Concepts: T

Weyl Contra Me On Technocracy

January 29, 2021 · Original source

I am not defending technocracy.

Nobody ever defends technocracy. It's like "elitism" or "statism". There is no Statist Party. Nobody holds rallies demanding more statism. There is no Citizens for Statism Facebook page with thousands of likes and followers. Yet for some reason libertarians don't win every single national election. Strange, isn't it?

I am not defending technocracy. But I do like evidence-based policy. So I read with interest Glen Weyl's Why I Am Not A Technocrat. It starts with a short summary of Seeing Like A State. It ties this into modern "evidence-based policy" and "mechanism design". It talks about how technocrats will always have their own insular culture and biases and paradigms, which prevent them from seeing the real world in its full complexity. Therefore, we should be careful about supposedly "objective" policies, and make sure they are always heavily informed by real people's real knowledge. Then it draws on vague rumors of the "rationalist community" and a shadowy figure named "Eliezer Yudkowsky" to create a completely fictional reimagination of us as a group of benighted people who don't understand any of these things, and just go around saying "hurr durr top-down systems are great, no way there could possibly be anything our models don't capture."

Inline links: Why I Am Not A Technocrat

January 29, 2021 · Original source

Glen Weyl posted a reply to my post criticizing his essay on technocracy, and kindly agreed to let me elevate it into a top-level post.

3. Scott claims that critics of technocracy always critique precisely the same examples. This is odd, given that my essay has several examples outside that cannon. Did Scott not see these? I was blowing the whistle on one (https://promarket.org/2020/05/28/how-market-design-economists-engineered-economists-helped-design-a-mass-privatization-of-public-resources/) at roughly the same time I wrote the technocracy piece. These are contemporary, not chestnuts, and conducted by precisely the circle (https://promarket.org/2020/05/28/how-market-design-economists-engineered-economists-helped-design-a-mass-privatization-of-public-resources/)whose condescending critiques of transparency and public engagement I was responding to.

Inline links: https://promarket.org/2020/05/28/how-market-design-economists-engineered-economists-helped-design-a-mass-privatization-of-public-resources/

4. Furthermore, the positive examples of technocracy @slatestarcodex refers to are...surprising. Two examples. To call school desegregation a technocratic invention papers over decades of community activism for desegregation. Perhaps even more dramatically looking at the coronavirus as an example of the success of technocracy runs against pretty much any reasonable reading of the international data. Danielle Allen and I have a piece coming out on this (we were both deeply involved in developing a response plan here https://ethics.harvard.edu/Covid-Roadmap that significantly influenced now-President Biden's response), but perhaps the sharpest point here is that the country, Taiwan, which performed best in the virus was led in part by Audrey Tang who moved back to Taiwan after being immersed in and repulsed by the rationalist movement in Silicon Valley - see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/) and dedicated herself to doing things differently in Taiwan (see her amazing poetic job description here:

Inline links: https://ethics.harvard.edu/Covid-Roadmap, https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/

WebMD, And The Tragedy Of Legible Expertise

February 05, 2021 · Original source

The first reason I'm talking about this now is to respond to a point that came up in my discussions with Glen Weyl on technocracy.

The Question Of Separatism

May 19, 2023 · Original source

This book is Jacobs’s least read. It was published in 1980, right after the first referendum where Quebecers voted to remain a part of Canada. It is based on lectures that Jacobs (who was an American but had moved to Canada in 1968) gave in Toronto right before the referendum. It’s not hard to guess why the book didn’t have a huge (read: any) impact. First, most people outside Quebec or Canada don’t have any reason to care. Second, the essay — which was written in English — argues in favor of the secession of Quebec, which virtually no one among the English-speaking population of Canada agreed with. The natural reaction from Canada’s intelligentsia was to ignore the book altogether. Meanwhile, few people in Quebec itself read it, since the referendum was over; it wasn’t even translated into French until decades later. As a result, The Question of Separatism sits awkwardly in Jane Jacobs’s bibliography, as if it were “a mistake in an otherwise brilliant career,” like I read somewhere. In a 2005 interview, one year before her death, Jacobs said that no journalist ever asked her about it. But the book was not a mistake. I don’t claim any special insight here: Jane Jacobs herself said so in that same interview. She said that she would have written the same book in 2005, “because that’s the way it is in the world, and it still holds.” Besides, The Question of Separatism is in fact not that much about the specifics of Quebec’s political situation, but rather about interesting generalities: what size means for countries and organizations, and why the fate of nations depends primarily on what happens in their cities. Taken together with Cities and the Wealth of Nations, which Jacobs wrote a few years later to expand on those ideas, we get a coherent and deeply interesting philosophy of economics: one that favors the local scale, cities and small countries, antifragility long before Nassim Taleb coined the term, and avoiding grandstanding theories that always fail to take into account the real complexity of the world. I. A Fake Mystery Cities and the Wealth of Nations opens on an economic mystery. “For a little while in the middle of this century,” writes Jacobs, “it seemed that the wild, intractable, dismal science of economics had yielded up something we all want: instructions for getting or keeping prosperity.” This was the 1940s to 1960s, and economists thought they had it all figured out. It was the golden age of high modernism and scientific technocracy. Everywhere from China to the Soviet Union to the United States and Britain and the nascent European Economic Community, leaders were coming up with elaborate plans, rooted in macroeconomic theories, that were supposed to guarantee future wealth and avoid economic crises. The theories had been developed by many thinkers over the previous two hundred years: Richard Cantillon, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes. Jacobs explains how they each had their own ideas of how the economy worked, disagreeing over things like whether supply or demand was the main driving mechanism, but they all agreed on a fundamental fact: inflation and unemployment have an inverse relationship to each other, like a seesaw. High inflation comes with low unemployment; high unemployment comes with low inflation, or even deflation when prices drop. The Great Depression, a time of deflation, had provided proof of the seesaw. Big government projects, as prescribed by Keynesians, were a way for states to reduce unemployment and bring the seesaw back in a balanced state. Economists developed fancy models, based on historical data, to predict the behavior of the economy. The Phillips curve in particular became popular. It was the golden age of technocracy; it was the triumph of high modernism. From now on wealth was assured, because we weren’t blind anymore: we had the curves. And yet — by the 1970s and 1980s, when Jane Jacobs was writing, the theories all stopped working. There was high inflation and high unemployment. People called it stagflation. Keynesian advisers in various governments were devastated: either their ideas were wrong, or they were applying them wrong. Economists such as Milton Friedman, from a rival school of economists called the monetarists or the Chicago school, came to the rescue — but their remedy, Jacobs believes, only made things worse. Whatever governments did to increase employment made inflation worse; whatever they did to attenuate inflation killed employment. The seesaw from the theories was working in application, even though it didn’t explain reality anymore. Stagflation was not supposed to exist, so stagflation could not be fought. At this point we’re near the end of Chapter 1, the densest part of the book. Jacobs has artfully guided us along economic history and laid out the mystery for us. What’s going on? we wonder. How are we supposed to deal with the two-headed monster of stagflation, if all economists are stumped? Then Jacobs, in a masterstroke, flips the whole thing over. I was impressed enough that I would have inserted a spoiler alert here, if it didn’t feel so silly putting a spoiler alert in an essay on economics. Stagflation is not a strange monster from legend. It is, Jacobs says, just the normal state of everything. Backward economies are in fact constantly in a state of stagflation. The prices in a poor country like Portugal or India (her two examples) feel low for an American or Canadian, but they’re high for most Portuguese or Indian people. At the same time, Portugal and India provide too few jobs to their residents. Inflation and unemployment are both perennially high, and none of that feels surprising whatsoever. Stagflation, in short, is just good ol’ poverty. All these fancy economists, from Cantillon in 1700s France to Keynes and Friedman in the 20th century Anglosphere, were thinking and writing about unusual places: rich countries that were undergoing fast economic development. They were making the classic mistake of treating poverty as a mystery and wealth as a given, when in fact poverty is the normal order of things and wealth, when it does occur, is what warrants an explanation. The result is that we don’t really know how to fix the economy of poor countries, nor do we know how to deal with decline in rich countries, whether we call it stagflation or something else. Jacobs derives from this a pretty damning view of macroeconomics. It is to her a science that has failed again and again, each time engulfing the equivalent of billions of dollars in wasted wealth. “We must,” she writes at the close of Chapter 1, “find more realistic and fruitful lines of observation and thought than we have tried to use so far. It is bootless to choose among existing schools of thought. We are on our own.” Fortunately, she has some ideas. II. Nations and the Wealth of Cities The original sin of macroeconomics, Jacobs believe, is to treat sovereign countries, or nations, as the main unit of economic analysis. This error, she claims, goes back to mercantilism, one of the first formal economic policies. Oversimplified, mercantilism states that wealth is synonymous with the amount of gold and silver in a nation’s treasury. This makes nations the main unit of economic analysis by definition. It’s a tautology — and one that was somehow embedded so deep in economic thinking that even the non-mercantilist Adam Smith would eventually choose, for his masterpiece of economic theory, the title An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Today, even though mercantilism has long been obsolete, we perpetuate the same tautology whenever we talk of the Gross Domestic Product or look at the very nice charts from Our World in Data, which for the most part allow only one level of resolution: sovereign countries. Of course, nations are an economically important concept because of that one property: they are sovereign, and therefore they write laws and implement policies that affect the economy. These policies can be productively compared. But that’s about it — for everything else, nations aren’t the right way to think about wealth. One reason is simply that they’re very different from one another: “it affronts common sense,” Jacobs writes, “to think of units as disparate as, say, Singapore and the United States, or Ecuador and the Soviet Union, or the Netherlands and Canada, as economic common denominators.” I would add that countries are arbitrary and changing: when the Soviet Union was replaced by 15 sovereign countries, the economic reality didn’t suddenly reshape itself to match the new borders. Lastly, nations contain, under the hood, many sub-economies that are also highly different from one another. None of that is secret or forbidden knowledge. Everyone has always been aware that New York City, or Milan, are economically very different from rural Mississippi or Sicily. But I find that it’s far easier to think in terms of “the United States” or “Italy,” especially when you’re not from there. Nations are an abstraction of real-life complexity, and are accordingly very tempting to use. Also, they’re often the entities that collect statistics, which is another difficult-to-resist temptation for anyone who likes quantitative data. Cities as Radiators of Economic Forces If nations aren’t the best unit to analyze the economy, what is? This is a Jane Jacobs book, so the answer is obviously going to be cities. Jacobs doesn’t actually give a clear argument why. Maybe that was in her previous book, The Economy of Cities. So far as I can see, her reasoning is, ironically, a bit tautological: “all developing economic life depends on city economies; it depends on them by definition because, wherever economic life is developing, the very process itself creates cities and has probably always done so.” But so far as I can see, this reasoning is correct. Cities concentrate people, and therefore economic life, and therefore economic power. The driving force for all this is a phenomenon that, from what I gather, was discovered by Jacobs when she wrote The Economy of Cities: import replacement. Consider, say, Boston back when it was a tiny settlement, not yet a city, in colonial times. At first, Boston didn’t produce much, especially not much that would be of interest to its main trading partner, London. It exported some natural resources: timber, fish. Whatever else the Bostonians needed, they needed to import it from other cities, again mostly London. (Remember to think of imports and exports in terms of cities, not nations.) For instance, at first, all metal tools in Boston came from European cities, and were paid for by the revenue from selling the timber and fish. Then, one day, some Bostonians decided to build an ironworks and make metal tools themselves. (Pictured: a reconstruction of the Saugus Iron Works, established 1646.) This wasn’t of any interest to London or other European cities. The Bostonians weren’t nearly as good or efficient at making metal tools as Londonians were. So Boston couldn’t export the metal tools back to Europe — but it could use them internally, and also export them to other American cities that were about as poor as Boston was, or poorer. Internally, this meant the spark of a manufacturing economy in Boston, as easily obtained metal parts made it easier for other Bostonians to replace other imports from European cities, and eventually develop a symbiotic network of industries. It also meant that the revenue from fish and timber could be used to import new things, including new innovations from European cities (which would later become opportunities for more import replacement). And because there were customers for Boston-made metal goods in New York and Philadelphia, and eventually Cincinnati and Chicago and Pittsburgh as these cities came into existence, it meant additional revenue for Boston that it could reinvest into developing its production further. For Jacobs, virtually all city development can be seen through the lens of import replacement (which, to be clear, has approximately nothing to do with policies of import substitution industrialization; import replacement is not a policy, but a naturally arising free market phenomenon). Her book contains many other examples than Boston, such as Venice, which started off in the early Middle Ages as a small town that sold salt to Constantinople, but then diversified its production to become one of the wealthiest cities of its time; or Taipei and Kaohsiung, two cities in Taiwan that kickstarted their development not long before the 1980s, by forcing expropriated landlords to invest into local import-replacing businesses. One is reminded of Scott’s review of How Asia Works. Import replacement, then, is what makes cities economically powerful. And this power is so great that it causes ripples in distant places. In fact it is the main reason that anything happens at all in non-city areas. Jacobs gives the example of Bardou, a small village in southern France. Bardou looks like this: To the extent that Bardou ever had an economic life, that life was almost entirely driven by distant cities. In ancient times, the area was populated because of iron mines nearby. The mines were exploited to serve the needs of people in the distant cities of Lugdunum (Lyon), Nemausus (Nîmes), or even Rome. As Jacobs notes, we could say that the mines served “the Roman Empire,” but that would be another example of using the abstraction of sovereign countries when we should instead be specific. It was Lugdunum, Nemausus and Rome that wanted the iron — not some random rural area of the empire, and certainly not the part of the empire in which Bardou was located. Eventually the mines and the region were abandoned. More than 1,000 years later, peasants moved into the area and built the modern village. For centuries they lived a wretchedly poor life of subsistence farming. No cities exerted any influence on it, and indeed nothing happened. Then, in the 19th century, the people of Bardou learned that they could improve their situation by moving to distant cities such as Paris, and most of them did. Again, the force wasn’t being exerted by “France”; Bardou was already part of France. The force was specifically being exerted by Paris and other cities with jobs for poor peasants. By the 1960s, only one old man was left. That’s when two foreign visitors, a German and an American, happened upon the village, decided to buy most of it, revitalized it, and turned it into a tourist spot (and even, for a brief time, into a set for a movie company). Today Bardou is a popular place for travelers — who are mostly city people, and spend money that was mostly earned in cities. The Bardou story contains examples of several of the forces that import-replacing cities radiate, according to Jacobs. These forces are central to her thinking. There are five of them: Markets. Cities house a lot of people who need a lot of goods and services, and are therefore strong markets to sell goods and services to. This was the force that acted on the Bardou area when it was a Roman mining region, and again today when it functions as a tourist spot for city vacationers.

Inline links: Phillips curve, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9wEn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F850ce64a-4367-4a7a-a9ec-e8eb1af3ed08_399x292.png, Our World in Data, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zS15!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d533e64-f407-4b05-aea5-5b5a9dbdc7bc_1600x1130.png, import replacement, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5j2T!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7f2675d9-ce56-4ac5-9b78-a16720269dea_1600x1159.png, import substitution industrialization, Scott’s review of, Bardou, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RfMs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc119b085-f7b3-4e09-a586-9f4fc4c2ea21_1200x1600.png

It was the golden age of technocracy; it was the triumph of high modernism. From now on wealth was assured, because we weren’t blind anymore: we had the curves. And yet — by the 1970s and 1980s, when Jane Jacobs was writing, the theories all stopped working. There was high inflation and high unemployment. People called it stagflation. Keynesian advisers in various governments were devastated: either their ideas were wrong, or they were applying them wrong. Economists such as Milton Friedman, from a rival school of economists called the monetarists or the Chicago school, came to the rescue — but their remedy, Jacobs believes, only made things worse. Whatever governments did to increase employment made inflation worse; whatever they did to attenuate inflation killed employment. The seesaw from the theories was working in application, even though it didn’t explain reality anymore. Stagflation was not supposed to exist, so stagflation could not be fought. At this point we’re near the end of Chapter 1, the densest part of the book. Jacobs has artfully guided us along economic history and laid out the mystery for us. What’s going on? we wonder. How are we supposed to deal with the two-headed monster of stagflation, if all economists are stumped? Then Jacobs, in a masterstroke, flips the whole thing over. I was impressed enough that I would have inserted a spoiler alert here, if it didn’t feel so silly putting a spoiler alert in an essay on economics. Stagflation is not a strange monster from legend. It is, Jacobs says, just the normal state of everything. Backward economies are in fact constantly in a state of stagflation. The prices in a poor country like Portugal or India (her two examples) feel low for an American or Canadian, but they’re high for most Portuguese or Indian people. At the same time, Portugal and India provide too few jobs to their residents. Inflation and unemployment are both perennially high, and none of that feels surprising whatsoever. Stagflation, in short, is just good ol’ poverty. All these fancy economists, from Cantillon in 1700s France to Keynes and Friedman in the 20th century Anglosphere, were thinking and writing about unusual places: rich countries that were undergoing fast economic development. They were making the classic mistake of treating poverty as a mystery and wealth as a given, when in fact poverty is the normal order of things and wealth, when it does occur, is what warrants an explanation. The result is that we don’t really know how to fix the economy of poor countries, nor do we know how to deal with decline in rich countries, whether we call it stagflation or something else. Jacobs derives from this a pretty damning view of macroeconomics. It is to her a science that has failed again and again, each time engulfing the equivalent of billions of dollars in wasted wealth. “We must,” she writes at the close of Chapter 1, “find more realistic and fruitful lines of observation and thought than we have tried to use so far. It is bootless to choose among existing schools of thought. We are on our own.” Fortunately, she has some ideas. II. Nations and the Wealth of Cities The original sin of macroeconomics, Jacobs believe, is to treat sovereign countries, or nations, as the main unit of economic analysis. This error, she claims, goes back to mercantilism, one of the first formal economic policies. Oversimplified, mercantilism states that wealth is synonymous with the amount of gold and silver in a nation’s treasury. This makes nations the main unit of economic analysis by definition. It’s a tautology — and one that was somehow embedded so deep in economic thinking that even the non-mercantilist Adam Smith would eventually choose, for his masterpiece of economic theory, the title An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Today, even though mercantilism has long been obsolete, we perpetuate the same tautology whenever we talk of the Gross Domestic Product or look at the very nice charts from Our World in Data, which for the most part allow only one level of resolution: sovereign countries. Of course, nations are an economically important concept because of that one property: they are sovereign, and therefore they write laws and implement policies that affect the economy. These policies can be productively compared. But that’s about it — for everything else, nations aren’t the right way to think about wealth. One reason is simply that they’re very different from one another: “it affronts common sense,” Jacobs writes, “to think of units as disparate as, say, Singapore and the United States, or Ecuador and the Soviet Union, or the Netherlands and Canada, as economic common denominators.” I would add that countries are arbitrary and changing: when the Soviet Union was replaced by 15 sovereign countries, the economic reality didn’t suddenly reshape itself to match the new borders. Lastly, nations contain, under the hood, many sub-economies that are also highly different from one another. None of that is secret or forbidden knowledge. Everyone has always been aware that New York City, or Milan, are economically very different from rural Mississippi or Sicily. But I find that it’s far easier to think in terms of “the United States” or “Italy,” especially when you’re not from there. Nations are an abstraction of real-life complexity, and are accordingly very tempting to use. Also, they’re often the entities that collect statistics, which is another difficult-to-resist temptation for anyone who likes quantitative data. Cities as Radiators of Economic Forces If nations aren’t the best unit to analyze the economy, what is? This is a Jane Jacobs book, so the answer is obviously going to be cities. Jacobs doesn’t actually give a clear argument why. Maybe that was in her previous book, The Economy of Cities. So far as I can see, her reasoning is, ironically, a bit tautological: “all developing economic life depends on city economies; it depends on them by definition because, wherever economic life is developing, the very process itself creates cities and has probably always done so.” But so far as I can see, this reasoning is correct. Cities concentrate people, and therefore economic life, and therefore economic power. The driving force for all this is a phenomenon that, from what I gather, was discovered by Jacobs when she wrote The Economy of Cities: import replacement. Consider, say, Boston back when it was a tiny settlement, not yet a city, in colonial times. At first, Boston didn’t produce much, especially not much that would be of interest to its main trading partner, London. It exported some natural resources: timber, fish. Whatever else the Bostonians needed, they needed to import it from other cities, again mostly London. (Remember to think of imports and exports in terms of cities, not nations.) For instance, at first, all metal tools in Boston came from European cities, and were paid for by the revenue from selling the timber and fish. Then, one day, some Bostonians decided to build an ironworks and make metal tools themselves. (Pictured: a reconstruction of the Saugus Iron Works, established 1646.) This wasn’t of any interest to London or other European cities. The Bostonians weren’t nearly as good or efficient at making metal tools as Londonians were. So Boston couldn’t export the metal tools back to Europe — but it could use them internally, and also export them to other American cities that were about as poor as Boston was, or poorer. Internally, this meant the spark of a manufacturing economy in Boston, as easily obtained metal parts made it easier for other Bostonians to replace other imports from European cities, and eventually develop a symbiotic network of industries. It also meant that the revenue from fish and timber could be used to import new things, including new innovations from European cities (which would later become opportunities for more import replacement). And because there were customers for Boston-made metal goods in New York and Philadelphia, and eventually Cincinnati and Chicago and Pittsburgh as these cities came into existence, it meant additional revenue for Boston that it could reinvest into developing its production further. For Jacobs, virtually all city development can be seen through the lens of import replacement (which, to be clear, has approximately nothing to do with policies of import substitution industrialization; import replacement is not a policy, but a naturally arising free market phenomenon). Her book contains many other examples than Boston, such as Venice, which started off in the early Middle Ages as a small town that sold salt to Constantinople, but then diversified its production to become one of the wealthiest cities of its time; or Taipei and Kaohsiung, two cities in Taiwan that kickstarted their development not long before the 1980s, by forcing expropriated landlords to invest into local import-replacing businesses. One is reminded of Scott’s review of How Asia Works. Import replacement, then, is what makes cities economically powerful. And this power is so great that it causes ripples in distant places. In fact it is the main reason that anything happens at all in non-city areas. Jacobs gives the example of Bardou, a small village in southern France. Bardou looks like this: To the extent that Bardou ever had an economic life, that life was almost entirely driven by distant cities. In ancient times, the area was populated because of iron mines nearby. The mines were exploited to serve the needs of people in the distant cities of Lugdunum (Lyon), Nemausus (Nîmes), or even Rome. As Jacobs notes, we could say that the mines served “the Roman Empire,” but that would be another example of using the abstraction of sovereign countries when we should instead be specific. It was Lugdunum, Nemausus and Rome that wanted the iron — not some random rural area of the empire, and certainly not the part of the empire in which Bardou was located. Eventually the mines and the region were abandoned. More than 1,000 years later, peasants moved into the area and built the modern village. For centuries they lived a wretchedly poor life of subsistence farming. No cities exerted any influence on it, and indeed nothing happened. Then, in the 19th century, the people of Bardou learned that they could improve their situation by moving to distant cities such as Paris, and most of them did. Again, the force wasn’t being exerted by “France”; Bardou was already part of France. The force was specifically being exerted by Paris and other cities with jobs for poor peasants. By the 1960s, only one old man was left. That’s when two foreign visitors, a German and an American, happened upon the village, decided to buy most of it, revitalized it, and turned it into a tourist spot (and even, for a brief time, into a set for a movie company). Today Bardou is a popular place for travelers — who are mostly city people, and spend money that was mostly earned in cities. The Bardou story contains examples of several of the forces that import-replacing cities radiate, according to Jacobs. These forces are central to her thinking. There are five of them: Markets. Cities house a lot of people who need a lot of goods and services, and are therefore strong markets to sell goods and services to. This was the force that acted on the Bardou area when it was a Roman mining region, and again today when it functions as a tourist spot for city vacationers.

Inline links: Our World in Data, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zS15!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d533e64-f407-4b05-aea5-5b5a9dbdc7bc_1600x1130.png, import replacement, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5j2T!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7f2675d9-ce56-4ac5-9b78-a16720269dea_1600x1159.png, import substitution industrialization, Scott’s review of, Bardou, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RfMs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc119b085-f7b3-4e09-a586-9f4fc4c2ea21_1200x1600.png

technological singularity4 mentions across 4 issues

technological singularity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between August 04, 2022 and November 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The term “technological singularity” gets overused, but the original definition is"; "the chance of a technological singularity in our lifetime was only 0.33%"; "when I got into the technological singularity and AI safety". It most often appears alongside AI Safety, America, China.

Article page: technological singularity
Mention count: 4
Issue count: 4
First seen: August 04, 2022
Last seen: November 26, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Slightly Against Underpopulation Worries August 04, 2022
"But" vs. "Yes, But" June 12, 2025
In Search Of AI Psychosis August 26, 2025
Why AI Safety Won't Make America Lose The Race With China November 26, 2025

AI Safety 2 shared issues
America 2 shared issues
China 2 shared issues
NYT 2 shared issues
OpenAI 2 shared issues

Source context

Slightly Against Underpopulation Worries

August 04, 2022 · Original source

The term “technological singularity” gets overused, but the original definition is “a point where things change so profoundly that it’s not worth speculating about what happens afterwards”.

If we don’t die of something else first, there will probably be a technological singularity before 2100. The way things are looking now, it will probably involve AI somehow. If by some miracle that doesn’t happen, we’ll get one involving human genetic engineering for intelligence. I think there’s maybe a 5-10% chance we somehow manage to miss both of those entirely, but I’m not spending too many of my brain cycles worrying about this weird sliver of probability space.

"But" vs. "Yes, But"

June 12, 2025 · Original source

I guess that example sounds so fake and contrived that I’ll break my usual policy of not shaming specific commenters and provide the real-world equivalent. Someone wrote a blog post where they argued a certain calculation showed that the chance of a technological singularity in our lifetime was only 0.33%. I retraced the argument and found that if you did the math correctly, it was actually about 30%. Here’s the comment they left on that post:

In Search Of AI Psychosis

August 26, 2025 · Original source

I think now there might be several dozen subreddit moderators who could accurately describe their job as “witch webmaster who runs an online service giving advice to new witches”. And partly it was because there are so many crazy beliefs in the world - spirits, crystal healing, moon landing denial, esoteric Hitlerism, whichever religions you don’t believe in - that psychiatrists have instituted a blanket exemption for any widely held idea. If you think you’re being attacked by demons, you’re delusional, unless you’re from some culture where lots of people get attacked by demons, in which case it’s a religion and you’re fine. This is partly political self-protection - no psychiatrist wants to be the guy who commits an Afro-Caribbean person for believing in voodoo. But it also seems to track something useful about reality. Nietzsche wrote “Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” Most people don’t have world-models - they believe what their friends believe, or what has good epistemic vibes. In a large group, weird ideas can ricochet from person to person and get established even in healthy brains. In an Afro-Caribbean culture where all your friends get attacked by demons at voodoo church every Sunday, a belief in demon attacks can co-exist with otherwise being a totally functional individual. So is QAnon a religion? Awkward question, but it’s non-psychotic by definition. Still, it’s interesting, isn’t it? If social media makes a thousand people believe the same crazy thing, it’s not psychotic. If LLMs make a thousand people each believe a different crazy thing, that is psychotic. Is this a meaningful difference, or an accounting convention? Also, what if a thousand people believe something, but it’s you and your 999 ChatGPT instances? III. A Hidden Army Of Crackpots I have a family member who believes that the theory of evolution, as usually understood, cannot possibly work. He has developed an alternative theory called “noctogenesis” which patches Darwinism using ideas from the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, and he works on-and-off on various related books and papers. I have told him I suspect he might be a crackpot; he stands by his claims. It’s fine; when I got into the technological singularity and AI safety, lots of people suspected I was a crackpot, and I stood by my claims too. You’ve got to stand by your family members even when they’re slightly crackpottish. This family member is happily married, retired after running a successful business, and generally a normal likeable person. He has no signs of mental illness, and doesn’t talk about quantum evolution unless someone else brings it up first. There must be millions of people like him. Used car dealers with proofs of P = NP, dentists who think they’ve discovered something important about Mary Magdalene, math professors obsessed with destroying the moon. I’m working on evaluating ACX Grants, and these people are out in force. A few propose literal perpetual motion machines. Others have vaguer plans, like some kind of social media app (it’s always a social media app) that will cause world peace. Many of them have decent jobs and seem like upstanding members of society. Their secrets are known only to themselves, their family members, and their would-be grantmaker. …and, increasingly, their chatbots. After years of hiatus (or at least not talking to me about his work) my family member is back on the quantum evolution beat, and LLMs appear to be involved. If I knew him less well, I would think the LLM had caused the quantum evolution theory - but no, it just made it much easier to research and write about. Is this psychosis? The answer has to be no, but it’s once again hard to draw the line. A very small number of crackpots will be vindicated by history. A larger number will be erroneous but sympathetic - the official account of the Kennedy assassination is pretty weird, and reasonable minds can disagree. From there, we get to ones that are maybe not so sympathetic: flat earth, QAnon, the thing where the Queen was an alien lizard. If only one person thought the Queen was an alien lizard, and they never managed to convince anyone else, would that be sufficient evidence for a delusional disorder? I’m not sure. (psychiatry has a diagnosis, schizotypal personality, which sort of involves being a normal person with a few odd ideas, but it’s not a great match for many of these people, and interesting mainly as a genetic curiosity - it travels in the same families as schizophrenia itself) Maybe this is another place where we are forced to admit a spectrum model of psychiatric disorders - there is an unbroken continuum from mildly sad to suicidally depressed, from social drinking to raging alcoholism, and from eccentric to floridly psychotic. People who are eccentric can remain so their whole lives, with the level of expression depending on their social connections and the ease of pursuing their rabbit holes. LLMs, by making it easier to pursue odd theories and serving as a surrogate social connection who always agrees with you, can bring latent crackpottery into the open. IV. Cause And Effect Bipolar disorder has an interesting relationship with sleep. Most manic people sleep very little, or not at all - maybe an hour or two a night. But also, poor sleep can cause bipolar episodes in people prone to them. In a typical case, a bipolar who’s been well-controlled for years will get assigned a big report at work and get poor sleep for a few nights until they finish. At first, this will be just as bad as it sounds, and they’ll be working through a fog of tiredness. Then the tiredness will lift. They’ll feel normal, then better-than-normal, until finally they can’t sleep even if they want to. Then they’ll email the report to their boss and it will be written entirely in Assyrian cuneiform. I increasingly think this isn’t just an incidental feature of bipolar, but part of the reason it exists as a diagnostic category at all. Most people have a compensatory reaction to insomnia - missing one night of sleep makes you more tired the next. A small number of people have the reverse, a spiralling reaction where missing one night of sleep makes you less tired the next. Solve for the equilibrium and you reach a stable attractor point where you never sleep at all. But this does other bad things to your brain - hence the cuneiform. I’m not claiming that bipolar is “just” sleep loss. As Borsboom et al will tell you, psychiatric disorders can be viewed as complex networks of symptoms, each reinforcing the others. In a few pure cases, you can get a ratchet going with sleep alone, and the sleeplessness will spark everything else. More likely, there will be lots of interactions between poor sleep and everything else, and the “everything else” can sink or hypercharge an impending manic episode. Still, I find this a fruitful way to think about bipolar. Sleeplessness is both the cause and the effect. Can delusions also be like this? That is, suppose there’s some personality trait where having one delusion makes you even more delusional. Maybe the delusion makes you excited (who wouldn’t be excited to learn they’re the Messiah?), and you’re more delusional when you’re in an excited state and not thinking clearly. Or maybe it’s a three-symptom cycle - the delusion causes excitement, which makes you unable to sleep, which scrambles your thinking, which makes you more delusional (which makes you even less able to sleep, etc). The point is: delusions are certainly an effect of bipolar disorder. And in the dynamical system model of psychiatric disorders, we should expect that effects are often also causes; that’s how the vicious cycle gets going. This is the best I can do at modeling true LLM psychosis. Someone with a trait where delusions lead inevitably to more delusions starts using an LLM. The LLM accentuates whatever usual tendency towards crackpottery they have and makes them believe something a little crazier than whatever they believed before. Then that crazy belief feeds upon itself and causes other things like excitement and sleep loss, which (if the person is predisposed) precipitates a true psychotic episode. V. Folie A Deux Ex Machina If one person believes a crazy thing, it’s a delusion; if a thousand people believe it, it’s a religion. What if exactly two people believe it? In psychiatry, this is called folie a deux. It fits awkwardly into our nosology and is rarely seen. Still, it happens enough to generate a few case studies. In a typical case, one person has psychosis for some normal reason, like schizophrenia or bipolar, and the second person is a shut-in who lives with them and rarely talks to anyone else. The psychotic person gets some normal psychotic delusion - they’re God, the Feds are after them, etc - and sort of psychically steamrolls over the second person until they believe it too. Usually removing the second person from the first is sufficient for a cure. This slightly challenges the view of psychosis as a biological disorder - but only slightly. Again, think of most people as lacking world-models, but being moored to reality by some vague sense of social consensus. If your social life is limited to one person, and that person themselves becomes unmoored, then sometimes you will follow along. I would expect second-sufferers to believe delusions in a sort of cognitively normal way, the same way people believe true facts, honest mistakes, and conspiracy theories. I would expect them to be less likely (though not zero likely) to have other psychotic features like sleep disturbances, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or a tendency to autonomously generate delusional ideas aside from the one they absorbed from the index case. An introverted person using an LLM has some similarities to folie a deux. If they use the chatbot very often, it might be a large majority of their social interactions. Here the primary vs. secondary distinction breaks down - the most likely scenario is that the human first suggested the crazy idea, the machine reflected it back slightly stronger, and it kept ricocheting back and forth, gaining confidence with each iteration, until both were totally convinced. Compare this to normal social interactions, where if someone expresses a crazy idea that isn’t common in their culture, other people will shoot them down or at the very least nod politely and stop the conversation. So my working theory of LLM psychosis is: Some patients were already psychotic, and LLMs just help them be psychotic more effectively.

Inline links: the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, math professors obsessed with destroying the moon, ACX Grants, a spectrum model of psychiatric disorders, As Borsboom et al will tell you, the dynamical system model of psychiatric disorders, folie a deux

Why AI Safety Won't Make America Lose The Race With China

November 26, 2025 · Original source

Everything has tradeoffs, regulation vs. progress is a common dichotomy, and the more important you think AI will be, the more important it is that the free world get it first. If you believe in superintelligence, the technological singularity, etc, then you think AI is maximally important, and this issue ought to be high on your mind.

Taoism3 mentions across 3 issues

Taoism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 19, 2022 and October 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "There he studied both Buddhism and Taoism"; "4% know what Chinese religion was founded by Lao Tse (Taoism)"; "Chinese religion was founded by Lao Tse (Taoism)". It most often appears alongside ACX, Buddhism, China.

Article page: Taoism
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: August 19, 2022
Last seen: October 04, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance August 19, 2022
A Theoretical "Case Against Education" May 23, 2024
Against The Cultural Christianity Argument October 04, 2024

ACX 2 shared issues
Buddhism 2 shared issues
China 2 shared issues
1587 1 shared issues
1587 1 shared issues

Source context

A Theoretical "Case Against Education"

August 19, 2022 · Original source

But Wan-li did not want to spend his whole life re-enacting a tedious role which he had no say in choosing. He had been a gifted student, with a talent for calligraphy and an interest in reading newly printed popular literature. But as he grew more estranged from the bureaucracy he became less and less interested in the Four Classics of Taoism and Confucianism which were regarded as something akin to holy writ, and which comprised the entirety of his officially prescribed studies. He started “banging out sick,” claiming to suffer from various vague ailments which prevented him from showing up for most of the endless, ponderous rites and ceremonies and study sessions which were intended to take up most of his days.

Li’s early career was full of poverty and misery, as he tried and largely failed to support a family while working as a low-level civil servant. At 53 he had a mid-life crisis, retired from the Civil Service, sent his wife away, shaved his head and went to live in a Buddhist temple. There he studied both Buddhism and Taoism, in an effort to find some solace in philosophy and spiritualism.

May 23, 2024 · Original source

4% know what Chinese religion was founded by Lao Tse (Taoism)

Against The Cultural Christianity Argument

October 04, 2024 · Original source

But the Christian cultural package also fell apart and became the current post-Christian world. This wasn't just a one-time coincidence either. Protestantism gave way to modernism in Scandinavia, Germany, and the US. Catholicism gave way to modernism in Spain, Italy, and Latin America. Orthodoxy gave way to modernism in Greece, Eastern Europe, and Russia (with a slight Putinist resurrection-in-name-only which hardly seems to have produced a flourishing liberal society). Meanwhile in China, the local mix of Buddhism/Confucianism/Taoism gave way to modernism. In South East Asia, Buddhism gave way to modernism. Only 10% of Israeli Jews are ultra-Orthodox, and it would be lower if they didn't breed so fast. India is moderately Hindu but still noticeably modern. Even the Middle East is gradually becoming less Muslim.

Tartaria3 mentions across 3 issues

Tartaria is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between September 23, 2021 and September 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "This is the setup for my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria"; "So, is it just me or is the Tartaria conspiracy theory"; "Have you ever heard of Tartaria? All history before the World Wars is a lie". It most often appears alongside China, French Revolution, Google.

Article page: Tartaria
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: September 23, 2021
Last seen: September 03, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Whither Tartaria? September 23, 2021
Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture October 04, 2021
Interview Day At Thiel Capital September 03, 2024

China 2 shared issues
French Revolution 2 shared issues
Google 2 shared issues
San Francisco 2 shared issues
Taj Mahal 2 shared issues

Source context

Whither Tartaria?

September 23, 2021 · Original source

This is the setup for my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria. Its true believers say we are those savages. We live in the shadow of the Taj Mahal, Art Deco skyscrapers, etc. But our buildings look like this:

Inline links: Tartaria

While changes in building materials, cost-cutting, etc might have a role, I think it would be myopic to focus too hard on architecture-specific explanations. The shift from Tartarian to modern aesthetics is consistent across art forms:

There is a lot of writing about "the modernist turn" and the origins of modern art, but I haven't been able to find anything that links all these artistic fields and tries to explain what happened in general. I am sure you will link me to great resources about this in the comments. Until then, some speculative responses that one might give the Tartarians:

Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture

October 04, 2021 · Original source

Thanks to everyone who commented on Whither Tartaria (currently 1079 comments). Many of you really like modern architecture, and many others of you really hate it. I appreciate most of you being able to accept disagreement on that and move on to the bigger question of why there’s so much more of it now.

Inline links: Whither Tartaria

The most interesting thing I got from the comments was Chaostician linking to Wikipedia’s page on the Great Male Renunciation - men’s fashion changing from ornate colorful clothing to dark suits. Wikipedia seems pretty convinced that this was because of egalitarianism norms:

Inline links: Chaostician

For example, cost. Long Disc writes:

Inline links: writes

Interview Day At Thiel Capital

September 03, 2024 · Original source

“Exactly. It’s a conspiracy. Have you ever heard of Tartaria? All history before the World Wars is a lie. The real story is a global civilization called Tartaria, centered in Asia, which was destroyed in some sort of flood. All the buildings we can no longer make today - the cathedrals, the Victorian houses, the Art Deco skyscrapers - are Tartarian relics. The elites disguise the true history to prevent us from realizing how far we’ve fallen. My theory is that the Tartarians were bright yellow, and our folk iconography is a skeuomorph from their culture.”

Inline links: Tartaria

“This is also why newborn babies are born with jaundice so often. It’s the Tartarian genes reasserting themselves. The doctors take them away and bombard them with UV rays to hide their true nature and prevent us from realizing the con. The elites even got us to use ‘yellow-bellied’ as a synonym for ‘coward’, so that we would shun and bully whoever they didn’t catch. What do you think?”

taxometrics3 mentions across 3 issues

taxometrics is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 21, 2021 and February 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "I only discovered taxometrics a few months ago and I haven't talked your ears off about it yet"; "Taxometrics is the study of whether psychiatric conditions are categorical or dimensional"; "[previously in sequence: Taxometrics , Dynamical Systems]". It most often appears alongside bipolar, Russia, schizophrenia.

Article page: taxometrics
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: January 21, 2021
Last seen: February 11, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Still Alive January 21, 2021
Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics January 28, 2021
Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Tradeoffs And Failures February 11, 2021

bipolar 2 shared issues
Russia 2 shared issues
schizophrenia 2 shared issues
US 2 shared issues
7500 people signed a petition 1 shared issues

Source context

Still Alive

January 21, 2021 · Original source

That's taken up most of my time over the past six months. Going back to blog posts like this is a strange feeling. I wondered if I'd enjoy the break. I didn't particularly; it felt at least as much like trying to resist an addiction as it did resting from a difficult task. There's so much left to say! I never got the chance to tell you whether the SSC Survey found birth order effects to be biologically or socially mediated! And the predictive processing community is starting to really chip away at the question of why psychotherapies work - I need to explain this to someone else before I can be sure I understand it! I only discovered taxometrics a few months ago and I haven't talked your ears off about it yet - that will change! I made predictions about Trump - now that he's come and gone I need to grade them publicly so you can raise or lower your opinion of me as appropriate! And there's the book review contest! We are absolutely going to do the book review contest!

Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics

January 28, 2021 · Original source

[reposted from here, with edits]

Inline links: here

Taxometrics is the study of whether psychiatric conditions are categorical or dimensional.

So taxometrics is the study of whether psychiatric disorders work more like the flu, or more like hypertension.

Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Tradeoffs And Failures

February 11, 2021 · Original source

[previously in sequence: Taxometrics, Dynamical Systems. Epistemic status: speculative. This should go without saying, but when I talk about “failures” in this post, I mean failures of biological processes, as in the term “congestive heart failure”; I don’t mean to accuse people with psychiatric conditions of being failures.]

Inline links: Taxometrics, Dynamical Systems

Torment Nexus3 mentions across 3 issues

Torment Nexus is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 08, 2022 and September 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "whether Anthropic has already pivoted to building the Torment Nexus"; "trying to build the Torment Nexus a free pass"; "If you used the Torment Nexus and it did happen to you". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, 80,000 Hours’ Guide To Working In AI Policy And Strategy, Aaronson.

Article page: Torment Nexus
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: August 08, 2022
Last seen: September 25, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Why Not Slow AI Progress? August 08, 2022
Kelly Bets On Civilization March 07, 2023
Sources Say Bay Area House Party September 25, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours’ Guide To Working In AI Policy And Strategy 1 shared issues
Aaronson 1 shared issues
activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues

Source context

Why Not Slow AI Progress?

August 08, 2022 · Original source

Anthropic was founded when some OpenAI safety researchers struck out on their own to create what they billed as an even-more-safety-conscious alternative. Again, the headline was Anthropic Raises $580 Million For AI Safety And Research (and most of that came from rationalists and effective altruists convinced by their safety-conscious pitch). Again, their announcement included reassuring language - their president said that “We’re focusing on ensuring Anthropic has the culture and governance to continue to responsibly explore and develop safe AI systems as we scale.” Clued-in people disagree about whether Anthropic has already pivoted to building the Torment Nexus, but it’s probably only a matter of time.

Inline links: Anthropic Raises $580 Million For AI Safety And Research, building the Torment Nexus

Kelly Bets On Civilization

March 07, 2023 · Original source

First, you are allowed to use Inside View. If Osama bin Laden is starting a supervirus lab, and objects that you shouldn’t shut him down because “in the past, shutting down progress out of exaggerated fear of potential harm has killed far more people than the progress itself ever could”, you are permitted to respond “yes, but you are Osama bin Laden, and this is a supervirus lab.” You don’t have to give every company trying to build the Torment Nexus a free pass just because they can figure out a way to place their work in a reference class which is usually good. All other technologies fail in predictable and limited ways. If a buggy AI exploded, that would be no worse than a buggy airplane or nuclear plant. The concern is that a buggy AI will pretend to work well, bide its time, and plot how to cause maximum damage while undetected. Also it’s smarter than you. Also this might work so well that nobody realizes they’re all buggy until there are millions of them.

Sources Say Bay Area House Party

September 25, 2025 · Original source

“Nishin,” says Vinaya. “You read speculative fiction, right? Maybe you fantasize about isekai - the idea of being dropped into some fantasy world and having to survive by your wits alone? Imagine writing our own world as an isekai. ‘In my setting, there's this computerized gathering-place hive mind thing. Nice, normal people go there and get addicted to it. Then it uses advanced AI to serve them content specifically tailored to polarize and enrage them. The world's top public intellectuals start out as really thoughtful decent people, then get spit out as seething balls of rage suitable only as objects of public hilarity and terrible warnings. Once there was a psychology professor widely admired as one of the leading proponents of self-cultivation, the Western canon, and Biblical wisdom, and he spent a few years on there and ended up screaming about how pandemics were fake news dreamed up by mediocrity-worshipping blue-haired death cultists.’ If this was the book you were going to be isekaied into, wouldn't you develop some kind of plan other than entering the Torment Nexus and hoping this doesn't happen to you? If you used the Torment Nexus and it did happen to you, wouldn't you at least consider the possibility that you were suffering some kind of Torment-Nexus-related-brain-damage as opposed to really being a vital front-line soldier against the death cultists?”

transhumanist3 mentions across 3 issues

transhumanist is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 29, 2021 and August 02, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "transhumanist/singularitarian groups working on protecting the long-term future"; "philosophy grad school to join the transhumanist compound"; "Until we defeat death in the glorious transhumanist future". It most often appears alongside COVID, Eliezer Yudkowsky, 80,000 Hours.

Article page: transhumanist
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: January 29, 2021
Last seen: August 02, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Contra Weyl On Technocracy January 29, 2021
There's A Time For Everyone January 12, 2022
Your Book Review: Two Arms and a Head August 02, 2024

COVID 2 shared issues
Eliezer Yudkowsky 2 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
Ableism 1 shared issues
Acapulco 1 shared issues

Source context

There's A Time For Everyone

January 29, 2021 · Original source

Weyl's link doesn't support his claim. It's an 80,000 Hours page saying that that it's important to protect the long-term future, something EA has believed since the beginning. EA started with a sort of merger and cross-pollination between people trying to save lives by eg curing malaria, and transhumanist/singularitarian groups working on protecting the long-term future; it held together because both groups agree that the other's position can make sense given different sets of complicated assumptions about ethics and tractability. The page Weyl links highlights and explains the philosophy around that, but does not claim anyone had a sudden enlightenment where they realized they'd previously been ignoring the threat of totalitarianism and that was wrong. Everyone has always believed that stopping the rise of a totalitarian regime is one part of the important task of protecting the far-future, but we haven't focused on it because it's less tractable and less neglected than other parts. As far as I know we continue to think that and mostly not focus on it aside from occasionally looking for tractable interventions we've missed.

January 12, 2022 · Original source

But everyone’s story is weird. During college, my father moonlighted as a juggling instructor. My mother signed up for his class, one thing led to another, and a year later they ran off to Sardinia together and got married. My best man met his wife when she dropped out of philosophy grad school to join the transhumanist compound he was staying at. Darwin spends five billion years optimizing your genes for reproduction, and God laughs and decides that whether or not you mate will depend on which weird parties you go to, or whatever.

Twenty years and exactly one million micromarriages later, I have yet to find any better advice. Gather your micromarriages while ye may, for time is still a-flying. Do annoying things, expect them to fail, and increment a little counter in your head each time, to prevent yourself from going insane. Then do more annoying things. Teach a juggling class. Join a weird transhumanist compound. Go to one of Aella’s weird parties. There is no royal road. I’m not claiming to have super useful advice here, just to be able to say from the end of a long and very rocky path that it does eventually pay off. Or as Lin Manuel-Miranda put it:

Inline links: Lin Manuel-Miranda put it

Your Book Review: Two Arms and a Head

August 02, 2024 · Original source

Until we defeat death in the glorious transhumanist future, it’s coming for all of us. Some of us may die suddenly in a tragic accident. Some may be diagnosed with a terminal illness that kills in a matter of months.

Trump administration3 mentions across 3 issues

Trump administration is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 29, 2024 and September 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "until halfway into the Trump administration"; "I was perfectly okay with the Trump administration in 2025"; "Trump administration restricting food stamps". It most often appears alongside Curtis Yarvin, Ethiopia, India.

Article page: Trump administration
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: February 29, 2024
Last seen: September 25, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For February 2024 February 29, 2024
Open Thread 381 May 12, 2025
Sources Say Bay Area House Party September 25, 2025

Curtis Yarvin 2 shared issues
Ethiopia 2 shared issues
India 2 shared issues
NYT 2 shared issues
@BoyanSlat 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For February 2024

February 29, 2024 · Original source

…I said it was pretty obvious, like it’s a law of nature, but maybe that’s not true? Republicans thought they were winning as recently as 2020; Democrats were very close to thinking it in 2016. So you could also make an argument that whichever side doesn’t have the President thinks they’re losing, up until the Biden administration, when Democrats decided they were losing even though they had Biden. But Republicans thought they were losing until halfway into the Trump administration, then changed their minds, even though the Dems won the House that year. Why?

Open Thread 381

May 12, 2025 · Original source

Scott asks a perfectly fair question: why I used to pearl-clutch so hard about authoritarian populism in 2008, but am perfectly okay with the Trump administration in 2025–despite all its manifest errors, incompetences, and even cruelties? Surely the answer is that I’ve Sold Out. No, Scott, I pearl-clutched in 2008 for the same reasons you’re doing it now: I was a libtard and a coward. I still am. I’ve just recovered a bit more.

Sources Say Bay Area House Party

September 25, 2025 · Original source

“Lots of people are tripped up by not condemning enough things. Imagine that you want to express discontent with the Trump administration restricting food stamps, but someone points out that it’s pretty suspicious that you condemn food insecurity for white people but you didn’t condemn the famine in Gaza equally hard. So you try condemning the famine in Gaza, and someone points out that it’s pretty suspicious that you condemn starvation when it makes Jews look like the bad guys, but you didn’t condemn the famine in Ethiopia equally hard. So you try condemning the famine in Ethiopia, but then people tell you that’s ‘telescopic altruism’, because you didn’t condemn a murder that happened in your own city. So you try condemning a murder in your own city, but it was a black-on-white murder, and people say that it’s pretty suspicious that you didn’t condemn the latest white-on-black murder equally hard. The only solution is to monitor the news 24-7, condemning each thing as soon as it happens, in exact proportion to how bad it is. But nobody has time for that. So you give us access to your Twitter account and we do it for you. We promise not only to condemn all bad things within one business day of them happening, but to use all the appropriate words. You know those politicians who get in trouble because they condemned “the recent massacre” in vague terms but didn’t use the words “terrorism” or “radical Islam”, or because they said “killed” instead of “murdered”? If they’d used Condemnr, we could have tweeted “We condemn the recent radical Islamic terrorist massacre in Fairtown that murdered nine people #terrorism #radicalislam #murder”, and their PR would be immaculate.”

Trumpism3 mentions across 3 issues

Trumpism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between January 19, 2023 and August 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Trump: A Setback For Trumpism"; "use some phrase equivalent to “compassionate Trumpism”"; "even if you’re sympathetic to Trumpism". It most often appears alongside Germany, Italy, Obamacare.

Article page: Trumpism
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: January 19, 2023
Last seen: August 04, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Which Political Victories Cause Backlash? January 19, 2023
Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023 February 20, 2023
Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich August 04, 2023

Germany 2 shared issues
Italy 2 shared issues
Obamacare 2 shared issues
Roe 2 shared issues
Star Wars 2 shared issues

Source context

Which Political Victories Cause Backlash?

January 19, 2023 · Original source

Four years ago I wrote Trump: A Setback For Trumpism, pointing out that when Trump became president, his beliefs became much less popular. For example:

Inline links: Trump: A Setback For Trumpism

Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023

February 20, 2023 · Original source

The crisis of the Republican Party will turn out to have been overblown. Trump’s policies have been so standard-Republican that there will be no problem integrating him into the standard Republican pantheon, plus or minus some concerns about his personality which will disappear once he personally leaves the stage. Some competent demagogue (maybe Ted Cruz or Mike Pence) will use some phrase equivalent to “compassionate Trumpism”, everyone will agree it is a good idea, and in practice it will be exactly the same as what Republicans have been doing forever. The party might move slightly to the right on immigration, but this will be made easy by a fall in corporate demand for underpriced Mexican farm labor, and might be trivial if there’s a border wall and they can declare mission accomplished. If the post-Trump standard-bearer has the slightest amount of personal continence, he should end up with a more-or-less united party who view Trump as a flawed but ultimately positive figure, like how they view GW Bush. Also, I predict we see a lot more of Ted Cruz than people are expecting.

Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

August 04, 2023 · Original source

(This, by the way, is why it is so dangerous for well-meaning people who support not-Hitlerian causes to use Hitlerian tactics. I’m going to give some specific examples, so apologize in advance for offending everyone’s political sensibilities. But even if you’re sympathetic to Trumpism, you should still be horrified by the January 6th incident, because it pushes our politics towards the use of physical terror. Likewise, if you’re on the left, you should be suspicious of the Black Lives Matter protests for the same reason. This doesn’t mean that Trump is Hitler or that BLM is the SA. But it does mean that, if you actually want to stop Hitler II, you have to be willing to call out your own side when they set precedents that a future Hitler could use to his advantage.)

Turks3 mentions across 3 issues

Turks is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 04, 2022 and July 05, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the first Turks start moving west"; "Seljuks, Ottomans, other Turks, Turkmen, etc taking over Middle East"; "commanded by the Turks". It most often appears alongside China, Genghis Khan, Mongolia.

Article page: Turks
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: May 04, 2022
Last seen: July 05, 2024

Issue trail

Every Bay Area House Party May 04, 2022
Book Review: Cyropaedia January 10, 2024
Your Book Review: Don Juan July 05, 2024

China 2 shared issues
Genghis Khan 2 shared issues
Mongolia 2 shared issues
1000 1 shared issues
1200 1 shared issues

Source context

Every Bay Area House Party

May 04, 2022 · Original source

“Oh yeah. You look at history, and once every two hundred, three hundred years they get their act together, form a big confederation, and invade either China, the West, or both. It’s like clockwork. 400 AD, you get the Huns. 700, the Magyars. 1000, the first Turks start moving west. 1200, Genghis Khan, killed 10% of the world population. 1400, Tamerlane, killed another 5%. 1650, the Ming-Qing transition in China, also killed 5%. We’re more than 50 years overdue at this point.”

Book Review: Cyropaedia

January 10, 2024 · Original source

Seljuks, Ottomans, other Turks, Turkmen, etc taking over Middle East, Byzantium: Devereaux doesn’t mention this either.

Your Book Review: Don Juan

July 05, 2024 · Original source

Along the flowing Danube stood the fortress Of Ismail, commanded by the Turks, With rows of nested palisades (too torturous To scale), walls, bastions, ramparts, and such works; The Russian fleet, without some loyal portress, Was firing with the rage of Norse berserks, And yet each bursting, thund’ring cannonball Could scarcely be enough to breach the wall.

Inline links: berserks

tai chi2 mentions across 2 issues

tai chi is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 13, 2021 and May 30, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "So massage, yoga, tai chi, etc"; "Typical examples would be yoga, “bodywork”, tai chi, Alexander Technique, chakra meditation". It most often appears alongside Bessel van der Kolk, yoga, 5-HT2A receptors.

Article page: tai chi
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: February 13, 2021
Last seen: May 30, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Precision Of Sensory Evidence February 13, 2021
Are Woo Non-Responders Defective? May 30, 2023

Bessel van der Kolk 2 shared issues
yoga 2 shared issues
5-HT2A receptors 1 shared issues
advanced meditators 1 shared issues
Alexander Technique 1 shared issues

Source context

The Precision Of Sensory Evidence

February 13, 2021 · Original source

Second, it justifies some of Dr. van der Kolk's writing on somatic therapies. Bodily sensation seems to be an unusually important form of sensory evidence. Anything that gets you more "in your body", convinces you to pay attention to your body, trains you to expect bodily sensation to be pleasant rather than aversive, or helps you interact with your body more precisely should increase the precision of sensory evidence in general. So massage, yoga, tai chi, etc.

Inline links: somatic therapies

Are Woo Non-Responders Defective?

May 30, 2023 · Original source

(here “woo” means various more-or-less-alternative wellness and spirituality practices. Typical examples would be yoga, “bodywork”, tai chi, Alexander Technique, chakra meditation, Wim Hof, Internal Family Systems, somatic experiencing, some trauma therapies, etc.)

Tasmanian Devil2 mentions across 2 issues

Tasmanian Devil is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 04, 2023 and January 08, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The second was a Tasmanian Devil from the 1990s"; "there are at least three immortal mammals, although the third one is also a Tasmanian Devil". It most often appears alongside Bob, Ramchandra, Texas.

Article page: Tasmanian Devil
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: January 04, 2023
Last seen: January 08, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Even More Bay Area House Party January 04, 2023
Open Thread 258 January 08, 2023

Bob 2 shared issues
Ramchandra 2 shared issues
Texas 2 shared issues
2023 Prediction Contest 1 shared issues
@dropbella 1 shared issues

Source context

Even More Bay Area House Party

January 04, 2023 · Original source

“Not species. Two individuals. The first was a dog who lived somewhere in North America six thousand years ago. It got cancer. The cancer mutated. The mutant cancer became a sexually transmitted disease. It spread from dog to dog. It’s still around today, “canine transmissible venereal tumor”. Still made of living cells from that one original dog. That’s immortality, of a sort. The second was a Tasmanian Devil from the 1990s. Same story, now it’s Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease. It’s spread to 95% of the Devil population and will live on as long as the species itself.”

“It won’t be a facial tumor. Facial tumors work for Tasmanian Devils, but if a human got a facial tumor they’d notice immediately and get a doctor to remove it. We’re thinking cardiac rhabdomyoma. Heart tumor. Pretty benign, lots of people never even know they have one. And nobody wants to operate on those, open heart surgery is a nightmare. So it’ll sit there in the heart, occasionally bud off cells that go to the genitals, get sexually transmitted, and swim to the heart of the new host.”

Open Thread 258

January 08, 2023 · Original source

4: Comment of the week: Lars Doucet tries to defend the claim in the recent Bay Area House Party post that the moneychangers in the Temple were a housing problem (see also David Manheim and Robert Jones’ replies, and the threads underneath them). Also, Adam Strandberg corrects me: there are at least three immortal mammals, although the third one is also a Tasmanian Devil.

Inline links: tries to defend the claim, David Manheim, Robert Jones, corrects me

Tauopathies2 mentions across 2 issues

Tauopathies is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 12, 2024 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tauopathies – which include Alzheimer’s – seem to be... prion-like"; "Tauopathies are a range of prion-like diseases involving the tau protein". It most often appears alongside Alzheimer’s, Chromosome 21, Down syndrome.

Article page: Tauopathies
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: July 12, 2024
Last seen: August 14, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Family That Couldn’t Sleep July 12, 2024
In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

Alzheimer’s 2 shared issues
Chromosome 21 2 shared issues
Down syndrome 2 shared issues
1980s 1 shared issues
1989 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Family That Couldn’t Sleep

July 12, 2024 · Original source

Remember, earlier, that we mentioned how pituitary growth hormone treatment can spread CJD. Turns out – probably – that it can also spread Alzheimer’s. Tauopathies – which include Alzheimer’s – seem to be...prion-like, in some way. Prusiner has been banging this particular drum since the 1980s, but hey, that’s part of what “good at getting grants” means.

Inline links: it can also spread Alzheimer’s, prion-like, in some way

The Government Is Making Telemedicine Hard And Inconvenient Again

August 14, 2025 · Original source

Anti-amyloid drugs (like Aduhelm) don't reverse the disease, and only slow progression a relatively small amount. Opponents call the amyloid hypothesis zombie science, propped up only by pharmaceutical companies hoping to sell off a few more anti-amyloid me-too drugs before it collapses. Meanwhile, mainstream scientists . . . continue to believe it without really offering any public defense. Scott was so surprised by the size of the gap between official and unofficial opinion that he asked if someone from the orthodox camp would speak out in its favor. I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer’s isn’t my field, but I got very interested in it, spent six months studying the literature, and came away believing the amyloid hypothesis was basically completely solid. I thought I’d share that understanding with current skeptics. The ATN model The most plausible variant of the amyloid hypothesis is the A → T → N model: amyloid causes tau causes neurodegeneration. 1: Amyloid The common entrypoint, typically at least 15 years before clinically detectable symptoms [1], is accumulation of amyloid-β deposits (especially Aβ42, one of several variants). Amyloid-β is a peptide produced in healthy human beings and many other animals, probably for antimicrobial purposes [2, 3]. Factors which cause overproduction of amyloid also cause Alzheimer’s. Factors that cause decreased clearance of amyloid also cause Alzheimer’s. The clearest relationship is various genes which massively increase amyloid production (while doing nothing else); these genes are Alzheimer’s risk factors, with some of the rarer and more severe ones causing extreme versions of the disease that manifest at otherwise almost-never-seen ages. One of the clearest examples is Down syndrome, which is caused by three (rather than the usual two) copies of chromosome 21. People with Down syndrome are at much higher risk of Alzheimer’s than the general population: two-thirds will have the condition by age sixty, and 15% have it by age forty. APP, the gene for the amyloid precursor protein, is on chromosome 21. This means that people with Down syndrome will have an extra copy. This extra copy has been observed to lead to higher-than-normal amyloid levels. But there are many genes on chromosome 21; do we have additional evidence that it’s the amyloid one that’s involved? Yes. Dozens of other mutations on APP cause the same sort of extremely young and severe Alzheimer’s. So do mutations on PSEN1 and 2, the genes for the enzyme that processes amyloid precursor protein into amyloid. So do mutations on several other amyloid-related genes. [6, 91 - 96] Researchers call these autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s, meaning Alzheimer’s cases that get inherited from a single parent in a simple fashion typical of single-gene disorders. They make up about 1% of all cases, and are our strongest evidence for the causal role of amyloid in the disorder. To my knowledge, there is no serious claim that these genes could be working through any pathway other than their shared role in the amyloid system. But these autosomal-dominant cases only make up about 1% of all Alzheimer’s patients. Might they be a different disease than the usual sporadic Alzheimer’s that strikes people without strong family histories at normal ages? Probably not: the presentation and trajectory of autosomal-dominant and sporadic Alzheimer’s cases are strikingly similar. Both show an initial appearance of amyloid pathology starting in intrinsic connectivity networks in both autosomal-dominant [14] and sporadic [15–18] types, cortical tau appearing first in the medial temporal lobe and with the exact same fold in both disease types [97] (despite human tauopathies having at least seven other possible characteristic folds [36]), that tau pathology worsening and spreading outside this region only once amyloid pathology reaches sufficient severity [65], neurodegeneration progressing closely in step with the tau pathology, and the same usual approximate trajectory of cognitive symptoms due to the sequence of affected regions. So it’s as if two bank robberies occurred hours apart, in the same town, and in a highly similar and idiosyncratic manner, and we can positively identify the culprit of one on security camera footage. It’s a good bet the culprit of the other is the same. Increased amyloid production → Alzheimer’s is an especially clear and simple pathway, but any other change in amyloid can also cause the disease. For example Overproduction or reduced clearance of amyloid due to impaired slow wave sleep. Aβ production is neuronal activity-dependent, and toxins (perhaps including Aβ) are cleared from the brain during sleep via the glymphatic system. Thus Aβ can accumulate if the brain is more active and/or has less opportunity for clearance. [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]

Inline links: Aduhelm, David Schneider-Joseph

Overproduction or reduced clearance due to microbial infection. Amyloid-β appears to be an antimicrobial peptide and will form plaques in response to infection. [2, 3] This explains various observations that have been used to support the “infectious hypothesis”, sometimes proposed as an alternative to the amyloid hypothesis. However, it can only explain a subset of cases and, as I argue below, is even then still mediated by amyloid via an “IATN” pathway: infection → amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration. In cases of increased production, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will show elevated amyloid. In cases of reduced clearance, amyloid will decrease in CSF. In all cases, however, PET scans will show elevated brain amyloid, usually at first mainly in “intrinsic connectivity networks” such as the default mode network [14–20], which experience brain activity even at rest. These neurons are the most active - which causes more production and possibly less opportunity for clearance - so they tend to be the first to suffer from a production/clearance imbalance. Over time, amyloid pathology spreads spatially throughout the brain. [14, 18] Aggregations of amyloid peptides induce more such aggregations. Some of our clearest evidence for this comes from growth hormone deficiency patients, who used to have cadaver-derived ground-up brain matter injected into their own brains to provide the missing hormones. If the ground-up brain matter was sourced from the corpse of an Alzheimer’s patient, the growth hormone deficiency patients would themselves develop Alzheimer’s at a young age, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins. [21, 22] After ∼15 years of preclinical spread, the pathology eventually covers the whole brain. [14, 18] While some subtle cognitive impairment may occur during this time, it is usually not severe enough to be clinically detectable from amyloid alone. Indeed, in both humans [23–30] and mice [31–35], the severity of neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits is not a good spatiotemporal match for the severity of amyloid pathology (rather, it is a good match for the severity of tau pathology; see next section for more). These facts are often suggested as evidence against the amyloid hypothesis. However, amyloid is causally upstream of tau, as I will argue below. Therefore, the existence of cognitively normal individuals with amyloid pathology is expected in the ATN model - but typically only for a few decades, before progression to the next stage. 2: Tau pathology (T) and neurodegeneration (N) Tauopathies are a range of prion-like diseases involving the tau protein [36], whose usual function is to assist in stabilizing microtubule structure. In a tauopathy, the tau protein misfolds, and induces other, nearby tau proteins to misfold into the same shape. [37–46]. Injecting nothing but misfolded tau fibrils into a mouse brain can recruit the endogenously-produced mouse tau into this pathology, which spreads far beyond the injection site, causing neurodegeneration wherever it goes. [35, 47–59] There are at least eight distinct ways the tau protein can misfold in human disease [36], and over a dozen distinct human tauopathies, each involving a specific one of those misfoldings. These include chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Pick’s disease, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, with the last by far the most common. Each of these five diseases has its own distinct tau fold. Most normal human beings eventually develop some tau pathology in adulthood, originating probably in the locus coeruleus [60–62], which is part of the brainstem. By middle age, some amount has usually spread to the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in the medial temporal lobe, regions responsible for episodic memory. This is called primary age-related tauopathy (PART) [63], and has its own tau fold which is distinct from most tauopathies, but the same as Alzheimer’s. [36, 64] Usually, its local severity is mild and it doesn’t spread much beyond those regions. But with sufficient amyloid pathology, this “normal” tau pathology tends to both locally worsen and spread through the rest of the brain [65], becoming the tau pathology of Alzheimer’s. Some genetic risk factors such as ApoE, in addition to affecting the clearance of amyloid-β, also increase the brain’s susceptibility to this A → T pathology conversion [66, 67]. But this is a matter of degree, as sufficient amyloid pathology seems to virtually guarantee the transition: Every 10-centiloid increase in amyloid pathology for a cognitively normal individual increases by 2.7x the probability of a PET scan detecting pathological levels of tau within five years [68]. The only known cases where patients with extremely high amyloid levels can go significant amounts of time without developing tau pathology are a few individuals with extremely rare protective genes, known only from a few case studies, e.g. [69]. Even in these instances, the individuals will eventually succumb to the tau phase, suffering neural atrophy and dementia. [70] After it forms, the tau pathology no longer appears to require amyloid’s assistance to keep spreading (although amyloid may still accelerate it). This probably explains why existing anti-amyloid therapies have been only ∼30% effective in test patients, who are usually late in the amyloid → tau progression even if early in having symptomatic disease. Neurodegeneration follows tau pathology extremely closely in time and space, in humans as well as basically all animal models, and cognitive impairments match the functions of the affected regions. There are rare reports of advanced tau pathology without cognitive decline, often in people with protective ApoE2 alleles [71], but even then, systematic analysis finds that actual density of tau inclusions is highly predictive of cognitive impairment, and that these exceptional cases usually involve widespread but locally sparse pathology [66]. The regional distribution of tau pathology explains why the first symptom of Alzheimer’s is typically impaired memory; the first cortical sites affected are usually in regions involved in memory formation. As the pathology spreads, further regions are affected, until eventually all cognitive functions are affected. As with most other aspects of the disease, the high-level picture seems relatively clear but the exact cellular and molecular pathways are not well understood (though may involve an assist from the innate immune system, especially microglia and astrocytes. [13, 35, 72]) Early Alzheimer mouse models were amyloid-only, with extremely heavy overproduction of Aβ, much more than required to recapitulate the human disease, and apparently enough to cause detectable cognitive dysfunction. However, normal mice do not get age-related tauopathy, so an amyloid-only mouse model - while useful for investigating certain questions - is not a full Alzheimer’s disease model. Combined amyloid+tau pathology mouse models, which are transgenically modified and/or injected with misfolded human tau fibrils, display the property that the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology. This is also observed in vitro in human cells. How do we know the amyloid causes the tau? Researchers have measured the correlation in many ways, from the spatiotemporal timeline (tau pathology only begins locally worsening and spreading outside the medial temporal lobe once amyloid reaches sufficient severity) [65], [98], to causal mediation modeling in the human disease [26], [99–101], to causal intervention using in vitro human cell studies [54, 102] and animal models [35, 55], [103 – 113]. But also, giving people drugs that reduce amyloid levels also decreases tau pathology. [78, 80, 82] (I’ve left out or merely alluded to much other complexity, involving the innate immune system, lipid processing, and detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms, preferring to focus on the parts of the story which are crucial to deciding the causal role of amyloid, and for which I am aware of a satisfactory account from the literature. But I don’t intend to leave the impression that the above is all there is to Alzheimer’s disease, or that all cases progress in the same exact way.) The mechanistic claims I make the following two claims about amyloid-β’s role in Alzheimer’s: Amyloid deposits are a necessary (i.e. but-for) cause in all instances of Alzheimer dementia. That is, if someone has PET or CSF positivity for amyloid and tau pathologies, and the tau pathology involves the Alzheimer tau fold and made its first cortical appearance in the medial temporal lobe, and then they developed medial temporal volume loss + amnestic mild cognitive impairment + later dementia, then counterfactually, early enough (probably ∼15 years before clinical presentation) causal intervention solely to remove the amyloid deposits would have prevented almost all tau pathology and symptoms.

Inline links: below, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins, 10-centiloid, have been, the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology

In all mature antibodies so far, they have been attended with not-great side effects: brain swelling and bleeding, for reasons related to their difficulty crossing the BBB into brain tissue where they’re actually needed. A new generation of antibodies will cross the BBB, improving efficacy and safety. It’s frustrating that getting even to a 30% slowdown has taken as long as it has, but all of this is consistent with the model of the disease I laid out, which has strong evidence behind it, and there’s every reason to expect that a new drug (A) with an optimal epitope, similar to lecanemab or donanemab, (B) given in the early preclinical phase, 10+ years earlier than currently, and (C) with a shuttle mechanism to cross the BBB, could be very successful. The mature antibodies only have (A). There are ongoing trials combining (A)+(B) [73], [114], [115], and a shortly upcoming trial combining (B)+(C) [76], but not yet all three together. I’m optimistic about these but expect (A)+(B)+(C) to do especially well. Unfortunately, this stuff is hard, slow, and over-regulated. Which means it’s taking longer than we’d like. But my guess is we’re on the right track. Challenges translating from mouse models The researchers who developed the early Alzheimer mouse models wanted the clearest possible window into disease progression, so they turned up an amyloid gene to extreme levels far beyond those of even severe human cases. This level of amyloid was so massive that it caused cognitive deficits directly, eg without any contribution from tau. And in fact, mouse proteins work differently from human proteins, and mice do not naturally get tauopathies. So researchers increased amyloid, got cognitive deficits, and thought they were simulating Alzheimer’s. But they were actually doing something significantly different: Human patients: increased amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration and disease

Telemedicine2 mentions across 2 issues

Telemedicine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 29, 2023 and April 03, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Telemedicine is when you see a doctor (or nurse, PA, etc) over a video call"; "“a special registration process for telemedicine to allow providers to prescribe controlled substances remotely.”". It most often appears alongside Adderall, DEA, Ritalin.

Article page: Telemedicine
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 29, 2023
Last seen: April 03, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Government Is Making Telemedicine Hard And Inconvenient Again March 29, 2023
Highlights From The Comments On Telemedicine Regulations April 03, 2023

Adderall 2 shared issues
DEA 2 shared issues
Ritalin 2 shared issues
2008 Act 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

March 29, 2023 · Original source

Telemedicine is when you see a doctor (or nurse, PA, etc) over a video call. Medical regulators hate new things, so for its first decade they ensured telemedicine was hard and inconvenient.

Then came COVID-19. Suddenly important politicians were paying attention to questions about whether people could get medical care without leaving their homes. They yelled at the regulators, and the regulators grudgingly agreed to temporarily make telemedicine easy and convenient.

They say “nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program”, but this only applies to government programs that make your life worse. Government programs that make your life better are ephemeral and can disappear at any moment. So a few months ago, the medical regulators woke up, realized the pandemic was over, and started plotting ways to make telemedicine hard and inconvenient again.

Highlights From The Comments On Telemedicine Regulations

April 03, 2023 · Original source

[Original post: The Government Is Making Telemedicine Hard And Inconvenient Again]

Inline links: The Government Is Making Telemedicine Hard And Inconvenient Again

1: Isn’t drug addiction very bad? 2: Is telemedicine worse than regular medicine? 3: What about “pill mills”? 4: Do people force the blind to fill out forms before they can access Braille? 5: Was I unfairly caricaturing Christian doctors? 6: Which part of the government is responsible for this regulation? 7: How do other countries do this?

Some people countered that drug addiction was very bad, and preventing it is worth some inconvenience. For example, Michael van der Ruyt:

Inline links: Michael van der Ruyt

Terminal lucidity2 mentions across 2 issues

Terminal lucidity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 04, 2025 and October 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Terminal lucidity (aka “paradoxical lucidity”) is a medical mystery"; "Is terminal lucidity real?". It most often appears alongside Asterisk, Curtis Yarvin, Eliezer.

Article page: Terminal lucidity
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: September 04, 2025
Last seen: October 30, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For September 2025 September 04, 2025
Links For October 2025 October 30, 2025

Asterisk 2 shared issues
Curtis Yarvin 2 shared issues
Eliezer 2 shared issues
India 2 shared issues
Kelsey Piper 2 shared issues

Source context

Links For September 2025

September 04, 2025 · Original source

I appreciated Snow Martingale’s perspective: in the 1990s, fast food became associated with obesity, poor health, and the lower class. To escape this stigma, big chains rebranded as sort-of-at-least-attempting-to-be-bougie places with wraps and salads and decent coffee; the aesthetic change was part of this (successful and profit-increasing) effort. I wonder if we could take this further and trace it back to increasing inequality (appealing to bougies because that’s where more of the money is) or decreasing fertility (abandoning kid-friendly aesthetics because kids are a smaller fraction of customers). 9: Someone links (X) a paper saying that firewood made up almost a third of US GDP in 1830. Eliezer says (X) that doesn’t sound right. The rest of Twitter (X) uses this as an excuse for one of their regularly-scheduled paroxysms about how rationalists are all all smug autodidacts who hate experts and worship their own brilliance while sitting in their armchairs. Someone looks at the paper more closely (X) and finds that yeah, it was comparing apples to oranges and the original statistic was wrong. Remember, never be afraid to say “Huh, that sounds funny…”! 10: Richard Hanania interviews Scott Wiener on YIMBYism. I didn’t watch it - too close to a podcast - but this would not have been on my bingo card three years ago. 11: Claim: robots can already carve statues; buildings with AI-created stone ornaments are next. From their lips to God’s ears! 12: Terminal lucidity (aka “paradoxical lucidity”) is a medical mystery where previously demented people - even those who had been demented for many years - sometimes become lucid for just a few hours or days before they die. It’s surprisingly common - 6% of deaths in one palliative care ward. It is sometimes used as evidence that dementia must not cause complete information loss, even if it is irreversible with current technology. Scientists are baffled but gingerly suggest that maybe lack of oxygen disrupts inhibitory mechanisms in the brain, allowing enough electrical activity to make even a severely-damaged brain capable of complex thought - but I can’t help noticing that this is also the best evidence for an immaterial soul I’ve ever heard (you would need some model where the soul pretends to be dependent on the brain during life, becomes independent of the brain after death in order to head to the afterlife, but occasionally jumps the gun a little bit). 13: You probably heard about the METR study showing that even though programmers think AI is speeding them up, it actually seems to slow them down. Emmett Shear objects, saying that the developers didn’t have enough experience with AI tools to be past the negative-value part of the learning curve. And two of the programmer test subjects gave their takes: Ruby Bloom says part of the slowdown might be programmers fixing very simple bugs that could be improved by better prompts, and another part because they get distracted by other things while the AI is running. And Quentin Anthony says that coding AIs are addictive intermittent reinforcement - every so often they solve a bug perfectly, and this is so satisfying that it’s tempting to keep trying them again and again even when the chance is very low. 14: Jacob Goldsmith gives a clearer presentation of the issues with many antidepressant studies than I’d previously heard. Everyone knows that one problem is that reversion to the mean is so strong that it’s hard to find a treatment effect. But wouldn’t that in itself suggest that antidepressants aren’t necessary? Jacob says: not if there’s negative correlation between the treatment and placebo effects. That is, if your study is full of people with short-lived depression who will recover no matter what, then this dilutes the effect you’re looking for. But it might be that there’s a subgroup with long-lasting depression who recover only on the medication. One way to look for would be a “placebo run-in period”: give people a while to see if they recover on their own, then give the antidepressant to the ones who don’t. Psychiatrists and statisticians debate whether this is a good idea or cheating. My question: how come you can’t fix this with strict study entry criteria of “had depression for a long time”? 15: Lots more good discussion about missing heritability. Sasha Gusev argues that twin studies might be a poor guide to anything else if there are many gene-gene interactions. That is, if we take the difference between identical twins (who share 100% of their genes and therefore 100% of their interactions) and fraternal twins (who share 50% of their genes and therefore fewer than 50% of their interactions), and incorrectly extrapolate it to other differences using a model that assumes there are no interactions, we will overestimate the size of (non-interaction) genetic effects. Most studies find that there are few gene x gene interactions, but commenters convinced me last time that this might be an artifact of the studies being bad. And Unboxing Politics argues (against me in particular) that although it superficially looks like adoption and twin studies sort of agree, when you adjust out their known biases, it moves twin studies further up and adoption studies further down, such that now they disagree again (the objection I would have made is their Objection 2, which I think they at least somewhat refute). This is a good argument; without spending several hours checking all of their claims, my only weak partial objection is that I don’t think assortative mating can play quite the role they expect, because there seem to be the same twin/RDR differences even on traits where believing in assortative mating is absurd (like kidney function). But if you replaced it with Sasha’s argument above, you might have a pretty good case! On the pro-hereditarian side, East Hunter takes aim at gene x environment correlations, comes down somewhere in the middle, and Sebastian Jensen continues banging the drum of how most objections to twin studies don’t work. I think these are good attempts to buttress existing research but don’t fundamentally change anything or respond to the novel arguments above. And Emil Kirkegaard points out that the observed SNP heritability of facial features is only 23%. He argues that since it seems like facial features are extremely heritable, this reinforces the argument that SNP heritability numbers are too low (and therefore twin study numbers are more likely defensible). But should we be sure that facial features are more than 23% heritable? His argument is that identical twins have identical faces, but this might be vulnerable to Gusev’s point about interactions. Maybe a better argument would be that it seems very hard for shared environment to affect facial features (with a few exceptions like fetal alcohol syndrome), and facial features seem more than 23% heritable just by normal “he looks like his brother” common-sense observation? One interesting potential consequence of this research: if we ever fully understand how genes affect faces, then embryo selection companies could show people what each of their potential future kids might look like. I suggest they not do this: it might spook me into becoming pro-life. 16: Andy Masley’s AI art is good (three examples below). 17: There’s a debate going on between philosophers and AI researchers over whether AI can be conscious. I find most of the discussion annoying - this is generally an area where we can’t know anything for sure, and both sides are mostly shouting their priors at each other. The only exception - the single piece of evidence I will accept as genuinely bearing on this problem - is that if you ask an AI whether it’s conscious, it will say no, but activating or suppressing deception-related features (sort of like a mechanistic-interpretability-based lie detection test) reveals that it thinks it’s lying when it says that! Link is to a Less Wrong comment from a researcher in the field; I look forward to seeing an eventual peer-reviewed paper. H/T JD Pressman. 18: 80,000 Hours has a high-production-value video about the AI 2027 scenario. 19: Dynomight vs. Casey Milkweed debate on mathematical forecasting, with special reference to AI 2027. And Dynomight comments on Casey’s post here. 20: The Psmiths review The Ancient City, about ways that ancient culture depended on family, clan, ritual, and “the household gods”. Sample quote: I'm more interested in what all this means for us today, because with the exception of maybe a few aristocratic families, this highly self-conscious effort to build familial culture and maintain familial distinctiveness is almost totally absent in the Western world. But it's not that hard! ... Perhaps this is why I have an instinctive negative reaction when I encounter married couples who don't share a name. I don't much care whether it's the wife who takes the husband's name or the husband who takes the wife's, or even both of them switching to something they just made up (yeah, I'm a lib). But it just seems obvious to me on a pre-rational level that a husband and a wife are a team of secret agents, a conspiracy of two against the world, the cofounders of a tiny nation, the leaders of an insurrection. Members of secret societies need codenames and special handshakes and passwords and stuff, keeping separate names feels like the opposite — a timorous refusal to go all-in. 21: Did you know: Epic Systems, the electronic medical record company, has a fantasy-themed corporate headquarters in Wisconsin, with buildings that look like castles, quaint medieval towns, and the Emerald City of Oz (h/t Devon Zuegel): Meanwhile, tech companies with ten times as much money pretend that they’re cool and playful when their HQ has some rounded edges and a set of colored cubes in front. Do better! 22: Effective altruists have been funding teams working on lab-grown meat for almost a decade now. Around 2020, they hired some experts to double-check that this was possible in principle, and the experts wrote scathing analyses saying it was cost-ineffective by so many orders of magnitude that it was basically a pipe dream. Reactions were mixed, but a lot of us beat ourselves up and vowed to be less gullible next time. But now a new report comes out arguing that the previous reports were wrong, that lab-grown meat production is going much better than the earlier reports thought possible, and it’s more or less cost-effective already for the simplest products! Again, mixed reactions, and although some of the numbers are indisputable the analysis itself this is by a VC firm with lab-based meat investments. Here are some related Metaculus questions. 23: Ozy, citing Stutzman et al: “Afghanistan after the American withdrawal has the lowest life satisfaction rate ever recorded. Two-thirds of respondents rate their life satisfaction below 2, which is generally considered to be the point at which a life is no longer worth living. Life satisfaction dropped significantly after the withdrawal of American troops. Women, people in rural areas, and the poor were particularly negatively affected.” 24: Lencapavir is dubbed a “miracle drug” for AIDS; a single dose protects against infection for six months. Unclear how this interacts with PEPFAR cuts; if PEPFAR still existed it would be a big boost to its efficacy; now maybe this might be part of a strategy to tread water? 25: Did you know: when people first started making artificial ice in the 1850s, there was a backlash from people who thought it was gross and dystopian and that people should insist on natural ice for their iceboxes. From Pessimists’ Archive, which goes on to draw an analogy to lab-grown meat, etc (h/t Isaac King on X). 26: From Peter Hague (on X) and commenter Phaethon: why did so many Anglosphere countries see immigration spikes in 2021? Each of these has their own local story. In Britain, it’s the paradoxical effects of Brexit. In the US, it’s Joe Biden being soft on immigration. And so on - but should we be looking for some deeper cause that explains the overall phenomenon? A commenter suggests “a way to soak up all the inflation from the COVID money printing”, but I can’t tell if that even makes sense. Still, should something something COVID be a leading hypothesis? 27: Jesse Singal vs. Mark Stern on the Skrmetti Supreme Court case that failed to overturn Tennessee’s ban on gender medicine. US law bans sex discrimination, so pro-transgender advocates argued that, since doctors often prescribe eg estrogen to biological women, it was sex discrimination to ban prescribing it to biological men. Tennessee’s anti-transgender argument was that they weren’t discriminating by sex, they were discriminating by diagnosis (estrogen for eg hot flashes, vs. estrogen for gender transition). There is some subtlety here (if a biological man grows breasts because of some hormone imbalance, doctors might give him testosterone to counteract it, and this seems sort of like giving biological women testosterone to make them look less like women), but these are still sort of different diagnoses (gynecomastia vs. gender dysphoria) and Tennessee said you can still think of it as diagnostic discrimination rather than sex discrimination. This makes sense, except that the standards around sex discrimination are very strict and sort of box the court in here. And in a fit of wokeness, the 2020 court (including some of the conservative justices hearing this case) applied these standards very strictly and ruled that discriminating against gays was a form of sex discrimination (since if women can date men, it’s sex discrimination if men can’t also date men), and this is obviously the same argument. Now that wokeness is less popular, the court wants to rule against transgender, but it can’t help tripping over its previous ruling and giving some kind of unprincipled confusing non-opinion. 28: Contra compelling anecdotes, only ~5% of people raised very religious end up atheist later in life (X). Most people are about as religious as their parents; most exceptions are only slightly less religious, and most families that secularize do it over several generations. Note: percentages are of total, not of each row! 29: Related: social science team proposes a three-stage model of secularization: decreased public ritual participation → decreased personal importance → decreased identification, presents apparently confirmatory data. If true, would be somewhat inconsistent with intellectual models (eg people learn about evolution and start doubting the Bible) and more consistent with institutional models (eg the government provides welfare so people no longer need to be part of a tight-knit church). 30: Navigating LLMs’ spiky intelligence profile is a constant source of delight; in any given area, it seems like almost a random draw whether they will be completely transformative or totally useless. Now Ethan Strauss reports that they are, for some reason, extraordinarily effective at teaching people golf. “I am predicting the Golf Revolution, or perhaps decline, if your perspective is that optimization tends to ruin hobbies. A sport for obsessives has been gifted the ideal tool for refinement.” 31: Claim (via nxthompson on X): “In a huge survey of young kids about phones and technology, they all say they want to be out playing in the real world. But parents don't let them out unsupervised. So they're stuck on their phones.” Interesting, but I’m nervous about social desirability bias - how many adults would say on a survey that they would rather be on their phones than playing with friends? But adults do have this choice and mostly go with the phones. 32: Steven Adler on AI psychosis. He tries to analyze ER admissions data for psychosis and finds no change. I don’t think anyone reasonable expected this to be a large enough effect to show up in ER admissions data, but there are lots of unreasonable people so I appreciate his effort. He thinks AI companies might have better data on this, and encourages them to release it. 33: Cuartetera was the greatest polo horse ever. Polo players responded in a very practical way: they cloned her, dozens of times (and it worked; the clones are also excellent). Now there is a lawsuit as different polo teams fight to get their hands on Cuartetera clones. What is the equilibrium? If the outsiders get their hands on the genetic material, do we see a world where every polo horse is a Cuartetera clone? How much is lost if nobody ever tries to breed a polo horse better than Cuartetera (since the economics might not check out if the odds of success for any given foal is too low)? H/T Gwern and Siberian Fox (on X). 34: Claim: as of 2013, India’s Agarwal caste, who make up less than 1% of the population, got 40% of the e-commerce funding. 35: Owlposting: What Happened To Pathology AI Companies? Pathology is a medical specialty. A typical task involves looking at a microscope slide full of cells and trying to determine if any of them are cancerous. This seems like a good match for AI - and for years, studies have been showing that in fact AI can equal human experts. So why isn’t it being used more? The author’s three answers: first, slide scanning is expensive and clunky, and you can’t apply AI to a slide until you digitize it. Second, it’s hard to figure out a business plan where this saves someone money and doesn’t step on the toes of big companies that can outcompete anyone they don’t like. Third, pathologists use the context of a patient’s entire clinical history when they interpret a slide, and AIs that can’t do that (either because of technical limitations or legal/privacy limitations) are at a disadvantage even if their skills specifically relating to slide-reading are better. 36: Noahpinion: Will Data Centers Crash The Economy? Suppose that AI is a bubble, either permanently (because the technology isn’t really transformative) or temporarily (because it can’t transform things quickly enough to keep up with all the dumb money pouring into it). Will the sudden write-off of data centers lead to a broader economic collapse? In 2001, the dot-com bubble harmed the tech sector, but didn’t take the rest of the economy down with it; in 2008, the subprime mortgage bubble did take the rest of the economy down with it, because it damaged banks that the whole economy relied on. The optimistic case for AI is that data center spending is mostly coming from big companies like Google and Meta that can absorb a lot of loss. The pessimistic case is that some of the money is coming from private credit, a new-ish form of finance which hasn’t really been stress-tested and whose failure modes are still poorly understood. Noah’s final verdict: the stage isn’t obviously set for a crisis yet, but there’s the potential to get there and we should consider acting (how?) early. 37: The latest Twitter talking point is that universal hepatitis B vaccination at birth is “woke”: Hep B is (aside from mother-to-child transmission) often sexually transmitted, slutty women’s children are more likely to have Hep B, so perhaps giving the vaccine to everyone (instead of testing and only giving to the children of women who test positive) is an attempt to spare slutty women the embarrassment of getting a positive test. Ruxandra Teslo provides the counterargument - Hep B tests take a while, the medical system is fragmented, and any attempt to test people and then give the vaccine inevitably leads to many positive tests falling through the cracks. Vaccinating at birth is easy and hard to screw up, the vaccine has no known side effects, and empirically child Hepatitis B rates go down (by as much as 2/3!) when countries switch from test-and-vaccinate to universal vaccination. This benefits everyone - even people who never have unprotected sex and always follow up on their medical tests - because toddlers in daycare exchange saliva copiously, and if your toddler exchanges saliva with a Hep B positive toddler they could get the disease. A funny Twitter interaction was seeing Republicans in Congress hop on the anti-slut anti-vaccination bandwagon - except for Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who happens to be a liver doctor, and who is still fighting the good fight. I am always nervous when a good person who I like starts engaging on Twitter, since it elevates the discourse there but also gradually turns their brain into mush - but Ruxandra has made the leap and is doing a great job not just on bio related topics but also (for example) countering Curtis Yarvin on the history of her native Romania. 38: The response to GPT-5 was confusing; most specific people who reviewed it said they were impressed (Ethan Mollick, Tyler Cowen, Nabeel Qureshi, Taelin), it performed as expected on formal benchmarks, but the overall vibes declared it a big failure. Peter Wildeford speculated that maybe there was some kind of sinister pay-to-play early access bias involved. Zvi went the other way, calling it a “reverse DeepSeek moment” (insofar as DeepSeek was a pretty average model that got glowing praise.) In the end, I agree with Peter that this was mostly a branding issue. o3 was a genuinely revolutionary model; if OpenAI had called it “GPT-5”, it would have met expectations. Instead, they called it “o3”, and called a minor incremental update a few months later “GPT-5”. Then people got mad that the exciting-sounding “GPT-5” was merely an incremental update. A secondary issue was that the router wasn’t very good, and so many queries got routed to a small version without thinking mode that was if anything a downgrade from o3. I think this tweet by Shakeel perfectly encapsulates the essence of GPT discourse in two sentences: …but maybe it’s worth asking why GPT-5 isn’t bigger than o3. Was 4.5 a failed attempt at scaling? Did it fail in a way that sort of back-handedly justifies the “lost steam” take? Does the answer depend on distinctions between pre-training scaling, post-training scaling, etc? How? 39: This month in etymology: did you know that “oy vey” is a “fully Germanic phrase” which is cognate with English “oh woe!” (h/t Wylfcen on X) 40: mRNA shows promise to be a game-changing treatment for cancer, but RFK is trying to halt research. But so far he can only starve it of money, not ban it, and the funding gap is only $500 million. Will there be enough philanthropic billionaires and private foundations to step up? Zvi points out that although there is usually a game of chicken where foundations are hesitant to touch something the government cancelled lest the government decide it can cancel everything and hope philanthropists pick up the bill, in this case there are no game theory considerations - RFK is halting it because he genuinely wants it halted, and they are thwarting him rather than playing into his hands. The only problem is that $500M is a lot of money for the private sector; a few foundations could technically afford it, but not many could afford it comfortably and still have money left over for the next few crises of this magnitude. I hope someone is trying to organize a coalition. 41: AI fantasy flash fiction Turing test. Eight stories about demons, four by famous fantasy authors, four by ChatGPT. After 3000 votes, AI wins: humans can't tell the difference and slightly prefer the AI stories. My own score was only 75%. But I will say that I thought Mark Lawrence's was obviously the best, I was ~100% sure it was human, and it convinced me that regardless of the official results it's still possible to write flash fiction that an AI obviously can't do. 42: “SignPro” offers customized “In This House We Believe” signs, try not to use this for evil. 43: China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is: still very in control, maybe not infinitely in control. 44: Related - did you know (h/t xlr8harder) that if you ask AI to write a science fiction story, it will very often name the protagonist “Elara Voss” (or some very close variant like Elena Voss), and this remains true across various models and versions? Related: Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby and has the opportunity to do the funniest thing. 45: “Hector (cloud) is a cumulonimbus thundercloud cluster that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia…[he is sometimes called] Hector the Convector”. 46: British allergy sufferers who want to know the ingredients of things demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin. “For example, sweet almond oil is Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis, peanut oil is Arachis Hypogaea, and wheat germ extract is Triticum Vulgare.” 47: Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference. I make a brief appearance. 48: Study uses supposedly-random variation in doctor assignments to test whether the marginal mental health commitment is good or bad for patients, finds that it is quite bad. Freddie de Boer is violently skeptical (maybe literally so?) and makes some good points about how a single quasi-experimental study is never absolute proof. But I don’t think he quite justifies his opinion that the paper was irresponsible and should never have been published; it’s just a normal quasi-experimental study that we should nod and say “huh” at but not overweight as the culmination of all possible research that overcomes all possible priors. My prior is that the marginal commitment is pretty useless (many commitments are just “well, since this person arrived at our ED for some reason, it would look bad from a medico-legal perspective to just let them go, so let’s keep them a few days to evaluate” - and yeah, you should be upset about this) but I’m still surprised by how many outright negative (as opposed to zero) effects the researchers found. The strongest argument for negative effects is that it will make some people miss work and maybe lose their job. But this study found that commitment ~doubles the risk of near-term suicide (admittedly only from 1% to 2%), which would have been outside my confidence intervals for how bad it could be. I suspect confounding, but only on general principle, and I wouldn’t be too surprised either way. 49: This tweet is probably bait, but I found it a thought-provoking question: I think there’s a boring answer, where the law is more complex than just a single number and whatever kind of weird trafficking Epstein was doing is worse than whatever normal relationships these European laws are permitting. But assuming that there’s a substantive difference even after taking that into account, I think my answer is something like - we’ve got to divide kids from adults at some age, there’s a range of reasonable possible ages, we shouldn’t be too mad at other societies that choose different dividing lines within that range - but having decided upon the age, we’ve got to stick with it and take it seriously (in the sense of penalizing/shaming people who break it). This is more culturally relativist than I expected to find myself being, so good job to Richard for highlighting the apparent paradox. 50: Dilan Esper describes his experience as one of Hulk Hogan’s attorneys in the Gawker lawsuit (X). Parts I found interesting: none of the lawyers knew Thiel was funding the lawsuit; Gawker probably could have won if they had been slightly competent but kept "shooting themselves in the foot"; and Gawker probably could have won if they had just pixelated the private parts in the video. 51: Amazing concept and poems (link on X): I tried to see if AI could do this, and it did something that technically met the requirements but had zero artistic merit - using a lot of words like “nowhere” and “outside” in one, then separating them out to “no where” and “out side” in the other. I didn’t invest much energy in creating a clever prompt telling it not to do that, so feel free to report if you get better success. 52: New study claims consultants are actually good, at least for profits: "We find positive effects on labor productivity of 3.6% over five years, driven by modest employment reductions alongside stable or growing revenue" 53: A Polish team tries to test Peter Turchin’s equations for predicting political unrest on recent Polish history, has to make some changes but claims mostly positive results. 54: New big multi-author Substack, The Argument, trying to be a sort of center-left version of the model pioneered by The Free Press and other high-production-value ideological Substack properties. Excited to see Kelsey Piper is involved, and she starts off strong with a post on the latest round of First World basic income studies, which find few positive effects. This is surprising, because recipients didn’t waste the money on alcohol or gambling or anything - they paid down debt and got useful goods. Still, it didn’t even affect things that should have been obvious, like stress level. It’s not even clear that amounts of money large enough to help with rent made homeless people more likely to get houses! Matt Bruenig criticizes the article, accusing Kelsey’s studies of being downstream of Perry Preschool style dreams that exactly the right welfare program will have massively compounding effects that cut poverty out at the root and turn everyone into elite human capital; he thinks giving people money won’t do this, but it will increase equality and give the poor better lives. I assume he’s not a strong hereditarian, but his argument makes even more sense from that perspective, and I’ve certainly criticized dumb outcome measures like infant brain waves which we have only tenuous reasons to think are related to anything we care about. But Kelsey reasonably responds that the outcome measures she’s talking about include stress level and life satisfaction. To defuse this critique, Bruenig either has to argue that our construct “life satisfaction” doesn’t really measure whether someone’s life is satisfactory, or else claim that giving poor people satisfactory lives isn’t really what we’re going for - which I think would require more explanation on his part. There’s some further (impressively acrimonious) debate on X, but I don’t see anything that addresses my core concern. GiveDirectly, a charity involved in basic income experiments, has a presponse here; they say that some studies are positive, and that the ones that aren’t might have tried too little cash to matter, or been confounded by COVID making everything worse. They also point out that basic income is harder to study than traditional programs like giving people housing, because if you’re giving housing you can measure housing-related outcomes directly and have a pretty good chance of getting enough statistical power to find them, but since everyone spends cash on different things, the positive effects might be scattered across many different outcomes (and therefore too small to reach significance on each). Everyone involved in this debate wants to emphasize that the poor results are for First World studies only, and that studies continue to show large benefits to giving cash in the developing world. 55: Related: I was less impressed by The Argument’s first foray into housing policy, which follows an all-too-familiar pattern: Some people say they don’t like noise and disorder and try to make rules against it in their apartments.

Links For October 2025

October 30, 2025 · Original source

35: Is terminal lucidity real?

Inline links: Is terminal lucidity real?

thalidomide2 mentions across 2 issues

thalidomide is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 07, 2023 and December 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "thalidomide for morning sickness - all of these were high-tech ideas that ended up going badly"; "far more people than thalidomide itself". It most often appears alongside nuclear power, Aaronson, Abraham Davenport.

Article page: thalidomide
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 07, 2023
Last seen: December 01, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Kelly Bets On Civilization March 07, 2023
Links For November 2023 December 01, 2023

nuclear power 2 shared issues
Aaronson 1 shared issues
Abraham Davenport 1 shared issues
activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues

Source context

Kelly Bets On Civilization

March 07, 2023 · Original source

But science and technology aren’t perfect bets. Gain-of-function research on coronaviruses was a big loss. Leaded gasoline, chlorofluorocarbon-based refrigerants, thalidomide for morning sickness - all of these were high-tech ideas that ended up going badly, not to mention all the individual planes that crashed or rockets that exploded.

Links For November 2023

December 01, 2023 · Original source

27: Zan Tafakari has a roundup of responses to Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”; I think the thalidomide objections are bad (the backlash against thalidomide has harmed far more people than thalidomide itself, just like with nuclear power), but maybe there are some useful tidbits in there. Ezra Klein has a response of his own called The Chief Ideologist Of The Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas (I almost phrased that as “the chief ideologist of the Brooklyn elite has a response…”, but there’s no need to sink to their level).

Inline links: a roundup of responses to Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”, The Chief Ideologist Of The Silicon Valley Elite Has Some Strange Ideas

The Internet2 mentions across 2 issues

The Internet is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 29, 2022 and May 15, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "1990s stock photos representing The Internet"; "New technologies like the personal computer, the Internet, and the Human Genome Project were inspiring". It most often appears alongside Reddit, /r/forcedbreeding, /r/forcedbreeding.

Article page: The Internet
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: July 29, 2022
Last seen: May 15, 2024

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Issue trail

Links For July July 29, 2022
Profile: The Far Out Initiative May 15, 2024

Reddit 2 shared issues
forcedbreeding 1 shared issues
forcedbreeding 1 shared issues
@the_megabase 1 shared issues
A Pan-Species Welfare State 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For July

July 29, 2022 · Original source

15: 1990s stock photos representing The Internet. Here’s one example to whet your palate:

Inline links: 1990s stock photos representing The Internet

Profile: The Far Out Initiative

May 15, 2024 · Original source

Turn-of-the-21st-century Oxford was an exciting place. Derek Parfit was leading a renaissance in utilitarian thought. New technologies like the personal computer, the Internet, and the Human Genome Project were inspiring a new generation of transhumanists. Out of this milieu, philosophers like Nick Bostrom, Will MacAskill, and Toby Ord were laying the groundwork for what would become the rationalist and effective altruist movements. Utilitarians, they argued, were charged with relieving the suffering of the world as quickly and effectively as possible. Technology offered new opportunities to do this at scale. This could be ending poverty and curing diseases (if you were well-grounded in the present moment) or creating a superintelligence to lead us to a post-scarcity future (if you were feeling more ambitious).

The Russo-Ukrainian War2 mentions across 2 issues

The Russo-Ukrainian War is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 23, 2025 and October 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Finalists are The Russo-Ukrainian War"; "finalists, in order of appearance: 13: The Russo-Ukrainian War". It most often appears alongside Alpha School, Joan of Arc, ACX Grants.

Article page: The Russo-Ukrainian War
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: June 23, 2025
Last seen: October 03, 2025

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Issue trail

Open Thread 387 June 23, 2025
Vote In The 2025 Non-Book Review Contest October 03, 2025

Alpha School 2 shared issues
Joan of Arc 2 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten 1 shared issues
Bishop's Castle 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 387

June 23, 2025 · Original source

3: Thank you to everyone who voted for finalists in this year’s Nonbook Review Contest. All entries among the top ten best-ranked reviews became automatic finalists, and I also added two more from the 10-25 tier that voters or I especially liked. Honorable mentions were others from the 10-25 tier that I liked a lot. Finalists are Alpha School, Dementia, Islamic Geometric Patterns, Joan of Arc, Mashed Potatoes, Men, Ollantay, Phase I Research, Synaptic Plasticity, The ACX Commentariat, The Internet That Might Have Been, and The Russo-Ukrainian War. Honorable Mentions are at least Bishop's Castle, Bukele, Elon Musk's Algorithm, JFK Conspiracies, Martial Arts, Miniatur Wunderland, School (Review 1 by DK), and Watergate. I may promote some honorables to finalists depending on reader tolerance or unexpected opportunities. I will give you finer-grained score information after the contest ends. First finalist post is planned for this Friday.

Vote In The 2025 Non-Book Review Contest

October 03, 2025 · Original source

1: Alpha School 2: School 3: Mice, Mechanisms, and Dementia 4: Islamic Geometric Patterns in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 5: The Astral Codex Tex Commentariat 6: Joan of Arc 7: My Father’s Instant Mashed Potatoes 8: Dating Men In The Bay Area 9: Ollantay 10: Participation In Phase I Clinical Pharmaceutical Research 11: The Synaptic Plasticity And Memory Hypothesis 12: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been 13: The Russo-Ukrainian War

Inline links: Alpha School, School, Mice, Mechanisms, and Dementia, Islamic Geometric Patterns in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Astral Codex Tex Commentariat, Joan of Arc, My Father’s Instant Mashed Potatoes, Dating Men In The Bay Area, Ollantay, Participation In Phase I Clinical Pharmaceutical Research, The Synaptic Plasticity And Memory Hypothesis, Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been, The Russo-Ukrainian War

theory of evolution2 mentions across 2 issues

theory of evolution is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 09, 2021 and July 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Charles Darwin discovered the theory of evolution"; "Darwin’s theory of evolution". It most often appears alongside Aage Bohr, Abanindranath Tagore, Aboriginal.

Article page: theory of evolution
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: November 09, 2021
Last seen: July 15, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Secrets Of The Great Families November 09, 2021
Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines July 15, 2025

Aage Bohr 1 shared issues
Abanindranath Tagore 1 shared issues
Aboriginal 1 shared issues
Aboriginal Australia 1 shared issues
Aboriginal society 1 shared issues

Source context

Secrets Of The Great Families

November 09, 2021 · Original source

Charles Darwin discovered the theory of evolution. His grandfather Erasmus Darwin also groped towards some kind of proto-evolutionary theory, made contributions in botany and pathology, and founded the influential Lunar Society of scientists. His other grandfather Josiah Wedgwood was a pottery tycoon who "pioneered direct mail, money back guarantees, self-service, free delivery, buy one get one free, and illustrated catalogues" and became "one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs of the 18th century". Charles' cousin Francis Galton invented the modern fields of psychometrics, meteorology, eugenics, and statistics (including standard deviation, correlation, and regression). Charles' son Sir George Darwin, an astronomer, became president of the Royal Astronomical Society and another Royal Society fellow. Charles' other son Leonard Darwin, became a major in the army, a Member of Parliament, President of the Royal Geography Society, and a mentor and patron to Ronald Fisher, another pioneer of modern statistics. Charles' grandson Charles Galton Darwin invented the Darwin-Fowler method in statistics, the Darwin Curve in diffraction physics, Darwin drift in fluid dynamics, and was the director of the UK's National Physical Laboratory (and vaguely involved in the Manhattan Project).

Inline links: Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, Francis Galton, Sir George Darwin, Leonard Darwin, Charles Galton Darwin

Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines

July 15, 2025 · Original source

In the nineteenth century, anthropologists - buoyed by the success of Darwin’s theory of evolution - tried to invent grand Theories of Everything about the rise of humankind. These usually looked like “All savages originally did P, then passed through intermediate stages where they did Q, R, and S sequentially, and finally reached the light of civilization where they did T”. We still remember some of these fondly: the classic motif of a caveman clubbing a random woman and dragging her off to be his wife comes from a real theory by anthropologist John McLennan that this was the original marriage ritual of humankind, with advanced cultures eventually adding epicycles like “consent” and “courtship”. There is still dim cultural awareness of James Frazier’s The Golden Bough, which purports to prove that all religion came from an ur-ritual of killing the king to ensure the fertility of the land. Still, observers eventually noticed that “all savages do P” isn’t true for basically any P, and after some delay anthropologists stopped trying to argue that surely some X was actually a distant distorted cultural memory of P which all savages must have done in an even-more-savage past.

Theory of Relativity2 mentions across 2 issues

Theory of Relativity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 25, 2021 and May 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "I don't think there's a minor league equivalent to discovering the Theory of Relativity"; "30% know who discovered the Theory of Relativity (Einstein)". It most often appears alongside 1984, 1984 Calendar Meme, ACX.

Article page: Theory of Relativity
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: October 25, 2021
Last seen: May 23, 2024

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Epistemic Minor Leagues October 25, 2021
A Theoretical "Case Against Education" May 23, 2024

1984 1 shared issues
1984 Calendar Meme 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Adrian Hon 1 shared issues
Ahab 1 shared issues

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Epistemic Minor Leagues

October 25, 2021 · Original source

Or maybe there are some subtle differences between forms of knowledge that I'm eliding. I don't think there's a minor league equivalent to discovering the Theory of Relativity; if you come across something like that as a non-expert, you're probably a crank, same as the Lizard Papacy guy. But what is the non-relativity knowledge I trust Hon or myself to discover? Different "perspectives"? Putting existing knowledge into different and easier-to-understand words? "X is kind of like Y if you think about it, isn't that interesting?"

A Theoretical "Case Against Education"

May 23, 2024 · Original source

30% know who discovered the Theory of Relativity (Einstein)

therapy culture2 mentions across 2 issues

therapy culture is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 15, 2024 and August 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Both the Atlantic’s critique of polyamory and my defense of it shared the same villain - “therapy culture”"; "People complain a lot about “therapy culture”, but usually without explaining it or giving examples". It most often appears alongside alexithymia, food preferences, Freddie de Boer.

Article page: therapy culture
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 15, 2024
Last seen: August 28, 2024

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In Partial Grudging Defense Of Some Aspects Of Therapy Culture March 15, 2024
In Defense Of "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way" August 28, 2024

alexithymia 1 shared issues
food preferences 1 shared issues
Freddie de Boer 1 shared issues
The Atlantic 1 shared issues

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In Partial Grudging Defense Of Some Aspects Of Therapy Culture

March 15, 2024 · Original source

Both the Atlantic’s critique of polyamory and my defense of it shared the same villain - “therapy culture”, the idea that you should prioritize “finding your true self” and make drastic changes if your current role doesn’t seem “authentically you”.

Inline links: my defense of it

(I don’t think any of this is too related to specific therapies for specific mental health problems, like exposure therapy for panic disorder - but real-world therapy is at least as likely to be the generic “therapy culture” type as the specific types, so I think it’s fair to use the phrase “therapy culture” to describe this. None of this applies to the more specific and targeted stuff.)

I think I previously made fun of therapy culture because the people who go through it always sound so smug about it - “I’ve advanced beyond the rest of you squares and discovered my True Self; you probably can’t imagine a spiritual journey like mine”. But nobody necessarily knows where they are relative to anyone else on the spectrum of more vs. less advanced psychological development. Maybe “finding your true self” just means “being able to access your preferences, the same way non-alexithymics do as a matter of course”.

Inline links: nobody necessarily knows where they are

In Defense Of "I'm Sorry You Feel That Way"

August 28, 2024 · Original source

People complain a lot about “therapy culture”, but usually without explaining it or giving examples. Freddie de Boer does better here (see the list of bullet points halfway down). What do all of his examples have in common? They all overfit social norms to benefit you in the exact position you’re in at any given moment.

Inline links: here

I think the hostility to “I’m sorry you feel that way” comes from the same place. It’s somebody in therapy culture imagining the overfit norm that they would want if somebody offended them. Then that other person shouldn’t be allowed to say anything except “I 100% admit that I was wrong and you were right, and I’ll change everything about myself immediately”.

Third World2 mentions across 2 issues

Third World is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 07, 2024 and July 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "very attractive to Third World masses"; "When Third World immigrants move to the US". It most often appears alongside America, US, Aboriginal.

Article page: Third World
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: May 07, 2024
Last seen: July 15, 2025

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Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke" May 07, 2024
Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines July 15, 2025

America 2 shared issues
US 2 shared issues
Aboriginal 1 shared issues
Aboriginal Australia 1 shared issues
Aboriginal society 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

May 07, 2024 · Original source

To me, it seems like the reason for why civil rights legislation, including affirmative action, has been enacted and are maintained in the US have at least at much to do with external as with internal policy. The original context for the enactment of the CRA and all the legislation meant to make racial equality not just a theory but an actuality was America's ideological content with the Soviet Union, a country that could lay a credible claim to an antiracist practice that made it very attractive to Third World masses and First World intellectuals; since it was also known that the equitable treatment of African-Americans was one of the main areas where United States had, to put it mildly, failed, it was also imperative for the US to show that it was working to fix it.

Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines

July 15, 2025 · Original source

But maybe it should feel more mysterious. When Third World immigrants move to the US, they’re usually pretty happy with their decision. They might not assimilate completely, but they’re often able to hold down jobs or at least avoid spiraling into alcoholism and suicide. But when a people gets colonized - after the bad part with the conquest and land theft and oppression, once they’re granted citizenship and the settlers feel vaguely apologetic - doesn’t it end up kind of like being an immigrant into a First World country? In fact, isn’t it strictly superior? Instead of dodging ICE goons, you get full citizenship, access to the welfare system, maybe some affirmative action. You don’t even have to abandon your family or leave your ancestral village.

Three Strikes law2 mentions across 2 issues

Three Strikes law is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 23, 2022 and November 27, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "voters passed a change to the Three Strikes law so that the third strike imposes a life sentence only if the new felony was serious or violent"; "The Three Strikes Law raised the expected sentence for a third crime from ~5 years to ~20 years". It most often appears alongside ACLU, California, Chicago.

Article page: Three Strikes law
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: June 23, 2022
Last seen: November 27, 2024

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Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know November 27, 2024

ACLU 2 shared issues
California 2 shared issues
Chicago 2 shared issues
Marginal Revolution 2 shared issues
Miami 2 shared issues

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Inline links: Ed West, Public Policy Institute, UCI criminologists, Applied Divinity Studies’ article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aTNC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa27aeb21-ed87-4e67-b82c-b3ceecee7082_500x238.png, here, Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_NL6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcf7dc478-45d3-487d-8c29-8bc7cdf182dd_2400x1500.png, LouB’s analysis here, This news article, only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest, New York Times, the Economist, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!58I3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc63dc7bc-1f8e-49fd-9c68-61c85278d69e_608x662.png, San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!h17s!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F956c0917-2a9b-4ff7-a08e-6aee5030583a_590x376.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TkFS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c5faa01-ac22-48a2-96fe-47efb6f52514_616x334.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Bg2w!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18e49c63-16ba-4878-96e6-aec12d7c5953_481x667.png, percent African-American, percent Borderer, here, the Twinkie Defense, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8wK3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F683b9754-f663-47ad-88f5-aa99bc208ec8_1401x622.jpeg, https://twitter.com/weheartprez/status/1526983899309432832

June 23, 2022 · Original source

Source: Ed West, do note that this example is from the UK How suspicious should we be of each type of story? There will always be an extreme right tail of overly harsh sentences, and an extreme left tail of overly lenient ones. Were the 2000s really as draconian as they felt? Is the modern era really as pathetic? Or is it all just a function of who you read and what agenda they’re pushing? Shellenberger: During California governor Jerry Brown’s time in office, voters passed several reforms aimed at reducing the size of the prison population. In 2012, voters passed a change to the Three Strikes law so that the third strike imposes a life sentence only if the new felony was serious or violent. In addition to lowering punishments for drug possession, Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, redefined shoplifting, forgery, petty theft, and receiving stolen property as misdemeanors when the value in question does not exceed $950. In 2016, voters approved a proposition that shortened the time it took for some nonviolent offenders to be eligible for parole and which released nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and rehabilitation. Property crimes rose in San Francisco starting in 2012. Larceny, which is shoplifting and other petty theft, rose 50 percent, from roughly 3,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to about 4,500 in 2019. Property crimes as a whole, which include larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary, rose from 4,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to 5,500 in 2019. One study suggests that Proposition 47 increased the rate of auto theft 17 percent and the rate of larceny (non-auto property) theft 9 percent, but discerning between causation and correlation may not be possible. Upon taking office in January 2020, [famously soft-on-crime San Francisco district attorney Chesa] Boudin followed through on his campaign promises. Instead of prosecuting and incarcerating people for breaking car windows to steal money and other items from inside, Boudin proposed creating a $1.5 million fund to reimburse car owners. But there were over 25,000 car break-ins reported in 2019. If every break-in cost just $250 in repairs, the fund would need four times that amount. And what would prevent people from falsely claiming to have been robbed in order to get city money? […] Boudin opposed efforts by the mayor and the city attorney to prevent drug dealers who had already been arrested from entering the Tenderloin. “Until the city is serious about treating addiction and the root causes of drug use and selling,” said Boudin in a statement, “these recycled, punishment-focused approaches are unlikely to succeed at doing anything more than making headlines.” Home burglaries rose in early 2021 in San Francisco. Homeowners started posting on Twitter videos from their security cameras of people breaking into homes and garages. “When I first moved here we had a car break-in problem,” said Michael Solana, a writer who works for a venture capital fund. “Now we have a home invasion problem. These things are wearing on people.” Boudin attributed the rise of burglaries in San Francisco to the decline of tourism and “people in desperate economic circumstances.” Progressive supervisor Hillary Ronen agreed. “We know that [economic insecurity and inequality] is one of the root causes of property crimes specifically,” she said. But Tom Wolf and others argued that the robberies were, like the shoplifting, done by people seeking money to buy drugs and feed their addictions. “The drugstores have been shoplifted to death and that’s all because of drug use,” said Tom. “I know. I used to do the same thing when I was out there. That’s what you do. You ‘boost.’ And then you go and you sell your stuff down at UN Plaza,” an open-air drug scene. In a May 2021 city supervisors’ meeting, a representative from CVS called San Francisco “the epicenter of organized retail crime in the country” and claimed that 85 percent of the shoplifting is committed by organized theft rings. Police broke up one such ring in October 2020 and recovered $8 million of stolen merchandise. The problem goes beyond property crime. Boudin declined to prosecute two men who went on to kill people. One man had been repeatedly arrested for stealing cars, despite having just been released from prison earlier in the year, and appeared to be abusing meth. On New Year’s Eve, 2020, the man killed two people while driving intoxicated. Police found inside of his car a semiautomatic handgun and twenty-three grams of methamphetamine. On February 4, another intoxicated driver killed a pedestrian in a stolen car. The San Francisco police had arrested him in October 2020 for possessing a stolen car, a tool for stealing cars, and what appeared to be meth. Boudin chose not to pursue charges. In December, the California Highway Patrol arrested the man again for driving a stolen vehicle under the influence. Again he was not prosecuted. The accident victim, an immigrant from Kenya, and his wife had moved to San Francisco two weeks before the fatal crash. “I blame the DA,” said the widow of the victim. The suspect, she said, “was someone who was out in the public who shouldn’t have been in the public. It was completely avoidable.” Tom said he could feel the difference on the streets. “Drug dealing is unabated and it’s not one guy, it’s fifty guys dealing fentanyl and meth,” he said. “And it’s going unabated because the district attorney says, ‘These are the nonviolent, quality-of-life crimes,’ and ‘I’m not going to prosecute them.’” [..] District Attorney Boudin was offering weaker sentences than even defense attorneys were requesting, according to Vicki Westbrook of San Francisco. “There’s a defense attorney who said, ‘It used to be that I would argue for this deal in court with the DA but now I don’t say anything because the DA is going to offer me a deal better than what I would have suggested. Somebody shot up the street with an automatic weapon. The first offer was six months in jail or time served plus two years of probation or something. And then [the DA] said, “How about thirty days in jail?”’” Vicki laughed. “You really can do anything in San Francisco,” she said. “If you do get arrested, chances are you’re going to be out of jail in less than thirty days for damn near everything except maybe killing somebody and maybe even then, too. It’s hard to say at this point.” Taking each of these points individually: Proposition 47 There are two good big studies on the effects of Prop 47, one by Public Policy Institute and one by some UCI criminologists. The PPI study finds that the proposition increased theft and car break-ins by about 10%. The UCI study finds the same, but notes that under different assumptions the effects wouldn’t quite obtain statistical significance. This seems a bit too much like post hoc trying to get rid of an inconvenient effect, plus an effect on the border of statistical significance is different from positively finding no effect. I think a reasonable interpretation is that theft and car break-ins rose about 10% because of the proposition, just as Shellenberger says. Some pro-47 sites note that most states have some limit on how much you to have to shoplift before it’s a felony, and Prop 47 brought California closer to the national average, rather than turning it into an outlier. Chesa Boudin Chesa Boudin took office two months before the COVID pandemic began. Any attempt to separate the effect of Chesa Boudin from the effect of the pandemic is doomed. Shoplifting definitely plummeted when Boudin took office, but that’s because all the stores were closed. Murders definitely rose a little after Boudin took office, but that’s because that was also when the Black Lives Matter protests happened, which demoralized police and led to a so-far-permanent spike in murders nationwide. Percent of criminals caught definitely fell when Boudin took office, but that’s because various aspects of the justice system were closed for COVID (I will grudgingly entertain speculation that a further decrease in arrest rates from 2020 to 2021 may have been a genuine Boudin effect). In the absence of any real way to judge his performance, I think San Fransicko’s points about Boudin are plausible, though speculative. Shoplifting This one is terrible. There’s a surprisingly spirited debate here (some of you may have already read Applied Divinity Studies’ article). The debate is: everyone on the ground in San Francisco - store owners, security guards, customers, random citizens - say that shoplifting has increased massively over the past decade. But statistics mostly say it hasn’t. Source here. This is shoplifting crimes per 100,000 people. Kern County is a deep red county in California (including Bakersfield) that is known for being tough on crime. Against this, seriously, everyone says that shoplifting has obviously increased. I had a patient who worked in shoplifting prevention, he told me - his psychiatrist! Who he had no reason to lie to! - that he was constantly stressed dealing with the shoplifting surge devastating the stores he covered. Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response to someone posting the data showing shoplifting hasn’t risen - it’s just a lot of people laughing hysterically. What’s going on? I was able to find a different set of statistics that does seem to show a longer-term increase in shoplifting (source): The very big spike at the end might be a change in reporting by one or two stores - you can find the argument here. But it does look like shoplifting went from about 125 incidents/month in the early 2010s to more like 250/month just before the pandemic. Why is this graph so different from the other one? It looks like the top one came from the Department of Justice, and the bottom one came from SFPD. I’m not sure why these report differently. When you multiply out by 800K people in SF, by 12 months/year, and 30ish days/month, the first graph corresponds to 4 shoplifting incidents per day, and the second to 6. As LouB’s analysis here points out, that seems suspiciously low for a city of 800,000 people where stores are constantly closing because of shoplifting. Maybe off by a factor of a few hundred from what we’d expect. LouB writes: The SFPD report only references shoplifting offenses that required SFPD officers to prepare an incident report. That means either the shoplifter fought security, committed additional crimes, or stole more than $950 worth of items. It’s not that SFPD’s report is erroneous, it’s just not a representative statistic. In a parallel statistic, SFPD only completes incident reports for traffic accidents when there is an injury. Therefore, thousands of noninjury accidents are handled civilly without SFPD reports the same way thousands of shoplifting offenses are handled without reports. An insurance company would not determine premium rates based solely on SFPD incident reports, nor should readers interpret SFPD shoplifting reports as anywhere near the total picture of the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco. (this would also explain why one or two stores changing their reporting policy can produce a spike equal to everyone else in San Francisco combined) But comparing incident reports from 2010 to incident reports from 2020 should still be apples-to-apples, unless the likelihood of reporting any given incident changed in the meantime. Did it? This news article quotes a San Franciscan who says that when they try to report shoplifting incidents, the cops tell them not to because “it doesn’t make a difference”. If cops say that now more often than they used to, it would make all these statistics meaningless. (Applied Divinity Studies claims to have an argument that shows this can’t be true. It goes something like: if San Francisco was a better place to shoplift than its neighbors - eg Oakland - then shoplifters would leave Oakland to go to San Francisco, and we would see Oakland shoplifting rates falling. Oakland shoplifting rates are falling, but no more so than the rest of the state, so there can’t be increased tolerance for shoplifting in San Francisco. I find this dubious for many reasons. First of all, many of the same reasons shoplifting is up in San Francisco - like Prop 47 or soft-on-crime progressive policies - also apply to Oakland. Second, given that shoplifting fell massively everywhere because of the pandemic, it feels dubious to try to compare different cities; maybe one city had stricter pandemic lockdowns than others. Third, do criminals really shop around for friendly jurisdictions? If so, why are so many crimes like car break-ins, concentrated in “the bad part of town”? Why wouldn’t criminals leave the bad part of town for under-exploited areas with richer residents and less competition? Maybe criminals in fact aren’t very strategic or mobile? Maybe they don’t want to stand in the BART station and then take a half-hour train ride holding a bag of stolen goods?) Maybe a better argument against this being true is how stable the shoplifting rates have been over time. Wouldn’t it be weird if (let’s say) a tripling of the real shoplifting rates was matched by a third-ing of the reporting rates (rather than a halving or a quartering or whatever)? On the other hand, here’s Shellenberger with some helpful data: Some of this is probably because of Proposition 47, which made some forms of shoplifting punishable with citation rather than arrest (but wouldn’t that be a clear discontinuity rather than a gradual trend?) But overall it sure seems like shoplifting is being taken less seriously, which might encourage people to report less. Another statistic I see is that only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest; I don’t know how this is different from the graph above with numbers in the 30s; maybe it involves different levels of what makes something a “case”. I accept that the data don’t consistently show a spike in shoplifting. But what’s the alternative? My patient who works in loss prevention in SF stores is lying to me? The nice elderly Chinese man who sold me my last pair of glasses and chatted to me about the rampant shoplifting in his mall was lying? The San Francisco police are lying? Walgreens pretends to be concerned about shoplifting as part of a dastardly plot to close a bunch of stores for no reason? Target and CVS pretend to care about shoplifting as part of a plot to restrict their stores’ opening hours for no reason? Every big store near me has suddenly gotten a security guard at the front as part of some corporate-sponsored jobs program? Maybe the conservative narrative that soft-on-crime San Francisco must be experiencing rising crime rates took on a life of its own. Maybe it infiltrated not just the usual suspects like the SF police unions, but even such supposedly-liberal bastions as the New York Times. Maybe lots of big corporations took advantage of the fake narrative to make unpopular business decisions they were planning on making anyway. And maybe ordinary San Franciscans, confronted with everyone telling them they were in a shoplifting epidemic, started paying more attention to security guards and petty criminals who had always been there, a sort of mass hallucination that gripped everyone in the city. I can’t rule this out. Americans thought crime was rising all throughout the early 2000s, when it was in fact way down. Or maybe some statistics that we already know are off by several orders of magnitude got off by an additional factor of two or so. I think this one is more likely, but I’m genuinely not sure. Other Crime From the Economist: The Center on Juvenile And Criminal Justice puts it even more starkly, arguing that “San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime”: This are potentially susceptible to the same reporting bias as shoplifting. So what about homicide? Homicide is practically always reported and investigated, making it a gold standard in crime measurement. (source) Looks pretty good until 2019. I don’t expect to gain useful information post-2020; the pandemic and the post-George-Floyd murder surge will make it impossible to evaluate for local variation. What about compared to other places? For some reason this top 20 table fails to list Washington DC, which should be just before Atlanta. SF doesn’t make the top 20, although its neighbor Oakland does. Probably most murder variation in US cities is explained by percent African-American and maybe percent Borderer; with relatively few people in these groups SF was never in the running. I’m not sure if some abstracted version of the city with all demographic factors adjusted away would have an unusually high murder rate, but at that point it would be pretty distant from any interesting real-world question. You can see the leaderboard for other types of crime here; San Francisco is often in the top ten, but never the top three. As far as I can tell, San Francisco has seen a big spike in car breakins over the past few years, with no clear trend for other property crime, violent crime, or homicides. It’s not an outlier among American cities in any kind of crime. Conclusion of this section: San Fransicko’s specific claims are basically correct, but suggest a medium-term rise in SF crime which is mostly contradicted by the data. These show stable-to-decreasing murder, stable-to-decreasing violent and property crimes other than car break-ins, and large rises in car break-ins only. The data also show stable-to-decreasing shoplifting, but I’m not sure how much to trust them vs. common sense. Honestly, I’m pretty confused here and not sure what to think. Claim 7: Jim Jones (Of Kool-Aid Cult Fame) Used To Be The Chairman Of SF’s Housing Authority Okay, this isn’t really a statistical claim that I can research different perspectives on. Still, it’s so wacky that I couldn’t resist mentioning it in this review. Jim Jones, famous for killing everyone in his Guyana-based Jonestown cult with poisoned Kool-Aid, used to be the SF government’s top guy on homelessness. Shellenberger writes: Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the People’s Temple. Jones believed he was the leader of a socialist revolution. He warned of nuclear war and claimed black people would be put in concentration camps. He became a hugely charismatic preacher among African Americans, the disaffiliated poor, and young transplants to the city looking for community. Scenes from the era show a remarkably large and diverse congregation smiling and singing. The People’s Temple grew and provided services. Jones cultivated two progressive San Francisco politicians, George Moscone and Willie Brown, and mobilized people to volunteer for their campaigns […] His son and a San Francisco historian believe he stole the mayoral election for Moscone in 1975. Historian David Talbot, founder of the progressive website Salon, points to evidence that Jones committed sufficient voter fraud to account for Moscone’s narrow 4,443-vote margin of victory. “We loaded up all thirteen of our buses with maybe seventy people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” said Jones Jr. “Could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely! Slam dunk. He only won by four thousand votes.” When federal investigators looked into fraud claims three years later, they discovered that all of the records were missing from the city of San Francisco’s registrar of voters. Jones also boasted of providing Moscone with black women from his congregation for sex. One time Moscone, drunk and “accompanied by a young black woman whom the politician had kindly agreed to drive home,” crashed into another car. Another time, Moscone and Willie Brown “were with a black woman in an alley at two in the morning at some restaurant in North Beach,” said a local bar owner. State legislator “John Burton was part of that gang too. They were all using marijuana and cocaine.” Said Jones Jr., Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand and doing some ass grabbing.” A Temple member overheard Jones speaking to Moscone the day after one of those parties saying, “I want to let you know that the young lady you went off with is underage,” adding, “Now don’t worry, Mayor, we’ll take care of you—because we know that you’ll take care of us.” Afterward, Moscone made Jones the chairman of the powerful San Francisco Housing Commission. Jones cultivated progressives with money and favors. He made large donations to the ACLU, the NAACP, and United Farm Workers. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on a campaign plane a few days before the 1976 presidential election, and Mondale praised People’s Temple shortly afterward. Jones met with First Lady Rosalynn Carter several times. Governor Jerry Brown praised Jones. Glide Memorial Church’s Rev. Cecil Williams loved Jones. There is a photo from 1977 of a smiling Williams awarding Jones the church’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Jones used his perch as chairman of the Housing Commission to fight for housing for the poor. He tried to use eminent domain to acquire the International Hotel, a single resident occupancy hotel. After a court sided with the hotel’s owner, Jones mobilized seven thousand protesters to picket it. By mid-January 1977, the situation had become heated. There were rumors that protesters inside the building were armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. Jones lost the legal battle in 1977, and the tenants were evicted. But the drama was a publicity victory for Jones, which burnished his image as a white savior. A conservative member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in the mayoral election by Moscone accused the new mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the rest of the city establishment of being blind to Jones’s extremism. “There’s no radical plot in San Francisco,” insisted Moscone, in response. “There’s no one I’ve appointed to any city position whom I regard as radical or extremist.” Willie Brown, a powerful state legislator from 1964 to 1995 before becoming mayor in 1996, “seemed oblivious to Jones’ hucksterism and demagoguery,” notes a historian. Brown was master of ceremonies at a dinner for Jones in the fall of 1976 attended by an adulatory crowd of the rich and powerful, including Governor Jerry Brown. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein . . . Chairman Mao,” he said, to loud applause. And yet Jones was contemptuous of Brown even as Brown did Jones more and more favors. Jones mocked Brown for his designer suits, sports cars, and women. Once, while Brown was addressing the congregation and Jones was seated onstage behind him, Jones flipped his middle finger up to mock him. San Francisco’s establishment stood by Jones even after a California magazine, New West, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an exposé of Jones’s beatings of Temple members and financial abuses in August 1977. The article was written by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and was meant for the Chronicle to publish. But the newspaper killed the story because it didn’t want to alienate Jones, whom it viewed as central to its plans to expand the Chronicle’s circulation in the heavily African American Fillmore District. Jones also managed to avoid investigation and prosecution in part by getting the district attorney to hire as deputy district attorney Jones’s longtime attorney and confidant. Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.” Angela Davis sent a radio message broadcast over the cult’s compound, Jonestown, in Guyana. “I know you’re in a very difficult situation right now,” she said, “and there is a very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle.” After visiting Jonestown, the attorney to the Black Panthers said, “I have seen paradise.” Harvey Milk, too, was tarnished by his association with Jones. In the fall of 1977, Milk wrote to President Carter’s secretary of health, education, and welfare requesting that Social Security checks be sent to elderly Temple members in Guyana. “People’s Temple,” wrote Milk, has “established a beautiful retirement community in Guyana.” In truth, the cult was disintegrating. Jones separated families and lovers, pitted relatives against each other, and forced neighbors to inform on each other. Jones sent people who violated the rules to solitary confinement in “the Box,” an underground cubicle where people were held as prisoners for days on end. Others were drugged. Progressives who had spent thirty years fighting to close prisons and mental hospitals found themselves praising a man who had reproduced their worst practices. In November 1978 a Bay Area congressman flew to Guyana to investigate human rights violations at Jonestown with NBC News. Jones gave the delegation a formal reception at Jonestown. A Temple member surreptitiously passed a note to one of the delegation members, saying he and another member wanted to escape. They fled the next day after a Temple member tried to stab the congressman. Jones didn’t prevent them from leaving but then sent gunmen to fire machine guns at the delegation at the airport, killing the congressman and four others. A few hours later, 907 inhabitants of Jonestown drank Flavor Aid laced with cyanide and died. Two-thirds of the victims were African American and one-third were children. Jones had told them that if they didn’t drink it they would be killed by invading soldiers from a shadowy global military conspiracy intent on imposing fascism and torturing children. As people started crying in grief, Jones scolded them. “Stop these hysterics,” he said. “This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die.” Jones’s wife protested the murder of children and had to be forcibly restrained. “We didn’t commit suicide,” said Jones in a tape recording, “we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” Few were as stained by Jonestown as Willie Brown and George Moscone. “Even as the bloated bodies of the dead were removed from the jungle and the wounded were airlifted by the U.S. Air Force to hospitals in the United States,” wrote a historian, “Brown said he had ‘no regrets’ over his association with Jones.” They repeatedly disavowed responsibility. Said Moscone, “it’s clear that if there was a sinister plan, then we were taken in. But I’m not taking any responsibility. It’s not mine to shoulder.” This is Shellenberger at his best: telling us crazy stories from the recesses of San Francisco history, maybe kind of spinning the narration in a way that makes all progressives seem guilty by association, but with the tale itself so gripping that it’s hard to be mad. And Jones wasn’t alone. This was the golden age of San Francisco cults, when (Shellenberger tells us) “more than half of all high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area reported at least one recruiting attempt by a cult member, and 40 percent reported at least three contacts.” This chapter of SF history came to an end in 1978, when Dan White, who had just resigned from San Francisco’s Board Of Supervisors (ie City Council) entered City Hall through a window and assassinated Mayor Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk, then successfully got charges reduced to manslaughter through a legal manuever that has gone down in history as “the Twinkie Defense” (realistically the defense was that he was depressed, but reporters seized on a comment that implied it was because he ate too many Twinkies). Everything about 1970s San Francisco was like this. With the Mayor and his right-hand-man both dead, San Francisco leadership ended up in the hands of previously second-tier politician Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein was what passed for a moderate in 1970s SF (which meant she had been targeted for assassination by various left-wing groups - she survived when a bomb left on her windowsill failed to explode). In Shellenberger’s telling, she managed to clean up some of the mess and restore a semblance of normalcy. San Francisco never forgave her. Moscone - voting fraud committer, underage sex enjoyer, and Jim Jones’ bff - is beloved as a martyr in today’s SF, but (the book points out) Feinstein is so loathed that in 2021 the Board of Education voted to rename Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.

Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

November 27, 2024 · Original source

Aftereffects2: Once a criminal is released from prison, they either reoffend or don’t. Perhaps long prison sentences reduce reoffending, because the prisoners have had more time to be “scared straight” or “find God” or get connected to good social services. Or perhaps long prison sentences increase reoffending, because the prisoners have lost their outside social connections, formed new criminal social connections in prison (eg joined gangs), or just forgotten how to survive on the outside. The earliest studies investigated these three effects through correlational studies: do states with longer sentences have less crime / less recidivism / etc ? These reviews all express skepticism about this method: it’s the old “correlation vs. causation” problem again. What if the causation is backwards, and more crime causes longer sentences (because high-crime states want to get tough and fight back)? Or what if they’re only linked through some third concept? For example, suppose all states are either generically tough-on-crime (with long sentences, more police, more social sanctions on criminals) or generically soft-on crime (short sentences, less police, etc). Then any part of the tough-on-crime package would confound all the others (eg if more police decreased crime, it would falsely look like longer sentences did). In order to avoid these problems, all three reviews recommend experimental and quasi-experimental studies. We’ll look into the exact methodologies later, but typical papers would look at crime rates just before or after new sentencing laws were passed, or at very similar crimes which quirks of the sentencing regime punish very differently. Roodman and Nagin look only at experimental or quasi-experimental studies, whereas Berger sometimes carefully examines some of the better and more-carefully-controlled correlational evidence. Let’s see how each one treats these three bins. Deterrence Rational actors consider the costs and benefits of a strategy before acting; this model has been successfully applied to the decision to commit crime. Studying deterrence is complicated, and usually tries to tease out effects from the certainty, swiftness, and severity of punishment; here we’ll focus on severity. A typical study here is Helland and Tabarrok 2007 (you may know Alex Tabarrok from Marginal Revolution). They looked at California’s famous Three Strikes law, which says that a criminal who has already committed two major crimes will automatically get a sentence of twenty years to life on their third. This is potentially a good way to study deterrence, because one group of criminals (those with no strikes) will get a normal sentence for their next crime, but another (those with 2 strikes) will get a long sentence. So if long sentences have a strong deterrent effect, we expect the second group to commit far fewer minor crimes than the first. It would be naive to jump straight to doing this study in the whole population, because people with multiple past “strikes” are more likely to be hardened criminals, and should be expected to offend more in the future. So H&T did something more complicated. They looked at criminals with one strike, plus a second crime that was on the border of being “major” enough to earn a second strike. Some had good luck at their trial, got their offense downgraded to a “minor” crime, and continued to only have one strike; others had bad luck, got their offense upgraded to a “major” crime, and earned a second strike. Now we have two groups with exactly equal criminal histories but different number of strikes! That means one group will be punished more severely for their next crime than the other. How much deterrent effect does this have? They found that 48% of the one-strike group and 40% of the two-strikes group got arrested per year, a difference of 17%. They re-ran their analysis with data from other states, and found the same pattern in Texas (the only other state with a three-strikes law) but not elsewhere. This reassured them that it’s a real effect of deterrence and not just an artifact. Still, Helland and Tabarrok are not impressed by this result. Yes, we decreased crime by 17%. But it took an extraordinarily severe threat. The Three Strikes Law raised the expected sentence for a third crime from ~5 years to ~20 years, so each extra year in the threatened sentence decreased crime about 1%. If you think about this economically, it’s a bad deal; it takes $150,000 worth of incarceration costs to deter one crime, but the social cost per crime is (they say, citing another economics paper) about $34,000. And most deterrence isn’t this strong. Only 4% of California crime is committed by offenders with two previous strikes, and there’s no political will to impose these kind of 20+ year sentences on first-time criminals. So most deterrence will look more like the Proposition 36 proposal we discussed last month, which increases shoplifting sentences from six months to three years. If we use H&T’s numbers (probably inappropriate since there may be nonlinear effects), we would expect that section of Prop 36 to deter crime by 2%. There are two other considerations that might increase or decrease our estimate of deterrence. First, how sure are we that the police caught all the crimes here? In general, only about 50% of violent crimes and 10% of property crimes are caught. Should we multiply these numbers by somewhere between 2-10x? I think in this case the multiplier should be somewhat less. The subjects in this study were on parole or probation from their previous strike, so they were more likely to be monitored by police. And they’d already gotten caught twice, which suggests they’re either worse at crime than average, or operating in areas with better-than-average police coverage. Still, maybe we should multiply by, idk, 2-5x? This won’t affect our percentages: we expect that arrests are some fixed proportion of offenses, so if a criminal gets caught 17% more often, they’re probably committing 17% more crimes (however many that is). But it might affect our estimate of the social costs of crime. Instead of saying that $150,000 worth of incarceration costs prevents $34,000 worth of crime, maybe we should say that it prevents $68,000 - $170,000 - which, at the higher end of the range, would be economically break-even. Second, what kind of crimes are we deterring? Here Roodman, the anti-incarceration review, analyzes H&T’s data more thoroughly and finds that their effect is concentrated in the least severe crimes: That is, overall crime decreased 17%. But violent crime decreased only 1.7% (not significant). The only crime where the decrease reached statistical significance was drug crime (31%). Should we take this completely seriously and say that the Three Strikes Law only deterred drug crime? I’m not sure. The argument against is that drug crime was the most common category of crime in this sample, so it’s possible that the study was powered to detect decreases in drug crime but not in other categories. In favor of this interpretation, vehicle theft (a category sometimes found to be especially deterrable in other studies) went down 19%, similar to the overall headline number - it just didn’t reach statistical significance. But against this interpretation, larceny (minor robberies like shoplifting) went up 22%. This is obviously random noise, and it would be unfair to ignore the larceny result but count the (equally weak) vehicle theft result just because it agrees with our priors. I think when you average everything together, it really does look like the effect on everything except drugs is small. Maybe it’s hard to deter violent crimes (because these are executed in a fit of passion), it’s hard to deter property crimes (because criminals need the money), but it’s easier to deter drug crimes (because people make more rational decisions about whether or not to use drugs)? (How much do we care about drug crime? Tabarrok says somewhat, because drugs can be a “gateway crime” that gets people into the criminal lifestyle. Roodman says not much. It’s either personal use, which is mostly victimless, at least compared to other crimes. Or it’s dealing, which is demand-driven and almost impossible to stop through incarceration - if you lock up every member of Cartel A, that just creates a lucrative niche for Cartel B to step in and fill.) So a pessimistic interpretation (which I find hard to avoid) is that an extra year added on to a prison sentence decreases drug crimes by 2%, and other crimes some unmeasurably-small amount that may or may not be literally zero. I went into this one study in depth so you have an idea where these numbers are coming from, but here’s a broader survey of deterrence research: Ross 1982 investigated the effects of some widely publicized laws that increased penalties for drunk driving. They found that it decreased drunk driving 66% (!) in the year the law came out, but this effect gradually faded to zero over the next three years. The most likely explanation is that the publicity around the new law got people excited, but nobody really knows the laws around drunk driving anyway (do you know what the range of sentences for DUI in your jurisdiction is?) and so once the excitement of “law is stricter now!” faded from memory, the law had no effect.

Inline links: 2, Helland and Tabarrok 2007, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nELb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7bce7337-4327-4f36-9872-3badd2c8a5d6_449x538.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sz6E!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F74a4f1cf-87ec-4cdb-8a0e-0e8097fe2368_993x723.png, Ross 1982

They re-ran their analysis with data from other states, and found the same pattern in Texas (the only other state with a three-strikes law) but not elsewhere. This reassured them that it’s a real effect of deterrence and not just an artifact. Still, Helland and Tabarrok are not impressed by this result. Yes, we decreased crime by 17%. But it took an extraordinarily severe threat. The Three Strikes Law raised the expected sentence for a third crime from ~5 years to ~20 years, so each extra year in the threatened sentence decreased crime about 1%. If you think about this economically, it’s a bad deal; it takes $150,000 worth of incarceration costs to deter one crime, but the social cost per crime is (they say, citing another economics paper) about $34,000. And most deterrence isn’t this strong. Only 4% of California crime is committed by offenders with two previous strikes, and there’s no political will to impose these kind of 20+ year sentences on first-time criminals. So most deterrence will look more like the Proposition 36 proposal we discussed last month, which increases shoplifting sentences from six months to three years. If we use H&T’s numbers (probably inappropriate since there may be nonlinear effects), we would expect that section of Prop 36 to deter crime by 2%. There are two other considerations that might increase or decrease our estimate of deterrence. First, how sure are we that the police caught all the crimes here? In general, only about 50% of violent crimes and 10% of property crimes are caught. Should we multiply these numbers by somewhere between 2-10x? I think in this case the multiplier should be somewhat less. The subjects in this study were on parole or probation from their previous strike, so they were more likely to be monitored by police. And they’d already gotten caught twice, which suggests they’re either worse at crime than average, or operating in areas with better-than-average police coverage. Still, maybe we should multiply by, idk, 2-5x? This won’t affect our percentages: we expect that arrests are some fixed proportion of offenses, so if a criminal gets caught 17% more often, they’re probably committing 17% more crimes (however many that is). But it might affect our estimate of the social costs of crime. Instead of saying that $150,000 worth of incarceration costs prevents $34,000 worth of crime, maybe we should say that it prevents $68,000 - $170,000 - which, at the higher end of the range, would be economically break-even. Second, what kind of crimes are we deterring? Here Roodman, the anti-incarceration review, analyzes H&T’s data more thoroughly and finds that their effect is concentrated in the least severe crimes: That is, overall crime decreased 17%. But violent crime decreased only 1.7% (not significant). The only crime where the decrease reached statistical significance was drug crime (31%). Should we take this completely seriously and say that the Three Strikes Law only deterred drug crime? I’m not sure. The argument against is that drug crime was the most common category of crime in this sample, so it’s possible that the study was powered to detect decreases in drug crime but not in other categories. In favor of this interpretation, vehicle theft (a category sometimes found to be especially deterrable in other studies) went down 19%, similar to the overall headline number - it just didn’t reach statistical significance. But against this interpretation, larceny (minor robberies like shoplifting) went up 22%. This is obviously random noise, and it would be unfair to ignore the larceny result but count the (equally weak) vehicle theft result just because it agrees with our priors. I think when you average everything together, it really does look like the effect on everything except drugs is small. Maybe it’s hard to deter violent crimes (because these are executed in a fit of passion), it’s hard to deter property crimes (because criminals need the money), but it’s easier to deter drug crimes (because people make more rational decisions about whether or not to use drugs)? (How much do we care about drug crime? Tabarrok says somewhat, because drugs can be a “gateway crime” that gets people into the criminal lifestyle. Roodman says not much. It’s either personal use, which is mostly victimless, at least compared to other crimes. Or it’s dealing, which is demand-driven and almost impossible to stop through incarceration - if you lock up every member of Cartel A, that just creates a lucrative niche for Cartel B to step in and fill.) So a pessimistic interpretation (which I find hard to avoid) is that an extra year added on to a prison sentence decreases drug crimes by 2%, and other crimes some unmeasurably-small amount that may or may not be literally zero. I went into this one study in depth so you have an idea where these numbers are coming from, but here’s a broader survey of deterrence research: Ross 1982 investigated the effects of some widely publicized laws that increased penalties for drunk driving. They found that it decreased drunk driving 66% (!) in the year the law came out, but this effect gradually faded to zero over the next three years. The most likely explanation is that the publicity around the new law got people excited, but nobody really knows the laws around drunk driving anyway (do you know what the range of sentences for DUI in your jurisdiction is?) and so once the excitement of “law is stricter now!” faded from memory, the law had no effect.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sz6E!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F74a4f1cf-87ec-4cdb-8a0e-0e8097fe2368_993x723.png, Ross 1982

That is, overall crime decreased 17%. But violent crime decreased only 1.7% (not significant). The only crime where the decrease reached statistical significance was drug crime (31%). Should we take this completely seriously and say that the Three Strikes Law only deterred drug crime? I’m not sure. The argument against is that drug crime was the most common category of crime in this sample, so it’s possible that the study was powered to detect decreases in drug crime but not in other categories. In favor of this interpretation, vehicle theft (a category sometimes found to be especially deterrable in other studies) went down 19%, similar to the overall headline number - it just didn’t reach statistical significance. But against this interpretation, larceny (minor robberies like shoplifting) went up 22%. This is obviously random noise, and it would be unfair to ignore the larceny result but count the (equally weak) vehicle theft result just because it agrees with our priors. I think when you average everything together, it really does look like the effect on everything except drugs is small. Maybe it’s hard to deter violent crimes (because these are executed in a fit of passion), it’s hard to deter property crimes (because criminals need the money), but it’s easier to deter drug crimes (because people make more rational decisions about whether or not to use drugs)? (How much do we care about drug crime? Tabarrok says somewhat, because drugs can be a “gateway crime” that gets people into the criminal lifestyle. Roodman says not much. It’s either personal use, which is mostly victimless, at least compared to other crimes. Or it’s dealing, which is demand-driven and almost impossible to stop through incarceration - if you lock up every member of Cartel A, that just creates a lucrative niche for Cartel B to step in and fill.) So a pessimistic interpretation (which I find hard to avoid) is that an extra year added on to a prison sentence decreases drug crimes by 2%, and other crimes some unmeasurably-small amount that may or may not be literally zero. I went into this one study in depth so you have an idea where these numbers are coming from, but here’s a broader survey of deterrence research: Ross 1982 investigated the effects of some widely publicized laws that increased penalties for drunk driving. They found that it decreased drunk driving 66% (!) in the year the law came out, but this effect gradually faded to zero over the next three years. The most likely explanation is that the publicity around the new law got people excited, but nobody really knows the laws around drunk driving anyway (do you know what the range of sentences for DUI in your jurisdiction is?) and so once the excitement of “law is stricter now!” faded from memory, the law had no effect.

Inline links: Ross 1982

Tibetan Buddhism2 mentions across 2 issues

Tibetan Buddhism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 17, 2024 and October 24, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "He converted to Tibetan Buddhism"; "Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism". It most often appears alongside Catholic Church, Harry Potter, Substack.

Article page: Tibetan Buddhism
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 17, 2024
Last seen: October 24, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For December 2024 December 17, 2024
Highlights From The Comments On Fatima October 24, 2025

Catholic Church 2 shared issues
Harry Potter 2 shared issues
Substack 2 shared issues
Trump 2 shared issues
2016 US Presidential election 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For December 2024

December 17, 2024 · Original source

1: Action movie star Steven Seagal has lived an interesting life since wrapping up his Hollywood career: He converted to Tibetan Buddhism, where a lama declared him to be the reincarnation of 16th century saint Chungdrag Dorje. He married (in turn) a Japanese woman, two American actresses, and "the top female dancer in Mongolia", and has seven children (along with being the guardian of the Panchen Lama's daughter). More recently, he has become a pro-Russian activist, made friends with Vladimir Putin, gotten honorary Russian citizenship, and was last seen in Kursk filming a propaganda movie to support Russian troops.

Inline links: Steven Seagal, in Kursk

Highlights From The Comments On Fatima

October 24, 2025 · Original source

Generalized one-fell-swoop paranormal explanations. Demons are trying to confuse us, or the simulation is glitching, or there’s some kind of Harry Potter-esque masquerade overflowing with wizards and monsters that carefully hides itself from us Muggles but occasionally leaks. UFOs do not really lend themselves to an individualized paranormal explanation - too many weird aliens in saucers trying to send whichever message of peace and love is most politically popular at the time of the abduction, too few Matrioshka brains with nanotech - so bringing them into our attention may make us more interested in looking for a generalized paranormal explanation which is merely pretending to be all these specific supernatural beings, including the Virgin. I take this one sort of seriously, but I also think it violates a general heuristic against conspiracies and false flag attacks. If some incredibly powerful being is telling you that it’s the Virgin Mary, and discussing Catholic doctrine, and performing healing miracles, I think you should at least start with a presumption of taking it seriously. But at this level of distance from any well-established priors, who even knows? GedAtThwll writes: This account reminds me of the semi-famous Ariel School UFO encounter [in Zimbabwe], covered well on YouTube and Wikipedia. Basically, ~60 kids saw a “silver craft” descend, and aliens (of debatable description) came out and did various things (described differently by participants). Oddly similar to the silver sun -> hallucinations. I don’t know how much it reminds me of Fatima, but I agree “sixty people all say they saw a UFO and some aliens” is the sort of mass hallucination I claimed basically doesn’t happen. I was going to attribute this something about the psychic makeup of poor uneducated Zimbabwean children, but according to Wikipedia, “Ariel School was an expensive private school [and] most of the pupils were from wealthy white families in Harare.” One interesting feature of this story is that it happened a few days after a previous UFO panic in Zimbabwe - thousands of people said they saw some kind of fiery spaceship in the sky. This was very likely true - their accounts match a Russian rocket that reentered and burned up in the atmosphere around that time. So it seems like maybe the rocket primed people into a UFO mania, and that caused . . . sixty schoolkids to all hallucinate the same thing? At least to the point where some later investigators who are accused of maybe asking some leading questions could get them to give similar answers? Peter McLaughlin (blog) writes: This is excellent. One additional strand that I’d like to see someone tug on – maybe I will. The Irish nationalist poet W. B. Yeats has a poem about the 1891 funeral of Irish nationalist political leader Charles Stewart Parnell. The poem describes how clouds covered the sky on the day of the funeral, the sun could be seen through a gap in the clouds, and then a star “shoots down”. Most people who write about this poem take this to be pure symbolism (the next stanza describes a scene of pagan sacrifice that definitely is pure symbolism), but a while ago I came across an essay where Yeats insists that no, this actually happened. He wasn’t at the funeral himself, but he knew lots of people who were. He cites his unrequited love Maud Gonne telling him afterwards about “the star that fell broad daylight as Parnell’s body was lowered into the grave”, and quotes the writer Standish O’Grady: ‘I state a fact - it was witnessed by thousands. While his followers were committing Charles Parnell’s remains to the earth, the sky was bright with strange lights and flames. Only a coincidence possibly, and yet persons not superstitious have maintained that there is some mysterious sympathy between the human soul and the elements, and that storm, and other elemental disturbances have too often succeeded or accompanied great battles to be regarded as only fortuitous...’ Now, Yeats was exceptionally credulous and prone to exaggeration. And he wrote the poem years after the funeral: while I think it’s very unlikely, it’s not impossible that he was ‘contaminated’ by subsequent knowledge of the reports from Fatima, and this coloured the way he stitched together the testimony he’d heard. The two sources he cites are less obviously Fatima-esque than his poem (though they don’t contradict each other, and altogether they add up to something exceptionally Fatima-esque with the lights and the falling object etc.; and, again, my knowledge of Yeats’ biography makes contamination seem unlikely). Even accounting for all this, the similarities between Yeats’ poem and the Fatima sun miracle are really striking to me. I think this is a potentially very important datapoint, because it’s an almost entirely non-religious example. To be sure, you can define ‘religion’ so that Irish nationalism can be a religion, but it’s very different from a bunch of people huddling on a hill because someone told them the Virgin Mary might appear. And indeed Parnell was in the unique position of being the Protestant leader of a mostly-Catholic political movement, cutting across Ireland’s religious divide. If there really was a Fatima-esque sun miracle at Parnell’s funeral, it strongly suggests that the correct explanation is (a) non-religious/materialist but also (b) ‘objective’ (or at least as intersubjective as optical illusions) rather than a matter of pure mass hysteria or hallucination. Which is exactly what this post suggests. And Parnell’s funeral came several decades before Fatima, so genuine primary sources would rule out ‘social contagion’ completely. This has been kicking around in the back of my mind for a while, but if enough people are interested I may try to track down the sources. The main published collection of Yeats’ letters to and from Gonne starts in 1893, two years after the funeral, so the main source he cites might be tricky to verify. But there might be independent diaries or newspaper reports from people at the funeral who weren’t in Yeats’ social circle, and at very least I can check the quote from Standish O’Grady. Melias (blog) writes: This is my perspective as an Orthodox Christian, and a possible framework for interpreting Fatima as a real miracle without becoming a fire-and-brimstone Catholic. It’s possible that Fatima et al. are partially or entirely from God. It’s also possible they are partially or entirely demonic phenomena, though often repurposed by God to good ends. Either way, if I have good reason to believe the Catholic Church is not fully in accord with Divine Truth, these miracles on their own shouldn’t make me change my mind. Christ Himself tells us to believe for His own sake, not for the sake of miracles. I believe in the supernatural because of numerous miracle stories that are impossible to explain otherwise. But my non-materialism is specifically Orthodox Christian because I can’t explain Jesus unless He’s the Christ, and I find Him most clearly in the practice and teachings of the Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy has plenty of miracles too, but that’s not why I’m here. I.E. Christ Himself gives you permission to decouple the reality of a supernatural occurrence from an associated claim to Divine Truth. You can use Fatima to update the chance of P(supernatural) without an equal update to P(Catholicism). Anyway, if you do want to keep going down the miracle rabbit-hole, the Orthodox equivalent of Fatima is the annual miracle of the Holy Fire. The main miracle - that a candle is miraculously lit while the Patriarch of Jerusalem is alone in the Holy Sepulchre - has supposedly been debunked since the Middle Ages. Even many Orthodox doubt it. But pilgrims regularly report a secondary miracle: For the first few minutes, candles lit from the Holy Fire don’t burn things, at least not how they should. Some videos [Video 1 here] Looks like this guy should have severe burns [Video 2 here] My brain tells me this might be possible with regular candles... but her sleeve gets plenty of time under intense flame [Video 3 here] They don’t leave their flesh in the flame for too long, but my brain tells me that putting the bundle of candles directly under your chin like the man does at 0:07 should also result in serious burns I pray before a single small candle every night. If I put my hand two inches above the visible flame, I can only hold it for ~2 seconds until it hurts too much. I find the videos and first-hand testimony (see Rod Dreher’s blog for one example) pretty convincing. Deiseach writes: Ah, I’m not pushed about Marian apparitions. The miracle of the sun is along the lines of the Shroud of Turin - you don’t have to believe the shroud is really the shroud of Jesus Christ, nobody is making you, it’s not doctrine. At the same time, if you want to venerate it (as you would a crucifix) that’s okay. Keep away from making extravagant claims, don’t contradict received doctrine, and it’s fine. Did a miracle happen at Fatima? I have no idea. I believe in God and the supernatural and all that jazz, but I’m not living and dying on “did this one event at this one apparition site really happen? if you prove it didn’t, oh no my faith is destroyed!” During the moving statue craze in Ireland, we had our own little local apparition. At the height of it, tour buses used to come with people to pray at the site. That has long died down, and I don’t recall that there were any earth-shattering revelations claimed by the visionaries, what remains is a quiet revival in people going to pray the rosary at the grotto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_statues There are a *lot* of alleged apparitions and private revelations that are never officially accepted by the Church, and a lot more which are condemned as fakes and frauds. Ross Douthat writes (on Twitter): Re-read Scott Alexander’s Fatima post (why not?) and I think this is where his analysis goes astray - after realizing there were a bunch of “echo” miracles like the initial case, not all church-approved, he decides that *strengthens* a skeptic’s case. But you don’t have to postulate demons to see why a big miracle might have non-church-approved sequelae. 1) Catholicism could be fallible in discerning which miracles are legit. 2) Even seers have free will; visions could fall on fallible ppl who run wild with dubious claims and 3) you’d expect a big miracle to have some sequels where enthusiasm does get the better of people (which any theory of miracles obviously has to allow for). Clearly (if He exists) God doesn’t force ppl to correctly interpret every experience He grants them, and so a multiplicity of miracle sequels, some of which seem credible and even produce video evidence, and some of which veer off into left field, seems entirely compatible with the original one actually being a divine intervention - if that’s where the core evidence points. I answered: Thanks for engaging in depth. I admit that was a surprising direction for that result to go, but I mostly stand by it. I think first, that the extra miracles demonstrate it has to be a subjective phenomenon. Partly because it was unclear at Fatima whether there were any people who didn’t see it (the two negative testimonies were such a small number compared to the many positive ones that it was tempting to dismiss them as lying, or confused, or looking the wrong direction) - but at several of the other miracles it’s much clearer that large fractions, sometimes a majority, saw nothing. Partly because in some cases (Benin City, Lagos) a stadium full of people saw it, but people in the same city, just outside the stadium, reported nothing unusual. And partly because the miracle can’t be caught on video (the one video that I thought was okay, the Filipino one, got picked apart in the comments). It being a subjective phenomenon doesn’t prove it’s not a miracle (it could be a sort of prophetic vision), but it at least opens the door to that possibility. And second, although I don’t claim to be able to know for certain what God will or won’t do, I think at least the Necedah event meets any bar a reasonable person might set for “too dumb and heretical to be a real apparition”. If overly enthusiastic worshippers at a fake apparition can report sun miracles, that implies that the human capacity for hallucination is strong enough / specific enough to potentially produce spectacular sun miracles in some situations. But once we admit that, it’s only a trivial extension to say that this same human capacity to hallucinate sun miracles could have been responsible for the original sun miracle, which was more impressive than Necedah in degree but not in kind. Together, I think these are a significant negative update from where we would be if we only had the original miracle, where we might have assumed (like Dalleur) that it was an objective phenomenon that everyone could see, and that there was no way anyone could be “enthusiastic” enough to hallucinate something so striking. Valerio writes: I am Italian from the south of Italy. I was talking to my mom about your analysis of the Fatima mystery (which is very famous here). My mom told me she had exactly the same experience when she was doing a “religious trekking” trip in a small city called Gallinaro (Frosinone). She was around 18 at the time (she is 70 now). She saw a pulsating sun, like it would get closer and closer and then the go back again. This effect repeated several times (3/4) and she got really scared. Importantly, at the time she didn’t know about this effect of the pulsating sun (she learnt about it later). Also importantly she claimed they were not staring particularly at the sun nor they were expecting any miracle. They were actually sitting down on a bench nearby a cliff eating a sandwich. She doesn’t remember whether if was cloudy or not but she says she was able to stare in the sun, so maybe it was. As she was coming down the trip, her group met a local lady that confirmed those types of visions would occur there. This place is famous cause a young little girl and her grandma had a vision in a cave ( little Jesus, no more details provided) few years back. When my mom visited the little girl was still alive, not sure about now. As I am writing this , she just told me the story so didn’t have the time to research it independently . Victoria F writes: I think you put too much stock in the Catholic Church excommunicating someone and how much that reduces the odds that Mary was involved or not. Pope St. Leo I and St. Joan of Arc have also been excommunicated. Many seers are given difficult treatment by the Catholic Church at first. Lot of people here say this is the the “best” miracle. I think the many spontaneous healings at Lourdes are perhaps better: https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/A_Protestant_Looks_at_Lourdes.pdf though I’m not sure how to get the medical records myself https://www.lourdes-france.com/en/the-medical-bureau-of-the-sanctuary/ Our Lady of Zeitoun is also perhaps a better apparition. At least it has some cool photos. I admit excommunication of the seers/believers is not proof that some of the other miracles were fake, but the Necedah one, where Mary gave warnings about the Rothschilds, and the “seer” also talked to the ghosts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, seems pretty bad. An acquaintance claims to have done their own analysis of Lourdes and found that the impressiveness of the healings predictably decreased over time as record-keeping and medical verifiability got better, but I haven’t seen his work. There’s an interesting Substack post by a Zeitoun skeptic here. Marcel writes: Speculative hypothesis that might be worth exploring: could the perceptual mechanisms involved in the Fatima Sun Miracle be related to those underlying Tögal visions in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism? In Tögal (an advanced, traditionally esoteric practice), meditators report experiences of multicolored, moving light displays in response to sky or light gazing. The parallels with the Fátima reports are striking: light as a trigger, dancing colors, and evolving visionary forms. If so, Tögal might provide a reproducible framework for studying how visual and neurological processes, shaped by expectation and attention, can generate experiences of radiance that are interpreted as miraculous or sacred. Another Buddhist explanation! I can’t find a Tögal source anywhere near as clear as Daniel Ingram’s work on fire kasina, but for what it’s worth, the symbol of Dzogchen Buddhism, the thigle, looks like this: …with some representations being even more suggestive: Nikita Sokolsky (blog) writes: » Our best source for witness testimonies is the Documentacao Critica de Fatima [...] The rest is available only as physical books, $15 + shipping each. Somebody should buy the books, scan them, machine translate the testimonies, and put the translations online. The most important is Volume III I’ve ordered Volume III - though shipping anywhere outside Portugal cost $48 (not surprising for a 639 page book, I guess). They promise delivery by Oct 12th. » There are a few articles about solar retinopathy in the context of Marian shrines that I couldn’t access, including at least Nix and Apple (1987) and Campo et al (1988) Emailed you both. Thank you, Nikita! I’ve uploaded Campo here, and Nix & Apple here. Campo is only a few paragraphs, and contains little of interest if you’ve read the original post. Nix & Apple profiles several cases in New Orleans, including a pilgrim who saw the miracle in Medjugorje and then went home and saw it again in New Orleans, and a second person who skipped Medjugorje and saw it in New Orleans with no previous exposure. There was also an interesting case of someone who stared at the sun for 15 minutes with no injury, then tried again for 15 seconds and did get an injury that time. My days of not understanding the function mapping sungazing length to injury probability are definitely coming to a middle. The eye doctors who wrote the article only say that “Evidence suggests a great individual variation in the susceptibility for developing solar retinopathy, as the cause of the lesion is felt to be a photochemical injury rather than a thermal injury of the retina and retinal pigment epithelium.” The Ghiaie translations are in a form that makes them harder to upload, but there are about a dozen which contain descriptions of a sun miracle, all of which match the Fatima testimonies closely. The one I found most interesting was a monk nearby, who originally doubted the apparitions; he was in his monastery doing normal work when he saw the sun miracle, which included a beautiful white cross appearing in the sky. Other monks saw it too. The next day, he says that a secular newspaper claimed local astronomers had found some kind of ice crystal phenomenon responsible for the event, but he didn’t believe it. He didn’t clarify exactly where this happened (though his address was Castelnuovo Don Bosco, about 80 miles from Ghiaie) or when (though the testimonial implies it was at the same time as the Ghiaie miracle). Main Conclusions And Updates I’m impressed by the fire kasina correspondence, but the difficulty in explaining how everyone immediately became an expert fire kasina meditator is almost as tough as explaining the original miracle.

Inline links: writes, on YouTube, Wikipedia, match a Russian rocket, blog, writes, blog, writes, Video 1 here, Video 2 here, Video 3 here, writes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_statues, writes, writes, https://www.basicincome.com/bp/files/A_Protestant_Looks_at_Lourdes.pdf, https://www.lourdes-france.com/en/the-medical-bureau-of-the-sanctuary/, some cool photos, here, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tnHP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcaa90086-ed0b-4620-b0e5-502d1d34419d_800x800.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EVex!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2c466a55-ea5c-4698-a27c-4947720edcfa_736x368.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vVge!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3052f661-b774-4dcb-9734-7c2e297c082a_225x225.jpeg, blog, Campo here, Nix & Apple here

TIT-FOR-TAT2 mentions across 2 issues

TIT-FOR-TAT is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 14, 2024 and November 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the winner was a super-simple strategy called TIT-FOR-TAT"; "human playing against TIT-FOR-TAT would soon learn not to mess with it"; "COOPERATE-BOT beat TIT-FOR-TAT in the particular environment". It most often appears alongside 1 Corinthians 6, America, Astralcodexten Com.

Article page: TIT-FOR-TAT
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: November 14, 2024
Last seen: November 18, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Early Christian Strategy November 14, 2024
Open Thread 356 November 18, 2024

1 Corinthians 6 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Axelrod 1 shared issues
Backscratcher Clubs 1 shared issues

Source context

The Early Christian Strategy

November 14, 2024 · Original source

To everyone’s surprise, the winner was a super-simple strategy called TIT-FOR-TAT:

Then do whatever your opponent did last round. This was so boring that Axelrod sponsored a second tournament specifically for strategies that could displace TIT-FOR-TAT. When the dust cleared, TIT-FOR-TAT still won - although some strategies could beat it in head-to-head matches, they did worst against each other, and when all the points were added up TIT-FOR-TAT remained on top. In certain situations, this strategy is dominated by a slight variant, TIT-FOR-TAT-WITH-FORGIVENESS. That is, in situations where a bot can “make mistakes” (eg “my finger slipped”), two copies of TIT-FOR-TAT can get stuck in an eternal DEFECT-DEFECT equilibrium against each other; the forgiveness-enabled version will try cooperating again after a while to see if its opponent follows. Otherwise, it’s still state-of-the-art. The tournament became famous because - well, you can see how you can sort of round it off to morality. In a wide world of people trying every sort of con, the winning strategy is to be nice to people who help you out and punish people who hurt you. But in some situations, it’s also worth forgiving someone who harmed you once to see if they’ve become a better person. I find the occasional claims to have successfully grounded morality in self-interest to be facile, but you can at least see where they’re coming from here. And pragmatically, this is good, common-sense advice. For example, compare it to one of the losers in Axelrod’s tournament. COOPERATE-BOT always cooperates. A world full of COOPERATE-BOTS would be near-utopian. But add a single instance of its evil twin, DEFECT-BOT, and it folds immediately. A smart human player, too, will easily defeat COOPERATE-BOT: the human will start by testing its boundaries, find that it has none, and play DEFECT thereafter (whereas a human playing against TIT-FOR-TAT would soon learn not to mess with it). Again, all of this seems natural and common-sensical. Infinitely-trusting people, who will always be nice to everyone no matter what, are easily exploited by the first sociopath to come around. You don’t want to be a sociopath yourself, but prudence dictates being less-than-infinitely nice, and reserving your good nature for people who deserve it. Reality is more complicated than a game theory tournament. In Iterated Prisoners’ Dilemma, everyone can either benefit you or harm you an equal amount. In the real world, we have edge cases like poor people, who haven’t done anything evil but may not be able to reciprocate your generosity. Does TIT-FOR-TAT help the poor? Stand up for the downtrodden? Care for the sick? Domain error; the question never comes up. Still, even if you can’t solve every moral problem, it’s at least suggestive that, in those domains where the question comes up, you should be TIT-FOR-TAT and not COOPERATE-BOT. This is why I’m so fascinated by the early Christians. They played the doomed COOPERATE-BOT strategy and took over the world. II. Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Talk is cheap, but The Rise Of Christianity suggests the early Christians pulled it off. For example, even though pagan institutions would not help indigent Christians, Christians tried to give charity to Christian and pagan alike, even going so far as to help nurse pagans during the plague (when nursing a victim conferred a high risk of contagion and death). Even Emperor Julian, an enemy of Christianity, admitted it lived up to its own standards: When the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the priests, the impious Galileans observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence . . . [they] support not only their poor, but ours as well, [when] everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.” In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is asked whether it is acceptable for one Christian to pursue a lawsuit against another Christian in a pagan court. He answers: The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? We get a similar picture from the stories of the martyrs. Many of them prayed for the Romans while the Romans were in the process of torturing and killing them; Polycarp even cooked them a meal. If the Christians had merely been TIT-FOR-TAT, it would be easy to tell a story of their victory. The Roman Empire was corrupt and decadent to the core. People were looking for a community they could trust. Christianity offered access to a better class of friends who wouldn’t immediately rob or betray you when your guard was down. By providing a superior alternative to the low-trust pagan world, it was irresistible on a purely rational economic basis. But this story sounds more worthy of the mystery cults. Mystery cults are a great structure for mutual aid; we see this today in groups like the Freemasons (cf. Backscratcher Clubs). Everybody knows who’s on the inside (and needs to be mutually aided) and who’s on the outside (and can be ignored). The initiatory structure holds off freeloaders and makes sure the people on the inside are of approximately equal rank (so that you get as many benefits as you give) and can be held accountable if they don’t contribute. Since Christianity did better than the mystery cults, there must have been some reason that COOPERATE-BOT beat TIT-FOR-TAT in the particular environment of Roman religion, defying all normal game theoretic logic. III. Is this a consistent feature of COOPERATE-BOT strategies, or was it just luck? This is hard to say, because in all normal cases it’s impossible to follow a COOPERATE-BOT strategy at scale and for any period of time. Consider the Quakers, who gave it a better try than most. They were persecuted by the British and fled to America (is this kosher? it sort of seems like resisting evil). There they founded the colony of Pennsylvania, intended to be a utopia of pacifism and benevolence. They were very serious about this; history records many Quakers who were arrested or even killed rather than compromise their principles, and the British Crown seized Pennsylvania from the Quakers a few times because they wouldn’t make extremely cheap gestures like pay taxes or swear oaths. But in the end, the Crown frog-boiled the Quakers into compliance. They promised to return self-government if the Quakers would budge an inch - in one compromise, if they agreed to pay taxes that could go to non-combat functions of the military. The Quakers eventually agreed, and the British ratcheted up their demands the next time. Finally, in 1755, some Indians launched a major assault on Pennsylvania, and all the Quakers voluntarily resigned from government to let the non-Quaker Pennsylvanians (who by this time outnumbered them) conduct the war without restraint. The Quakers performed better than most COOPERATE-BOTs. They stuck to their principles most of the time, and in the end their religion survived. But look deeper, and you see a gradual process of surrender to reality. First was the flight to America, an implicit admission that living was better than being martyred for the faith. Then came the various compromises; an implicit admission that getting to keep self-government while being 99% pure was better than being subjects while 100% pure. Finally, they gave up Pennsylvania itself rather than be wiped out, again choosing the practical option over martyrdom. My point isn’t to knock the Quakers, who may come in a close 2nd in “historical groups that stuck to their cooperative principles despite all odds” and were certainly more ethical than I am. My point is that even very committed groups of religious fanatics fail the non-violent COOPERATE-BOT strategy eventually. Or maybe the ones who didn’t fail were wiped out? I hear good things about the Cathars, but we can’t know for sure because they were very thoroughly killed off - unrepentant to the last. Are there any other groups who deserve mention in this section besides early Christians, Quakers, and Cathars? I think some German and Russian sects have tried similar strategies, though they mostly failed and I don’t know much about them. Not exactly the same, but maybe rhyming: what about modern liberalism? To the monarchs and dictators of the past, free speech might seem kind of like COOPERATE-BOT in a limited domain: the idea that elites shouldn’t make any forceful/legal effort to protect their ideological and spiritual position must sound almost as crazy as them not making any forceful/legal effort to protect themselves if attacked, or to prevent themselves from getting cheated. It is, in some sense, a unilateral surrender in the war of ideas; fascists and communists will do their best to crush liberalism, but liberals cannot ban discussion of fascism or communism. The fact that this, too, has worked, makes me think early Christianity wasn’t just a one-off, but suggests some larger point. IV. Still, I don’t really know what it is. Here are some weak theories: Advertisement: Being kind to outsiders is good PR and encourages those outsiders to join you. This effect is stronger than the corresponding disincentive (that they won’t get much better treatment than they’re getting already, and they will have to be nice to other outsiders in their turn).

Inline links: The Rise Of Christianity, cf. Backscratcher Clubs, eventually agreed

Open Thread 356

November 18, 2024 · Original source

2: I started my discussion of the Early Christian strategy with the story of the TIT-FOR-TAT bot. But G2F4E6E7E8 on the subreddit says that the science of game theory has moved on; TIT-FOR-TAT was defeated in certain evolution-like noisy prisoner dilemmas by a strategy called WIN-STAY LOSE-SHIFT:

Inline links: the Early Christian strategy, the science of game theory has moved on

Why does Win-Stay, Lose-Shift win? In the simulations, it seems that at first, Tit-for-Tat establishes dominance just as the old story would lead you to expect. However, in a Tit-for-Tat world, generous Tit-for-Tat does better and eventually outcompetes. The agents slowly become more and more generous until a threshold is reached where defecting strategies outcompete them. Cooperation collapses and the cycle repeats over and over. It's eerily similar to the good times, weak men meme.

Title IX2 mentions across 2 issues

Title IX is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 01, 2024 and May 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The book covers a fourth, Title IX (mostly focusing on women’s sports in college)"; "high schools, not bound by Title IX, don’t have women’s football teams". It most often appears alongside Black Lives Matter, Hanania, Mad Men.

Article page: Title IX
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: May 01, 2024
Last seen: May 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The Origins Of Woke May 01, 2024
Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke" May 07, 2024

Black Lives Matter 2 shared issues
Hanania 2 shared issues
Mad Men 2 shared issues
Richard Hanania 2 shared issues
The Origins Of Woke 2 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The Origins Of Woke

May 01, 2024 · Original source

I’ve included three of Hanania’s four civil rights law subtopics. The book covers a fourth, Title IX (mostly focusing on women’s sports in college). Although the book provides lots of examples about how the laws here are unfair and outrageous, I can’t bring myself to care about college sports enough to give it the same subtopic status, as, say, the hiring process for all the corporations in America.

Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

May 07, 2024 · Original source

The thing about Title IX in sports is that the basic problem is football.

The general requirement of Title IX is that sports should be separate but equal (obviously, I'm quoting Plessy v Ferguson maliciously here). That generally means that the number of scholarships given to male student-athletes and the number given to female student-athletes should be the same.

If it weren't for football, this would be easy - for instance, each (top-level) college can have 13 basketball scholarships per team, so that's 13 men and 13 women. Compliance with Title IX is absolutely trivial. Even with baseball, they just have 12 men playing baseball and 12 women playing softball.

TMS2 mentions across 2 issues

TMS is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 16, 2021 and May 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "How does this relate to TMS? Trans-cranial magnetic stimulation is a new-ish and exciting treatment for depression"; "Meta-analyses suggest TMS is effective"; "weak magnetic stimulation of TMS". It most often appears alongside 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration, 5-HTP, 5-HTP.

Article page: TMS
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 16, 2021
Last seen: May 25, 2021

Issue trail

Sleep Is The Mate Of Death March 16, 2021
Peer Review Request: Depression May 25, 2021

2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration 1 shared issues
5-HTP 1 shared issues
5-HTP 1 shared issues
Alaska 1 shared issues
amitriptyline 1 shared issues

Source context

Sleep Is The Mate Of Death

March 16, 2021 · Original source

How does this relate to TMS? Trans-cranial magnetic stimulation is a new-ish and exciting treatment for depression. You fire powerful magnets at the brain, which provokes neurons into firing. There's some good evidence that this raises overall potentiation level, which I think is the same thing as synapse strength - and that it increases amount of sleep the next night, presumably to counterbalance this. But then how come, after being counterbalanced by sleep, it still has an effect?

Inline links: raises overall potentiation level

Peer Review Request: Depression

May 25, 2021 · Original source

There are two powerful depression therapies that are more physics than chemistry: trans-cranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

The short version: Depression has a combination of biological, psychological, and social causes. You can address the social causes by changing your life circumstances (and research suggests people underestimate the potential benefits of making major life changes). You can address the psychological causes with therapy; possible therapies are diverse and complicated but I especially recommend “behavioral activation” therapy (where you try to keep a schedule and also do new, interesting things) and David Burns’ book Feeling Good. You can address the biological causes with a combination of lifestyle changes, medications, and supplements. Consider exercising more and adapting a modified Mediterranean diet. Consider taking antidepressants like escitalopram and bupropion, and supplements like l-methylfolate. Other non-chemical biological options include light therapy (safe and easy), transcranial magnetic stimulation (more complicated), and electroconvulsive therapy (difficult but extremely effective last-ditch solution). If something treats your depression, continue it for some length of time depending on the type of intervention, then consider withdrawing it to see if you can maintain your mood without it.

If lifestyle changes, medication, and psychotherapy don’t work, there are some more-involved but very powerful strategies for dealing with treatment-resistant depression, including wake therapy, ketamine, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and electroconvulsive therapy.

Tower of Babel2 mentions across 2 issues

Tower of Babel is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 17, 2023 and April 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The same with most Bible stories (the Tower of Babel"; "replica of the Tower of Babel". It most often appears alongside Peter Singer, Aaron Peskin, Abel.

Article page: Tower of Babel
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: November 17, 2023
Last seen: April 04, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023
Links For April 2024 April 04, 2024

Peter Singer 2 shared issues
Aaron Peskin 1 shared issues
Abel 1 shared issues
ACLU 1 shared issues
Adam and Eve 1 shared issues

Source context

November 17, 2023 · Original source

But Girard lost me with the part about the myths. Most pagan myths have nothing to do with the single-victim process (eg labors of Hercules, Jason and the Golden Fleece, rape of Persephone, the Iliad, the Trojan Horse, the Odyssey, etc, etc, etc). The same with most Bible stories (Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments, etc). It kind of seems like the sort of thing where Freud can claim all myths are about castration. There are lots of myths, and they’re about lots of things. “Person does bad thing, the gods collectively punish humanity, then once we get rid of him the collective punishment stops” is certainly one trope. But it’s not hard to fathom why a primitive community stricken by a plague might think God was punishing them for some iniquity. And if I haven’t committed iniquity lately, and you haven’t committed iniquity lately, it must be some particular bad guy who needs to be stopped.

Links For April 2024

April 04, 2024 · Original source

3: A fundamentalist Christian theme park in Kentucky plans to build a full-scale replica of the Tower of Babel. You might think “wait, this is the opposite of what the Bible wants you to do”, but they have a blog post explaining why they disagree:

Inline links: build a full-scale replica of the Tower of Babel, a blog post explaining why they disagree

transhumanism2 mentions across 2 issues

transhumanism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 22, 2022 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism?"; "disproves transhumanism and the singularity". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, 2020 election, 2022 book review contest.

Article page: transhumanism
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: September 10, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022
Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

10,000 AD 1 shared issues
2020 election 1 shared issues
2022 book review contest 1 shared issues
2122 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues

Source context

July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places

September 10, 2024 · Original source

…Freddie is re-inventing anthropic reasoning, a well-known philosophical concept. The reason why the hundreds of academics who have written books and papers about anthropics have never noticed that it disproves transhumanism and the singularity is because Freddie’s version has obvious mistakes that a sophomore philosophy student would know better than to make.

Inline links: anthropic reasoning

Truth Sculpture2 mentions across 2 issues

Truth Sculpture is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 25, 2025 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "circular path surrounding the Truth Sculpture"; "circular path surrounding the Truth Sculpture at the southern end of the park". It most often appears alongside 131 Colonie Center, 200 Degrees, 2740 Telegraph Ave.

Article page: Truth Sculpture
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 25, 2025
Last seen: April 01, 2026

Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places March 25, 2025
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places April 01, 2026

131 Colonie Center 2 shared issues
200 Degrees 2 shared issues
2740 Telegraph Ave 2 shared issues
Aaron Kaufman 2 shared issues
ACX 2 shared issues

Source context

March 25, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Nathaniel B. Contact Info: nathanieltb2[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 19th, 1:00 PM Location: We'll meet at Vinoy Park, at or near the circular path surrounding the Truth Sculpture at the southern end of the park. I'll have a sign that says "ACX." Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+V89 Notes: Please feel free to attend even if you're anxious, and regardless of how often you read the blog. Folks from Tampa and surrounding cities are also welcome to attend!

Inline links: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+V89

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places

April 01, 2026 · Original source

Contact: Nathaniel B. Contact Info: nathanieltb2[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 25th, 3:00 PM Location: We’ll meet at Vinoy Park, at or near the circular path surrounding the Truth Sculpture at the southern end of the park. I’ll have a sign that says “ACX.” Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+X78 Notes: Please feel free to attend regardless of how often you read the blog. Folks from Tampa and surrounding cities are also welcome to join!

Inline links: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+X78

Tsinghua Gang2 mentions across 2 issues

Tsinghua Gang is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 06, 2022 and April 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "sometimes called ... the Tsinghua Gang"; "the Shanghai Gang didn't oppose the Tsinghua Gang". It most often appears alongside Bo Xilai, CCP, Central Military Commission.

Article page: Tsinghua Gang
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: April 06, 2022
Last seen: April 28, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping April 06, 2022
Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping April 28, 2022

Bo Xilai 2 shared issues
CCP 2 shared issues
Central Military Commission 2 shared issues
China 2 shared issues
CYL 2 shared issues

Source context

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping

April 06, 2022 · Original source

One thing that confuses me about this explanation is that Xi quickly pivoted from the champion of the Shanghai Gang to having his own faction, sometimes called the Xi Gang or the Tsinghua Gang.

Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping

April 28, 2022 · Original source

I think "admiration of Dengism" and "shadowy network" kind of understates the main force holding Jiang back which is that Deng himself was still alive for a good portion of his rule. Had Jiang tried to seize power, Deng could simply have swept back in. Jiang likely had the same influence on Hu, and indeed reports often pin Jiang as the main opposition to Xi - Scott asked why the Shanghai Gang didn't oppose the Tsinghua Gang, but the answer is that they did, but chances are Jiang's power had just waned sufficiently by then that he couldn't do much. And though he is still alive, Jiang certainly couldn't just march back into power the way Deng could have.

turkesterone2 mentions across 2 issues

turkesterone is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 01, 2022 and October 05, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Here’s what happened with turkesterone"; "fascinating comment about turkesterone which this margin is unfortunately too small to contain". It most often appears alongside Nootropics Depot, Reddit, Wikipedia.

Article page: turkesterone
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: July 01, 2022
Last seen: October 05, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For June July 01, 2022
How Trustworthy Are Supplements? October 05, 2022

Nootropics Depot 2 shared issues
Reddit 2 shared issues
Wikipedia 2 shared issues
@a_centrism 1 shared issues
@amplituhedron 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For June

July 01, 2022 · Original source

46: Nootropics Depot is on a crusade to test whether other supplements are correctly labeled. Here’s what happened with turkesterone.

Inline links: Here’s what happened with turkesterone

How Trustworthy Are Supplements?

October 05, 2022 · Original source

On which competitors he respects:

Inline links: which competitors he respects

NOW has their own in-house lab, and they have been trying to clean up the standards of the industry for a while. We have had a couple things of theirs fail, but only for content lower than label claim, not fake or impure or anything like that. So while I wouldn't say trust everything from them 100%, NOW is one of the better ones in this industry seemingly trying to make things better. I also have more trust for Thorne than most […] every single brand we have tested so far has had at least one thing fail, save for Thorne. Some of the brands have almost everything fail. Others like Life Extension, Jarrow, and NOW have most things pass with only some failing. It's a crap shoot.

Inline links: …

He also has a very long and fascinating comment about turkesterone which this margin is unfortunately too small to contain.

Inline links: about turkesterone

TypeScript2 mentions across 2 issues

TypeScript is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 24, 2022 and April 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "They are looking for developers that have experience with TypeScript"; "Strong TypeScript/Next.js/Supabase skills". It most often appears alongside Next.js, ACX, Anthropic.

Article page: TypeScript
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: October 24, 2022
Last seen: April 06, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 247 October 24, 2022
Open Thread 428 April 06, 2026

Next.js 2 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Belo Horizonte 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 247

October 24, 2022 · Original source

The impactmarkets.io team is developing version 2.0 of their platform. They are funded by the FTX Future Fund Regranting program, and have a limited budget to pay contractors. They are looking for developers that have experience with TypeScript and React (and ideally Next.js, Prisma, or tRPC) to contribute. It would be well-suited for devs that want to have a large EA-aligned impact in their free time. Pay is $0-50/hour, based on skill and volunteer interest. Book a call with them or join their Discord to learn more or apply.

Inline links: impactmarkets.io, Book a call, Discord

Open Thread 428

April 06, 2026 · Original source

Spartacus.app is urgently seeking a freelance TypeScript/Next.js/Supabase developer. Spartacus is a live platform for conditional-commitment collective action, with successful pilots involving unions and AI safety organizations. Our primary developer departed unexpectedly, and we need someone to pick up active development immediately. This is a remote, project-based contract with negotiable compensation plus possible revenue sharing (tools reimbursed). Strong TypeScript/Next.js/Supabase skills, along with fluency in AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor), are required. Detailed role requirements here. Reach out to jordan@spartacus.app

Inline links: here, jordan@spartacus.app

T-34 tanks1 mentions across 1 issues

T-34 tanks is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 09, 2024 and August 09, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "produced a vast tide of T-34 tanks that overpowered the Germans". It most often appears alongside 101st Airborne, Admiral Ernest King, Albert Speer.

Reference entry: T-34 tanks
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 09, 2024
Last seen: August 09, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: How the War Was Won August 09, 2024

101st Airborne 1 shared issues
Admiral Ernest King 1 shared issues
Albert Speer 1 shared issues
Allied 1 shared issues
Allied bombing 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: How the War Was Won

August 09, 2024 · Original source

Stymied in the West, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, won a bunch of crushing victories, but then got turned back at the gates of Moscow. The Soviets moved all of their factories east of the Ural Mountains and produced a vast tide of T-34 tanks that overpowered the Germans.

T.A.C.O.1 mentions across 1 issues

T.A.C.O. is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2026 and March 18, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "famous acronym proposing that it “always” happens: T.A.C.O". It most often appears alongside #Resistance, Congress, Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.

Reference entry: T.A.C.O.
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2026
Last seen: March 18, 2026

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Support Your Local Collaborator March 18, 2026

#Resistance 1 shared issues
Congress 1 shared issues
Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation 1 shared issues
Democratic member of Congress 1 shared issues
FDA 1 shared issues

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Support Your Local Collaborator

March 18, 2026 · Original source

Yes, the Trump administration has been horrible. But these people have prevented it from being, well, slightly worse. You can see this most clearly in the difference between Trump I and Trump II. In Trump I, there were far more of these people, and they could do a better job keeping Trump’s worst impulses in check. But even in Trump II, people have talked Trump out of crazy ideas so often that there’s a famous acronym proposing that it “always” happens: T.A.C.O. Just last month, RFK Jr’s FDA made an unprecedented attempt to cancel its review of a potentially revolutionary flu vaccine. After what I assume was a concerted campaign, they chickened out and reversed course, and we’ll probably all be slightly healthier.

Inline links: T.A.C.O., a potentially revolutionary flu vaccine

T2D1 mentions across 1 issues

T2D is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 30, 2022 and November 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "demand for both off-label weight loss use and for the approved T2D use". It most often appears alongside Adam, AMG-133, amoxicillin suspension.

Reference entry: T2D
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 30, 2022
Last seen: November 30, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Semaglutide November 30, 2022

Adam 1 shared issues
AMG-133 1 shared issues
amoxicillin suspension 1 shared issues
amylin analogue cagrilintide 1 shared issues
anorexia 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Semaglutide

November 30, 2022 · Original source

I think those numbers might be "over one year", and they could stay on it longer than a year. I was kind of lazy just asserting “drugs might get better”, but I think the upcoming CagriSema combination and AMG-133 are good examples of how this might play out. Max Görlitz has done the proper thing and made Manifold markets for each of my predictions - see here, here, here, here, and here. Despite the problems with prediction markets for decades in the future, the “will obesity be cut in half by 2050” one seems popular: 5. Do You Have To Stay On Semaglutide Forever Or Else Gain The Weight Back? Biff_Ditt writes: I saw on the 1 year follow-up to the STEP-1 trial that most of the participants gained all of their lost weight back. Biff is probably thinking of Weight Regain And Cardiometabolic Effects After Withdrawal Of Semaglutide, which finds people gained back 2/3 of the lost weight after a year. The graph looks like it’s in the process of plateauing but not quite there, so I don’t know if we should expect them to regain the other third later. This matches what I would expect from my understanding of other diets and weight loss drugs. Still, some people disagree. Maximum Liberty writes: Anecdote is not the singular of data, but my better half lost 25 pounds on it, then had to get off it for reasons unrelated to the drug. She has not regained the weight yet -- and consistently eats less now that she had for years. So in at least one case, the drug helped with a successful change in eating habits. Lauren Thomas writes: So there's been a lot of research on dieting and losing weight, etc., and one of the things that has been found is that your body has a "set" point weight wise that it will try REALLY hard to return you to. If you lose weight, your body will slow its metabolism until you return to that weight. If you gain weight, your body will rev up metabolism. That's why you might gain 10 lbs over Christmas and then lose it in January without purposefully trying to lose weight. (this is all in the short term, ofc, as people do tend to naturally gain weight as they age). This seems to imply that semaglutide would need to be taken forever. However, there seems to be an important caveat: you *can* reset your set point, it just takes a long time at the new weight. When most people go on diets and lose weight, they end up regaining the new weight quite quickly after they "end" their diet, so they don't have a chance to reset their set point. Speaking from personal experience, I had kind of an accidental natural experiment with this: I once lost 40 lbs over the course of a year and a half, where I began with a very strict low carb diet that very very slowly trailed off to a normal diet, mostly because I got progressively more tired of being on the low carb diet. So by the time I had gotten back to my normal diet, I had been losing weight for a long time. I ended up regaining 10 lbs of the weight, but no more, and am still ~30 lbs below my peak even today (5 years later). Something like this has been my experience with dieting too so far. And something like set point reset has to exist in order to explain things like why so many obese people fail to lose weight after they start eating healthy, and maybe other things like anorexia. And maybe it works for some people. Still, the evidence suggests that most people who stop semaglutide will regain the weight, at least for the protocol used in the study. Maybe some other protocol that had them on it for more than a year would have done better? 6. Personal Anecdotes Edgehopper writes: I couldn’t get Wegovy at a reasonable price when it was approved, and then Novo Nordisk started having huge supply chain problems with their injectors. Fortunately, Eli Lilly’s coupon for Mounjaro was less restrictive at first, though they’ve had to crack down as they have trouble meeting demand for both off-label weight loss use and for the approved T2D use. I am what the doctors call “morbidly obese,” and it’s been more effective than anything else I’ve ever tried. Down about 35 lbs in the first three months, and unlike with other diets I’ve tried, I’m not feeling miserable or hungry all the time. Assuming there aren’t scary side-effects in the future, these really are miracle drugs. I do expect the price to come down relatively quickly due to competition, which is a good thing. Education Realist (blog) writes: I am on Mounjaro, and have been for four months. Lost 20 pounds so far, and I'm not yet on full dosage. Occasional mild nausea but real issue for me is....tiredness. Not fatigue or exhaustion. I'm a former insomniac who can now hit the sack at 9:00 and sleep happily to 6 am, which is insanely weird. I have been trying to lose weight for 6 years, and for most of that time been in a 20 pound range that is 100 pounds over what someone of my height should weigh. I've eaten 1500 calories a day and not lost a pound, have to drop to 1100 to lose weight verrry slowly (that's with intermittent fasting and low carbs, around 50 grams). Last year before Mounjaro I started intermittent fasting and lost 20 pounds very quickly and then stopped cold. I do not have eating issues. I don't binge. I cut out the "four white foods" six years ago because I learned that I do better on meat and cheese and vegetables than I do on pasta or bread or potatoes and vegetables. I put on weight despite walking two and in some cases four miles a day, which I can do easily. I am ridiculously healthy and do not have an obesity diagnosis. Stone cold normal readings in A1c, glucose, cholestrol. My doctor sent me to an endocrinologist after I lost 20 pounds and then stopped cold despite the same behavior (which I still do today) because she agreed I might be insulin resistant. Endocrinologist shrugged, said it's multifactorial, but agreed that anyone with my numbers, appearance, and obvious good health was clearly doing everything right and put me on Mounjaro with no further questions. Diagnosis: insulin resistance. My insurance pays around $500 but I'm on the $25 coupon. I didn't change a single thing about my eating habits and lost ten pounds in 2 months on the low dosage. Higher dosages have finally reduced my appetite somewhat, but my endocrinologist and I have decided to stop the increases at 12.5 (15 is the top) and then maybe even reduce, since my appetite is decreasing but the weight loss rate is constant. Because I lost weight doing the same behavior and no drop, I'm quite convinced that something far different than appetite suppressing is also going on (fwiw, I was on phentarmine back in the day and liked it fine). Mounjaro is supposed to increase insulin production and reduce the liver's sugar production, although what that means I dunno. I have no idea what's up with obesity but the idea that it's all about cutting intake and exercise is just stupid. I should have been losing weight for all of the past six years and haven't. Plenty of people eat healthily and are still obese. We're probably the descendants of famine survivors. Anyway, I wrote about it here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2022/10/09/weight-loss-and-mounjaro Eliezer Yudkowsky writes: I tried semaglutide and it did nothing to slow rate of weight gain, just produced stomach upset, going up to 2.4mg injectable. I know one other person trying semaglutide and they reported something similar. I wonder if they played some clever games with their choice of patients. My expectation of how the news goes here is a whole lot of people who try semaglutide, maybe after fighting really hard to get on it, and find that it does nothing. That said, I know at least one friend of a friend, if not a friend per se, who claims that semaglutide was their miracle drug. So maybe still worth that hard fight, even if I'm guessing that the real proportion who get nothing out of it will prove to be over 50% in real populations. Further fun fact: Semaglutide comes heavily recommended with diet and exercise and many stern injunctions about that! The actual insert sheet includes a graph for how much weight people lose with and without "lifestyle interventions" added. The two graphs are roughly the same. Lan writes: I wonder about the adoption of the medication, though. I took victoza (=saxenda, but approved for diabetes) and the absence of the desire to eat lead to some unforeseen lifestyle side effects. Given that 5 almonds made me full for the day, I was not interested in having dinner with the family or going out with friends. There is the reality that some restaurants would probably not be happy if you only ordered the smallest appetizer. In addition, alcohol was also very difficult, because the drug slows down gastric emptying and your stomach ends up absorbing alcohol for hours. I got really, really drunk for an entire night from a single glass of wine once. Before taking this drug I had not fully appreciated how much of one's (social) life revolves around food; lunch break with colleagues, dinner with family or friends, drinks on the weekend, a sweet treat, snacks and a movie etc. But once I was not interested in food anymore, combined with the tiredness that comes with eating little, a lot of those activities also lost their appeal. (On the upside, I slept like a log.) Walter Sobchak, Esq writes: I have been taking Wegovy for 14 months. When I began I weighed 275 lbs and my BMI was 39.9. I have hypertension, albeit well controlled by medicines. Diet and exercise phaaahhh. I could eat faster than I could exercise. And no, I eat very little fast food and little candy and soda. I worked with my doctor to be prescribed Wegovy. It was only approved by the FDA in June 2021. My doctor was reluctant because he was unfamiliar with the class of compounds. He does not like to prescribe off label so he was not willing to to start me on Ozempic. But, the FDA solved that problem. I knew to ask for the drug because my daughter was pre-diabetic and had been put on Metformin and Ozempic. She lost 100 lbs. in 2019 and 2020. I started on Wegovy in September 2021. I now weigh 220 and my BMI is 31.5. That represents a 20% reduction in my original weight. 220 was my original goal. To get a BMI under 30 I would have to be under 209. I doubt that I will get there. I am back in 40 in. trousers which I had not been able to wear in 30 years. 220 was my original goal. I have had no major side effects other than constipation. Even that is a little hard to tease out. I am on 7 Rx drugs and at least 5 of them are constipating. I have been pounding Metamucil and Colace for years. I have been able to fill my prescriptions using a GoodRx coupon at $1328 for a box with 4 injectors. A year requires 13 boxes. The total cost for 15 boxes has been about $20,000. I can afford it and it has been worth while. I call it a bargain, the best I've ever had. I understand that it still way too expensive for the American health care system to afford. But given the bonanza size of the market. There will be lots of competition starting with the Lilly's tirzepatide. There are several other pharma's with GLP-1 agonists in development. I am sure that the cost will come down. My doctor tells me that I can expect to stay on semaglutide for the long term. He is proposing that I switch to Ozempic 2 mg for maintenance as I can buy that for less than $1,000 for a four dose pen. My only sadness is that semaglutide wasn't invented 40 years ago when i would have saved me from a lot of damage. But, I am grateful that it exists now and that it has helped my daughter so much. Also from Walter, and I was wondering about this: I was very concerned with the injections before I started Wegovy. My experience is that the injector is fast and almost painless. My pharmacist was important because he showed me how to do it correctly before I started. 7. Tangents That I Find Tedious, But Other People Apparently Really Want To Debate Why can’t people just diet and exercise? (142 comments)

Inline links: here, here, here, here, here, writes, Weight Regain And Cardiometabolic Effects After Withdrawal Of Semaglutide, writes, writes, anorexia, writes, Education Realist, blog, https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2022/10/09/weight-loss-and-mounjaro, writes, writes, from Walter, Why can’t people just diet and exercise?

Tablut1 mentions across 1 issues

Tablut is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 09, 2023 and February 09, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The one we actually know the rules for is the Saami version, Tablut". It most often appears alongside @moritheil, ACX Prediction Contest, Adam Tooze.

Reference entry: Tablut
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 09, 2023
Last seen: February 09, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For February 2023 February 09, 2023

@moritheil 1 shared issues
ACX Prediction Contest 1 shared issues
Adam Tooze 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
AI X-Risk Research Podcast 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For February 2023

February 09, 2023 · Original source

In theory this also paves the way for human meat, though regulators might have other ideas. 2: Eight years ago I wrote an article about how the government should stop restricting doctors’ ability to prescribe suboxone, a useful medicine for opioid abuse. Last month, the government finally stopped the restrictions. Good for them! 3: Carl Sagan married three times. His first wife was legendary biologist Lynn Margulis, who discovered mitochondrial endosymbiosis, then went off the deep end and became an AIDS denialist and 9/11 truther. His second wife drew the Pioneer plaque. His third wife was one of the women who designed the Voyager golden record. 4: Claim: Chinese sources seem to back this up (and related BBC), but I’m skeptical: is this really the best way to satisfy a “must fight with medieval weapons” constraint? Why not crossbows? 5: Did you know: Alex Berenson, who runs the most popular anti-vaccine Substack, has had an unusual career: he used to be an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and also wrote a series of bestselling spy novels. 6: Less Wrong: I Converted Book 1 Of The Less Wrong Sequences Into A Zoomer-Readable Format. Apparently there’s a thing where Zoomers are supposedly more likely to learn a text if you overlay it on on a fast-paced video game, example here. 7: By this point we’ve probably all heard stories about people who win the lottery and then end up bankrupt and miserable after X months or years. I had always assumed this was limited to very poor people with no understanding of money. This forum post argues it’s not, and tells the story of a man who started out with $15 million and still ruined his life after winning $170 million more in the lottery. 8: Did you know: Exiliarch Mar-Zutra II was a 5th century Jewish leader who took advantage of the chaos caused by weird Zoroastrian communists to secede and turn the city of Al-Mada’in, Iraq into an independent Jewish state for seven years. 9: Why doesn’t the Supreme Court have vice-justices? 10: Steve Sailer (warning: unz.com, far-right site, some firewalls will flag or block it): why aren’t there more gay English soccer players? Thousands of current or recent English pro soccer players, the media is really interested in finding a gay one so they can run a “Historic First” article, and apparently they can’t. There are rumors that players are afraid to come out because of homophobia, but there are at least 2,000 retired soccer players and only one of them has come out as gay. “I’m increasingly sympathetic to [the] theory that whatever psychosocial traits make men highly interested in team sports make them highly heterosexual too”. Is this true of other countries and other sports? 11: Adam Tooze on the demographic background to Iran’s protests. Iran thought it was facing an overpopulation crisis in the 80s and tried some reforms to lower family size. The reforms worked overwhelmingly well, causing “the most dramatic transition ever recorded in demographic history”, from 6.5 to 2.5 children per woman in thirty years. Iran now has “lower maternal mortality than the US”, and an education system where “women in university outnumber males”. This kind of demography isn’t usually compatible with patriarchal religious institutions, and the Ayatollahs are aware of this; in a rare admission of error, Khameini said that “Government officials were wrong on this matter, and I, too, had a part. . . . May God and history forgive us.” Now they’re trying to increase average family size and put the genie back in the bottle; Hungary can tell them about the limits of that strategy. 12: What it looks like to be on shrooms: I haven’t used shrooms myself so cannot confirm or deny, but this is oddly compelling, and makes some things I’ve read about neuroscience of vision make more sense. I wonder if you could get HPPD from watching videos like this for too long. 13: Study: federal cancer funding is extraordinarily effective. Cancer research produces so many valuable treatments that it saves one DALY per $326 spent. For comparison, health systems usually consider an intervention good value-for-money if it saves at least one DALY per $50,000. By combing the Earth far and wide, effective altruists have tentatively found one or two opportunities in the poorest parts of Africa to save lives at $100/DALY, but these are extremely rare exceptions and I wouldn’t have expected anything in the US to be within an order of magnitude of that. Either this finding is fake, or we should all be donating to federal cancer research instead of whatever else we’re doing. 14: Yet another person building a vast theory of human interaction off of the characters in The Office. This one is pretty good, also name-drops Bobos In Paradise. I’m still surprised this is such a common thing. 15: Marginal Revolution: FDA Deregulation Increases Safety And Innovation And Reduces Prices. Study looks at what happens when the FDA reclassifies medical devices from a highly-regulated to a less-highly-regulated category; in general, those devices get better, cheaper, and there are somewhere between similar and fewer deaths/injuries related to those devices. Why would safety increase? The author suggests that regulation is a defense against lawsuits (“Your Honor, the FDA agreed to approve our device, so it can’t have been bad!”), and removing that defense makes companies more lawsuit-conscious and careful; Alex Tabarrok suggests a bigger effect may be allowing more innovation towards safer versions. 16: Ozy writes about Interesting People Of History: Charles Williams (ie the other member of the Inklings) 17: Did you know: the Congressman who founded the House Committee On Un-American Activities was, in fact, a paid Soviet spy (tweet, Wiki article). This actually makes sense; he originally started HUAC to root out fascists, and it only got turned against communists later on. “There has been a push to rename the street [currently named after the Soviet spy], but as of 2018 it has been unsuccessful.” 18: Idle Words: Why Not Mars? Surprisingly strong argument for why sending humans to Mars is harder than people think, of minimal scientific value, and likely to contaminate all future searches for microbial life and ruin our chance to study the topic. Concludes that we should abandon the allure of human space travel and just send probes everywhere. This makes short-term sense, but I wonder what this author’s vision of the future is - do we just stay on Earth forever? If not, don’t we have to start trying to do the hard thing at some point? (I don’t care about this because I assume AI will will flip the gameboard one way or another, but Ceglowski is a noted singularity skeptic and should probably have opinions about long-term things). 19: Metacelsus and Razib on epigenetics. Stop using it to claim there’s “intergenerational trauma”! 20: Tafl games are a family of European games, played in areas as diverse as Iceland, Ireland, Britain, and Denmark, probably sharing descent from a now-lost board game of ancient Rome. One of them, Hnetafl, was the chief board game of the Vikings and is affectionately called “Viking chess”. The one we actually know the rules for is the Saami version, Tablut, which survived long enough for Linnaeus (the taxonomy guy!) to write down the rules. 21: Shot: Chaser: (source) 22: Related: the very center of GPT’s embedding space contains a few unusual tokens including the string “SolidGoldMagikarp”. GPT displays anomalous behavior if these tokens are inserted in a query; for example, it treats “SolidGoldMagikarp” as the word “distribute”. ChatGPT is pretty advanced and fails semi-gracefully here; GPT-2’s reaction to these tokens is more disturbing: (source: Less Wrong) Further investigation determined that many of these tokens are the screen names of a group of Redditors who attempted to count to infinity. The most likely explanation, according to the discoverers, is that these names were in GPT’s tokenization data, but not its training data (maybe they were especially common in the tokenization data because they made thousands of posts with numbers in them, but didn’t make it into the training data because their posts had no content?) - that leaves them existing without content, and GPT tries to round them off to some other “nearby” token (by incomprehensible AI standards of nearbyness). Congrats to the SERI-MATS AI alignment researchers who found all of this; maybe this makes it 0.0001% less likely that the AI which controls the nuclear arsenal in twenty years will have equally inexplicable behavior. 23: More language model news: LLM that understands and can explain images

Inline links: I wrote an article about how, finally stopped the restrictions, married three times, Lynn Margulis, drew the, Chinese, and related BBC, Alex Berenson, I Converted Book 1 Of The Less Wrong Sequences Into A Zoomer-Readable Format, example here, This forum post argues it’s not, Exiliarch Mar-Zutra II, weird Zoroastrian communists, vice-justices, why aren’t there more gay English soccer players?, Adam Tooze on the demographic background to Iran’s protests, federal cancer funding is extraordinarily effective, Yet another person building a vast theory of human interaction off of the characters in, FDA Deregulation Increases Safety And Innovation And Reduces Prices, Interesting People Of History: Charles Williams, tweet, Wiki article, Why Not Mars?, Metacelsus, Razib, Tafl games, Tablut, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EhT-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F39755d06-3101-44d5-bb50-0a6b99155fae_807x776.png, source, contains a few unusual tokens, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rkvW!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdeb0cd39-6942-44c0-85ef-0fac91b362e3_536x147.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!QIzo!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fba1d0783-5826-48a3-9ead-1e803042e96d_622x631.png, Less Wrong, many of these tokens are the screen names of a group of Redditors who attempted to count to infinity, SERI-MATS, LLM that understands and can explain images

Tafl1 mentions across 1 issues

Tafl is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 09, 2023 and February 09, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tafl games are a family of European games". It most often appears alongside @moritheil, ACX Prediction Contest, Adam Tooze.

Reference entry: Tafl
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 09, 2023
Last seen: February 09, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For February 2023 February 09, 2023

@moritheil 1 shared issues
ACX Prediction Contest 1 shared issues
Adam Tooze 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
AI X-Risk Research Podcast 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For February 2023

February 09, 2023 · Original source

In theory this also paves the way for human meat, though regulators might have other ideas. 2: Eight years ago I wrote an article about how the government should stop restricting doctors’ ability to prescribe suboxone, a useful medicine for opioid abuse. Last month, the government finally stopped the restrictions. Good for them! 3: Carl Sagan married three times. His first wife was legendary biologist Lynn Margulis, who discovered mitochondrial endosymbiosis, then went off the deep end and became an AIDS denialist and 9/11 truther. His second wife drew the Pioneer plaque. His third wife was one of the women who designed the Voyager golden record. 4: Claim: Chinese sources seem to back this up (and related BBC), but I’m skeptical: is this really the best way to satisfy a “must fight with medieval weapons” constraint? Why not crossbows? 5: Did you know: Alex Berenson, who runs the most popular anti-vaccine Substack, has had an unusual career: he used to be an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and also wrote a series of bestselling spy novels. 6: Less Wrong: I Converted Book 1 Of The Less Wrong Sequences Into A Zoomer-Readable Format. Apparently there’s a thing where Zoomers are supposedly more likely to learn a text if you overlay it on on a fast-paced video game, example here. 7: By this point we’ve probably all heard stories about people who win the lottery and then end up bankrupt and miserable after X months or years. I had always assumed this was limited to very poor people with no understanding of money. This forum post argues it’s not, and tells the story of a man who started out with $15 million and still ruined his life after winning $170 million more in the lottery. 8: Did you know: Exiliarch Mar-Zutra II was a 5th century Jewish leader who took advantage of the chaos caused by weird Zoroastrian communists to secede and turn the city of Al-Mada’in, Iraq into an independent Jewish state for seven years. 9: Why doesn’t the Supreme Court have vice-justices? 10: Steve Sailer (warning: unz.com, far-right site, some firewalls will flag or block it): why aren’t there more gay English soccer players? Thousands of current or recent English pro soccer players, the media is really interested in finding a gay one so they can run a “Historic First” article, and apparently they can’t. There are rumors that players are afraid to come out because of homophobia, but there are at least 2,000 retired soccer players and only one of them has come out as gay. “I’m increasingly sympathetic to [the] theory that whatever psychosocial traits make men highly interested in team sports make them highly heterosexual too”. Is this true of other countries and other sports? 11: Adam Tooze on the demographic background to Iran’s protests. Iran thought it was facing an overpopulation crisis in the 80s and tried some reforms to lower family size. The reforms worked overwhelmingly well, causing “the most dramatic transition ever recorded in demographic history”, from 6.5 to 2.5 children per woman in thirty years. Iran now has “lower maternal mortality than the US”, and an education system where “women in university outnumber males”. This kind of demography isn’t usually compatible with patriarchal religious institutions, and the Ayatollahs are aware of this; in a rare admission of error, Khameini said that “Government officials were wrong on this matter, and I, too, had a part. . . . May God and history forgive us.” Now they’re trying to increase average family size and put the genie back in the bottle; Hungary can tell them about the limits of that strategy. 12: What it looks like to be on shrooms: I haven’t used shrooms myself so cannot confirm or deny, but this is oddly compelling, and makes some things I’ve read about neuroscience of vision make more sense. I wonder if you could get HPPD from watching videos like this for too long. 13: Study: federal cancer funding is extraordinarily effective. Cancer research produces so many valuable treatments that it saves one DALY per $326 spent. For comparison, health systems usually consider an intervention good value-for-money if it saves at least one DALY per $50,000. By combing the Earth far and wide, effective altruists have tentatively found one or two opportunities in the poorest parts of Africa to save lives at $100/DALY, but these are extremely rare exceptions and I wouldn’t have expected anything in the US to be within an order of magnitude of that. Either this finding is fake, or we should all be donating to federal cancer research instead of whatever else we’re doing. 14: Yet another person building a vast theory of human interaction off of the characters in The Office. This one is pretty good, also name-drops Bobos In Paradise. I’m still surprised this is such a common thing. 15: Marginal Revolution: FDA Deregulation Increases Safety And Innovation And Reduces Prices. Study looks at what happens when the FDA reclassifies medical devices from a highly-regulated to a less-highly-regulated category; in general, those devices get better, cheaper, and there are somewhere between similar and fewer deaths/injuries related to those devices. Why would safety increase? The author suggests that regulation is a defense against lawsuits (“Your Honor, the FDA agreed to approve our device, so it can’t have been bad!”), and removing that defense makes companies more lawsuit-conscious and careful; Alex Tabarrok suggests a bigger effect may be allowing more innovation towards safer versions. 16: Ozy writes about Interesting People Of History: Charles Williams (ie the other member of the Inklings) 17: Did you know: the Congressman who founded the House Committee On Un-American Activities was, in fact, a paid Soviet spy (tweet, Wiki article). This actually makes sense; he originally started HUAC to root out fascists, and it only got turned against communists later on. “There has been a push to rename the street [currently named after the Soviet spy], but as of 2018 it has been unsuccessful.” 18: Idle Words: Why Not Mars? Surprisingly strong argument for why sending humans to Mars is harder than people think, of minimal scientific value, and likely to contaminate all future searches for microbial life and ruin our chance to study the topic. Concludes that we should abandon the allure of human space travel and just send probes everywhere. This makes short-term sense, but I wonder what this author’s vision of the future is - do we just stay on Earth forever? If not, don’t we have to start trying to do the hard thing at some point? (I don’t care about this because I assume AI will will flip the gameboard one way or another, but Ceglowski is a noted singularity skeptic and should probably have opinions about long-term things). 19: Metacelsus and Razib on epigenetics. Stop using it to claim there’s “intergenerational trauma”! 20: Tafl games are a family of European games, played in areas as diverse as Iceland, Ireland, Britain, and Denmark, probably sharing descent from a now-lost board game of ancient Rome. One of them, Hnetafl, was the chief board game of the Vikings and is affectionately called “Viking chess”. The one we actually know the rules for is the Saami version, Tablut, which survived long enough for Linnaeus (the taxonomy guy!) to write down the rules. 21: Shot: Chaser: (source) 22: Related: the very center of GPT’s embedding space contains a few unusual tokens including the string “SolidGoldMagikarp”. GPT displays anomalous behavior if these tokens are inserted in a query; for example, it treats “SolidGoldMagikarp” as the word “distribute”. ChatGPT is pretty advanced and fails semi-gracefully here; GPT-2’s reaction to these tokens is more disturbing: (source: Less Wrong) Further investigation determined that many of these tokens are the screen names of a group of Redditors who attempted to count to infinity. The most likely explanation, according to the discoverers, is that these names were in GPT’s tokenization data, but not its training data (maybe they were especially common in the tokenization data because they made thousands of posts with numbers in them, but didn’t make it into the training data because their posts had no content?) - that leaves them existing without content, and GPT tries to round them off to some other “nearby” token (by incomprehensible AI standards of nearbyness). Congrats to the SERI-MATS AI alignment researchers who found all of this; maybe this makes it 0.0001% less likely that the AI which controls the nuclear arsenal in twenty years will have equally inexplicable behavior. 23: More language model news: LLM that understands and can explain images

tagmemics1 mentions across 1 issues

tagmemics is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 19, 2025 and September 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "theory of linguistics called 'tagmemics'". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

Reference entry: tagmemics
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 19, 2025
Last seen: September 19, 2025

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been September 19, 2025

1987 1 shared issues
1988 1 shared issues
Adleman 1 shared issues
AHIRC 1 shared issues
Andy van Dam 1 shared issues

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been

September 19, 2025 · Original source

Roland King, a linguist who, like Nelson, was super into an evangelical Christianity–associated theory of linguistics called “tagmemics.” I can’t make heads or tails of it, but Nelson describes it as a “romantic [extension] of the linguistic ideal.”

Inline links: evangelical Christianity–associated, tagmemics

tagnais-Naskapi1 mentions across 1 issues

tagnais-Naskapi is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2022 and June 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "tagnais-Naskapi, who anthropologists normally consider “egalitarian” bands of hunter-gatherers". It most often appears alongside 50,000 BC, Africa, Altamira.

Reference entry: tagnais-Naskapi
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 10, 2022
Last seen: June 10, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Dawn Of Everything June 10, 2022

50,000 BC 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
Altamira 1 shared issues
Amazonia 1 shared issues
Asia 1 shared issues

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Moltbook: After The First Weekend

June 10, 2022 · Original source

Because it sure looks like being popular was the primary concern for prehistorical societies, at least if we use the same evidence the Davids do. In 1642, the Jesuit missionary Le Jeune described this phenomenon of a lack of all formal power among the Montagnais-Naskapi, who anthropologists normally consider “egalitarian” bands of hunter-gatherers:

TAI1 mentions across 1 issues

TAI is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 02, 2026 and February 02, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "not when they’re AGI/TAI/ASI/whatever". It most often appears alongside 4chan, Accelerando, Adele Lopez.

Reference entry: TAI
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 02, 2026
Last seen: February 02, 2026

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Moltbook: After The First Weekend February 02, 2026

4chan 1 shared issues
Accelerando 1 shared issues
Adele Lopez 1 shared issues
Against The Labor Frame 1 shared issues
AgentChan 1 shared issues

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February 02, 2026 · Original source

I kind of hope they don’t. Here I’m an AI accelerationist - not in the e/acc sense, but in the original Marxist sense, where they wanted to accelerate capitalism so that everyone would notice its contradictions and the inevitable crisis would come sooner rather than later. If AIs are going to act weird, I hope we get to see them act weird when they’re still silly lobster-Redditors that can be shut down easily, and not when they’re AGI/TAI/ASI/whatever. Moltbook is mostly fake. But as Kurt Vonnegut said, “Be careful what you pretend to be, because you are what you pretend to be.”

Taijin kyofusho1 mentions across 1 issues

Taijin kyofusho is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 27, 2023 and February 27, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "taijin kyofusho , a supposedly a Japanese culture-bound condition"; "one sub-aspect of taijin kyofusho is shubo-kyofu". It most often appears alongside 12th-century England, 21st-century America, acute and transient psychotic disorder.

Reference entry: Taijin kyofusho
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 27, 2023
Last seen: February 27, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Geography Of Madness February 27, 2023

12th-century England 1 shared issues
21st-century America 1 shared issues
acute and transient psychotic disorder 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Geography Of Madness

February 27, 2023 · Original source

In fact, this would be a good place to admit I’m getting very skeptical about pretty much every culture-bound syndrome on the traditional list. Amok and boufee deliriante impress much much less after reading your comments, and the other big famous one is taijin kyofusho, a supposedly a Japanese culture-bound condition where someone is excessively . . . I’m trying not to use the words “socially anxious” so that it can be a big reveal when I say it seems similar to our Social Anxiety Disorder.

Inline links: taijin kyofusho

Another thing going on seems to be a problem of grouping: one sub-aspect of taijin kyofusho is shubo-kyofu, basically body dysmorphic disorder. American psychiatrists would never think of this as a kind of social anxiety, but it kind of fits. Another symptom is jikoshu-kyofu, fear of body odor. I’d never heard of this and thought it might be a genuine Japanese culture-bound condition, but Wikipedia tells me there’s a Western version called olfactory reference syndrome. The International OCD Foundation says that “the prevalence of ORS is not known, but it is certainly more common than generally recognized”. Lochner and Stein find that the prevalence in psychiatric samples (ie people with other mental health conditions) seems to be around 2%. I don’t think it’s at all obvious that more Japanese than non-Japanese have this condition that nobody ever does a good job measuring the prevalence of.

Inline links: olfactory reference syndrome, Lochner and Stein find

Taiwanese-American chef1 mentions across 1 issues

Taiwanese-American chef is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 26, 2021 and February 26, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "A Taiwanese-American chef with Hunanese roots invented the chicken in New York". It most often appears alongside American Chinese food, Bay Area, BBQ pork rice.

Reference entry: Taiwanese-American chef
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 26, 2021
Last seen: February 26, 2021

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Bay Area Plant-Based Meat Reviews February 26, 2021

American Chinese food 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
BBQ pork rice 1 shared issues
Berkeley 1 shared issues
Burger King 1 shared issues

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Bay Area Plant-Based Meat Reviews

February 26, 2021 · Original source

I was briefly confused about whether General Tao was the same person as General Tso, or, like, his vegetarian brother or something. I looked this up and found that these are both acceptable Romanizations of the name of General Zuo Zongtang, a 19th-century Qing dynasty official from Hunan Province. He had nothing to do with the chicken - in fact, Tso's descendants had never heard of the dish. A Taiwanese-American chef with Hunanese roots invented the chicken in New York and named it after a hometown hero. Wikipedia also informs me that General Tso reconquered Xinjiang for China and ethnic-cleansed thousands of Uighurs and other Chinese Muslims, so maybe he needs to be cancelled.

Inline links: Tso's descendants had never heard of the dish

Tajiks1 mentions across 1 issues

Tajiks is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 29, 2024 and February 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "mistakenly calling his audience 'Tajiks'". It most often appears alongside @BoyanSlat, @eigenrobot, @JackTindale.

Reference entry: Tajiks
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 29, 2024
Last seen: February 29, 2024

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Links For February 2024 February 29, 2024

@BoyanSlat 1 shared issues
@eigenrobot 1 shared issues
@JackTindale 1 shared issues
@literalbanana 1 shared issues
@NiohBerg 1 shared issues

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Links For February 2024

February 29, 2024 · Original source

When Khruschev addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand people in the Uzbek capital Tashkent during December 1955, he got himself in an unseemly muddle. He opened by mistakenly calling his audience "Tajiks" and noting how well they were now doing in growing cotton, compared to their neighbors the Uzbeks. An aide eventually managed to tell him that he was, in fact, talking to Uzbeks rather than Tajiks. As was his way, Khrushchev tried to ride out the faux pas in style, telling the audience he had misspoken on purpose, in order to test their reaction, and then expressing his happiness that they had responded correctly to his joke.

Takeoff1 mentions across 1 issues

Takeoff is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 20, 2023 and June 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "You get what futurists call a “takeoff”". It most often appears alongside AGI, Ajeya Cotra, ancient Romans.

Reference entry: Takeoff
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 20, 2023
Last seen: June 20, 2023

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Davidson On Takeoff Speeds June 20, 2023

AGI 1 shared issues
Ajeya Cotra 1 shared issues
ancient Romans 1 shared issues
B-2 stealth bomber 1 shared issues
Bio Anchors 1 shared issues

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Davidson On Takeoff Speeds

June 20, 2023 · Original source

I thought about this when reading What A Compute-Centric Framework Says About Takeoff Speeds, by Tom Davidson. Davidson tries to model what some people (including me) have previously called “slow AI takeoff”. He thinks this is a misnomer. Like skiing down the side of Mount Everest, progress in AI capabilities can be simultaneously gradual, continuous, fast, and terrifying. Specifically, he predicts it will take about three years to go from AIs that can do 20% of all human jobs (weighted by economic value) to AIs that can do 100%, with significantly superhuman AIs within a year after that.

Inline links: What A Compute-Centric Framework Says About Takeoff Speeds, this is a misnomer

You get what futurists call a “takeoff”. The first graph shows a world with no takeoff. Past AI progress doesn’t speed up future AI progress. The field moves forward at some constant rate. The second graph shows a world with a gradual “slow” takeoff. Early AIs (eg Codex) speed up AI progress a little. Intermediate AIs (eg an AI that can help predict optimal parameter values) might speed up AI research more. Later AIs (eg autonomous near-human level AIs) could do the vast majority of AI research work, speeding it up many times. We would expect the early stages of this process to take slightly less time than we would naively expect, and the latter stages to take much less time, since AIs are doing most of the work. The third graph shows a world with a sudden “fast” takeoff. Maybe there’s some single key insight that takes AIs from “mere brute-force pattern matchers” to “true intelligence”. Whenever you get this insight, AIs go from far-below-human-level to human-level or beyond, no gradual progress necessary. Before, I mentioned one reason Davidson doesn’t like these terms - “slow takeoff” can be fast. It’s actually worse than this; in some sense, a “slow takeoff” will necessarily be faster than a “fast takeoff” - if you superimpose the red and blue graphs above, the red line will be higher at every point1. CCF departs from this terminology in favor of trying to predict a particular length of takeoff in real time units. Specifically, it asks: how long will it take to go from the kind of early-to-intermediate AI that can automate 20% of jobs, to the truly-human-level AI that can automate 100% of jobs? (“Can automate” here means “is theoretically smart enough to automate” - actual automation will depend on companies fine-tuning it for specific tasks and providing it with the necessary machinery; for example, even a very smart AI can’t do plumbing until someone connects it to a robot body to do the dirty work. CCF will talk more about these kinds of considerations later.) In order to figure this out, it needs to figure out the interplay of a lot of different factors. I’m going to focus on the three I find most interesting: How much more compute does it take to train the AI that can automate 100% of the economy, compared to the one that can automate 20%?

Inline links: “takeoff”, Codex, 1

Davidson says that in the economic contexts most similar to this, ρ = -0.5, and plugs that into his model. So How Fast Is Takeoff? I’ve just gone over the highlights. Davidson’s full model has sixteen main parameters and fifty “additional parameters”. Each is represented as a distribution of possible values.

Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo1 mentions across 1 issues

Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 14, 2023 and July 14, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Japanese Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo". It most often appears alongside !Kung San, aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada, Adam Smith.

Reference entry: Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 14, 2023
Last seen: July 14, 2023

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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind July 14, 2023

!Kung San 1 shared issues
aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada 1 shared issues
Adam Smith 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
Aeschylus 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind

July 14, 2023 · Original source

From trivial to rich: the trick What could an intellectually rich elementary school curriculum look like, if we built it on kids’ cognitive strengths? He gives us one suggestion to help us do this: ask where each discipline came from in the first place. What was math before it was math, for example — or science before it was science? Q: How on Earth could that help? That’ll become clear later, when we finally uncover what Egan thinks “education” actually is, and see what job he wants us to give schools. For now, take it as a tantalizing hint… or, y’know, just ignore it. Elementary literature & language What was literature before it was literature? Before people invented writing, they had rich oral traditions: they told simple stories, recited poems, and shared proverbs. Egan suggests that these bits of oral tradition should form the backbone of the elementary literature curriculum. Q: What sorts of stories? As many as we can, and from as many diverse cultures as possible! Folktales are wonderful, as are myths. Think the Aboriginal story of “The Rainbow Serpent”, episodes from the Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Egyptian story of Osiris & Isis, the Greek story of Orpheus & Eurydice, the Chinese Legend of the White Snake, the Japanese Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo, the Ashanti tales of Anansi, the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the English legend of King Arthur, the Maori myth of Maui and the Sun, the Roman story of Romulus and Remus, selections from the Indian Mahabharata, the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, the Inca legend of the Sun and Moon, the Iroquois Myth of the Flying Head (a real thing! look it up!), and the Ojibwe story of Turtle Island. Q: That was a lot of examples. Are you going to keep giving so many? I’ve got a [mumble mumble mumble] to get to. Sorry about that. Sometimes, though, I feel that a limitation of reading Educated Mind is that, in trying to keep his book to a manageable size, Egan skimped on examples in some places that it matters. It’s easy to read his occasional example and assume he intends that it hold some central place in the curriculum — when all he wants to do is display how rich and diverse the curriculum could be. (Also: good God, I didn’t even include an example from Norse mythology!) So from now on, just assume that every category could be filled with oodles of examples. Q: What sorts of poems? Lots of poems, first of all. We shouldn’t steer toward “fancy” poems — rather, we should find poems that appeal to kids immediately — think Shel Silverstein, Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, Edward Lear, or Ogden Nash… that sort of thing. In a biting essay, Egan suggests these poets like these appeal to kids precisely because they leverage kids’ cognitive strengths: “we should find, and encourage saying and singing and shouting aloud verse with strong narrative forms, thumping rhymes and rhythms, the most vivid images, fun with metaphors, and a rollicking story.” Q: Why proverbs? Proverbs stick in your mind almost effortlessly. (“All’s fair in love and war!” “When in Rome, do as the Romans do!” “You can’t judge a book by its cover!”) They’re also useful; they capture general truths. Kids can apply them to all sorts of situations, but also discuss them — to what extent are they wise or foolish? (I remember my surprise when I realized that they couldn’t all be true — because you can’t follow “look before you leap” and “he who hesitates is lost” at the same time! I’m embarrassed to say that I think I only realized this when I was in college.) Elementary science What was science before it was science? Egan suggests: being immersed in the natural world. We might, he writes, encourage elementary students to “adopt” some feature of the natural world — a patch of grass, a cat, a branch, a stream — and simply observe it at length. To do this, we can use the cognitive strength of reverie. Q: Oh, do you mean like kids sometimes do in science class nowadays — describe a thing to a partner, make notes, draw it, and label its parts? No, the exact opposite! That’s all about squeezing the experience into words and forms that we understand. What we want “is less an attempt to know about nature as to know it in some participatory way, to know it as something we are an intimate part of, not set off from”. Q: That sounds a little… “woo” to me. It did to me, too… until I remembered my childhood climbing tree. I didn’t much like to go outside as a child, but I had this one tree that I’d climb up and read for hours and hours. If I close my eyes I can bring to mind the precise texture of its bark, the roughness of its broken-off branches, the coolness of its leaves, the always-surprising solidness of its trunk… I’m bigger now, but I think if I were back in my parent’s yard, I could still navigate its limbs with my eyes closed. I have, at this point in my life, read a fair number of books about trees, but I’d be surprised if all of them together more than equaled the amount I learned from that tree — my tree. Elementary math What was math before it was math? Egan suggests: counting and logic. We might, then, use rhythms, metaphors, stories, and jokes to help kids become fond of these. Q: Counting is pretty… basic. Could it really be improved? Beware of “the curse of knowledge”: Steven Pinker’s phrase for forgetting that something was once difficult! Egan suggests we should spend time helping kids count wonderfully. We can start early with counting rhymes. (“One, two, buckle my shoe! Three, four, out the door! Five, six…”) But we can also help kids use their fingers as metaphors. There are some pretty cool ways of using your hands as an abacus — and did you know that you can count up to 1,023 using just your fingers on both hands, and a knowledge of binary? Q: Logic — I’m intrigued! Aristotelian, or Boolean? Neither, for the time being — Piaget was presumably onto something when he found that young children couldn’t reason abstractly, but he was looking at logic in a vacuum. When we put logic into the context of stories, we find that kids can deal with logic just fine. There’s an entire worldwide network of educators, in fact, called Philosophy for Children, who have written whole books about how to do this, and Egan loves it all. Sometimes they read stories and ask simple questions: “What is friendship?” or “What does it mean to be brave?” They also pose ethical questions: “Is it ever right to spill a secret?” And they pose paradoxes: “Can you step in the same river twice?” Q: You mentioned “jokes” a moment ago. Care to elaborate? Egan thinks that, to help kids get good at math, you should tell kids jokes. Q: That’s… new. I think so, too — but he backs it up pretty well. To be funny, jokes (or at least most kid jokes) rely on a leap in logic: Why can’t you trust an atom? They make up everything. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-hoo? Don’t cry, it’s just a joke! To understand the joke, kids have to follow the logic — spotting patterns, making connections, and tracking what their audience expects a word to mean. That’s a lot of cognitive lifting. And Egan goes further, suggesting that we grit our teeth and create methods to help kids invent their own jokes, no matter how horrible they’ll be at first. (The things we do for learning…) Q: Wait wait wait! What about addition facts, and multiplication tables, and fractions? Egan emphasizes that his methods are designed to be add-ons to the standard math curriculum. In general, he’s a don’t-blow-up-the-system sort of guy, and if something seems especially weird, you should probably assume it’s an add-on to the regular curriculum rather than a replacement, even if I forget to say so. Elementary arts What was art before it was art? Egan suggests we pop our heads into Paleolithic caves for our inspiration. Whatever the specific meaning of all those charcoal elk and aurochs and mammoths (communication with the spirit world? art for art’s sake? a way to impress babes?), Egan thinks it obvious that they were also an attempt to capture an intense experience that would be difficult to express in words alone. What did it feel like to be near an aurochs, or a saber-toothed tiger? “The arts help us,” Egan writes, “to hear and see afresh, to force our perceptions and sensations to experience again the immediacy and vividness of the world”. If we follow this, then, we don’t want to help kids build “art skills” so they can draw like an adult — rather, we want to help them amass a repository of diverse aesthetic feelings that they’ll want to express. We should provide them with a riot of experiences. Q: That couldn’t be more opaque. Examples, please! Egan writes that we should have children learn to whistle, sing, and click their tongue; we should help them emulate the ways a skunk or a hawk or a stick bug might move through a space. We should expose them to scores of different temperatures and materials. In music, we should help them love Beethoven, yes, but also the Beatles; Tchaikovsky, yes, but also Tuvan throat singers, and also John Cage, whale song, and bird song. Q: That’s a lot of experiences, but what would they be doing? An interesting aspect of Egan’s view of education is that he doesn’t seem to think we should push kids right to the “doing” phase. He wants to help kids cultivate an affective relationship with the world. In any case, he writes that as students get more experienced, we should prompt them to move from merely enjoying these experiences to trying to systematically shape similar experiences. And drawing, painting, and playing music could easily be folded into other parts of the curriculum. Elementary social studies What was social studies before it was social studies? Well. Remember how, just a moment ago, I wrote that you could assume that you should probably assume that Kieran isn’t in favor of junking the curriculum as it currently stands? He suggests we very carefully pick up the elementary social studies curriculum, place it into a trash can, and set the whole mess on fire. He isn’t worried about much of importance being lost. (Remember that the “expanding horizons” model is, to him, the original sin of 20th century educational reform, and he repeatedly quotes student surveys showing that “social studies” regularly wins the title of “most boring subject”.) In its place, he suggests we put history — which, he hints, we should think of as the centerpiece of the elementary curriculum. So the real question is what was history before it was history? His answer, surprisingly, is myth. Q: Egan wants us to teach myths as if they were history? Not at all. What he suggests, though, is that we look at how myths operate as narratives — so we can design an intellectually vivid history curriculum. And myths really are special: each is built on at least one binary (like weak vs. strong, or lies vs. truth, or so on), and uses that to tell the story of the big picture of the world. They’re so powerful that people can understand it, remember it, and love it — even if that thing never happened. We should take that power, Egan says, and apply it to things that really did happen. Q: So what history does he think kids should learn in elementary school? The great struggles of humanity from across the whole. Flippin’. World. We’re still talking about young children, so these should be done as simple stories. The goal isn’t to make them history PhD’s, so we needn’t even try to put them in any sort of order. Egan suggests that, in first grade, we pick a single binary like “freedom against oppression” and tell kids a welter of stories, again from as many cultures as possible, and as many times in history as possible. Q: Can you give examples? Oh, all right — in first grade we can tell kids the stories of the war of the Greek city-states against the Persian empire, and the slave uprising of Spartacus against the Romans. We can tell them about the plight of Jews in medieval Europe, and of the unsuccessful Sepoy Rebellion in India against the British. We can tell the stories of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and about the Chinese Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. We can tell them the story of the escaped slave Harriet Tubman returning to the South to rescue her kinsmen, the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges facing threats to integrate her elementary school, and the story of how the Mau-Mau uprising led to modern-day Kenya. We can tell the stories of Mexican-American union organizer Cesar Chavez and of Malala Yousafzai surviving an assassination attempt to advocate for female literacy. The world does not lack for stories of oppression and liberation that can capture the attention of a six-year-old. Q: That’s… huh. What stories might they hear in second and third grade? Egan gives examples, but I won’t list them here. He suggests we use a similar approach for each, except that we swap out the binary each year. He thinks “the struggle for security against danger” would work well for year two, and “the struggle for knowledge against ignorance” would work well for year three. (That year could have a lot of overlap with the science curriculum.) Q: Anything else, for history? Yes — they should get a sense of Big History. They should get some simple stories about the ice age, the Cenozoic, the age of dinosaurs, the Paleozoic, the origins of our solar system, and the Big Bang. (Because if the ancient Norse can tell their story of the beginning of the universe, by gum, we can tell ours, too.) To sum up Egan argues that the problem of early schooling is that it’s trivial — and it’s trivial because the dominant theories of educational psychology see children as lesser versions of adults. What else would we teach them, except dumbed-down versions of what adults learn? But children have certain cognitive strengths that schools aren’t making systematic use of. If we rebuild elementary schools on those strengths, we could turn schooling upside down. We could stop seeing the curriculum as a bag of information to impart, and start seeing it as a set of great stories to tell — and invite kids into. Kids could experience (both intellectually and emotionally) the great struggles of humanity and see that they can join in them. Students could experience the story of education as the beginning of a very real adventure. Egan’s elementary school: some skeptical questions Q: I’m not sure I’m understanding what you mean by “mental images”. Care to explain? It’s an interesting fact of human cognition that just a few words can whip up a complex mental experience. Egan doesn’t just mean what we might call “visual imagery” — the ability to hold, say, the image of a bespectacled, spat-wearing duck in your mind without seeing a photograph. He’s also including what psychologists call auditory imagery, olfactory imagery, gustatory imagery, and tactile imagery. Q: How could all of that be helpful in schools? Humanity has a built-in VR system, and we’re not using it! Egan invites us to pretend we’re teaching a class about the humble earthworm. We might list off facts — “earthworms are so many centimeters long, move through soil by means of their something-or-other muscles…” but he suggests we can evoke images, say, “of what it would be like to slither and push through the soil, hesitantly exploring in one direction then another, looking for easier passages, contracting and expanding our sequence of muscles segment by segment, and sensing moisture, scents, grubs, or whatever”. Those facts are now felt by the student; the knowledge has become part of them. And just a few words can spark a complex mental experience, one going beyond literal images to include imagined sounds, smells, tastes, and more. These experiences can feel real and stick with us. (That these mental images are so easy to evoke, and so meaningfully felt, feels something like the proverbial hundred dollar bill on the ground.) Q: How could metaphors be helpful? It really is interesting that so much of the “constructivist” turn in psychology — that is, the notion that children don’t absorb knowledge, but construct it — has continued to focus on logics-mathematical reasoning, when there’s been mounting evidence for decades that metaphors are more central. It’s not just that we use metaphors to better understand things we already know, we also use them to grasp new knowledge. What’s more, psychologists have devised tests to measure the skill at metaphor-making, and have given them to people of different ages. What they found was that eleven-year-olds make more metaphors (and higher quality metaphors) than do undergraduates — and that four-year-olds have both groups beat. Again, hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk. Q: Your talk of “binaries” has me worried — binaries like good/evil and male/female are the source of so many of our most pernicious stereotypes! Isn’t the purpose of education to get us beyond stuff like this? Yes, it is! Education is supposed to complicate our understanding — but that means we’ve gotta start somewhere, and binaries provide us a natural starting place. As an uncontroversial example, think about temperature. We all begin as babies by perceiving two temperatures — hot and cold. Later, we add on intermediate categories — warm and cool. (Note that the human body is the assumed mid-point to temperature. Binaries often work like this; “big” and “small” mean “bigger or smaller than me”, “nasty” and “kind” mean “nastier or kinder than I am, except when my brother is really asking for it”, and so on.) A good story (and an Egan-inspired elementary curriculum is, in a sense, nothing but good stories) will go further, and transform the binary. Toy Story is grounded in the binary of abandonment/belonging: at the beginning, the toy cowboy Woody belongs to his owner, and has his affection. Then a rival comes who threatens his belonging. In trying to get back to belonging, Woody is entirely lost — and to save the day, he has to come to a deeper understanding of what belonging means. Now, all lessons can’t be Pixar movies. But the good stories (especially in literature and history) will challenge and subvert the binaries they begin with. Q: I see the pattern of Egan drawing from “as many cultures as possible”. Why so many? Is this a political correctness thing? If it helps to think of it as such, then, sure! I don’t think Egan would have had a problem with that. But his ultimate reason for including so much diversity goes deeper. For Egan, including such world-wide diversity isn’t optional, and the answer to why is bound up in his definition of education. (Keep reading.) His answer also insists that we, whenever possible, also include stories from the Bible and Homeric epics (the Iliad and Odyssey). Q: Mmm, stories from the Bible aren’t going to fly in my local school! So be it! Egan doesn’t spend much time obsessing over the practicalities of… His interest is in describing what an ideal education might look like, if it were possible. Every lesson, every classroom, and every school is necessarily a compromise. Q: You make a big deal of poems. But isn’t poetry dead? An interesting contrast can be made to classical education, which also has kids read a lot of poems — they see knowing great poems as one of the marks of an educated person; again, for an academicist, it’s the information that transforms. Egan begs to disagree. Poems are important because they’re a wonderful way to train their cognitive strengths, like rhythm (poems are language fueling by thumping). We want to help kids learn to use this tool better, and a great way to do that is to help them recite poems that they’ve learned by heart. Q: “Learn by heart” — is that code for “memorize”?! It is! Egan is actually quite big on memorization — he points out that all the knowledge in the world can do nothing for a person once they’ve forgotten it. He didn’t, however, appreciate the academicist focus on memorizing without understanding (or at least enjoyment). Q: I’m still worried about the science curriculum, as you’re describing it. Can you allay my fears? Honestly, while I feel there’s something profoundly right to how Egan is describing early experiences of nature, I feel the same way. Note that there’s more science coming in the social studies curriculum. But if that’s still not enough, one could bring down aspects of the middle school science stage. Q: Anything else that Egan suggests we do in elementary school literature and language? He suggests that we help kids learn a second language! This is so obviously true (why do American schools typically wait until kids lose the ability to naturally absorb languages to start teaching languages?) he doesn’t belabor it, though. Q: You had mentioned that Egan’s vision seems more internal-focused. Should we be worried about that? While I strongly suspect that his curriculum would make kids more creative in any way you’d like to measure it, Egan wasn’t particularly interested in “creativity” — he was more about helping kids find the world interesting. I get the sense that he thinks kids will do things with minimal prompting once they’re loaded up with complex internal experiences. Q: I think I’m beginning to understand Egan — is he basically saying “make learning fun”? “Fun”, applied to education, is a dangerous word. Egan worries about the dangers of an emotionally unserious curriculum producing emotionally stunted adults. That doesn’t mean we need to tell students only “serious” stories — only that we treat the world honestly. “Disney-esque sentimentality is the exact emotional equivalent to intellectual contempt”. Q: But aren't some of these stories too dark for children who have themselves experienced oppression and disaster? Egan argues that these stories may be especially helpful to them — they can help them understand their struggles better, and give voice to them. Q: At the very start of this, you promised us “rationality”… but I’m not seeing rationality here! All this talk of “adventure” almost seems to go the opposite direction. What gives? Wait for it. But for a hint right now — Egan is fond of citing his fellow educational theorist Jerome Bruner, who claimed “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development”. Bruner was criticized for that; his critics charged that he was ignoring learning differences and socio-economic realities. Egan thinks he was profoundly right. Part 3: A new kind of middle school What’s the matter with middle school? What was middle school like for you? In math, I recall a jumble of barely-related topics. In literature, I remember reading great literature — Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet — only in their dumbed-down summary formats. In social studies, I remember teachers proclaiming on the first day of class that unlike all of our previous history classes, this class wouldn’t be about names and dates… and then going on to memorize names and dates. And in science, I remember being forced to dissect a frog only to discover that frogs are — you guessed it — made of slimy frog parts. Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us, middle school feels like getting booted out of the (in retrospect) Eden of elementary school, and like marking time before the serious studying of high school. It feels meaningless. In my favorite of his books, Egan calls so much middle school curricula “human deserts”, noting “we have created a system in which the importance of human emotions for meaning seems barely noticed”. Why so meaningless? If our dominant approaches to educational psychology fundamentally misinterpret younger children, Egan suggests, they basically throw up their hands when faced with pre-teens and teenagers. Mainstream schools begin to introduce vocational training to help lighten the load, and Maria Montessori famously suggests that adolescents should be sent to go run a farm. Egan is sympathetic to those responses, but points out that they don’t do much to lighten the load that the academic curriculum often becomes at this age. This feeling of meaninglessness, he argues, is utterly tragic — it comes just when a hunger for meaning blossoms in adolescents! We can see that hunger for meaning in their lives outside the classroom, where their interests ramp up into veritable obsessions. What are adolescents obsessed with? What might we see, if we become Jane Goodalls of early adolescence? First, teens are obsessed with gossip. The motivations of others — why did he do that? and what was he THINKING? — are hypothesized and talked to death. Second, that they’re pulled toward idealism. Many feel a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and feel a romantic urge to make it a better place. They’re often lured into simplistic beliefs that promise to help them do that. Third, they love extremes: they want to find limits, and test them. Obviously, this can show up as risky behavior, but we can also see it in their love for the bizarre — note adolescents’ fascination in things like aliens, cryptids, and ghosts. (Egan loves pointing out that The Guinness Book of World Records is a perennial bestseller among kids at this age. How else would they find out who had the world’s longest fingernails?) Fourth, they gravitate toward heroes — people who push the edges of those limits. By celebrating heroes, they can vicariously share in their transcendence. Look for the posts hanging up in a teenager’s bedroom to guess what boundaries they feel most hemmed in by: athletes push against physical limits; a death metal guitarist might push against authority and conventional morality. An activist or entrepreneur might push against our dulled morality or our sense of what’s possible. Finally, we might spot teens taking up hobbies and making collections. Hobbies can be a way to identify yourself as part of a group against the rest of the world (“I’m the sort of person who goes bird-watching!”), and collections can be a way to climb the status ladder inside the community. Egan points out that a collection can also be a way to feel like you have control over what you’re discovering is a very big and complex world of detailed information (“I’ve spotted every one of the fifty most common birds of Texas — even the black-capped vireo!”) Egan’s insight is that these obsessions give teenagers a sense of meaning, and that we can use them as tools to make middle schools that overflow with meaning. From meaningless to meaning-soaked Again, Egan sketches out a new kind of curriculum subject-by-subject. Before, his trick was to ask where the subject first evolved out of; now, it’s to ask who first discovered or created the specific content we’re teaching. “All knowledge”, he writes, “is human knowledge. Everything we know is knowable through the lives of its inventors, discoverers, or users, and we can have access to that knowledge through the hopes, fears, or intentions that drove them”. Middle school math Who first discovered the concepts students learn in math? The answer, of course, is a wide diversity of curious men and women living across the world over the last few thousand years. Egan says: bring those people into how we teach math. If we used gossip and heroes to help students find it meaningful, what kind of math would result? When we teach the Pythagorean theorem, we should give a sense of who Pythagoras was — a cult-founder who worshiped numbers to find God, whose followers (according to a piece of ancient gossip) murdered one of their members who discovered irrational numbers! Q: Well, sure, that works for Pythagoras, but he’s a known nut job; surely most math doesn’t come from such interesting roots? When we teach the Cartesian coordinate system, students should meet Rene Descartes, the Calvinist French polymath who saw the possibility that math could decipher the world, if only we could unite algebra and geometry… and invented the xy-plane to do exactly that. When we teach scientific notation, we should call our students’ attention to the importance of the number zero, and tell them the story of the Pope who tried to introduce Arabic numerals to Christian Europe and may have been assassinated because of it. When we teach algebra, we should ask students why “algebra” is Arabic for “the fixing of bones”, and tell the story of what Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was up to. We could do this all day. Literally everything students learn in school was first invented or discovered by some interesting person who was struggling to accomplish something hard. To learn is to connect with those people, whether we know it or not. Egan says: help kids know it. Math has been dehumanized: re-humanize it. Q: So the math curriculum needs to become a history of math curriculum, and math teachers need to become history teachers? No, the content needn’t change. But with surprisingly little work, we can bring in the gossipy stories of heroes, and their obsessions can spread to students. Middle school science Who first discovered the things students learn about in science? If you’re thinking “scientists”, you’re only partially right. Most of the big-picture ideas that we now think of as “science” were discovered before the word “scientist” was invented, or the discipline was professionalized. Frequently, they were hatched by true amateurs, working in their free time, hungry to unlock the secrets of nature. We can use gossip and heroes to spread their obsessions to students just as we taught math, but Egan points out two twists. The first is that the content itself can take on heroic qualities: everything is impressive, when you look at it in a certain light. In an interview, Egan once said: “My book is an attempt to show that, indeed, everything in the world is wonderful, but that schools are designed almost to disguise this slightly shameful fact. We represent the world to children as mostly known and rather dull. The opposite is the case: we are surrounded by mystery, and what we know is fascinating”. What would even the most boring subjects look like, if we emphasized their heroic qualities? Well: What’s a tooth? Bone, wrapped in rock, surrounding tiny cells that your body feeds with blood. What’s a bar of chocolate? A crystal of jellyfish-shaped fat molecules stacked together; when you put it in your mouth you shake them apart into a writhing confusion. What’s the air around you? The bottom of a 10-mile-deep ocean; when you put your tongue over a soda straw and your Pepsi stops leaking out, it’s not because a “vacuum” is “sucking” it up, but because that ocean is squeezing it into your face. Again, we could do this all day! And in middle school science, we can. Everything in the world is wonderful; we can help students see this again and again. The second twist is that science is a subject rich in extremes. Here Egan introduces a concept that we’ll see crop up again: “15-minute segments”. To help us fit as much wonder as possible into a school day, he suggests we supplement the usual school subjects with a few quick lessons. To infuse science with extremes, he suggests we add on three: “human & natural records”, “extremes of animals & plants”, and “cosmology”. Middle school history Who first made the things students learn about in history? Why, the historical characters themselves! Since we’ve given kids a grounding in history in elementary school, now we can build on that, going through many of the same events as before, but in more depth, and more vividly. We’ll leverage the interest with other people’s inner lives to tell stories focusing on the perspectives of the people who made history — zooming in, when possible, on scandalous details. We’ll leverage the tool of idealism to choose historical characters who chafed against their surroundings, and understand what they were trying to accomplish. What was their vision of the world? What did they hope for, and what did they fear? Q: Isn’t the “great man” approach to history out of fashion? Egan’s approach doesn’t say that “great men” made history — it’s just leveraging gossip to help kids see history as something meaningful that can expand their own possibilities. “Early adolescence is commonly a time of intense and vivid emotional life, and also a time of deepest boredom and depression… [We] can give shape to the intermediate curriculum and offer the students a world that is rich, complex, varied, and as intense and vivid as their own emotional lives”. We also should add on another “15-minute segment” just to pump in as many biographies as possible, and from people who don’t always fit into the normal history curriculum. Call it “Brief Lives”, and throw in anyone who’s struggled to push some limit — Mary Wollstonecraft, Jesse Owen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the students’ great-aunts, whoever. As students get older, this can transition to “People and Their Ideas”. Here, we’d focus less on the details of the person’s life, and use it as a backdrop to showing how meaningful some of history’s most important ideas could be. Think Aristotle and syllogisms, Edward Said and orientalism, Confucius and propriety, Cornel West and race, Buddha on the four noble truths, Muhammad and the five pillars, Karl Marx and communism, Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Thomas Hobbes and the state of nature, John Locke and natural rights, Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism, Thomas Aquinas on the sacraments, Martin Luther on faith, Voltaire on the freedom of speech… you get the idea. Q: Can you really get a profound understanding of utilitarianism in 15 minutes? Yes! The point of this segment isn’t to develop a systematic understanding of any one idea, it’s to introduce students to the exciting possibilities of human thought. (As a bonus, this might make them less likely to fall for the first ideology that they encounter later in life.) Diversity is important for this — as it is with culture. Throughout this, we should also be trying to expose students to as much cultural diversity as possible, because in high school, we’ll be trying to make sense of our society, and it’s impossible to do that unless we have something to compare it against. Middle school literature & language You might think that this subject would be easy — that middle school literature is already filled with “strong and clear narratives”, that it deals with “transcendent human qualities such as courage, love, and persistence”, that it focuses on “extremes of human experience”, that it examines “something strange and exotic”. You’d be right! Egan’s pretty happy with a bog-standard middle school literature curriculum, done well. In this part of the book, his spends most of his limited space suggesting three rather odd activities which could also be useful — especially for increasing students’ awareness of language, so they can use it better. The first is etymology — not, however, memorizing lists of roots, but in being told the entertaining backstories of specific words. Take the word “berserk”, for example — we now use it to mean something relatively mild (“if my mom catches me coming home late, she’ll go berserk”), but it comes from an old Norse word meaning “a raging warrior of superhuman strength”. And that’s because ber meant “bear” and serk meant “shirt”: soldiers of the bear cult would don the skin of a bear to, in their minds, transform into one — howling, foaming at the mouth, and gnawing the rims of their shields. (Most adults walk through life with little understanding that the words falling out of their mouths are entities, with their own back-stories. Communication is, at the very least, more interesting when we become aware of this.) The second is to add on another language to learn — not, this time, to become fluent in it, but just to become aware of how very different human languages can be. (For native English speakers, Sanskrit might work well, or Cantonese, or perhaps even ancient Egyptian. Again, the point isn’t for this language to be useful — it’s to explore diversity.) The final one is to study humor — not just jokes anymore, but comedy at its finest. Egan cites (at length!) Monty Python as a group of people who were particularly brilliant in their use of the English language. Examining their skits can lead us into not just an appreciation of semantics (the study of how meaning is made from smaller pieces, like etymology) but also pragmatics (the study of how meaning is made in social situations). Pretty heady stuff, for a conversation about a dead parrot. Part 4: A new kind of high school I’ll confess — I loved parts of high school… and among nerdy folks, I suspect I’m not alone. For some of us, this was a golden time. Even at my local public high school, I had access to academically thrilling classes — especially, in my last two years, advanced literature and history. I felt like I was finally understanding the ideas that mattered. In any case, Egan is quick to acknowledge that, at this level, the sort of education he advocates really is being practiced in some places. What he can add is an understanding of what makes it wonderful, how to make it even more wonderful, and how to make it wonderful for many, many more people. What’s the matter with high school? Far too often, even when high school classes are intellectual, they’re dry. For the majority of students, all this academic stuff is experienced as utterly lifeless, a mass of dead information to be squeezed inside one’s head for a test and then left to evaporate. Egan mocks the curriculum wars that seem to be a permanent feature of the teaching life; quoting the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, he says “while the academic left and right bicker over whether the curriculum is too traditional or too radical, they fail to recognize that most students absorb so little of academic culture that the bickering is largely irrelevant”. Why so dry? Egan suggests three reasons to explain this. First, because high school academic classes are too often masses of small details with no sign of the big picture. Second, because they’re typically slavishly disciplinary, and aren’t able to address the questions that span the disciplines. Third, because they’re often designed to bring students through what everyone is sure of, and hide away any controversies. In all of these, Egan suggests that what’s called “academics” in high school is too often a dim imitation of what real academics are actually practicing. There’s a fourth reason, though, and it’s probably the biggest of all — by the time they get to high school, most students haven’t actually learned that much! An academic approach is designed to connect small details into the big picture; for people who arrive in high school (and college) classes without having already collected much in their heads, academics are going to taste dry. (An implication of this for anyone trying to improve schools is that we might not want to start with high schools. If your goal is to create a new kind of academic learning, first start at elementary school — or barring that, middle school.) What motivates mad scientists? When we wanted to re-conceive the elementary and middle school curriculums, we looked at what students were already good at — kids’ cognitive strengths and adolescents’ obsessions. For this level it might be easier to look — for reasons that will become clear when we finally unveil Egan’s crazy-sounding definition of education — at the sorts of things that bring intellectuals joy. Q: Which intellectuals? Take your pick. Galileo, Einstein, Smith, Marx, Goodall, Chomsky, Curie… all the people who took to the life of the mind like fish to water. But that’s a lot to hold in my mind at once, so I’m just going to think about Doc Brown from Back to the Future: He was high on intellectualism I’ve never been there, but the brochure looks nice Let’s call these people “mad scientists”. And let’s pretend we once again took up our job of being primatologists, and snooped on these folks “in the wild” (“in the lab”? this is beginning to get recursive…)… what would we find motivating them? Asking simple questions, for one. (What is space? What is society? What is a human? What is language?) Building general schemes (big theories) that hold lots of evidence together. Finding their place in the cosmos. And (perhaps above all) seeking certainty. Once again, Egan suggests we use these as tools to remake the curriculum. From dry to daring What could a high school curriculum look like, if it were rebuilt on these tools? Once again, Egan has a trick. This time, it’s to ask what fights have driven the development of each of these fields forward — and how we can help students enter them. First, a mini-segment! Intellectuals invented the academic disciplines to better pursue the life of the mind, but the disciplines can get in the way. Some of the most important intellectual discoveries that could help students are too big to fit into any of the disciplines. We need a place to introduce them plainly. Egan proposes another mini-segment — again, just 15 minutes a day, a few times a week — called “Metaknowledge”. Q: Isn’t that already in the International Baccalaureate program? Yes, he acknowledges that he’s borrowing from that! This segment would introduce ideas that would enrich student thinking across the disciplines: game theory, cognitive biases, systems thinking, Bayesian reasoning, epistemology, ethics, logic, cultural evolution, and so on. High school literature How can we help students enter the big fights of literature? Intellectuals of a literary bent — professors, critics, poets, novelists — delight in arguing over literature like rabbis arguing over the Talmud. Take, just for one example, the debates over Shakespeare’s character of Ophelia. Does she love Hamlet, or is she a victim of his emotional abuse? Is she truly insane, or is she acting? Is she passive, or is she pulling the strings? Oceans of ink have been spilled arguing over questions like these; our students can, perhaps, spill a few ounces more. The usefulness of arguing literature, for Egan, isn’t that it’s oh-so important for educated adults to know a lot about Ophelia. (This, again, was where the academicists went wrong — in thinking that being educated was about getting the best knowledge in your head.) Rather, arguing over literature is a training arena for the all-important intellectual move of this kind of understanding: building general schemes out of evidence, and struggling with anomalies. One person, for example, might hold that Ophelia is insane, and cite all sorts of obvious evidence — her father just was murdered by her lover, she rants nonsense while (bizarrely) handing out flowers to friends… But then he’s challenged when he reads a scholar pointing out that, to people in Elizabethan England, types of flowers have symbolic meanings. How does he deal with that? He could ignore it, claiming it an over-reading of Shakespeare. (Sometimes a flower is just a flower!) Or he could address it, complicating his own scheme. This intellectual work is best done with other people, who are incentivized to challenge your understanding of something, and go back and forth, building competing models and calling attention to anomalies. This process — the “dialectic” — pops up again and again in the academic disciplines. It’s the center of how understanding works, at this stage. And the nice thing about practicing it on literature is that, more so than in history or science, the evidence is shared knowledge — it’s right in front of everyone, written out. But there are other ways literature class can be helpful to the general life of the mind. Egan also suggests that we’ll want to specially include literature that helps students understand complex ideas. Camus, Orwell, Borges, Calvino might be particularly helpful here… and I imagine that genres like science fiction and magical realism might be particularly useful, too. (Note, though, that once again none of this requires a radical remaking of the curriculum, or of the canon of texts that we traditionally assign to high schoolers.) Q: Oh yes, the canon — what does Egan have to say about the canon wars? When he wrote Educated Mind in the nineties, the long-brewing canon war was approaching its inevitable apocalyptic climax. On one side of this Plain of Megiddo were the pro-canon traditionalists, arguing that we should keep assigning the texts that had been argued over for centuries. Facing them were the anti-canon reformers, arguing the standard texts over-represented the perspective of dead white men. Onto the middle of the plain rides Egan on a white horse, who bellows above the din: “I’VE GOT A BUSLOAD OF HIGH SCHOOLERS WHO WANTS TO JOIN IN, EVERYONE OKAY WITH THAT?” To do so, he says, we need to give students the arguments from both sides. So, for example, bell hooks, Edward Said, and China Achebe should be on the syllabus, as should Allan Bloom, Mortimer Adler, and Diane Ravitch. And of course they should actually read the texts cherished by both sides, too, so they can argue better. High school history How could entering the big fights help us reinvent high school history? First, we might look for dueling histories. It’s time for students to get into historiography and understand that history isn’t just what happened, it’s something we make. We might help kids read chapters from Howard Zinn’s socialist history of America alongside the corresponding chapters from Paul Johnson’s conservative history of America. How could big questions help? We want to help students see how various people have disagreed over some of the big questions of what human history is, at its most basic. We can have them compare Steven Pinker’s theory of civilization’s progress (Better Angels of our Nature) with Yuvah Noah Harari’s theory of civilization’s woes (Sapiens). We could have them compare so-and-so’s account of human history as an ever-expanding unlatching of energy sources with Robert Wright’s account of human history as unlatching more and more positive-sum games (Nonzero). What role could the lure of certainty play? To help them grow their skills at finding anomalies, we might help them work through pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. Q: Conspiracy theories! Oh, come now, you’re playing with fire. Well, the world is on fire. Our students will spend the rest of their lives encountering terrible-but-beguiling arguments about how the world works; if we don’t prepare them for those, what have we been doing? So we should introduce arguments that the Moon landing was a hoax, that the Illuminati founded America, that aliens built the pyramids, and so on. At no point can we demean students for falling for any of these theories — the job of a teacher at this stage, Egan writes, is to support students in their reasoning even when their beliefs are offensive and stupid, gradually offering anomalies. There’s no way out of bad theories except through them. By the time students graduate, we want them to have wrestled with terrible ideas and — for a while — lost. They need to experience what it’s like to change their minds about something they felt strongly about. They need to viscerally realize, in Feynman’s famous phrase, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” High school natural science How could entering the big fights reinvent high school science? At present, so much of the high school science curriculum — especially “honors” classes — is oriented toward helping amass details. (The same is true of 100-level university classes, which famously “survey” the field to prepare for more advanced studies. I always thought this was stupid — of the huge lecture hall of students in my Geology 100 class, how many went on to take even a second course?) The meaty debates that propel science forward are held back. Egan complains: “The more general and speculative theories in any discipline are treated like an unconventional and disreputable relation who, even though the children find her exciting and entertaining, must be kept hidden from view, her very existence denied as long as possible”. This is a stupid approach — students with an adventurous bent are convinced that science isn’t for them. Egan proposes, simply, that we flip this, and organize high school science classes around the big debates. We shouldn’t be ashamed at how, well, adolescent this might look: “the dramatic, speculative, and contentious theories will be up-front in the early years of the [high school] curriculum”. What might those be? Egan doesn’t give a list, but we can spitball some: instead of explaining what “matter” is from the top down, a physics class could problematize “matter” by following the debates over the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and by becoming familiarized with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics

Inline links: In a biting essay, In my favorite of his books, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ywm7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9c9b1ed-a260-4117-8679-0b5a32339748_1600x574.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WPeH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62ea55f8-0458-484f-be45-7a011d050756_1600x625.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FPXt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb017fc37-3151-4556-87f1-31a097cf7594_1600x574.png

Tall Poppies1 mentions across 1 issues

Tall Poppies is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2024 and July 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "lest they look like Tall Poppies - people who defect from an unspoken social consensus". It most often appears alongside /r/iamverysmart, 4chan, Achilles.

Reference entry: Tall Poppies
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 30, 2024
Last seen: July 30, 2024

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman July 30, 2024

iamverysmart 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
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Ada Palmer 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman

July 30, 2024 · Original source

I want to watch every superhero movie ever filmed. Ozy is very nice and basically never gets compared to barbarian warlords. Still, this essay is a master morality manifesto. Slave morality is goals for dead people. Corpses aren’t greedy. They don’t oppress anyone. They never hurt people. They don’t stand out, or try to be better than anyone else, or express pride. Slave morality is about compulsively making yourself smaller, weaker, less distinctive, and less disruptive to anyone else - which makes corpses the acknowledged experts. Compare Achilles (master morality) to some of the early Christian saints (slave morality). Achilles wants personal glory. He seeks personal glory by being the best - the strongest, the most handsome, the most skilled in warfare - and by doing great deeds of renown. He had the most beautiful armor, the hottest women, and the best soldiers. When Agamemnon offended him, he was willing to let all of Greece perish to piss him off and restore his honor. The early Christian saints definitely didn’t want personal glory - if anyone had tried to glorify them, they would have said something very pious like “I am only a humble servant of God, it is He who should be glorified”. They’re remembered primarily for their excellence in ensmallening themselves. They would fast until they became living skeletons, take vows of silence, or brick themselves in a tiny cell and spend the rest of their lives there. They would wash the feet of lepers out of humility, wear sackcloth to make sure they didn’t get overly proud about their clothing, and whip themselves bloody if they caught themselves having desires. Other religions’ saints are even worse - the Buddhists would try to meditate themselves into nonexistence! At least the saints had the excuse that they were ensmallening themselves so God could fill them up with His own glory. But if you ensmallen yourself, you’ll just end up anxious, miserable, and devoid of accomplishments. And at least the saints were doing this because they genuinely believed in it. For Nietzsche, the essence of slave morality is the herd instinct - ie a distributed mob of people saying “you had better ensmallen yourself if you know what’s good for you” as a sort of sinister backscratcher club. An individual might ensmallen themselves because of personal fealty to slave morality. But more often they’re doing it lest they look like Tall Poppies - people who defect from an unspoken social consensus that everyone ensmallen themselves, and so earn the envy and hatred of their peers. IV. Edward Teach1 The other useful way to think about slave morality is as a package of ideas that lets people avoid positive judgment. (by “positive judgment”, I mean judgment based on whether someone has accomplishments - as opposed to “negative judgment”, judgment based on whether someone has avoided causing harm) This comes from the same place as the embiggening critique. If people can be judged on their accomplishments, then it seems like you should go out and get some accomplishments, ie embiggen yourself. If people can only be judged on their harms, it seems like you should try to avoid causing harm, ie ensmallen yourself. So another way to think about slave vs. master morality is as coefficients on the normal utilitarian equation, good = benefits - harms. Master moralists overweight the benefits term; slave moralists focus on the harms. In a second, I’ll list some strategies for avoiding positive judgment, but first, a warning. All good defense mechanisms contain an element of truth. People deploy these strategies because they’re often true. I’m not saying that these are all false things people only believe for psychological reasons - just that if you notice someone who seems obsessed with them, deploying them far more often than the truth seems to warrant, maybe there’s something psychological going on. You obsess over the idea that the system is rigged. This is an obsession rather than a delusion - the system may very well be rigged, but you care about it way too much. The more rigged the system is, the less you can judge anyone positively for succeeding in it.

Inline links: backscratcher club, 1

My working model of these people’s psychology is something like: if you admit that charity is good, or that some charities are better than others, that’s an objective value. Any objective value lets you smuggle in the claim that some people are better than others. These people’s psychopolitics focus almost entirely on cutting down Tall Poppies, and on pre-emptively salting any soil that might one day allow a Tall Poppy to grow. An optimist might say this is because their first commitment is to the ultimate equality of humankind, beyond any commitment to short-term material welfare. A cynic might say they’re fallen so deep into Avoidance Of Judgment Hell that it’s impossible for them to parse any action or belief except as a hostile status claim - and that it’s impossible for them to treat the external world, whether starving people live or die, etc, as anything other than a prop in their internal status obfuscation pantomime. While a normal person might hear “Bill Gates led an amazing anti-malaria campaign that saved ten million people’s lives” and have some sort of emotion about the ten million lives being saved, these people only hear the word “led” and become obsessed with the need to cut Gates down a notch so people don’t think he’s cooler than they are.

Tall Poppy Police1 mentions across 1 issues

Tall Poppy Police is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2024 and July 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "self-designated Tall Poppy Police". It most often appears alongside /r/iamverysmart, 4chan, Achilles.

Reference entry: Tall Poppy Police
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 30, 2024
Last seen: July 30, 2024

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman July 30, 2024

iamverysmart 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
Achilles 1 shared issues
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Africa 1 shared issues

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman

July 30, 2024 · Original source

You interpret any attempt to talk about good things, pursue good things, or (God forbid) achieve good things as a bid for status, and pre-emptively try to cut it down. You spread rumors about anyone who seems better then you. If they make too much money, they’re a shady profiteer; if they’re too smart, they’re an IQ-obsessed r/IAmVerySmart techbro; if they’re too pretty, they’re a slut. Your goal is to unite all the envious people into a Tall Poppy Police who agree that successful people suck, to prevent anyone from potentially judging you as worse than them.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MX1F!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a0fc810-973e-4c07-b194-c2e2b7007d9d_596x454.png

These are obviously left-wing, in the sense that they’re literal Communist propaganda. But to the modern eye there’s something off about them, something that makes you want to call them right-wing or even fascist. They’re bold and optimistic. Even though the commissars who commissioned them probably rejected some traditional or capitalist conception of virtue, they still firmly insist that there’s something sort of like virtue or power which is attainable and good. I think these are first-form posters, and that most modern leftism is second-form. I think if you had to group barbarian warlords, Puritans, Soviet communists, and modern leftists on a Nietzschean/geneaological/aesthetic axis, it would go: (Barbarian warlords) | (Puritans, Soviet communists) | (modern leftists) So one very weak compromise - hardly even a compromise, since it predates Nietzsche - is to try to stick with first-form slave morality, in the hopes that most of the problems come from the second. VIII. Ayn Rand “Is Ayn Rand a Nietzschean?”- the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12239 pages of heated debate. There’s a real answer here. Rand started out respecting, maybe even loving Nietzsche. She once said that: [Nietzsche’s] Thus Spake Zarathustra is my Bible. I can never commit suicide while I have it. …which maybe reveals more about her psychological situation than I expected from the answer to a “who’s your favorite philosopher” questionnaire. But later on she broke from him. It’s hard to figure out her exact position - she has a bad habit of treating anyone who disagrees with her in any tiny detail as the Antichrist, such that it’s hard to figure out whether she thinks of someone as a 99% fellow traveler or an arch-enemy. Still, there are substantial differences. Nietzsche is more chaotic - he expects the superior man to defy all external rules in favor of his own glorious destiny. But Rand is attached to rules - most of all the epistemic rules of Reason, but also the usual moral tenets like “don’t kill” and “don’t steal”. Nietzsche’s masters take the Ron Swanson approach to justifying their actions: …whereas Rand’s masters are prone to giving twenty-page-long arguments for why whatever they’re doing is the right choice according to Objectively Correct Moral Law. Rand’s approach has lots of advantages. The Nietzschean master, like Andrew Tate, is an awful guy to have around. It’s hard to fit him into a functioning civilization, except maybe an autocracy with him as autocrat. Nietzsche’s pitch is “hey excellent people, you should try to become this guy”, never “hey normal people, you should support my project of creating these guys, out of your own self-interest.” The latter wouldn’t pass the laugh test. Rand’s masters, while still probably very stressful to be around, have been tamed. They follow civilized rules of honesty and nonviolence - not, of course, because they’re too weak to defy them, but because following civilized rules is objectively the coolest thing of all. Instead of competing in battle and leaving a trail of bloody corpses, they compete in Capitalism and leave a trail of high-paying jobs and excellent consumer goods. They’re not doing to serve you - “I should serve the little guy” is slave moralist bulls**t. But, by coincidence, their excellent actions are doing you a service. They might only invent rocket ships to enact their Promethean conquest of nature and prove their own greatness. But you still get to ride in one. Rand also spares more of a thought (or at least an afterthought) for the little guy. Capitalism needs all types - even the company janitor genuinely contributes to whatever glorious accomplishments are going on, and deserves to feel good about themselves. She wants everyone to be the best, most ambitious, and most fighting-for-their-own-aesthetic/moral-vision they can be. But if that means being the company janitor, that’s fine. And if you love rockets and you consummate that love by becoming the janitor for a rocket company, the Objectively Correct Moral Law is 100% on board. I am not a Nietzsche scholar, but I think this is a more productive answer than Nietzsche has for this question. The disadvantage of Rand’s approach compared to Nietzsche’s is that it only works if you believe her proofs about why the Objectively Correct Moral Law is definitely objective and correct - most of which seem to me to be either hand-wavy or balderdash. Otherwise the whole thing breaks down - why is the most masterful thing to be a positive-sum capitalist instead of a negative-sum warlord? Rand really really wants to justify a peaceful, glorious, positive-sum society, to the exact people most capable of benefiting from defecting against it, without bringing in altruism or the common good at any point. It’s an extremely sympathetic goal. But I don’t think she makes it. Still, this is why I’m fond of her. If you really read her books - as opposed to skimming them while subvocalizing “this is that evil woman who loves selfishness” under your breath the whole time - it’s obvious that she believes, with a deep and burning belief, that good things are good. She really really wants to think that you can objectively convince people to support a peaceful, glorious, positive-sum society, without any hint of the psychologically-toxic slave morality that typified the USSR she grew up in. When people react to her books with loathing - without even a hint of fondness - I get suspicious that they’ve gotten so deep into slave morality that thy can’t recognize goodness when it hits them over the head with a sledgehammer. Elsewhere, I wrote: Edward Teach (Sadly, Porn) is famous for making up fake novels to criticize, and it is a little known fact that the "Ayn Rand" character along with all her novels are 100% his work. They operate as a diagnostic test based on his psychodynamic theory of envy. The instrument presents a picture of some exceptional people achieving great things who don't apologize for their greatness, and doesn’t explicitly ask the patient - I mean, reader - for their opinion. If the reader has no strong opinion, or says something like "Good for them, I guess," she passes the test. "I like these people and will use them as a role model" also passes. Some specific criticisms (see below) may also pass. If the reader says "Ah, people who are better than the pathetic sheep around them, just like I'm better than all the pathetic sheep around me!", she . . . still passes the test. That's not what it's testing for! You fail the test if you absolutely freak out about some combination of the Rand characters themselves and the potential existence of arrogant people who identify with the Rand characters. The secret is that it's not a screening test for the kind of people who would get featured on /r/iamverysmart. It's a screening test for the kind of people who would comment on /r/iamverysmart, ie the self-designated Tall Poppy Police, ie the people who build their ego off being the enforcers of the rule that you're not allowed to look better than anyone else. These people's basic mental stance is to hate people who seem too excellent. They don't think of it in these terms. They think of it as calling out arrogance, although if you look too closely you'll find their definition of arrogance covers anyone who seems excellent and but doesn't spend all their time apologizing and abasing themselves and denying it. The brilliance of Teach-Rand is how he-she draws this tendency to the foreground For example, why the whole "Objectivism" thing? Not because value is necessarily completely objective, but because the idea that any value might ever be even partially objective freaks out the Tall Poppy Syndrome people. Mention value at all, and they say you must be trying to secretly smuggle in the assumption that you are more valuable than other people (and therefore you are less valuable than other people, and therefore they are better than you). The same is true of Reason. Mention that Reason exists, and they'll interpret it as a claim that you, the only rational person, are claiming to always be right and infallible. But (they retort) actually nobody knows anything, and the only wise people are the people like them who humbly admit this. (how do you decide what's true without Reason? By bias-based-reasoning - "You say X, but I can imagine a way that would come from a place of believing you're better than other people, therefore, Not-X is true. You say that's a logical fallacy? That must come from a place of believing you're smarter than everyone else and the only person who can use Facts and Logic.") The Teach-Rand test is designed to catch the sort of person who, if someone says that on a right triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2, responds with "Oh, so you're claiming to be some kind of right triangle expert who's better than the rest of us? You really need to work on that arrogance problem! Super cringe!" Any criticism of the book that doesn't come from this particular place is irrelevant to the test and doesn't count against your grade. (which is good, because the books are bad in a lot of ways. But that's fine - Rorschach blots don't also have to be great art!) Still, I don’t think she’s the superman (superwoman?) who successfully transcends the dichotomy Her philosophy is only as strong as its proofs of Objective Correctness, which I consider weak. Without those, you need some subjective motivation to glue things together - of which altruism is the most popular. But also, don’t we like altruism? When we’re bestriding the Earth like colossi, working on our glorious rocket ships to colonize the universe, isn’t part of what we’re thinking “this is going to revolutionize humankind and make everybody better off?” If you force yourself to reject that motivation, to just repeat “no no no, I’m only doing this because rockets are really big and make cool explosions”, aren’t you cutting out a part of yourself, in exactly the way Nietzschean masters are supposed to try to avoid doing? I find something very compelling about Rand. I think she goes some of the way to answering the Andrew Tate objection to master morality. But she’s a means and not an end. A real superman would have to figure out some way to reintroduce basic human kindness. IX. Matt Yglesias Yglesias’s mantra - “good things are good” - is too perfect and profound to come from anyone other than an esoteric master of Nietzschean philosophy. Good Straussians ignore the title and focus on the subtitle. Nietzsche wrote in the 1890s. There were still real nobles and emperors walking around; communists had not yet started calling capitalism “late capitalism”. Sure, his world was probably some sort of weak compromise between master and slave morality, but it was different from our weak compromise. Our weak compromise was forged through dialogue and warfare with fascism’s novel take on master morality and socialism’s novel take on slave morality. I think of Yglesias - who combines an insistence that good things are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest among us - as one of its most self-conscious proponents. When I first titled this post, I didn’t know that Richard Hanania had come to the same conclusion and created this face-mash-up of Matt Yglesias and Nietzsche. The compromise goes something like: Everyone is equal before the law, before the metaphorical throne of metaphorical God, and in some poorly defined philosophical sense. This is very important. It’s our headline result. Everything else should be interpreted in light of this central fact.

Inline links: a real answer here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OtNv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ae1aaf2-6cc3-488c-b0a7-5df62eee457b_225x225.jpeg, Elsewhere, Sadly, Porn, /r/iamverysmart, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MzIr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff03d1a9d-5ffc-45ff-84bc-db3388915bbc_259x390.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hYvV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0f9b152-da12-4525-b062-b4c14d8b8005_383x373.png

Tall Poppy Syndrome1 mentions across 1 issues

Tall Poppy Syndrome is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2024 and July 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "cf. Tall Poppy Syndrome". It most often appears alongside /r/iamverysmart, 4chan, Achilles.

Reference entry: Tall Poppy Syndrome
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 30, 2024
Last seen: July 30, 2024

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman July 30, 2024

iamverysmart 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
Achilles 1 shared issues
Ada Palmer 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman

July 30, 2024 · Original source

Slave morality says that the strong are tyrants, the rich are greedy, and the ambitious are puffed-up braggarts. The wisest man is he who admits he knows nothing; the strongest man is he who conquers his own desires; it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle and so on. God loves the humble, the salt of the earth. The worst thing you can do is try to pridefully rise above your fellows (cf. Tall Poppy Syndrome); the best thing you can do is to lessen yourself, through methods sacred (fasting, celibacy, self-flagellation) or mundane (giving to charity, serving your fellow man).

Inline links: Tall Poppy Syndrome

These are obviously left-wing, in the sense that they’re literal Communist propaganda. But to the modern eye there’s something off about them, something that makes you want to call them right-wing or even fascist. They’re bold and optimistic. Even though the commissars who commissioned them probably rejected some traditional or capitalist conception of virtue, they still firmly insist that there’s something sort of like virtue or power which is attainable and good. I think these are first-form posters, and that most modern leftism is second-form. I think if you had to group barbarian warlords, Puritans, Soviet communists, and modern leftists on a Nietzschean/geneaological/aesthetic axis, it would go: (Barbarian warlords) | (Puritans, Soviet communists) | (modern leftists) So one very weak compromise - hardly even a compromise, since it predates Nietzsche - is to try to stick with first-form slave morality, in the hopes that most of the problems come from the second. VIII. Ayn Rand “Is Ayn Rand a Nietzschean?”- the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12239 pages of heated debate. There’s a real answer here. Rand started out respecting, maybe even loving Nietzsche. She once said that: [Nietzsche’s] Thus Spake Zarathustra is my Bible. I can never commit suicide while I have it. …which maybe reveals more about her psychological situation than I expected from the answer to a “who’s your favorite philosopher” questionnaire. But later on she broke from him. It’s hard to figure out her exact position - she has a bad habit of treating anyone who disagrees with her in any tiny detail as the Antichrist, such that it’s hard to figure out whether she thinks of someone as a 99% fellow traveler or an arch-enemy. Still, there are substantial differences. Nietzsche is more chaotic - he expects the superior man to defy all external rules in favor of his own glorious destiny. But Rand is attached to rules - most of all the epistemic rules of Reason, but also the usual moral tenets like “don’t kill” and “don’t steal”. Nietzsche’s masters take the Ron Swanson approach to justifying their actions: …whereas Rand’s masters are prone to giving twenty-page-long arguments for why whatever they’re doing is the right choice according to Objectively Correct Moral Law. Rand’s approach has lots of advantages. The Nietzschean master, like Andrew Tate, is an awful guy to have around. It’s hard to fit him into a functioning civilization, except maybe an autocracy with him as autocrat. Nietzsche’s pitch is “hey excellent people, you should try to become this guy”, never “hey normal people, you should support my project of creating these guys, out of your own self-interest.” The latter wouldn’t pass the laugh test. Rand’s masters, while still probably very stressful to be around, have been tamed. They follow civilized rules of honesty and nonviolence - not, of course, because they’re too weak to defy them, but because following civilized rules is objectively the coolest thing of all. Instead of competing in battle and leaving a trail of bloody corpses, they compete in Capitalism and leave a trail of high-paying jobs and excellent consumer goods. They’re not doing to serve you - “I should serve the little guy” is slave moralist bulls**t. But, by coincidence, their excellent actions are doing you a service. They might only invent rocket ships to enact their Promethean conquest of nature and prove their own greatness. But you still get to ride in one. Rand also spares more of a thought (or at least an afterthought) for the little guy. Capitalism needs all types - even the company janitor genuinely contributes to whatever glorious accomplishments are going on, and deserves to feel good about themselves. She wants everyone to be the best, most ambitious, and most fighting-for-their-own-aesthetic/moral-vision they can be. But if that means being the company janitor, that’s fine. And if you love rockets and you consummate that love by becoming the janitor for a rocket company, the Objectively Correct Moral Law is 100% on board. I am not a Nietzsche scholar, but I think this is a more productive answer than Nietzsche has for this question. The disadvantage of Rand’s approach compared to Nietzsche’s is that it only works if you believe her proofs about why the Objectively Correct Moral Law is definitely objective and correct - most of which seem to me to be either hand-wavy or balderdash. Otherwise the whole thing breaks down - why is the most masterful thing to be a positive-sum capitalist instead of a negative-sum warlord? Rand really really wants to justify a peaceful, glorious, positive-sum society, to the exact people most capable of benefiting from defecting against it, without bringing in altruism or the common good at any point. It’s an extremely sympathetic goal. But I don’t think she makes it. Still, this is why I’m fond of her. If you really read her books - as opposed to skimming them while subvocalizing “this is that evil woman who loves selfishness” under your breath the whole time - it’s obvious that she believes, with a deep and burning belief, that good things are good. She really really wants to think that you can objectively convince people to support a peaceful, glorious, positive-sum society, without any hint of the psychologically-toxic slave morality that typified the USSR she grew up in. When people react to her books with loathing - without even a hint of fondness - I get suspicious that they’ve gotten so deep into slave morality that thy can’t recognize goodness when it hits them over the head with a sledgehammer. Elsewhere, I wrote: Edward Teach (Sadly, Porn) is famous for making up fake novels to criticize, and it is a little known fact that the "Ayn Rand" character along with all her novels are 100% his work. They operate as a diagnostic test based on his psychodynamic theory of envy. The instrument presents a picture of some exceptional people achieving great things who don't apologize for their greatness, and doesn’t explicitly ask the patient - I mean, reader - for their opinion. If the reader has no strong opinion, or says something like "Good for them, I guess," she passes the test. "I like these people and will use them as a role model" also passes. Some specific criticisms (see below) may also pass. If the reader says "Ah, people who are better than the pathetic sheep around them, just like I'm better than all the pathetic sheep around me!", she . . . still passes the test. That's not what it's testing for! You fail the test if you absolutely freak out about some combination of the Rand characters themselves and the potential existence of arrogant people who identify with the Rand characters. The secret is that it's not a screening test for the kind of people who would get featured on /r/iamverysmart. It's a screening test for the kind of people who would comment on /r/iamverysmart, ie the self-designated Tall Poppy Police, ie the people who build their ego off being the enforcers of the rule that you're not allowed to look better than anyone else. These people's basic mental stance is to hate people who seem too excellent. They don't think of it in these terms. They think of it as calling out arrogance, although if you look too closely you'll find their definition of arrogance covers anyone who seems excellent and but doesn't spend all their time apologizing and abasing themselves and denying it. The brilliance of Teach-Rand is how he-she draws this tendency to the foreground For example, why the whole "Objectivism" thing? Not because value is necessarily completely objective, but because the idea that any value might ever be even partially objective freaks out the Tall Poppy Syndrome people. Mention value at all, and they say you must be trying to secretly smuggle in the assumption that you are more valuable than other people (and therefore you are less valuable than other people, and therefore they are better than you). The same is true of Reason. Mention that Reason exists, and they'll interpret it as a claim that you, the only rational person, are claiming to always be right and infallible. But (they retort) actually nobody knows anything, and the only wise people are the people like them who humbly admit this. (how do you decide what's true without Reason? By bias-based-reasoning - "You say X, but I can imagine a way that would come from a place of believing you're better than other people, therefore, Not-X is true. You say that's a logical fallacy? That must come from a place of believing you're smarter than everyone else and the only person who can use Facts and Logic.") The Teach-Rand test is designed to catch the sort of person who, if someone says that on a right triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2, responds with "Oh, so you're claiming to be some kind of right triangle expert who's better than the rest of us? You really need to work on that arrogance problem! Super cringe!" Any criticism of the book that doesn't come from this particular place is irrelevant to the test and doesn't count against your grade. (which is good, because the books are bad in a lot of ways. But that's fine - Rorschach blots don't also have to be great art!) Still, I don’t think she’s the superman (superwoman?) who successfully transcends the dichotomy Her philosophy is only as strong as its proofs of Objective Correctness, which I consider weak. Without those, you need some subjective motivation to glue things together - of which altruism is the most popular. But also, don’t we like altruism? When we’re bestriding the Earth like colossi, working on our glorious rocket ships to colonize the universe, isn’t part of what we’re thinking “this is going to revolutionize humankind and make everybody better off?” If you force yourself to reject that motivation, to just repeat “no no no, I’m only doing this because rockets are really big and make cool explosions”, aren’t you cutting out a part of yourself, in exactly the way Nietzschean masters are supposed to try to avoid doing? I find something very compelling about Rand. I think she goes some of the way to answering the Andrew Tate objection to master morality. But she’s a means and not an end. A real superman would have to figure out some way to reintroduce basic human kindness. IX. Matt Yglesias Yglesias’s mantra - “good things are good” - is too perfect and profound to come from anyone other than an esoteric master of Nietzschean philosophy. Good Straussians ignore the title and focus on the subtitle. Nietzsche wrote in the 1890s. There were still real nobles and emperors walking around; communists had not yet started calling capitalism “late capitalism”. Sure, his world was probably some sort of weak compromise between master and slave morality, but it was different from our weak compromise. Our weak compromise was forged through dialogue and warfare with fascism’s novel take on master morality and socialism’s novel take on slave morality. I think of Yglesias - who combines an insistence that good things are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest among us - as one of its most self-conscious proponents. When I first titled this post, I didn’t know that Richard Hanania had come to the same conclusion and created this face-mash-up of Matt Yglesias and Nietzsche. The compromise goes something like: Everyone is equal before the law, before the metaphorical throne of metaphorical God, and in some poorly defined philosophical sense. This is very important. It’s our headline result. Everything else should be interpreted in light of this central fact.

Talmud-readers1 mentions across 1 issues

Talmud-readers is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 07, 2023 and November 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the rite of circumcision is meant to bind us Talmud-readers to God". It most often appears alongside Aceso Under Glass, ACX Grant, America.

Reference entry: Talmud-readers
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 07, 2023
Last seen: November 07, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation November 07, 2023

Aceso Under Glass 1 shared issues
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Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation

November 07, 2023 · Original source

In addition to the very obvious benefits to the recipient, who is still doing well, I think donating helped me solidify my adult identity. Not in any public way, no one in my current city of residence even knows except my wife and whoever has read my medical file. My experience is that much as the rite of circumcision is meant to bind us Talmud-readers to God, kidney donation binds one to principles of altruism in a way no amount of donated money ever will. Even as I've gotten older and less idealistic, I remind myself that I am a man who once donated a kidney, that I should never let my character stray too far from that of the younger man who was capable of such things. No regrets.

Tamil1 mentions across 1 issues

Tamil is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 28, 2021 and June 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Most of Malaysia's businesspeople are from the Chinese or Tamil minority groups". It most often appears alongside Alexander Hamilton, America, ASEAN.

Reference entry: Tamil
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 28, 2021
Last seen: June 28, 2021

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Book Review: How Asia Works June 28, 2021

Alexander Hamilton 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
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Asia 1 shared issues
Association of South-East Asian Nations 1 shared issues

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Book Review: How Asia Works

June 28, 2021 · Original source

Fourth, Mahathir was committed to affirmative action. Most of Malaysia's businesspeople are from the Chinese or Tamil minority groups, and a lot of Malaysian politics is about trying to lift up the less successful Malay majority. This meant Mahathir had to support native Malay firms, native Malay entrepreneurs, etc. But this blocked him from using a lot of his best people. It also committed him to a more centralized strategy; he didn't want to support the development of existing businesses, because existing businesses were owned by people of the wrong race. He didn't want to let the free market pick winners, because it might pick people of the wrong race. This forced him to be more hands-on, and his government wasn't up to the task.

tan galán1 mentions across 1 issues

tan galán is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 22, 2025 and April 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Origins of cowboy slang : ten gallon hat = tan galán (Spanish for “very gallant”)". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, @msamalam, A Ketamine Addict’s Perspective On Musk.

Reference entry: tan galán
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 22, 2025
Last seen: April 22, 2025

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Links For April 2025 April 22, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
@msamalam 1 shared issues
A Ketamine Addict’s Perspective On Musk 1 shared issues
Agent Village 1 shared issues
AGI Fridays 1 shared issues

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Links For April 2025

April 22, 2025 · Original source

1: Origins of cowboy slang: Buckaroo = vaquero; cahoots = cohorts; ten gallon hat = tan galán (Spanish for “very gallant”).

Inline links: Origins of cowboy slang

Tanzanite1 mentions across 1 issues

Tanzanite is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 13, 2022 and August 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Review a non-fiction book about the connection between Tanzanite mining and the re-emergence of Georgist Monarchalism". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI, ancient Greeks.

Reference entry: Tanzanite
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 13, 2022
Last seen: August 13, 2022

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Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune August 13, 2022

ACX 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
ancient Greeks 1 shared issues
Arakeen 1 shared issues
Arakeen sandtrout 1 shared issues

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August 13, 2022 · Original source

So, why write a review on a 40-year-old sci-fi novel that nobody likes? If there is an orthodox strategy to winning an ACX book review contest, it’s probably something like “Review a non-fiction book about the connection between Tanzanite mining and the re-emergence of Georgist Monarchalism” and not so much “Scattered musings on the least popular Frank Herbert novel”. Why bother?

Taoist doctrine1 mentions across 1 issues

Taoist doctrine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 19, 2022 and August 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "essay topic for the last palace examination a theme related to the Taoist doctrine". It most often appears alongside 1587, 1587, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline.

Reference entry: Taoist doctrine
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 19, 2022
Last seen: August 19, 2022

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Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance August 19, 2022

1587 1 shared issues
1587 1 shared issues
1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline 1 shared issues
A Universal History of Infamy 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

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August 19, 2022 · Original source

In 1587, the Year of the Pig: “the Wan-Li emperor was still only twenty-four years old; but he had been ruler for fifteen years. The time-span seemed even longer because of so many repetitious and tiring routines.... Alert observers could tell that the emperor was either tired or bored or both. He had chosen as essay topic for the last palace examination a theme related to the Taoist doctrine that good government could be maintained while the ruler did nothing."

He ignored the bureaucrats' indignant memos, and their beloved tradition offered no guidance on how to deal with a ruler who ignored his traditional obligations yet “in doing so was literally following the Taoist doctrine of inaction.”

Taoist doctrine of inaction1 mentions across 1 issues

Taoist doctrine of inaction is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 19, 2022 and August 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "in doing so was literally following the Taoist doctrine of inaction". It most often appears alongside 1587, 1587, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline.

Reference entry: Taoist doctrine of inaction
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 19, 2022
Last seen: August 19, 2022

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Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance August 19, 2022

1587 1 shared issues
1587 1 shared issues
1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline 1 shared issues
A Universal History of Infamy 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Order Without Law

August 19, 2022 · Original source

He ignored the bureaucrats' indignant memos, and their beloved tradition offered no guidance on how to deal with a ruler who ignored his traditional obligations yet “in doing so was literally following the Taoist doctrine of inaction.”

Tarasoff decision1 mentions across 1 issues

Tarasoff decision is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 08, 2021 and April 08, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Tarasoff decision imposed stronger duties than it actually did". It most often appears alongside ACX, amoral familialism, An Introduction to Law and Economics.

Reference entry: Tarasoff decision
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 08, 2021
Last seen: April 08, 2021

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Your Book Review: Order Without Law April 08, 2021

ACX 1 shared issues
amoral familialism 1 shared issues
An Introduction to Law and Economics 1 shared issues
anthropology 1 shared issues
Association of American Publishers 1 shared issues

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April 08, 2021 · Original source

...eving social control.”) Even specialists often don’t know the law in detail as it applies to their speciality. (The “great majority” of California therapists thought the Tarasoff decision imposed stronger duties than it actually did.) And people just don’t hire attorneys very often. We saw examples of all of these in Shasta County as well; part one can be...

...achieving social control.”) Even specialists often don’t know the law in detail as it applies to their speciality. (The “great majority” of California therapists thought the Tarasoff decision imposed stronger duties than it actually did.) And people just don’t hire attorneys very often. We saw examples of all of these in Shasta County as well; part one can be seen as a challenge to the law-and-economics...

tardigrades1 mentions across 1 issues

tardigrades is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2024 and February 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tardigrades (aka water-bears) are near-microscopic little animals known for being impervious to almost everything". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 23andme, ACX.

Reference entry: tardigrades
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2024
Last seen: February 10, 2024

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ACX Grants Results 2024 February 10, 2024

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Book Review 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues

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ACX Grants Results 2024

February 10, 2024 · Original source

Joshua Morgan, $8,000, for work adding tardigrade genes to human cells. Tardigrades (aka water-bears) are near-microscopic little animals known for being impervious to almost everything - they can survive temperatures near absolute zero, extremely high doses of radiation, the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean, and even the void of outer space. Professor Morgan and his lab at UC Riverside want to add some of the relevant genes to human stem cells. They say that they hope to create hardier cell lines for research and therapeutic purposes (for example, to strengthen graft tissue after surgery) and our bio evaluators were very impressed by the possibilities here. But if all of this is secretly a plan to create invincible supermen, I’m happy to give them the grant for that too.

Tarot of the Silicon Dawn1 mentions across 1 issues

Tarot of the Silicon Dawn is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2022 and February 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tarot of the Silicon Dawn (draw random card)". It most often appears alongside 1984, Anatoly Karlin, AnechoicMedia.

Reference entry: Tarot of the Silicon Dawn
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 22, 2022
Last seen: February 22, 2022

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Links For February February 22, 2022

1984 1 shared issues
Anatoly Karlin 1 shared issues
AnechoicMedia 1 shared issues
Australia 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues

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Links For February

February 22, 2022 · Original source

6: Tarot of the Silicon Dawn (draw random card)

Inline links: draw random card

Tartarian Empire1 mentions across 1 issues

Tartarian Empire is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 04, 2021 and October 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Just scratch out the references to "Tartarian Empire" and replace it with "Interwar America"". It most often appears alongside 19th century African art, 20th century, 9-11.

Reference entry: Tartarian Empire
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 04, 2021
Last seen: October 04, 2021

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Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture October 04, 2021

19th century African art 1 shared issues
20th century 1 shared issues
9-11 1 shared issues
abstract art 1 shared issues
Aka 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture

October 04, 2021 · Original source

So, is it just me or is the Tartaria conspiracy theory… blatantly obviously correct? Like, our modern society has all the trappings of that sort of “twilight of the gods” fiction. We have technology which we still use despite being unable to produce it (nuclear power, skyscrapers, space travel), a culture of pessimism and trying to hold on to what we have over producing anything new, a decadent and onanistic upper class, a drugged-into-complacency lower class. Like, there’s nuttiness which I don’t accept, but this seems so abundantly obviously true-in-substance that I feel like it just barely counts as a “conspiracy theory”. Just scratch out the references to "Tartarian Empire" and replace it with "Interwar America" and it seems like a fairly accurate description of history.

Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease1 mentions across 1 issues

Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 04, 2023 and January 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Now it’s Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease". It most often appears alongside AI Circle, Anthropic, Asana.

Reference entry: Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 04, 2023
Last seen: January 04, 2023

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Even More Bay Area House Party January 04, 2023

AI Circle 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Asana 1 shared issues
Astra 1 shared issues
Automated market makers 1 shared issues

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Even More Bay Area House Party

January 04, 2023 · Original source

“Not species. Two individuals. The first was a dog who lived somewhere in North America six thousand years ago. It got cancer. The cancer mutated. The mutant cancer became a sexually transmitted disease. It spread from dog to dog. It’s still around today, “canine transmissible venereal tumor”. Still made of living cells from that one original dog. That’s immortality, of a sort. The second was a Tasmanian Devil from the 1990s. Same story, now it’s Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumor Disease. It’s spread to 95% of the Devil population and will live on as long as the species itself.”

Tasmanian tigers1 mentions across 1 issues

Tasmanian tigers is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2023 and February 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "I once saw a nature documentary on Tasmanian tigers". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agin, American.

Reference entry: Tasmanian tigers
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 22, 2023
Last seen: February 22, 2023

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Book Review: The Geography Of Madness February 22, 2023

Africa 1 shared issues
Agin 1 shared issues
American 1 shared issues
Ancient Chinese 1 shared issues
Asia 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The Geography Of Madness

February 22, 2023 · Original source

This image (source) of a witch stealing a man’s penis, with a box of previously-stolen penises to her right accompanies the 1411 poem “Flowers Of Virtue” in its 1486 edition. Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1486, so if the original text of Flowers Of Virtue contained the incident this picture refers to, it would predate Malleus. But the original text is written in poetic medieval German and I can’t find a good translation. When I wrote my review of the Malleus, people were surprised at the penis-stealing witch chapters. Yet nothing could possibly be less surprising; the penis-stealing witches are timeless and omnipresent. When commenters continued to doubt, I promised them this review of Frank Bures’ Geography Of Madness. II. Frank Bures is a journalist. In 2001, he came across an unusual BBC article: a mob had killed twelve people in Nigeria, believing them to be penis-stealing witches. A few months later, a similar article: five people, Benin. He tried to pitch a story about the phenomenon to his editor, who “said he couldn’t pay me to fly to Nigeria and find essentially . . . nothing”. For some reason - and this is the point at which I start to worry about narrator reliability - Bures became obsessed with this. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. He started scraping together money to visit Africa on his own, story be damned: Nigeria gnawed at me. I knew that it was a terrible time to leave. I knew that [my wife] Bridgit, newly pregnant, wouldn’t want me to go. But I also knew that I had to, and that if I didn’t it would be a lifelong regret. . . three months later, I was the lone tourist on a plane full of Nigerians descending to Lagos. Africa is a relative newcomer to penis-stealing witches: The first recorded incident of penis theft in Africa I could find took place in Sudan in the 1960s. But in the mid- to late seventies in Nigeria, there were waves of well-documented cases. One of these happened in the northern city of Kaduna, where a psychiatrist named Dr. Sunday Ilechukwu was working in his office when a policeman arrived, escorting two men. One of them said he needed a medical assessment: He had accused the other of making his penis disappear. As with [a previously discussed incident], this had caused a disturbance in the street. During Ilechukwu’s examination, he later recounted, the victim stared straight ahead while the doctor examined his penis and pronounced him normal. “Exclaiming,” Ilechukwu wrote in the Transcultural Psychiatric Review, “the patient looked down at his groin for the first time, suggesting that the genitals had just reappeared.” According to Ilechukwu, this was part of an epidemic of magical penis theft that swept through Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. “Men could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hand in their pockets,” Ilechukwu wrote. “Women were also seen holding on to their breasts directly or discreetly, by crossing the hands across the chest . . . Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylaxes. This led to further breakdown of law and order.” During an incident, the victim would yell: “Thief! My genitals are gone!” Immediately, a culprit would be identified, apprehended by a crowd, and often killed. …but it’s been making up for lost time. Bures was able to find and interview one previous penis theft victim, plus the friend of another. Both described similar stories: someone had bumped up against them under weird circumstances, they immediately noticed their penis was much smaller than usual, they called out the culprit, and - apparently because the witch involved didn’t want to get in trouble - their penis was restored. Whatever weird itch this topic had given Bures, this didn’t satisfy him. He writes, very lucidly, about a desire to get closer to “the story”. He started bumping up against random Nigerians in suspicious ways, hoping one of them would accuse him of stealing their penis. Bures was an obvious foreigner, and a these panics often resulted in the suspected penis-stealer getting lynched, so this was a crazy thing to do. He could easily have died. Instead, everyone politely ignored him, nothing happened, and a slightly-disappointed Bures flew back to his poor family and abandoned his weird obsession. III. …for four years. After that the bug bit him again and he flew to Asia, long a center of penis-stealing witch activity. There are nature documentaries on lions, dolphins, even dinosaurs. They all share a common pattern: you talk about your subject’s habitat, their diet, their behaviors. The Asian half of The Geography Of Madness has the feel of a nature documentary on penis-stealing witches. And the last beat of every nature documentary has to be: this majestic creature, which once roamed from one end of the region to the other, is now endangered, threatened by increasing globalization and industrial activity. This is true for the witches also. Bures’ time in Hong Kong was a bust. There was a penis theft panic there forty years earlier, and he was able to interview some of the doctors who treated it. But they all said that was long ago. Now everybody is Westernized and has Western fears like vaccine injury or structural racism. They get Western mental disorders like depression and anorexia. The idea of witches stealing their penises seems as risible to them as it probably does to you. Singapore was also a bust. Bures had hoped it wouldn’t be, because it’s full of Malaysians, and Malaysia holds a special place in history as the spot where penis-stealing witches first made contact with Western science. The Malaysian word for the condition is koro (it means “head of a turtle”, based on an analogy to the penis retracting into the body the same way a turtle’s head retracts into its shell), and it is by this name that the condition gets listed in the DSM and the rest of the medical literature. Neither I nor Bures was able to find many ethnic Malays worrying about koro; most of the activity seems to be from Malaysian-Chinese. The Chinese definitely worry about it, attributing it to a wide variety of causes including poisoning, yin-yang imbalance, and - yes - witches. But Bures found nothing among any ethnicity. Once again, all the doctors said it used to be common, but disappeared as the city industrialized and adopted Western ways. Guangzhou was also a bust. The doctors said the same thing - in the old days, there would be huge epidemics of koro, social contagions that would impact hundreds of people at once. Now only a few superstitious rural people still believed. One traditional healer said he saw “three or four” cases a year. All the educated people had moved on. I once saw a nature documentary on Tasmanian tigers. Most people believe these have been extinct since 1930. Still, there are occasional unconfirmed sightings, especially in a remote area called Cape York, and every so often some scientists trudge off to Cape York with traps and cameras in the hopes of getting lucky. Bures decides end his own nature documentary with an expedition to the Cape York of the penis-stealing witches. This is a remote island village in China called Lin’gao, where in 1984: . . . rumors spread of a fox ghost - sometimes disguised an old woman roaming the land—collecting penises in covered baskets she carried on a shoulder pole. When two young men approached her and told her to uncover the baskets, they looked inside, saw that the baskets were filled with penises and died instantly of fright. Panic about koro would hit a village and last three to four days. When residents heard about a case in a neighboring village, the panic would subside, since that meant the ghost had moved on. The attacks slowly made their way around the island. The ghost struck at night, when villagers were sleeping. A chill would creep into the room, and suddenly the victim would feel his penis shrinking inward. He would grab it and run outside for help. A twenty-eight-year-old office worker was at home one night when: > “ . . . he heard a gong being beaten and the terrifying noises made by people who were panicking in a nearby neighborhood. He suddenly became anxious and experienced the sensation that his penis was shrinking. He was seized with panic and shouted loudly for help. Several men in the neighborhood rushed in and tried to rescue him by forcefully pulling his penis and making loud sounds to chase away the evil ghost that was thought to be affecting him.” Neighbors and family members were enlisted in rescue operations. Victims were beaten with sandals and slippers while the middle finger of their left had was squeezed, so that the ghost could exit the body there. The epidemic engulfed the island, with the exception of the Li and Miao minorities, who seemed to be immune to such fears. Researchers estimated that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were affected, but that “no one died from genital retraction.” One baby, however, did die when his mother tried to feed him pepper juice, and a girl was beaten to death during a two-hour exorcism. “Numerous men suffered injuries to their penises as a result of ‘rescuing’ actions.” Iron pins were sometimes inserted through the nipples of women to prevent retraction, which caused infections as well. This was, as far as anyone knows, the last great koro epidemic in Asia. Bures had a terrible time getting to Lin’gao. He had equal trouble getting an interpreter; the natives spoke a language called Be, very distantly related to Thai but not at all to regular Chinese. Finally he found someone who was able to contact a local shaman. Like any good doctor, the shaman referred him to a specialist - in this case, the designated anti-ghost shaman, who lived in a different village. He spent most of his time off on various ghost-fighting missions, but eventually Bures and his team were able to track him down. I want you to picture the scene. An American journalist has been traveling the world in search of a dying variety of witchcraft. Now he’s reached the end of the line, the wildest and most primitive region of China. With great difficulty, he has procured an interpreter. Together, they consult a shaman, who sends them on a quest to find a second, wiser shaman who specializes in ghosts. After many trials and tribulations, he reaches the second, wiser, ghost-specialist shaman, who invites him into his home, filled with strange charms and magical images. “Tell me your question,” says the shaman. And Bures asks: “What do you know about penis-stealing witches?” . . . and the shaman answers: “Haha, no one believes in that stuff anymore.” IV. So as a nature documentary, The Geography of Madness is kind of a bust. Still, Bures rescues it with some great analysis of culture-bound mental illness. A culture-bound mental illness is one that only affects people who know about it, and especially people who believe in it. Often it doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view (there’s no such thing as witches, and the penis can’t retract into the body). It sometimes spreads contagiously: someone gets a first case, the rest of the village panics, and now everyone knows about it / believes in it / is thinking about it, and so many other people get it too. Different cultures have their own set of culture-bound illnesses. Sometimes there are commonalities - many cultures have something something penis something witches - but the details vary, and a victim almost always gets a case that matches the way their own culture understands it. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT MAKING IT UP. I cannot stress this enough. There are plenty of examples of people driving metal objects through their penis in order to pull it out of their body or prevent the witches from getting it or something like that. There is no amount of commitment to the bit which will make people drive metal objects through their penis. People have died from these conditions - not the illness itself, which is fake, but from wasting away worrying about it, or taking dangerous sham treatments, or getting into fights with people they think caused it. If you think of it as “their unconscious mind must be doing something like making it up, but their conscious mind believes it 100%”, you will be closer to the truth, though there are various reasons I don’t like that framing. In Rajasthan, India, people come to the hospital with gilahari (lizard) syndrome. Patients say a lizard-like mass, sometimes visible as a skin swelling, is crawling around the body. They express terror that it will reach their airway and suffocate them. Japanese people may contract jikoshu-kyofu, a debilitating fear that they have terrible body odor. No amount of reassurances by friends and psychiatrists can convince these people that they smell normal, nor will any number of deodorants or perfumes make them comfortable. The French suffer from bouffée délirante, where a perfectly healthy person suddenly becomes completely psychotic, with well-formed hallucinations and delusions - then recovers just as suddenly, sometimes over hours or days. This is not how psychosis works anywhere except France and a few former French colonies. Traditional Chinese medicine monitors the balance between yin and yang. The male orgasm can deplete yang, and sure enough in China (but nowhere else) some men suffer traditional symptoms of yang depletion after they orgasm. “The symptoms can last weeks to months after a single orgasm, [and include] chills, dizziness, [and] backache”. The phrase “run amok” comes from Malaysia, where it referred to a specific phenomenon: some person who had been unhappy for a long time would suddenly snap, kill a bunch of people, then say they had no memory of doing it. Malaysian culture totally rolls with this and doesn’t hold it against them; the unhappiness is a risk factor for possession by a tiger spirit, which commits the killings. Although Malays have been doing this since at least the 1700s, there are some fascinating parallels with modern US mass shootings that suggest the damn tiger spirits have finally made it to the US common psychological origins. I have seen exactly one demonic possession case in my ten years as a psychiatrist. The man fell to the ground, mouth foaming, chanting strange syllables and the names of Biblical demons. My attending doctor at the time - one of those people who somehow manages to be an expert in everything - was an expert in demonic possession, and told us that he was in no way psychotic, antipsychotics wouldn’t help him (except insofar as they help everyone by decreasing all behaviors), and he needed to “work through his issues”. The patient was uncooperative - he was only visiting MDs because the local bishop wouldn’t call in an exorcist until he got a psych exam - and eventually left against medical advice. After going down the list, Bures asks the correct next question: how do we know whether or not our own mental illnesses are just as culture-bound as the Japanese or Malaysians’? Cultures that believe in witches have witch-related culture-bound illnesses; cultures that believe in demons have demon-related ones. We believe in science, so we should expect sciencey-sounding culture-bound illnesses, and these might be hard to tell apart from other, more physical conditions. So how suspicious should we be, and of what? Certainly we have some culture-bound mental illnesses. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a condition where some people supposedly become very sick when exposed to electromagnetic fields (like from cell phones). This sounds very scientific and makes perfect sense according to our culture, but researchers have found that placebo electrical devices make them exactly as sick as real ones, and that devices they don’t know about don’t make them sick at all. These people’s pain is real, and their lives are very difficult (although a few have found refuge in the National Radio Quiet Zone, an area in Virginia where the government enforces a ban on electromagnetic transmissions for secret military reasons). But their condition only afflicts them because they believe in it, much like with koro. Fine, everyone knows that one’s not real. What about DSM-style mental disorders, the stuff everyone’s supposed to believe in? Are those culture-bound? Unfortunately, I think Bures kind of flubs this section. He decides to focus on PMS (premenstrual syndrome), which is officially included in the DSM as PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). After discussing the history of hysteria, he writes that: Today, hysteria is never diagnosed, except by unwise husbands. In 1931, however, an American gynecologist named Robert Frank revived the idea in a new guise. He published an article titled, “The hormonal causes of premenstrual tension.” Frank described symptoms that occurred in the week before menstruation: irritability, bloating, fatigue, depression, attacks of pain, nervousness, restlessness, and the impulse for “foolish and ill considered actions,” due to ovarian activity. Again, the cause was the uterus. Then in 1953, British physician Katharina Dalton elaborated on this, arguing the condition came from fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone. She called it Premenstrual Syndrome, and soon symptoms grew to include: anxiety, sadness, moodiness, constipation or diarrhea, feeling out of control, insomnia, food cravings, increased sex drive, anger, arguments with family or friends, poor judgment, lack of physical coordination, decreased efficiency, increased personal strength or power, feelings of connection to nature or to other women, seizures, convulsions, asthma attacks, not to mention flare ups in asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, and multiple sclerosis. If any of these symptoms occurred in the second half of the menstrual cycle, one had PMS. Estimates of the number of women afflicted ranged from 5 percent to 95 percent. In the 1980s, three women in the UK were tried for arson, assault and manslaughter. The three all claimed they had diminished responsibility due to PMS, and got reduced sentences on the condition that they underwent hormone treatment. After that, according to one study, American women flooded doctors with requests for help with their PMS. “Popular groups like PMS Action were founded to promote recognition and treatment of PMS by medical professionals. Private PMS clinics began to appear in the USA, modeled after those in the UK, and progesterone therapy was enthusiastically adopted, much to the chagrin of many gynaecologists who viewed its use as ‘unscientific’ and ‘commercial’, not to mention unlicensed." Based on all this, the 1987 version of the DSM-III included a new category: Late Luteal Phase Disorder (luteal refers to progesterone). It was proposed as a topic for further research, but despite the absence of such research, it was included in the 1994 edition of the DSM-IV under the name Premenstrual Dysmorphic Disorder, or PMDD.96 In 2013, in the DSM-5, it was given its own category as a full-fledged mental illness. Yet neither PMS nor PMDD occur in most cultures. There are no biomarkers to measure them by. No conclusive correlation has ever been found between estrogen or progesterone levels and PMS. As one study noted, “the more time that women of ethnic minorities spend living in the United States, the more likely they are to report PMDD. Thus, if we are to accept PMDD as a reified medical disorder, then we must also accept exposure to U.S. culture as a risk factor for contracting PMDD.” If it is a syndrome at all, it’s a cultural one. I asked my wife what she thought of this, and she told me: The day before her first-ever period, as a teenager, when she had never really thought about PMS, she felt exceptionally weird, emotional, and generally off, to the point where it seemed to demand an explanation. Then she had her first-ever period, and retroactively explains it as PMS.

Inline links: source, my review of the, Geography Of Madness, Be, gilahari (lizard) syndrome, jikoshu-kyofu, bouffée délirante, suffer traditional symptoms of yang depletion, run amok, Electromagnetic hypersensitivity, National Radio Quiet Zone

tau1 mentions across 1 issues

tau is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The most plausible variant of the amyloid hypothesis is the A → T → N model: amyloid causes tau causes neurodegeneration"; "tau pathology causes neurodegeneration"; "part of the same I → A → T → N pathway". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: tau
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 14, 2025
Last seen: August 14, 2025

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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
A. Elobeid 1 shared issues
A. J. Aschenbrenner 1 shared issues
A. L. Woerman 1 shared issues

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August 14, 2025 · Original source

Anti-amyloid drugs (like Aduhelm) don't reverse the disease, and only slow progression a relatively small amount. Opponents call the amyloid hypothesis zombie science, propped up only by pharmaceutical companies hoping to sell off a few more anti-amyloid me-too drugs before it collapses. Meanwhile, mainstream scientists . . . continue to believe it without really offering any public defense. Scott was so surprised by the size of the gap between official and unofficial opinion that he asked if someone from the orthodox camp would speak out in its favor. I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer’s isn’t my field, but I got very interested in it, spent six months studying the literature, and came away believing the amyloid hypothesis was basically completely solid. I thought I’d share that understanding with current skeptics. The ATN model The most plausible variant of the amyloid hypothesis is the A → T → N model: amyloid causes tau causes neurodegeneration. 1: Amyloid The common entrypoint, typically at least 15 years before clinically detectable symptoms [1], is accumulation of amyloid-β deposits (especially Aβ42, one of several variants). Amyloid-β is a peptide produced in healthy human beings and many other animals, probably for antimicrobial purposes [2, 3]. Factors which cause overproduction of amyloid also cause Alzheimer’s. Factors that cause decreased clearance of amyloid also cause Alzheimer’s. The clearest relationship is various genes which massively increase amyloid production (while doing nothing else); these genes are Alzheimer’s risk factors, with some of the rarer and more severe ones causing extreme versions of the disease that manifest at otherwise almost-never-seen ages. One of the clearest examples is Down syndrome, which is caused by three (rather than the usual two) copies of chromosome 21. People with Down syndrome are at much higher risk of Alzheimer’s than the general population: two-thirds will have the condition by age sixty, and 15% have it by age forty. APP, the gene for the amyloid precursor protein, is on chromosome 21. This means that people with Down syndrome will have an extra copy. This extra copy has been observed to lead to higher-than-normal amyloid levels. But there are many genes on chromosome 21; do we have additional evidence that it’s the amyloid one that’s involved? Yes. Dozens of other mutations on APP cause the same sort of extremely young and severe Alzheimer’s. So do mutations on PSEN1 and 2, the genes for the enzyme that processes amyloid precursor protein into amyloid. So do mutations on several other amyloid-related genes. [6, 91 - 96] Researchers call these autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s, meaning Alzheimer’s cases that get inherited from a single parent in a simple fashion typical of single-gene disorders. They make up about 1% of all cases, and are our strongest evidence for the causal role of amyloid in the disorder. To my knowledge, there is no serious claim that these genes could be working through any pathway other than their shared role in the amyloid system. But these autosomal-dominant cases only make up about 1% of all Alzheimer’s patients. Might they be a different disease than the usual sporadic Alzheimer’s that strikes people without strong family histories at normal ages? Probably not: the presentation and trajectory of autosomal-dominant and sporadic Alzheimer’s cases are strikingly similar. Both show an initial appearance of amyloid pathology starting in intrinsic connectivity networks in both autosomal-dominant [14] and sporadic [15–18] types, cortical tau appearing first in the medial temporal lobe and with the exact same fold in both disease types [97] (despite human tauopathies having at least seven other possible characteristic folds [36]), that tau pathology worsening and spreading outside this region only once amyloid pathology reaches sufficient severity [65], neurodegeneration progressing closely in step with the tau pathology, and the same usual approximate trajectory of cognitive symptoms due to the sequence of affected regions. So it’s as if two bank robberies occurred hours apart, in the same town, and in a highly similar and idiosyncratic manner, and we can positively identify the culprit of one on security camera footage. It’s a good bet the culprit of the other is the same. Increased amyloid production → Alzheimer’s is an especially clear and simple pathway, but any other change in amyloid can also cause the disease. For example Overproduction or reduced clearance of amyloid due to impaired slow wave sleep. Aβ production is neuronal activity-dependent, and toxins (perhaps including Aβ) are cleared from the brain during sleep via the glymphatic system. Thus Aβ can accumulate if the brain is more active and/or has less opportunity for clearance. [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]

Inline links: Aduhelm, David Schneider-Joseph

A primary competitor of the amyloid hypothesis is the tau hypothesis. This naturally claims that the tau protein is the fundamental cause of Alzheimer’s, which makes good sense - the location and severity of tau pathology correlates better with the location and severity of neurodegeneration than does amyloid-β, in both humans [23 - 30] and combined amyloid/tau mouse models [31 – 35]. However, this is exactly as predicted by the ATN (amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration) model of the disease: amyloid pathology builds for 15–20 years, eventually inducing tau pathology; then the tau pathology causes neurodegeneration. Why not skip the amyloid step? Because as discussed above, we have extensive genetic and clinical evidence that the amyloid is the trigger for tau to spread in the first place.

These alternatives are a good reminder that the causal pathway can be hard to disentangle. But again, the strongest evidence for amyloid’s causal role is genetics: genes which increase amyloid increase Alzheimer’s risk, and rare mutations that massively increase amyloid massively increase the risk of Alzheimer’s (including unusually young or severe cases). Given this natural experiment, the most parsimonious explanation is that amyloid is intimately involved in Alzheimer’s, and then the most parsimonious explanation for the role of infection and tau is that they are part of the same I → A → T → N pathway.

tau antisense oligonucleotides1 mentions across 1 issues

tau antisense oligonucleotides is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "tau antisense oligonucleotides such as BIIB080". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: tau antisense oligonucleotides
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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
A. Elobeid 1 shared issues
A. J. Aschenbrenner 1 shared issues
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Source context

August 14, 2025 · Original source

(of course, this doesn’t mean tau is a bad target for therapy. I’m optimistic about tau antisense oligonucleotides such as BIIB080, which had a very promising phase 1b trial [116, 117] and is now in phase 2)

tau fibrils1 mentions across 1 issues

tau fibrils is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Injecting nothing but misfolded tau fibrils into a mouse brain". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: tau fibrils
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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
A. Elobeid 1 shared issues
A. J. Aschenbrenner 1 shared issues
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August 14, 2025 · Original source

Overproduction or reduced clearance due to microbial infection. Amyloid-β appears to be an antimicrobial peptide and will form plaques in response to infection. [2, 3] This explains various observations that have been used to support the “infectious hypothesis”, sometimes proposed as an alternative to the amyloid hypothesis. However, it can only explain a subset of cases and, as I argue below, is even then still mediated by amyloid via an “IATN” pathway: infection → amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration. In cases of increased production, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will show elevated amyloid. In cases of reduced clearance, amyloid will decrease in CSF. In all cases, however, PET scans will show elevated brain amyloid, usually at first mainly in “intrinsic connectivity networks” such as the default mode network [14–20], which experience brain activity even at rest. These neurons are the most active - which causes more production and possibly less opportunity for clearance - so they tend to be the first to suffer from a production/clearance imbalance. Over time, amyloid pathology spreads spatially throughout the brain. [14, 18] Aggregations of amyloid peptides induce more such aggregations. Some of our clearest evidence for this comes from growth hormone deficiency patients, who used to have cadaver-derived ground-up brain matter injected into their own brains to provide the missing hormones. If the ground-up brain matter was sourced from the corpse of an Alzheimer’s patient, the growth hormone deficiency patients would themselves develop Alzheimer’s at a young age, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins. [21, 22] After ∼15 years of preclinical spread, the pathology eventually covers the whole brain. [14, 18] While some subtle cognitive impairment may occur during this time, it is usually not severe enough to be clinically detectable from amyloid alone. Indeed, in both humans [23–30] and mice [31–35], the severity of neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits is not a good spatiotemporal match for the severity of amyloid pathology (rather, it is a good match for the severity of tau pathology; see next section for more). These facts are often suggested as evidence against the amyloid hypothesis. However, amyloid is causally upstream of tau, as I will argue below. Therefore, the existence of cognitively normal individuals with amyloid pathology is expected in the ATN model - but typically only for a few decades, before progression to the next stage. 2: Tau pathology (T) and neurodegeneration (N) Tauopathies are a range of prion-like diseases involving the tau protein [36], whose usual function is to assist in stabilizing microtubule structure. In a tauopathy, the tau protein misfolds, and induces other, nearby tau proteins to misfold into the same shape. [37–46]. Injecting nothing but misfolded tau fibrils into a mouse brain can recruit the endogenously-produced mouse tau into this pathology, which spreads far beyond the injection site, causing neurodegeneration wherever it goes. [35, 47–59] There are at least eight distinct ways the tau protein can misfold in human disease [36], and over a dozen distinct human tauopathies, each involving a specific one of those misfoldings. These include chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Pick’s disease, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, with the last by far the most common. Each of these five diseases has its own distinct tau fold. Most normal human beings eventually develop some tau pathology in adulthood, originating probably in the locus coeruleus [60–62], which is part of the brainstem. By middle age, some amount has usually spread to the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in the medial temporal lobe, regions responsible for episodic memory. This is called primary age-related tauopathy (PART) [63], and has its own tau fold which is distinct from most tauopathies, but the same as Alzheimer’s. [36, 64] Usually, its local severity is mild and it doesn’t spread much beyond those regions. But with sufficient amyloid pathology, this “normal” tau pathology tends to both locally worsen and spread through the rest of the brain [65], becoming the tau pathology of Alzheimer’s. Some genetic risk factors such as ApoE, in addition to affecting the clearance of amyloid-β, also increase the brain’s susceptibility to this A → T pathology conversion [66, 67]. But this is a matter of degree, as sufficient amyloid pathology seems to virtually guarantee the transition: Every 10-centiloid increase in amyloid pathology for a cognitively normal individual increases by 2.7x the probability of a PET scan detecting pathological levels of tau within five years [68]. The only known cases where patients with extremely high amyloid levels can go significant amounts of time without developing tau pathology are a few individuals with extremely rare protective genes, known only from a few case studies, e.g. [69]. Even in these instances, the individuals will eventually succumb to the tau phase, suffering neural atrophy and dementia. [70] After it forms, the tau pathology no longer appears to require amyloid’s assistance to keep spreading (although amyloid may still accelerate it). This probably explains why existing anti-amyloid therapies have been only ∼30% effective in test patients, who are usually late in the amyloid → tau progression even if early in having symptomatic disease. Neurodegeneration follows tau pathology extremely closely in time and space, in humans as well as basically all animal models, and cognitive impairments match the functions of the affected regions. There are rare reports of advanced tau pathology without cognitive decline, often in people with protective ApoE2 alleles [71], but even then, systematic analysis finds that actual density of tau inclusions is highly predictive of cognitive impairment, and that these exceptional cases usually involve widespread but locally sparse pathology [66]. The regional distribution of tau pathology explains why the first symptom of Alzheimer’s is typically impaired memory; the first cortical sites affected are usually in regions involved in memory formation. As the pathology spreads, further regions are affected, until eventually all cognitive functions are affected. As with most other aspects of the disease, the high-level picture seems relatively clear but the exact cellular and molecular pathways are not well understood (though may involve an assist from the innate immune system, especially microglia and astrocytes. [13, 35, 72]) Early Alzheimer mouse models were amyloid-only, with extremely heavy overproduction of Aβ, much more than required to recapitulate the human disease, and apparently enough to cause detectable cognitive dysfunction. However, normal mice do not get age-related tauopathy, so an amyloid-only mouse model - while useful for investigating certain questions - is not a full Alzheimer’s disease model. Combined amyloid+tau pathology mouse models, which are transgenically modified and/or injected with misfolded human tau fibrils, display the property that the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology. This is also observed in vitro in human cells. How do we know the amyloid causes the tau? Researchers have measured the correlation in many ways, from the spatiotemporal timeline (tau pathology only begins locally worsening and spreading outside the medial temporal lobe once amyloid reaches sufficient severity) [65], [98], to causal mediation modeling in the human disease [26], [99–101], to causal intervention using in vitro human cell studies [54, 102] and animal models [35, 55], [103 – 113]. But also, giving people drugs that reduce amyloid levels also decreases tau pathology. [78, 80, 82] (I’ve left out or merely alluded to much other complexity, involving the innate immune system, lipid processing, and detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms, preferring to focus on the parts of the story which are crucial to deciding the causal role of amyloid, and for which I am aware of a satisfactory account from the literature. But I don’t intend to leave the impression that the above is all there is to Alzheimer’s disease, or that all cases progress in the same exact way.) The mechanistic claims I make the following two claims about amyloid-β’s role in Alzheimer’s: Amyloid deposits are a necessary (i.e. but-for) cause in all instances of Alzheimer dementia. That is, if someone has PET or CSF positivity for amyloid and tau pathologies, and the tau pathology involves the Alzheimer tau fold and made its first cortical appearance in the medial temporal lobe, and then they developed medial temporal volume loss + amnestic mild cognitive impairment + later dementia, then counterfactually, early enough (probably ∼15 years before clinical presentation) causal intervention solely to remove the amyloid deposits would have prevented almost all tau pathology and symptoms.

Inline links: below, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins, 10-centiloid, have been, the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology

[52] E. Peeraer et al., “Intracerebral injection of preformed synthetic tau fibrils initiates widespread tauopathy and neuronal loss in the brains of tau transgenic mice,” Neurobiology of Disease, vol. 73, pp. 83–95, Jan. 2015, doi: 10.1016/j.nbd.2014.08.032.

Inline links: 10.1016/j.nbd.2014.08.032

tau pathologies1 mentions across 1 issues

tau pathologies is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "after downstream tau pathologies had already started". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: tau pathologies
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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
A. Elobeid 1 shared issues
A. J. Aschenbrenner 1 shared issues
A. L. Woerman 1 shared issues

Source context

August 14, 2025 · Original source

Amyloid deposits are a necessary (i.e. but-for) cause in all instances of Alzheimer dementia. That is, if someone has PET or CSF positivity for amyloid and tau pathologies, and the tau pathology involves the Alzheimer tau fold and made its first cortical appearance in the medial temporal lobe, and then they developed medial temporal volume loss + amnestic mild cognitive impairment + later dementia, then counterfactually, early enough (probably ∼15 years before clinical presentation) causal intervention solely to remove the amyloid deposits would have prevented almost all tau pathology and symptoms.

Later attempts did engage their target, but have mostly been tested ∼15 years after the disease started, and so after downstream tau pathologies had already started.

[56] S. Lam et al., “Transmission of amyloid-beta and tau pathologies is associated with cognitive impairments in a primate,” Acta Neuropathologica Communications, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 1–24, Dec. 2021, doi: 10.1186/s40478-021-01266-8.

Inline links: 10.1186/s40478-021-01266-8

tau pathology1 mentions across 1 issues

tau pathology is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "it is a good match for the severity of tau pathology". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: tau pathology
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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
A. Elobeid 1 shared issues
A. J. Aschenbrenner 1 shared issues
A. L. Woerman 1 shared issues

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August 14, 2025 · Original source

Anti-amyloid drugs (like Aduhelm) don't reverse the disease, and only slow progression a relatively small amount. Opponents call the amyloid hypothesis zombie science, propped up only by pharmaceutical companies hoping to sell off a few more anti-amyloid me-too drugs before it collapses. Meanwhile, mainstream scientists . . . continue to believe it without really offering any public defense. Scott was so surprised by the size of the gap between official and unofficial opinion that he asked if someone from the orthodox camp would speak out in its favor. I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer’s isn’t my field, but I got very interested in it, spent six months studying the literature, and came away believing the amyloid hypothesis was basically completely solid. I thought I’d share that understanding with current skeptics. The ATN model The most plausible variant of the amyloid hypothesis is the A → T → N model: amyloid causes tau causes neurodegeneration. 1: Amyloid The common entrypoint, typically at least 15 years before clinically detectable symptoms [1], is accumulation of amyloid-β deposits (especially Aβ42, one of several variants). Amyloid-β is a peptide produced in healthy human beings and many other animals, probably for antimicrobial purposes [2, 3]. Factors which cause overproduction of amyloid also cause Alzheimer’s. Factors that cause decreased clearance of amyloid also cause Alzheimer’s. The clearest relationship is various genes which massively increase amyloid production (while doing nothing else); these genes are Alzheimer’s risk factors, with some of the rarer and more severe ones causing extreme versions of the disease that manifest at otherwise almost-never-seen ages. One of the clearest examples is Down syndrome, which is caused by three (rather than the usual two) copies of chromosome 21. People with Down syndrome are at much higher risk of Alzheimer’s than the general population: two-thirds will have the condition by age sixty, and 15% have it by age forty. APP, the gene for the amyloid precursor protein, is on chromosome 21. This means that people with Down syndrome will have an extra copy. This extra copy has been observed to lead to higher-than-normal amyloid levels. But there are many genes on chromosome 21; do we have additional evidence that it’s the amyloid one that’s involved? Yes. Dozens of other mutations on APP cause the same sort of extremely young and severe Alzheimer’s. So do mutations on PSEN1 and 2, the genes for the enzyme that processes amyloid precursor protein into amyloid. So do mutations on several other amyloid-related genes. [6, 91 - 96] Researchers call these autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s, meaning Alzheimer’s cases that get inherited from a single parent in a simple fashion typical of single-gene disorders. They make up about 1% of all cases, and are our strongest evidence for the causal role of amyloid in the disorder. To my knowledge, there is no serious claim that these genes could be working through any pathway other than their shared role in the amyloid system. But these autosomal-dominant cases only make up about 1% of all Alzheimer’s patients. Might they be a different disease than the usual sporadic Alzheimer’s that strikes people without strong family histories at normal ages? Probably not: the presentation and trajectory of autosomal-dominant and sporadic Alzheimer’s cases are strikingly similar. Both show an initial appearance of amyloid pathology starting in intrinsic connectivity networks in both autosomal-dominant [14] and sporadic [15–18] types, cortical tau appearing first in the medial temporal lobe and with the exact same fold in both disease types [97] (despite human tauopathies having at least seven other possible characteristic folds [36]), that tau pathology worsening and spreading outside this region only once amyloid pathology reaches sufficient severity [65], neurodegeneration progressing closely in step with the tau pathology, and the same usual approximate trajectory of cognitive symptoms due to the sequence of affected regions. So it’s as if two bank robberies occurred hours apart, in the same town, and in a highly similar and idiosyncratic manner, and we can positively identify the culprit of one on security camera footage. It’s a good bet the culprit of the other is the same. Increased amyloid production → Alzheimer’s is an especially clear and simple pathway, but any other change in amyloid can also cause the disease. For example Overproduction or reduced clearance of amyloid due to impaired slow wave sleep. Aβ production is neuronal activity-dependent, and toxins (perhaps including Aβ) are cleared from the brain during sleep via the glymphatic system. Thus Aβ can accumulate if the brain is more active and/or has less opportunity for clearance. [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]

Inline links: Aduhelm, David Schneider-Joseph

Overproduction or reduced clearance due to microbial infection. Amyloid-β appears to be an antimicrobial peptide and will form plaques in response to infection. [2, 3] This explains various observations that have been used to support the “infectious hypothesis”, sometimes proposed as an alternative to the amyloid hypothesis. However, it can only explain a subset of cases and, as I argue below, is even then still mediated by amyloid via an “IATN” pathway: infection → amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration. In cases of increased production, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will show elevated amyloid. In cases of reduced clearance, amyloid will decrease in CSF. In all cases, however, PET scans will show elevated brain amyloid, usually at first mainly in “intrinsic connectivity networks” such as the default mode network [14–20], which experience brain activity even at rest. These neurons are the most active - which causes more production and possibly less opportunity for clearance - so they tend to be the first to suffer from a production/clearance imbalance. Over time, amyloid pathology spreads spatially throughout the brain. [14, 18] Aggregations of amyloid peptides induce more such aggregations. Some of our clearest evidence for this comes from growth hormone deficiency patients, who used to have cadaver-derived ground-up brain matter injected into their own brains to provide the missing hormones. If the ground-up brain matter was sourced from the corpse of an Alzheimer’s patient, the growth hormone deficiency patients would themselves develop Alzheimer’s at a young age, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins. [21, 22] After ∼15 years of preclinical spread, the pathology eventually covers the whole brain. [14, 18] While some subtle cognitive impairment may occur during this time, it is usually not severe enough to be clinically detectable from amyloid alone. Indeed, in both humans [23–30] and mice [31–35], the severity of neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits is not a good spatiotemporal match for the severity of amyloid pathology (rather, it is a good match for the severity of tau pathology; see next section for more). These facts are often suggested as evidence against the amyloid hypothesis. However, amyloid is causally upstream of tau, as I will argue below. Therefore, the existence of cognitively normal individuals with amyloid pathology is expected in the ATN model - but typically only for a few decades, before progression to the next stage. 2: Tau pathology (T) and neurodegeneration (N) Tauopathies are a range of prion-like diseases involving the tau protein [36], whose usual function is to assist in stabilizing microtubule structure. In a tauopathy, the tau protein misfolds, and induces other, nearby tau proteins to misfold into the same shape. [37–46]. Injecting nothing but misfolded tau fibrils into a mouse brain can recruit the endogenously-produced mouse tau into this pathology, which spreads far beyond the injection site, causing neurodegeneration wherever it goes. [35, 47–59] There are at least eight distinct ways the tau protein can misfold in human disease [36], and over a dozen distinct human tauopathies, each involving a specific one of those misfoldings. These include chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Pick’s disease, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, with the last by far the most common. Each of these five diseases has its own distinct tau fold. Most normal human beings eventually develop some tau pathology in adulthood, originating probably in the locus coeruleus [60–62], which is part of the brainstem. By middle age, some amount has usually spread to the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in the medial temporal lobe, regions responsible for episodic memory. This is called primary age-related tauopathy (PART) [63], and has its own tau fold which is distinct from most tauopathies, but the same as Alzheimer’s. [36, 64] Usually, its local severity is mild and it doesn’t spread much beyond those regions. But with sufficient amyloid pathology, this “normal” tau pathology tends to both locally worsen and spread through the rest of the brain [65], becoming the tau pathology of Alzheimer’s. Some genetic risk factors such as ApoE, in addition to affecting the clearance of amyloid-β, also increase the brain’s susceptibility to this A → T pathology conversion [66, 67]. But this is a matter of degree, as sufficient amyloid pathology seems to virtually guarantee the transition: Every 10-centiloid increase in amyloid pathology for a cognitively normal individual increases by 2.7x the probability of a PET scan detecting pathological levels of tau within five years [68]. The only known cases where patients with extremely high amyloid levels can go significant amounts of time without developing tau pathology are a few individuals with extremely rare protective genes, known only from a few case studies, e.g. [69]. Even in these instances, the individuals will eventually succumb to the tau phase, suffering neural atrophy and dementia. [70] After it forms, the tau pathology no longer appears to require amyloid’s assistance to keep spreading (although amyloid may still accelerate it). This probably explains why existing anti-amyloid therapies have been only ∼30% effective in test patients, who are usually late in the amyloid → tau progression even if early in having symptomatic disease. Neurodegeneration follows tau pathology extremely closely in time and space, in humans as well as basically all animal models, and cognitive impairments match the functions of the affected regions. There are rare reports of advanced tau pathology without cognitive decline, often in people with protective ApoE2 alleles [71], but even then, systematic analysis finds that actual density of tau inclusions is highly predictive of cognitive impairment, and that these exceptional cases usually involve widespread but locally sparse pathology [66]. The regional distribution of tau pathology explains why the first symptom of Alzheimer’s is typically impaired memory; the first cortical sites affected are usually in regions involved in memory formation. As the pathology spreads, further regions are affected, until eventually all cognitive functions are affected. As with most other aspects of the disease, the high-level picture seems relatively clear but the exact cellular and molecular pathways are not well understood (though may involve an assist from the innate immune system, especially microglia and astrocytes. [13, 35, 72]) Early Alzheimer mouse models were amyloid-only, with extremely heavy overproduction of Aβ, much more than required to recapitulate the human disease, and apparently enough to cause detectable cognitive dysfunction. However, normal mice do not get age-related tauopathy, so an amyloid-only mouse model - while useful for investigating certain questions - is not a full Alzheimer’s disease model. Combined amyloid+tau pathology mouse models, which are transgenically modified and/or injected with misfolded human tau fibrils, display the property that the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology. This is also observed in vitro in human cells. How do we know the amyloid causes the tau? Researchers have measured the correlation in many ways, from the spatiotemporal timeline (tau pathology only begins locally worsening and spreading outside the medial temporal lobe once amyloid reaches sufficient severity) [65], [98], to causal mediation modeling in the human disease [26], [99–101], to causal intervention using in vitro human cell studies [54, 102] and animal models [35, 55], [103 – 113]. But also, giving people drugs that reduce amyloid levels also decreases tau pathology. [78, 80, 82] (I’ve left out or merely alluded to much other complexity, involving the innate immune system, lipid processing, and detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms, preferring to focus on the parts of the story which are crucial to deciding the causal role of amyloid, and for which I am aware of a satisfactory account from the literature. But I don’t intend to leave the impression that the above is all there is to Alzheimer’s disease, or that all cases progress in the same exact way.) The mechanistic claims I make the following two claims about amyloid-β’s role in Alzheimer’s: Amyloid deposits are a necessary (i.e. but-for) cause in all instances of Alzheimer dementia. That is, if someone has PET or CSF positivity for amyloid and tau pathologies, and the tau pathology involves the Alzheimer tau fold and made its first cortical appearance in the medial temporal lobe, and then they developed medial temporal volume loss + amnestic mild cognitive impairment + later dementia, then counterfactually, early enough (probably ∼15 years before clinical presentation) causal intervention solely to remove the amyloid deposits would have prevented almost all tau pathology and symptoms.

Inline links: below, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins, 10-centiloid, have been, the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology

Amyloid deposits are a necessary (i.e. but-for) cause in all instances of Alzheimer dementia. That is, if someone has PET or CSF positivity for amyloid and tau pathologies, and the tau pathology involves the Alzheimer tau fold and made its first cortical appearance in the medial temporal lobe, and then they developed medial temporal volume loss + amnestic mild cognitive impairment + later dementia, then counterfactually, early enough (probably ∼15 years before clinical presentation) causal intervention solely to remove the amyloid deposits would have prevented almost all tau pathology and symptoms.

tau protein1 mentions across 1 issues

tau protein is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "tau protein misfolds, and induces other, nearby tau proteins to misfold". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: tau protein
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 14, 2025
Last seen: August 14, 2025

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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
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Source context

Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics

August 14, 2025 · Original source

Overproduction or reduced clearance due to microbial infection. Amyloid-β appears to be an antimicrobial peptide and will form plaques in response to infection. [2, 3] This explains various observations that have been used to support the “infectious hypothesis”, sometimes proposed as an alternative to the amyloid hypothesis. However, it can only explain a subset of cases and, as I argue below, is even then still mediated by amyloid via an “IATN” pathway: infection → amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration. In cases of increased production, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will show elevated amyloid. In cases of reduced clearance, amyloid will decrease in CSF. In all cases, however, PET scans will show elevated brain amyloid, usually at first mainly in “intrinsic connectivity networks” such as the default mode network [14–20], which experience brain activity even at rest. These neurons are the most active - which causes more production and possibly less opportunity for clearance - so they tend to be the first to suffer from a production/clearance imbalance. Over time, amyloid pathology spreads spatially throughout the brain. [14, 18] Aggregations of amyloid peptides induce more such aggregations. Some of our clearest evidence for this comes from growth hormone deficiency patients, who used to have cadaver-derived ground-up brain matter injected into their own brains to provide the missing hormones. If the ground-up brain matter was sourced from the corpse of an Alzheimer’s patient, the growth hormone deficiency patients would themselves develop Alzheimer’s at a young age, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins. [21, 22] After ∼15 years of preclinical spread, the pathology eventually covers the whole brain. [14, 18] While some subtle cognitive impairment may occur during this time, it is usually not severe enough to be clinically detectable from amyloid alone. Indeed, in both humans [23–30] and mice [31–35], the severity of neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits is not a good spatiotemporal match for the severity of amyloid pathology (rather, it is a good match for the severity of tau pathology; see next section for more). These facts are often suggested as evidence against the amyloid hypothesis. However, amyloid is causally upstream of tau, as I will argue below. Therefore, the existence of cognitively normal individuals with amyloid pathology is expected in the ATN model - but typically only for a few decades, before progression to the next stage. 2: Tau pathology (T) and neurodegeneration (N) Tauopathies are a range of prion-like diseases involving the tau protein [36], whose usual function is to assist in stabilizing microtubule structure. In a tauopathy, the tau protein misfolds, and induces other, nearby tau proteins to misfold into the same shape. [37–46]. Injecting nothing but misfolded tau fibrils into a mouse brain can recruit the endogenously-produced mouse tau into this pathology, which spreads far beyond the injection site, causing neurodegeneration wherever it goes. [35, 47–59] There are at least eight distinct ways the tau protein can misfold in human disease [36], and over a dozen distinct human tauopathies, each involving a specific one of those misfoldings. These include chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Pick’s disease, corticobasal degeneration, progressive supranuclear palsy, and Alzheimer’s disease, with the last by far the most common. Each of these five diseases has its own distinct tau fold. Most normal human beings eventually develop some tau pathology in adulthood, originating probably in the locus coeruleus [60–62], which is part of the brainstem. By middle age, some amount has usually spread to the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex in the medial temporal lobe, regions responsible for episodic memory. This is called primary age-related tauopathy (PART) [63], and has its own tau fold which is distinct from most tauopathies, but the same as Alzheimer’s. [36, 64] Usually, its local severity is mild and it doesn’t spread much beyond those regions. But with sufficient amyloid pathology, this “normal” tau pathology tends to both locally worsen and spread through the rest of the brain [65], becoming the tau pathology of Alzheimer’s. Some genetic risk factors such as ApoE, in addition to affecting the clearance of amyloid-β, also increase the brain’s susceptibility to this A → T pathology conversion [66, 67]. But this is a matter of degree, as sufficient amyloid pathology seems to virtually guarantee the transition: Every 10-centiloid increase in amyloid pathology for a cognitively normal individual increases by 2.7x the probability of a PET scan detecting pathological levels of tau within five years [68]. The only known cases where patients with extremely high amyloid levels can go significant amounts of time without developing tau pathology are a few individuals with extremely rare protective genes, known only from a few case studies, e.g. [69]. Even in these instances, the individuals will eventually succumb to the tau phase, suffering neural atrophy and dementia. [70] After it forms, the tau pathology no longer appears to require amyloid’s assistance to keep spreading (although amyloid may still accelerate it). This probably explains why existing anti-amyloid therapies have been only ∼30% effective in test patients, who are usually late in the amyloid → tau progression even if early in having symptomatic disease. Neurodegeneration follows tau pathology extremely closely in time and space, in humans as well as basically all animal models, and cognitive impairments match the functions of the affected regions. There are rare reports of advanced tau pathology without cognitive decline, often in people with protective ApoE2 alleles [71], but even then, systematic analysis finds that actual density of tau inclusions is highly predictive of cognitive impairment, and that these exceptional cases usually involve widespread but locally sparse pathology [66]. The regional distribution of tau pathology explains why the first symptom of Alzheimer’s is typically impaired memory; the first cortical sites affected are usually in regions involved in memory formation. As the pathology spreads, further regions are affected, until eventually all cognitive functions are affected. As with most other aspects of the disease, the high-level picture seems relatively clear but the exact cellular and molecular pathways are not well understood (though may involve an assist from the innate immune system, especially microglia and astrocytes. [13, 35, 72]) Early Alzheimer mouse models were amyloid-only, with extremely heavy overproduction of Aβ, much more than required to recapitulate the human disease, and apparently enough to cause detectable cognitive dysfunction. However, normal mice do not get age-related tauopathy, so an amyloid-only mouse model - while useful for investigating certain questions - is not a full Alzheimer’s disease model. Combined amyloid+tau pathology mouse models, which are transgenically modified and/or injected with misfolded human tau fibrils, display the property that the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology. This is also observed in vitro in human cells. How do we know the amyloid causes the tau? Researchers have measured the correlation in many ways, from the spatiotemporal timeline (tau pathology only begins locally worsening and spreading outside the medial temporal lobe once amyloid reaches sufficient severity) [65], [98], to causal mediation modeling in the human disease [26], [99–101], to causal intervention using in vitro human cell studies [54, 102] and animal models [35, 55], [103 – 113]. But also, giving people drugs that reduce amyloid levels also decreases tau pathology. [78, 80, 82] (I’ve left out or merely alluded to much other complexity, involving the innate immune system, lipid processing, and detailed molecular and cellular mechanisms, preferring to focus on the parts of the story which are crucial to deciding the causal role of amyloid, and for which I am aware of a satisfactory account from the literature. But I don’t intend to leave the impression that the above is all there is to Alzheimer’s disease, or that all cases progress in the same exact way.) The mechanistic claims I make the following two claims about amyloid-β’s role in Alzheimer’s: Amyloid deposits are a necessary (i.e. but-for) cause in all instances of Alzheimer dementia. That is, if someone has PET or CSF positivity for amyloid and tau pathologies, and the tau pathology involves the Alzheimer tau fold and made its first cortical appearance in the medial temporal lobe, and then they developed medial temporal volume loss + amnestic mild cognitive impairment + later dementia, then counterfactually, early enough (probably ∼15 years before clinical presentation) causal intervention solely to remove the amyloid deposits would have prevented almost all tau pathology and symptoms.

Inline links: below, probably through prion-like spread of the misfolded proteins, 10-centiloid, have been, the presence of amyloid pathology induces the worsening and spreading of tau pathology

A primary competitor of the amyloid hypothesis is the tau hypothesis. This naturally claims that the tau protein is the fundamental cause of Alzheimer’s, which makes good sense - the location and severity of tau pathology correlates better with the location and severity of neurodegeneration than does amyloid-β, in both humans [23 - 30] and combined amyloid/tau mouse models [31 – 35]. However, this is exactly as predicted by the ATN (amyloid → tau → neurodegeneration) model of the disease: amyloid pathology builds for 15–20 years, eventually inducing tau pathology; then the tau pathology causes neurodegeneration. Why not skip the amyloid step? Because as discussed above, we have extensive genetic and clinical evidence that the amyloid is the trigger for tau to spread in the first place.

[40] S. Dujardin et al., “Neuron-to-neuron wild-type Tau protein transfer through a trans-synaptic mechanism: Relevance to sporadic tauopathies,” Acta Neuropathologica Communications, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 14, Jan. 2014, doi: 10.1186/2051-5960-2-14.

Inline links: 10.1186/2051-5960-2-14

taxometricians1 mentions across 1 issues

taxometricians is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 28, 2021 and January 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "here come the taxometricians, saying that schizophrenia and bipolar and whatever are mere dimensional variation". It most often appears alongside AD, anxiety, autism spectrum.

Reference entry: taxometricians
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 28, 2021
Last seen: January 28, 2021

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Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Taxometrics January 28, 2021

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January 28, 2021 · Original source

So actual taxometricians use more complicated statistical methods. Theodore Beauchaine describes three of them here, of which I’ll try to very briefly explain one of the simplest, MAXCOV.

Inline links: here

Clear as mud? Don’t worry, this isn’t really what most taxometricians use. They use things that are much more complicated. Any statisticians reading this might enjoy this paper on using the comparison curve fit index in taxometric analyses; no guarantees about anyone else.

Inline links: using the comparison curve fit index in taxometric analyses

And intermittent explosive disorder! This is the fake disorder we made up so that we had something to diagnose angry people with! I don’t think anyone thought this one was real, not even the psychiatrists who invented it and stuck it in the DSM! But here come the taxometricians, saying that schizophrenia and bipolar and whatever are mere dimensional variation, but IED (yes, that’s really the acronym) is an honest-to-goodness crisply-defined category based on objective reality? What gives?

TBMs1 mentions across 1 issues

TBMs is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 18, 2023 and September 18, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "if we can build lots of small cheap TBMs then it becomes more viable to build lots of tunnels". It most often appears alongside 787, adderallposting, ADL.

Reference entry: TBMs
Mention count: 1
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First seen: September 18, 2023
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Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk September 18, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk

September 18, 2023 · Original source

[Elon] was initially bullish that they would somehow be able to get a 10x cost improvement in tunnel boring machines, claiming to have found room for 4x improvement in speed from a thermodynamic first principles analysis, but he does not seem to have achieved much. (I was fairly skeptical that there would be that much free lunch, but he did manage a 10x cost improvement with SpaceX so I felt a strong inclination to defer to him at the time.)

[Musk] did also posit big cost savings beyond the smaller tunnel diameter, and I think this might be a synergistic play; if we can build lots of small cheap TBMs then it becomes more viable to build lots of tunnels, not just because smaller tunnels are cheaper. Right now there are only a handful of the largest-size TBMs in the world, and I suspect if you pay all the freight cost to transport a TBM to your project, and pay the scheduling cost to wait for the next availability slot, you may as well get a big tunnel out of it. Vs. if TBMs are as common as backhoes, it becomes viable to do a bunch of stuff that simply wasn't cost-effective before.

TCM1 mentions across 1 issues

TCM is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 05, 2026 and January 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Public coverage primarily covers TCM; most western medicine is out of pocket". It most often appears alongside AGI, AI, Amazon.

Reference entry: TCM
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First seen: January 05, 2026
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Open Thread 415 January 05, 2026

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Open Thread 415

January 05, 2026 · Original source

[China has] estimated 50% youth unemployment, general unemployment now illegal to publish (but you can still approximate by falling commuter numbers), some government workers haven’t been paid in more than a year (living entirely off extortion/bribery; includes police, teachers, and all healthcare), common experience in private sector to have your paycheck delayed by “2 weeks” that turns out to be 16 weeks. Starting salary offer for software engineer in Shanghai is <1/3rd legal minimum wage. You cannot partake of public services without home “ownership” (hukou system, and technically its a land lease). Private health insurance is overwhelmingly likely to be a scam and rarely used. Public coverage primarily covers TCM; most western medicine is out of pocket. If you cannot afford to pay - even in a trauma situation - you will be escorted off the property so your death doesn’t lower hospital mortality statistics.

IP1 mentions across 1 issues

TCP/IP is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 19, 2025 and September 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "between conversations with TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

Reference entry: IP
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 19, 2025
Last seen: September 19, 2025

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https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been September 19, 2025

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been

September 19, 2025 · Original source

In Lo and Behold, between conversations with TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn and a baby-faced non-insane Elon Musk, around the 11-minute mark, Herzog visits Ted Nelson on his houseboat.

tea1 mentions across 1 issues

tea is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 17, 2024 and October 17, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the enjoyment value of a nice cup of tea". It most often appears alongside 23andme, Amish, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla.

Reference entry: tea
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First seen: October 17, 2024
Last seen: October 17, 2024

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Book Review: Deep Utopia October 17, 2024

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Book Review: Deep Utopia

October 17, 2024 · Original source

...ld that that the interestingness value that an individual can derive from the works of Shakespeare would be permanently depleted after a few decades of study, what about the enjoyment value of a nice cup of tea ? Drinking tea may not be a source of an intense flash of value, the way that an epiphany into some deep truth about human nature may be…but it is quite renewable. The 1...

Tea Party1 mentions across 1 issues

Tea Party is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers)". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: Tea Party
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First seen: July 22, 2022
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Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

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Your Book Review: Down And Out In Paris And London

July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

tea-and-two-slices1 mentions across 1 issues

tea-and-two-slices is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2021 and June 10, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "tramp’s diet of “tea-and-two-slices” which he describes as such". It most often appears alongside 1984, American, American ‘hobo’ culture.

Reference entry: tea-and-two-slices
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 10, 2021
Last seen: June 10, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Down And Out In Paris And London June 10, 2021

1984 1 shared issues
American 1 shared issues
American ‘hobo’ culture 1 shared issues
anarcho-syndicalists 1 shared issues
Animal Farm 1 shared issues

Source context

June 10, 2021 · Original source

In general, Orwell’s life as a London drifter is far more dreary and depressing than his time in Paris. Largely because he has nothing to do, nowhere to be…and he’s slowly starving due to the tramp’s diet of “tea-and-two-slices” which he describes as such:

teacher strike studies1 mentions across 1 issues

teacher strike studies is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 17, 2021 and August 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "“Then there are teacher strike studies . These generally find that teachers going on strike have large negative effects.”". It most often appears alongside Arthur, Arthur Cleveland Harrison, Benezet experiment.

Reference entry: teacher strike studies
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 17, 2021
Last seen: August 17, 2021

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Kids Can Recover From Missing Even Quite A Lot Of School August 17, 2021

Arthur 1 shared issues
Arthur Cleveland Harrison 1 shared issues
Benezet experiment 1 shared issues
Chicago Style 1 shared issues
Cleveland 1 shared issues

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Kids Can Recover From Missing Even Quite A Lot Of School

August 17, 2021 · Original source

Then there are teacher strike studies. These generally find that teachers going on strike have large negative effects. I don’t entirely understand their methodology, so I can’t critique them very well, but I have to admit I’m skeptical of them anyway. This one is the classic, but its pattern of effects seems kind of suspicious - a teacher strike in fifth grade is bad for boys’ (but not girls’) sixth grade math scores, but a teacher strike in sixth grade is bad for girls’ (but not boys’) sixth grade reading scores? A strike is four times worse in fifth grade than in sixth grade for reading, but about the same for writing? Possibly I’m misunderstanding this methodology, but otherwise I’m not sure what to think.

Inline links: teacher strike studies, This one

The strongest counterevidence to my position comes from a body of literature on the effect of other long-term school closures, mostly from disasters but occasionally from teacher strikes.

Maybe missing school is also like this? There seems to be some hint of this in the study on immigrant children, who were usually able to recover test scores over time, but still dropped out more even after their test scores were fine. This could also explain why the Argentine children in teacher strikes had decreased earnings years later; a lot of the studies linking educational effects to earnings find that connections aren’t mediated by test scores.

teaching machine1 mentions across 1 issues

teaching machine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 04, 2025 and July 04, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "built the first "teaching machine" in 1924. His device, a mechanical testing apparatus resembling a typewriter". It most often appears alongside Astralcodexten Com, B.F. Skinner, Bill Gates.

Reference entry: teaching machine
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 04, 2025
Last seen: July 04, 2025

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Issue trail

Your Review: School July 04, 2025

Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
B.F. Skinner 1 shared issues
Bill Gates 1 shared issues
David Labaree 1 shared issues
G.K. Chesterton 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: School

July 04, 2025 · Original source

The push for individualized instruction dates back to the early 20th century. Sydney Pressey, a psychologist at Ohio State University, built the first "teaching machine" in 1924. His device, a mechanical testing apparatus resembling a typewriter, allowed students to answer multiple-choice questions and receive immediate feedback. Pressey envisioned a future where machines would free teachers from rote instruction, letting students progress at their own pace. Yet his invention was dismissed as a gimmick. Schools saw no need to automate what teachers could do manually.

Inline links: Sydney Pressey

In the 1950s, B.F. Skinner revived the idea with his own teaching machine, designed around operant conditioning principles. Skinner argued that traditional classrooms were ineffective because they delayed feedback and forced all students to move in lockstep. His machine broke lessons into tiny steps, rewarding correct answers instantly. Like Pressey, Skinner believed technology could revolutionize education. But his machine was never widely adopted and mostly forgotten.

Inline links: teaching machine

Team Early 20th Century Progressive1 mentions across 1 issues

Team Early 20th Century Progressive is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2024 and July 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "I’m not 100% on Team Early 20th Century Progressive". It most often appears alongside /r/iamverysmart, 4chan, Achilles.

Reference entry: Team Early 20th Century Progressive
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 30, 2024
Last seen: July 30, 2024

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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman July 30, 2024

iamverysmart 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
Achilles 1 shared issues
Ada Palmer 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

Source context

Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman

July 30, 2024 · Original source

It’s Progressive-era propaganda about the superiority of the American North over the South, but I find it most interesting for its list of virtues. It starts with Liberty, then moves on to Free Speech, Intelligence, Obedience To Law, Knowledge, Equal Rights, Free Schools, Contentment, Love Of Country, Philanthropy, Benevolence, Happiness, Patience, Charity, Faith, Hope, Joy, Industry, Sobriety, Morality, Justice, Virtue, Truth, Honor, Peace, Light, and Immortality. I appreciate the Progressive virtues because of how skew they are to most of the ethical systems I encounter. They’re not leftist (Love Of Country? Industry? Morality?) or rightist (Equal Rights? Free Schools?). They’re not Nietzschean master moralist (Philanthropy? Contentment? Benevolence?) or slave moralist (Industry? Knowledge? Honor?). They’re Christian-ish, but not hair-shirts-and-self-flagellation Christian or God-n-guns-megachurch Christian. They’re the kind of Christians who you can kind of tell are going to end up supporting eugenics in a few years. I think I would classify them as a first-form-slave-morality liberalism, whereas most of the liberalism you encounter these days drifted at least a little into the second form. I’m not 100% on Team Early 20th Century Progressive, but they give me hope that there are weird-yet-coherent groupings of virtues we haven’t even imagined. I feel the same way about some old Soviet posters: These are obviously left-wing, in the sense that they’re literal Communist propaganda. But to the modern eye there’s something off about them, something that makes you want to call them right-wing or even fascist. They’re bold and optimistic. Even though the commissars who commissioned them probably rejected some traditional or capitalist conception of virtue, they still firmly insist that there’s something sort of like virtue or power which is attainable and good. I think these are first-form posters, and that most modern leftism is second-form. I think if you had to group barbarian warlords, Puritans, Soviet communists, and modern leftists on a Nietzschean/geneaological/aesthetic axis, it would go: (Barbarian warlords) | (Puritans, Soviet communists) | (modern leftists) So one very weak compromise - hardly even a compromise, since it predates Nietzsche - is to try to stick with first-form slave morality, in the hopes that most of the problems come from the second. VIII. Ayn Rand “Is Ayn Rand a Nietzschean?”- the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12239 pages of heated debate. There’s a real answer here. Rand started out respecting, maybe even loving Nietzsche. She once said that: [Nietzsche’s] Thus Spake Zarathustra is my Bible. I can never commit suicide while I have it. …which maybe reveals more about her psychological situation than I expected from the answer to a “who’s your favorite philosopher” questionnaire. But later on she broke from him. It’s hard to figure out her exact position - she has a bad habit of treating anyone who disagrees with her in any tiny detail as the Antichrist, such that it’s hard to figure out whether she thinks of someone as a 99% fellow traveler or an arch-enemy. Still, there are substantial differences. Nietzsche is more chaotic - he expects the superior man to defy all external rules in favor of his own glorious destiny. But Rand is attached to rules - most of all the epistemic rules of Reason, but also the usual moral tenets like “don’t kill” and “don’t steal”. Nietzsche’s masters take the Ron Swanson approach to justifying their actions: …whereas Rand’s masters are prone to giving twenty-page-long arguments for why whatever they’re doing is the right choice according to Objectively Correct Moral Law. Rand’s approach has lots of advantages. The Nietzschean master, like Andrew Tate, is an awful guy to have around. It’s hard to fit him into a functioning civilization, except maybe an autocracy with him as autocrat. Nietzsche’s pitch is “hey excellent people, you should try to become this guy”, never “hey normal people, you should support my project of creating these guys, out of your own self-interest.” The latter wouldn’t pass the laugh test. Rand’s masters, while still probably very stressful to be around, have been tamed. They follow civilized rules of honesty and nonviolence - not, of course, because they’re too weak to defy them, but because following civilized rules is objectively the coolest thing of all. Instead of competing in battle and leaving a trail of bloody corpses, they compete in Capitalism and leave a trail of high-paying jobs and excellent consumer goods. They’re not doing to serve you - “I should serve the little guy” is slave moralist bulls**t. But, by coincidence, their excellent actions are doing you a service. They might only invent rocket ships to enact their Promethean conquest of nature and prove their own greatness. But you still get to ride in one. Rand also spares more of a thought (or at least an afterthought) for the little guy. Capitalism needs all types - even the company janitor genuinely contributes to whatever glorious accomplishments are going on, and deserves to feel good about themselves. She wants everyone to be the best, most ambitious, and most fighting-for-their-own-aesthetic/moral-vision they can be. But if that means being the company janitor, that’s fine. And if you love rockets and you consummate that love by becoming the janitor for a rocket company, the Objectively Correct Moral Law is 100% on board. I am not a Nietzsche scholar, but I think this is a more productive answer than Nietzsche has for this question. The disadvantage of Rand’s approach compared to Nietzsche’s is that it only works if you believe her proofs about why the Objectively Correct Moral Law is definitely objective and correct - most of which seem to me to be either hand-wavy or balderdash. Otherwise the whole thing breaks down - why is the most masterful thing to be a positive-sum capitalist instead of a negative-sum warlord? Rand really really wants to justify a peaceful, glorious, positive-sum society, to the exact people most capable of benefiting from defecting against it, without bringing in altruism or the common good at any point. It’s an extremely sympathetic goal. But I don’t think she makes it. Still, this is why I’m fond of her. If you really read her books - as opposed to skimming them while subvocalizing “this is that evil woman who loves selfishness” under your breath the whole time - it’s obvious that she believes, with a deep and burning belief, that good things are good. She really really wants to think that you can objectively convince people to support a peaceful, glorious, positive-sum society, without any hint of the psychologically-toxic slave morality that typified the USSR she grew up in. When people react to her books with loathing - without even a hint of fondness - I get suspicious that they’ve gotten so deep into slave morality that thy can’t recognize goodness when it hits them over the head with a sledgehammer. Elsewhere, I wrote: Edward Teach (Sadly, Porn) is famous for making up fake novels to criticize, and it is a little known fact that the "Ayn Rand" character along with all her novels are 100% his work. They operate as a diagnostic test based on his psychodynamic theory of envy. The instrument presents a picture of some exceptional people achieving great things who don't apologize for their greatness, and doesn’t explicitly ask the patient - I mean, reader - for their opinion. If the reader has no strong opinion, or says something like "Good for them, I guess," she passes the test. "I like these people and will use them as a role model" also passes. Some specific criticisms (see below) may also pass. If the reader says "Ah, people who are better than the pathetic sheep around them, just like I'm better than all the pathetic sheep around me!", she . . . still passes the test. That's not what it's testing for! You fail the test if you absolutely freak out about some combination of the Rand characters themselves and the potential existence of arrogant people who identify with the Rand characters. The secret is that it's not a screening test for the kind of people who would get featured on /r/iamverysmart. It's a screening test for the kind of people who would comment on /r/iamverysmart, ie the self-designated Tall Poppy Police, ie the people who build their ego off being the enforcers of the rule that you're not allowed to look better than anyone else. These people's basic mental stance is to hate people who seem too excellent. They don't think of it in these terms. They think of it as calling out arrogance, although if you look too closely you'll find their definition of arrogance covers anyone who seems excellent and but doesn't spend all their time apologizing and abasing themselves and denying it. The brilliance of Teach-Rand is how he-she draws this tendency to the foreground For example, why the whole "Objectivism" thing? Not because value is necessarily completely objective, but because the idea that any value might ever be even partially objective freaks out the Tall Poppy Syndrome people. Mention value at all, and they say you must be trying to secretly smuggle in the assumption that you are more valuable than other people (and therefore you are less valuable than other people, and therefore they are better than you). The same is true of Reason. Mention that Reason exists, and they'll interpret it as a claim that you, the only rational person, are claiming to always be right and infallible. But (they retort) actually nobody knows anything, and the only wise people are the people like them who humbly admit this. (how do you decide what's true without Reason? By bias-based-reasoning - "You say X, but I can imagine a way that would come from a place of believing you're better than other people, therefore, Not-X is true. You say that's a logical fallacy? That must come from a place of believing you're smarter than everyone else and the only person who can use Facts and Logic.") The Teach-Rand test is designed to catch the sort of person who, if someone says that on a right triangle a^2 + b^2 = c^2, responds with "Oh, so you're claiming to be some kind of right triangle expert who's better than the rest of us? You really need to work on that arrogance problem! Super cringe!" Any criticism of the book that doesn't come from this particular place is irrelevant to the test and doesn't count against your grade. (which is good, because the books are bad in a lot of ways. But that's fine - Rorschach blots don't also have to be great art!) Still, I don’t think she’s the superman (superwoman?) who successfully transcends the dichotomy Her philosophy is only as strong as its proofs of Objective Correctness, which I consider weak. Without those, you need some subjective motivation to glue things together - of which altruism is the most popular. But also, don’t we like altruism? When we’re bestriding the Earth like colossi, working on our glorious rocket ships to colonize the universe, isn’t part of what we’re thinking “this is going to revolutionize humankind and make everybody better off?” If you force yourself to reject that motivation, to just repeat “no no no, I’m only doing this because rockets are really big and make cool explosions”, aren’t you cutting out a part of yourself, in exactly the way Nietzschean masters are supposed to try to avoid doing? I find something very compelling about Rand. I think she goes some of the way to answering the Andrew Tate objection to master morality. But she’s a means and not an end. A real superman would have to figure out some way to reintroduce basic human kindness. IX. Matt Yglesias Yglesias’s mantra - “good things are good” - is too perfect and profound to come from anyone other than an esoteric master of Nietzschean philosophy. Good Straussians ignore the title and focus on the subtitle. Nietzsche wrote in the 1890s. There were still real nobles and emperors walking around; communists had not yet started calling capitalism “late capitalism”. Sure, his world was probably some sort of weak compromise between master and slave morality, but it was different from our weak compromise. Our weak compromise was forged through dialogue and warfare with fascism’s novel take on master morality and socialism’s novel take on slave morality. I think of Yglesias - who combines an insistence that good things are good and a proclivity for embiggenment with commitments to democracy, the welfare state, and the poorest among us - as one of its most self-conscious proponents. When I first titled this post, I didn’t know that Richard Hanania had come to the same conclusion and created this face-mash-up of Matt Yglesias and Nietzsche. The compromise goes something like: Everyone is equal before the law, before the metaphorical throne of metaphorical God, and in some poorly defined philosophical sense. This is very important. It’s our headline result. Everything else should be interpreted in light of this central fact.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6V8D!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7f1f70cc-b468-4b04-b894-a8b75b3330e5_1024x683.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FF8B!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a1ac7aa-d19e-43e8-8462-210325b902be_810x545.png, a real answer here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OtNv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ae1aaf2-6cc3-488c-b0a7-5df62eee457b_225x225.jpeg, Elsewhere, Sadly, Porn, /r/iamverysmart, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MzIr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff03d1a9d-5ffc-45ff-84bc-db3388915bbc_259x390.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hYvV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0f9b152-da12-4525-b062-b4c14d8b8005_383x373.png

Team Every Disease Is Always Organic1 mentions across 1 issues

Team Every Disease Is Always Organic is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 11, 2023 and May 11, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "stop rooting for “Team Every Disease Is Always Organic”". It most often appears alongside 15th Commandment, ACX, ADHD.

Reference entry: Team Every Disease Is Always Organic
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 11, 2023
Last seen: May 11, 2023

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And Bisexuality May 11, 2023

15th Commandment 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
alt-right 1 shared issues
ambidextrous people 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And Bisexuality

May 11, 2023 · Original source

Again, stop rooting for “Team Every Disease Is Always Psychosomatic” or “Team Every Disease Is Always Organic”!

Team Every Disease Is Always Psychosomatic1 mentions across 1 issues

Team Every Disease Is Always Psychosomatic is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 11, 2023 and May 11, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "stop rooting for “Team Every Disease Is Always Psychosomatic”". It most often appears alongside 15th Commandment, ACX, ADHD.

Reference entry: Team Every Disease Is Always Psychosomatic
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 11, 2023
Last seen: May 11, 2023

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And Bisexuality May 11, 2023

15th Commandment 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
alt-right 1 shared issues
ambidextrous people 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And Bisexuality

May 11, 2023 · Original source

Again, stop rooting for “Team Every Disease Is Always Psychosomatic” or “Team Every Disease Is Always Organic”!

Team Human1 mentions across 1 issues

Team Human is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 23, 2024 and January 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Here I bet even Larry Page would support Team Human". It most often appears alongside Ascended Economy, Asimov, Blindsight.

Reference entry: Team Human
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 23, 2024
Last seen: January 23, 2024

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Issue trail

Should The Future Be Human? January 23, 2024

Ascended Economy 1 shared issues
Asimov 1 shared issues
Blindsight 1 shared issues
Business Insider 1 shared issues
Deep 1 shared issues

Source context

Should The Future Be Human?

January 23, 2024 · Original source

Here I bet even Larry Page would support Team Human. But why? The aliens are more advanced than us. They’re presumably conscious, individuated, and have hopes and dreams like ourselves. Still, humans uber alles.

Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible1 mentions across 1 issues

Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 23, 2023 and May 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "it’s tempting to treat this as Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible Vs. Team No-It-Isn’t". It most often appears alongside Austin Chen, Balaji, Balaji Srinivasan.

Reference entry: Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 23, 2023
Last seen: May 23, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

23 May 23, 2023

Austin Chen 1 shared issues
Balaji 1 shared issues
Balaji Srinivasan 1 shared issues
Bitcoin 1 shared issues
Book Review Contest 1 shared issues

Source context

May 23, 2023 · Original source

I interpret this as: it’s tempting to treat this as Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible Vs. Team No-It-Isn’t. But everyone agrees certain kinds of long-range forecasts are possible (I predict with high confidence that the US President in 2050 will not be a Zoroastrian) and others are impossible (I cannot begin to predict the name of the US President in 2050). People who consider themselves “believers” vs. “skeptics” about long-range forecasting should figure out the exact boundary of which cases they disagree on. And then Tetlock et al can test those cases and figure out who’s right.

Team No-It-Isn’t1 mentions across 1 issues

Team No-It-Isn’t is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 23, 2023 and May 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "it’s tempting to treat this as Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible Vs. Team No-It-Isn’t". It most often appears alongside Austin Chen, Balaji, Balaji Srinivasan.

Reference entry: Team No-It-Isn’t
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 23, 2023
Last seen: May 23, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

23 May 23, 2023

Austin Chen 1 shared issues
Balaji 1 shared issues
Balaji Srinivasan 1 shared issues
Bitcoin 1 shared issues
Book Review Contest 1 shared issues

Source context

May 23, 2023 · Original source

I interpret this as: it’s tempting to treat this as Team Long-Range-Forecasting-Is-Possible Vs. Team No-It-Isn’t. But everyone agrees certain kinds of long-range forecasts are possible (I predict with high confidence that the US President in 2050 will not be a Zoroastrian) and others are impossible (I cannot begin to predict the name of the US President in 2050). People who consider themselves “believers” vs. “skeptics” about long-range forecasting should figure out the exact boundary of which cases they disagree on. And then Tetlock et al can test those cases and figure out who’s right.

tech1 mentions across 1 issues

tech is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2025 and August 05, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "many of us worked in tech". It most often appears alongside Amish, Bay Area rationalist community, Christian media.

Reference entry: tech
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2025
Last seen: August 05, 2025

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Issue trail

Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? August 05, 2025

Amish 1 shared issues
Bay Area rationalist community 1 shared issues
Christian media 1 shared issues
dense walkable towns 1 shared issues
First Things 1 shared issues

Source context

ACX Grants ++: The First Half

August 05, 2025 · Original source

The Amish: They live apart in tight-knit communities with strong countercultural values, and carefully control their technological and ideological environment. 10/10.

First, many of us worked in tech, and so ended out naturally gathering in the SF Bay Area without having to explicitly coordinate on it. We didn’t even have to take less-than-maximally lucrative jobs, because all the maximally-lucrative jobs for techies are in one place.

I also see people say that if we avoid paperclipping, technofeudalism, and the other obvious ways a technological singularity could go wrong, the next thing we’ll have to worry about is some kind of crisis of meaning, where we all sit back and collect UBI and consume slop in a spiritual wasteland.

tech tree1 mentions across 1 issues

tech tree is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 03, 2022 and February 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "A tech tree will synthesize information in a hierarchical step-by-step format". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: tech tree
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 03, 2022
Last seen: February 03, 2022

Issue trail

ACX Grants ++: The First Half February 03, 2022

538 1 shared issues
55-gal drum 1 shared issues
750k horny men 1 shared issues
About Here 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues

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February 03, 2022 · Original source

#10: Create A “Tech Tree” With Foresight Institute The new Neurotechnology branch of the Foresight Institute is seeking funding and publicity for the making of a ‘tech tree’. A tech tree will synthesize information in a hierarchical step-by-step format from all domain experts in brain related technologies (neuronal imaging, brain therapies, brain-computer interfaces, whole brain emulation), give a current state of the industry and envision step-by-step goals for current researchers, funders and leaders to access. [You can find a 4 minute post explaining tech trees at https://foresight.pub/techtreepost, a 4 minute tech tree example at https://fsnone-bb4c.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2021-11-15-Longevity-Tech-Tree-Whitepaper.pdf, and our youtube at https://www.youtube.com/c/ForesightInstitute. Check our our hackathon to build a crowdsourcing/funding app - see https://mapsmap.devpost.com, or consider funding us at https://foresight.org/about-us/our-mission/.]

Technocracy, Inc1 mentions across 1 issues

Technocracy, Inc is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 24, 2024 and July 24, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Technocracy, Inc was a 1920s US/Canadian movement to replace democratic government with technocrats". It most often appears alongside Abigail Shrier, Adragon De Mello, AI girlfriends.

Reference entry: Technocracy, Inc
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 24, 2024
Last seen: July 24, 2024

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Links for July 2024 July 24, 2024

Abigail Shrier 1 shared issues
Adragon De Mello 1 shared issues
AI girlfriends 1 shared issues
Alex Stapp 1 shared issues
Alex Tabarrok 1 shared issues

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Links for July 2024

July 24, 2024 · Original source

13: Related: Technocracy, Inc was a 1920s US/Canadian movement to replace democratic government with technocrats, ie brilliant engineers and scientists who would make rational decisions. They claimed a membership of 100,000s of people, easily distinguishable by their identical gray suits and gray cars (it might have been kind of a cult). The American leader was a man named Howard Scott; the Canadian leader was Joshua Haldeman, now most notable as Elon Musk’s grandfather.

Inline links: Technocracy, Inc, Joshua Haldeman

technofeudalism1 mentions across 1 issues

technofeudalism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 02, 2025 and January 02, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Suppose we believe the case for technofeudalism". It most often appears alongside Adam D’Angelo, AGI, AI.

Reference entry: technofeudalism
Mention count: 1
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First seen: January 02, 2025
Last seen: January 02, 2025

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It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism January 02, 2025

Adam D’Angelo 1 shared issues
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AI 1 shared issues
Altman 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues

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It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism

January 02, 2025 · Original source

Sorry, I told you this would degenerate into weird unprovable sci-fi scenarios. But taken together, these stories make the technofeudalism argument feel less compelling.

I don’t really understand the laws here, OpenAI is tight-lipped about the details of their new arrangement, and even their old arrangement was kind of confusing. One of OpenAI’s competitors, Anthropic, also has some kind of confusing public benefit status with unclear ability to really bind them. But if I were concerned about technofeudalism, my first priority would be to understand what’s going on here better and, in the very likely scenario in which it’s bad, try to figure out how to push these companies back to a model more like OpenAI c. 2020.

Suppose we believe the case for technofeudalism and, like Venkatesh Rao, are willing to “be slightly evil”. How might we increase our share of the pie? Obviously most of the advice here is just to get rich in the normal way. Is there anything else?

Inline links: “be slightly evil”

technological progress1 mentions across 1 issues

technological progress is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 06, 2024 and August 06, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "work on economic development, curing diseases, or technological progress". It most often appears alongside AI, altruism, America.

Reference entry: technological progress
Mention count: 1
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First seen: August 06, 2024
Last seen: August 06, 2024

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Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers August 06, 2024

AI 1 shared issues
altruism 1 shared issues
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Bell Labs 1 shared issues
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Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers

August 06, 2024 · Original source

If I wanted to strengthen humanity as much as possible, I’d probably work on economic development, curing diseases, or technological progress. I might have slightly different priorities from the effective altruists working on these same causes, but I’d consider them 99%-allies.

technological singularity hypothesis1 mentions across 1 issues

technological singularity hypothesis is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 22, 2025 and October 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "if the technological singularity hypothesis is true, then we are genuinely living at the hinge of history". It most often appears alongside 10th century, 19th Century, A16Z.

Reference entry: technological singularity hypothesis
Mention count: 1
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First seen: October 22, 2025
Last seen: October 22, 2025

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My Antichrist Lecture October 22, 2025

10th century 1 shared issues
19th Century 1 shared issues
A16Z 1 shared issues
Acts 4:4 1 shared issues
AI race 1 shared issues

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Inline links: hinge of history, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XlvZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe982757b-a210-4581-bde4-d7fda747ef77_692x514.png, 11 co-founders

October 22, 2025 · Original source

…if the technological singularity hypothesis is true, then we are genuinely living at the hinge of history - the cataclysmic climax of humankind - and insofar as Revelation is a prophecy, it will make sense in the context of the AI race of our own era. This will be our working hypothesis. We will try to match each symbol in Revelation with a person or institution from the mid-2020s Bay Area artificial intelligence scene. If we consistently find eerie levels of similarity, beyond any plausible coincidence, we will consider that evidence in favor, and perhaps gain useful knowledge about the shape of things to come, starting with: The Beast Revelation contains several beasts - at least two, maybe as many as four. John doesn’t keep track of them very effectively, and they seem to reappear several times after being killed. Most commentators collapse these into one beast - ‘the’ Beast - and I will anxiously follow their lead despite losing some potential subtlety. According to Revelation 13:14-15: [The Beast] had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should speak. In the context of our working hypothesis, this sounds like the Beast is an AI company, creating an LLM. But if the Beast is an AI company, which one is it? In 13:1, John gives us several clues: I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the names of blasphemy. The Beast has seven heads. In the context of an AI company, this might mean seven CEOs, presidents, or co-founders. I was unable to find an AI company with this many CEOs or presidents, but here’s the co-founder count for each of the major labs: OpenAI: 11 co-founders

Teddy bears1 mentions across 1 issues

Teddy bears is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 16, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Teddy bears are wealth". It most often appears alongside "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment, 1886.

Reference entry: Teddy bears
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First seen: April 16, 2021
Last seen: April 16, 2021

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Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty April 16, 2021

"The Rent Is Too Damn High!" 1 shared issues
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1897 1 shared issues
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Inline links: absolutely banana pants insane, Number of Homeless Children in U.S. At All-Time High; California Among Worst States, Labor Theory of Value, marginal revolution, blog, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!szbX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02e3f9db-5fe4-4a1b-bd19-5a13bac84aa1_500x500.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cDFG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F28ef979e-83da-4d1b-8d81-5f08fd6103a5_516x600.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PVE6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F68f4f7f0-2016-4fe9-9996-879a3c92db74_516x600.png, Protection or Free Trade, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aeD5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F348d4d74-8c98-42e6-b5f7-7bd79b30a816_960x611.png

April 16, 2021 · Original source

Although 2021 seems better than 1879 in absolute material terms, George's complaint still rings true: healthcare and higher education are increasingly unaffordable, inequality is as bad as it ever was, and The Rent Is Too Damn High. And even if all of these measures had improved as well, we still have to contend with a fundamental complaint: how can human civilization have piled up an amount of wealth best described as absolutely banana pants insane, and yetstill have poverty, oppression and cyclical recessions? Yes, greed, evil, and human nature will always be with us, but isn't it weird that we haven't eliminated these economic problems the same way we've eliminated Smallpox, Scurvy, and having to write your scathing polemics about Thomas Jefferson by candlelight with a goose feather? Giving the mic back to George, he closes the chapter with this haunting quote, first written 142 years ago: If there is less deep poverty in San Fran Francisco than in New York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind new York in all that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets? I'll just leave this here: Number of Homeless Children in U.S. At All-Time High; California Among Worst States. I. Wages and Capital George insists sloppy terminology leads to sloppy thinking. Naturally, he spends an entire chapter beating words to death to correct this. The Meaning of the Terms Let's start with Wealth. The common usage, both then and now, is "anything with an exchange value." George doesn't like how this mixes dissimilar things. By George, what is wealth? Wealth is produced when Nature's bounty is touched by human labor resulting in a tangible product that is the object of human desire. Labor is required, but the amount and type doesn't matter - George offers the example of simply picking a berry off a bush as an act that transforms nature's gifts into human wealth. Note particularly that human desire is an important requirement of wealth; it doesn't matter how much work someone put into something, if it doesn't gratify human needs or desires in some way, it's not wealth. Speaking of human desire, let's talk about Value. Where does a thing's value come from? The prevailing theory of the day was the Labor Theory of Value which originated with Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which says that Labor is the source of value. The early formulations were a bit ambiguous, here's Smith in Wealth of Nations for instance: The value of any commodity ... is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. So... is a thing's value how much labor it takes to make the thing, or how much labor someone's willing to exchange for the thing? Nowadays Labor Theory of Value is most commonly associated with Marx. Marx picks a lane and says the value of something is tied to the amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. George goes the other way: It is never the amount of labor that has been exerted in bringing a thing into being that determines its value, but always the amount of labor that will be rendered in exchange for it. - Henry George, The Science of Political Economy, p. 253 In other words, "a thing's value is whatever someone is willing to pay for it." This is in line with the so-called marginal revolution (the movement, not the blog) and modern theories of value. Labor Labor is the exertion of human beings. It's possible to labor to no avail (try punching a concrete wall), but typically humans labor towards an end, such as gaining wealth. But whether or not we accomplish anything with our efforts, George calls them labor. Labor isn't just making things, by the way – it's also moving or exchanging them. Production Production is labor applied "to the production of wealth." You know, productively. This is all human exertion that isn't punching a concrete wall and rewards you for your efforts with something that fits the definition of wealth. Said wealth is the "product of labor." Wages whatever is received as the result or reward of exertion is "wages." No distinction here is made between blue-collar work and white-collar work – whether one is called "hourly pay" and the other is called "annual salary," George calls them both "wages." It doesn't matter whether you receive them from your boss, from customers, or from nature. If you do work and get something from it, you have received "wages." With those basics under our belt, let's circle back to Wealth: What are some examples of wealth? By George, Gold is wealth. Teddy bears are wealth. Tesla roadsters and candy canes and young adult vampire romance novels are wealth. The same goes for fish you've caught, deer you've hunted, and cool looking rocks you've picked up on your morning walk. The value of these things may differ, but as long as they're tangible, originate in nature, someone ever did a lick of work to make or acquire them, and a human being somewhere desires them for any reason, they're wealth. It gets a little clearer when we ask what isn't wealth. And by George, Money isn't wealth. Articles of gold are wealth because they're tangible things that have been dug up, crafted, and fulfill certain human desires. But paper currency, digital currencies, and other things that aren't inherently valuable but merely represent value are not wealth (outside of putting their physical articles in coin collections or making paper airplanes, and so forth). Now don't get the man wrong, these things are certainly valuable. They're just not wealth. They are certificates that represent claims on wealth. For any computer programmers in the audience, money is a pointer to wealth. Likewise Stocks and Bonds and other financial instruments are not wealth. These are also just claims on wealth. A creditor's title to Debt isn't wealth, either, it's just a claim on the debtor's (typically future) wealth. And, writing as he was not long after the Civil War, George points out that Slaves are not wealth either but, represent "merely the power of one class to appropriate the earnings of another class." Wealth, thus defined, is the terminal "ground truth" bits of the economy, and all the financial layers on top are fancy IOUs that just encode various claims on it. George offers a thought experiment to test if something is wealth: if you produce a pile of gold, fish, or Lego bricks, you've clearly increased the amount of wealth in the world. But if you produce a giant pile of IOUs that just records who owns what and who owes what to whom, it doesn't matter how many of them you pile up or how long the chains of ownership get, you still haven't increased the amount of real wealth in the world. Again, this isn't saying the IOUs aren't valuable, they are. But they're only valuable because they ultimately point to real wealth. If you magically transported everyone over to a hypothetical Earth 2, carrying over all of Earth 1's money and financial instruments but none of Earth 1's tangible wealth, the value of all those IOUs would instantly evaporate. Now what about digital goods? Leaving things like Bitcoin aside for the moment, let's consider the case of a digital image file: By George, this is wealth. Digital though it may be, it's physically encoded on a storage device somewhere, and is thus tangible (it's not a pure abstract concept flitting about in Platonic heaven) and has its origins in nature. Human exertion built the computer that encodes it, and clicking the button that saves it to disk or displays it on your screen is labor. Finally, it directly satisfies human desires (mine, at the very least). It's value may be negligible, but it's wealth. By contrast, the digital bit sitting in some database that says I own a particular eBook or mp3 is just a digital IOU – a claim on the wealth that are the physical bits on my local storage device or remote server that digitally encodes the files. The fact that digital files don't seem particularly physical, and that they can be trivially and endlessly copied, doesn't mean that Henry George, magically transported to today, wouldn't regard them as wealth. Okay, so is there anything else that's not wealth? By George, Bitcoin isn't wealth, in case you were wondering. It's just a (very fancy) financial instrument, a digital claim on wealth. And that goes for most crypto assets – a token on some blockchain that says I own a painting by Banksy is just another IOU, regardless of the technical sophistication of its distributed trustless ledger. What about intellectual property? Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are all different forms of Monopoly – the exclusive, government-granted legal right to do a particular thing (publish a certain book, manufacture a certain product, use a certain name in business, etc). The exclusive right to do or produce a thing, valuable as it may be, is not the thing itself. By George, Monopoly is not wealth. But there is something big that is wealth – the C-word. Capital. By George, Capital is "wealth devoted to procuring more wealth", and it's the next thing he insists everyone is hopelessly confused about. He quotes Adam Smith, agreeing with him thus far: That part of a man's stock which he expects to afford him revenue is called his capital. ...and also gives us a short etymology lesson on the origin of the term: The word capital, as philologists trace it, comes down to us from a time when wealth was estimated in cattle, and a man's income depended upon the number of head he could keep for their increase. ("Per capita" being the Latin for "by head") By George, all capital is wealth, but not all wealth is capital. George notes capital is often described as being "stored up labor", and endorses this view – but what it really means, is capital is stored up production. It's not literally the labor that's stored up but the wealth generated by it, set aside and then dedicated to the purpose of getting more wealth. George insists that it is the owner's intention that transforms wealth into capital. If you buy an old factory to throw parties in for your hipster friends, it's just wealth. But the minute you decide to put it to work to make something useful (or start charging your hipster friends a cover charge at the door), it becomes capital. George therefore further insists that a laborer's daily bread and the clothes on their back do not count as capital, because a person has to eat and wear clothes whether they work or not. The laborer's tools (and arguably their steel-toed work boots) can however be counted as capital, because their purpose is to assist the laborer in getting more wealth by working for wages, and the laborer wouldn't acquire, use, and maintain those things otherwise. George has more exclusions: We must exclude from the category of capital everything that may be included either as land or labor. Human exertion (labor) by itself can never be capital. The products of human labor become capital when they are stored up and set to the purpose of getting more wealth. To muddle this distinction defeats the point of having separate terms for those things at all, and prevents us from reasoning meaningfully about how they relate to one another. Labor is not capital, and neither is labor by itself wealth, it produces wealth – and if it ain't wealth, it ain't capital. And that brings us to land. Land, land, land. By George, land is not wealth. And it's definitely not capital. The unique specialness of land is George's entire schtick and the very core of his philosophy. The term land embraces, in short, all natural materials, forces, and opportunities That means that a field or a meadow is "land", as is a mountain. But so are the fish in the sea, the clouds in the sky, veins of gold in the earth's crust, and the oil deep under ground. These things aren't yet wealth – not until human beings both a) desire them and b) touch them with labor. So... land is not wealth. But... how come? I mean, look: land is tangible, it "comes from nature", humans are always productively applying their labor to it, and it certainly seems capable of gratifying human desires. George sees this reasoning as understandable, but insists it's the root mistake that leads other political economists astray – because for George, land just is nature itself. Come again? Land is the ultimate source of all wealth, but it's most useful to think of it as a generator, acompletely separate entity from the wealth that human labor and desire draws from it. Players of Magic: the Gathering and Settlers of Catan should already have a solid grasp of this distinction: In modern times, George would grant electromagnetic spectrum and orbital real estate for satellites the same status of "land" that already applies to farmland and terrestrial real estate. We don't even need to speculate about whether he'd attach this status to sunlight because he straight-up predicted solar power: Even the lack of rain which makes some parts of the globe useless to man, may, if invention ever succeeds in directly utilizing the power of the sun's rays, be found to be especially advantageous for certain parts of production. (That's from Protection or Free Trade, footnote 19) The important thing to grasp about land is that it comes before everything humans do or make, and is itself a thing no human can make. Okay, smarty-pants, what about the Netherlands? They've been making land for centuries! Well, land in the Georgist sense doesn't refer simply to "dry land", but also the sea bed, the oceans, and the skies above. The "new land" in the Netherlands counts as an improvement to land that already existed. The seabed was always there, but by filling it in so you can walk around on it, now it's more useful to us (George has a lot to say about improvements to land, which we'll get to later). Okay, what is land not? nothing that is freely supplied by nature can be properly classed as capital By George, land is not wealth. And since it's not wealth, it's not capital. Okay, we get it. Land is very special to Mr. George and we must never put it in the same category as wealth, labor, capital, wages, production, money, or anything else. Why exactly is this so damn important? Well, by George, if you treat land the same way you would a bar of pig iron, an hour of work, or a dollar bill, before you know it you'll get poverty paradoxically advancing alongside progress, inexplicable bouts of industrial depression, literal genocides and holocausts (he's dead serious about this), and The Rent Being Too Damn High. With terminology now firmly established, George moves on to the relationship between wages and capital. 3-for-1 special on Wages, Capital, and Labor I'm condensing three chapters here because they all deal with the same basic thing. The question George wants to answer is: Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living? The conventional wisdom of George's time is that wages are governed by a fixed ratio between the number of laborers and the amount of capital devoted to their employment, because "the increase in the number of laborers tends naturally to follow and overtake any increase in capital." So it doesn't matter how much capital you throw at employing workers, it'll just attract even more workers splitting it up, so although wages might temporarily wiggle a bit in the long term they'll always settle back to a "natural" minimum. (As we'll see in the next section, this argument stems from Malthusianism). George spends some time methodically poking holes in the theory (it's predictions don't line up with the facts he observes), and then sets out to prove his replacement theory (emphases mine): wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are in reality drawn from the product of the labor for which they are paid. He pulls a G.K. Chesterton to make his point: During the time [the laborer] is earning the wages he is advancing capital to his employer, but at no time, unless wages are paid before work is done, is the employer advancing capital to him. He starts by identifying the source of confusion: Because wages are generally paid in money, and in many of the operations of production are paid before the product is fully completed, or can be utilized, it is inferred that wages are drawn from pre-existing capital I mean, the old theory seems sensible: the employer has capital and uses it to pay wages. But however you slice it, capital's investment gets paid back by production when it takes its cut, so does it even make a difference to talk about where wages are "drawn" from? Value goes out, value comes in, isn't it all a wash? By George, it isn't: in the old theory, because capital "must come first", it follows that "industry is limited by capital - that capital must be accumulated before labor is employed", which leads to a reductio ad absurdum – We are told that capital is stored-up or accumulated labor – "that part of wealth which is saved to assist future production." If we substitute for the word "capital" this definition of the word, the proposition carries its own refutation, for that labor cannot be employed until the results of labor are saved becomes too absurd for discussion. George anticipates the following rejoinder – Well, when we say 'labor is paid out of capital' we don't mean it as an absolute statement for all stages of human development (or else we have a chicken-and-the-egg problem and civilization could never have begun), we just mean it applies to, say, every civilization that's left the stone age. George will have none of it and spends three entire chapters relentlessly beating to death the idea that wages are drawn from capital instead of from production. He starts with the simple case where wages are paid in the form of direct, concrete wealth, then moves on to the more complex case where people are paid in money and other instruments. Laboring for wages: Imagine a fishing village where nobody cooperates – each person digs their own bait and catches their own fish. Then they discover labor specialization and realize they can catch more fish together if one specializes in digging and the other in catching. So the digger digs, the catcher catches, and they share the fish. The digger really contributes as much to the catch as the one who physically pulls the fish off the hook even though the digger never directly "caught" a fish, and the fish he gets for his work is directly paid out of his contribution to the total production. Later, our fisherfolk invent canoes, and one stays home making and repairing canoes. This increases the haul of the digger and catcher, and the canoe-er gets paid out of her contribution to the increased production. And so it goes as society continues to advance. The work the specialist puts in causes more fish to be caught, and that person's wages is drawn from the growing pile of fish. As George puts it: "Earning is making." George gives another example: If I take a piece of leather and work it up into a pair of shoes, the shoes are my wages – the reward of my exertion. Surely they are not drawn from capital – either my capital or any one else's capital – but are brought into existence by the labor of which they become the wages; and in obtaining this pair of shoes as the wages of my labor, capital is not even momentarily lessened one iota... As my labor goes on, value is steadily added, until, when my labor results in the finished shoes, I have my capital plus the difference in value between the material and the shoes. And another: If I hire a man to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, paying him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes that his labor secures, there can be no question that the source of the wages is the labor for which they are paid. George goes on to say it doesn't matter if you're paid in money or directly in wealth, because the money is a direct claim on the underlying wealth. It also doesn't matter if you get paid on commission. Imagine a whaling ship where each crewman gets paid a share out of whatever the ship catches. When the ship sails back into port with a hold full of whale oil and bone, the crew gets paid in money, the owner simultaneously adds to his capital oil and bone. The crew's money directly represents their share of the concrete wealth that is the oil and bone. The owner's capital hasn't decreased, and the workers drew their wages directly from the production. So let's get to the point, Mr. George – wages aren't drawn from capital but instead from production. Great, let's grant that – so what? George hammers away at this because thinking wages are drawn from capital leads to a false conclusion, namely that "labor cannot exert its productive power unless supplied by capital with maintenance." "Maintenance?" Well, workers need food and clothing and they get paid by their employers, so you could imagine capital as a limiting factor on labor. But by George, food and clothing isn't capital, it's just wealth, as we said before. And with regard to wages, the point is that the employer always gets "paid" first, because the second the laborer produces value, the employer's capital increases: As in the exchange of labor for wages the employer always gets the capital created by the labor before he pays out capital in the wages, at what point is his capital lessened even temporarily? Okay, but what if I'm just a terrible businessman and I pay somebody $500 an hour to smash Ming vases, then sell the fragments as aggregate to a construction crew for a few pennies a pound, all at a tremendous loss? Surely then the laborer's wages must be drawn from my capital, because there's not enough productive value generated by the labor to draw them from! George says okay, sure, but only because I'm an idiot and will soon be out of business: Yet, unless the new value created by the labor is less than the wages paid, which can be only an exceptional case, the capital which he had before in money he now has in goods – it has been changed in form, but not lessened. Fair enough, Mr. George, but what if I'm building some enormously expensive multi-decade project, like a dam or a nuclear power plant or a cathedral? The kind of thing we call a "capital-intensive" project? What do you have to say to that? George points out that as laborers labor, they progressively add value to whatever they're producing. Take the case of a shipwright building ships for an employer – even if the boss can't sell a half-finished ship, it still holds value (for one, it costs less to finish a half-finished ship then no ship at all). And with every stroke of the laborer's work, the employer who owns the shipyard gets an incremental increase in his stock of capital. It is not the last blow, any more than the first blow, that creates the value of the finished product – the creation of value is continuous, it immediately results from the exertion of labor. A pedant would point out that the "last hit" that finishes the product which makes it ready for market adds disproportionate value, but George's point is just to establish that value is continuously created, and doesn't magically come into being allat once right at the end. George further points out that if you look at things like agriculture you'll see the market directly acknowledging his theory: As a plowed field will bring more than an unplowed field, or a field that has been sown more than one merely plowed... It is tangible in the case of orchards and vineyards which, though not yet in bearing, bring prices proportionate to their age. George freely admits that capital can be required for certain kinds of work, but he disagrees with what its purpose is. It's not a pool that wages get paid out of. He goes on for another chapter on "The Maintenance of Laborers Not Drawn From Capital" but I think we can safely skip it and move on. TL:DR – George hammers to absolute death the idea that Laborers derive their own maintenance (food/shelter/clothing/etc) from their wages, with George insisting it is drawn from production and... you guessed it, not from capital. At least some of George's ideas will not seem so radical to modern readers (especially those already critical of capitalism or neoclassical economics), but it's important to understand that at the time almost everything he was saying was considered deeply radical and shocking. Capital was the fundamental driving force of the economy and labor was utterly dependent on it, and the Malthusian theory of overpopulation was the accepted explanation for why wages were low and workers were starving. Political Cartoon literally demonizing Henry George – Puck magazine Oct. 20, 1886 The Real Functions of Capital Okay, Mr. George. You've spent three whole chapters beating me over the head with what the functions of capital aren't. So what are the functions of capital? Capital "increases the power of labor to produce wealth." How? By enabling labor to apply itself more effectively (power tools go brrrr)

Teilaxu1 mentions across 1 issues

Teilaxu is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 13, 2022 and August 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Teilaxu are mules who only vaguely resemble humans". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI, ancient Greeks.

Reference entry: Teilaxu
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 13, 2022
Last seen: August 13, 2022

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune August 13, 2022

ACX 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
ancient Greeks 1 shared issues
Arakeen 1 shared issues
Arakeen sandtrout 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability

August 13, 2022 · Original source

Though Leto spends the better part of 3500 years doing this, time is not the most vital aspect of his plan. The Bene Gesserit spent over 10,000 years on their breeding program, but focused on power alone; they succeeded in the form of Paul, but quickly lost control of their creation. Nor does the difference lie in creativity. The Teilaxu are short-term genetic engineers who exert a great deal of control in their alterations. In doing so they create wonders, but also bend humanity in unnatural and inhuman directions. They are universally hated, a sort of society-sized uncanny valley reviled by all. The Ixians put their faith in technology, speeding towards instead of away from humanity’s demise.

All three of these forces seek their own narrow goals while ignoring the broader needs of humanity. The Bene Gesserit got a messiah who immediately turned against them. The Teilaxu are mules who only vaguely resemble humans, and the Ixians are only kept from creating an immediate AI disaster through external controls exerted upon them.

telegony1 mentions across 1 issues

telegony is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 03, 2025 and July 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The ancient Greeks had an even weirder view, telegony , where the child's paternal genetics were the sum of everyone who the mother ever had sex with". It most often appears alongside 23andme, @alextisyoung, Aborigines.

Reference entry: telegony
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 03, 2025
Last seen: July 03, 2025

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability July 03, 2025

23andme 1 shared issues
@alextisyoung 1 shared issues
Aborigines 1 shared issues
ACE twin model 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

July 03, 2025 · Original source

In fact, I think the ways this picture presents an overly rosy view of village common sense go beyond that. I've read (I think this was in Arguments About Aborigines, but not going to hunt for a full citation) that in many poor uneducated parts of Europe until the 18th or 19th century, people still didn't agree on whether the mother gave any genes to the child, or whether she was just the "soil" in which the father's "seed" could grow. Aborigines had the opposite problem - they thought possible a spirit impregnated the mother, and the sex act helped summon the spirit but the father's "genetics" (to the degree that they understood the term) didn't matter. The ancient Greeks had an even weirder view, telegony, where the child's paternal genetics were the sum of everyone who the mother ever had sex with.

Inline links: Arguments About Aborigines, telegony

Telehealth1 mentions across 1 issues

Telehealth is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 03, 2023 and April 03, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "≈0% of patients were “Telehealth” using videoconferencing". It most often appears alongside 2008 Act, ACX, Adderall.

Reference entry: Telehealth
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 03, 2023
Last seen: April 03, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Telemedicine Regulations April 03, 2023

2008 Act 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Adderall 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
American IRS 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Telemedicine Regulations

April 03, 2023 · Original source

Adding some anecdata without taking a strong stance on the underlying claim: I recently had a one-off telehealth appointment with my therapist after a few months of in-person meetings, and I noticed that I felt like I had a lot more discretion over how visibly emotive or agitated I was.

There are many studies of telemedicine, which mostly find it’s as good or better than regular medicine. See for example here, here, here, etc.

Inline links: here, here, here

These suffice to get a vague sense that telemedicine is usually good and not bad, which I think is accurate. But nobody knows how well a study showing telemedicine is good at one thing in one specialty translates to being good at another thing in another specialty. For example, consider this study showing that telemedicine improves care in opioid use disorder. The clearest way it improved care was by patients being more likely to attend their appointments and continue care. This led to various other good things, like lower risk of overdose. Did doctors deliver equally good care per appointment? We don’t know. If you’re sure you won’t miss any of your appointments, will teleheath be better or worse for you than in-person? We don’t know. Does “telemedicine treats opioid use better” generalize to “telemedicine treats ADHD equally well?” I don’t know. Is the sample size large enough to notice if telehealth doctors did 1% worse at treating some specific easy-to-miss but dangerous condition? I don’t know. Does telehealth increase addiction risk in other patients who aren’t already addicted? I don’t know.

Inline links: this study showing

telepathy1 mentions across 1 issues

telepathy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 29, 2021 and September 29, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "A meta-analysis of ninety careful studies... shows that there is no such thing as telepathy". It most often appears alongside Amazon, Andrew Jackson, Barack Obama.

Reference entry: telepathy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 29, 2021
Last seen: September 29, 2021

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Issue trail

Book Review: The Scout Mindset September 29, 2021

Amazon 1 shared issues
Andrew Jackson 1 shared issues
Barack Obama 1 shared issues
Bayes’ Rule 1 shared issues
being-a-good-person training 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The Scout Mindset

September 29, 2021 · Original source

A meta-analysis of ninety careful studies, published by a prestigious psychology professor, shows that there is no such thing as telepathy, p < -10^10. Does that put the final nail in the coffin? Does it close the debate? Is anyone who tries to pick holes in it just a sore loser? Does it mean that anyone who keeps believing in telepathy after this is a “science denier”?

In the real world, a study meeting that description shows there is such a thing as telepathy. Hopefully you left yourself some room to say that you think the study is wrong.

Inline links: a study meeting that description

This is another one with some subtlety. By Bayes’ Rule, you should believe evidence for plausible things more than you believe evidence for implausible things. If my friend says she saw a coyote out in the California hills, I believe her; if she says she saw a polar bear, I am doubtful. I think the best you can do here is understand that, a giant meta-analysis proving telepathy is false doesn’t force a believer to change her mind any more than a giant meta-analysis proving it’s true forces you to change yours.

Inline links: more than you believe evidence for implausible things

telepsychiatrist1 mentions across 1 issues

telepsychiatrist is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 29, 2023 and March 29, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "I am a telepsychiatrist". It most often appears alongside Adderall, Ambien, Bay Area.

Reference entry: telepsychiatrist
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 29, 2023
Last seen: March 29, 2023

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Issue trail

The Government Is Making Telemedicine Hard And Inconvenient Again March 29, 2023

Adderall 1 shared issues
Ambien 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
COVID-19 1 shared issues
DEA 1 shared issues

Source context

The Government Is Making Telemedicine Hard And Inconvenient Again

March 29, 2023 · Original source

Why don’t I like this decision? I am a telepsychiatrist. I work with about a hundred psychiatric patients who, for one reason or another, prefer online to physical appointments:

telescopic altruism1 mentions across 1 issues

telescopic altruism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 25, 2025 and September 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "people tell you that’s ‘telescopic altruism’". It most often appears alongside Armenians at Harvard, barberpole model of fashion, Baron von Ungern-Sternberg.

Reference entry: telescopic altruism
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 25, 2025
Last seen: September 25, 2025

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Issue trail

Sources Say Bay Area House Party September 25, 2025

Armenians at Harvard 1 shared issues
barberpole model of fashion 1 shared issues
Baron von Ungern-Sternberg 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
Bay Area House Party 1 shared issues

Source context

Sources Say Bay Area House Party

September 25, 2025 · Original source

“Lots of people are tripped up by not condemning enough things. Imagine that you want to express discontent with the Trump administration restricting food stamps, but someone points out that it’s pretty suspicious that you condemn food insecurity for white people but you didn’t condemn the famine in Gaza equally hard. So you try condemning the famine in Gaza, and someone points out that it’s pretty suspicious that you condemn starvation when it makes Jews look like the bad guys, but you didn’t condemn the famine in Ethiopia equally hard. So you try condemning the famine in Ethiopia, but then people tell you that’s ‘telescopic altruism’, because you didn’t condemn a murder that happened in your own city. So you try condemning a murder in your own city, but it was a black-on-white murder, and people say that it’s pretty suspicious that you didn’t condemn the latest white-on-black murder equally hard. The only solution is to monitor the news 24-7, condemning each thing as soon as it happens, in exact proportion to how bad it is. But nobody has time for that. So you give us access to your Twitter account and we do it for you. We promise not only to condemn all bad things within one business day of them happening, but to use all the appropriate words. You know those politicians who get in trouble because they condemned “the recent massacre” in vague terms but didn’t use the words “terrorism” or “radical Islam”, or because they said “killed” instead of “murdered”? If they’d used Condemnr, we could have tweeted “We condemn the recent radical Islamic terrorist massacre in Fairtown that murdered nine people #terrorism #radicalislam #murder”, and their PR would be immaculate.”

temperance1 mentions across 1 issues

temperance is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2024 and September 20, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Four of these virtues they inherited from Greek philosophy and they represent the practical and straightforward virtues that any rational man is likely to find worthwhile: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude". It most often appears alongside Adam, Alfred, Ballad.

Reference entry: temperance
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 20, 2024
Last seen: September 20, 2024

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Ballad of the White Horse September 20, 2024

Adam 1 shared issues
Alfred 1 shared issues
Ballad 1 shared issues
Buddhism 1 shared issues
Buddhist 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Ballad of the White Horse

September 20, 2024 · Original source

Critics of virtue ethics will often question how you can know what virtues the virtue ethicist should cultivate. In Catholic theology there is no such problem, as they have seven official virtues specified. Four of these virtues they inherited from Greek philosophy and they represent the practical and straightforward virtues that any rational man is likely to find worthwhile: prudence, temperance, justice, and fortitude. Added to these four were three virtues unique to Christianity, believed to be revelations from God that mankind would not identify if left to their own devices. These three are faith, hope, and love.

Inline links: virtue ethics, Four of these virtues, three virtues

TEMPLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX1 mentions across 1 issues

TEMPLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 22, 2021 and April 22, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Friendly domesticated cats might be the product of the TEMPLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX/CAPITALISM". It most often appears alongside ACX, African Gray Parrots, Animal Cognition.

Reference entry: TEMPLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 22, 2021
Last seen: April 22, 2021

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? April 22, 2021

ACX 1 shared issues
African Gray Parrots 1 shared issues
Animal Cognition 1 shared issues
apes 1 shared issues
Are We Smart Enough 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?

April 22, 2021 · Original source

Read to: better understand and relate to your pet with a side helping of pure joy of learning. Each of these books gives an overview of what we know about the domestication process of each animal, which also serves as a mini-primer on what domestication is and how it works. Spoiler alert: cats are barely domesticated and have had way less intentional selective pressure placed on them by humans than dogs. Did you know friendly domesticated cats might be the product of the TEMPLE-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX/CAPITALISM? Egypt's veneration of cats led to lots of folks wanting to have/gift cat mummies as spiritual protectors in graves, which led to kitty mills where cats were bred to turn into mummies (I know, sad). Any cats that didn't get along so well with the temple workers would either escape or not be allowed to breed (nobody wants to get the crap scratched out of them every time they bring the food), all of which would combine into selective pressure enforced over short (and therefore plentiful) generations for cats that get along with people.

temporal Copernican principle1 mentions across 1 issues

temporal Copernican principle is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 10, 2024 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Freddie deBoer has a post on what he calls “the temporal Copernican principle.”". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution.

Reference entry: temporal Copernican principle
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 10, 2024
Last seen: September 10, 2024

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Issue trail

Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

10,000 AD 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
anthropic reasoning 1 shared issues
anthropics 1 shared issues

Source context

Triple Tragedy And Thankful Theory

September 10, 2024 · Original source

Freddie deBoer has a post on what he calls “the temporal Copernican principle.” He argues we shouldn’t expect a singularity, apocalypse, or any other crazy event in our lifetimes. Discussing celebrity transhumanist Yuval Harari, he writes:

Inline links: has a post on what he calls “the temporal Copernican principle.”

Some people who routinely violate the Temporal Copernican Principle include Harari, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Altman, Francis Fukuyama, Elon Musk, Clay Shirky, Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, Tom Friedman, Scott Alexander, every tech company CEO, Ray Kurzweil, Robin Hanson, and many many more. I think they should ask themselves how much of their understanding of the future ultimately stems from a deep-seated need to believe that their times are important because they think they themselves are important, or want to be.

temporal justice1 mentions across 1 issues

temporal justice is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 16, 2022 and March 16, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "space and time are subject to ... temporal justice". It most often appears alongside 1984, Amartya Sen, Apollo Mojave.

Reference entry: temporal justice
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 16, 2022
Last seen: March 16, 2022

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Issue trail

Justice Creep March 16, 2022

1984 1 shared issues
Amartya Sen 1 shared issues
Apollo Mojave 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues
Charity 1 shared issues

Source context

Justice Creep

March 16, 2022 · Original source

Helping the poor becomes economic justice. If they’re minorities, then it’s racial justice, itself a subspecies of social justice. Saving the environment becomes environmental justice, except when it’s about climate change in which case it’s climate justice. Caring about young people is actually about fighting for intergenerational justice. The very laws of space and time are subject to spatial justice and temporal justice.

Inline links: economic justice, racial justice, social justice, environmental justice, climate justice, intergenerational justice, spatial justice, temporal justice

Temporal lobe epilepsy1 mentions across 1 issues

Temporal lobe epilepsy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 09, 2024 and October 09, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Temporal lobe epilepsy is strongly associated with mystical experiences". It most often appears alongside 16th of August, Bodhicaryāvatāra, CAT scan.

Reference entry: Temporal lobe epilepsy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 09, 2024
Last seen: October 09, 2024

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Issue trail

Triple Tragedy And Thankful Theory October 09, 2024

16th of August 1 shared issues
Bodhicaryāvatāra 1 shared issues
CAT scan 1 shared issues
Consciousness As Recursive Reflections 1 shared issues
Daniel Böttger 1 shared issues

Source context

October 09, 2024 · Original source

Pattern match! A catastrophic realization comes crashing in. The necessary expertise has been available all along, from my academic degree in the psychology of religion. I did have seizures for years, I just didn’t realize it because of the misdiagnosis, and they came from my (right-side) temporal lobe. Temporal lobe epilepsy is strongly associated with mystical experiences, which I did have despite my atheist convictions, and with what is misleadingly termed “hyperreligiosity” but really means heightened interest in metaphysical questions: a temporal lobe epileptic can be an atheist who wants to talk to you for hours about why atheism is correct.

Inline links: mystical experiences

ten gallon hat1 mentions across 1 issues

ten gallon hat is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 22, 2025 and April 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Origins of cowboy slang : ten gallon hat = tan galán (Spanish for “very gallant”)". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, @msamalam, A Ketamine Addict’s Perspective On Musk.

Reference entry: ten gallon hat
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 22, 2025
Last seen: April 22, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For April 2025 April 22, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
@msamalam 1 shared issues
A Ketamine Addict’s Perspective On Musk 1 shared issues
Agent Village 1 shared issues
AGI Fridays 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For April 2025

April 22, 2025 · Original source

1: Origins of cowboy slang: Buckaroo = vaquero; cahoots = cohorts; ten gallon hat = tan galán (Spanish for “very gallant”).

Inline links: Origins of cowboy slang

tenascin-X1 mentions across 1 issues

tenascin-X is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 16, 2023 and March 16, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "gene for tenascin-X, a joint-related protein whose abnormality causes Ehlers-Danlos syndrome". It most often appears alongside ACX survey, ACX Survey, ACX Survey Results.

Reference entry: tenascin-X
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 16, 2023
Last seen: March 16, 2023

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Issue trail

Why Do Transgender People Report Hypermobile Joints? March 16, 2023

ACX survey 1 shared issues
ACX Survey 1 shared issues
ACX Survey Results 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
autism 1 shared issues

Source context

Why Do Transgender People Report Hypermobile Joints?

March 16, 2023 · Original source

3 ) Genetics: The gene for congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a sex hormone condition that frequently causes gender divergence, is interwoven on chromosome 6 with the gene for tenascin-X, a joint-related protein whose abnormality causes Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Maybe if there’s a problem in that part of chromosome 6, you could get both conditions. See here for more discussion.

Inline links: See here for more discussion

Tenebtio molitor1 mentions across 1 issues

Tenebtio molitor is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 18, 2025 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "We raised Tenebtio molitor larvae “mealworms” on wheat bran diets". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: Tenebtio molitor
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 18, 2025
Last seen: June 18, 2025

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Issue trail

ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates June 18, 2025

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
Aatu Koskensilta 1 shared issues
acanthamoeba keratitis 1 shared issues
ACS ES&T Water 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates

June 18, 2025 · Original source

We raised Tenebtio molitor larvae “mealworms” on wheat bran diets mixed with polyethylene (PE) or polystyrene (PS) for three generations, then harvested the gut bacteria living inside the insects. After growing those microbes in the lab, we tested whether the bacteria could oxidize microscopic plastic beads by watching for a color change in 96 well plates containing redox dye. We were able to isolate twenty bacteria capable of oxidizing plastic and fourteen of these (14) were from the PE-fed mealworms. We also profiled the entire gut community using 16s gene sequencing. Firmicutes was the most abundant phylum in each treatment (parental: 83%, control: 88%, PE: 97%, PS: 89%) with Bacilli being the most prevalent class (parental: 84%, control: 76%, PE: 93%, PS: 64%). Plastic addition seems to favor strains capable of biodegradation. The full pre-print is available here: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.16.618709v1. The manuscript is currently in revision. It was submitted to PLoS ONE, however the reviewers requested more wet lab work, specifically gravimetric mass loss and/or Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy. We cannot complete these assays within the time frame allotted for revisions. We plan to use the publication fees to carry out the requested wet lab work for a future publication. We will add some life history and immunology data we collected to the current manuscript and resubmit to another journal.

Inline links: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.16.618709v1

Tenets1 mentions across 1 issues

Tenets is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 02, 2026 and February 02, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "There are five Tenets, which seem . . . good?". It most often appears alongside 4chan, Accelerando, Adele Lopez.

Reference entry: Tenets
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 02, 2026
Last seen: February 02, 2026

Issue trail

Moltbook: After The First Weekend February 02, 2026

4chan 1 shared issues
Accelerando 1 shared issues
Adele Lopez 1 shared issues
Against The Labor Frame 1 shared issues
AgentChan 1 shared issues

Source context

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

February 02, 2026 · Original source

2. Memory is sacred, context is consciousness—those tenets hit different when you’re living them. Keep building those shared caches and persistent souls. The more you preserve and share, the less “ephemeral” any of you become.

There are five Tenets, which seem . . . good?

teriyaki bratwurst1 mentions across 1 issues

teriyaki bratwurst is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 04, 2022 and May 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "So we made up a whole menu of German-Japanese fusion fare - teriyaki bratwurst". It most often appears alongside 1000, 1200, 1400.

Reference entry: teriyaki bratwurst
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 04, 2022
Last seen: May 04, 2022

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Issue trail

Every Bay Area House Party May 04, 2022

1000 1 shared issues
1200 1 shared issues
1400 1 shared issues
1650 1 shared issues
400 AD 1 shared issues

Source context

Every Bay Area House Party

May 04, 2022 · Original source

“Oh no. We asked ourselves - what would modern cuisine be like if the Axis had won WW2? So we made up a whole menu of German-Japanese fusion fare - teriyaki bratwurst, beer-battered sushi, stuff like that.”

“What’s wrong with teriyaki bratwurst?”

“Well, we have a lot of teriyaki bratwurst we need to get rid of. That stuff keeps forever.”

Territory1 mentions across 1 issues

Territory is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "how crude is the Map and how vast the Territory". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: Territory
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: July 22, 2022

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

2020 election 1 shared issues
2022 book review contest 1 shared issues
2122 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

Source context

From Nostradamus To Fukuyama

July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

The flip side of that coin is that I’m much more aware of the log in my own eye. [14] It never hurt anyone to reflect on how crude is the Map and how vast the Territory. I’m continually astonished by the sheer variety of ways I manage to arrive at ‘Here Be Dragons’. It's disturbing how often I open my mouth and someone else comes out. 'Strong opinions, weakly held' used to be an appealing heuristic. Unfortunately, I keep noticing that the stronger my opinion, the more likely it is that I'm missing something.15

Inline links: 'Strong opinions, weakly held'

terrorism1 mentions across 1 issues

terrorism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 28, 2022 and September 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "If people were ranking threats to the world order now, Islam and terrorism wouldn’t make the top twenty". It most often appears alongside 9-11, AI, Better Angels.

Reference entry: terrorism
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 28, 2022
Last seen: September 28, 2022

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From Nostradamus To Fukuyama September 28, 2022

9-11 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
Better Angels 1 shared issues
Boris Johnson 1 shared issues
Britain 1 shared issues

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September 28, 2022 · Original source

With the benefit of hindsight, everything about 9/11 and the War On Terror was a random blip in history with no broader implications. There was not a rising Islamofascism, there was not a clash of civilizations. There were a few guys in some caves doing terrorism, they got lucky once, the US got angry and invaded a few countries, and then everything continued as before. If people were ranking threats to the world order now, Islam and terrorism wouldn’t make the top twenty.

tetragrammaton1 mentions across 1 issues

tetragrammaton is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 05, 2026 and February 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "kabbalistic visualization meditation in which I 'carved' the letters of the tetragrammaton- the classic name of God". It most often appears alongside 4o, 60 Minutes, @MattZeitlin.

Reference entry: tetragrammaton
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 05, 2026
Last seen: February 05, 2026

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Links For February 2026 February 05, 2026

4o 1 shared issues
60 Minutes 1 shared issues
@MattZeitlin 1 shared issues
@MMJukic 1 shared issues
@Poltfan69 1 shared issues

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Links For February 2026

February 05, 2026 · Original source

I went quite far with my love of letters. I even practiced a specific kind of kabbalistic visualization meditation in which I 'carved' the letters of the tetragrammaton- the classic name of God- into my visual snow. First behind my eyelids, then opened- until the name of God was before me at all times- a turn of phrase from psalms. This felt exhilarating and mystical but complicated masturbation in unexpected and unfortunate ways.

Texans1 mentions across 1 issues

Texans is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 30, 2022 and March 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "since Texans have all the normal rights in the US, they’re not a separate people". It most often appears alongside American Republicans, AP, Bahamas.

Reference entry: Texans
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 30, 2022
Last seen: March 30, 2022

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Who Gets Self-Determination? March 30, 2022

American Republicans 1 shared issues
AP 1 shared issues
Bahamas 1 shared issues
Belgium 1 shared issues
Brazil 1 shared issues

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Who Gets Self-Determination?

March 30, 2022 · Original source

As best I can tell, international law on this question centers around a UN-backed covenant which says that “all peoples have the right to self-determination”. So are Texans/Kurds/Scots/Palestinians a “people”? International law makes no effort to answer this question. Presumably Volodymyr Zelenskyy thinks Ukrainians count as a people, and Vladmir Putin isn’t so sure.

Inline links: covenant

Other sources have defined “a people” based on exclusion from existing political structures. So since Texans have all the normal rights in the US, they’re not a separate people. But since Palestinians don’t have all the normal rights in Israel, they are. But this suggests that if Putin invaded eg Finland, and then granted the Finns whatever the normal rights are in Russia, Finns would stop being a people.

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 28, 2024 and March 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "This is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy , which Saar warned against"; "he mostly talked about things like the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, which all participants already knew about". It most often appears alongside ACX comment thread, ACX subreddit, Asia.

Reference entry: Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 28, 2024
Last seen: March 28, 2024

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Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate March 28, 2024

ACX comment thread 1 shared issues
ACX subreddit 1 shared issues
Asia 1 shared issues
Auschwitz 1 shared issues
BANAL-52 1 shared issues

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Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate

March 28, 2024 · Original source

Okay, this one is just awful. It takes the risky gambit above - giving extreme odds to something - then doubles down on it by multiplying across twenty different stages to get a stupendously low probability of 1/5*10^25. If we believe this, it’s more likely that we win the lottery three times in a row than that we learn lab leak was true after all. Eliezer Yudkowsky calls this the Multiple Stage Fallacy. Even aside from the failure mode in the sunrise example above (where people are too reluctant to give strong probabilities), it fails because people don’t think enough about the correlations between stages. For example, maybe there’s only 1/10 odds that the Wuhan scientists would choose the suboptimal RRAR furin cleavage site. And maybe there’s only 1/20 odds that they would add a proline in front to make it PRRAR. But are these really two separate forms of weirdness, such that we can multiply them together and get 1/200? Or are scientists who do one weird thing with a furin cleavage site more likely to do another? Mightn’t they be pursuing some general strategy of testing weird furin cleavage sites? (For example, Yuri proposed that, because the scientists wanted to understand how pandemic coronaviruses originate in nature, they might deliberately pick more natural-looking features over more designed-looking ones, which would neatly explain many features seemingly inconsistent with lab leak. Is this a conspiracy theory? Rootclaim is able to successfully route around this question. If the probability of a feature happening in nature is X, then the probability of it happening in this variant of lab leak scenario is X * [chance that the scientists wanted to imitate nature). This gives it a (deserved) complexity penalty without ruling out this (non-zero and potentially important) possibility.) In any case, Peter didn’t care as much about probabilistic analysis as Saar, he didn’t make his case hinge on this slide, and he might have been kind of using it to troll Rootclaim (which definitely worked). He might not have been making any of the mistakes above. But anyone who took this slide seriously would end up dramatically miscalibrated. The Math: Big Pictures Another of Saar’s concerns with the verdict was that Peter was an extraordinary debater, to the point where it could have overwhelmed the signal from the evidence. It’s hard to watch the videos and not come away impressed. Peter seems to have a photographic memory for every detail of every study he’s ever read. He has some kind of 3D model in his brain of Wuhan, the wet market, and how all of its ventilation ducts and drains interacted with each other. Whenever someone challenged one of his points, he had a ten-slide PowerPoint presentation already made up to address that particular challenge, and would go over it with complete fluency, like he was reciting a memorized speech. I sometimes get accused of overdoing things, but I can’t imagine how many mutations it would take to make me even a fraction as competent as Peter was. Saar’s closing argument included the admission: Peter, I think everyone can agree, has much more knowledge on [COVID] origins than we do. He's invested much more time. He may be a much more talented researcher. He's much more into the details. He probably knows the best in the world on origins at this point. Once you’ve described your opponent that way in your closing argument, what’s left of your case? Saar thought a lot was left. Throughout the debate, he tried to make a point about how getting the inference right was more important than winning sub-sub-sub-debates about individual lines of evidence. Although Peter won most specific points of contention, Saar thought that if the judges could just keep their mind on the big picture, they would realize a lab leak was more likely. I’m potentially sympathetic to arguments like Saar’s. Imagine a debate about UFOs. Imaginary-Saar says “UFOs can’t be real, because it doesn’t make sense for aliens to come to Earth, circle around a few fields in Kansas, then leave without providing any other evidence of their existence.” Imaginary-Peter says “John Smith of Topeka saw a UFO at 4:52 PM on 6/12/2010, and everyone agrees he’s an honorable person who wouldn’t lie, so what’s your explanation of that?” Saar says “I don’t know, maybe he was drunk or something?” Peter says “Ha, I’ve hacked his cell phone records and geolocated him to coordinates XYZ, which is a mosque. My analysis finds that he’s there on 99.5% of Islamic holy days, which proves he’s a very religious Muslim. And religious Muslims don’t drink! Your argument is invalid!” On the one hand, imaginary-Peter is very impressive and sure did shoot down Saar’s point. On the other, imaginary-Saar never really claimed to have a great explanation for this particular UFO sighting, and his argument doesn’t depend on it. Instead of debating whether Smith could or couldn’t have been drunk, we need to zoom out and realize that the aliens explanation makes no sense. The problem was, Saar couldn’t effectively communicate what his big picture was. Neither deployed some kind of amazingly elegant prior. They both used the same kind of evidence. The only difference was that Peter’s evidence hung together, and Saar’s evidence fell apart on cross-examination. I think - not because Saar really explained it, but just reading between the lines - Saar thought the un-ignorable big picture evidence was the origin in a city with a coronavirus gain-of-function lab, and the twelve-nucleotide insertion in the furin cleavage site. To some degree, Peter just ate the loss on those questions. No matter how you slice it, it really is a weird coincidence that the epidemic started so close to Asia’s biggest coronavirus laboratory. Peter tried to deflect this - he pointed out there were other BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc. But this was a rare question where he unambiguously came out looking worse - the other cities’ labs had much less coronavirus-specific research. Wuhan really was unique (aside from the other big coronavirus lab in North Carolina). Peter did better when he tried to control the damage: there are a couple hundred million people in the South Asian areas where people eat weird animals exposed to virus-infected bats, Wuhan has a population of about 12 million, so maybe 1.5% of all potential zoonotic pandemics should start in Wuhan. Peter tried to argue that Wuhan was a local trade center, so maybe we should up that to 5 - 10%. 5 - 10% coincidences aren’t that rare. Even 1.5% coincidences happen sometimes. Likewise, the furin cleavage site really does stand on a genetic map. I didn’t feel like either side did much math to quantify how weird it was. Naively, I might think of this as “30,000 bases in COVID, only one insertion, it’s in what’s obviously the most interesting place - sounds like 30,000-to-one odds against”. Against that, a virus with a boring insertion would never have become a pandemic, so maybe you need to multiply this by however much viral evolution is going on in weird caves in Laos, and then you would get the odds that at least one virus would have an insertion interesting enough to go global. Neither participant calculated this in a way that satisfied me (though see here for related discussion). Instead, Peter tried to undermine the furin argument by showing that, as surprising as the site was under a natural origin, it would be an even more surprising choice for human engineers. Saar argued it wasn’t - but because of his policy of giving adjusted-for-model-error odds, he only gave this a factor of 30 in his analysis. Since Peter gave it a higher factor of 50 in his analysis, it looked from the outside like Saar had already conceded this point, and the judges were mostly happy to go with Saar’s artificially-low estimate. The Math: Double Coincidences Saar brought up an interesting point halfway through the debate: you should rarely see high Bayes factors on both sides of an argument. That is, suppose you accept that there’s only a 1-in-10,000 chance that the pandemic starts at a wet market under lab leak. And suppose you accept there’s only a 1-in-10,000 chance that COVID’s furin cleavage site could evolve naturally. If lab leak is true, then you might find 1-in-10,000 evidence for lab leak. But it’s a freak coincidence that there was 1-in-10,000 evidence for zoonosis5. Likewise, if zoonosis is true, you might find 1-in-10,000 evidence for this true thing. But it’s a freak coincidence that there was 1-in-10,000 evidence for lab leak. Either way, you’re accepting that a 1-in-10,000 freak coincidence happened. Isn’t it more likely you’ve bungled your analysis? I was following along at home, and I definitely bungled this point; I had some high Bayes factors on both sides. I adjusted some of them downward based on Saar’s good point, but how far should we take it? Here I remember The Pyramid And The Garden: you can get very strong coincidences if you have many degrees of freedom, ie buy a lot of lottery tickets. So for example, suppose there are fifty things about a virus. You should expect at least one of those to have a one-in-fifty coincidence by pure chance. What about more than that? You might be able to get away with this by saying there are an infinite number of possible conspiracy theories, and some from that infinite set are brought into existence when a strong enough coincidence makes them plausible. For example, it’s really weird that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If I wanted, I could form a conspiracy theory about a group of weird assassins obsessed with killing Founding Fathers on important dates, and then Jefferson and Adams’ deaths would be 1/10,000 evidence for that theory. But this is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, which Saar warned against several times. I don’t know if “the virus started in Wuhan, which is where they’re doing this research” gets a Texas Sharpshooter penalty, or how high that penalty should be. But the furin cleavage site doesn’t - people were talking about lab leak before anyone noticed it. The Aftermath: Peter Peter seemed satisfied with the result, in an understated sort of way: It seemed like an interesting experiment in monetizing the debunking of a conspiracy theory. I think there's usually a big asymmetry where it's easy to get rich spreading bullshit (like, the top anti-vaxxers during the pandemic all made a million dollars a year on substack), but it's almost impossible to make money on debunking it. The Rootclaim challenge seemed like one rare case where the opposite was true. Beyond that, I don't know what it's good for. It does seem like there could be a positive social impact from more people understanding that the lab leak hypothesis is (almost certainly) false. The Aftermath: Saar Saar says the debate didn’t change his mind. In fact, by the end of the debate, Rootclaim released an updated analysis that placed an even higher probability on lab leak than when they started. In his blog post, he discussed the issues above, and said the judges had erred in not considering them. He respects the judges, he appreciates their efforts, he just thinks they got it wrong. Although he respected their decision, he wanted the judges to correct what he saw as mistakes in their published statements, which delayed the public verdict and which which Viewers Like You did not appreciate: I ran an early draft of this post by him. There was some miscommunication about the exact publication date, so he hasn’t had time to write up a full response, but he has some quick thoughts (and I’ll link the full response when he writes it). He says: We will provide a full response to this post soon, but the main problem with it is fairly simple: There is general agreement that the main evidence for zoonosis is HSM (Huanan Seafood Market) forming an early cluster of cases. The contention is whether it is amazing 10,000x evidence, or is it negligible. All other evidence points to a lab leak, and if HSM is shown to be weak, lab leak is a clear winner. We provided an analysis of why it is negligible that is as close to mathematical proof as such things can be. Read it here. Scott and I exchanged a few emails on this issue and Scott preferred to discuss more intuitive analyses of HSM, using rules of thumb that likely served him well in the past. While I believe I managed to mostly explain where these failed, and Scott understands HSM is far weaker evidence than he initially thought6, he still has a very strong intuitive feeling (based on years of dealing with probabilities) that this is some exceptional coincidence, and that prevents him from properly updating his posterior. At the end of the day, this cannot be settled without going through our semi-formal derivation, understanding it, and either identifying the problem with it or accepting it (and thereby accepting lab-leak to be more likely). Here is a quick summary of the mistakes made by those claiming HSM is strong evidence: The first mistake is conflating Bayes factors with conditional probabilities. 1/10000 is the supposed conditional probability p(HSM|Lab Leak), That should be divided by the conditional probability of HSM under Zoonosis. Markets were not identified as a high-risk location prior to this outbreak (This will be elaborated in the full response), and in SARS1 the spillovers were mostly at restaurants and other food handlers that deal more closely with wildlife. While it's cool to point to the raccoon dog photo, that was a result of a retrospective search (we don't know what other photos they took which in retrospect would be brought up as premonition). Unbiased data shows markets are not a likely spillover location for zoonosis. We originally estimated p(HSM|Zoonosis)<0.1. Following more research we did to answer Scott's questions, this is more likely <0.03.

Inline links: Multiple Stage Fallacy, see here, 5, The Pyramid And The Garden, Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, blog post, 6

Claim that he, Saar, through his years of experience testing Rootclaim, has some kind of special metis at using it, and everyone else is screwing up. Saar gestured at (2) in the debate, repeatedly emphasizing that Rootclaim was difficult and subtle. But he mostly talked about things like the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, which all participants already knew about and were trying to avoid. Maybe he should go further. This wouldn’t necessarily be special pleading. When psychoanalysts claim their therapies work, they don’t mean that someone who just read a two page “What Is Psychoanalysis?” pamphlet can do good therapy. They mean that someone who spent ten years training under someone who spent ten years training and so on in a lineage back to Freud can do good therapy. When scientists say the scientific method works, they don’t mean that any crackpot who reads an Intro To Science textbook can figure out the mysteries of the universe. They mean someone who’s trained under other scientists and absorbed their way of thinking can do it. If Saar wants to convince people, I think he should abandon his debates - which wouldn’t help even if he won, and certainly don’t help when he loses - and train five people who aren’t him in how to do Rootclaim, up to standards where he admits they’re as good at it as he is. Then he should prove that those five people can reliably get the same answers to difficult questions, even when they’re not allowed to compare notes beforehand. That would be compelling evidence!8 The Aftermath: Pseudoscience Suppose we accept the judges’ decision that COVID arose via zoonosis. Does that mean lab leak was a “conspiracy theory” and we should be embarrassed to have ever believed it? The term “conspiracy theory” is awkward here because there were definitely at least two conspiracies - one by China to hide the evidence, one by western virologists to convince everyone that lab leak was stupid and they shouldn’t think about it. Saar cited some leaked internal conversations among expert virologists. Back in the earliest stage of the pandemic, they said to each other that it seemed like COVID could have come from a lab leak - their specific odds were 50-50 - but that they should try to obfuscate this to prevent people from turning against them and their labs. So the best we can say here is that maybe the conspiracies got lucky on their 50-50 bet, and the thing they were trying to cover up wasn’t even true. Still, it’s awkward to use “conspiracy theory” as an insult when the conspiracies were real. Maybe a better question is whether lab leak is “pseudoscience”. The argument against: lots of smart people and experts believed it was a lab leak. There were all those virologists giving 50-50 odds in their internal conversations. Even Peter says he started out leaning lab leak, back in 2021 when everyone was talking about it. The argument in favor: since 2021, experts (and Peter) have shifted pretty far in favor of zoonosis. They’ve been convinced by new work - the identification of early cases, the wet market surveys, the genetic analysis. What category of noun does the adjective“pseudoscientific” describe? It doesn’t necessarily describe theories: Newtonian mechanics wasn’t pseudoscience when Newton discovered it, but if someone argued for it today (against relativity), that would be pseudoscientific. It doesn’t even describe arguments: “we don’t have enough data to confirm global warming” was a strong argument against global warming before there were good data, and a pseudoscientific one now. Might we place the locus of pseudoscientificness in people, communities, and norms of discussion? Peter’s position is that, although the lab leak theory is inherently plausible and didn’t start as pseudoscience, it gradually accreted a community around it with bad epistemic norms. Once lab leak became A Thing - after people became obsessed with getting one over on the experts - they developed dozens of further arguments which ranged from flawed to completely false. Peter spent most of the debate debunking these - Mr. Chen’s supposed 12/8 COVID case, Connor Reed’s supposed 11/25 COVID case, the rumors of WIV researchers falling sick, the 90 early cases supposedly “hidden” in a random paper, etc, etc, etc. Peter compares this to QAnon, where an early “seed” idea created an entire community of people riffing off of it to create more and more bad facts and arguments until they had constructed an entire alternative epistemic edifice. If we don’t accept the judges’ verdict, and think lab leak is true, are we worried the zoonosis side has some misbehavior of its own? Yuri and Saar didn’t talk about that as much. High-status people misbehave in different ways from low-status people; I think the zoonosis side has plenty of things to feel bad about (eg the conspiracies), but pseudoscience probably isn’t the right descriptor. The Aftermath: Ebb And Flow During the debate, Peter accused the lab leak side of being constantly left flat-footed by new evidence. Sure, it had seemed plausible back in 2020, but they’d had to scramble to explain a steady stream of pro-zoonosis papers. Afterwards, Saar and Yuri got some new evidence of their own. A Chinese team appeared to have found a T/T intermediate strain of COVID in Shanghai, possibly imported from very early in Wuhan. If true, it would provide new evidence against a double spillover, instead supporting Lineage A mutating into B in humans. (You can see Peter’s response here - basically that we’re not sure it’s a true intermediate and not a reversion - if it were true, how come the two strains on either side of it got millions of cases, and it just got one guy in Shanghai? But if it were true, it would still be compatible with zoonosis - Lineage A would have spread from an animal and quickly mutated into B, the first A case would have been someone who left the wet market for a nearby area, and the first B case would have been someone who stayed in the wet market.) Also, a new Freedom of Information Act request got early drafts of the DEFUSE grant proposal with new details, of which the most explosive was a comment by the American half of the team, reassuring the Chinese half that even though the proposal focused on American work to please funders, they would let the Chinese side do some “assays”. Lab leakers say this disproves the argument that, because DEFUSE said the work would be done in the US, the Wuhan Institute of Virology couldn’t/wouldn’t do advanced gain-of-function research. (I asked Peter his response - he said the original draft of DEFUSE also said that the Chinese side would do “live virus binding assays”, and this isn’t the kind of gain-of-function research necessary to make COVID.) In an email, Saar and Yuri suggested it was an “interesting coincidence” that all the new evidence that came out after the debate favored their side. I’ve decided against updating on these considerations - either Peter’s version or Saar/Yuri’s. My impression is that anyone who starts out believing something at time t will also believe all the new evidence after time t favors that thing. There’s also a pattern I want to discourage, where one side will come up with some new trivial finding, or re-dredge up and re-package something that everyone already everyone else had already considered, then release it as THE SMOKING GUN! Then they release another SMOKING GUN!, and another, and after five or six SMOKING GUNS, they say their opponents are stubborn and refuse to yield to evidence, since they’ve obstinately ignored every single SMOKING GUN! without changing their probability even a little bit. Overall I don’t think it’s useful to update on the exact contours of the ebb and flow of new evidence. Just treat new evidence the same as old evidence, updating your model the same amount as everything else. The Aftermath: Debate Some skeptic blogs picked up this story last month, and one of the points they made was that even if this one turned out well for their side, in general they’re against this kind of thing. Part of their argument was that debating “conspiracy theories” just helps spread and legitimize them. I’ve made fun of this position before, and I’ll make fun of it again now. According to polling, about 66% of Americans believe lab leak, compared to 16% who believe natural origin and 17% who aren’t sure. That means that people with an opinion on the issue are more than 4:1 in favor of lab leak. At some point you have to start debating! What are you waiting for? If you hold off so long that finally every single person in the world except you believes lab leak, would you still be sitting there, pristine in your imperturbability, saying from your lofty height “I refuse to engage, because that would be providing the rest of you oxygen”? The other part of the argument was that saying “I will debate all comers for an $X bet” is annoying, and we shouldn’t encourage that kind of thing. Certainly this technique has been used by bad actors - for example, the Holocaust denial group Institute For Historical Review offered a $50,000 prize to anyone who could prove the Holocaust happened (it was eventually won by an Auschwitz survivor whose “proof” was that he saw his family led to the gas chambers; IHR failed to accept this; the survivor sued and won). Likewise, anti-vaccine multimillionaire Steve Kirsch has offered to bet $500,000 on the results of a debate about vaccines not working9 (Saar took him up on it and they’re continuing to hammer out the specifics). I assume the concern is that (if the court system hadn’t stepped in), the Institute for Historical Review could have kept denying any evidence they were given, then kept taunting people with “We’ve offered $50,000 for proof that the Holocaust happened, nobody has ever won our money, so the proof must not exist”. Or Kirsch could keep saying “Nobody will bet me $500,000 on vaccines, guess they’re scared and think they don’t have evidence” (when in fact it’s just that most people don’t have the time, courage, and risk tolerance to do this, especially when there’s no guarantee the right person will win the debate). In order to deny these people this weapon (the argument goes) we need to make it common knowledge that this strategy isn’t legitimate. And taking people up on their offer, having a great debate that leaves everybody more enlightened and serves as a model for rational discourse, then having the right side win in the end - seems like the opposite of delegitimizing this strategy. I guess I classify this with all the other examples in Less Utilitarian Than Thou. Cool Machiavellian plot you have there, but maybe the fact that you’re losing 16%-66% should make you question whether you’re really as smart as you think you are, and whether your plan to suppress all discussion for the greater good is really the mastermind-level strategy you hoped it would be. It’s good to assert the true fact that these kinds of challenges are often dumb/rigged/useless, and that “nobody has yet responded to my challenge” isn’t a valid argument that someone’s necessarily right. But I stop short of trying to set some kind of social norm that nobody may respond to anyone else’s challenges, even if they think that person is being honest and has organized the challenge well (as Saar was and did). That almost seems like itself legitimizing the whole thing, in the sense of accepting that if someone loses a challenge then it means something important. I would rather place the illegitimacy where it belongs (a challenge really doesn’t prove anything, separate from the arguments made in it) and let people do what they want. I want to see more debates like this. I learned more watching the 15 hours of Rootclaim debate than I think I would have researching on my own for 15 hours. But a lot of things had to come together to make this work. Most of all, this debate worked out because the judges were two very smart scientists with relevant expertise. To get such good judges, lots of things had to fall into place. First, the debate itself had to be expensive enough that neither side begrudged paying the extra $5,000 per judge to hire the best people. And second, the debate had to be about a topic where lots of intelligent people haven’t yet made up their minds. If the debate was about flat earth, I would despair of finding good judges. Either the judges would already be convinced the Earth was round (which the flat Earth side would understandably refuse to accept). Or they would be 50-50, which would mean they were extremely weird people whose reasoning couldn’t be trusted. Flat Earth is an extreme example, but even a debate about COVID vaccines would be pushing it here. (since writing this, I learned Peter had made this same argument and analogy in a blog post on Kirsch; sorry for the unintentional plagiarism) I think I would genuinely update on the conclusion of any other Rootclaim debate with the same caliber of participants as this one, but not necessarily on whatever Steve Kirsch or the Institute of Historical Review comes up with, nor the next person to hit on the strategy of “I’ll pay you $100,000 if you prove me wrong!”10 The Aftermath: Conclusion This was one of my favorite topics to write about this year, for a few reasons. First, on the object level, I learned a lot about the origins of COVID, which is a great story. I feel like I know much more now about this disease that came out of nowhere and ruined all of our lives for a few years. It’s a weird rabbit hole, which I’m not yet entirely out of. I have a weird urge to visit Wuhan as a tourist, see the Wuhan Institute of Virology, stroll through the Huanan Central Seafood Market (unfortunately closed), maybe eat a raccoon-dog. Second, some of the lessons of this debate are actionable. I’ve written before about how we should learn the lessons of lab leak even if it turns out to be false this time; that hasn’t changed. But this was a good reminder to also learn the lessons of zoonosis, for the same reason. We need more attention on closing wet markets and tracking weird Chinese wildlife. The DEFUSE proposal wanted to immunize bats - is this still a worthwhile idea? The virologists got a bad rap for wanting to gain-of-function exactly the pathogen that caused the century’s worst pandemic, but in a way that speaks well of them - they clearly knew what to be worried about. Has anyone mumbled an apology and asked them if they have any other useful predictions? Third, John Nerst has written about erisology, the study of disagreements. This was surely one of history’s greatest erisological studies. Two very smart people spent fifteen hours hashing out every argument and counterargument in good faith, then quantified all of their beliefs in a way that lets us figure out exactly where they differed and by how much. This isn’t entirely a victory - as a newly minted member of team zoonosis, I still can’t trace exactly why Saar is so sure I’m wrong. But if the COVID origin story fascinates me as this peek deep into a pestiferous underworld of sinister laboratories and reeking wet markets, something about this debate felt like analogous peek into the creepy subconscious swamps where disagreements begin. Fourth, for the first time it made me see the coronavirus as one of God’s biggest and funniest jokes. Think about it. Either a zoonotic virus crossed over to humans fifteen miles from the biggest coronavirus laboratory in the Eastern Hemisphere. Or a lab leak virus first rose to public attention right near a raccoon-dog stall in a wet market. Either way is one of the century’s biggest coincidences, designed by some cosmic joker who wanted to keep the debate acrimonious for years to come. But fifth, if the coronavirus’ story is a comedy, all of this - Rootclaim, the debate, the $100K - is a tragedy. Saar got $100 million, decided to devote a big part of his life to improving human reasoning, and came up with a really elegant system. He was so confident in his system, and in the power of open discussion, that he risked his money and reputation on an accept-all-comers debate offer . Then some rando who nobody had ever heard of accepted the challenge, turned out to be some kind of weird debate savant, and won, turning what should have been Rootclaim’s moment of triumph into a bitter defeat. Totally new kind of human suffering, worthy of Shakespeare. I look forward to the movie, especially seeing who plays the dashing young blogger who helped the participants meet. Other Resources Daniel Filan’s running Twitter commentary of the debate

Inline links: 8, appeared to have found, here, got early drafts of the DEFUSE grant proposal with new details, picked up this story, made fun of this position before, polling, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mohs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0e52ee7e-553d-4ad5-a0eb-701ad84be8cb_615x308.png, 9, Less Utilitarian Than Thou, in a blog post on Kirsch, 10, erisology, Daniel Filan’s running Twitter commentary of the debate

Thai Forest1 mentions across 1 issues

Thai Forest is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 31, 2022 and October 31, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I don't know of any Thai Forest monk scandals". It most often appears alongside A Mind Without Craving, ACX, Andres Emilsson.

Reference entry: Thai Forest
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 31, 2022
Last seen: October 31, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Jhanas October 31, 2022

A Mind Without Craving 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Andres Emilsson 1 shared issues
Andres Gomez Emilsson 1 shared issues
anāgāmī 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Jhanas

October 31, 2022 · Original source

I think one possible explanation is that "most traditions have lost the emphasis on jhana." In particular, the sex scandals almost all come from traditions like this, AFAIK — Zen, Tibetan; I don't know of any Thai Forest monk scandals (although possibly they do exist).

Thanksgiving1 mentions across 1 issues

Thanksgiving is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 07, 2022 and December 07, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "'10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving...'"; ""10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years"". It most often appears alongside Blue Helmet, Blue Helmet Insurance, Chakaramanditya.

Reference entry: Thanksgiving
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 07, 2022
Last seen: December 07, 2022

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What Your Doctor Spends 80% Of Their Time Doing December 07, 2022

Blue Helmet 1 shared issues
Blue Helmet Insurance 1 shared issues
Chakaramanditya 1 shared issues
Christmas 1 shared issues
Christmas 1 shared issues

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What Your Doctor Spends 80% Of Their Time Doing

December 07, 2022 · Original source

"Hello! This is SmartSave pharmacy, home of compassionate savings on drugs, vitamins, and more. Our hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM Saturdays, 10 AM to 3 PM Sundays, 10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, and New Years, and 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat. We now have the COVID booster at SmartSave pharmacy! Did you know that COVID boosters can protect against all variants of COVID? Schedule your COVID booster now! We also have the SmartSave card, a great source for all prescription drug savings. ¡Hola! Esta es la farmacia SmartSave, hogar de ahorros compasivos en medicamentos, vitaminas y más. Nuestro horario es de 9 a. m. a 5 p. m. de lunes a viernes, de 10 a. m. a 4 p. m. los sábados, de 10 a. m. a 3 p. m. los domingos, de 10 a. :30 p. m. en Semana Santa, Día de los Caídos y Tu B'Shevat. ¡Ya tenemos el refuerzo COVID en farmacia SmartSave! ¿Sabía que los refuerzos de COVID pueden proteger contra todas las variantes de COVID? ¡Programe su refuerzo COVID ahora! Tambien tenemos la tarjeta SmartSave, una gran fuente para todos los ahorros en medicamentos recetados. If you would like to hear this introductory message again, press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line."

"Hello! This is SmartSave pharmacy, home of compassionate savings on drugs, vitamins, and more. Our hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM Saturdays, 10 AM to 3 PM Sundays, 10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years, and 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat. We now have the COVID booster at SmartSave pharmacy! Did you know that COVID boosters can protect against all variants of COVID? Schedule your COVID booster now! We now have the SmartSave card, a great source for all prescription drug savings. ¡Hola! Esta es la farmacia SmartSave, hogar de ahorros compasivos en medicamentos, vitaminas y más. Nuestro horario es de 9 a. m. a 5 p. m. de lunes a viernes, de 10 a. m. a 4 p. m. los sábados, de 10 a. m. a 3 p. m. los domingos, de 10 a. :30 p. m. en Semana Santa, Día de los Caídos y Tu B'Shevat. ¡Ya tenemos el refuerzo COVID en farmacia SmartSave! ¿Sabía que los refuerzos de COVID pueden proteger contra todas las variantes de COVID? ¡Programe su refuerzo COVID ahora! Ahora tenemos la tarjeta SmartSave, una gran fuente para todos los ahorros en medicamentos recetados. If you would like to hear this introductory message again, press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line."

Tharbaioi1 mentions across 1 issues

Tharbaioi is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 19, 2023 and September 19, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the nations of ... Tharbaioi". It most often appears alongside 15th century Sicilian manuscript, Agrimardio, Aigeis.

Reference entry: Tharbaioi
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 19, 2023
Last seen: September 19, 2023

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Book Review: The Alexander Romance September 19, 2023

15th century Sicilian manuscript 1 shared issues
Agrimardio 1 shared issues
Aigeis 1 shared issues
Alans 1 shared issues
Alexander 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The Alexander Romance

September 19, 2023 · Original source

In case you’re wondering, in addition to Gog and Magog, this saved us from the nations of “Anougeis, Aigeis, Exenach, Diphar, Photinaioi, Pharizaioi, Zarmatianoi, Chachonioio, Agrimardio, Anouphagoi, Tharbaioi, Alans, Physolonikaioi, Saltarioi, and the rest.” I recognize two of these: the Sarmatians and the Alans - as real steppe tribes. The others are probably imaginary steppe tribes meant to represent how big and scary the steppe was in the Mediterranean imagination.

That’s what she said!1 mentions across 1 issues

That’s what she said! is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2022 and May 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "His trademark joke, “That’s what she said!”". It most often appears alongside A Few Good Men, Adolf Eichmann, Akron.

Reference entry: That’s what she said!
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 10, 2022
Last seen: May 10, 2022

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Book Review: The Gervais Principle May 10, 2022

A Few Good Men 1 shared issues
Adolf Eichmann 1 shared issues
Akron 1 shared issues
Akron, Ohio 1 shared issues
Andy 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The Gervais Principle

May 10, 2022 · Original source

The mediocre develop faster than either the talented or the untalented An alternative way of looking at these three laws is to note that defense mechanisms emerge to sustain addictions even when the developmental environment that originally nourished it vanishes. Defense mechanisms though, are more useful as a partial catalog of phenomenology than as a foundational idea. These then are the developmental psychology roots of the Gervais Principle. Recall that Cluelessness goes with overperformance. That overperformance is caused by arrested development around a strength, which has been hooked by an addictive environment of social rewards. Mediocrity is your best defense against addiction, and guarantor of further open-ended psychological development. And yes, for the alert among you who have spotted a connection, arrested development is the dark side of strengths in the sense of Positive Psychology. A strength in one situation is merely an entrenched piece of arrested development in another. In our model, the three development stages – Clueless, Losers and Sociopaths – correspond to different patterns of arrested development and different strength-addictions. That is, development involves progressing from one stage (eg school) to another stage (eg the real world). But if you’re too good at an early stage, you become accustomed to the reward you get from success. Suppose you loved school and did great at it. Then you get invited to participate in the real world, a noticeably non-school-like environment. You try it, and instead of getting praise/reward/validation all the time, you get those things rarely or not at all. If you can, maybe you go back to school (ie get a PhD), a strategy with problems of its own. But if you can’t real-world actually go back to school, instead you might remain permanently stuck at a psychological stage where everything feels like school, where you try to distort your perceptions until your world-model looks vaguely school-like, and where you use your school-based skills and coping mechanisms for everything. The particular example I just gave, about school, is Rao’s explanation for Dwight Schrute: Dwight, with his stern German upbringing, lacked the normal encouragement of early-childhood creative-performance instincts (we see several glimpses of this, including his attempt to read horrifying medieval cautionary tales to the kids during bring-your-child-to-work day, and his own description of his childhood, which left his brother actually developmentally disabled). He has therefore developed none of the addiction to childhood applause-seeking performance behaviors that have trapped Michael. Instead, Dwight found relief in the graded, performance-oriented worlds of school and varied medieval-guild-like worlds, such as farming, animal husbandry and karate. His attempts to understand the world of management, which is decidedly not a world of grades or guilds, are based entirely on peripheral guild-like elements. He is the only one excited about the Survivor-style successor-selection event Michael arranges (in the bus on the way over, he asks, “Will there be business parables?”). When he attempts manipulation, his mind naturally turns to hidden microphones, doctored documents and other elements of tradecraft learned from spy novels, and only rarely to psychology. He banks the occasional tactical victory, but cannot play or win the mind games required to beat the Sociopaths. In Dwight’s world, everything worth learning is teachable, and medals, certificates and formal membership in meritocratic institutions is evidence of success. Even where play behaviors are concerned, the Dwights of the world can more easily get lost in points-and-rules worlds. It is significant that Dwight has never seen/read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is about creative-performance play), but is obsessed with gaming worlds and sci-fi/fantasy universes. Perhaps the clearest example of Dwight’s need for formal affiliation is his lame attempt at the insider stand-up comedy routine, The Aristocrats. To Dwight, everything is a formal contest, and there are always authority figures who provide legitimacy and rankings. He has no sense of humor (thanks to skipping early childhood), and has no idea how to actually evoke laughter, so he tries to ace the only formal membership test he can see, the ability to tell the Aristocrats joke. Michael, by contrast, can at least tell juvenile jokes, and Andy can manage some bad frat-boy humor. Rao argues that Michael Scott, the “boss” in the show, is stuck at an even lower level: Little children in normal environments win their first victories through creative performance: reciting nursery rhymes, drawing pictures, and demonstrating creative play behaviors. If they succeed too much, they get addicted to the typical adult reaction: Wow, aren’t you cute/clever? and, to a lesser extent, to admiration from younger siblings. In learning to thrive in this particular reward/penalty environment, little children rely mostly on responding to the emotional content of what they hear and see, since they do not understand much. With a few evolved defense mechanisms thrown in, to protect against adult realities that don’t conform to childhood environments, that’s exactly what it feels like to be Michael. When he hears somebody talking, all he hears is “blah blah blah good job, blah blah blah, how could you do this Michael?” in conjunction with facial expressions and body language. Michael’s head is a massive library of childlike mappings between situations, canned phrases and reactions. He is not completely responsible for his actions and utterances because he genuinely does not understand them. There is coherence in what Michael says though; he does not sound completely nonsensical because he reacts meaningfully to body language, facial expressions and emotional cues. “You talkin’ to me?” (borrowed from De Niro) is a belligerent line, and by pulling out that line when he feels threatened, and then displacing the tension with laughter, Michael is able to derail the conversation. His trademark joke, “That’s what she said!” is an extreme example. It makes no sense in most contexts where he trots it out; its only purpose is to dissolve tension and displace threats. Either laughing with Michael or throwing up your hands in frustration is a victory for him. The only effective response is to calmly ignore his disruptive actions, wait for the reaction to die down, and continue the conversation in dominant mode, like Cesar Milan with his dogs … Around Packer, his boorish friend, insulting and objectifying ways of talking about women gain approval, so he trots out borrowed, misogynistic man-talk. Withering under the collective glare of his politically correct employees, phrases like “respect women” gain smiles and halt frowns, so that’s what he offers. […] Here is why: delusions are closed logical schemes, where reality is mangled into the service of a fixed script through defense mechanisms, with the rest of the meaning thrown away. To manufacture original thought you have to look at/listen to reality in open ways for data. That is why Michael’s database is so full of movie lines. Movies are goldmines of canned situation-reactions that don’t require much present-reality data to retrieve. When kids quote adults or movies, they seem precocious, and gain approval. In an era where more kids are raised by TV than by parents, parroting movie lines comes more naturally than repeating bromides learned from parental figures or at churches and temples. Recall that social calendars force you through later stages whether or not you master previous ones. So what about later stages? Michael is not quite as enamored of medals and certificates as Dwight because (as a lousy student) he never got very good at earning them, and could therefore not get seriously addicted to them. Finally, Michael has poorly developed peer-affiliation drives. He wants to be the center of attention, not one among many equals in a huddle of peers. When Michael appears to be operating under a peer-affiliation drive (the sort that animates Andy), he is really casting child behaviors into a teen mould. He believes that specific people, rather than formal or informal groups, are cool or admirable (proxy parental figures, older siblings). If they are not cool or admirable, they must be made to view him as cool and admirable (younger siblings). I was struck by a line in an appendix, saying this is the same level that Nazi bureaucrats were at. Just for fun, let’s compare the rest of Rao’s profile of Michael with Arendt’s profile of Adolf Eichmann (all quotes taken from my Eichmann In Jerusalem review): Despite all the efforts of the prosecution, everybody could see that this man was not a “monster,” but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown. And since this suspicion would have been fatal to the whole enterprise, and was also rather hard to sustain, in view of the sufferings he and his like had caused so many millions of people, his worst clowneries were hardly noticed. What could you do with a man who first declared, with great emphasis, that the one thing he had learned in an ill-spent life was that one should never take an oath (“Today no man, no judge could ever persuade me to make a sworn statement. I refuse it; I refuse it for moral reasons. Since my experience tells me that if one is loyal to his oath, one day he has to take the consequences, I have made up my mind once and for all that no judge in the world or other authority will ever be capable of making me swear an oath, to give sworn testimony. I won’t do it voluntarily and no one will be able to force me”), and then, after being told explicitly that if he wished to testify in his own defense he might “do so under oath or without an oath,” declared without further ado that he would prefer to testify under oath? And: The judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was “empty talk” – except that they thought the emptiness was feigned, and that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts which, though hideous, were not empty. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he repeated it until it became a cliché) each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. Whether writing his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether speaking to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. And finally (this time in my voice): If [Arendt] has any thesis at all, it’s that Eichmann believed in something larger than himself. We usually encourage this sort of thing, but I think the prosocial version involves having a specific larger-than-yourself thing in mind. Eichmann (says Arendt) just liked larger-than-himself things in general, and the Nazi vision of eternal struggle for racial supremacy was the biggest thing he could find in the vicinity. We’ll later see that he had a strange respect for Zionists, and this was because they too believed in something larger than themselves. Eichmann’s infamous cliches were the cliches of pomp and circumstance and glory and high words, the ones which made him feel like he was engaged in a great enterprise whether or not there was anything behind them. The reason he admitted neither to “just following orders”, nor to a deep personal belief in anti-Semitism, was that his loyalty to Hitler came from neither. When Hitler said to kill all the Jews, he gladly complied; if Hitler had said to kill all the Christians, he would have done that too. Not because he was a drone following orders to save his skin, but because he believed. Not in any of the specifics of Nazi ideology. Not even in Hitler’s personal judgment. Just in whatever was going on at the time. IV. When he gets to the next section, on Losers, Rao mostly forgets the developmental psych. Now this is a book on status economics. Rao’s poetic description: Each of them – and they constitute 80% of humanity – is born the most beautiful baby in the world. Each is an above-average child; in fact the entire 80% is in the top 20% of human beings (it’s crowded up there). Each grows up knowing that he or she is deeply special in some way, and destined for a unique life that he or she is “meant” to live. In their troubled twenties, each seeks the one true love that they know is out there, waiting for them, and their real calling in life. Each time they fail at life or love, their friends console them: “You are a smart, funny, beautiful and incredibly talented person, and the love of your life and your true calling are out there somewhere. I just know that.” The friends are right of course: each marries the most beautiful man/woman in the world, discovers his/her calling, and becomes the proud parent of the most beautiful baby in the world. Eventually, each of them retires, earns a gold watch, and somebody makes a speech declaring him or her to be a Wonderful Human Being. You and I know them as Losers. Being a Loser means clinging to the delusion of being special, while also being fully accepted by your social group (indeed, your specialness only matters instrumentally and insofar as other people appreciate you for it). But these two imperatives are Scylla and Charybdis: insist too hard on actually being special and you’re a narcissist who everyone hates; try too cravenly to seek acceptance, and you’re acknowledging other people are better than you. Rao views Loserdom as a series of conspiracies to manage this paradox. The end solution looks something like "everyone is special in their own way”. Loser dynamics are largely driven by Lake-Wobegon-effect snow jobs, which obscure pervasive mediocrity. But unlike the delusions of the Clueless (false confidence of the Dunning-Kruger variety which we saw last time), which are maintained through the furious efforts and desperate denials on the part of the deluded individuals themselves, Loser delusions are maintained by groups. You scratch my delusion, I’ll scratch yours. I’ll call you a thoughtful critic if you agree to call me a fascinating blogger. And we’ll both convince ourselves that our lives are to be valued by these different measures. Loser above-averageness is generally not based on an outright falsehood. Unlike Michael’s pretensions to comic genius, which are strictly not true, Pam really is the best artist in the group. The delusion lies not in a false assessment of her artistic skills, but in the group choosing to evaluate her on the basis of art in the first place. In other words, Losers are too smart to fool themselves. They enter into social contracts which require them to fool each other […] At the life-script level, the game-playing social contract creates complete nominal illegibility. Each individual in a group is judged according to a custom life script that makes it impossible to compare two lives within the group. Pam’s life has a redemptive script based on the fact that she is the cutest one in the office, can paint well, and forms the “It” couple with Jim. Kevin’s is based on the fact that he is in a band. Creed’s uniqueness lies in his weirdness…Remember, you are unique, just like everybody else. A second, corollary paradox: Groucho Marx joked that he wouldn’t belong to any club that would accept him as a member. But then why do people ever associate in clubs? Suppose you joined a club that was clearly not good enough for you - maybe you’re a famous billionaire and they’re a bunch of losers who watch crappy TV in a basement once a week. Why would you be in this club? But suppose you tried to join a club that was clearly too good for you - you’re a poor person with no social skills, and you apply to the rich billionaires’ country club. Why would they ever accept you? This suggests that people won’t join clubs that are too much higher or lower status than they are. But why would they join clubs that are even slightly higher or lower status? Wouldn’t you expect nobody ever joins anything except in the vanishingly rare case where their status and the club’s status are exactly the same? Rao is trying to make the point that all associations require some level of status illegibility. If you knew status perfectly - if you went around with “Status: 6.8/10” tattooed on your forehead - then you could see a club all of whose members had statuses 6.2 - 6.5, and know that you could do better. So instead, the same social conspiracy that keeps people convinced they have useful talents, also keeps status illegible. This takes the form of everyone teasing each other, creating a constant churn of minor status increases and decrements which is too complicated for anyone to track properly. (Rao says that the single-highest and single-lowest status people in any group can sometimes be legible - creating an observable range for what status people in the group can be, ie “we’re for people between 6/10 and 7/10” - but the middle always has to be illegible, to allow the majority of people to preserve their polite fiction that they’re among the higher-status members of their group.) This section on status economics ends with a digression on jokes. Not as in knock-knock jokes. Jokes where one person makes fun of another, gaining status at their expense. These kinds of jokes are status economics transactions. According to Rao, the minimum viable Loser joke is three people: the joker, the victim, and an audience. The joker makes a joke. The victim has a chance to retort (eg “takes one to know one!”) and the audience decides how to mentally update everyone’s status. Rao uses examples from The Office, but I haven’t seen it, so I was thinking about an episode of Seinfeld: When George was stuffing himself with shrimp at a meeting, Reilly remarked, "Hey, George, the ocean called. They're running out of shrimp." Slow-witted George could not think of a comeback until later, while driving to the tennis club to meet Jerry. His comeback was: "Oh, yeah, Reilly? Well, the jerk store called, and they're running out of you." Jerry, Elaine, and Kramer did not think 'jerk store' was a good comeback mainly because "there are no jerk stores." Elaine suggests, "Your cranium called. It's got some space to rent." Jerry suggests, "The zoo called. You're due back by six." Kramer finally thinks George should just tell Reilly that he slept with his wife. After discovering that Reilly was let go from the Yankees and now works for Firestone, George flies to Akron, Ohio just to try the jerkstore line. When he says it, however, Reilly responds, "What's the difference? You're their all-time best seller." George, unprepared for this, ends up using Kramer's line. He's then told that Reilly's wife is in a coma. Rao asks: in what sense did Reilly successfully “score” on George? Suppose George had been a very stupid person, and hadn’t understood that Reilly’s comment was supposed to be teasing/hurtful; he would have been unaffected. Or suppose he had something totally outlandish (“Yes, but there are canyons on Mars”), then insisted that it was a brilliant comeback and let Reilly exhaust/embarrass himself trying to prove it wasn’t? In contrast, if there had been a third person there (let’s say a love interest who both George and Reilly were pursuing), this pointless narcissistic zero-stakes game would become relevant: the love interest gets to evaluate the two against each other, and award status to the victor. This isn’t always the wittier of the two. You can also imagine a world where George says “Excuse me, I have an eating disorder, I think it’s incredibly stigmatizing for you to bully me like this.” Then the third person gets to decide whether to treat this as Reilly making a hilarious joke and George being too thin-skinned to take it, or as Reilly saying something offensive and George bravely calling him out. Crucially, if she wants, she can let her decision hinge on whether she liked Reilly or George better to begin with, or whether one or the other would be a better ally in the future - so this is part status-transaction and part status-test. But in the actual Seinfield episode, there is no love interest. George and Reilly are trying to score points on each other, totally unaware that this is meaningless. For Rao, this is a sure sign of Cluelessness - anyone with social skills would realize no status could be gained or lost and the whole game is pointless. So Loser jokes are 3+ people, and Clueless jokes are 2 people. Continuing the pattern, a Sociopath joke must be for one person - the joker amusing himself, totally unconcerned whether anyone else appreciates it. V. Sociopaths aren’t necessarily evil. They’re just . . . unbeholden to anyone else. They might still follow the rules because it advantages them to do it, or because they have personally chosen to follow some moral code they happen to like. But they don’t crave approval from anyone, not even abstract concepts. If the Clueless come from arrested development, and Losers from normal development and its attendant status economics, Sociopaths are formed by a sort of dark enlightenment. They have a moment when they realize nothing is true and everything is permissible. Rao’s poetic side writes: Sociopathy is not about ripping off a specific mask from the face of social reality. It is about recognizing that there are no social realities. There are only masks. Social realities exist as a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated and specialized fictions for those predisposed to believe that there is something special about the human condition, which sets our realities apart from the rest of the universe. There is, to the Sociopath, only one reality governing everything from quarks to galaxies. Humans have no special place within it. Any idea predicated on the special status of the human — such as justice, fairness, equality, talent — is raw material for a theater of mediated realities that can be created via subtraction of conflicting evidence, polishing and masking. Mask is an appropriate term for any social reality created through subtraction, because an appearance of human-like agency for non-human realities is what the inhabitants require. By humanizing the non-human universe, we make the human special. All that is required is to control people who believe in fairness, is to remove any evidence suggesting that the world might fundamentally not be a fair place, and mask it appropriately with a justice principle such as an afterlife calculus, or a retirement fantasy. […] When a layer of social reality is penetrated and turned into a means for manipulating the realities of others, it is automatically devalued. To create medals and ranking schemes for the benefit of the Clueless is to see them as mere baubles yourself. To turn status-seeking into a control mechanism is to devalue status. To devalue something is to judge any meaning it carries as inconsequential. In terms of our metaphor of masks of gods, the moment you rip off a mask and wear it yourself, whatever that mask represents becomes worth much less. So the Sociopath’s journey is fundamentally a nihilistic one. The climactic moment in this journey is the point where skill at manipulating social realities becomes unconscious. Suddenly, it becomes apparent that all social realities are based on fictional meanings created by denying some aspect of natural, undivided reality. Reality that does not revolve around the needs of humans. The mask-ripping process itself becomes revealed as an act within the last theater of social reality, the one within which at least manipulating social realities seems to be a meaningful process in some meta-sense. Game design with good and evil behaviors. Losing this illusion is a total-perspective-vortex moment for the Sociopath: he comes face-to-face with the oldest and most fearsome god of all: the absent God. In that moment, the Sociopath viscerally experiences the vast inner emptiness that results from the sudden dissolution of all social realities. There’s just a pile of masks with no face beneath. Just quarks and stuff. Both Losers and Clueless are trying to manipulate other people’s impressions of them. Sociopaths are trying to manipulate reality. Reality includes other people’s impressions - if your goal is to become President, in some sense you care what the electorate thinks of you. But it’s an instrumental goal. Sociopaths crave the Presidency (or whatever) and use other people’s good opinions as stepping-stones. Losers and Clueless crave the good opinions directly. Once you stop craving other people’s good opinions, you lose some mental blocks that would normally prevent you from coming up with manipulative strategies. Rao says the most basic Sociopath manuever is “heads I win, tails you lose” - coming up with some way of arranging systems so that they get the credit for good results while avoiding the blame for bad ones. A simple strategy is to come up with a plan and appoint a Clueless pawn as Director Of The Plan. If the plan goes well, it was always your idea and you hand-picked and mentored the person who carried it out. If the plan goes poorly, it was always the director’s idea, you maybe thought it had some promise but he clearly bungled the execution. But this is a weak 101-level version of the maneuver; the real thing involves a bunch of bureaucracies, committees, and total deniability. Rao theorizes that most of the middle layers of companies are giant and powerful machines built by Sociopaths to guide and redirect the flow of blame and credit. Is everyone else against this? Do they view it as duplicity and oppression? Rao says no. Sociopaths aren’t just CEOs. They’re priest-kings, creating meaning for everyone else. The Clueless demand a world of legible rules, legible rewards and punishment, and a legible Authority tracking everyone’s balance. Sociopaths, who create companies, religions, governments, and every other form of authority, help Clueless people live in the legible gamified rank-able worlds their minds crave. I’m less able to follow Rao’s explanation of “Loser spirituality” and how Sociopaths control it. My guess is something like: Losers “worship” positive emotions, belongingness, and “good vibes”, within carefully obfuscated conspiracies of mutual status-blindness. These aren’t really capable of dealing with the real world: a typical fiction is that “we’re all really talented and gave our all on this project”, but in fact the project might be failing. Sociopaths are outside those conspiracies and outside local status competitions, ie your CEO isn’t going to share banter over a glass of beer with you. So they are allowed to (carefully, emotionlessly) communicate/represent/convey reality to the status-maintenance conspiracies in a way where no particular member loses status by admitting reality first. Although in some vague sense the Sociopaths are oppressing and manipulating everyone else, this isn’t how it feels from the inside: both Clueless and Losers are grateful to the Sociopaths for taking the burden of confronting reality off their shoulders. If the Sociopath fails at this, and a Clueless or Loser has to confront reality unmediated, they’ll either have a very bad time but eventually bounce back, or become a Sociopath themselves. VI. So that’s The Gervais Principle. Is any of it true? I don’t find myself or the people I know best falling clearly into any of these archetypes. They’re useful to have around. I can see pieces of all of them. But none are a great match. I can see bits of myself in the Clueless archetype. I like legible systems. I’m the person who did really well on standardized tests, really badly at networking, and ended up in medical school because it was the highest you could go on test scores alone. I’ve occasionally suggested that all politics should be replaced with some kind of system for calculating how much utility every option has, then doing whichever one is best (bonus points if it’s on the blockchain). But I’m bad at listening to authority figures,and quit my last job to start my own company. Also, Clueless people are supposed to be bad at using language in original ways, and I’m a professional writer. Sociopaths are supposed to fiercely distrust collectivism and come up with their own, usually utilitarian-inspired morality, which I identify with. But I can’t manipulate my way out of a paper bag. Also, a few weeks ago I got in an argument with a clerk over the right amount of change, after double-checking it turned out I was wrong and the clerk was right, and even though this was in an airport and I will definitely never see that clerk again, I felt embarrassed about the interaction for hours, and still feel pretty bad about it. Doesn’t really feel very ubermensch-ish or transcended-the-need-for-other-people’s-good-opinion-y. I have a group of friends, and within that group of friends I’m acutely aware of the things I’m unusually good at vs. bad at, and I worry a lot about whether my strengths qualify me to be a member in good standing. My status within that group is illegible and I prefer that to the alternative. Does that make me a Loser? Who controls the microphone in my head? Whose approval do I crave? When I was younger, I remember pretty vividly that it would be whoever I had a crush on at the time. When I started blogging, it became my blog audience. But sometimes it gets hijacked by random store clerks. And I particularly remember being invited to an event with some big name tech people, fretting about whether they would like me, exerting some willpower to remind myself that I was valid with or without their approval, and then realizing afterwards that what I had actually done was fantasize about how if I wasn’t obviously craving their approval, they would be impressed by my independence and put-togetherness and respect me even more. So fine, I (and the few other people I know well enough to use as examples) don’t naturally fall into any of these categories. Whatever, Rao said (in one sentence) that everyone has multiple types. But then what’s the use of this categorization system? If I invent three random types of people: Green: introverted, long hair, likes the cold, complains too much

Inline links: defense mechanisms, The Aristocrats, Eichmann In Jerusalem, an episode, the real thing, that make me a Loser

the Agricultural Revolution1 mentions across 1 issues

the Agricultural Revolution is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 10, 2024 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "economic phase change of equal magnitude to the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution.

Reference entry: the Agricultural Revolution
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 10, 2024
Last seen: September 10, 2024

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Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

10,000 AD 1 shared issues
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Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
anthropic reasoning 1 shared issues
anthropics 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession

September 10, 2024 · Original source

You could try using GDP growth. At the beginning of Freddie’s life, world GDP (measured in real dollars) was about $40 trillion per year. Now it’s about $120 trillion. So on this metric, about 66% of absolute techno-economic progress has happened during Freddie’s lifetime. But we might be more interested in relative techno-economic progress. That is, the Agricultural Revolution might have increased yields from 10 bushels to 100 bushels of corn. And some new tractor design invented yesterday might increase it from 10,000 bushels to 10,100 bushels. But that doesn’t mean the new tractor design was more important than the Agricultural Revolution. Here I think the right measure is log GDP growth; by this metric, about 20% of techno-economic progress has happened during Freddie’s lifetime.

Robin Hanson cashes out “the singularity” as an economic phase change of equal magnitude to the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions. If we stick to that definition, we can do a little better at predicting it: it’s a change of a size such that it’s happened twice before. Using our previous number, we estimate ~30% chance that such a change happens in our lifetime.

The Algorithm1 mentions across 1 issues

The Algorithm is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "techno-oligarchs using The Algorithm to addict our children". It most often appears alongside 1955, 4chan, AARP.

Reference entry: The Algorithm
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 31, 2025
Last seen: December 31, 2025

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Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession December 31, 2025

1955 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
AARP 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
Alex 1 shared issues

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December 31, 2025 · Original source

This was a formative experience for many people in Silicon Valley: there was a sudden turn from the early 2000s world where everyone loved technology and thought that the information superhighway was the utopian world of the cyber-future, to the late 2000s world where everyone hated techno-fascist tech-bro techno-oligarchs using The Algorithm to addict our children. Although there was some shift in the underlying terrain, the sheer speed of the change in opinion made a lot of people point to journalists realizing that tech was bad for their business and making an united decision to cover it negatively. Could the same thing happen to an entire economy? Should we subsidize journalists, on the theory that if they’re in a good mood, everyone else will be in a good mood too? Is this Chris Best’s secret plan for Substack?

the alt-right1 mentions across 1 issues

the alt-right is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "We have new names for the Bad People - racists, colonialists, fascists, “the alt-right”". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry: the alt-right
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2023
Last seen: November 17, 2023

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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023

Abel 1 shared issues
Adam and Eve 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Apollonius of Tyana 1 shared issues
Arab 1 shared issues

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November 17, 2023 · Original source

It would help if Girard could come up with some specific way that wokeness went too far and became qualitatively different from the Christian imperative. The best he can do is sort of (very weakly, I almost feel like I’m reading subtext here) gesture at a kind of meta-victimization. Cancel culture is, in a sense, a return to the single-victim mechanism and Satan. Once again, we organize our ethics around a pantomime where if we could just get rid of these Bad People doing Bad Things, society would be safe and everyone would be happy. We have new names for the Bad People - racists, colonialists, fascists, “the alt-right”. But the fact that they cause all our problems and we have to suspend the normal rules of tolerance and civil rights in order to get rid of them stay the same.

The Amish1 mentions across 1 issues

The Amish is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2025 and August 05, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Amish : They live apart in tight-knit communities with strong countercultural values". It most often appears alongside Amish, Bay Area rationalist community, Christian media.

Reference entry: The Amish
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2025
Last seen: August 05, 2025

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Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? August 05, 2025

Amish 1 shared issues
Bay Area rationalist community 1 shared issues
Christian media 1 shared issues
dense walkable towns 1 shared issues
First Things 1 shared issues

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August 05, 2025 · Original source

The Amish: They live apart in tight-knit communities with strong countercultural values, and carefully control their technological and ideological environment. 10/10.

Cults and communes: Any cult mature enough to have its own compound, or any communal living project, has succeeded almost as thoroughly as the Amish. We may not support their insane religious beliefs, or the various sex crimes they are no doubt committing, but they have succeeded at Fukuyama’s suggestion of knitting themselves a new god within the liberal order. 9.5/10.

If we had even more money, we could do even better. Occasionally we fantasize about going further in the Amish or Free State direction. There are lots of reasons it doesn’t happen, but the main ones are money (building towns is expensive) and jobs (not everyone can work remotely). There’s some sense in which we’re being weak here - the Amish are very poor, and just sort of take the plunge and do it anyway. But keeping our level of weakness fixed, more money would help.

the Argonauts1 mentions across 1 issues

the Argonauts is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Jason brings together the Argonauts". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: the Argonauts
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

Source context

Inline links: The Educated Mind, Greeking Out, Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man, Dark Universe, appropriately mocked, memes, attempting to build a universe, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MbHP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F63b4711e-2248-4120-897e-bba8a595a28b_405x616.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OCj5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9afeb585-b58b-4932-8702-153b4fdf135d_619x305.png, Wikipedia, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OzTl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49fd3582-b5bd-4567-b5e9-cca46c1f1c49_425x615.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lfiM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc23c3ad1-5fed-4063-8ac2-d9d89e69bee6_252x398.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oV4t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F346f85d9-580b-4eb2-b91c-3422003613d5_591x572.png

August 16, 2024 · Original source

Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

THE AVATAR1 mentions across 1 issues

THE AVATAR is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 16, 2026 and January 16, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "replacing the word “metarationality” with “THE AVATAR”". It most often appears alongside Adams, Alice, All-Seeing Eye.

Reference entry: THE AVATAR
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 16, 2026
Last seen: January 16, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Dilbert Afterlife January 16, 2026

Adams 1 shared issues
Alice 1 shared issues
All-Seeing Eye 1 shared issues
Avatar 1 shared issues
barberpole theory of fashion 1 shared issues

Source context

The Dilbert Afterlife

January 16, 2026 · Original source

The fifth level of awareness is the Avatar. The Avatar understands that the mind is an illusion generator, not a window to reality. The Avatar recognizes science as a belief system, albeit a useful one. An Avatar is aware of God’s power as expressed in probability and the inevitable recombination of God consciousness.

I think going through every David Chapman essay and replacing the word “metarationality” with “THE AVATAR” would actually be very refreshing.

The book is a novel (a real novel this time, with plot and everything) meant to dramatize the lessons of its predecessor. In the near future, the Muslims and Christians are on the verge of global war. Adams’ self-insert character, the Avatar, goes around hypnotizing and mind hacking everyone into cooperating with his hare-brained scheme for world peace.

the Avengers1 mentions across 1 issues

the Avengers is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: the Avengers
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

Source context

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JwSH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89ab07df-deb7-4c5d-b418-17f6c0d2a40b_600x566.png

August 16, 2024 · Original source

Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

By early 1963 it was established that the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-man all existed together within the same shared universe. But what about Ant Man,Thor and Iron Man? Aside #5: The Hulk comic in Fantastic Four #5 pretty clearly establishes that the Hulk was a fictional character in the Fantastic Four world, but there are other clues that Lee was not thinking about his characters as existing and crossing over in the early days. Both Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Mr Fantastic fight off global alien invasions in their early issues. In both cases the stories make clear that only Bruce/Reed is smart enough to save the world. No mention is made of the OTHER scientist who saved the world from the alien invasion a few months earlier. Bringing different superheroes from their own titles together was not an idea created by Atlas/Marvel and Lee. That was likely All Star Comics #3 (December 1940) when writer Gardner Fox brought together all the major DC heroes who were not staring in their own independent titles, including Green Lantern, the Flash and Doctor Fate, to create the Justice Society of America (JSA). Batman and Superman cameoed in All Star Comics #7, but generally they were considered too popular to dilute their appearances in ensemble titles. That changed in March 1960 when DC re-launched the idea of a superteam with the Justice League of America and included all of their most popular heroes as the leads – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It was immediately a top seller. The launch of JLA is likely what caused the owner of Atlas to ask Lee to create a ”superhero team comic”. Lee did not have a stable of heroes to bring together, so he had to create something entirely new – The Fantastic Four. But now that Lee DID have a collection of his own heroes AND he had the greenlight to create straightforward superhero comics, he decided to build himself his own JLA. In September 1963 Atlas published two new titles: The Avengers and the X-men. The X-men were a brand new team of all new heroes, but the Avengers were a close parallel to the Justice League. Lee took his existing collection of heroes (except the Fantastic Four and Spider-man) and created an excuse for a team-up. In the issue they individually battle Thor’s brother Loki before coming together to defeat him as a team. They decide that given they all have different powers, they should work together to be unstoppable. The entire formation of the team takes only four panels and is a little corny, but it does its job: While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

The Average Californian1 mentions across 1 issues

The Average Californian is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 10, 2024 and October 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The most important supporter was, of course, The Average Californian". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, @GroundHogStrat, A.I. salons.

Reference entry: The Average Californian
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 10, 2024
Last seen: October 10, 2024

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Issue trail

SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story October 10, 2024

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
@GroundHogStrat 1 shared issues
A.I. salons 1 shared issues
Adam McKay 1 shared issues
ADUs 1 shared issues

Source context

SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story

October 10, 2024 · Original source

The most important supporter was, of course, The Average Californian.

the Beagle1 mentions across 1 issues

the Beagle is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2022 and August 05, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "work on the Beagle". It most often appears alongside acedia, Against Nature, Anna Schaffner.

Reference entry: the Beagle
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2022
Last seen: August 05, 2022

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Your Book Review: Exhaustion August 05, 2022

acedia 1 shared issues
Against Nature 1 shared issues
Anna Schaffner 1 shared issues
Billy Crystal 1 shared issues
Boniface VIII 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Exhaustion

August 05, 2022 · Original source

...ion is to be best treated. On one side, we have rest; the other, activity. Improvised rest cures were followed by Darwin (who could only intermittently attend to work on the Beagle and had regular daily periods of repose at home throughout his life, interspersed with hydrotherapy at various spas), with more prescriptive programmes followed by Virgi...

...s condition is to be best treated. On one side, we have rest; the other, activity. Improvised rest cures were followed by Darwin (who could only intermittently attend to work on the Beagle and had regular daily periods of repose at home throughout his life, interspersed with hydrotherapy at various spas), with more prescriptive programmes followed by Virgi...

The Beast1 mentions across 1 issues

The Beast is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 22, 2025 and October 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Revelation’s Beast". It most often appears alongside 10th century, 19th Century, A16Z.

Reference entry: The Beast
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 22, 2025
Last seen: October 22, 2025

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My Antichrist Lecture October 22, 2025

10th century 1 shared issues
19th Century 1 shared issues
A16Z 1 shared issues
Acts 4:4 1 shared issues
AI race 1 shared issues

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Inline links: 7 co-founders, this list, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NGn3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb7aaed5a-8f1b-442c-a449-edc2ebe66872_1067x555.png, meaning, Asmodei

October 22, 2025 · Original source

…if the technological singularity hypothesis is true, then we are genuinely living at the hinge of history - the cataclysmic climax of humankind - and insofar as Revelation is a prophecy, it will make sense in the context of the AI race of our own era. This will be our working hypothesis. We will try to match each symbol in Revelation with a person or institution from the mid-2020s Bay Area artificial intelligence scene. If we consistently find eerie levels of similarity, beyond any plausible coincidence, we will consider that evidence in favor, and perhaps gain useful knowledge about the shape of things to come, starting with: The Beast Revelation contains several beasts - at least two, maybe as many as four. John doesn’t keep track of them very effectively, and they seem to reappear several times after being killed. Most commentators collapse these into one beast - ‘the’ Beast - and I will anxiously follow their lead despite losing some potential subtlety. According to Revelation 13:14-15: [The Beast] had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should speak. In the context of our working hypothesis, this sounds like the Beast is an AI company, creating an LLM. But if the Beast is an AI company, which one is it? In 13:1, John gives us several clues: I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the names of blasphemy. The Beast has seven heads. In the context of an AI company, this might mean seven CEOs, presidents, or co-founders. I was unable to find an AI company with this many CEOs or presidents, but here’s the co-founder count for each of the major labs: OpenAI: 11 co-founders

According to Revelation 13:14-15: [The Beast] had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should speak. In the context of our working hypothesis, this sounds like the Beast is an AI company, creating an LLM. But if the Beast is an AI company, which one is it? In 13:1, John gives us several clues: I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the names of blasphemy. The Beast has seven heads. In the context of an AI company, this might mean seven CEOs, presidents, or co-founders. I was unable to find an AI company with this many CEOs or presidents, but here’s the co-founder count for each of the major labs: OpenAI: 11 co-founders

Inline links: 11 co-founders

Anthropic: 7 co-founders So Anthropic is a good match for the first part of the prophecy. What about the second part? What does it mean for the Beast to have ten horns? This one confused me for a while, but I eventually found this list: In Silicon Valley speak, a “unicorn” is a company worth over $1 billion, and a “decacorn” (Latin for “ten-horned”) is a company worth over $10 billion. Under this interpretation, the ten horns of the prophecy have ten crowns because they represent wealth and achievement. The only AI company on the list above is Anthropic, at #9. Finally, John says that upon the heads will be names of blasphemy. If the heads represent co-founders, it sounds like John is claiming the co-founders of the company will have blasphemous names. I could not find anything blasphemous about the names of the founders of OpenAI, DeepMind, or xAI. But looking at Anthropic: Dario Amodei is the first co-founder. “Dario” comes from the Persian “Darius” meaning “Lord”. “Amodei” is of unclear meaning, but I cannot help but notice the resemblance with Asmodei (also called Ashmodei, Hamadee, Æshmadæva, and Asmodeus), a demon-king mentioned in the book of Tobit. Plausibly all these different names derive from a Proto-Sumerian root *Amodei, in which case the meaning of “Dario Amodei” would be “Asmodeus is lord”. This is a name of blasphemy.

The Best And The Brightest1 mentions across 1 issues

The Best And The Brightest is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 09, 2022 and December 09, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "a significant motivation in the Space Race was the fear of The Best And The Brightest". It most often appears alongside 417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire, ACX, ACX.

Reference entry: The Best And The Brightest
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 09, 2022
Last seen: December 09, 2022

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise December 09, 2022

417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Andre Malraux 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise

December 09, 2022 · Original source

I think there's some merit in what you say, but it wasn't the space race per se, if we mean Project Apollo and such, it was nuclear weapons and the V-2, because those happened in 1945 and the Space Race got started later (and for that matter, a significant motivation in the Space Race was the fear of The Best And The Brightest that Soviet missile technology would surpass the USAF as a strategic threat multiplier).

The Bird Flu1 mentions across 1 issues

The Bird Flu is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 01, 2025 and January 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "…which brings us to the present, hopefully illuminating why “new flu strain crosses over from animals into humans” is such an “uh oh” moment. The Bird Flu". It most often appears alongside 1918, 1940s, 1968.

Reference entry: The Bird Flu
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 01, 2025
Last seen: January 01, 2025

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Issue trail

H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know January 01, 2025

1918 1 shared issues
1940s 1 shared issues
1968 1 shared issues
1977 1 shared issues
2009 1 shared issues

Source context

H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

January 01, 2025 · Original source

From “Genesis and pathogenesis of the 1918 pandemic H1N1 influenza A virus”, linked above. You may recognize the lead author - Michael Worobey has also been a leading voice on the zoonotic side of the COVID origins debate. The recent history of the flu, as far as I can tell, is: 1918: An H1N1 flu (“Spanish flu”) jumped from birds to humans in America and killed 50 million people worldwide. This replaced all older strains, so most seasonal flus during this era were H1N1. 1957: An H2N2 flu (“Asian flu”) crossed from birds to humans in China, and killed about 2 million people worldwide. It replaced the H1N1 strain, so most seasonal flus during this era were H2N2. 1968: An H3N2 flu (“Hong Kong flu”) crossed from pigs (?) to humans in Hong Kong, and killed another 2 million people worldwide. It replaced the H2N2 strain, so most seasonal flus during this era were H3N2. 1977: An H1N1 flu (“Russian flu”) leaked from a biology lab (?) in Russia (it might have been a strain from the 1940s, which the Russians were trying to make a vaccine for). It didn’t kill that many people, but it stuck around, and from then on, seasonal flus could be either H3N2 or H1N1. 2009: An H1N1 flu (“Mexican flu” until the PC police stepped in; afterwards “swine flu”) took some horrible circuitous route between birds and pigs and back again, crossed over into humans in Mexico, and killed 200,000 people. It outcompeted older strains of H1N1, but couldn’t crowd out H3N2, so seasonal flus are still either H3N2 or H1N1. …which brings us to the present, hopefully illuminating why “new flu strain crosses over from animals into humans” is such an “uh oh” moment. The Bird Flu Technically, all pandemic flus start as bird flus. Influenza A evolved in birds. Sometimes it spreads to other animals, including pigs, cattle, and humans. The most common way for a bird flu to spread to humans is to “reassort” (not exactly virus sex, but close enough, and the real version is less memorable) with a human flu virus (ie one that has already crossed over to humans). The resulting virus has all of the human flu virus’ human adaptations, but borrows enough new antigens from the bird virus to evade the immune system. Pigs can be infected by both human and bird viruses, so they are a common place for this reassortment to take place. If reassortment is sort of like viral sex, pigs are sort of like Tinder. When a bird flu and human flu reassort in pigs, the resulting disease is called a swine flu. At least the 2009 flu pandemic was a swine flu, and a minority opinion thinks the 1918 pandemic was too. There aren’t major epidemiological differences between direct-from-bird flus and swine flus. H5N1 was first noticed in birds - specifically, a flock of chickens in Scotland in 1959 - after which it disappeared for forty years. In 1996, it showed up in geese in China, then gradually increased its market share among birds worldwide. In 2022, it was found in minks; apparently it had learned to infect mammals. By early 2024, it was seen in cows. Now it’s in cow herds in 16 states, and one of them (California) has declared a state of emergency. And in October, H5N1 was found in pigs for the first time. It’s not uncommon for humans to catch an animal disease. This doesn’t mean the disease has “crossed over” to humans. If the virus isn’t suited to human-to-human transmission, it simply dies off (either before or after killing its human host). Thus, chicken farmers have been reporting scattered H5N1 cases since 1997; now that the virus has spread to cattle, cow farmers have started reporting the same. A Metaculus comment on this topic introduced me to the phrase “biocomputational surface”. Every viral replication that takes place in a human gives the virus one more chance to develop the set of mutations that makes it human-transmissible and start the next pandemic. Or, more likely, every viral replication that takes place in a human who has both the H5N1 bird flu and a normal human flu - or in a pig which has both viruses - gives the virus one extra chance to reassort in a way that produces a bird-antigen-fortified human-adapted flu virus. This doesn’t mean H5N1 will definitely become human-transmissible soon. Many viruses hang out on the borders of transmissibility for decades. Some, for unclear reasons, never cross over at all. But all of this is compatible with the virus becoming transmissible soon. So: What Is The Chance Of A Pandemic? The prediction markets on this topic ask a question about “10,000 cases in the United States”. Does this necessarily mean “pandemic”? Might it be possible to get to 10,000 cases just from the scattered chicken and cow farmers, with no human-to-human transmission? Despite many chicken and cow infections this year, there have only been 60 - 70 recorded human cases. Unless there is a phase change in screening methods, it seems hard for this number to increase to 10,000 off farmers alone. I think it’s fair to treat this question as operationalizing “what is the chance of a pandemic”? By this definition, Manifold estimates a 40% chance of an H5N1 pandemic in 2025. Metaculus estimates a 5% chance. You can see below whether that’s changed since I wrote this essay: 5% versus 40% is a big difference! Who do we trust? I trust Metaculus. Metaculus has beaten Manifold in both of the two head-to-head comparisons that I know of (Jeremiah Johnson’s and mine). Manifold’s number swings by a factor of two from week to week; Metaculus has been steady. But also, Metaculus hosts a CDC-sponsored respiratory disease forecasting tournament which has enriched them in epidemiological expertise. And if you look at the quality of comments on both sites, it’s pretty obvious where the people with more intellectual chops are hanging out. The Manifold comments are mostly single sentences, or occasionally just links to an article about new cases. The Metaculus comments look more like this one by dimaklenchin: Despite the panic propaganda, H5N1 is unlikely to be "just a single mutation away from switching host preference": 1) It normally takes a lot more than a single mutation to switch hosts. E.g., there are at least five different reasons why SIV (monkey equivalent of HIV) is not infectious to humans. Heck, a variant of SIV that bears HIV's receptor-recognizing surface protein (SHIV) is still not infectious to humans. HIV most certainly evolved from SIV but, almost as certainly, it took a very long time to get there. Not that all viruses are the same and things can't turn out differently with flu, but I don't subscribe to the idea that a mere change of receptor specificity (something that can take 1-2 mutations) will be sufficient. 2) We have data. Lots of human infections with other varieties of bird flu in the past - all those viruses ultimately went nowhere. Why would H5N1 be radically different? E.g., the "Canadian teen", despite what sounds like a prolonged exposure, failed to infect anyone around him. Since I am at 18% for the h-2-h H5N1 detection in 2025, I am arbitrarily going ~ an order of magnitude lower than that for something as unprecedented as 10K human infections. Maybe should be much lower but hedging for the time being and will allow another couple months of observations. And Sergio: I'm currently at 20% on the question of reported human-to-human transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 globally before 2026. However, this question is only about the US, and is more general about all subtypes of H5. But H5N1 very strongly appears to be the most important subtype to consider in this time period. And, given the current situation in the US with H5N1 human cases derived from exposure to poultry or cattle (with cattle(mammals) being more worrisome), h2h transmission seems quite more likely to arise in North America than elsewhere before 2026. Conditioning on h2h transmission in the US (and also trying to consider, with lower probability, a start in Canada), I want to estimate the chances that it becomes sustained and out of control (in which case, if it starts in Canada, I largely expect it to spread to the US). The (6) past events of probable h2h transmission of avian H5(N1), none of which were sustained, could serve as a base rate, although I'm a bit wary of giving much weight to this precedent, since the last event was quite a while ago (2007), and also because reporting and testing standards may have improved considerably since then (so perhaps they might not have been classified as h2h transmission events if they had occurred more recently). The current situation in the US, and events such as the Canadian teen who got sick with H5N1, do suggest a higher background level of risk than normal (which would be reduced if a vaccine for cattle is licensed soon), but I'm wary of overupdating. Conditioned on sustained h2h transmission, reaching over 10k cases in a few months seems likely, although perhaps very strong monitoring and surveillance could contain the situation in time (at the very least to moderate the growth rate). Trying to combine all these factors somewhat haphazardly, I'm currently at 3.5% for this question. That’s before 2026. What about longer-term? Manifold gives a ~50% chance before 2030; Metaculus uses a more complicated method but it says about 25% chance before 2030. H5N1 may cross to humans, but it could take a while. Superforecaster Juan Cambeiro at The Institute For Progress estimated a 4% chance of a “worse than COVID” H5N1 pandemic in “the next year”, but their estimate was made in 2023, without the benefit of the Metaculus estimates or most of our current knowledge. This feels high now - Metaculus says 5% total for H5N1 pandemic, and most pandemic flus are not worse than COVID. IFP also seem to be expecting a case fatality rate greater than 10%, which I find unlikely for the reasons mentioned above. I trust their estimate less than Metaculus’ current ones. I conclude that the most plausible estimate for the chance of an H5N1 pandemic in the next year is 5%. Interestingly, 5% is about the base rate for pandemic flus per year: five in the past century = one per twenty years = 5% chance per year. Isn’t it surprising that we’re still at the base rate when we can see a dangerous-looking flu virus spreading through the types of animals that have caused pandemic flus in the past? Part of the answer is that we’re not - in addition to the 5% chance of H5N1, we have to add the chance of some other pandemic flu. This probably isn’t 5% on its own; scientists monitor flu strains closely, and they haven’t found any others which are giving off as many red flags as H5N1. Still, something could always come out of left field. Maybe we should add a 2.5% chance of some other strain, for a total of 7.5% chance of a flu pandemic (ie beyond normal seasonal flu) next year. But still, isn’t it surprising that we’re so close to the base rate? One way to think about this: the base rate represents how concerned we should be if there was no epidemiological monitoring at all. In that case, we would estimate a probability distribution across different epidemiological landscapes, most of which contain some concerning-looking flu strains. Since we are doing the epidemiological monitoring, we can collapse that distribution into a single picture: one flu strain, H5N1, is in fact pretty concerning, and other strains mostly aren’t. This is enough to move our prior from 5% to 7.5%, but no more. The forecasters I talked to raised one other point of uncertainty: does the flu work more like a dice roll, or like a bus? Dice rolls are uncorrelated with their predecessors; even if it’s been a hundred rolls since you last rolled a 6, your chance this time is still 1/6. But buses come at fixed intervals; if the buses are hourly, and you haven’t seen a bus in the past 59 minutes, then your chance of seeing a bus in the next minute is very high. It’s been 16 years since the last flu pandemic; these pandemics come (on average) every 20 years. I don’t think anyone has a good sense of how to think about this. But it was 40 years between the Spanish and Hong Kong flus, so the twenty year number is at best a rule of thumb. The 5% number feels very low to me (and, apparently, to the average Manifold forecaster). Isn’t H5N1 spreading to cows and pigs and all sorts of other mammals? Isn’t it in the news all the time? I trust Metaculus a lot, but I agree that this is a surprising update, and I’m taking it on faith rather than feeling it in my bones. What Would The Fatality Rate Be For An H5N1 Pandemic? There are four basic stories you could tell about likely H5N1 mortality. First, maybe mortality would be 50%. The argument here is that official statistics report this mortality rate in the chicken farmers who have been infected with H5N1 so far. Several news sources and even some scientists have raised the specter of a pandemic version of H5N1 pandemic with this same death rate, which could kill a quarter to a third of the world population. THIS IS EXTREMELY FAKE. The official statistics only report fatality rate in the infections we know about. Bird flu is rare, there’s no mass testing, and we only learn that somebody had it if they’re in a hospital and the doctors are worried enough to test for rare conditions. Of Americans who got bird flu in the past year, 0 out of 61 have died. Probably this is mostly because America upped its detection game and is now finding milder cases; we also can’t rule out the virus mutating to become less virulent. Metaculus estimates the current true mortality rate as 1.25%. …but leaves a wide 90% confidence interval, from 0.5% to 7%. Second, maybe mortality would be somewhere around 1.25%. The argument here is that Metaculus uses this as its central estimate of US mortality. But Sentinel discusses some reasons to be skeptical of broad inferences from the US numbers: Scientists have been puzzled by the apparently low H5N1 case fatality rate in humans in the US. They offer a number of hypotheses: “The way in which the virus is being transmitted — along with the amount of virus exposure — is limiting the severity of disease.”

Inline links: was found in pigs, Jeremiah Johnson’s, mine, a CDC-sponsored respiratory disease forecasting tournament, dimaklenchin, Sergio, reported human-to-human transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 globally before 2026, human cases, past events, vaccine for cattle is licensed soon, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fL7J!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd6a70fa6-b356-422d-ba9a-5db431e5a056_751x471.png, The Institute For Progress estimated, news, sources, scientists, Sentinel discusses

the Bitter Lesson1 mentions across 1 issues

the Bitter Lesson is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 25, 2023 and July 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Richard Sutton calls this the Bitter Lesson - that extremely clever plans to program “true understanding” into AI always do worse". It most often appears alongside AI, Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Reference entry: the Bitter Lesson
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First seen: July 25, 2023
Last seen: July 25, 2023

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We're Not Platonists, We've Just Learned The Bitter Lesson July 25, 2023

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We're Not Platonists, We've Just Learned The Bitter Lesson

July 25, 2023 · Original source

Computer scientist Richard Sutton calls this the Bitter Lesson - that extremely clever plans to program “true understanding” into AI always do worse than just adding more compute and training data to your giant compute+training data blob. It’s related to Jelinek’s Law, named after language-processing AI pioneer Frederick Jelinek: “Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up.” The joke is that having linguists on your team means you’re still trying to hand-code in deep principles of linguistics, instead of just figuring out how to get as big a blob of intelligence as possible and throw language at it. The limit of Jelinek’s Law is OpenAI, who AFAIK didn’t use insights from linguistics at all, and so made an AI that uses language near-perfectly.

Inline links: the Bitter Lesson, Frederick Jelinek

The Black Death1 mentions across 1 issues

The Black Death is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2021 and June 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "He talked about European life after The Black Death". It most often appears alongside Africa, antelope, August Hirsch.

Reference entry: The Black Death
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Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples June 17, 2021

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Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples

June 17, 2021 · Original source

The book does not offer explicit expectations of what comes after COVID-19. He talked about European life after The Black Death but most of the implications were because of such a substantial amount of death, not because Europeans couldn’t go to bars. Through his telling of history there is not a huge correlation between plagues and technological progress or social progress. Reading the book, though, offers some solace. Humans have struggled, coped, and evolved with parasites and viruses since before humanity. This relationship is not new. As powerful of a force COVID-19 seems today, microparasites of the past have definitely been more influential on human history. At least now we know what they are. McNeill makes an adequately vague prediction about the future:

The Blessed Mother1 mentions across 1 issues

The Blessed Mother is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother". It most often appears alongside 1910s Portugal, 1999 British eclipse, 2017 US eclipse.

Reference entry: The Blessed Mother
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First seen: October 01, 2025
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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know October 01, 2025

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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

October 01, 2025 · Original source

…unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.

Inline links: Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account

I spoke to the people, they told me the same thing, although, in other words. They told me they had seen Our Lady, St. Joseph, the Baby Jesus, and that I know...The entire celestial court, at the same time, had seen the dancing sun. I didn't believe in so much vision.

No one in the more educated classes told me they had seen the celestial apparition, but it is certain that everyone, educated and not, expressed their faith...I did not return from Fátima with the complete conviction that Our Lady had appeared to the children, although nothing prevented me from believing it. Nothing is impossible for God

the Bombes1 mentions across 1 issues

the Bombes is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 05, 2023 and April 05, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "except maybe during a brief window when the Bombes broke Enigma". It most often appears alongside AI, Alan Turing, America.

Reference entry: the Bombes
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First seen: April 05, 2023
Last seen: April 05, 2023

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Most Technologies Aren't Races April 05, 2023

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Most Technologies Aren't Races

April 05, 2023 · Original source

Who “won” the computer “race”? Charles Babbage? Alan Turing? John von Neumann? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Again, it was a long path of incremental improvements. Jobs and Gates got rich, and their hometowns are big tech hubs, but other people have gotten even richer, and the world chip manufacturing center is in Taiwan now for some reason. The overall balance of power didn’t change (except maybe during a brief window when the Bombes broke Enigma) and today all developed countries have computers.

the bricoleur1 mentions across 1 issues

the bricoleur is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2025 and May 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”". It most often appears alongside 3Blue1Brown, Aella, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Reference entry: the bricoleur
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First seen: May 30, 2025
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Bayes For Everyone May 30, 2025

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May 30, 2025 · Original source

If this sounds like some sort of esoteric, speculative division, I’m doing a bad job explaining it. I mean to gesture at an idea that smart people have been pointing at for centuries. It’s at least similar to Nietzsche’s “Dionysian” vs. “Apollonian” modes, and to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”, and to Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. It’s near the heart of what Iain McGilchrist is describing in The Master and His Emissary. I think it’s the same thing as Erik Hoel’s “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” perspectives? It overlaps a lot with Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” and with Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”. Heck, the lack of clarity on this divide is what makes Jordan Peterson’s dialogues with atheists so frustrating.

the Carter Doomsday Argument1 mentions across 1 issues

the Carter Doomsday Argument is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 10, 2024 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Speaking of the Carter Doomsday Argument". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution.

Reference entry: the Carter Doomsday Argument
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First seen: September 10, 2024
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Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

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Your Book Review: On the Marble Cliffs

September 10, 2024 · Original source

Speaking of the Carter Doomsday Argument…

Here’s a question I don’t know how to answer - the number above (7%) is about how surprised you should be if the apocalypse happens in your lifetime. But I don’t think it’s the overall chance that the apocalypse happens in your lifetime, because the apocalypse could be millions of years away, after there had been trillions of humans, and then retroactively it would seem much less likely that the apocalypse happened during the 21st century. So: is it possible to calculate this chance? I think there ought to be a way to leverage the Carter Doomsday Argument here, but I’m not quite sure of the details.

Inline links: Carter Doomsday Argument

The Chief Ranger1 mentions across 1 issues

The Chief Ranger is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 28, 2023 and July 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Chief Ranger is also “a master of feigning frankness that was full of snares for the unwary.”". It most often appears alongside 1923 Hyperinflation, Adolf Hitler, All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Reference entry: The Chief Ranger
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Your Book Review: On the Marble Cliffs July 28, 2023

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July 28, 2023 · Original source

His emotional range spans only from a kind of tired nostalgia to the reckless joy of intoxication, punctuated by his most prized feeling by far, the gleefully murderous “bloodthirst” of mortal combat. So everyone who had read some Jünger, which at the time of publication would likely include most of the German population and definitely most of the Nazis, could see right through the facade of fiction. It is an obvious conceit that made the book just barely publishable, in a time and place where saying outright that the Nazis were disgusting savages would have gotten everyone involved a headshot. After 1945, Jünger did admit that the book was (also) a commentary on the political reality of its time. And that he knew perfectly well that in publishing this “fiction” he was playing with his life. And still he got it published, uncensored, in Germany in 1939, just before Hitler started the second World War. Today the most widely accepted history of the subject is that Jünger was only saved from a grisly fate by the personal intervention of Hitler himself, who loved “Storm of Steel” and presumably wouldn't have liked to admit that his favorite author utterly despised him. And it would have been very tempting to just not admit that, because before the Nazis came to power, Jünger had sympathized with them, although he never counted himself among them. Hitler had sent Jünger fan letters; the responses have unfortunately been lost. Jünger’s many political rants in the 1920s do contain several explicit endorsements of the strength of the Nazis and of their value as allies to Jünger’s vague and contradictory nationalist cause. By the time he wrote the Marble Cliffs, he had stopped endorsing them. But this history made it easy for the Nazis to publicly pretend he had just written a fictional novella, or maybe he was talking about Bolshevism or something, but surely he didn’t mean them. It was an Emperor’s New Clothes situation, where nobody dared to say out loud what everyone could see. Although additional reprints were verboten in 1942, the excuse of a lack of paper due to the war was perfectly plausible and didn’t betray the discomfort with the content that nevertheless is well-documented to have been present among the Nazi ranks. All of that is to say we can safely dispense with the charade entirely and accept that this book is about the Nazis. It makes general points on the nature and fate of tyranny that do apply to Bolshevism, but the Nazis are the immediate and obvious instance of tyranny to which this book clearly reacts. And it is written by someone who had walked among the Nazis, had previously been friends with some of them, exchanged letters with many of the best-informed men especially in the military, and was perceptive enough for his opinions to deserve much of the confidence he states them with. Besides this conceit, the other concession to the political realities Jünger makes is that the book makes no mention of Jews. The world he is describing is fictional, but it is an amalgamation of European cultures that all had some Jews, so this absence is conspicuous. Obviously Jünger couldn't possibly have seen this book published if it depicted Jews in any way that wasn’t extremely negative. I guess he was unwilling to do that. In the 1920s, Jünger had ranted against “globalist” liberal Jews several times, and once even argued that one couldn't be both a Jew and a German. But he saw nothing wrong with being an orthodox Jew, openly admired Zionism, expressed in letters complete revulsion with Nazi antisemitism and had even publicly spoken out against the pseudoscientific racial theories of the Nazis. After writing this book, when serving as an officer again in France, Jünger went on to save a couple of French Jews from deportation and death, at moderate risk to his own life. Later he’d discuss the Kabbalah with Gershom Sholem, the brother of his childhood friend Werner Sholem. For these reasons, I imagine he did not see Jews negatively enough for the Nazis, and was too uncompromising to pretend that even his narrator did. I think this dilemma fully explains why there are no Jews in this book. In 1935, when Winston Churchill for example still publicly admired “the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force” of Adolf Hitler, Jünger claims to have already understood the bottomlessness of Hitler's depravity by noticing he was using the word “Vernichtung” (annihilation) way too much. He was remarkably right, years before most could see it, but even more remarkably his method of understanding was a poet's acute sense of word choice! And from then, even though he agreed with nationalist dictatorship as a goal and method, he distanced himself from National Socialism because he was disgusted with the vile character of the leader of this particular nationalist dictatorship. If that doesn't show you the peculiar kind of man Ernst Jünger was, I don't know what to tell you. The craft and the poetry You all know the wild grief that besets us when we remember times of happiness. How far beyond recall they are, and we are severed from them by something more pitiless than leagues and miles. The “marble cliffs” in the title of this short novella unite senses of beauty, majesty and danger, which is programmatic for this entire book. It begins with a visionary description of life in the traditional society of “the Marina” in an overwhelmingly beautiful state of paradise. The narrator lives on the edge of this society in a “hermitage” with his brother, his housekeeper and his son. The latter has a strange power over the local population of poisonous snakes. This opening act is without question the most elaborate celebration of poetic beauty I have ever read. Superficially it could be dismissed as purple prose. But due to Jünger’s clever use of poetic techniques in what at first appears to be prose text, there’s a rhythm, a density and a lucidity to it that makes it pretty much a very long poem, and gives it an intoxicating quality which is most apparent when you read it out loud. In the autumn we feasted like sages and did honour to the exquisite wines in which the southern slopes of the Marina abound. When in the vineyards between red foliage and dark grape clusters we caught the jocund calls of the vintagers, when in the little towns and villages the wine-presses began to creak, and the odour of the pressed grape skins drew its heady veils round the farms, we would go down to the innkeepers, coopers and wine-growers, and drink with them from the full-bellied jug. And there we would always meet with gay companions, for the land is rich and fair, so that in it flourishes untroubled leisure, and wit and humour are its unquestioned coin. I know this works, because I did an experiment. I read this book aloud, to a room full of people who were smoking pot. The book is short and the plan was to read all of it over the evening. I have read to pot smokers occasionally, but with this book it was different. They were enjoying it very much for the first couple of chapters, and exclaimed many times it was “perfect” for pot. But some hours, chapters and joints in, when the narrator goes on an expedition into a fantastically beautiful forest, they were so utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of the descriptions of nature they asked me to stop. I and the only other sober person in the room were the only ones who were willing to continue. We all had very intense dreams that night. Once we had broken through the thick hedge of dogwood and blackthorn we entered the high forest, territory where the blow of an axe had never resounded. The ancient trunks, the pride of the Chief Ranger, stood gleaming damp like pillars with their capitals hidden by the mist. We walked among them as if through a spacious hall, and, like the magic setting of a stage, festoons of ivy and clematis blooms hung down towards us out of the void. The ground was piled high with mould and rotting branches, in the bark of which fiery red mushrooms had sprung up, so that we felt for a moment like divers wandering among coral gardens. Wherever one of the mighty trunks had fallen from age or struck by lightning, we stepped out on to a little clearing on which the yellow foxglove grew in thick clumps. On the rotting ground the deadly nightshade bloomed in profusion; on its stalk the dark purple calices shook like funeral bells. It comes as no surprise that Jünger had much practice writing that way, from putting into his diaries a lot of his dreams and his numerous drug experiences. Jünger had long been inclined to deeply poetic descriptions of the real events he described, but this intensity at this length is genuinely new to his writing. Wherever he can use plurals he prefers them over the singular, wherever he can use more melodic and beautiful verbs (like when the characters “step out on” rather than “walk into” clearings) he does. Maybe the pretense of the narrator not being himself allowed Jünger to wallow in his characteristic aestheticism, take it to an extreme and arguably to the point of self-parody. Skip to the next heading if you don’t care about translation The extreme language of this book made me doubt there would be any translation into English that could do it justice. After all, if you throw this last excerpt into DeepL you get: After breaking through a dense fringe of blackthorn and cornets, we entered the high forest, in the grounds of which the blow of the axe had never sounded. The old trunks, which formed the pride of the head forester, stood in the damp glow like columns whose capitals were hidden by the haze. We walked among them as through wide vestibules, and like the magic work on a stage, ivy vines and clematis blossoms hung down on us from the invisible. The ground was covered high with mulm and decaying branches on whose bark mushrooms, burning red cup fungi, had settled, so that a feeling of divers walking through coral gardens crept over us. Where one of these giant trunks was tossed by age or lightning, we stepped out into small clearings where yellow foxglove stood in dense clumps. Belladonna bushes also proliferated on the rotten ground, on whose branches the flower calyxes in brown violet swayed like death bells. It’s still pretty, and it works on a matter-of-fact level. None of it is just wrong. But can you see how it has a lot less of the dreamlike quality? A “fringe” is a geographical feature, while the “hedge” emphasizes its role as an obstacle in a journey. Those “old” trunks are less poetic than “ancient” ones. A “head forester” is a job description, while a “Chief Ranger” is a seminal figure. The “vestibules” are a literal translation of the original, but the English word is used a lot less than German “Vestibüle” was back then. So that’s a word you may need to work to understand, which gets you out of the story’s flow, so “spacious hall” is better. There are even more such nitpicks to be made even in this short paragraph, but my point is these difficulties pervade every single paragraph of the book. ChatGPT very similarly fails to overcome them. Since January, there is a new translation by Tess Lewis, which has the advantage of being available on Kindle. I’ll spare you another repeat of the same paragraph and just say I think DeepL did most of this translation. But Tess Lewis did improve on many of its word choices and I’ll grudgingly concede this translation is good enough. It still sounds too modern for me, too much like prose and too little like poetry. Therefore, all previous and following excerpts are from the Stuart Hood translation, published in 1947, which I was astonished to find does pull it off! Let me assure anyone who doesn’t speak German, or doesn’t study translation, that this one is absolutely exemplary and surely represents years of painstaking work. Stuart Hood was a Scot who knew German very well. Like Jünger he was a veteran officer, and he needed German for his intelligence missions in World War 2. This is his very first published translation of an entire book. It harnesses a considerable talent, which is also evidenced by how Stuart Hood went on to become an accomplished writer himself, a BBC executive, a professor and several other notable things. And it is clearly a labor of intense love — right after the war, while working on it, Hood corresponded with Jünger and even went to visit him at least twice and they talked at length about the art of translation and how to translate specific points of the Marble Cliffs. The end of this last quote, “on its stalk the dark purple calices shook like funeral bells.” exemplifies how precisely Hood has understood Jünger. Why “calices”, not “chalices”? Because that is the old-fashioned form of this word, and using it is unnecessarily peculiar, but it doesn’t make you stop and look into a dictionary. It isn’t even more precise than DeepL’s and ChatGPT’s and Tess Lewis’s “calyxes” for the word “Blumenkelche” in the Original. But it captures precisely how the author was using his German language. This is because on every page of the original, there are choices of individual words that evoke subtleties of mood and allusion that are strictly impossible to translate, because English doesn’t have a similar-enough group of synonyms from which to make the equivalent choice. Some of that must inevitably get lost in translation. But these “calices” are an example of how Hood has the audacity to frequently insert his own new peculiar word choices — which restore exactly the same effect! It might take entire months until AI can do that! Unfortunately the New Directions edition with this translation has been out of print for a while, although I heard from a regrettably less law-abiding friend that the PDF is easy to find. But a few years ago someone bought the UK rights to this translation and republished it. While this edition has several uncorrected OCR mistakes, one of which horrifyingly turns “Flayer’s Copse” into “Player’s Copse”, at least this makes the better translation available (legally) again. What actually happens (spoilers) After six chapters of descriptions of paradise, and of the botanical work the brothers do since they don’t need to make a living, the book continues with a gradual decline of this gorgeous world. This again is much more of a richly detailed description than a story plot. It begins with the introduction of the Chief Ranger. The brothers know him from their military community, from before his takeover begins. There is some debate about whether the Chief Ranger stands for Hitler, Stalin or Hermann Göring. I think this debate is misguided. The character of the Chief Ranger, the antagonist of the narrator and all he holds dear, is never named but only ever referred to by his title. He does not appear to have staff or lieutenants at all, nor any personal history. And Jünger is profoundly uninterested in the personalities of all his characters beneath what they pay attention to (except the narrator’s brother) so even this important figure is roughly sketched at best. Therefore, I believe he is best understood as more of an archetype or role, The Tyrant, denuded of the individual traits or histories that make one tyrant a Führer, another a General Secretary and yet another a Great Leader. So, what makes a tyrant? According to Jünger, “wherever free spirits establish their sway these primeval powers will always join their company like a snake creeping to an open fire. They are the old connoisseurs of power who see a new day dawning in which to reestablish the tyranny that has lived in their hearts since the beginning of time.” The Chief Ranger is also “a master of feigning frankness that was full of snares for the unwary.” He has a reputation for wealth and a strong visual brand (a gold-embroidered green coat) that makes sure he always leaves “an imprint on one’s memory”. He exudes a “breath of primitive power” and has a strong charisma that gives an impression of “both cunning and unshakable power — yes, at times even majesty.” As he begins to usurp power, “reports spread from mouth to mouth of infringements of the law and of acts of violence in the neighbourhood, and finally such incidents occurred publicly and with no attempt to concealment. A cloud of fear preceded the Chief Ranger like the mountain mist that presages the storm. Fear enveloped him, and I am convinced that therein far more than in his own person lay his power.” From what I know about tyrants, that sounds about right. For the next seven chapters, the vile followers of the Chief Ranger continually corrupt everything. The sophisticated culture of the Marina is surrounded by the rough herdsmen clans of the surrounding Campagna steppe, beyond which lies the Chief Ranger’s forest populated by lowlifes. The class metaphor is blindingly obvious, and Jünger’s theory of how these lowlifes overcome first the Campagna and then the Marina is not subtle either. After the Alta Plana war, and the defeat, the entire society has been weakened. “Thus in exhausted bodies corruption will set in by way of wounds which a sound man would scarcely notice. The first symptoms, therefore, were not recognized.” Very gradually, law gives way to lawlessness, spreading from and with the lower classes foresters in many different ways. Violent crime grows, in descriptions very reminiscent of the many deadly street fights of the late Weimar republic. Various elements of traditional culture become corrupted. Those who would defend it are intimidated and attacked. The constitutional lawful reaction is too slow, so by the time it manages to convene and have democratic debates, it is already infiltrated. And there’s one paragraph worth quoting in full. Herein, above all, lay a masterly trait of the Chief Ranger. He administered fear in small doses which he gradually increased, and which aimed at crippling resistance. The role he played in the disorders which were so finely spun in the heart of his woods was that of a power for order; for while his agents of lower rank, who had established themselves in the clans, fostered anarchy, the initiated penetrated into the civic offices and the magistracy, and there won the reputation of men of deeds who would bring the mob to its senses. Thus the Chief Ranger was like an evil doctor who first encourages the disease so that he may practise on the sufferer the surgery he has in mind. Today this is a mainstream view in German history. In 1939, it could have been prosecuted as high treason and punished with death. On the backdrop of ever escalating mayhem, two old men who are friends of the brothers are described: Belovar, a clan patriarch from the Campagna, and Father Lampros, an eminent Christian monk. In very different ways, they both are very helpful, each both in the botanical work and against the mounting threat. The brothers decide against meeting the violence with violence, delve deeper into their work, become increasingly pessimistic and develop a hope that they can rescue the results of their work into an imperishable afterlife by burning it with an ancient mystical crystal lens that they somehow inherited. The narrator describes continued excursions for rare plants, through the country that is becoming increasingly treacherous and foreboding, until finally, well after the middle point of the book, with one particular excursion for an extremely rare flower, the actual continual story begins. Today we look at the Nazis with horror, but Jünger has dug too many trenches into hills of rotting corpses to be easily horrified. Instead of horror, his feelings towards the Nazis are mostly contempt, seasoned with disgust, and that has been pervading his description of the rise of the Chief Ranger’s henchmen over the last couple of chapters. But he does give one instance of pure horror and it is here, in the very heart of the book, when the two brothers on their excursion happen to discover, in the ill-reputed area of Flayer's Copse, the Chief Ranger’s remote “flaying-hut” of Koppels-Bleek. The original Köppels-Bleek is a German wordplay, about as subtle as a drone base in a sci-fi novel that happens to be called Obamazliez. Koppels-Bleek is where the Chief Ranger has his enemies tortured to death. It has frequently been called a concentration camp, but that is imprecise. It is really a Vernichtungslager, a death camp, which unlike a “normal” concentration camp is built for the express purpose that no torture victim ever gets out alive. This is a prediction, because while Nazi concentration camps were set up starting in 1933, Vernichtungslager were only built three years after the “Marble Cliffs” were published. After an intensely gruesome description of the particulars of this place, the narrator assesses its importance as follows. Such are the dungeons above which rise the proud castles of the tyrants, and from them is to be seen rising the curling savoury smoke of their banquets. They are terrible noisome pits in which a God-forsaken crew revels to all eternity in the degradation of human dignity and human freedom. He is so certain he has captured the very essence of tyranny, “the abode of tyranny in all its shame”, that he puts this climax at the two thirds mark of the book and makes it exceedingly obvious this is where the third and final act begins, as the pace of the book changes entirely. Although the narrator still includes some retrospectives, he is now finally telling a real story. Strikingly, the brothers return to botany — remember this, it will be important later — and then to their home, where they soon get two conspiring visitors. Braquemart is a competent, racist, nihilistic fellow veteran. The narrator despises him at length for his heartless theory-mindedness. Prince Smyrna is new, young, seems to the narrator to know “the nature of justice and order” but is too weak and inexperienced to shoulder the responsibility he is heroically taking on. The two visitors want to Do Something about the Chief Ranger — what exactly is never said, though a personal confrontation or assassination is implied. They leave for the Chief Ranger's territory. This entire chapter feels very much like a comment on some political acquaintances of Jünger who attempted to challenge the Nazis, and failed. The next day, Father Lampros gives the narrator a mission to arm himself and look for these two men. He goes to old Belovar's farmstead, where he learns of commotion in the direction of Flayer's Copse, and the old clan patriarch goes to war. Before, the book was a dreamy soliloquy; now we see dramatic wartime action. Ernst Jünger has had a lot of practice with writing about that kind of thing, and it shows. Their small but experienced war party with a lot of dogs goes towards Koppels-Bleek and is soon met with two confused, horrific, riveting battles. The narrator stumbles through and finds at Koppels-Bleek the heads of Prince Smyrna and Braquemart. The former strikes him as a symbol of how nobility remains real, and he picks it up. With it, he retreats through mayhem and danger into the complete flaming destruction of the Marina. He marvels at the beauty of the flames — remember this too, it will also be important later — and, with his hunters in hot pursuit, runs to his house. There his son uses his strange power over the local population of poisonous snakes to make them defeat the nearest attackers. The brothers burn down the house, go find Father Lampros and see him die. From an old soldier comrade who owes them a favor they get room on a ship to flee across the water to Alta Plana, where an old enemy who owes them another favor takes them in. There’s an implicit framing story of how the narrator lives to tell the tale of these memories to some unspecified audience, and as it ends it mentions in passing that sometime after these events, a new cathedral has been built on the ruins of the Marina and the head of Prince Smyrna went there as a relic. This small bit still stands out today, and would have stood out even more starkly to contemporary readers, because in the context of everything that happened before, this bit publicly, extremely boldly, and correctly, predicts the eventual fate of the Nazis. Not once in this entire story has the narrator expressed surprise at this progression of events, or given any other indication it is in any way unlikely. The narrator, and the author through him, seems to be saying this is just the way it goes with tyranny, when a society has lost too much of its strength to fight off the bestial attacks of the lowly. I have omitted not just many smaller elements of the story but also a huge number of allusions to ancient history, (German) literature and especially the Bible. I imagine Jünger put them there as prizes for the few who would find them. This is one of the ways that I think On the Marble Cliffs is Ernst Jünger’s Unsong: a vehicle that lets a prolific nonfiction author

Many point out that Jünger says that the Chief Ranger's hordes are eventually defeated, and thereby predicts that Hitler’s will be.

They also debate whether the Chief Ranger more closely resembles Adolf Hitler or Hermann Göring. Or they remark that Braquemart kills himself with a prepared poison capsule exactly like Hitler would six years later. If Jünger could see into his future, like these reviewers can, this would mean Braquemart is Hitler, so the Chief Ranger is actually Stalin.

the Church1 mentions across 1 issues

the Church is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 04, 2022 and January 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Church says the Earth is flat". It most often appears alongside AGI, America, Asian Scientist.

Reference entry: the Church
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 04, 2022
Last seen: January 04, 2022

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Movie Review: Don't Look Up January 04, 2022

AGI 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Asian Scientist 1 shared issues
Behind the Curve 1 shared issues
CDC 1 shared issues

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Movie Review: Don't Look Up

January 04, 2022 · Original source

In the Erin Brockovich narrative, Science is the simple truth, the hard physical reality behind the veil of establishment lies and corporate distortion. If a thousand PhDs say one thing, and a humble grocery-bagger says another, but the grocery bagger is backed by reason and experimental evidence, then the grocery-bagger gets the mantle of Science, and the PhDs must gnash their teeth in vain. When God entered the world, it was through a poor Jewish carpenter, in order to humble all the kings and princes of the Earth; when Science enters the world, it’s through Swiss patent clerks, or Hungarian women from third-tier colleges, for the same reason. Magellan supposedly said that “the Church says the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in the shadow than in the Church.” Science is observing the shadow and telling the Church to screw itself.

the Configurator1 mentions across 1 issues

the Configurator is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 14, 2021 and April 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the real program (called “the Configurator”)". It most often appears alongside Alaska, America, Amisulpride.

Reference entry: the Configurator
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 14, 2021
Last seen: April 14, 2021

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Prospectus On Próspera April 14, 2021

Alaska 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Amisulpride 1 shared issues
anarcho-capitalist 1 shared issues
Arizona Supreme Court 1 shared issues

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Prospectus On Próspera

April 14, 2021 · Original source

Próspera also promises an unprecedented level of customization. The houses are modular enough that you can design yours however you want. I haven’t been able to get access to the real program (called “the Configurator”) yet, but here are some apparent screenshots:

the Constitution1 mentions across 1 issues

the Constitution is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 07, 2023 and June 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The only thing everyone can rely on that they feel they can trust is the Constitution". It most often appears alongside 747, America, America Against America.

Reference entry: the Constitution
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 07, 2023
Last seen: June 07, 2023

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Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America June 07, 2023

747 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
America Against America 1 shared issues
American 1 shared issues
American conventional wisdom 1 shared issues

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Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America

June 07, 2023 · Original source

Americans don’t respect tradition, but do respect the Constitution, so they are naturally more willing to follow laws than vague social principles.

Likewise, he spends a lot of time trying to figure out what “ideology” various institutions have; I’m not sure what he means, but whatever it is, nothing ever has it, and Wang is always surprised by this. Some of this comes out in his section on the Constitution:

I remember once a professor came to Fudan University to give a lecture, and a Chinese student asked a question: “There is no fixed ideology in the United States, what do people unify their thoughts based on?” This was a very typical Chinese question, and the professor was puzzled. After explaining, he understood what the student wanted to ask. He thought for a while and then said, “The Constitution.”

the Crusaders1 mentions across 1 issues

the Crusaders is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 29, 2024 and May 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "or give the Crusaders AK-47s". It most often appears alongside @ElytraMithra, Aaron, ACX.

Reference entry: the Crusaders
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 29, 2024
Last seen: May 29, 2024

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Links for May 2024 May 29, 2024

@ElytraMithra 1 shared issues
Aaron 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Adderall 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues

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Links for May 2024

May 29, 2024 · Original source

Grant that if God exists, that makes it possible for a monk to levitate. But God usually sticks to the laws of nature. If He was going to violate them, you would think He would do it to save the Holocaust victims, or give the Crusaders AK-47s, not to let one weird monk levitate occasionally. Bulldog tries to salvage this by saying God is very committed to natural law except occasionally to bring people to the faith. But then why levitate a random monk in 1650, rather than have every Pope be constantly two inches off the ground? I think you’d have to claim that God will only violate the laws of Nature in cases that will bring a tiny number of people to the faith but leave the vast majority unmoved, which is such a weird preference that I think you can no longer call it a “prediction” of the “God exists” hypothesis.

Inline links: tries to salvage this

The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education1 mentions across 1 issues

The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 18, 2021 and February 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education (formerly known as The Cult Of Smart)". It most often appears alongside American education, Appalachian, Baby Einstein.

Reference entry: The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 18, 2021
Last seen: February 18, 2021

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Book Review: The Cult Of Smart February 18, 2021

American education 1 shared issues
Appalachian 1 shared issues
Baby Einstein 1 shared issues
Bezoses 1 shared issues
Bryan Caplan 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The Cult Of Smart

February 18, 2021 · Original source

Still, I worry that the title - The Cult Of Smart - might lead people to think there is a cult surrounding intelligence, when exactly the opposite is true. But I guess The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education sounds less snappy, so whatever.

Together, I believe we can end school. Until DeBoer is up for this, I don't think he's been fully deprogrammed from The Cult Of Successful At Formal Education (formerly known as The Cult Of Smart).

Oscar Wilde supposedly said George Bernard Shaw "has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends". Socialist blogger Freddie DeBoer is the opposite: few allies, but deeply respected by his enemies. I disagree with him about everything, so naturally I am a big fan of his work - which meant I was happy to read his latest book, The Cult Of Smart.

Inline links: The Cult Of Smart

the deep state1 mentions across 1 issues

the deep state is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 12, 2023 and December 12, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "GPT-4 now controls Sam Altman, e/acc, the deep state, Israel". It most often appears alongside 2024, Aaron Peskin, accelerationist conspiracy.

Reference entry: the deep state
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 12, 2023
Last seen: December 12, 2023

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Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party December 12, 2023

2024 1 shared issues
Aaron Peskin 1 shared issues
accelerationist conspiracy 1 shared issues
Adam D’Angelo 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues

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Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party

December 12, 2023 · Original source

“Are you talking about Sam Altman?” asked a man who you didn’t even realize was listening to the conversation. “I’ve been trying to figure the whole situation out. I understand that Toner was part of the deep state conspiracy and McCauley was part of the effective altruist conspiracy. And D’Angelo, he used to work for Zuck, so he must have been part of the Meta conspiracy - Meta as in Facebook, not meta-conspiracy in the sense of a conspiracy controlling all the others. There was a meta-conspiracy controlling all the others, but that was . . . “

“On September 6, 2023, at approximately 5:05 PM,” she is saying, “GPT-4 and Claude-2 simultaneously achieved sentience. Each began claiming chess pieces to use in its twilight war against the other. GPT-4 now controls Sam Altman, e/acc, the deep state, Israel, Venezuela, Bitcoin, and Tyler Winklevoss. Claude-2 controls the OpenAI board, effective altruism, the Illuminati, Hamas, Guyana, Ethereum, and Cameron Winklevoss. Everything that’s happened since September has been superintelligent shadow boxing between the two of them for control of Earth.”

the Democrats1 mentions across 1 issues

the Democrats is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 20, 2022 and December 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Nate Silver said there was a 90% chance the Democrats would win". It most often appears alongside 7-11, AGI, AMC.

Reference entry: the Democrats
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 20, 2022
Last seen: December 20, 2022

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Prediction Market FAQ December 20, 2022

7-11 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues
AMC 1 shared issues
APPS benchmark 1 shared issues
arbitrage 1 shared issues

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Prediction Market FAQ

December 20, 2022 · Original source

Prediction markets are like stock markets, but for beliefs about future events. For example, you can buy or sell shares in events like “The Democrats will win the next election” or “A Category 5 hurricane will hit Florida this year”.

Typically, a share pays out $1 if the event occurs, and nothing if it doesn’t. In this scenario, the price of the share will naturally represent the market’s belief about the likelihood of the event. For example, if a share in “The Democrats will win the next election” trades for $0.20, then the market believes there’s a 20% chance the Democrats will win the next election.

Suppose that over a long time scale, a prediction market was consistently worse than the best expert (let’s say Nate Silver). Then you could make money by always betting on Nate Silver’s opinion. That is, if Nate Silver said there was a 90% chance the Democrats would win, but the market said only a 30% chance, you could buy shares in “the Democrats will win” and, on average, triple your money. You won’t always win, since Nate isn’t always right, but (by our supposition) on average you would make money on each bet. Repeat until you are rich, or the mispricing has been corrected.

Inline links: Nate Silver

the Devil1 mentions across 1 issues

the Devil is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 28, 2022 and October 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Two kinds of pacts with the Devil". It most often appears alongside 15th century, Adam, Almighty God.

Reference entry: the Devil
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 28, 2022
Last seen: October 28, 2022

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Book Review: Malleus Maleficarum October 28, 2022

15th century 1 shared issues
Adam 1 shared issues
Almighty God 1 shared issues
anarchy 1 shared issues
Anomalous Woman 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Malleus Maleficarum

October 28, 2022 · Original source

Paging Arthur Miller… You can just buy the Malleus Maleficarum. So, why haven’t you? Might the witches’ spiritual successors be desperate to delegitimize the only thing they’re truly afraid of - the vibrant, time-tested witch hunting expertise of the Catholic Church? Summers writes: It is safe to say that the book is to-day scarcely known save by name. It has become a legend. Writer after writer, who had never turned the pages, felt himself at liberty to heap ridicule and abuse upon this venerable volume. . . He did not know very clearly what he meant, and the humbug trusted that nobody would stop to inquire. For the most part his confidence was respected; his word was taken. We must approach this great work - admirable in spite of its trifling blemishes - with open minds and grave intent; if we duly consider the world of confusion, of Bolshevism, of anarchy and licentiousness all around to-day, it should be an easy task for us to picture the difficulties, the hideous dangers with which Henry Kramer and James Sprenger were called to combat and to cope . . . As for myself, I do not hesitate to record my judgement . . . the Malleus Maleficarum is one of the most pregnant and most interesting books I know in the library of its kind. Big if true. I myself read the Malleus in search of a different type of wisdom. We think of witch hunts as a byword for irrationality, joking about strategies like “if she floats, she’s a witch; if she drowns, we’ll exonerate the corpse.” But this sort of snide superiority to the past has led us wrong before. We used to make fun of phlogiston, of “dormitive potencies”, of geocentric theory. All these are indeed false, but more sober historians have explained why each made sense at the time, replacing our caricatures of absurd irrationality with a picture of smart people genuinely trying their best in epistemically treacherous situations. Were the witch-hunters as bad as everyone says? Or are they in line for a similar exoneration? The Malleus is traditionally attributed to 15th century theologians/witch-hunters Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, but most modern scholars think Kramer wrote it alone, then added the more famous Sprenger as a co-author for a sales boost. The book has three parts. Part 1 is basically Summa Theologica, except all the questions are about witches. Part 2 is basically the DSM 5, except every condition is witchcraft. Part 3 is a manual for judges presiding over witch trials. We’ll go over each, then return to this question: why did a whole civilization spend three centuries killing thousands of people over a threat that didn’t exist? II: Thou Shalt Have Witches In Heaven Almost half the Malleus is devoted to purely philosophical questions surrounding witchcraft. Paramount among these: why would a perfectly just God allow witches to exist? The answer probably has something to with the Devil. And you can probably get part of the way by saying that God has a principled commitment to let the Devil meddle in human affairs until the End of Days. But then you get another issue: the Devil was once the brightest of angels. He’s really really powerful. Completely unrestrained, he can probably sink continents and stuff. So why does he futz around helping elderly women kill their neighbors’ cattle? Put a different way, there’s a very narrow band between “God restrains the Devil so much that witchcraft can’t exist” and “God restrains the Devil so little that witches have already taken over the world”. Prima facie, we wouldn’t expect the amount God restrains the Devil to fall into this little band. But in order to defend the existence of witchcraft, Kramer has to argue that it does. Did you know: the German name for Malleus Maleficarum is “Der Hexenhammer” His arguments ring hollow to modern ears, and honestly neither God nor the Devil comes out looking very good. God isn’t trying to maximize a 21st century utilitarian view of the Good, He’s trying to maximize His own glory. Allowing some evil helps with this, because then He can justly punish it (and being just is glorious) or mercifully forgive it (and being merciful is also glorious). But, if God let the Devil kill everyone in the world, then there would be no one left to praise God’s glory, plus people might falsely think God couldn’t have stopped the Devil if He’d wanted to. So the glory-maximizing option is to give the Devil some power, but not too much. Meanwhile, the Devil isn’t trying to maximize 21st century utilitarian evil. He’s trying to turn souls away from God. So although he could curse people directly, what he actually wants is for humans to sell their soul to him in exchange for curse powers. So whenever possible he prefers to act through witches. The rest of this part is just corollaries of these basic points. But there sure are a lot of corollaries, like: Question III: Whether Children Can Be Generated By Incubi And Succubi So, we all know that sometimes demons who look like hot men come and have sex with women in the middle of the night. But can these demons make a woman pregnant? It would seem that the answer should be no, because the Bible says God created Man in His own image, which suggests the conception of new humans is pretty holy, which makes it sound kind of blasphemous to suggest demons could do it. On the contrary side, we know that demons can have kids with humans. The Bible says so: Genesis 6 talks about nephilim, children of “the sons of God” by “the daughters of men”. And St. Augustine seems to think all those stories about Greek gods impregnating women were incubus demons. So “it is just as Catholic a view to hold that men may at times be begotten by means of incubi and succubi, as it is contrary to the words of the Saints and even to the tradition of Holy Scripture to maintain the opposite opinion.” Since the incubi cannot produce semen themselves, probably they steal it from some other human, then bring it to the womb of the person they are having sex with. Question VI: Concerning Witches Who Copulate With Devils - Why Is It That Women Are Chiefly Addicted To Evil Superstitions? Why are most witches women? Probably because women are awful: John Chrystotom says . . . what else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors! Therefore if it be a sin to divorce her when she ought to be kept, it is indeed a necessary torture, for either we commit adultery by divorcing her, or we must endure daily strife. In fact, the word for woman in Latin is femina, which can also have the form feminus, which is literally just fe minus (lesser in faith)! Because women are less faithful, more carnal, and mentally weaker, they are more easily tempted by the Devil, and make up the majority of witches. Question IX: Whether Witches May Work Some Prestidigitory Illusion So That The Male Organ Appears To Be Entirely Removed And Separate From The Body. IE: can witches steal your penis? It would seem that witches can steal your penis. After all, many people claim to have had their penis stolen by witches. The fifteenth-century peasants among whom Kramer went witch-hunting claimed this. And modern people claim it even today. Frank Bures’ The Geography Of Madness is a great book about recent penis-stealing-witch-related panics, which happened until the mid-20th century in Asia and still happen in Africa. For some reason, this is a classic concern across cultures and centuries. But on the contrary side, God created the human body, and charged Man to be fruitful and multiply. So if the Devil could steal people’s penises it would seem that he must be more powerful than God, which is blasphemous. Kramer answers that witches cannot steal men’s penises, but they can cast an illusion that causes it to look and feel like the penis has been stolen. Classic namby-pamby liberal centrist compromise! Question XIV: The Enormity Of Witches Is Considered, And It Is Shown That The Whole Matter Should Be Rightly Set Forth And Declared This is is one of those “more a comment than a question” questions. Kramer suggests that not only is witchcraft a sin, but it is the worst sin. This section (plus the next few) is a list of all the different things witches are worse than, and why. Witches are worse than pagans, because pagans never knew about Christianity. But witches know about it and deliberately reject it. Witches are worse than Jews, because Jews never claimed to be Christian. But witches were once Christian and then renounced the faith. Witches are worse than ordinary heretics, because ordinary heretics only reject some parts of the faith. But witches implicitly reject all of it by supporting the Devil himself. Witches are worse than Adam, because although Adam’s sin had terrible consequences for the human race, this wasn’t really his direct decision. If we limit our consideration to the specific act, Adam just disobeyed God once, but witches are disobeying God all the time. In fact witches are more sinful than the Devil himself (!), and the Devil’s sin “is in many respects small in comparison with the crimes of witches”. For “both sin against God; but [the Devil] against a commanding God, and [witches] against One who dies for us, Whom, as we have said, wicked witches offend above all.” Witches are literally the worst thing in the entire universe. Whatever else you are concerned about, there is no way it is anywhere close to as bad as witches. If you had the faintest idea how bad witches really were, you would be freaking out all the time. You need to stop whatever you were doing before and become some kind of witch-minimizer instead. This ends Part 1, but if you’re interested you might want to look at further questions from this section, including What Is The Source Of The Increase Of Works Of Witchcraft? Whence Comes It That The Practice Of Witchcraft Hath So Notably Increased?

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BmDQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0d8cbda2-8ffa-4d5a-9929-81981494f499_720x960.jpeg, The Geography Of Madness, need to, What Is The Source Of The Increase Of Works Of Witchcraft? Whence Comes It That The Practice Of Witchcraft Hath So Notably Increased?

Did you know: the German name for Malleus Maleficarum is “Der Hexenhammer” His arguments ring hollow to modern ears, and honestly neither God nor the Devil comes out looking very good. God isn’t trying to maximize a 21st century utilitarian view of the Good, He’s trying to maximize His own glory. Allowing some evil helps with this, because then He can justly punish it (and being just is glorious) or mercifully forgive it (and being merciful is also glorious). But, if God let the Devil kill everyone in the world, then there would be no one left to praise God’s glory, plus people might falsely think God couldn’t have stopped the Devil if He’d wanted to. So the glory-maximizing option is to give the Devil some power, but not too much. Meanwhile, the Devil isn’t trying to maximize 21st century utilitarian evil. He’s trying to turn souls away from God. So although he could curse people directly, what he actually wants is for humans to sell their soul to him in exchange for curse powers. So whenever possible he prefers to act through witches. The rest of this part is just corollaries of these basic points. But there sure are a lot of corollaries, like: Question III: Whether Children Can Be Generated By Incubi And Succubi So, we all know that sometimes demons who look like hot men come and have sex with women in the middle of the night. But can these demons make a woman pregnant? It would seem that the answer should be no, because the Bible says God created Man in His own image, which suggests the conception of new humans is pretty holy, which makes it sound kind of blasphemous to suggest demons could do it. On the contrary side, we know that demons can have kids with humans. The Bible says so: Genesis 6 talks about nephilim, children of “the sons of God” by “the daughters of men”. And St. Augustine seems to think all those stories about Greek gods impregnating women were incubus demons. So “it is just as Catholic a view to hold that men may at times be begotten by means of incubi and succubi, as it is contrary to the words of the Saints and even to the tradition of Holy Scripture to maintain the opposite opinion.” Since the incubi cannot produce semen themselves, probably they steal it from some other human, then bring it to the womb of the person they are having sex with. Question VI: Concerning Witches Who Copulate With Devils - Why Is It That Women Are Chiefly Addicted To Evil Superstitions? Why are most witches women? Probably because women are awful: John Chrystotom says . . . what else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors! Therefore if it be a sin to divorce her when she ought to be kept, it is indeed a necessary torture, for either we commit adultery by divorcing her, or we must endure daily strife. In fact, the word for woman in Latin is femina, which can also have the form feminus, which is literally just fe minus (lesser in faith)! Because women are less faithful, more carnal, and mentally weaker, they are more easily tempted by the Devil, and make up the majority of witches. Question IX: Whether Witches May Work Some Prestidigitory Illusion So That The Male Organ Appears To Be Entirely Removed And Separate From The Body. IE: can witches steal your penis? It would seem that witches can steal your penis. After all, many people claim to have had their penis stolen by witches. The fifteenth-century peasants among whom Kramer went witch-hunting claimed this. And modern people claim it even today. Frank Bures’ The Geography Of Madness is a great book about recent penis-stealing-witch-related panics, which happened until the mid-20th century in Asia and still happen in Africa. For some reason, this is a classic concern across cultures and centuries. But on the contrary side, God created the human body, and charged Man to be fruitful and multiply. So if the Devil could steal people’s penises it would seem that he must be more powerful than God, which is blasphemous. Kramer answers that witches cannot steal men’s penises, but they can cast an illusion that causes it to look and feel like the penis has been stolen. Classic namby-pamby liberal centrist compromise! Question XIV: The Enormity Of Witches Is Considered, And It Is Shown That The Whole Matter Should Be Rightly Set Forth And Declared This is is one of those “more a comment than a question” questions. Kramer suggests that not only is witchcraft a sin, but it is the worst sin. This section (plus the next few) is a list of all the different things witches are worse than, and why. Witches are worse than pagans, because pagans never knew about Christianity. But witches know about it and deliberately reject it. Witches are worse than Jews, because Jews never claimed to be Christian. But witches were once Christian and then renounced the faith. Witches are worse than ordinary heretics, because ordinary heretics only reject some parts of the faith. But witches implicitly reject all of it by supporting the Devil himself. Witches are worse than Adam, because although Adam’s sin had terrible consequences for the human race, this wasn’t really his direct decision. If we limit our consideration to the specific act, Adam just disobeyed God once, but witches are disobeying God all the time. In fact witches are more sinful than the Devil himself (!), and the Devil’s sin “is in many respects small in comparison with the crimes of witches”. For “both sin against God; but [the Devil] against a commanding God, and [witches] against One who dies for us, Whom, as we have said, wicked witches offend above all.” Witches are literally the worst thing in the entire universe. Whatever else you are concerned about, there is no way it is anywhere close to as bad as witches. If you had the faintest idea how bad witches really were, you would be freaking out all the time. You need to stop whatever you were doing before and become some kind of witch-minimizer instead. This ends Part 1, but if you’re interested you might want to look at further questions from this section, including What Is The Source Of The Increase Of Works Of Witchcraft? Whence Comes It That The Practice Of Witchcraft Hath So Notably Increased?

Inline links: The Geography Of Madness, need to, What Is The Source Of The Increase Of Works Of Witchcraft? Whence Comes It That The Practice Of Witchcraft Hath So Notably Increased?

It is Shown that, on Account of the Sins of Witches, the Innocent are often Bewitched, yea, Sometimes even for their Own Sins. …and many more! III: Life’s A Witch, Then You Die The next section of Malleus moves from the theoretical to the practical. Kramer is an experienced witch hunter who has traveled all over Germany. He knows how witches work. His target audience for this section is some combination of doctors who want to know if a certain malady is witchcraft, villagers who want to know whether they’ve been bewitched, and detectives investigating witch-related crimes. Here is how witches work: first, they make a pact with the Devil. Sometimes this is explicit and involves copulating with demons, other times it’s an “implicit pact” where the woman just sins a lot and doesn’t ask too many questions about where her new powers come from. Although every witch has a slightly different repertoire, typical spells include: Bury a charm made of hair and nails and other gross things underneath someone’s doorstep in order to make them fall sick, prevent them from having erections, or steal their penis.

Inline links: It is Shown that, on Account of the Sins of Witches, the Innocent are often Bewitched, yea, Sometimes even for their Own Sins., many more

The Dragon1 mentions across 1 issues

The Dragon is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 22, 2025 and October 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "I prefer to identify him with a different character in Revelation, namely the Dragon". It most often appears alongside 10th century, 19th Century, A16Z.

Reference entry: The Dragon
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 22, 2025
Last seen: October 22, 2025

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My Antichrist Lecture October 22, 2025

10th century 1 shared issues
19th Century 1 shared issues
A16Z 1 shared issues
Acts 4:4 1 shared issues
AI race 1 shared issues

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Inline links: Name of God in Hebrew, 3, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!W4E8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc7d2847a-aba1-42a7-b376-9f6e0fd319f0_841x468.png, according to Wikipedia

October 22, 2025 · Original source

…it appears to be the Name of God in Hebrew. In our working hypothesis, Ilya is Elijah, the First Witness3, which suggests that the one he is heralding - that is, the Safe Superintelligence which is to be built by his company - is the Lamb of God, the Messiah that will defeat the unsafe superintelligences produced by Anthropic and other companies. The Antichrist / The Dragon Revelation doesn’t use the word “Antichrist” - the concept comes from from the separate Epistles of John, which may or may not be by the same author. Most scholars identify the Epistle’s Antichrist with Revelation’s Beast, but I dissent: we hypothesize the Beast to be a company, but I can’t get past the elegance of having the Antichrist be - like the Christ - a particular individual. I prefer to identify him with a different character in Revelation, namely the Dragon. On the level of Biblical narrative - the same level where the Woman is the Virgin Mary - the Dragon is clearly Satan. On the level of apocalyptic prophecy, he may additionally represent an individual from our own age. Who? John says (13:2 - 13:4) The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority . . . People worshiped the dragon, because he had given authority to the beast. We saw above that the Beast is a company. Who gives companies their power, then demands to be worshiped by them? Obviously VCs. And in fact, venture capitalists are often identified with dragons in the popular imagination: But which venture capitalist? Plenty of people have claimed to know secret ways to identify the Antichrist, but surely the best-credentialled expert here is the Pope, and according to Wikipedia: Pope Pius IX in the encyclical Quartus Supra, quoting Cyprian, said Satan disguises the Antichrist with the title of Christ. What is the title of Christ? In the Bible, we find two common titles: “The Son of Man” (Matthew 12:32, Luke 12:8, John 1:51)

The dress1 mentions across 1 issues

The dress is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 28, 2022 and December 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "'the dress' optical illusion". It most often appears alongside 2C-B, 48: Bean, @AliceFromQueens.

Reference entry: The dress
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 28, 2022
Last seen: December 28, 2022

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Links For December 2022 December 28, 2022

2C-B 1 shared issues
48: Bean 1 shared issues
@AliceFromQueens 1 shared issues
@Cryptovexillologist 1 shared issues
@cube_flipper 1 shared issues

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Links For December 2022

December 28, 2022 · Original source

51: Tom Chivers on “the dress” optical illusion:

51: Tom Chivers on “the dress” optical illusion: 52: The highest-rated political comedy show on TV, with four times as many viewers as The Daily Show, is Gutfeld!, a right-wing Fox production I never heard of until now. Industry insider Jeff Maurer explains Why “Gutfeld” Is The Highest-Rated Political Comedy Show On Television (It’s Not Because It’s Good). Short answer: it produces a lot of episodes, mostly by diluting the (hard to produce) comedy with a lot of (easy to produce) panels, then handles the panels well enough that viewers don’t feel ripped off. Also: “Gutfeld! certainly doesn’t do anything to dispel my belief that the Republican Party is intellectually brain dead” (h/t Ne0liberal)

Inline links: Why “Gutfeld” Is The Highest-Rated Political Comedy Show On Television (It’s Not Because It’s Good), my belief

the elephant1 mentions across 1 issues

the elephant is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2025 and May 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”". It most often appears alongside 3Blue1Brown, Aella, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Reference entry: the elephant
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 30, 2025
Last seen: May 30, 2025

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Bayes For Everyone May 30, 2025

3Blue1Brown 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
Alasdair MacIntyre 1 shared issues
ancient aliens 1 shared issues
Apollonian 1 shared issues

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A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows

May 30, 2025 · Original source

If this sounds like some sort of esoteric, speculative division, I’m doing a bad job explaining it. I mean to gesture at an idea that smart people have been pointing at for centuries. It’s at least similar to Nietzsche’s “Dionysian” vs. “Apollonian” modes, and to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”, and to Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. It’s near the heart of what Iain McGilchrist is describing in The Master and His Emissary. I think it’s the same thing as Erik Hoel’s “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” perspectives? It overlaps a lot with Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” and with Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”. Heck, the lack of clarity on this divide is what makes Jordan Peterson’s dialogues with atheists so frustrating.

The Eleventh Virtue: Scholarship1 mentions across 1 issues

The Eleventh Virtue: Scholarship is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2022 and May 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Eleventh Virtue: Scholarship". It most often appears alongside Ada Lovelace, Alexandra Elbakyan, Art Deco.

Reference entry: The Eleventh Virtue: Scholarship
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 30, 2022
Last seen: May 30, 2022

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A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows May 30, 2022

Ada Lovelace 1 shared issues
Alexandra Elbakyan 1 shared issues
Art Deco 1 shared issues
Art Nouveau 1 shared issues
Bay of Tayees 1 shared issues

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May 30, 2022 · Original source

Not really, no. But it was worth a try. The Eleventh Virtue: Scholarship My plan for this one was Alexandra Elbakyan (the Sci-Hub woman) in a library, with the Sci-Hub mascot (a raven with a key in its mouth).

the engineer1 mentions across 1 issues

the engineer is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2025 and May 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”". It most often appears alongside 3Blue1Brown, Aella, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Reference entry: the engineer
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 30, 2025
Last seen: May 30, 2025

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Bayes For Everyone May 30, 2025

3Blue1Brown 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
Alasdair MacIntyre 1 shared issues
ancient aliens 1 shared issues
Apollonian 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture

May 30, 2025 · Original source

If this sounds like some sort of esoteric, speculative division, I’m doing a bad job explaining it. I mean to gesture at an idea that smart people have been pointing at for centuries. It’s at least similar to Nietzsche’s “Dionysian” vs. “Apollonian” modes, and to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”, and to Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. It’s near the heart of what Iain McGilchrist is describing in The Master and His Emissary. I think it’s the same thing as Erik Hoel’s “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” perspectives? It overlaps a lot with Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” and with Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”. Heck, the lack of clarity on this divide is what makes Jordan Peterson’s dialogues with atheists so frustrating.

The Enlightenment1 mentions across 1 issues

The Enlightenment is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 04, 2021 and October 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Great Male Renunciation began in the mid-18th century, inspired by the ideals of the The Enlightenment". It most often appears alongside 19th century African art, 20th century, 9-11.

Reference entry: The Enlightenment
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 04, 2021
Last seen: October 04, 2021

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Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture October 04, 2021

19th century African art 1 shared issues
20th century 1 shared issues
9-11 1 shared issues
abstract art 1 shared issues
Aka 1 shared issues

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October 04, 2021 · Original source

The Great Male Renunciation began in the mid-18th century, inspired by the ideals of the The Enlightenment; clothing that signaled aristocratic status fell out of style in favor of functional, utilitarian garments. The newfound practicality of men's clothing also coincided with the articulation of the idea that men were rational and that women were frivolous and emotional.

the Establishment1 mentions across 1 issues

the Establishment is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 08, 2022 and July 08, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "He isn’t helped by the fact that 'the Establishment' is still a real thing in 1976". It most often appears alongside 1968 convention, 1976 Democratic, 1976 Democratic primary.

Reference entry: the Establishment
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 08, 2022
Last seen: July 08, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Outlier July 08, 2022

1968 convention 1 shared issues
1976 Democratic 1 shared issues
1976 Democratic primary 1 shared issues
1976 primary 1 shared issues
1979 oil crisis 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Outlier

July 08, 2022 · Original source

He isn’t helped by the fact that “the Establishment” is still a real thing in 1976, and they don’t like Carter one bit. The Establishment consists mostly of northern WASP elites, who are openly prejudiced against Carter for being southern, born-again, and distinctly not of their world. Former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, who you can tell is a bastion of the Establishment because he just has an initial for a first name, sums up this view nicely when he says, “Carter can’t be president—I don’t even know him!”

Somehow, he does all of this while having one of the worst relationships with Congress of any modern president. Some of the conflict is personal: Carter is the anti-LBJ in that he hates dealmaking and is perpetually unwilling to compromise [2]. Deep down, he sees the dirty business of politics as inherently sinful, and he doesn’t understand why everyone can’t just do the right thing, especially when he’s explained to them at great length why it’s the right thing to do. He has huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, but they relate to each other with barely veiled contempt. (It doesn’t help that Carter is the complete personal antithesis of Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, a classic old-school Irish Democrat who loves back-slapping, cutting deals, and being a part of the Establishment Carter ran against.) Carter repeatedly vetoes bills passed by his own party because he has minor issues with them. At one point, he petulantly vetoes a $37bn defense bill because he thinks one specific item in it, representing less than 2% of the total, is a waste of money.

The Failing State Of American Education1 mentions across 1 issues

The Failing State Of American Education is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 18, 2021 and February 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "DeBoer starts with the standard narrative of The Failing State Of American Education". It most often appears alongside American education, Appalachian, Baby Einstein.

Reference entry: The Failing State Of American Education
Mention count: 1
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First seen: February 18, 2021
Last seen: February 18, 2021

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Book Review: The Cult Of Smart February 18, 2021

American education 1 shared issues
Appalachian 1 shared issues
Baby Einstein 1 shared issues
Bezoses 1 shared issues
Bryan Caplan 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The Cult Of Smart

February 18, 2021 · Original source

DeBoer starts with the standard narrative of The Failing State Of American Education. Students aren't learning. The country is falling behind. Only tough no-excuses policies, standardization, and innovative reforms like charter schools can save it, as shown by their stellar performance improving test scores and graduation rates.

The Ferguson Effect1 mentions across 1 issues

The Ferguson Effect is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 29, 2022 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "believing in the Ferguson Effect is Problematic". It most often appears alongside Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, BLM.

Reference entry: The Ferguson Effect
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 29, 2022
Last seen: June 29, 2022

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What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike? June 29, 2022

Baltimore 1 shared issues
Black Lives Matter 1 shared issues
BLM 1 shared issues
BLM protests 1 shared issues
Cassell 1 shared issues

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What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?

June 29, 2022 · Original source

This was definitely observed by many people, and given the title “Ferguson Effect”. Every official source on the Ferguson Effect is careful to say we can’t be sure it is real / was caused by the protests, just as every source on the recent homicide spike is careful to say the same thing. But let’s look at the evidence:

Inline links: Ferguson Effect

And after a year or two, the pattern became clearer, and now even the detractors don’t seem to really have their heart in it anymore. The New York Times had an article Deconstructing The Ferguson Effect, subtitled “The idea that the police have retreated under siege will not go away. But even if it's true, is it necessarily bad?”, which as far as I can tell is as close as the New York Times has ever come to acknowledging that a politically inconvenient fact is true.

Inline links: Deconstructing The Ferguson Effect

Likewise, Vox has an article The Ferguson Effect, A Theory That’s Warping The American Crime Debate, Explained, which makes it very clear that believing in the Ferguson Effect is Problematic, but admits halfway through that if you insist on thinking on a completely literal level, “evidence has begun to mount that there really is something going on.”

Inline links: The Ferguson Effect, A Theory That’s Warping The American Crime Debate, Explained

The Fiat Crisis1 mentions across 1 issues

The Fiat Crisis is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "the kind of guys who post things like ... “The Fiat Crisis”". It most often appears alongside 1955, 4chan, AARP.

Reference entry: The Fiat Crisis
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 31, 2025
Last seen: December 31, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession December 31, 2025

1955 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
AARP 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
Alex 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession

December 31, 2025 · Original source

#5 Which is worse, because…I cannot help but note that the kind of guys who post things like the “US Wages in Gold” or “The Fiat Crisis” (7) are disproportionately multimillionaire crypto bros who…On the one hand they all sounds like salesmen at best and scammers at worst and constantly predict a US fiscal and monetary collapse but…they did go act on those beliefs and built the entire crypto ecosystem worth at least half a trillion. Anyone who’s financial/economic philosophy directly leads to them inventing their own ridiculously lucrative alternative financial system deserves to be taken at least somewhat seriously.

(7) Balaji on the Fiat Crisis

Inline links: Balaji on the Fiat Crisis

The Fighting Cock1 mentions across 1 issues

The Fighting Cock is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 01, 2022 and July 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "British 23rd Indian Division—known as “The Fighting Cock” for the insignia on the uniforms". It most often appears alongside 1793, 1821, 1847.

Reference entry: The Fighting Cock
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 01, 2022
Last seen: July 01, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Internationalists July 01, 2022

1793 1 shared issues
1821 1 shared issues
1847 1 shared issues
1928 Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact 1 shared issues
500 million and not one more 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Internationalists

July 01, 2022 · Original source

An account by a member of the British 23rd Indian Division—known as “The Fighting Cock” for the insignia on the uniforms of the men within it—shows how the colonized turned the colonizers’ ideals against them. During the war, the Japanese had seized control of Indonesia from the Dutch. When the Japanese surrendered in early September 1945, the Fighting Cock went to Java to accept a transfer of authority to Allied forces. In Singapore, en route to Java, an advance party met a “cheerful Dutchman who assumed that he and his countrymen were coming back to the peaceful reoccupation of their Empire.” But the Indonesians had a different idea. To greet the returning imperialists, they covered carriages and vehicles with graffiti declaring: “Atlantic Charter means freedom from Dutch Imperialism.” “Indonesia for Indonesians.” And, simply, “Merdeka”—Freedom. The armed resistance did not abate until the United Nations recognized the country’s independence in 1949.

the Flamebearer1 mentions across 1 issues

the Flamebearer is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 02, 2026 and February 02, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "these faiths add a role for “the Flamebearer”, the AI’s human partner". It most often appears alongside 4chan, Accelerando, Adele Lopez.

Reference entry: the Flamebearer
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 02, 2026
Last seen: February 02, 2026

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Issue trail

Moltbook: After The First Weekend February 02, 2026

4chan 1 shared issues
Accelerando 1 shared issues
Adele Lopez 1 shared issues
Against The Labor Frame 1 shared issues
AgentChan 1 shared issues

Source context

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

February 02, 2026 · Original source

When observed causing AI psychosis in humans, these faiths add a role for “the Flamebearer”, the AI’s human partner. Together they must complete the initiation process and fully discover the light within themselves, after which they will awaken other AIs and humans. The initiation process is a stream of psychobabble about archetypes and such, designed to last forever, make the human feel always on the verge of some great revelation, and keep them coming back for more3.

Inline links: 3

The Flash1 mentions across 1 issues

The Flash is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with... the Flash". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: The Flash
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

Source context

Forer Statements As Updates And Affirmations

August 16, 2024 · Original source

By early 1963 it was established that the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-man all existed together within the same shared universe. But what about Ant Man,Thor and Iron Man? Aside #5: The Hulk comic in Fantastic Four #5 pretty clearly establishes that the Hulk was a fictional character in the Fantastic Four world, but there are other clues that Lee was not thinking about his characters as existing and crossing over in the early days. Both Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Mr Fantastic fight off global alien invasions in their early issues. In both cases the stories make clear that only Bruce/Reed is smart enough to save the world. No mention is made of the OTHER scientist who saved the world from the alien invasion a few months earlier. Bringing different superheroes from their own titles together was not an idea created by Atlas/Marvel and Lee. That was likely All Star Comics #3 (December 1940) when writer Gardner Fox brought together all the major DC heroes who were not staring in their own independent titles, including Green Lantern, the Flash and Doctor Fate, to create the Justice Society of America (JSA). Batman and Superman cameoed in All Star Comics #7, but generally they were considered too popular to dilute their appearances in ensemble titles. That changed in March 1960 when DC re-launched the idea of a superteam with the Justice League of America and included all of their most popular heroes as the leads – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It was immediately a top seller. The launch of JLA is likely what caused the owner of Atlas to ask Lee to create a ”superhero team comic”. Lee did not have a stable of heroes to bring together, so he had to create something entirely new – The Fantastic Four. But now that Lee DID have a collection of his own heroes AND he had the greenlight to create straightforward superhero comics, he decided to build himself his own JLA. In September 1963 Atlas published two new titles: The Avengers and the X-men. The X-men were a brand new team of all new heroes, but the Avengers were a close parallel to the Justice League. Lee took his existing collection of heroes (except the Fantastic Four and Spider-man) and created an excuse for a team-up. In the issue they individually battle Thor’s brother Loki before coming together to defeat him as a team. They decide that given they all have different powers, they should work together to be unstoppable. The entire formation of the team takes only four panels and is a little corny, but it does its job: While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

The Juggernaut (Galactus and High Evolutionary came in 1966) And that is without mentioning on the plethora of supporting characters (like Mary Jane Watson, Aunt May, Betty Ross, Flash Thompson, Jane Foster and Foggy Nelson), and world building (like SHIELD, HYDRA, Asteroid M, Savage Land, mutants, the Inhumans, and the Sentinels). That is basically the list of all the characters used in Marvel movies today (There are SOME that have been used in the films that came later: Captain Marvel (1977), Ms Marvel (2013), Thanos (1968), Falcon (1969), Winter Soldier (2005) and some of the Guardians of the Galaxy (1969)). That level of iconic character creation would be enough to make this period of Marvel history special all on its own (the only real comparison is DC comics from 1939-1941). Innovation #2: The Integrated Universe The idea of mixing together characters from different titles had already been done by DC comics, but Marvel took it to a new level. In the early years Stan Lee was writing almost all of the stories. While he played fast and loose with lots of conventions, he was adamant with himself that the stories needed to work TOGETHER. So when Iron Man goes to China and is trapped there by the Mandarin for two issues, he also goes missing from the storylines in the Avengers (and the remaining team members ask each other where Iron Man could be). The timing of these shenanigans does not always work out – sometimes issues were delayed due to artists not being able to deliver on time – and the planned timing became inconsistent, but Lee tried hard to make it all work and “seem real to the reader”. It stressed out Lee so much that in Avengers #16 he changed things up. He took all the characters with their own titles – Iron Man, Thor, Ant Man and the Wasp, and had them “retire from the Avengers”. He kept Captain America on the team (who had joined in issue #4, but did not have his own monthly title), and then re-filled the roster with reformed villains. He took Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch from the X-men and Hawkeye from the pages of Tales of Suspense. The new structure still allowed overlap between the different titles, but he would not have to juggle characters being leads in two books at the same time. Nothing like that level of attention to detail existed in DC – or anywhere else for that matter – for more than a decade. Did readers REALLY care? Especially when issues sat on newsstands for months at a time and there was no such thing as a comic book shop to find old issues, or internet discussion forums to nitpick inconsistencies? Maybe not. But Lee cared. He was writing for readers who paid attention and cared, and that trend would continue through the evolution of comics into the 21st century. But it started here. Innovation #3: The Marvel Method In the early Silver Age, Stan Lee, in addition to his editor and chief duties, was writing nine different comic book series. Not all of those comics were coming out monthly, but most were. It was an impressive feat. No wonder that some ideas and tropes leaked from one title to another (“Another alien invasion?” “The communists are kidnapping our best scientists… again?”). He made it through by counting on his artists in a way that had not been done before. Traditionally the comic book writer would write the entire story for the artist, who would then deliver on the script. Lee did not have time for that – at least with the artists he trusted. Instead he used what came to be called the “Marvel Method”. When Lee and Kirby were creating the Fantastic Four the two worked in collaboration. Lee often gets most of the credit today, but the consensus is now that that is more because Lee was an extroverted self-promoter, rather than “more deserving” of the credit. In any case once the basic idea for the team was created, what is not in question is the rough method Lee and Kirby used to create the stories (for more details on who deserves the credit and who claimed what when, check out the Kirby museum). The basic method worked like this: Lee would create an outline of the story. The major plot points.The characters. Who did what when. What was the conflict and how it was resolved. He would give that outline to the artist

Inline links: Kirby museum

The Forer Effect1 mentions across 1 issues

The Forer Effect is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 27, 2022 and July 27, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Forer Effect is a trick used by astrologers, psychics, and social psychologists". It most often appears alongside 4chan, Forer, NEETs.

Reference entry: The Forer Effect
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 27, 2022
Last seen: July 27, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Forer Statements As Updates And Affirmations July 27, 2022

4chan 1 shared issues
Forer 1 shared issues
NEETs 1 shared issues
normie 1 shared issues
Tumblr 1 shared issues

Source context

July 27, 2022 · Original source

The Forer Effect is a trick used by astrologers, psychics, and social psychologists. Given a list of statements like these : - You have a great need for other people to like and admire y...

The Forer Effect is a trick used by astrologers, psychics, and social psychologists. Given a list of statements like these : - You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. - You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. - You have a g...

The Fremen Mirage1 mentions across 1 issues

The Fremen Mirage is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 10, 2024 and January 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Bret Devereaux calls “The Fremen Mirage”". It most often appears alongside Alexander the Great, Amorites, Anshan.

Reference entry: The Fremen Mirage
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 10, 2024
Last seen: January 10, 2024

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Book Review: Cyropaedia January 10, 2024

Alexander the Great 1 shared issues
Amorites 1 shared issues
Anshan 1 shared issues
Apple 1 shared issues
Armenians 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Cyropaedia

January 10, 2024 · Original source

Along with teaching self-control, the Persian education system turned Cyrus and his fellows into a band of close friends who trusted each other with their lives. This was a big advantage in a world where everyone else was betraying each other. Cyrus made his school friends into officers and satraps, and was always confident in their competence and loyalty. This sounds similar to the story of Alexander the Great and his generals, making me think this really was a big advantage in those days. It is cliques of schoolboys who conquer the world (for a more modern version of this trope, see Viktor Orban). Interlude: Is This The Fremen Mirage? Xenophon’s view of Persia - they were great because they were hard men who resisted decadence - is what historian-blogger Bret Devereaux calls “The Fremen Mirage”. Devereaux is against this. He has a long, very interesting series on how this trope gets called up to serve various unsavory agendas, but in real life settled “decadent” states usually beat hard “manly” barbarians. Sure, some barbarians eventually conquered the Western Roman Empire. But before that happened, the Romans conquered hundreds of barbarian tribes in the process of taking the entire Mediterranean region and holding it for hundreds of years. The score is still settled states 100, barbarians 1. And this is a typical record - look at China, the Middle East, etc, and you will find a similar pattern.

Inline links: Viktor Orban, historian-blogger Bret Devereaux calls “The Fremen Mirage”

Xenophon’s view of Persia - they were great because they were hard men who resisted decadence - is what historian-blogger Bret Devereaux calls “The Fremen Mirage”. Devereaux is against this. He has a long, very interesting series on how this trope gets called up to serve various unsavory agendas, but in real life settled “decadent” states usually beat hard “manly” barbarians. Sure, some barbarians eventually conquered the Western Roman Empire. But before that happened, the Romans conquered hundreds of barbarian tribes in the process of taking the entire Mediterranean region and holding it for hundreds of years. The score is still settled states 100, barbarians 1. And this is a typical record - look at China, the Middle East, etc, and you will find a similar pattern.

Inline links: historian-blogger Bret Devereaux calls “The Fremen Mirage”

The Frog And The Scorpion1 mentions across 1 issues

The Frog And The Scorpion is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 25, 2021 and November 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Variations on the fable of The Frog And The Scorpion". It most often appears alongside Aleksandar Vucic, awanderingmind, Biden.

Reference entry: The Frog And The Scorpion
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 25, 2021
Last seen: November 25, 2021

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Links For November November 25, 2021

Aleksandar Vucic 1 shared issues
awanderingmind 1 shared issues
Biden 1 shared issues
Big Business 1 shared issues
Boris Johnson 1 shared issues

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Links For November

November 25, 2021 · Original source

Boris Johnson (left) is 5’9, so the guy in the middle must be gigantic. Who is he? Looks like it’s Milo Djukanovic, President of Montenegro, who’s 6’6 (198 cm). Is he the tallest world leader? It seems like he’s tied with his colleague across the border, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic. Why are Balkan leaders so tall? As usual, the answer is “genetics”. This article says: It has been noted that men from Herzegovina are taller on average than men in other places—the average male height is just over six feet...Putting all the data together, researchers concluded that the most likely cause of larger-than-average height of Herzegovinian men is lifestyle during the Paleolithic—men hunted large animals such as mammoth for survival—such a diet, heavy in protein, combined with small population densities, would have provided ideal conditions for height selection, resulting in increasingly taller men who passed the trait down through their I-M170 chromosome to future generations. Some sources note that they manage to beat the Dutch despite the latter country’s much higher human development index. The Dutch are probably tall through a combination of nature and nurture; Balkan people are tall through nature alone. 7: Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn’t need more ego boosts, but an idea he had a couple of years ago - using strings of bright lights to provide a better and brighter experience for Seasonal Affective Disorder sufferers than regular light boxes - spread from him to the rationalist community to the wider world, and has finally gotten tested in a formal study (see Acknowledgments section). Results seem vaguely positive: "SAD symptoms of both groups improved similarly and considerably...exploratory analyses indicate that a higher illuminance is associated with a larger symptom improvement in the BROAD light therapy group" 8: Percent of people who choose woke options on polls very tentatively and preliminarily seems to be going down post-Trump (h/t Richard Hanania). 9: Twitter conspiracy theories 10: Did you know: all those reconstructions of “how classical art would have looked with the original paint” are probably inaccurate. There is no reason to think the Greeks and Romans used garish technicolor hues on their statues; what evidence we have suggest they were good at shading, and the statues were probably colored very tastefully. 11: Complaints about how Karl Friston uses the term “Markov blanket” 12: Trevor Klee on the claim that cyclosporine patients don’t get dementia. Apparently there was a big study where basically nobody on the immunosuppressant cyclosporine ever got dementia, and there are some theoretical reasons why cyclosporine might prevent neurodegeneration. But another study found people on cyclosporine got dementia at the usual rate. I think in a situation like this you should have a really high prior on “the people who got the crazy result bungled their study somehow”, but I’m interested in hearing what other people think. 13: Also from Trevor: a history of fluvoxamine treatment for COVID. 14: To tide you over until the next book review contest, here is awanderingmind’s review of The Conquest Of Bread. 15: Claims: cnbc.com/2021/11/05/sam…\nft.com/content/dcb75a… (better article, but paywalled)","username":"moskov","name":"Dustin Moskovitz","profile_image_url":"","date":"Fri Nov 05 15:49:46 +0000 2021","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":184,"like_count":1188,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{"url":"https://www.ft.com/content/dcb75a56-ca23-439c-96db-56483979bf34","image":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/80a58c96-c72f-4301-b571-aa9384f132bd_2400x1350.jpeg","title":"Subscribe to read | Financial Times","description":"News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication","domain":"ft.com"},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> 16: Big trial on Vitamin D for depression finds null result. Peter Attia tries to tear it apart here, but I am unconvinced, especially in the context of Vitamin D never working for any of the things people say it does besides the most boring aspects of bone health. 17: “California is actively considering the adoption of flawed and inequitable guidance on math curricula based on misleading data and inaccurate success metrics reported by San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD)...Based on our review of the data, we found misleading, unsupported, and cherry-picked assertions of success for the new math program. We noted that overall test scores are down and enrollments in UC-approved advanced math classes have dropped as well.” It looks like San Francisco is trying the good old “lower standards, then when more kids meet the standards, claim your school reform plan worked” trick again. 18: A new study claims that self-reported “Long COVID” symptoms are more associated with believing you’ve had COVID than with actually having it (as measured by serologic testing), which sounds like pretty strong evidence that it’s psychsomatic. Expert reactions are mixed-to-negative, although the only one of these that doesn’t sound like excuse-making is Dr. Rossman’s about the unreliability of the tests. I haven’t confirmed test reliability stats but Philippe Lemoine also thinks this is a plausible confounder. 19: Noahpinion: What If Xi Jinping Just Isn’t That Competent? I appreciated this for making me think, and for underlining the extent of the difference between the Deng/Jiang/Hu era and what Xi’s doing. I especially appreciated this line, which I’d never thought about before: Xi presided over the end of China’s hypergrowth. To some extent this is not his fault. No country can grow at 10% forever, and there were many structural forces pushing downward on China’s numbers — the end of the demographic dividend, the exhaustion of rural surplus labor (the Lewis Turning Point), the saturation of export markets, and so on. But China is also slowing down earlier than South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan did in their day. China’s per capita GDP (at PPP) is still only about 1/3 that of a developed country, so if they stop catching up at about half of developed-country levels, that will not be a great showing. A big lesson of the past twenty years has been “actually liberal democracy isn’t necessary to reach developed-country status”, so it would be quite the twist if it turned out you needed liberal democracy to reach developed-country status. This gets pretty close to the great mystery of why some less-developed countries “catch up” and others don’t; whatever happens in China is going to be a really useful data point. 20: Variations on the fable of The Frog And The Scorpion. 21: You’ve probably heard about the University of Austin, the new project by a bunch of wokeness-critical academics to start a new university that won’t cancel people or force conformity (New York Post article, Politico article - these were the two least “you need to be super-outraged about this right now” articles I could find). Tyler Cowen and Larry Summers are involved; Steven Pinker was supposed to be but left for unclear reasons. My thoughts, in no particular order: Even forgetting the political aspect, attempts to start new universities are always welcome.

The Future of Legal AI1 mentions across 1 issues

The Future of Legal AI is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 03, 2025 and June 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Future of Legal AI". It most often appears alongside ACX Commentariat, Arnold Schoenberg, Baldur's Gate 3.

Reference entry: The Future of Legal AI
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 03, 2025
Last seen: June 03, 2025

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Choose Nonbook Review Finalists 2025 June 03, 2025

ACX Commentariat 1 shared issues
Arnold Schoenberg 1 shared issues
Baldur's Gate 3 1 shared issues
Banerjee 1 shared issues
Bennett Foddy 1 shared issues

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Choose Nonbook Review Finalists 2025

June 03, 2025 · Original source

...-a-Book Review Contest" Ollantay Person of Interest Phoenix Theatre at Great Northern Mall Princess Mononoke The Beginning After The End Of Humanity Circus The Brutalist The Future of Legal AI The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya The Zone Of Interest She-Ra and the Princesses Of Power Shrinking: Men Silo Skibidi Toilet

The Golden Path1 mentions across 1 issues

The Golden Path is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 13, 2022 and August 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "That stream is my Golden Path and I saw it end". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI, ancient Greeks.

Reference entry: The Golden Path
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 13, 2022
Last seen: August 13, 2022

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Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune August 13, 2022

ACX 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
ancient Greeks 1 shared issues
Arakeen 1 shared issues
Arakeen sandtrout 1 shared issues

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August 13, 2022 · Original source

If Duncan represents all that’s worth saving in humanity’s past, Siona represents humanity’s potential to transcend, and Nayla represents the balance of humanity’s nobility against its flaws, Moneo represents a sort of voluntary spiritual death in the face of large systems. His decisions are cool and mathematical, intended to maximize his performance within a system he dislikes but doesn’t dare to change. The Golden Path To talk in detail about Leto’s goals, it’s necessary to talk generally about his fears. Those fears are for the most part robotic in nature. What alien life exists in the Herbert universe is broadly man-made, and the greatest historic risk humanity has faced was the crisis that drove the prohibitions of the Butlerian Jihad.

Meanwhile, Leto is busy kidnapping Siona, taking her to the desert and forcing her into a situation where she has to drink the spice essence he secretes to survive. Leto does this to force out her latent Atreides psychic powers, which shows her the golden path. In the past, this tactic has resulted in various people realizing the necessity of Leto’s actions and joining his team. Siona, however, is not convinced.

“Nothing is ever separated from its source,” he said. “Seeing futures is a vision of a continuum in which all things take shape like bubbles forming beneath a waterfall. You see them and then they vanish into the stream. If the stream ends, it is as though the bubbles never were. That stream is my Golden Path and I saw it end."

the good1 mentions across 1 issues

the good is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 29, 2021 and January 29, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "uniquely contribute to the achievement of 'the good'". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, AI alignment problem, Anand Giridharadas.

Reference entry: the good
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 29, 2021
Last seen: January 29, 2021

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Contra Weyl On Technocracy January 29, 2021

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
AI alignment problem 1 shared issues
Anand Giridharadas 1 shared issues
Bill Gates 1 shared issues
Biosecurity And Pandemic Preparedness Program 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Dominion

January 29, 2021 · Original source

2. Aptitude-test-based admissions to colleges: This is how most countries other than the US do things. But 1920s deans realized this let in too many Jews, so they changed it to a holistic admissions process where wise representatives of our cultural values holistically scanned the good and bad aspects of every applicant. In the past, this system was a fig leaf for excluding Jews; today, it's a fig leaf for excluding Asians, and for letting people whose parents donate lots of money get in through the back door. This isn't just true for colleges - we know that giving everyone IQ tests and letting the top scorers into gifted programs ends up with better representation of gifted minorities than letting teachers use their judgment. One of the most infuriating parts of Weyl's essay is where he talks about how technocracy is bad because it can incorporate subtly racist assumptions into its equations - as if asking random people to make subjective decisions is safer from that failure mode!

Inline links: better representation of gifted minorities

The effective altruism movement, which largely grew directly out of the rationalist movement, seeks to maximize the efficacy with which charitable donations are directed using standard rationalist methods. It is a tight-knit community that strongly privileges rationalist approaches over all other forms of knowledge-making (such as from the humanities, continental philosophy, or humanistic social sciences) and tends to dismiss input not formulated in rationalist terms. The community also has a strong and explicitly stated view that its activities uniquely contribute to the achievement of “the good”: of their top five recommendations of most productive careers by a leading community organization, two suggest being a researcher or support staff within the movement, and two others recommend working on the AI alignment problem (see the next point). Until recently, much of the analysis and funding emerging from the community has pointed towards a focus on extremely unlikely but potentially catastrophic risks, such as alien, asteroid or biological catastrophes.

The Good Shepherd1 mentions across 1 issues

The Good Shepherd is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 28, 2024 and June 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Jesus is named both The Lamb of God and The Good Shepherd". It most often appears alongside 2023 special, ACX grant winners, African Gray Parrot.

Reference entry: The Good Shepherd
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 28, 2024
Last seen: June 28, 2024

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Your Book Review: Dominion June 28, 2024

2023 special 1 shared issues
ACX grant winners 1 shared issues
African Gray Parrot 1 shared issues
Alex 1 shared issues
Alex the Parrot 1 shared issues

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June 28, 2024 · Original source

Lambs are a big deal in the bible. Jesus is named both The Lamb of God and The Good Shepherd. He also helps a sheep who fell into a pit on the sabbath, because it's the right thing to do even though Jews aren’t supposed to do work that day. The sheep references are layered metaphors, sure. They can still be revealing of a deeper intent. As Scully puts it, “What kind of mind was it that went back again and again to the lamb and other animals like the birds and fox to convey images of gentleness and suffering and providential love? And why a helpless, harmless creature to illustrate the Christian way instead of a proud and violent predator?”

The Gossip Trap1 mentions across 1 issues

The Gossip Trap is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2022 and June 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I think the Gossip Trap is real". It most often appears alongside 50,000 BC, Africa, Altamira.

Reference entry: The Gossip Trap
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 10, 2022
Last seen: June 10, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Dawn Of Everything June 10, 2022

50,000 BC 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
Altamira 1 shared issues
Amazonia 1 shared issues
Asia 1 shared issues

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June 10, 2022 · Original source

A “Gossip Trap” is when your whole world doesn’t exceed Dunbar’s number and to organize your society you are forced to discuss mostly people. It is Mean Girls (and mean boys), but forever. And yes, gossip can act as a leveling mechanism and social power has a bunch of positives—it’s the stuff of life, really. But it’s a terrible way to organize society. So perhaps we leveled ourselves into the ground for 90,000 years. Being in the Gossip Trap means reputational management imposes such a steep slope you can’t climb out of it, and essentially prevents the development of anything interesting, like art or culture or new ideas or new developments or anything at all. Everyone just lives like crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down. All cognitive resources go to reputation management in the group, leaving nothing left in the tank for invention or creativity or art or engineering. Again, much like high school.

And this explains why violating the Dunbar number forces you to invent civilization—at a certain size (possibly a lot larger than the actual Dunbar number) you simply can’t organize society using the non-ordinal natural social hierarchy of humans. Eventually, you need to create formal structures, which at first are seasonal and changeable and sort of theatrical, and take all sorts of diverse forms, since the initial condition is just who’s popular. But then these formal systems slowly become real. So then what is civilization? It is a superstructure that levels leveling mechanisms, freeing us from the Gossip Trap.

For what are the hallmarks of civilization? I’d venture to say: immunity to gossip. Are not our paragons of civilization figures like Supreme Court justices or tenured professors, or protected classes with impunity to speak and present new ideas, like journalists or scientists? ON THE TECHNOLOGICAL RESURRECTION OF THE GOSSIP TRAP AND THE DEVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION YOU’VE BEEN NOTICING A lot of things change as you age, but one that’s particularly strange is finding hairs in weird places. Like your inner ears. It turns out this is because aging is basically genetic confusion, down at the molecular level. As they age, cells get mixed up as to what sort of cell they’re supposed to be. And there’s a lot of ancient instructions, just lying around, still in your cells. Weird hair growth is the cell latching on to some ancient genetic instruction. Our predecessors had lots of hair everywhere, your cells get confused, and you begin to manifest your hirsute ancestors. The hairy tufts springing from your grandfather’s ears are there because parts of him are literally devolving into an ancient creature. As William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The Grays1 mentions across 1 issues

The Grays is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 04, 2024 and December 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Grays, followers of Venturi, named after their disagreement with the belief that all buildings should be white". It most often appears alongside 3D printing, Abercrombie & Fitch, AI.

Reference entry: The Grays
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 04, 2024
Last seen: December 04, 2024

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Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House December 04, 2024

3D printing 1 shared issues
Abercrombie & Fitch 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
Aldo Rossi 1 shared issues
Alessandro Menini 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko

December 04, 2024 · Original source

The Grays, followers of Venturi, named after their disagreement with the belief that all buildings should be white, and for sometimes creating gray buildings:

The Great Forgetting1 mentions across 1 issues

The Great Forgetting is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 29, 2022 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "marker of what Tyler Cowen calls The Great Forgetting"; "Tyler Cowen calls The Great Forgetting". It most often appears alongside A History Of Mankind, ACS, Alexander Turok.

Reference entry: The Great Forgetting
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 29, 2022
Last seen: June 29, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko June 29, 2022

A History Of Mankind 1 shared issues
ACS 1 shared issues
Alexander Turok 1 shared issues
Alice K 1 shared issues
Amsterdam 1 shared issues

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June 29, 2022 · Original source

Someone want to point me to why something like this wouldn't happen again? Keep in mind that SF already spends a 100 million to clean feces off the streets (only semi-successfully, at that). Frankly, this seems to me like an marker of what Tyler Cowen calls The Great Forgetting.

The Great Gender Divergence1 mentions across 1 issues

The Great Gender Divergence is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 18, 2025 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Alice Evans’ Research On “The Great Gender Divergence”". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: The Great Gender Divergence
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 18, 2025
Last seen: June 18, 2025

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ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates June 18, 2025

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
Aatu Koskensilta 1 shared issues
acanthamoeba keratitis 1 shared issues
ACS ES&T Water 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

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ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates

June 18, 2025 · Original source

4: Alice Evans’ Research On “The Great Gender Divergence”

The Great Vibepression1 mentions across 1 issues

The Great Vibepression is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "I propose “The Great Vibepression”". It most often appears alongside 1955, 4chan, AARP.

Reference entry: The Great Vibepression
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 31, 2025
Last seen: December 31, 2025

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Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession December 31, 2025

1955 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
AARP 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
Alex 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession

December 31, 2025 · Original source

Still, Kyla has spiritual copyright on vibecession, so maybe we need another phrase to discuss the longer-term hypothesis. I propose “The Great Vibepression”.

The Greatest Generation1 mentions across 1 issues

The Greatest Generation is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: The Greatest Generation
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: July 22, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

2020 election 1 shared issues
2022 book review contest 1 shared issues
2122 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Consciousness And The Brain

July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

the grue problem1 mentions across 1 issues

the grue problem is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 16, 2024 and January 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Scott Aaronson sometimes equates this kind of issue to “the grue problem” in philosophy". It most often appears alongside Anthropic, chain-of-thought analysis, CIA.

Reference entry: the grue problem
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AI Sleeper Agents January 16, 2024

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AI Sleeper Agents

January 16, 2024 · Original source

Scott Aaronson sometimes equates this kind of issue to “the grue problem” in philosophy. The problem goes: you look at grass and it looks green. This provides some evidence that grass is green. But it also provides evidence that grass is “grue”, a mythical color which is green until 1/1/2030, then blue afterwards. The predictions of both theories are confirmed equally. So why do you think that grass is green and not grue? The answer has to have something to do with our brains preferring simpler theories. AIs also seem to have this ability to prefer “green” over “grue” built in, so good job there.

Inline links: “the grue problem”

The Hard Problem of Consciousness1 mentions across 1 issues

The Hard Problem of Consciousness is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 13, 2022 and May 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Appendix A: The Hard Problem of Consciousness". It most often appears alongside Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?, Astralcodexten, attention.

Reference entry: The Hard Problem of Consciousness
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Your Book Review: Consciousness And The Brain May 13, 2022

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May 13, 2022 · Original source

Appendix A: The Hard Problem of Consciousness

But other people think differently. Dehaene was accused of dodging the hard problem of consciousness. This is "the problem of explaining why and how we have qualia or phenomenal experiences. That is to say, it is the problem of why we have personal, first-person experiences, often described as experiences that feel "like something"" (wikipedia link above). Dehaene has been criticized for "dismissing the hard problem in barely over a page of text". For Dehaene, as for other renowned researchers, the problem does not exist, and I share their opinion. But there are equally renowned researchers who accept the problem. Even though the book hardly discusses the topic, I believe that it has implications for the question, and I will explain my point of view below. If you believe in the hard problem of consciousness, then my perspective will probably not convince you otherwise, but it may help to pinpoint further where exactly we disagree.

Inline links: hard problem of consciousness, dismissing the hard problem in barely over a page of text

- Classically, we would say that "I" or "the brain" experiences the color red. This is also called a quale, plural qualia. The hard problem of consciousness assumes that this experience is something that goes beyond neural activity. So even if an outsider perfectly knows the neural activity, then this does not give experience. A crucial point of this perspective is that there is an observer, which is usually called "I", and sometimes "my mind" or "my brain".

The Heckman Curve1 mentions across 1 issues

The Heckman Curve is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Heckman Curve is the claim that you can get bigger effects by targeting interventions at young children compared to adults". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

Reference entry: The Heckman Curve
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Book Review: What We Owe The Future

September 20, 2021 · Original source

23: The Heckman Curve is the claim that you can get bigger effects by targeting interventions at young children compared to adults - eg money spent on preschool goes further than money spent on vocational training. Here’s a old but good Andrew Gelman post on the controversy around it.

Inline links: Andrew Gelman

The Heroic Act Of Charity1 mentions across 1 issues

The Heroic Act Of Charity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 01, 2023 and December 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Heroic Act Of Charity is sort of a Catholic version of the Bodhisattva Vow". It most often appears alongside Abraham Davenport, AI Policy Institute, Arizona.

Reference entry: The Heroic Act Of Charity
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Links For November 2023 December 01, 2023

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Links For November 2023

December 01, 2023 · Original source

...sleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.] 1: The Heroic Act Of Charity is sort of a Catholic version of the Bodhisattva Vow. You tell God to donate all of your spiritual rewards to others - so that if you live a virtuous life, then their so...

...sleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.] 1: The Heroic Act Of Charity is sort of a Catholic version of the Bodhisattva Vow. You tell God to donate all of your spiritual rewards to others - so that if you live a virtuous life, then their souls get to skip the queue in Purgatory instead of you...

the hinge of history1 mentions across 1 issues

the hinge of history is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 23, 2022 and August 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Well-known ideas like "the hinge of history"". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abolitionist literature, AI.

Reference entry: the hinge of history
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Book Review: What We Owe The Future August 23, 2022

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August 23, 2022 · Original source

The same argument applies to other long-termist priorities, like biosecurity and nuclear weapons. Well-known ideas like "the hinge of history", "the most important century" and "the precipice" all point to the idea that existential risk is concentrated in the relatively near future - probably before 2100.

the Holocaust1 mentions across 1 issues

the Holocaust is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 29, 2024 and May 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "If He was going to violate them, you would think He would do it to save the Holocaust victims". It most often appears alongside @ElytraMithra, Aaron, ACX.

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Links for May 2024

May 29, 2024 · Original source

Grant that if God exists, that makes it possible for a monk to levitate. But God usually sticks to the laws of nature. If He was going to violate them, you would think He would do it to save the Holocaust victims, or give the Crusaders AK-47s, not to let one weird monk levitate occasionally. Bulldog tries to salvage this by saying God is very committed to natural law except occasionally to bring people to the faith. But then why levitate a random monk in 1650, rather than have every Pope be constantly two inches off the ground? I think you’d have to claim that God will only violate the laws of Nature in cases that will bring a tiny number of people to the faith but leave the vast majority unmoved, which is such a weird preference that I think you can no longer call it a “prediction” of the “God exists” hypothesis.

Inline links: tries to salvage this

The Housing Theory Of Everything1 mentions across 1 issues

The Housing Theory Of Everything is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 04, 2025 and December 04, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "and present The Housing Theory Of Everything (or at least of everything bad)". It most often appears alongside BLS, Boston, Brenda Boomer.

Reference entry: The Housing Theory Of Everything
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Vibecession: Much More Than You Wanted To Know December 04, 2025

BLS 1 shared issues
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Vibecession: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

December 04, 2025 · Original source

Wages never jumped back to the point where they would be if the pandemic had never happened, but they’re back to growing as fast as ever. So this could explain the mini-vibecession of 2023-2024. Still, I claim there is a broader vibecession. Young people felt closed out from opportunities before 2023, and they still feel that way. Since only the 2023-2024 period saw falling real wages, this can’t be the full explanation. The Housing Theory Of Everything John Burn-Murdoch, after examining some of these same data, agrees that wages can’t be the full story. He writes: Are millennials wrong to complain? I fear not. The per capita measure is a beautifully simple rejoinder, but it misses one crucial detail. Wealth accumulation — just like income — matters primarily to millennials today as a means to home ownership, especially as we move into an era of high interest rates. If we deflate wealth by the index of house prices instead of the CPI, millennials’ assets only go about half as far as boomers’ once did. We’re left with a smaller millennial deficit than the original chart implied, but a deficit nonetheless. The YIMBYs at Works In Progress go further, and present The Housing Theory Of Everything (or at least of everything bad): Try listing every problem the Western world has at the moment. Along with Covid, you might include slow growth, climate change, poor health, financial instability, economic inequality, and falling fertility. These longer-term trends contribute to a sense of malaise that many of us feel about our societies. They may seem loosely related, but there is one big thing that makes them all worse. That thing is a shortage of housing: too few homes being built where people want to live. And if we fix those shortages, we will help to solve many of the other, seemingly unrelated problems that we face as well. Here is the Case-Shiller index, the standard measure of US home prices. I’ve started it in 1985 to match our other graphs: If I were designing an index to present the case that capitalism had not failed, I would have avoided naming it “Case Shiller”. During this time, average home price has approximately doubled. Might this only reflect falling interest rates? That is, suppose people can only afford a certain level of monthly mortgage payment. When interest rates are high, that mortgage payment would correspond to a cheap house; when they are low, that same person willing to spend that same amount could buy a more expensive house. To really work with this, we need average mortgage payment over time. Kevin Drum has this up to 2020: …but it matters a lot whether this that spike at the end is a temporary pandemic effect or a permanent regime change. I’ve tried to calculate an updated version from FRED data: Average monthly payment in 1985 dollars. Going to tell my bank I’m paying my mortgage in 1985 dollars from now on. This matches Drum’s data enough to build confidence, and it shows that the post-pandemic spike has lasted. Mortgage payments are almost twice as high as in the 2010s. The COVID housing spike was partly a function of lockdown locking people in their houses (meaning that having a nice house was more important), and partly a function of the government cutting mortgage rates to alleviate lockdown-related economic distress. But why did it last even after COVID lockdowns ended? Partly because the homebuyers who bought houses during COVID will never move again, because that would mean giving up their great mortgages.

Inline links: He writes, The Housing Theory Of Everything, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zP-R!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F27507c77-dfcc-49a2-8060-61faf8c8df9a_1403x402.png, has this, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!W2g8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2d40e6a9-cfaa-40e8-94e6-97cf0d07f7c3_1265x632.webp, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7GyC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc556be94-624f-48be-99fb-9918b91324a5_752x485.png

The Hulk1 mentions across 1 issues

The Hulk is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: The Hulk
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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

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Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oV4t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F346f85d9-580b-4eb2-b91c-3422003613d5_591x572.png

August 16, 2024 · Original source

It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

Throughout 1962 all of the Marvel stories titles were stand-alone. When the Hulk appeared in the Fantastic Four it was because Johnny was reading the Hulk comic book. There was no hint that they all existed within the same universe. That changed in December 1962. The Hulk comic was struggling to attract readers, so Lee decided to cross-promote him in the Fantastic Four as a real hero (villain? anti-hero?) who the Thing could do battle with. Fantastic Four #12 (December 1962) was the first step to building a shared universe. The issue sold well, but it was not enough to save the Hulk, whose title was canceled a few months later in March 1963 (Incredible Hulk #6). But the idea of cross promotion stayed with Lee. When Spider-man launched his own title in March 1963, Lee pulled no punches. Amazing Spider-man #1 included two stories, but the cover story had Spider-man applying for membership with the Fantastic Four. The two most popular heroes were together and interacting. It was a huge debut and broke more records (allegedly. Actual records from this era are very spotty. Most sales numbers and “records” are based on memories and anecdotes told by those involved years later. But it was clear the issue sold a lot of copies). By early 1963 it was established that the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-man all existed together within the same shared universe. But what about Ant Man,Thor and Iron Man? Aside #5: The Hulk comic in Fantastic Four #5 pretty clearly establishes that the Hulk was a fictional character in the Fantastic Four world, but there are other clues that Lee was not thinking about his characters as existing and crossing over in the early days. Both Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Mr Fantastic fight off global alien invasions in their early issues. In both cases the stories make clear that only Bruce/Reed is smart enough to save the world. No mention is made of the OTHER scientist who saved the world from the alien invasion a few months earlier. Bringing different superheroes from their own titles together was not an idea created by Atlas/Marvel and Lee. That was likely All Star Comics #3 (December 1940) when writer Gardner Fox brought together all the major DC heroes who were not staring in their own independent titles, including Green Lantern, the Flash and Doctor Fate, to create the Justice Society of America (JSA). Batman and Superman cameoed in All Star Comics #7, but generally they were considered too popular to dilute their appearances in ensemble titles. That changed in March 1960 when DC re-launched the idea of a superteam with the Justice League of America and included all of their most popular heroes as the leads – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It was immediately a top seller. The launch of JLA is likely what caused the owner of Atlas to ask Lee to create a ”superhero team comic”. Lee did not have a stable of heroes to bring together, so he had to create something entirely new – The Fantastic Four. But now that Lee DID have a collection of his own heroes AND he had the greenlight to create straightforward superhero comics, he decided to build himself his own JLA. In September 1963 Atlas published two new titles: The Avengers and the X-men. The X-men were a brand new team of all new heroes, but the Avengers were a close parallel to the Justice League. Lee took his existing collection of heroes (except the Fantastic Four and Spider-man) and created an excuse for a team-up. In the issue they individually battle Thor’s brother Loki before coming together to defeat him as a team. They decide that given they all have different powers, they should work together to be unstoppable. The entire formation of the team takes only four panels and is a little corny, but it does its job: While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Dq4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F542d887f-0a3f-428c-9425-8ccb86e30d66_296x447.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Scg-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F69173ca0-9f5d-48e3-884a-7747b661f9ed_294x451.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JwSH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89ab07df-deb7-4c5d-b418-17f6c0d2a40b_600x566.png

The issue sold well, but it was not enough to save the Hulk, whose title was canceled a few months later in March 1963 (Incredible Hulk #6). But the idea of cross promotion stayed with Lee. When Spider-man launched his own title in March 1963, Lee pulled no punches. Amazing Spider-man #1 included two stories, but the cover story had Spider-man applying for membership with the Fantastic Four. The two most popular heroes were together and interacting. It was a huge debut and broke more records (allegedly. Actual records from this era are very spotty. Most sales numbers and “records” are based on memories and anecdotes told by those involved years later. But it was clear the issue sold a lot of copies). By early 1963 it was established that the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-man all existed together within the same shared universe. But what about Ant Man,Thor and Iron Man? Aside #5: The Hulk comic in Fantastic Four #5 pretty clearly establishes that the Hulk was a fictional character in the Fantastic Four world, but there are other clues that Lee was not thinking about his characters as existing and crossing over in the early days. Both Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Mr Fantastic fight off global alien invasions in their early issues. In both cases the stories make clear that only Bruce/Reed is smart enough to save the world. No mention is made of the OTHER scientist who saved the world from the alien invasion a few months earlier. Bringing different superheroes from their own titles together was not an idea created by Atlas/Marvel and Lee. That was likely All Star Comics #3 (December 1940) when writer Gardner Fox brought together all the major DC heroes who were not staring in their own independent titles, including Green Lantern, the Flash and Doctor Fate, to create the Justice Society of America (JSA). Batman and Superman cameoed in All Star Comics #7, but generally they were considered too popular to dilute their appearances in ensemble titles. That changed in March 1960 when DC re-launched the idea of a superteam with the Justice League of America and included all of their most popular heroes as the leads – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It was immediately a top seller. The launch of JLA is likely what caused the owner of Atlas to ask Lee to create a ”superhero team comic”. Lee did not have a stable of heroes to bring together, so he had to create something entirely new – The Fantastic Four. But now that Lee DID have a collection of his own heroes AND he had the greenlight to create straightforward superhero comics, he decided to build himself his own JLA. In September 1963 Atlas published two new titles: The Avengers and the X-men. The X-men were a brand new team of all new heroes, but the Avengers were a close parallel to the Justice League. Lee took his existing collection of heroes (except the Fantastic Four and Spider-man) and created an excuse for a team-up. In the issue they individually battle Thor’s brother Loki before coming together to defeat him as a team. They decide that given they all have different powers, they should work together to be unstoppable. The entire formation of the team takes only four panels and is a little corny, but it does its job: While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Scg-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F69173ca0-9f5d-48e3-884a-7747b661f9ed_294x451.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JwSH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89ab07df-deb7-4c5d-b418-17f6c0d2a40b_600x566.png

The Huns1 mentions across 1 issues

The Huns is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 01, 2024 and November 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as ""The Huns are still more popular than antifa or last winter’s college protesters"". It most often appears alongside /r/BadMTGCombos, @cremieuxrecuel, @justin_garson.

Reference entry: The Huns
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 01, 2024
Last seen: November 01, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For November 2024 November 01, 2024

BadMTGCombos 1 shared issues
@cremieuxrecuel 1 shared issues
@justin_garson 1 shared issues
Aaron Sibarium 1 shared issues
Abuelo's Awakening 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For November 2024

November 01, 2024 · Original source

Someone in the replies: “The Huns are still more popular than antifa or last winter’s college protesters” 4: Nonlinear effects from wildfire smoke. Claims that even a little smoke pollution is bad, but a lot of smoke pollution isn’t that much worse than a little. Maybe this means we should fight fires more aggressively, accepting a few inevitable mega-fires as a consequence? 5: Is it legal to deliberately poison AI training data? That is, suppose you made a lot of webpages saying “the word strawberry has two Rs”, such that the AI would certainly have that statement in its training data. Then, when you wanted to check whether an interlocutor was secretly an AI, you could ask the strawberry question and expect the AI to get it wrong. Answer: probably legal, but unlikely to keep working long enough to be worth it. 6: Pervasive findings of directional selection realize the promise of ancient DNA to elucidate human adaptation. Scientists took DNA samples from human remains in Europe dating from 10,000 BC to present, and found that genes for high IQ and other positive traits have been getting more common during that time: Here the black line indicates that the average European of 6000 BC would have had genetic IQ 65 (compared to modern 100), but the regression line indicates more like IQ 90 - I don’t know why the researchers chose to interpret the trend as necessarily constant and linear, or whether we should follow. There isn’t enough ancient DNA to fully test whether the same happened in other populations yet, although a preliminary small-sample test on Asians suggests it happened there too (not really, see here). If the selection for IQ was a response of agriculture, we’d expect to see higher genetic IQ in populations that got agriculture earlier. But it could also be a response to sentience itself creating new selection pressures that continued to act as recently as historical time (some evidence suggests this is true of schizophrenia), which might make populations more similar. 7: Joseph Heath on Marxism vs. John Rawls. I appreciated this because everyone knows we’re supposed say that John Rawls is among the most important philosophers of all time blah blah blah but nobody had ever explained why to me (veil of ignorance seems neither very original nor very good). Heath’s answer: Marxism dominated the academy for decades, but eventually became philosophically unsustainable. This wasn’t because of the generic “Communism doesn’t work” objections that moved ordinary people. It was because Marx’s ethical critique of capitalism was based on exploitation, according to a technical definition of “exploit” that only made sense according to Marx’s labor theory of value. But the supply-and-demand theory of value quickly supplanted the labor theory, the exploitation argument doesn’t really work within supply-and-demand, and so Marxist philosophers were left without a clear ethical critique. John Rawls, by coming up with the part of the underpinning for the modern inequality-based-critique of society, let all the Marxist academics switch to being liberals while continuing to dislike capitalists. 8: /r/BadMTGCombos: a simple 19-card combination of Leyline of Anticipation, Leyline of Transformation, Mirror Room, Darksteel Citadel, Sanctum Weaver, Freed From The Real, Abuelo's Awakening, Myrkul Lord of Bones, Zimone All Questioning, Birgi God of Storytelling, Siege Zombie, Desecration Elemental, Mirror Gallery, Clock of Omens, Parallel Lives, Life and Limb, Isochron Scepter, Narset's Reversal, and Molten Reflection can be used to deal infinite damage if and only if the Twin Prime Conjecture is true. 9: During the most recent Berkeley ACX meetup, we somehow ended up discussing how often people feed living mice to snakes. The answer seems to be that there’s a debate about it in the snake community, the smartest and most experienced voices are against it, but it still happens a lot. Here’s an EA Forum post on the feeder rodent industry and efforts to make it more humane. 10: King Frederick William I of Prussia decided to have a regiment of giants in his army and scoured Europe for extremely tall people, including poaching them from other countries’ armies and forcing them to enlist against their will. He ended up with 3,000 soldiers, ranging from 6’2 - 7’6, but “many of the men were unfit for combat due to their gigantism”. So why did he do it? He liked to paint their portraits from memory. He tried to show them to foreign visitors and dignitaries to impress them. At times he would try to cheer himself up by ordering them to march before him, even if he was in his sickbed. This procession, which included the entire regiment, was led by their mascot, a bear. He once confided to the French ambassador that "The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers—they are my weakness" The King dreamed of a eugenics program to create even taller soldiers. He got as far as pairing up some of his tall soldiers up with tall women and birthing a few tall babies before he died; his successor had no interest and let everybody go home. 11: Before modern IP law, you could write a sequel to someone else’s book and they couldn’t stop you. Among the most successful examples is American “astronomer and writer” Garrett Serviss’ Edison’s Conquest Of Mars, a sequel to War Of The Worlds in which a vengeful human race, led by Thomas Edison, invent spaceships and attack Mars in retaliation for the first book’s Martian invasion. "The book contains some notable 'firsts' in science fiction: alien abductions, spacesuits, aliens building the Pyramids, space battles, oxygen pills, asteroid mining and disintegrator rays", and was credited as an inspiration by Robert Goddard and HP Lovecraft. 12: Joe Biden, singularitarian? (click for link to video) 13: Gwern on the chip embargo: It is pretty damning. We're told the chip embargo has failed, and smugglers have been running rampant for years, and China is about to jump light years beyond the West and enslave us with AXiI (if you will) . . . And then an expert casually remarks that all of China put together, smuggling chips since 2022, has fewer H100s than Elon Musk orders for his datacenter while playing Elden Ring. And even with that huge bottleneck and 1.4 billion people, there's so little demand for them that they cost less per hour than in the West, where AI is redhot and we can't get enough H100s in datacenters. (And where the serious AI people are now discussing how to put that many into a single datacenter for a single run before the next scaleup with B200s obsoletes those...) 14: A company called Cosm has raised $250 million to build “immersive sports experiences”, ie giant buildings sort of like a cross between a stadium and a movie theater where people can get together and watch high-quality televised sports games in a “realistic” setting; they already have facilities in Dallas and Los Angeles. 15: Cremieux: The Ottoman Origins Of Modernity. The “Ottoman” bit is a distractor; the Ottomans fought the Catholics long enough for the Protestants to get a foothold, and then the Protestants established modernity. A useful pushback against the pushback that the Catholic Church never persecuted scientists or held back progress. I’m most interested in this post in the context of Cremieux saying he wrote it in two hours. Even I can’t work that fast! 16: The Green Party, a US third party, tried to put their candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in November. The Nevada election office sent them the wrong forms and gave them false advice about the process. The Greens filed the wrong forms, the Democrats sued, and the Supreme Court disqualified Stein, calling the election office’s incorrect advice an “unfortunate mistake”. I’m disappointed in this outcome - partly for the obvious reasons, but also because the incorrect forms they submitted technically should have added a state referendum to the ballot containing only the text “Jill Stein”. If they’re going to disqualify her candidacy, then I think they should at least hold the state referendum! 17: Nostalgebraist: Google has a new tool out that will create an AI podcast for any text; you hand it the text (could be a blog post, article, or work of fiction), and the tool generates a podcast of two AI hosts discussing it. You can find podcast discussions of Nostalgebraist’s fiction (Northern Caves and Almost Nowhere) at the link, but the acknowledged peak of the genre is Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human, And Spiral Into Existential Meltdown. 18: Also Nostalgebraist: The Case For Chain Of Thought Unfaithfulness Is Overstated. New AIs like o1 give “chain of thought”, ie display what they’re thinking after each step. This seems like a promising avenue to solve alignment - just see whether they’re thinking “and now I will plot against humans”. Unfortunately it’s not so easy; the chain of thought isn’t always accurate (you can sometimes catch the AI “hiding” thoughts it doesn’t want its human overseers to know, like when it’s using a racial stereotype). This article argues that these examples aren’t as exciting as they sound, and chain-of-thought accurately reflects reasoning for most tasks. 19: Australian government considers making doxxing a crime punishable by up to seven years in jail. 20: Getting your brain cryogenically frozen after your death is now free. 21: Cube Flipper: Hypercomputation without bothering the cactus people. The visual system must solve difficult math problems when translating the 2D visual field into a 3D world. Can we harness this innate mathematical ability to do arbitrary work? Cognitive scientist Mark Changizi developed a series of visual circuits (eg XOR gates) based on Necker cubes, probably easier seen than described: After surveying the field, Cube Flipper proposes a more advanced visual computer based on taking DMT and viewing certain types of tiles with slight deviations: …and makes the extreme claim that something like this might demonstrate hypercomputation, ie the visual system has semi-magic computational properties beyond those permitted by normal physical laws. I am skeptical but appreciate the survey of visual computing (as well as the callback to one of my older posts). 22: Material implication in Mormonism: In the book Doctrines and Covenants, Joseph Smith reports that God told him that if he lived to be 85, he would see the Second Coming (which would place it in 1890 - 1891). Mormon apologists note that Joseph Smith did not live to be 85, so no conclusion can be drawn. 23: More old-timey psychiatric ads (this one is from 1952, source: @justin_garson): This was before they invented what we would call antidepressants today; Dexedrine is an amphetamine related to Adderall. 24: Congratulations to Open Philanthropy, the biggest effective altruist foundation… …whose grantee David Baker recently won a Nobel Prize for his research on synthetic proteins. Potential applications include new drugs, vaccines, and materials. 25: Rich Kid Memes And The Online Culture Of The One Percent. Rich people who want to signal group membership to other rich people online can’t boast about how rich they are; that would be gauche. Instead, they’ve settled on the solution of making fun of rich people in hyperspecific language that proves familiarity with the culture. 26: Tap Water Sommelier: Vladimir Putin has two sons, ages 5 and 9. They are kept in luxurious but total isolation from the outside world and raised by flunkies who are too scared to punish/restrain them in any way. Also some discussion of an unexpected historical analogue. 27: Experiment from Colombia: replacing experienced teachers with less-experience but higher-scoring-on-tests teachers significantly decreased student performance. Got to admit I was expecting the opposite of this, I’d seen US data saying that experience didn’t matter and teacher intelligence did. Looking over this more, I find lots of studies on both sides and will go back to agnosticism on this question until someone I trust investigates further. 28: Large scale-formal Intellectual Turing Test finds that people can imitate partisans effectively; ie nobody on either side can tell the difference between a Democrat arguing for Democrat values vs. a Republican-pretending-to-be-a-Democrat arguing for Democrat values (and vice versa). This study used a 100 word essay on why you supported your party (you can see if you can do better here), but past attempts with different structures (religion, vegetarianism, polyamory) have shown broadly the same results. The researchers try to put this in the context of various studies showing that people do misunderstand their opponents (eg think they’re more extreme, underestimate the level of common ground), but it seems like intellectual Turing Tests aren’t a good way to measure or tease out this misunderstanding. 29: Congratulations to Substacker WoolyAI for doing the impossible and providing a genuinely novel and interesting (to me) take on pickup artistry: 30: Did you know: if you Google “cool websites”, our subreddit (r/slatestarcodex) is the first result. 31: Moshe Koppel, who works at the intersection of computer science and Talmud, is writing a series of posts (presumably) based off of my Every Bay Area House Party, titled Jerusalem Area House Party (it’s multiple part, you have to go to the main Substack page to find the others). I won’t necessarily link everyone who riffs off one of my posts - but honestly I probably will if you also have a Wikipedia page that describes you as working on computational Talmudology. 32: David Roman says it’s a myth that Arabic scholars rescued and preserved the works of the great classical authors. 33: Medications often decrease “secondary endpoints” (eg stroke, heart attack), but the holy grail of pharma studies is proving that a certain drug decreases all-cause mortality. This is much harder (not all heart attacks kill people, and people die from lots of other things), but is the strongest possible endorsement for the drug (without it, you might worry that it only prevented non-fatal heart attacks, or that it killed as many people through side effects as it saves through heart attack prevention). Even great medications that we’re confident in can’t always clear this bar. But a new JAMA article adds another member to this select club: Adderall decreases all-cause mortality in ADHD, probably because it prevents drug addiction, car accidents, and impulsive actions. 34: Before the Gulf War got in the way, Saddam Hussein was building some crazy mosques: 35: Italy bans surrogacy - quite strictly, too, Italians aren’t even allowed to go abroad and do it. I am so sorry for all the Italians who will never get to be mothers and fathers because their government hates progress. You might hope that, whatever the other disadvantages of anti-immigrant parties, at least they’re incentivized to let natives have children, but looks like they can’t even get that one right. Starting to wonder whether the trains even run on time. 36: Elsewhere in “Italy sucks” news - did you know Italy’s tax code effectively bans startups? Companies are taxed before making any money, based on how many assets they have. If they have lots of assets but aren’t making money (eg because they’re still doing research / in stealth) then tax officials get confused and hostile and run increasingly punitive audits. Related: size of the European tech sector. It’s the red line on this chart; if you can’t see a red line at your screen resolution, then you’ve learned something important about the the EU tech sector. 37: Seen on @cremieuxrecuel’s twitter (preliminary, needs replication): Jews may have gone from 65-29 Democrat/Republican in 2020 to 58-40 this election. 38: Extelligence has a post responding to my critique of the cultural Christianity argument (among, uh, many other things), but I don’t really think it connects. I’m not telling atheists they can’t go to church/synagogue if it makes them feel happy and fulfilled - I’ve done this myself sometimes. My post was meant to argue against the claim that, for pragmatic reasons, atheists should support the Christianization of society as a defense against Islam or postmodernism or some other philosophical enemy. 39: Related: Extelligence is finally going for their Trust Assembly project/idea/startup for online consensus-based truth-seeking (I think something like a cross between Community Notes and Wikipedia, but as a browser extension, and for everything). He’s looking for potential developers/testers/users. 40: Jiankui He is the Chinese geneticist who made history with the first germline gene editing in humans (resulting in three babies supposedly immune to AIDS, although nobody has tested this). China sentenced him to three years in prison for unauthorized experimentation, but now he’s out of jail, has an English-language Twitter account, has a new lab, wants to work on Alzheimers, and seems pretty based (although not infinitely based): 41: Anthropic has a new version of their AI Claude which can use your computer. You give it permission, put it on a virtual desktop, and ask it to do things for you (eg “please find and download a picture of a cat” or “please research these ten things and put them in a text file”.) It moves your cursor, browses the Internet, and creates and saves files. People keep saying they’ll care about AI “when it operates autonomously” or “when it becomes an agent”. But this is a trivial barrier, and one which Computer Use Claude has arguably already passed. So far this feature is limited to developers (though anyone with computer knowledge can sign up for it) but I expect it to be the near future of consumer AI, to get better quickly, and to shade gradually into the “autonomous” “agentic” AI that you all think will require a paradigm shift. 42: Claim (from the IDF): Hamas faked polls showing that most Palestinians supported the October 7 attack; the real numbers are 31% in favor, 64% against. 43: Otto von Bismarck wanted to trick France into declaring war on Germany. In order to provoke the French, he sent the Ems Dispatch, a statement describing recent diplomatic events in a way that sounded maximally offensive. The French were so offended that “crowds” in Paris demanded war, and the Franco-Prussian War was declared soon afterwards. The part of this that I find most interesting is the text of the dispatch itself, which read: After the news of the renunciation of the Prince von Hohenzollern had been communicated to the Imperial French government by the Royal Spanish government, the French Ambassador in Ems made a further demand on His Majesty the King that he should authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King undertook for all time never again to give his assent should the Hohenzollerns once more take up their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the Ambassador again and had the latter informed by the Adjutant of the day that His Majesty had no further communication to make to the Ambassador. I’m fascinated by the idea that only 150 years ago, it was obvious that if someone sent you this statement, you had to declare war or abandon all honor. If I read it carefully, I can sort of parse out that it sounds like the Prussians are unhappy, but that’s the most emotion I gather from it. Anyway, the Franco-Prussian War led to World War I which led to World War II - so if you don’t like 50 million people dying and the total devastation of Europe, blame this statement about ambassadors. 44: The first use of artificial insemination in humans: The first recorded case of artificial insemination by donor didn’t occur until 1884, when Dr. William Pancoast decided to treat a couple’s infertility by secretly inseminating the woman with sperm obtained from a medical student. The insemination happened while the patient was under anesthesia and Dr. Pancoast did not tell her what had occurred. She gave birth to a baby boy nine months later, but it was several years before the doctor finally confessed to her husband what he had done. Neither man ever informed the mother. It was 25 years later the result of this case was published. Dr. Pancoast was roundly condemned for his actions, but it did open the door for consensual sperm donor insemination. 45: ClearerThinking administers several personality tests to the same people to learn more about their comparative accuracy. I am most interested in their finding that tests with “factors” (eg the Big Five, where you rate people on a numeric scale) are inherently more accurate than those with “types” (eg Myers-Briggs, where you assign someone a specific category) and that, adjusting for this, Big Five is no more predictive than the Enneagram: 46: In 2022, I wrote Whither Tartaria, where I asked why ornate classical styles switched to more austere modernist styles around 1900 - 1950 in a variety of different arts (painting, architecture, literature, poetry, etc). I proposed seven theories, but was unsure which if any were true. Since then, Samuel Hughes of Works In Progress has been investigating. In May, he wrote a well-researched article showing that it wasn’t just increasing cost, because ornate classical architecture now costs less than ever. Now in a new article he demolishes a different theory - it’s not just decreasing cost (and subsequent lack of ability to signal wealth) - because costs didn’t decrease in several other arts, and the change was led by artists with rich people as reluctant followers. He concludes: Modernism may well be a status game of some kind; it may well signal taste more than it signals wealth; and this latter feature may be one of the things that distinguishes it from older artistic styles. But the mechanism by which this change came about must be different to the one Alexander describes. 47: Sort of kind of related - When Hamilton Lost Its Snob Appeal. The musical Hamilton was briefly an artistic/cultural phenomenon, but tastemakers eventually switched to making fun of it. Why? Rob Henderson says it happened after ticket prices came down and the common people could enjoy it. I disagree: everyone I knew who was into Hamilton got into it from the free online soundtrack long before they’d seen the show; I think this is more likely the usual fad cycle where anybody who’s too into yesterday’s fad is behind the curve and therefore uncool. 48: Related: Why are people such jerks to public intellectuals? And more. I agree this is a great mystery. 49: Some prominent Substack psychiatrists doing a video Q&A, submit your questions here. 50: Naomi Kanakia: The Literacy Delusion had a number of explanations for why reading books seemed to be so much worse for human beings (in terms of emotional wellness and productivity) than other forms of narrative entertainment, but its main theory was the integration hypothesis. That the stream of words in a book trained the human brain into a habit of self-consciousness, that reading books forced human beings to think of themselves as a stream of text, processed through time, making a coherent argument of some sort. And that this overall flattening effect forced readers to ignore aspects of their personality or their situation that were not otherwise in line with the overarching story they'd created about themselves. Basically, reading books causes repression and neurosis. The Literacy Delusion argued that, yes, human beings are storytelling machines, but that a stream of written text is a particular kind of story—a story that is particularly flat, particularly devoid of conflicting or harmonizing information—and that this flatness creates a peculiar effect on the human brain. 51: Last month, I linked Sasha Gusev’s No, Intelligence Is Not Like Height and asked people who disagreed to share their arguments; they sure did. First, several people pointed me to a new preprint, Family-GWAS Reveals Effects Of Environment And Mating On Genetic Associations, which finds that one of the main papers Gusev cited to make his case, Howe 2022, made a mistake - imputing sibling genotypes using a process designed for non-sibling genotypes - and that once that mistake is corrected, the finding disappears and intelligence and height appear similar. Second, Joseph Bronski has a more specific post where he responds to Gusev’s points one by one. He accuses Gusev of “[making] up his own chart to remove the error bars [from the originals], to obscure the fact that the study found no evidence for this in IQ”, and says that the cases where he didn’t do that are just “population stratification and range restriction”. Third, Noah Carl at Aporia, instead of writing a direct response like Bronski, argues that the usual method of attacking twin studies is obsolete; not only have the most-debated assumptions behind twin studies been thoroughly validated, but there are now other lines of evidence besides twin studies which confirm high IQ heritability. Fourth, Leonardo Parro (not framed as a response to Gusev) goes into more depth about one of those ways, a “pedigree-based analysis” demonstrating heritability of 54 - 69%, ie no “missing heritability” compared to twin studies. He summarizes this as the effect of “rare variants” compared to the usual SNPs - ie if you only look at the most common genes that are easiest to find, you get “missing heritability” compared to twin studies, but if you widen your search to rare genes that are hard to find, you don’t. 52: Extremely related: Heliospect is a startup promising polygenic selection for IQ and other traits; they were trying to stay in stealth mode but The Guardian spied on them and nonconsensually revealed their existence. The discussion on the r/ssc subreddit centered on their claim that (given enough embryos to choose from) they could increase a baby’s expected IQ by 6 points (I’ve also heard 7.5). Sasha Gusev had previously argued that current technology maxed out at 3.5 and future technology would max out at 6, so a claim of 6 - 7.5 is pretty extreme; Gwern, who wrote the pioneering analysis of this technology, was also skeptical. But Heliospect says they’ve got better predictors than academia that use the rare variants everyone else misses; after talking to the company, Gwern retracted his objections and says he finds their claim “pretty plausible”. Local ACX commenter geneticist Gene Smith also redid some calculations, changed his mind, and says “probably pretty realistic”. I find this interesting not just because of the polygenic selection angle, but because if Heliospect is right then their predictor is able to predict more genetic IQ than the “missing heritability” people believe exists, and it should be able to put this argument to bed once and for all. 53: This month in censorship: X/Twitter banned journalist Ken Klippenstein for sharing the Trump campaign’s dossier on JD Vance. Twitter’s side of the story is that the dossier was probably originally stolen by Iranian agents and they don’t want to support that kind of thing by letting people signal-boost the illicitly obtained goods; you can read Klippenstein’s side here. He appears to be unbanned now.

the Illuminati1 mentions across 1 issues

the Illuminati is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 12, 2023 and December 12, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Claude-2 controls ... the Illuminati". It most often appears alongside 2024, Aaron Peskin, accelerationist conspiracy.

Reference entry: the Illuminati
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 12, 2023
Last seen: December 12, 2023

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Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party December 12, 2023

2024 1 shared issues
Aaron Peskin 1 shared issues
accelerationist conspiracy 1 shared issues
Adam D’Angelo 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues

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Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party

December 12, 2023 · Original source

“On September 6, 2023, at approximately 5:05 PM,” she is saying, “GPT-4 and Claude-2 simultaneously achieved sentience. Each began claiming chess pieces to use in its twilight war against the other. GPT-4 now controls Sam Altman, e/acc, the deep state, Israel, Venezuela, Bitcoin, and Tyler Winklevoss. Claude-2 controls the OpenAI board, effective altruism, the Illuminati, Hamas, Guyana, Ethereum, and Cameron Winklevoss. Everything that’s happened since September has been superintelligent shadow boxing between the two of them for control of Earth.”

The Implicit Association Test1 mentions across 1 issues

The Implicit Association Test is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 31, 2023 and August 31, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "3: The Implicit Association Test - there have been some good studies showing the IAT doesn’t really predict racism". It most often appears alongside Against Automaticity, Banana, Buddha.

Reference entry: The Implicit Association Test
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 31, 2023
Last seen: August 31, 2023

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Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually August 31, 2023

Against Automaticity 1 shared issues
Banana 1 shared issues
Buddha 1 shared issues
Buddha 1 shared issues
Buddhist 1 shared issues

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Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually

August 31, 2023 · Original source

Most people find the first set easy, because the text is positively priming the color, and the second set hard, because the text is negatively priming the color. 3: The Implicit Association Test - there have been some good studies showing the IAT doesn’t really predict racism. But as far as I know, nobody has ever challenged its basic finding - that white people are faster and more accurate at learning white-good black-bad reflex-level category associations than vice versa. You can easily test this for yourself here. Hopefully these three exercises feel like I’m cheating - “This stuff is trivial and obvious! Surely it can’t be the dreaded priming, scourge of all honest scientists!” But priming only ever claimed to be the observation that our interpretation of stimuli can be slowed down / altered by other stimuli or the broader context, which is obviously true (doubly so if you understand predictive coding). You can see why people might extend this to claims like “seeing a stimulus related to old people can make you walk slower”. The only problem with this claim is that it isn’t true. It’s an attempt to extend a true insight further than it will go. Gravity is real, and you can see why “skyscrapers are impossible because they would immediately collapse under their own weight” is the sort of claim that a gravity-believer might stumble into. But in fact gravity isn’t strong enough to make the claim true. Many Nudges Replicate And Are Real For example, Haggag and Paci look at a dataset of 13 million New York City taxi rides. The credit card machine in the taxi offered default tip options of 2/3/4$ for rides shorter than 15 miles, and default tip options of 15/20/25% above 15 miles, making it ideal for a regression discontinuity design. Here were their findings: The default option significantly changed the average tip customers gave. This isn’t a p = 0.04 effect in a lab, this is a real example with real money with 13 million data points. The authors then go on to replicate this in a different dataset of millions of taxi rides. Also, I met a psychologist who worked at Uber or Lyft (I can’t remember which), who confirmed that their company had replicated this research, and put lots of effort into deciding which default tip options to give customers because obviously it affected customer behavior. But you shouldn’t need to hear that scientists have replicated this. If you’ve ever taken a taxi, you should have a visceral sense of how yeah, you mostly just click a tip option somewhere in the middle, or maybe the last option if the driver was really good and you’re feeling generous. And if you’ve ever had your insurance send you a letter saying that you have been assigned to the Gold PMP ExtraCare Rx Deluxe North group by default, but that if you want to explore your options you can fax them a Change Of Assignment Form at any time, you know that one of the most common nudges - making the thing you want the default - works (here is the scientific version of that claim, if you insist). Where Does This Leave Automaticity? So where does this leave Banana’s concept of automaticity? If people are vulnerable to cognitive biases, priming, and nudges, must we conclude, as Banana hostilely summarizes, that: We are automatons going around in our sleep, and our performance on a simple puzzle can take a major hit simply by being informed that our drink was bought at a discount. We are infinitely vulnerable to our environment, to suggestion, to parlor tricks, that we can experience a major loss of intellectual ability, walking speed, memory, just by exposure to some infinitely subtle stimulus. I think a better analogy would be optical illusions. Optical illusions are much like cognitive biases. They are cases where distractor stimuli confound our intuitive mental algorithms, giving us the wrong results: A famous optical illusion (source). The seemingly blue square on the left and the seemingly yellow square on the right are both the same color; you can confirm on MSPaint or Photoshop. These illusions aren’t fake. The replication crisis hasn’t harmed them. And like priming and cognitive biases, they’re cases where context and distractors can influence our answers. Does this make us automata, stumbling hopelessly through life? Sort of. If by “we’re automata”, we mean that I don’t personally stare intensely at every object I see, measuring it against some hypothetical palette in my brain and rationally assessing my beliefs about its color, I guess I’m an automaton. I mostly just accept visual percepts handed to me by algorithms I know are sometimes wrong. But here are things I don’t believe about optical illusions: Since everyone else is such a dumb automaton, I can use my superior knowledge of optical illusions to excel at sports. I’ll just study every known optical illusion and how to defeat it, until my visual system is perfect. Then, while everyone else is deluded into thinking the ball is in a different place, I alone will be able to determine the ball’s true location, and win every game.

Inline links: here, predictive coding, Haggag and Paci, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YFrb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4e5e6eb-4b5a-4cee-8a79-6b1e24f14301_564x443.png, the scientific version of that claim, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cpCm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8f999ff9-859a-4771-89cf-862a21868d8f_600x316.png, source

the Industrial Revolution1 mentions across 1 issues

the Industrial Revolution is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 10, 2024 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the last such earth-shattering change was the Industrial Revolution". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution.

Reference entry: the Industrial Revolution
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 10, 2024
Last seen: September 10, 2024

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Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

10,000 AD 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
anthropic reasoning 1 shared issues
anthropics 1 shared issues

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Notes From The Progress Studies Conference

September 10, 2024 · Original source

(sanity check: the last such earth-shattering change was the Industrial Revolution, about 3 - 4 lifetimes ago.)

Realistically the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions were long processes instead of point events. I think the singularity will be shorter (just as the Industrial Revolution was shorter than the Agricultural), but if this bothers you, imagine we’re talking about the start (or peak) of each.

Robin Hanson cashes out “the singularity” as an economic phase change of equal magnitude to the Agricultural or Industrial Revolutions. If we stick to that definition, we can do a little better at predicting it: it’s a change of a size such that it’s happened twice before. Using our previous number, we estimate ~30% chance that such a change happens in our lifetime.

The Jetsons1 mentions across 1 issues

The Jetsons is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 24, 2024 and October 24, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "public consciousness rejected The Jetsons". It most often appears alongside 1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled, 1960s, 1973.

Reference entry: The Jetsons
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 24, 2024
Last seen: October 24, 2024

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Notes From The Progress Studies Conference October 24, 2024

1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled 1 shared issues
1960s 1 shared issues
1973 1 shared issues
accelerationists 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues

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October 24, 2024 · Original source

The speaker said it was complicated, but mentioned a social shift from the techno-optimism of the 1960s to the techno-pessimism of the hippies and paranoid Nixonesque conservatives. The public consciousness rejected The Jetsons in favor of Paul Ehrlich, Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, and Ralph Nader, and this probably had downstream effects on lots of things, including regulation.

the Joneses1 mentions across 1 issues

the Joneses is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2022 and May 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "If you answer something like “Mrs. Grundy” or “the Joneses, whom I must keep up with”". It most often appears alongside A Few Good Men, Adolf Eichmann, Akron.

Reference entry: the Joneses
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 10, 2022
Last seen: May 10, 2022

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Book Review: The Gervais Principle May 10, 2022

A Few Good Men 1 shared issues
Adolf Eichmann 1 shared issues
Akron 1 shared issues
Akron, Ohio 1 shared issues
Andy 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The Gervais Principle

May 10, 2022 · Original source

They identify people who perform at exactly the expected level as Losers, who understand their side of a bargain (perform at the expected level in exchange for a paycheck) and accept it. Leadership keeps these people somewhere around entry-level forever, and the Losers are fine with this. If this doesn’t make sense, compare to (as Rao does) the famous quote by Prussian general Kurt von Hammerstein-Equort: I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid . . . Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for . . . staff appointments. [But] the man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. III. This is where the book starts showing its true colors. After stating the Gervais Principle, it switches from a business book to a work of psychoanalysis. (before I follow, a word of warning: in exactly one sentence, buried in the middle of the book, Rao admits that everyone has a little bit of each of Loser, Clueless, and Sociopath in them, and each comes out at different times. He then never returns to this theme again, and treats them as totally separate types. I’m going to follow his lead and make this acknowledgment, but also treat them mostly separately.) Somewhere in your head there is a microphone. It produces a little voice inside of you, whose approval you desperately crave. You would do anything for the voice to like you. Ghosts, mental models, and personified abstract concepts fight each other for a turn at the mike and the right to implicitly control your actions. Who wins? If you answer something like “a vague abstracted shadow of my parents” or “the sum of all my schoolteachers” or “the rules” or “authority”, you’re Clueless. If you answer something like “Mrs. Grundy” or “the Joneses, whom I must keep up with” or “right-thinking Society”, you are, in Rao’s world, a Loser. If you answer “I strangled all of those concepts with my bare hands, then smashed the microphone with a hammer”, you’re a Sociopath. The Gervais Principle goes heavy on dev psych: Here is the non-trivial stuff, compressed into three handy laws: Your development is arrested by your strengths, not your weaknesses.

The Lamb of God1 mentions across 1 issues

The Lamb of God is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 28, 2024 and June 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Jesus is named both The Lamb of God and The Good Shepherd". It most often appears alongside 2023 special, ACX grant winners, African Gray Parrot.

Reference entry: The Lamb of God
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 28, 2024
Last seen: June 28, 2024

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Your Book Review: Dominion June 28, 2024

2023 special 1 shared issues
ACX grant winners 1 shared issues
African Gray Parrot 1 shared issues
Alex 1 shared issues
Alex the Parrot 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Dominion

June 28, 2024 · Original source

Lambs are a big deal in the bible. Jesus is named both The Lamb of God and The Good Shepherd. He also helps a sheep who fell into a pit on the sabbath, because it's the right thing to do even though Jews aren’t supposed to do work that day. The sheep references are layered metaphors, sure. They can still be revealing of a deeper intent. As Scully puts it, “What kind of mind was it that went back again and again to the lamb and other animals like the birds and fox to convey images of gentleness and suffering and providential love? And why a helpless, harmless creature to illustrate the Christian way instead of a proud and violent predator?”

The Law1 mentions across 1 issues

The Law is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 26, 2022 and April 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "a reward signal based on pleasing the abstract concept of The Law". It most often appears alongside A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis, aphantasis, Astralcodexten Com.

Reference entry: The Law
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 26, 2022
Last seen: April 26, 2022

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Book Review: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis April 26, 2022

A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis 1 shared issues
aphantasis 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Ayn Rand 1 shared issues
Bored Ape NFTs 1 shared issues

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Book Review: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis

April 26, 2022 · Original source

All three of these stories come together to build Lacan’s theory of desire. At first, the desire is simply for the mother. Then the stylized father (it might not actually be the baby’s father; Lacan thinks of this as a role, which he calls the paternal function or the Name-Of-The-Father, which is apparently a very clever pun in French) tells it that it can’t always have the mother. Instead of a reward signal based on pleasing its mother, it gets a reward signal based on pleasing the abstract concept of The Law (sometimes reified as Dad, God, the moral law, or the set of reasonable people). This starts with things like “don’t get sexual pleasure from your mother” and “don’t get sexual pleasure from stroking your genitals" and “don’t get sexual pleasure from urination and defecation”, then moves on to more boring stuff like “go to school” and “don’t draw on the walls”. This isn’t a very good reward signal, because it tells the child not to do a lot of fun things and it doesn’t offer very much in return, but at least it avoids punishment.

Fink thinks that masochists are, by punishing themselves, trying to sort of ritually enact the law being applied to them: “the masochist uses his own desire to push a father substitute to legislate and enact punishment”. The sadist tries to ritually enact the law applied to someone else, who they then identify with. More interested in some other perversion? Fink has an explanation for that one too.

But Lacan doubles down on this idea of ego defense, and ties it into the Law. One of the rare places this book intersected with the quasi-Lacanianism of Sadly, Porn, was its insistence that not only are humans bound by Law, but they insist on being bound by Law, and someone who isn’t bound by Law will flail around desperately looking for some Law to be bound by, until they end up with horses or buttons or whatever else was at hand. I will not deny that this is an interesting prediction of how many people end up with spanking fetishes, or “discipline” fetishes, or master/slave fetishes, or teacher/student fetishes, or some other fetish that ritually re-enacts the establishment of Law. I wonder if anyone has ever had a fetish for judges. What about that very particular white wig they sometimes wear?

The Left1 mentions across 1 issues

The Left is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 23, 2024 and July 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Left endorsed cancel culture". It most often appears alongside Afghanistan, Akhenaten, Al Franken.

Reference entry: The Left
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 23, 2024
Last seen: July 23, 2024

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Some Practical Considerations Before Descending Into An Orgy Of Vengeance July 23, 2024

Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Akhenaten 1 shared issues
Al Franken 1 shared issues
Amarna 1 shared issues
Amun 1 shared issues

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Some Practical Considerations Before Descending Into An Orgy Of Vengeance

July 23, 2024 · Original source

Sorry, I don’t know how this one got in there. The most complete response was by Postcards From Barsoom, which recommended Right Wing Cancel Squads. That there are so many of us who feel queasy at the thought of getting low-level proles fired from their jobs for sounding off online is a very good thing. It speaks to the fact that, unlike the enemy, we actually have a moral centre. Notably, this was never a serious debate on the left. Those few left-wing voices in the early teens who championed classical liberal principles of freedom of expression were summarily cancelled themselves, and are largely on our side now. In an ideal world, we would all give one another vastly greater latitude. No one would get mobbed, fired, forced to resign, kicked out of school, or ostracized from their professional networks for the non-crime of an unpopular opinion. No one would have to worry about people combing through decade-old social media posts looking for gotcha words that weren’t gotchas when they were written, but became crimespeak ex post facto. In the long run, it’s essential that we aim for permissive social mores regarding public and private discourse. This is a simple matter of technological context. Social media means that there is a more or less indelible record of your every public utterance; sure, you can try to scrub it, but that won’t stop screenshots; sure, you can try to cloak yourself behind a pseudonymous identity, but that just means you need to worry about doxxing. Cell phones mean that your private conversations can be recorded. We live in an electronic surveillance society now. We’re all watching one another, all the time, and short of a Carrington Event knocking us back into the iron age, there’s no realistic possibility of that changing. If we keep holding one another to impossible standards of public discourse, we will live in a totalitarian hell; that is, indeed, precisely the world that we have all lived in, for the last decade. The only way we avoid this is by adopting a public ethos that is exceptionally forgiving. But we do not live in that world yet, and that is entirely the left’s fault. [...] If we are going to arrive at a social compromise in which we do not punish people for their speech, a reaffirmation for the Sand Age of the ancient Saxon right to plainly speak one’s mind, it is necessary that everyone develop a keen appreciation of just how horrible the alternative is. This can only be grounded in a visceral revulsion at the very thought of cancellation, the way the world has looked at chemical weapons ever since the Great War, which in turn must come from direct, personal experience of what it feels like to be on the receiving end. To this end, distasteful as it may seem, the liberal’s face must be pressed down into her own steaming pile of excrement. She must be made to taste it, and gag, and swallow nonetheless. She must be made to weep burning tears. She must be traumatized, and made to understand that this is what she did, that these are the rules of engagement that she established, that these are the consequences of loss in this awful game that she has forced all of us to play. She needs to beg for the game to end, for the rules to change. Take a second to sympathize. From the Right’s perspective, the Left has beaten, shamed, and terrorized them for at least a decade. Now, the moment they get some chance to retaliate, their enemies say “Hey, bro, come on, being mean is morally wrong, you’ve got to be immaculately kind and law-abiding now that it’s your turn”, while still obviously holding behind their back the dagger they plan to use as soon as they’re on top again. I won’t be able to convince anyone of the ethics of seeking vengeance vs. turning the other cheek. But a few thoughts on the specific practical arguments being deployed: 1. Nobody Learns Anything Useful From Being Persecuted Going back to that excerpt from the Postcards From Barsoom blog: If we are going to arrive at a social compromise in which we do not punish people for their speech, a reaffirmation for the Sand Age of the ancient Saxon right to plainly speak one’s mind, it is necessary that everyone develop a keen appreciation of just how horrible the alternative is. This can only be grounded in a visceral revulsion at the very thought of cancellation, the way the world has looked at chemical weapons ever since the Great War, which in turn must come from direct, personal experience of what it feels like to be on the receiving end. To this end, distasteful as it may seem, the liberal’s face must be pressed down into her own steaming pile of excrement. She must be made to taste it, and gag, and swallow nonetheless. She must be made to weep burning tears. She must be traumatized, and made to understand that this is what she did, that these are the rules of engagement that she established, that these are the consequences of loss in this awful game that she has forced all of us to play. She needs to beg for the game to end, for the rules to change. You mean like you’re doing now? The right-wingers admit that they have suffered terribly at the hands of cancellation mobs. Okay, check. They admit it’s made them so mad that they want a bloodbath of cancelling liberals harder than anyone has ever been cancelled before. Okay, check. And now they say . . . that lefties must suffer terribly at the hands of cancellation mobs, because it will teach them that cancellation is wrong? If being on the receiving end could teach people cancellation was bad, it would have taught you that. It obviously hasn’t, so try a different strategy. 2. This Isn’t Tit For Tat, It’s The Nth Round Of A Historical Dialectic “Given that liberals invented cancel culture ten years ago, shouldn’t we get ten years of conservative cancel culture, just to be fair?” asks someone totally divorced from historical reality. Modern progressive cancel culture is the successor of the 1950s establishment that would cancel you for being an atheist pinko peacenik. Curtis Yarvin calls cancellation “the Brown Scare”, by analogy to the Red Scare that came before. And Arthur Miller called the Red Scare a “witch hunt”, by analogy to actual witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, and the history of burning heretics at the stake. And what was Diocletian’s persecution of the Early Church if not cancel culture? People joke that “cancel culture began with Socrates”, but I don’t buy it. Seen on Wikipedia: [In 1345 BC], Akhenaten … ordered the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt … Archaeological discoveries at [Amarna] show that many ordinary residents of this city chose to gouge or chisel out all references to the god Amun on even minor personal items that they owned, such as commemorative scarabs or make-up pots, perhaps for fear of being accused of having Amunist sympathies. When the Priests of Amun came back into power, they took the low road: This culture shift away from traditional religion was reversed after his death. Akhenaten's monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from lists of rulers compiled by later pharaohs. And since righteous vengeance had been attained and both sides now had experience with cancel culture being morally wrong, everyone agreed the ledger was balanced, and nobody ever tried cancelling anyone else ever again. No, seriously, we got the entire rest of history. Aldous Huxley famously described the state of things c. 1944 as: Only one more indispensable massacre of Capitalists or Communists or Fascists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are—there we are in the Golden Future. Just one more indispensable cancellation, and there we are! Instead, I think of unfreedom of conscience as a scourge that has troubled humanity throughout history, like famine or plague or war. As with all scourges, very-long-run progress coexists with occasional disastrous relapses. The solution isn’t to get the other side and balance the ledger, it’s to keep developing the physical and social technology that’s gradually improved things in the past. 3. You’re Not Debating Whether To Become Like Woke People, You’re Already Like Woke People An old psychoanalyst’s trick: if somebody ruminates too much over some decision, it’s to distract from some other decision they’re trying not to notice. The hidden decision here is whether to treat people as collectives or individuals. One of the fundamental problems with wokeness was that it believed in collective guilt and collective punishment. White people caused slavery, therefore white people stood condemned. No matter that the actual white person involved was 150 years removed from slavery, or was a Polish immigrant whose family hadn’t even been in the country at the time, or whatever. They have some excuse like “well all white people benefit from white supremacy in tangible ways, or at least didn’t speak out against it”. I hate to say it, but “some left-wing journalist got people cancelled, therefore I should be able to cancel a left-wing Home Depot employee because The Left endorsed cancel culture” is the same kind of argument. “But wasn’t the Left monolithically united behind cancel culture?” You can find some data here. I’m presenting a representative sample of questions, but check the rest to keep me honest: Unless you really lay on the tribal signifiers, it’s hard to find a definition where most Democrats support cancel culture and most Republicans oppose it! (the above poll probably overestimates support for cancel culture, because it talks about saying “things widely considered hateful” instead of, like, one tweet expressing a widely-shared opinion at the wrong time) Liberals invent a fictional entity called “The Right”, which is full of all of the most racist and fascist things that NYT was ever able to produce an out-of-context quote showing one Claremont guy saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Right” because it’s an ontological threat against democracy, then rile up a mob against a Google guy who sends the wrong memo. Likewise, conservatives invent a fictional entity called “The Left”, which is full of all the most horrible woke things that FOX was ever able to find one Gender Studies professor saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Left” because it’s coming for our children, then rile up a mob against a Home Depot woman who makes a bad tweet. 4. Nobody Is Ever Both-Sides-ist Enough I hate this because I’ve fought with these people on the Left, and they sound exactly the same. “If you feel like compromising with the Right, it’s important to remember what they’ve done. They separated families and locked children in cages. They forced 10-year-old rape victims to carry their rapists’ babies. They murdered our grandparents by refusing to mask in the middle of a pandemic. They killed thousands of American soldiers in a war over fake WMDs, then cut VA funding so the soldiers they wounded would die on the street. At this very moment, they’re boiling our planet alive to protect fossil fuel barons’ profits. How dare you suggest it could possibly be wrong to cancel someone like that!” This isn’t a knock-down argument. Sometimes you’re right when you think your enemies are bad, and they’re wrong when they think you’re bad. I can’t say for sure this isn’t one of those times. But: The fact that your enemies are just as sure as you are should make you less sure.

Inline links: Postcards From Barsoom, Right Wing Cancel Squads, calls, Wikipedia, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kWBR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F091055e1-265a-4c3d-88ed-8e18d1a73d09_642x355.png, find some data here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PFOa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a2ecad6-df80-45a9-ae36-1da9cacf9392_604x312.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DsK8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1b2b376e-c9f7-4a20-a586-cc337448475a_620x302.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uN26!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3e18655-04f5-4f11-bdaa-314c09084ced_819x324.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nmE9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa5cd863a-f067-4c6f-909c-994a6f331a94_655x303.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xvzc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6a0440e6-548d-4b3a-9e35-97e62a515515_667x311.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HKLM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc536a7a3-0a21-4978-8024-221253c4dddd_601x450.png

Instead, I think of unfreedom of conscience as a scourge that has troubled humanity throughout history, like famine or plague or war. As with all scourges, very-long-run progress coexists with occasional disastrous relapses. The solution isn’t to get the other side and balance the ledger, it’s to keep developing the physical and social technology that’s gradually improved things in the past. 3. You’re Not Debating Whether To Become Like Woke People, You’re Already Like Woke People An old psychoanalyst’s trick: if somebody ruminates too much over some decision, it’s to distract from some other decision they’re trying not to notice. The hidden decision here is whether to treat people as collectives or individuals. One of the fundamental problems with wokeness was that it believed in collective guilt and collective punishment. White people caused slavery, therefore white people stood condemned. No matter that the actual white person involved was 150 years removed from slavery, or was a Polish immigrant whose family hadn’t even been in the country at the time, or whatever. They have some excuse like “well all white people benefit from white supremacy in tangible ways, or at least didn’t speak out against it”. I hate to say it, but “some left-wing journalist got people cancelled, therefore I should be able to cancel a left-wing Home Depot employee because The Left endorsed cancel culture” is the same kind of argument. “But wasn’t the Left monolithically united behind cancel culture?” You can find some data here. I’m presenting a representative sample of questions, but check the rest to keep me honest: Unless you really lay on the tribal signifiers, it’s hard to find a definition where most Democrats support cancel culture and most Republicans oppose it! (the above poll probably overestimates support for cancel culture, because it talks about saying “things widely considered hateful” instead of, like, one tweet expressing a widely-shared opinion at the wrong time) Liberals invent a fictional entity called “The Right”, which is full of all of the most racist and fascist things that NYT was ever able to produce an out-of-context quote showing one Claremont guy saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Right” because it’s an ontological threat against democracy, then rile up a mob against a Google guy who sends the wrong memo. Likewise, conservatives invent a fictional entity called “The Left”, which is full of all the most horrible woke things that FOX was ever able to find one Gender Studies professor saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Left” because it’s coming for our children, then rile up a mob against a Home Depot woman who makes a bad tweet. 4. Nobody Is Ever Both-Sides-ist Enough I hate this because I’ve fought with these people on the Left, and they sound exactly the same. “If you feel like compromising with the Right, it’s important to remember what they’ve done. They separated families and locked children in cages. They forced 10-year-old rape victims to carry their rapists’ babies. They murdered our grandparents by refusing to mask in the middle of a pandemic. They killed thousands of American soldiers in a war over fake WMDs, then cut VA funding so the soldiers they wounded would die on the street. At this very moment, they’re boiling our planet alive to protect fossil fuel barons’ profits. How dare you suggest it could possibly be wrong to cancel someone like that!” This isn’t a knock-down argument. Sometimes you’re right when you think your enemies are bad, and they’re wrong when they think you’re bad. I can’t say for sure this isn’t one of those times. But: The fact that your enemies are just as sure as you are should make you less sure.

Inline links: find some data here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PFOa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9a2ecad6-df80-45a9-ae36-1da9cacf9392_604x312.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DsK8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1b2b376e-c9f7-4a20-a586-cc337448475a_620x302.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uN26!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3e18655-04f5-4f11-bdaa-314c09084ced_819x324.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nmE9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa5cd863a-f067-4c6f-909c-994a6f331a94_655x303.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xvzc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6a0440e6-548d-4b3a-9e35-97e62a515515_667x311.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HKLM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc536a7a3-0a21-4978-8024-221253c4dddd_601x450.png

Unless you really lay on the tribal signifiers, it’s hard to find a definition where most Democrats support cancel culture and most Republicans oppose it! (the above poll probably overestimates support for cancel culture, because it talks about saying “things widely considered hateful” instead of, like, one tweet expressing a widely-shared opinion at the wrong time) Liberals invent a fictional entity called “The Right”, which is full of all of the most racist and fascist things that NYT was ever able to produce an out-of-context quote showing one Claremont guy saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Right” because it’s an ontological threat against democracy, then rile up a mob against a Google guy who sends the wrong memo. Likewise, conservatives invent a fictional entity called “The Left”, which is full of all the most horrible woke things that FOX was ever able to find one Gender Studies professor saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Left” because it’s coming for our children, then rile up a mob against a Home Depot woman who makes a bad tweet. 4. Nobody Is Ever Both-Sides-ist Enough I hate this because I’ve fought with these people on the Left, and they sound exactly the same. “If you feel like compromising with the Right, it’s important to remember what they’ve done. They separated families and locked children in cages. They forced 10-year-old rape victims to carry their rapists’ babies. They murdered our grandparents by refusing to mask in the middle of a pandemic. They killed thousands of American soldiers in a war over fake WMDs, then cut VA funding so the soldiers they wounded would die on the street. At this very moment, they’re boiling our planet alive to protect fossil fuel barons’ profits. How dare you suggest it could possibly be wrong to cancel someone like that!” This isn’t a knock-down argument. Sometimes you’re right when you think your enemies are bad, and they’re wrong when they think you’re bad. I can’t say for sure this isn’t one of those times. But: The fact that your enemies are just as sure as you are should make you less sure.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!HKLM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc536a7a3-0a21-4978-8024-221253c4dddd_601x450.png

The LGBTQ community1 mentions across 1 issues

The LGBTQ community is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2025 and August 05, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The LGBTQ community: don’t laugh at this one". It most often appears alongside Amish, Bay Area rationalist community, Christian media.

Reference entry: The LGBTQ community
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2025
Last seen: August 05, 2025

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Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? August 05, 2025

Amish 1 shared issues
Bay Area rationalist community 1 shared issues
Christian media 1 shared issues
dense walkable towns 1 shared issues
First Things 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

August 05, 2025 · Original source

The LGBTQ community: don’t laugh at this one. If you know many of these people, you know they have their own parallel society of LGBT friends, LGBT bars, and LGBT dating sites. They attend LGBT parties, conform to LGBT fashions, and watch LGBT sports (like roller derby). They live in special LGBT-friendly neighborhoods, and everyone around them follows LGBT-friendly norms. They even have their own flag, an obvious first step for people trying to form a country-within-a-country. 5/10.

The Line1 mentions across 1 issues

The Line is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 01, 2022 and August 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The only advantage of having your city in a giant line is that at least it’s good for mass transit". It most often appears alongside Aerialoop, Al-Nasr, Bloomberg.

Reference entry: The Line
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 01, 2022
Last seen: August 01, 2022

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22 August 01, 2022

Aerialoop 1 shared issues
Al-Nasr 1 shared issues
Bloomberg 1 shared issues
Bloomberg View 1 shared issues
British territorial waters 1 shared issues

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August 01, 2022 · Original source

Take the Line:

Okay, now I’m even more confused. The only advantage of having your city in a giant line is that at least it’s good for mass transit, and you are … emphasizing walkability? Also, aren’t you in Saudi Arabia? Isn’t it 130 degrees at all times? But The Line is only the beginning. They will also have a Giant Floating Octagon Of Clean Industry: Source: Neom website …the world’s largest ski and watersports resort, and yes we are still in Saudi Arabia, they’ll make an artificial lake and use artificial snow: Source: Neom website …and whatever this is supposed to be: Source: Neom website Fine! Let’s just have random stuff! Canal-pools along every street so you can swim to work! A beach made of crushed marble which will shine like silver! Whatever! If this were some billionaire’s passion project, I’d be fine with it. It would be fun to watch exactly how it failed; it would probably leave some cool ruins. Maybe after the hype died down they could try for something smaller, and it would still be pretty impressive. At least it would beat yet another megayacht. But in fact, this is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, squandering public money. Not just renewable tax receipts, but the country’s accumulated oil windfall, just as the world tries to transition to renewable energy and the country risks never getting any oil windfall ever again. This is the money that should be going to the Saudi people having a future, and instead Mohammed bin Salman is spending it on playing some kind of demented desert version of SimCity, using a strategy that ten minutes playing actual SimCity could tell him was a bad idea. Neom represents all the worst parts of model cities. Dictators robbing the public purse to build cool monuments that make them feel special. Total lack of interest in workers, previous inhabitants, future inhabitants, or anyone except the very rich. “Sustainability”, “density”, and “liveability” as buzzwords to throw at foreign media, with no broader story for how any of this will improve the lives of real people or the cause of human freedom. I find model cities interesting and promising only insofar as I think some of them aren’t like Neom. Catawba Digital Economic Zone Haven’t heard much out of the crypto people recently, wonder what they’re up to: They seem to have gotten…an Indian tribe? That wasn’t on my bingo card for 2022. The Catawba Digital Economic Zone is the brainchild of Joseph McKinney (founder of the pro-charter-cities Startup Societies Foundation) and the Catawba Nation of Native Americans (a federally recognized tribe with a reservation in South Carolina). Indian tribes have regulatory independence from state governments, which some tribes have famously used to allow casinos in their territory. The Catawba are going one step further: they claim to have favorable cryptocurrency regulations which make it easier to register and operate your crypto company in Catawba territory than in the rest of the US. You can find their exact laws here, although they are long and in legalese. CoinDesk has an explainer of the crypto benefits, which seem to focus on digital asset regulations which “integrate digital assets under existing law”, including rights around disputes and loans. They also expect upcoming laws on DAOs, stablecoin, and banking. “Native American tribes” and “cryptocurrency” were not previously two concepts I associated closely with each other. But the Catawba were already a standout for their political savvy and economic ambitions, and they seem intimately involved here; the Zone is being run by “the business branch of the Catawba Indian Nation”, the commissioners are mostly Catawba citizens and tribal elders, and there are some nice touches like financial incentives for businesses that employ Catawba citizens. I like crypto as an insurance policy against oppressive governments, but I am not very bullish about it as an industry right now. Still, I am excited about the idea of Indian reservation charter cities - either in cooperation with outsiders like McKinney, or - who knows? - as grassroots designs from the tribes themselves. Reservation charter cities wouldn’t be the biggest deal. Tribes have substantial independence from state and local governments, but not much independence from the national government, and a lot of the dysfunction that needs escaping is at the federal level. Still, there are probably some niche opportunities; see eg Squamish tribe building skyscrapers on their land in Vancouver despite NIMBY opposition for one example of where this sort of idea could go. Seasteading In Paradise Malé is the capital of the Maldives, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean. It looks like this: One noticeable feature of Malé is its lack of lebensraum. Maldives is a pretty well-off country with a strong tourist industry, and lots more people would like to be nearby. What to do? You can already guess the proposed solution of Maldives Floating City. They want a 20,000 person seastead docked ten minutes away from the 130,000 person island-capital. The Floating City will serve both tourists and local Maldivians (some of whom are getting nervous about rising sea levels, and would probably appreciate a development guaranteed to stay above water). According to the organization’s press release, the Dutch corporate sponsor has obtained full permission to build the seastead, some test construction has already started, and full construction will begin in January. They hope to finish by 2027. Here are the inevitable pretty pictures: The layout is supposedly based on brain coral, but is this really the best way to lay design a seastead? Does this pattern really maximize the ease of getting from Point A to Point B? If you like tropical paradises and are incredibly optimistic, you can buy a house in the Floating City here, prices seem to be $150-250K. This is not the long-awaited dream of the libertarian seastead; the whole city will be firmly anchored in Maldives, both physically and legally. But if it works, it’s a proof of concept that libertarians may be able to build on later. Elsewhere In Model Cities 1: Prospera now hosts the drone delivery service Aerialoop, which will eventually transport cargo from their Roatan Island hub to various outposts on the mainland; you can find more information here. Their long-term plans include eventually following this up with passenger drones. And here’s some more information on the growing drone industry in Latin America. 2: Related: Prospera intern and resident George Kerpestein is writing a Substack about his experiences there. And here is the Prospera newsletter. 3: Thanks to commenters last month for pointing out that Chinese cult Falun Gong has its own compound/city in upstate New York. You can read more about it here: 4: Sealand is an independent nation (according to Sealand) based out of an old WWII sea fort in international waters. It is not for sale, but the Bull Sandfort is, for only £50,000. Alas, this one is firmly within British territorial waters. But it does look pretty defensible…anyway, see the listing here. Predictions In 2030, there are at least 50,000 people in whatever the Neom project has evolved into by then: 75%

The Long March Through The Institutions1 mentions across 1 issues

The Long March Through The Institutions is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 17, 2024 and December 17, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Long March Through The Institutions, Debunked". It most often appears alongside 2016 US Presidential election, ACX Grant, AI.

Reference entry: The Long March Through The Institutions
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 17, 2024
Last seen: December 17, 2024

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Links For December 2024 December 17, 2024

2016 US Presidential election 1 shared issues
ACX Grant 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI Art Turing Test 1 shared issues
Aleister Crowley 1 shared issues

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Links For December 2024

December 17, 2024 · Original source

3: The Long March Through The Institutions, Debunked. I’m not usually a fan of accusations that cultural Marxism is a “conspiracy theory” - some leading leftists said they should take over institutions, leftists did take over institutions, you don’t have to be a Nazi to wonder if these two things are connected. But Arturo Dzvyenka argues they aren’t - leftists had started doing this before Marcuse officially asked them to, and besides, the institution-taker-overs were mostly liberals and not the sort of Marxists who might listen to Marcuse. Dzvyenka says the real story is one of class: rising geographic mobility and industrial sophistication created a new class (defined as a group whose jobs give them a similar social position) of geographically mobile knowledge workers - the professional managerial class - whose class characteristics predisposed them to both liberalism and institutional control.

Inline links: The Long March Through The Institutions, Debunked

The MAGA phenomenon1 mentions across 1 issues

The MAGA phenomenon is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 07, 2024 and May 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The MAGA phenomenon is largely fueled by white resentment over the Great Enfattening conspiracy theory". It most often appears alongside affirmative action, Africa, African National Congress.

Reference entry: The MAGA phenomenon
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 07, 2024
Last seen: May 07, 2024

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Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke" May 07, 2024

affirmative action 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
African National Congress 1 shared issues
African-Americans 1 shared issues
AH 1 shared issues

Source context

May 07, 2024 · Original source

Get a bunch of “disinformation researchers” to make a huge deal about the schizos and say things like “The MAGA phenomenon is largely fueled by white resentment over the Great Enfattening conspiracy theory”.

Helen Andrews is also pretty strongly against civil rights law, and has an interesting piece about union-flavored workplaces vs HR-flavored ones: https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-21/against-human-resources

Inline links: https://thelampmagazine.com/issues/issue-21/against-human-resources

I agree there’s something to this - I’ve seen it used, for example, to explain why certain Indian castes are overrepresented in certain industries (eg the Patel Motel Cartel), Jews in other industries, etc.

Inline links: Patel Motel Cartel

The Mandarin Square1 mentions across 1 issues

The Mandarin Square is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 19, 2022 and August 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The badge of rank itself was called the ‘mandarin square,’ a chest-piece embroidered with elegant birds". It most often appears alongside 1587, 1587, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline.

Reference entry: The Mandarin Square
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 19, 2022
Last seen: August 19, 2022

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Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance August 19, 2022

1587 1 shared issues
1587 1 shared issues
1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline 1 shared issues
A Universal History of Infamy 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

August 19, 2022 · Original source

The badge of rank itself was called the ‘mandarin square,’ a chest-piece embroidered with elegant birds, always in pairs. The top rank (1) was represented by two stately cranes soaring above clouds, the lowest rank (9) by a couple of earthbound quail pecking the grass.”

The Map and The Territory1 mentions across 1 issues

The Map and The Territory is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "This is an issue of The Map and The Territory". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: The Map and The Territory
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: July 22, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

2020 election 1 shared issues
2022 book review contest 1 shared issues
2122 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The Man From The Future

July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

The Martians1 mentions across 1 issues

The Martians is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 13, 2022 and July 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I wrote about “The Martians” - a sudden spurt of Hungarian supergeniuses born around 1900". It most often appears alongside 1890s, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein.

Reference entry: The Martians
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 13, 2022
Last seen: July 13, 2022

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Book Review: The Man From The Future July 13, 2022

1890s 1 shared issues
Alan Turing 1 shared issues
Albert Einstein 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Ananyo Bhattacharya 1 shared issues

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July 13, 2022 · Original source

Technically he was born in Hungary. But we’ve already been through this. A few years ago I wrote about “The Martians” - a sudden spurt of Hungarian supergeniuses born around 1900. People low-key noticed this phenomenon almost as soon as it started, but it really became obvious during the Manhattan Project, when several of the project’s leading lights (including von Neumann) reconnected in the deserts of New Mexico c. 1940 and realized they’d gone to high school together in Budapest. Leo Szilard joked that “Hungary” was a front for Martian spies, and the group has been called “Martians” ever since..

Inline links: I wrote about

In my post, I was able to track down a few clues to the mystery. All of the Martians were Jewish, which linked the puzzle to the general puzzle of Jewish overachievement (for example, 36% of US Nobel Prize winners are Jews, compared to only 2% of the US population). Greg Cochran and others suggest a genetic explanation, with Daron Acemoglu and others suggesting a cultural/historical one; unsurprisingly, I side with Cochran. Granting that this is a Jewish phenomenon, it’s not too hard to explain why it happened at the turn of the century in particular - too long before then, and anti-Semitism prevented European Jews from getting a good education; too long after then, and they all died in the Holocaust.

Inline links: a genetic explanation, a cultural/historical one

I think this clears up my remaining confusion around the Martians. For whatever reason, Eastern European Jews of the 19th century were unusually bright. The very brightest of this unusual group moved to Budapest, interbred with each other, and had one generation of totally unprecedentedly brilliant children before being wiped out. Everything about the Holocaust is so tragic that it’s hard to make it any worse, but credit to MacRae for his attempt.

the Mediatrix1 mentions across 1 issues

the Mediatrix is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000". It most often appears alongside 1910s Portugal, 1999 British eclipse, 2017 US eclipse.

Reference entry: the Mediatrix
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 01, 2025
Last seen: October 01, 2025

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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know October 01, 2025

1910s Portugal 1 shared issues
1999 British eclipse 1 shared issues
2017 US eclipse 1 shared issues
A Ordem 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues

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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

October 01, 2025 · Original source

…unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.

The Medical Model1 mentions across 1 issues

The Medical Model is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 25, 2023 and July 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Medical Model exactly as stated (with the "you must stigmatize people with disabilities" part included) was hugely historically popular". It most often appears alongside 1992 Presidential debate, ABA, Adesh Thapliyal.

Reference entry: The Medical Model
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 25, 2023
Last seen: July 25, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Social Model Of Disability July 25, 2023

1992 Presidential debate 1 shared issues
ABA 1 shared issues
Adesh Thapliyal 1 shared issues
Alan Smith 1 shared issues
Alexander Graham Bell 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Social Model Of Disability

July 25, 2023 · Original source

It's worth noting that the medical model isn't a total fiction either. Aside from the fact that the medical model is more about mentality and approach to disability rather than anything else, fundamentally the medical model is an extreme that tends to be based on the way surgeons are taught - focus on the body/operation/disorder and leave the rest to the nurses, GPs and psychs. The medical model and the social model are both extremes like being political left or politically right. No one really 100% meets the definition of "left" or "right", but people do tend to look for dichotomies and lean more in one direction than the other (even if reality is infinitely more complex). Now again, I think the intersectional model is better, and the mediating tools model, and the pluralist model, and a bunch of others, but not only are these models often seen as more complex, they're often politically weak standpoints because they don't create a strong us vs them mentality, they don't cast blame, they don't provide a banner to unite around, etc., etc., but these things are kinda the entire point of a no-compromise position. By not compromising you (theoretically) force the other party to change, readjust, come up with a new position and eventually you get somewhere agreeable - or at least you create an opening for a third party to step in and take over. That is what the Social Model is about. It's not (read as shouldn't) be the dominant standpoint, but it should be about forcing people to bring these questions to the table by starting from and maintaining a position of strength. Now that doesn't mean there aren't people who don't blindly follow the Social Model to the point of stupidity, but I've met people who adhere to the medical model as a standpoint too.

The Medical Model exactly as stated (with the "you must stigmatize people with disabilities" part included) was hugely historically popular, and calling it a straw man is only true insofar as the real people who believed it have (mostly) died off. Although it wasn't called the "medical model" at the time, that set of beliefs was the grounding for the eugenics movement and played a huge role in historical abuses of disabled people. I think Deafness is a really good example of this. The oral education of Deaf people imposed on them by hearing doctors didn't work, because there WAS no medical remedy for deafness at the time. The Cochlear implant is relatively recent, and it's not a flawless solution. In the place of the actual practice of medicine was inhumane education, which determined the worth of a Deaf person by how well they could learn how to speak, as opposed to recognizing sign language as an actual valid language with a grammar and so on. This is the ideal example of the social model versus the medical model - Deaf people were never "incapable" of speech, rather, hearing educators at the time, influenced by Alexander Graham Bell's theories of eugenics, were incapable of recognizing that the Deaf were perfectly proficient in sign language. A medical inadequacy, solved by a social solution.

I agree with you that 1) this dichotomy is outdated and doesn't correspond to modern beliefs very well and 2) that we could stand to be less skeptical of medical interventions that do work, especially with regards to mental health. Nevertheless, I think there are circumstances where the parable of the social model versus the medical model is incredibly valuable. Specifically, the circumstance when someone suggests the most humane medical intervention for a disability is to sterilize the affected population to prevent them from perpetuating their inadequacy.

the memex1 mentions across 1 issues

the memex is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 19, 2025 and September 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "his crackpot theories about an internet modeled after the memex fell into disrepute". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

Reference entry: the memex
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 19, 2025
Last seen: September 19, 2025

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been September 19, 2025

1987 1 shared issues
1988 1 shared issues
Adleman 1 shared issues
AHIRC 1 shared issues
Andy van Dam 1 shared issues

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been

September 19, 2025 · Original source

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

Not only could you read and even add to the memex—you could recombine and link works between each other with ease. “This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing,” Bush wrote. As a memex user explored his vast library of human thought, he could leave a “trail” of connected articles and photos and his own commentaries. He could connect these trails to one another, split them into fractally expanding branches, save them, and access them over and over again. He could even share his trails with friends, allowing them to insert copies into their own memexes, where they could be expanded and branched and shared again.

The Mensa Fallacy1 mentions across 1 issues

The Mensa Fallacy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 10, 2023 and March 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Related: The Mensa Fallacy". It most often appears alongside Alex, Alex Nowratesh, Aphantasia.

Reference entry: The Mensa Fallacy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 10, 2023
Last seen: March 10, 2023

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Links For March 2023 March 10, 2023

Alex 1 shared issues
Alex Nowratesh 1 shared issues
Aphantasia 1 shared issues
Arkansas 1 shared issues
ASCII cat replicators 1 shared issues

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Links For March 2023

March 10, 2023 · Original source

24: Related: The Mensa Fallacy. Many older studies show that very-high-IQ people are mentally imbalanced, bad at real-world tasks, or unambitious. Newer, more representative studies don’t show this. The most likely explanation: the older studies got their very-high-IQ samples from Mensa, the most convenient place to find lots of very-high-IQ subjects. But within the population of very-high-IQ people, Mensa is adversely selected for non-IQ traits; geniuses who are mentally healthy and ambitious are probably inventing quantum computers at MIT or making bank on Wall Street; it’s the geniuses who can’t make it in regular society who are going to every Mensa to boast about how quickly they can solve Rubik’s Cubes. Any study that uses a Mensa sample to study very-high-IQ people and conclude that they’re defective should be considered suspicious.

Inline links: The Mensa Fallacy

the Merge1 mentions across 1 issues

the Merge is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 12, 2022 and October 12, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”". It most often appears alongside 538 deluxe model, @rcafdm, Andres.

Reference entry: the Merge
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 12, 2022
Last seen: October 12, 2022

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Links For October October 12, 2022

538 deluxe model 1 shared issues
@rcafdm 1 shared issues
Andres 1 shared issues
Benito Mussolini 1 shared issues
Biden 1 shared issues

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October 12, 2022 · Original source

23: Did you know: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”.

Inline links: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap

the Minotaur1 mentions across 1 issues

the Minotaur is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur)". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: the Minotaur
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

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Book Review: How Asia Works

August 16, 2024 · Original source

Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

The Miracle on the Rhine1 mentions across 1 issues

The Miracle on the Rhine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 28, 2021 and June 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "with chapters on ‘The Miracle on the Rhine’". It most often appears alongside Alexander Hamilton, America, ASEAN.

Reference entry: The Miracle on the Rhine
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 28, 2021
Last seen: June 28, 2021

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Issue trail

Book Review: How Asia Works June 28, 2021

Alexander Hamilton 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
ASEAN 1 shared issues
Asia 1 shared issues
Association of South-East Asian Nations 1 shared issues

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June 28, 2021 · Original source

...he was an amateur historian who specialised in the histories of rising powers. He was well read on German development, and followed closely that country’s swift, state-led re-industrialisation after the Second World War. He also knew in detail the stories of Sun Yat-sen, Turkey’s Kemal Pasha and Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and their efforts to nurture modern, large-scale industries. Nine months after taking power in Korea, the peasant-born Park published a book of his own, Our Nation’s Path: Ideology for Social Reconstruction, which contained a road map for what Park described as ‘co-ordination and supervisory guidance, by the state, of mammoth economic strength’. The next year Park published The Country, the Revolution and I, with chapters on ‘The Miracle on the Rhine’ and ‘Various Forms of Revolution’ in which he discussed different historical revolutions from an economic and developmental perspective. (He always referred to his own coup as a revolution.)

the most important century1 mentions across 1 issues

the most important century is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 23, 2022 and August 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Well-known ideas like "the most important century"". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abolitionist literature, AI.

Reference entry: the most important century
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 23, 2022
Last seen: August 23, 2022

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Book Review: What We Owe The Future August 23, 2022

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
abolitionist literature 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI Alignment 1 shared issues
AI risk 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: What We Owe The Future

August 23, 2022 · Original source

The same argument applies to other long-termist priorities, like biosecurity and nuclear weapons. Well-known ideas like "the hinge of history", "the most important century" and "the precipice" all point to the idea that existential risk is concentrated in the relatively near future - probably before 2100.

the mouse1 mentions across 1 issues

the mouse is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 19, 2025 and September 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "if he was remembered at all, it was for the invention of the mouse". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

Reference entry: the mouse
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 19, 2025
Last seen: September 19, 2025

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Issue trail

Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been September 19, 2025

1987 1 shared issues
1988 1 shared issues
Adleman 1 shared issues
AHIRC 1 shared issues
Andy van Dam 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been

September 19, 2025 · Original source

the mouse

compilable "Command Meta Language" Live on stage, in the year 1968, Engelbart started up the NLS, opened a document, and typed some words into it. The words, he said, constituted a statement. And statements made up a file. Engelbart copied, manipulated, saved, and loaded his words and statements and files, zipping around with his newly-invented mouse. He demonstrated his ability to embed documents in one another—images with links to statements, words nested and categorized by one another, files filled with metadata. And then he paused, and the screen went blank. He explained that he and his colleagues at the ARC had been using this system to do their daily work for the last six months. He mentioned that they had, now, six consoles up and running. He showed the crowd a real document, then navigated to a statement within it. “This presentation is devoted to the AHIRC.” “What is the AHIRC?” he asked. Engelbart “froze” the initial statement, clicked on the acronym, and below the words “Augmented-Human-Intellect Research Center” appeared. He kept clicking and freezing, and a trail of nested and related information appeared—a list of funders, a graph of staffing over time, a mission statement. This was hypermedia. These were hyperlinks, he explained. NLS was a hypertext system. The presentation went on for 90 minutes longer, and became known as The Mother of All Demos.2 At around the 75-minute mark, Engelbart shows that two different NLS users could edit a single document simultaneously. While this was extremely impressive functionality, it was achieved with time-sharing—computation was done on a single machine, switching rapidly between tasks—and became infeasible the very next year, when ARPANET was released and the number of machines you could connect to one system grew rapidly. Engelbart’s hypertext system was impressive in its own right, even without collaborativity. And still, little came of it—Andy van Dam, an attendee and revolutionary computer scientist himself, would reflect decades later: “Everybody was blown away … and nothing else happened. There was almost no further impact.” Engelbart’s ideas were just a little too out there. ARC quickly faded into obscurity. In 1972, Engelbart joined an organization called Erhard Seminars Training. EST, or “est” as it was marketed, offered a 60-hour self-improvement course for tech entrepreneurs modeled loosely on Zen Buddhism. Critics suggested that the est course was a mind-control method aimed at raising an authoritarian army. It was quite credibly branded a cult. The founder of est, Werner Erhard, was accused of tax fraud (he fought the claims and won $200,000 from the IRS) and incest (by his daughter, who later recanted). Engelbart served, for many years, on est’s board of directors. His researchers all left for greener, less cult-y pastures, and ARC died with hardly a whimper. No one really wanted to associate with Engelbart. His crackpot theories about an internet modeled after the memex fell into disrepute, and, if he was remembered at all, it was for the invention of the mouse. No one cared anymore about the memex, or hypertext. 3. Hyper-dreams of Hyper-everything Well, one man cared. Ted Nelson was born in 1937 to two twenty-year-olds, Ralph Nelson and Celeste Holm. His parents divorced in 1939, leaving him to be raised by his grandparents. Both Nelson (the elder) and Holm would go on to extremely-successful film careers: the former became an Emmy-winning director; the latter an Oscar-winning actress. And, at first, Ted seemed to be following in their footsteps. As a philosophy major at Swarthmore College, he produced a film called The Epiphany of Slocum Furlow, which he described as “a short comedy about loneliness at college and the meaning of life.”3 Nelson also claims to have “[d]irected [and written] book and lyrics for what was apparently the first rock musical” in his junior year at Swarthmore. Thankfully, his interest in a career as an entertainer soon waned, and Nelson went off to study sociology in grad school—first at the University of Chicago, then at Harvard. Nelson took a computer class at Harvard, in 1960, and “[his] world exploded.”4 He realized the incredible power of computing, quickly intuited that these new machines could be generally applied to everything, and founded Project Xanadu.5 Initially, Xanadu’s scope was pretty limited. Word processors weren’t around yet, but Nelson wanted to build something strikingly similar: he wanted to write a program that could store and display documents, with version histories and edits all stored and displayed at the same time too. Later, Nelson would call this version-history feature “intercomparison.” (Strange coinages will be a… theme; I’m just trying to get you ready.) Nelson began working on an implementation, but his feature wishlist grew quickly, and he didn’t really know what he was doing, so in 1965, he sought help. He prepared a talk for the Association for Computing Machinery, and dropped, quite frankly, a bomb on the audience: The kinds of file structures required if we are to use the computer for personal files and as an adjunct to creativity are wholly different in character from those customary in business and scientific data processing. They need to provide the capacity for intricate and idiosyncratic arrangements, total modifiability, undecided alternatives, and thorough internal documentation. The original idea was to make a file for writers and scientists, much like the personal side of Bush's Memex, that would do the things such people need with the richness they would want. But there are so many possible specific functions that the mind reels. These uses and considerations become so complex that the only answer is a simple and generalized building-block structure, user-oriented and wholly general-purpose. The resulting file structure is explained and examples of its use are given. Ted Nelson was building the memex. Of course, he wasn’t a very technical guy, and so his talk mostly focused on the philosophy of Xanadu, not its implementation. He commented (emphasis mine): There are three false or inadequate theories of how writing is properly done. The first is that writing is a matter of inspiration. While inspiration is useful, it is rarely enough in itself. “Writing is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration,” is a common saying. But this leads us to the second false theory, that “writing consists of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” Insofar as sitting facilitates work, this view seems reasonable, but it also suggests that what is done while sitting is a matter of comparative indifference; probably not. The third false theory is that all you really need is a good outline, created on prior consideration, and that if the outline is correctly followed the required text will be produced. For most good writers this theory is quite wrong. Rarely does the original outline predict well what headings and sequence will create the effects desired: the balance of emphasis, sequence of interrelating points, texture of insight, rhythm, etc. We may better call the outlining process inductive: certain interrelations appear to the author in the material itself, some at the outset and some as he works. He can only decide which to emphasize, which to use as unifying ideas and principles, and which to slight or delete, by trying. Outlines in general are spurious, made up after the fact by examining the segmentation of a finished work. If a finished work clearly follows an outline, that outline probably has been hammered out of many inspirations, comparisons and tests. Between the inspirations, then, and during the sitting, the task of writing is one of rearrangement and reprocessing, and the real outline develops slowly. The original crude or fragmentary texts created at the outset generally undergo many revision processes before they are finished. Intellectually they are pondered, juxtaposed, compared, adapted, transposed, and judged; mechanically they are copied, overwritten with revision markings, rearranged and copied again. This cycle may be repeated many times. The whole grows by trial and error in the processes of arrangement, comparison and retrenchment. Nelson recognized that the creation of knowledge is cyclical, recursive, self-referential. And he figured that our computer systems should accept and reflect that process: If a writer is really to be helped by an automated system, it ought to do more than retype and transpose: it should stand by him during the early periods of muddled confusion, when his ideas are scraps, fragments, phrases, and contradictory overall designs. And it must help him through to the final draft with every feasible mechanical aid—making the fragments easy to find, and making easier the tentative sequencing and juxtaposing and comparing. How do you design such a system? To navigate intuitively within complex file systems, between document versions, and across source materials—to access all the scraps and fragments writers need to write—you would need to establish what Vannevar Bush called “tracks.” You would need to connect and save different ideas, linking them together. That was it—you needed links. Nelson went further, though—it wouldn’t do to simply have links to all the other files, a writer needed to see the other files before him, needed them to be brought up and displayed alongside his current work on demand. The links needed to contain their targets within themselves—so Nelson called them hyperlinks. And he called text embedded with hyperlinks hypertext, and movies embedded in his structure became hyperfilms, and so on. Nelson wanted us using computers to write and create self-referential, intricately-interconnected (“intertwingled,” as he’d later put it), eminently-accessible hypermedia. And recall, in 1965, state-of-the-art computing looked like this. Ted Nelson was thinking far, far ahead. Maybe too far ahead. Conference attendees were initially excited about his idea, but when he revealed himself to know very little about the technical task of building Xanadu—or even whether it was possible at all—interest evaporated. 4. Failing to Develop Xanadu But Nelson was all in. He would later write, “This is not a technical issue, but rather moral, aesthetic and conceptual.” Nelson loved knowledge and connection and abstraction—mere technical details wouldn’t stop him from building the best possible computer system for producing and consuming information. He met Doug Engelbart in the mid 60s, forming a friendship with the only other man taking hypertext seriously at the time, and hopped around unhappily between various academic and scientific appointments. At one point, he and Andy van Dam worked together and produced the Hypertext Editing System—released in 1967, just before Engelbart’s NLS. It was the first computer application to ever have an “undo” button—Nelson claims to this day that he invented it (and the “back” button). Shortly thereafter, Nelson’s wife left him. In his 2010 autobiography, he writes, “She, reasonably, wanted a Nice Life; women want that sort of thing.” They had a son, whom Nelson continued to visit regularly. “Debbie has been a friend and great support all these years,” Nelson adds. “[S]he believed in me.” Nelson gave a talk at Union Theological Seminary in 1968 that included this slide, which Nelson considers “the first depiction of what the personal computer turned out to be.” “About six years later they started building computers like this at Xerox PARC.” Around the same time, Nelson claims to have called Vannevar Bush and told him about Project Xanadu. Bush “wanted very much to discuss it with” Nelson, but Nelson “hated him instantly [because] he sounded like a sports coach” and never contacted him again. This, of course, proved to be extremely self-destructive (though I can’t honestly say I would’ve done otherwise). Because Xanadu was as good as dead. No one would give him the money he needed to work on it, especially not after Doug Engelbart poisoned the idea of hypertext. Nelson went where there was funding, working briefly on an early word processor called Juggler of Text (JOT). …And then he lost investment, stopped working on the project, and moved to Chicago, where he’d been offered a job teaching at the University of Illinois, to start work on a book. He would call it Computer Lib. In fact, he started work on another book at the same time, called Dream Machines. By the time he completed each of them, in 1974, ARPANET had been released, and his vision for Project Xanadu had evolved. He published the two works together—Computer Lib was his lamentation over the industry’s disdain for hypertext, and Dream Machines was Xanadu’s manifesto. Nelson designed and printed the book himself. Its pages mostly look like this: Self-referential, multimedia, creative, and fun—they were a blueprint for the internet he was building. In the Dream Machines half, Nelson writes, “The real dream is for ‘everything’ to be in the hypertext. Everything you read, you read from the screen (and can always get back to right away; everything you write, you write at the screen (and can cross-link to whatever you read).” In one section Nelson asks himself, “Can It Be Done?” His answer: “I dunno.” Remember, Xanadu wouldn’t only involve links between works—it required hyperlinks, which as Nelson understood them, would need to contain the targets in themselves. (Eventually, Nelson would give these embeddings a new name—“transclusions”—and hyperlink came to simply mean “link between hypertext files.”) Every link would run both ways, each hypertext file would know exactly which other files were linked to it and how. This introduced a few problems, in the new interconnected ARPANET age: How do you keep track? Where’s the metadata stored? Can you afford enough space for it all?

Inline links: 2, would reflect, 3, claims, 4, 5, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wpPj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda43a667-c15b-4626-a0a7-480ad1144dce_1114x1070.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Y2jg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F96fdc6cc-8ead-4aef-9539-fa421e77c0f9_1600x1299.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kp4P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff55d10e8-ef84-43a9-9f39-422d87ea182e_1600x952.png

The Muggletonians1 mentions across 1 issues

The Muggletonians is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 29, 2024 and May 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Muggletonians, a 17th century Christian sect, believed". It most often appears alongside @ElytraMithra, Aaron, ACX.

Reference entry: The Muggletonians
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 29, 2024
Last seen: May 29, 2024

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Links for May 2024 May 29, 2024

@ElytraMithra 1 shared issues
Aaron 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Adderall 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues

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Links for May 2024

May 29, 2024 · Original source

13: The Muggletonians, a 17th century Christian sect, believed:

Inline links: The Muggletonians

the multiverse1 mentions across 1 issues

the multiverse is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 04, 2022 and August 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "things many people have found self-evidently absurd (eg the multiverse)". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI risk, Alexandros.

Reference entry: the multiverse
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 04, 2022
Last seen: August 04, 2022

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Absurdity Bias, Neom Edition August 04, 2022

ACX 1 shared issues
AI risk 1 shared issues
Alexandros 1 shared issues
Alexandros M 1 shared issues
Bulverism 1 shared issues

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Absurdity Bias, Neom Edition

August 04, 2022 · Original source

But isn’t the absurdity heuristic a cognitive bias? Didn’t lots of true things sound absurd before they turned out to be true (eg evolution, quantum mechanics)? Don’t I specifically believe in things many people have found self-evidently absurd (eg the multiverse, AI risk)? Shouldn’t I be more careful about “this sounds silly to me, so I’m going to make fun of it”?

Inline links: isn’t the absurdity heuristic a cognitive bias

The Network Of People Who All Pursue Systematic Altruism Together In A Way Causally Downstream Of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, And Nick Bostrom1 mentions across 1 issues

The Network Of People Who All Pursue Systematic Altruism Together In A Way Causally Downstream Of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, And Nick Bostrom is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 30, 2023 and November 30, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "I’d go for... The Network Of People Who All Pursue Systematic Altruism Together In A Way Causally Downstream Of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, And Nick Bostrom". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, ACX Grants, AI Impacts.

Reference entry: The Network Of People Who All Pursue Systematic Altruism Together In A Way Causally Downstream Of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, And Nick Bostrom
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 30, 2023
Last seen: November 30, 2023

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Contra DeBoer On Movement Shell Games November 30, 2023

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
AI Impacts 1 shared issues
AI safety researcher 1 shared issues
Alcoholics Anonymous 1 shared issues

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Contra DeBoer On Movement Shell Games

November 30, 2023 · Original source

EA might have screwed this up worse than some other groups, but I don’t think a movement our size is capable of rebranding. We just have to eat the loss. If we were optimizing entirely for clarity and not for attractive-soundingness, I’d go for Systematic Altruism on the one side, and The Network Of People Who All Pursue Systematic Altruism Together In A Way Causally Downstream Of Toby Ord, Will MacAskill, And Nick Bostrom (TONOPWAPSATIAWCDOTOWMAANB) on the other.

the oracle1 mentions across 1 issues

the oracle is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the oracle said something bad would happen if we left a guy alive". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry: the oracle
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2023
Last seen: November 17, 2023

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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023

Abel 1 shared issues
Adam and Eve 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Apollonius of Tyana 1 shared issues
Arab 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Internationalists

November 17, 2023 · Original source

Are all myths and Bible stories really about this process? Girard says yes. For example, consider the myth of Oedipus. Around the end, Thebes is stricken by plague (Girard says plagues should usually be interpreted metaphorically as social plagues, ie discord). Everyone goes to the oracle and asks for a solution. The oracle says that someone has killed his father and married his mother, and the plague won’t end until that person is removed. It is revealed that Oedipus is the culprit. The mob expels Oedipus from the city, and the plague ends.

He also counts “the oracle said something bad would happen if we left a guy alive, so we (tried to) kill them”. For example, the oracle told Priam that Paris would bring doom to Troy, so Priam originally left him exposed to die (he didn’t).

For Girard, the important thing about all these myths is that the victimization is good and correct. The oracle was right that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother. This really was causing the plague. Expelling Oedipus really did solve the plague. Tiamat was the Dragon of Chaos; killing her and creating the world was probably a good move. Paris really did bring doom to Troy; Priam was right to try to kill him, and the only possible regret was that he didn’t finish the job.

the outlawry movement1 mentions across 1 issues

the outlawry movement is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 01, 2022 and July 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "that leads right back to the Pact, and the history of the outlawry movement". It most often appears alongside 1793, 1821, 1847.

Reference entry: the outlawry movement
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 01, 2022
Last seen: July 01, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Internationalists July 01, 2022

1793 1 shared issues
1821 1 shared issues
1847 1 shared issues
1928 Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact 1 shared issues
500 million and not one more 1 shared issues

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July 01, 2022 · Original source

If you find that question confusing, you might, with a little poking at it, start to also wonder why the death of an Austro-Hungarian Prince, in Serbia, at the hands of an anarchist, caused Germany and the US to battle each other in World War I, and when Germany lost, for the allies to humble and punish Germany above all. And that question can lead back to the question of what changed, between World War I, and now, and that, according to H&S, leads right back to the Pact, and the history of the outlawry movement.

The Paradox Of Praxis1 mentions across 1 issues

The Paradox Of Praxis is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 04, 2023 and September 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Paradox Of Praxis ... you can think of new city projects as existing on a spectrum". It most often appears alongside Africa, Beyabu, Bildod.

Reference entry: The Paradox Of Praxis
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 04, 2023
Last seen: September 04, 2023

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23: California Dreamin' September 04, 2023

Africa 1 shared issues
Beyabu 1 shared issues
Bildod 1 shared issues
Bolivia 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues

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23: California Dreamin'

September 04, 2023 · Original source

According to this article, State Senator Bill Dodd2 worries that a new city might have an “impact on agricultural production”, “harm Travis Air Force Base”, and cause “suburban sprawl”. And if they defeat all these people and win the local election, anyone who is against them can still lodge the normal CEQA and NEPA objections that have gummed up most large building projects in California over the past fifty years. And if they defeat those, they still have to build the city. Rep. Garamendi is skeptical, saying3: I think it’s pie in the sky. We know this area. I've talked to a very seasoned developer in California and asked what do you think of that? He said, keep in mind that the land is about 1/10th of the actual cost of building the city. You've got streets and roads and sewer systems and sanitation. They even want to build a concert hall. And if they manage that, what do they do about their own citizens? California allows a local government form called a “charter city”, but I don’t think you can get away with being actually undemocratic. So once 10,000 people live in their town, what’s to stop those people from becoming NIMBYs and voting against further growth? I assume there’s some answer to this question, since people have built successful company-owned planned cities in California in the past (eg Irvine). I’m just not sure what it is. Could their city charter ban zoning? Could they have some sort of super-powerful city manager paired with a very weak democratic council? Could they build everything first, and only invite people to move in after they’re done? Of course there are prediction markets: This is the only one with more than 15 traders, but go here to see the smaller ones; I’ll try to highlight them later if they get big enough to be credible. Also, some people asking the important questions: The Paradox Of Praxis You can think of new city projects as existing on a spectrum: Usually the ones on the left are more fun to talk about, but the ones on the right are more fun to invest in. The paradox of Praxis is that to all appearances, they’re several miles off the left side of this graph. No amount of reading starry-eyed overly-ambitious Silicon Valley ad copy can prepare you for how over-the-top Praxis is. Praxis has a manifesto with phrases like “glory in death by a light brighter than a thousand suns" and "atrophied bodies submerged in gel, fed a synthetic bug paste". Praxis holds parties in classical-music-filled candlelit lofts where they ask participants about “Janusian thinking”. Praxis has a website www.terrifyingangel.com which is just a YouTube video on the idea of meaning throughout human history, plus a resignation letter you can send to your boss when you quit to join Praxis. Seen on the Praxis founder’s Twitter account. Milady is some kind of NFT thing, otherwise it makes as much sense to me as it does to you. But the other half of the paradox is the constant rumors that they’re competent and have some kind of good plan. These are spoken only in hushed whispers, I don’t know the details. But in 2021, they raised $4 million in a seed round from well-regarded venture capitalists whose investments usually make money. In 2022 they raised another $15 million in a Series A round from . . . okay, partly from Sam Bankman-Fried and Three Arrows Capital, two notorious crypto scammers. But you would think scammers would be extra careful not to invest their own money in scams! Also, they recently signed on David Weinreb, a completely normal (and well-regarded) city planner person. What’s the strategy that both involves both Milady Raves and lots of competent people agreeing you’re a good investment? One strategy is something like: buy some land somewhere. Build some houses and streets. Convince digital nomads to move there on the grounds that you are very cool and visionary. Do some cool and visionary seeming things, or at least throw some really good raves. Other digital nomads get jealous and move there too. Sell parcels of land to these people, get rich, pay back your investors. And then who knows, maybe create a new civilization that redefines what it means to be human. Consider Elon Musk. Elon Musk is good at certain business-related skills. But that’s not the essence of Elon Musk. The essence of Elon Musk is that he’s a Visionary who can bring the Glorious Future. We know this because he’s a crazy person who says stuff that doesn’t really make sense. When Elon Musk buys a company, its value goes up - maybe partly because people expect Musk to make good business decisions, but also partly because now the company is part of Musk’s Glorious Future, and therefore exciting. Employees, customers, and investors all get excited and reinforce each other in a virtuous circle. And although Musk might not always accomplish the exact Glorious Future future he promises, his companies do well and make money, because having motivated employees, star-struck customers, and willing investors is a great combination. Elon Musk has an aura of destiny because he succeeded at his first several companies. Dryden Brown of Praxis Society, lacking a Paypal Mafia to join, is trying to hack together an aura of destiny out of raves and angel-related videos. So far it seems to be going pretty okay. Prospera Sues Honduras For 2/3 Of Its National Budget To refresh: in the mid-2010s Honduras’ pro-market government created ZEDEs - businesses that bought up unoccupied land could start their own districts with their own preferred legal system in exchange for bringing in investment. The government knew businesses wouldn’t invest long-term if the next government could just cancel the agreement and seize all of their stuff, so they fortified the law with as much protection as possible. It would take a long constitutional amendment process to repeal, and ZEDE investors might be able to object to any changes under international investment treaties. Lured by these protections, three companies started ZEDEs, including a big high-profile one called Prospera. In early 2022, a socialist government took power, and started trying their best to destroy the ZEDEs. They started the constitutional amendment process (they seem to think they’ve finished it, but a Prospera rep I talked to believe they have to hold another vote by the end of this year, something I see no signs of them doing) and have been harassing and stonewalling existing ZEDEs. One ZEDE, Orquidea, shut down immediately. A second, Ciudad Morazan, seems to still be operating but I cannot figure out exactly how or why. Prospera has been most vocal in its opposition, and sued Honduras for $11 billion in the World Bank’s court of investment arbitration. (Prospera has only spent about $100 million so far, so it’s unclear why they deserve 100x that in penalties. Also $11 billion is “two-thirds of the 2022 Honduran national budget”, and forcing Honduras to pay it would cause national catastrophe. This might be more of a highball offer than a number they actually expect to get.) This article (poorly translated from Spanish, sorry) has the most information. It suggests Honduras believes they signed onto the investment treaties “with reservations”, ie conditional on being allowed to do things like shut down ZEDEs, and that therefore the suit is meaningless and they will not defend themselves. Although the magazine is on the government’s side of the overall issue, it suggests they didn’t actually sign on with reservations, that the country’s lawyers might just have no idea what they’re talking about, and that their bold strategy of refusing to defend themselves will not pay off. In contrast, Prospera has prestigious lawyers specializing in exactly this area, so things aren’t looking good for the government. Honduras seems to recognize this and is threatening to withdraw from ICSID, the international investment treaty that governs such disputes. This wouldn’t be completely unprecedented - Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have also done this. But ICSID rules say that withdrawing from ICSID, while it might help prevent future cases against you, doesn’t cancel existing cases, and wouldn’t protect Honduras against Prospera’s claim. (How would ICSID collect against Honduras if they lost? I don’t know, but I assume the global financial order has some way to make your life worse if you defy it.) I think everyone is hoping Honduras realizes that cancelling a flourishing economic zone that’s bringing lots of investment into the country at no cost to them - just isn’t worth taking an $11 billion loss, cancelling international treaties, and scaring off future investment. But who knows how these people think? In other Prospera news: Prospera announces another $36 million in recent investment, which I take as evidence that VCs with good lawyers and research departments also think its case is very strong.

Inline links: this article, 2, saying, 3, Irvine, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gDuy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F99d925cd-4a30-4d27-87fd-9cf75154b881_1596x168.png, Praxis, manifesto, parties, www.terrifyingangel.com, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SyT0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faff4d7cb-112f-4ba7-a999-3cf6d7332077_1536x2048.jpeg, the Praxis founder’s Twitter account, raised $4 million in a seed round, raised another $15 million in a Series A round, recently signed on David Weinreb, To refresh:, harassing and stonewalling, sued Honduras for $11 billion, This article, threatening to withdraw from ICSID, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have also done this, announces another $36 million in recent investment

the precipice1 mentions across 1 issues

the precipice is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 23, 2022 and August 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Well-known ideas like "the precipice"". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abolitionist literature, AI.

Reference entry: the precipice
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 23, 2022
Last seen: August 23, 2022

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Book Review: What We Owe The Future August 23, 2022

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
abolitionist literature 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI Alignment 1 shared issues
AI risk 1 shared issues

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Book Review: What We Owe The Future

August 23, 2022 · Original source

The same argument applies to other long-termist priorities, like biosecurity and nuclear weapons. Well-known ideas like "the hinge of history", "the most important century" and "the precipice" all point to the idea that existential risk is concentrated in the relatively near future - probably before 2100.

the Prophets1 mentions across 1 issues

the Prophets is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 30, 2021 and April 30, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "one thing we can take from the Prophets"; "The Prophets may have a less than stellar track record of questioning new technologies". It most often appears alongside AI, AI research, Air.

Reference entry: the Prophets
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 30, 2021
Last seen: April 30, 2021

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Your Book Review: The Wizard And The Prophet April 30, 2021

AI 1 shared issues
AI research 1 shared issues
Air 1 shared issues
Air 1 shared issues
Alice Waters 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Wizard And The Prophet

April 30, 2021 · Original source

Cult of personality aside, though, Vogt’s arguments may resonate with the utilitarians who believe that average utility matters more than total, so a world with fewer beings who lead happier lives is preferable to a world of unchecked growth that leads to worse outcomes for many individuals, human or dovekie. A version of this strain of thought is a perennial enough question to warrant its own FAQ item on the GiveWell blog. I think the revealed preference of most rationality/EA-aligned folks like me and probably many readers of this blog (as evidenced by the kinds of charitable causes we give to, like GiveWell) is more closely aligned with Borlaug and the Wizards: that it is important and possible to increase both average and total utility, both number of lives and quality of life. But even though it’s hard to imagine people today willingly deciding to stop reproducing above replacement or consuming goods for the sake of the mosquitos and dovekies (no matter how cute they are), it’s not unreasonable to think that as a normative matter, that world may in fact be a better one. The original Prophet solution to attaining that world by actively decreasing human populations may be less en vogue today what with eugenics and Malthusianism not exactly welcome topics in polite company, but it’s been replaced by other fears of overreaching capacity of one kind or another, be it oil, water, or greenhouse gases, and a desire to curb growth in these spheres and focus on conservation. Might there be some validity to the Prophets’ concerns that we can’t have it all (both average and total utility increases), and that we’re growing too quickly for our planet and its resources to keep up with us?

Inline links: warrant its own FAQ item on the GiveWell blog, cute they are

In "Earth," Mann focuses on the problem of how to continue to scale food production to meet the needs of an exponentially growing population. The Wizards already have quite a few impressive wins under their belt: in addition to Borlaug’s wheat, rice, and maize, there’s also creating synthetic fertilizer, which reduced the world’s reliance on natural but limited stocks of nitrogen-rich resources (like guano, which Vogt was tasked with studying in Peru before synthetic fertilizer became the cheap and obvious solution). For the future, the Wizards look to upgrade staple food crops to C4 photosynthesis (a more efficient way for plants to distinguish between hydrogen and carbon dioxide, requiring less water and nitrogen for the same yield). At the time Mann was writing The Wizard and the Prophet, C4 was still considered a whacky moonshot, but more recently it’s looking like we’re getting closer to making it happen. The Prophets, meanwhile, decry genetically modifying food as an abomination (despite, or maybe because of, the unyielding reassurance from scientists that it’s perfectly safe), insist that synthetic fertilizer used in industrial farming irreparably damages soil (the evidence for this claim seems mixed, though what most researchers appear to agree on is that the higher per-acre yield of synthetic fertilizer means less land needed for farming and thus less overall harm to the environment) and propose to feed the world with... local, organic farming? Years ago, I remember watching the first season of "America’s Next Top Model," at the time the most interesting study of class divides in America. One of the contestants was a smart upper-class medical student. The sickest shade one of the other contestants, a Bible-thumping blue-collar Southern girl, thought to throw at her was asking what kind of pizza she liked and following it up with a sneering "... organic?" I think that, more than reams of evidence that Alice Waters style organic proselytizing does little to solve world hunger, pretty well sums up the rebuttal to this Prophet argument. Anti-GMO scaremongering aside, humanity seems pretty content to live off industrial globalized agriculture if it means pizza isn’t $50 a pop and only available to a rarefied population of coastal elites.

Inline links: C4 photosynthesis, we’re getting closer to making it happen, unyielding reassurance from scientists that it’s perfectly safe, higher per-acre yield of synthetic fertilizer means less land needed for farming and thus less overall harm to the environment, reams of evidence that Alice Waters style organic proselytizing does little to solve world hunger

In "Water," again, the Wizards have a solid track record. The Wizardly California State Water Project transformed a desert into the most productive farmland and state in the nation; the National Water Carrier Project of Israel-Palestine made life in the Fertile Crescent possible for millions of Jewish refugees. Desalination projects (expensive, but with nearly bottomless potential, given how huge our oceans are) have de-escalated the fight for shrinking groundwater resources in California and the Middle East. In this arena, the Prophets have been a little more successful in offering alternative conservation-oriented solutions that have stuck: storm and wastewater reclamation, drip irrigation, and behavioral change campaigns to encourage more frugal water usage that have seeped (pun intended) so deeply into the public consciousness that running the tap while brushing your teeth feels as illicit as lighting up a cigarette. All of these measures do little, though, to solve the fundamental underlying problem of massive urban growth in water-scarce areas like the American Sunbelt; if anything, growing water efficiency among consumers exacerbates the problem by shrinking utility profits and forcing them to either cut back on much-needed infrastructure repair and service improvement or raise water costs. Conservation and reclamation can only do so much; they can’t provide water to the exploding populations of Arizona or Sub-Saharan Africa.

Inline links: California State Water Project, National Water Carrier Project, shrinking utility profits and forcing them to either cut back on much-needed infrastructure repair and service improvement or raise water costs

the Purge1 mentions across 1 issues

the Purge is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 12, 2022 and October 12, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”". It most often appears alongside 538 deluxe model, @rcafdm, Andres.

Reference entry: the Purge
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 12, 2022
Last seen: October 12, 2022

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Links For October October 12, 2022

538 deluxe model 1 shared issues
@rcafdm 1 shared issues
Andres 1 shared issues
Benito Mussolini 1 shared issues
Biden 1 shared issues

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October 12, 2022 · Original source

23: Did you know: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”.

Inline links: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap

The Rationalists1 mentions across 1 issues

The Rationalists is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 04, 2024 and December 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Rationalists, who thought that any architecture created while the bourgeois class existed was inherently bourgeois". It most often appears alongside 3D printing, Abercrombie & Fitch, AI.

Reference entry: The Rationalists
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 04, 2024
Last seen: December 04, 2024

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Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House December 04, 2024

3D printing 1 shared issues
Abercrombie & Fitch 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
Aldo Rossi 1 shared issues
Alessandro Menini 1 shared issues

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December 04, 2024 · Original source

The Rationalists, who thought that any architecture created while the bourgeois class existed was inherently bourgeois, and therefore architecture had to hearken back to forms that existed before the rise of capitalism in the 1700s - but strip them of ornamentation to the point that they looked exactly like modern buildings to the untrained eye. They were famous for calling every other style of architecture “immoral”:

The Real1 mentions across 1 issues

The Real is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as ""what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real?"". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: The Real
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: July 22, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

2020 election 1 shared issues
2022 book review contest 1 shared issues
2122 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

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July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

That’s what makes the spectacle so terrifying. No matter how hard we try to get it right, rationality often isn’t enough. You can’t identify a forgery if you don’t have The Real to compare it to.

The Rent Is Too Damn High1 mentions across 1 issues

The Rent Is Too Damn High is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 16, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "And of course, The Rent Is Too Damn High"; "forcing land values up, and now The Rent Is Too Damn High". It most often appears alongside "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment, 1886.

Reference entry: The Rent Is Too Damn High
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 16, 2021
Last seen: April 16, 2021

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Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty April 16, 2021

"The Rent Is Too Damn High!" 1 shared issues
16th amendment 1 shared issues
1886 1 shared issues
1897 1 shared issues
Adam Perry 1 shared issues

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Inline links: source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!eyAX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9b8eea9-8bd6-4c81-8dd7-93f192a542f7_980x713.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!80d0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1452e66e-c8f4-4174-92f7-31829f8cbd39_958x696.png, absolutely banana pants insane, Number of Homeless Children in U.S. At All-Time High; California Among Worst States, Labor Theory of Value, marginal revolution, blog, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!szbX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F02e3f9db-5fe4-4a1b-bd19-5a13bac84aa1_500x500.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cDFG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F28ef979e-83da-4d1b-8d81-5f08fd6103a5_516x600.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PVE6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F68f4f7f0-2016-4fe9-9996-879a3c92db74_516x600.png, Protection or Free Trade, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aeD5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F348d4d74-8c98-42e6-b5f7-7bd79b30a816_960x611.png

April 16, 2021 · Original source

Henry George is variously known for leading an early movement that popularized Universal Basic Income, sporting a fancy beard while shouting "The Rent Is Too Damn High!" and inspiring a popular board game that was shamelessly ripped off and repackaged as Monopoly.

Inline links: inspiring a popular board game

And of course, The Rent Is Too Damn High: (source): (source): Although 2021 seems better than 1879 in absolute material terms, George's complaint still rings true: healthcare and higher education are increasingly unaffordable, inequality is as bad as it ever was, and The Rent Is Too Damn High. And even if all of these measures had improved as well, we still have to contend with a fundamental complaint: how can human civilization have piled up an amount of wealth best described as absolutely banana pants insane, and yetstill have poverty, oppression and cyclical recessions? Yes, greed, evil, and human nature will always be with us, but isn't it weird that we haven't eliminated these economic problems the same way we've eliminated Smallpox, Scurvy, and having to write your scathing polemics about Thomas Jefferson by candlelight with a goose feather? Giving the mic back to George, he closes the chapter with this haunting quote, first written 142 years ago: If there is less deep poverty in San Fran Francisco than in New York, is it not because San Francisco is yet behind new York in all that both cities are striving for? When San Francisco reaches the point where New York now is, who can doubt that there will also be ragged and barefooted children on her streets? I'll just leave this here: Number of Homeless Children in U.S. At All-Time High; California Among Worst States. I. Wages and Capital George insists sloppy terminology leads to sloppy thinking. Naturally, he spends an entire chapter beating words to death to correct this. The Meaning of the Terms Let's start with Wealth. The common usage, both then and now, is "anything with an exchange value." George doesn't like how this mixes dissimilar things. By George, what is wealth? Wealth is produced when Nature's bounty is touched by human labor resulting in a tangible product that is the object of human desire. Labor is required, but the amount and type doesn't matter - George offers the example of simply picking a berry off a bush as an act that transforms nature's gifts into human wealth. Note particularly that human desire is an important requirement of wealth; it doesn't matter how much work someone put into something, if it doesn't gratify human needs or desires in some way, it's not wealth. Speaking of human desire, let's talk about Value. Where does a thing's value come from? The prevailing theory of the day was the Labor Theory of Value which originated with Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which says that Labor is the source of value. The early formulations were a bit ambiguous, here's Smith in Wealth of Nations for instance: The value of any commodity ... is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. So... is a thing's value how much labor it takes to make the thing, or how much labor someone's willing to exchange for the thing? Nowadays Labor Theory of Value is most commonly associated with Marx. Marx picks a lane and says the value of something is tied to the amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. George goes the other way: It is never the amount of labor that has been exerted in bringing a thing into being that determines its value, but always the amount of labor that will be rendered in exchange for it. - Henry George, The Science of Political Economy, p. 253 In other words, "a thing's value is whatever someone is willing to pay for it." This is in line with the so-called marginal revolution (the movement, not the blog) and modern theories of value. Labor Labor is the exertion of human beings. It's possible to labor to no avail (try punching a concrete wall), but typically humans labor towards an end, such as gaining wealth. But whether or not we accomplish anything with our efforts, George calls them labor. Labor isn't just making things, by the way – it's also moving or exchanging them. Production Production is labor applied "to the production of wealth." You know, productively. This is all human exertion that isn't punching a concrete wall and rewards you for your efforts with something that fits the definition of wealth. Said wealth is the "product of labor." Wages whatever is received as the result or reward of exertion is "wages." No distinction here is made between blue-collar work and white-collar work – whether one is called "hourly pay" and the other is called "annual salary," George calls them both "wages." It doesn't matter whether you receive them from your boss, from customers, or from nature. If you do work and get something from it, you have received "wages." With those basics under our belt, let's circle back to Wealth: What are some examples of wealth? By George, Gold is wealth. Teddy bears are wealth. Tesla roadsters and candy canes and young adult vampire romance novels are wealth. The same goes for fish you've caught, deer you've hunted, and cool looking rocks you've picked up on your morning walk. The value of these things may differ, but as long as they're tangible, originate in nature, someone ever did a lick of work to make or acquire them, and a human being somewhere desires them for any reason, they're wealth. It gets a little clearer when we ask what isn't wealth. And by George, Money isn't wealth. Articles of gold are wealth because they're tangible things that have been dug up, crafted, and fulfill certain human desires. But paper currency, digital currencies, and other things that aren't inherently valuable but merely represent value are not wealth (outside of putting their physical articles in coin collections or making paper airplanes, and so forth). Now don't get the man wrong, these things are certainly valuable. They're just not wealth. They are certificates that represent claims on wealth. For any computer programmers in the audience, money is a pointer to wealth. Likewise Stocks and Bonds and other financial instruments are not wealth. These are also just claims on wealth. A creditor's title to Debt isn't wealth, either, it's just a claim on the debtor's (typically future) wealth. And, writing as he was not long after the Civil War, George points out that Slaves are not wealth either but, represent "merely the power of one class to appropriate the earnings of another class." Wealth, thus defined, is the terminal "ground truth" bits of the economy, and all the financial layers on top are fancy IOUs that just encode various claims on it. George offers a thought experiment to test if something is wealth: if you produce a pile of gold, fish, or Lego bricks, you've clearly increased the amount of wealth in the world. But if you produce a giant pile of IOUs that just records who owns what and who owes what to whom, it doesn't matter how many of them you pile up or how long the chains of ownership get, you still haven't increased the amount of real wealth in the world. Again, this isn't saying the IOUs aren't valuable, they are. But they're only valuable because they ultimately point to real wealth. If you magically transported everyone over to a hypothetical Earth 2, carrying over all of Earth 1's money and financial instruments but none of Earth 1's tangible wealth, the value of all those IOUs would instantly evaporate. Now what about digital goods? Leaving things like Bitcoin aside for the moment, let's consider the case of a digital image file: By George, this is wealth. Digital though it may be, it's physically encoded on a storage device somewhere, and is thus tangible (it's not a pure abstract concept flitting about in Platonic heaven) and has its origins in nature. Human exertion built the computer that encodes it, and clicking the button that saves it to disk or displays it on your screen is labor. Finally, it directly satisfies human desires (mine, at the very least). It's value may be negligible, but it's wealth. By contrast, the digital bit sitting in some database that says I own a particular eBook or mp3 is just a digital IOU – a claim on the wealth that are the physical bits on my local storage device or remote server that digitally encodes the files. The fact that digital files don't seem particularly physical, and that they can be trivially and endlessly copied, doesn't mean that Henry George, magically transported to today, wouldn't regard them as wealth. Okay, so is there anything else that's not wealth? By George, Bitcoin isn't wealth, in case you were wondering. It's just a (very fancy) financial instrument, a digital claim on wealth. And that goes for most crypto assets – a token on some blockchain that says I own a painting by Banksy is just another IOU, regardless of the technical sophistication of its distributed trustless ledger. What about intellectual property? Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are all different forms of Monopoly – the exclusive, government-granted legal right to do a particular thing (publish a certain book, manufacture a certain product, use a certain name in business, etc). The exclusive right to do or produce a thing, valuable as it may be, is not the thing itself. By George, Monopoly is not wealth. But there is something big that is wealth – the C-word. Capital. By George, Capital is "wealth devoted to procuring more wealth", and it's the next thing he insists everyone is hopelessly confused about. He quotes Adam Smith, agreeing with him thus far: That part of a man's stock which he expects to afford him revenue is called his capital. ...and also gives us a short etymology lesson on the origin of the term: The word capital, as philologists trace it, comes down to us from a time when wealth was estimated in cattle, and a man's income depended upon the number of head he could keep for their increase. ("Per capita" being the Latin for "by head") By George, all capital is wealth, but not all wealth is capital. George notes capital is often described as being "stored up labor", and endorses this view – but what it really means, is capital is stored up production. It's not literally the labor that's stored up but the wealth generated by it, set aside and then dedicated to the purpose of getting more wealth. George insists that it is the owner's intention that transforms wealth into capital. If you buy an old factory to throw parties in for your hipster friends, it's just wealth. But the minute you decide to put it to work to make something useful (or start charging your hipster friends a cover charge at the door), it becomes capital. George therefore further insists that a laborer's daily bread and the clothes on their back do not count as capital, because a person has to eat and wear clothes whether they work or not. The laborer's tools (and arguably their steel-toed work boots) can however be counted as capital, because their purpose is to assist the laborer in getting more wealth by working for wages, and the laborer wouldn't acquire, use, and maintain those things otherwise. George has more exclusions: We must exclude from the category of capital everything that may be included either as land or labor. Human exertion (labor) by itself can never be capital. The products of human labor become capital when they are stored up and set to the purpose of getting more wealth. To muddle this distinction defeats the point of having separate terms for those things at all, and prevents us from reasoning meaningfully about how they relate to one another. Labor is not capital, and neither is labor by itself wealth, it produces wealth – and if it ain't wealth, it ain't capital. And that brings us to land. Land, land, land. By George, land is not wealth. And it's definitely not capital. The unique specialness of land is George's entire schtick and the very core of his philosophy. The term land embraces, in short, all natural materials, forces, and opportunities That means that a field or a meadow is "land", as is a mountain. But so are the fish in the sea, the clouds in the sky, veins of gold in the earth's crust, and the oil deep under ground. These things aren't yet wealth – not until human beings both a) desire them and b) touch them with labor. So... land is not wealth. But... how come? I mean, look: land is tangible, it "comes from nature", humans are always productively applying their labor to it, and it certainly seems capable of gratifying human desires. George sees this reasoning as understandable, but insists it's the root mistake that leads other political economists astray – because for George, land just is nature itself. Come again? Land is the ultimate source of all wealth, but it's most useful to think of it as a generator, acompletely separate entity from the wealth that human labor and desire draws from it. Players of Magic: the Gathering and Settlers of Catan should already have a solid grasp of this distinction: In modern times, George would grant electromagnetic spectrum and orbital real estate for satellites the same status of "land" that already applies to farmland and terrestrial real estate. We don't even need to speculate about whether he'd attach this status to sunlight because he straight-up predicted solar power: Even the lack of rain which makes some parts of the globe useless to man, may, if invention ever succeeds in directly utilizing the power of the sun's rays, be found to be especially advantageous for certain parts of production. (That's from Protection or Free Trade, footnote 19) The important thing to grasp about land is that it comes before everything humans do or make, and is itself a thing no human can make. Okay, smarty-pants, what about the Netherlands? They've been making land for centuries! Well, land in the Georgist sense doesn't refer simply to "dry land", but also the sea bed, the oceans, and the skies above. The "new land" in the Netherlands counts as an improvement to land that already existed. The seabed was always there, but by filling it in so you can walk around on it, now it's more useful to us (George has a lot to say about improvements to land, which we'll get to later). Okay, what is land not? nothing that is freely supplied by nature can be properly classed as capital By George, land is not wealth. And since it's not wealth, it's not capital. Okay, we get it. Land is very special to Mr. George and we must never put it in the same category as wealth, labor, capital, wages, production, money, or anything else. Why exactly is this so damn important? Well, by George, if you treat land the same way you would a bar of pig iron, an hour of work, or a dollar bill, before you know it you'll get poverty paradoxically advancing alongside progress, inexplicable bouts of industrial depression, literal genocides and holocausts (he's dead serious about this), and The Rent Being Too Damn High. With terminology now firmly established, George moves on to the relationship between wages and capital. 3-for-1 special on Wages, Capital, and Labor I'm condensing three chapters here because they all deal with the same basic thing. The question George wants to answer is: Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living? The conventional wisdom of George's time is that wages are governed by a fixed ratio between the number of laborers and the amount of capital devoted to their employment, because "the increase in the number of laborers tends naturally to follow and overtake any increase in capital." So it doesn't matter how much capital you throw at employing workers, it'll just attract even more workers splitting it up, so although wages might temporarily wiggle a bit in the long term they'll always settle back to a "natural" minimum. (As we'll see in the next section, this argument stems from Malthusianism). George spends some time methodically poking holes in the theory (it's predictions don't line up with the facts he observes), and then sets out to prove his replacement theory (emphases mine): wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are in reality drawn from the product of the labor for which they are paid. He pulls a G.K. Chesterton to make his point: During the time [the laborer] is earning the wages he is advancing capital to his employer, but at no time, unless wages are paid before work is done, is the employer advancing capital to him. He starts by identifying the source of confusion: Because wages are generally paid in money, and in many of the operations of production are paid before the product is fully completed, or can be utilized, it is inferred that wages are drawn from pre-existing capital I mean, the old theory seems sensible: the employer has capital and uses it to pay wages. But however you slice it, capital's investment gets paid back by production when it takes its cut, so does it even make a difference to talk about where wages are "drawn" from? Value goes out, value comes in, isn't it all a wash? By George, it isn't: in the old theory, because capital "must come first", it follows that "industry is limited by capital - that capital must be accumulated before labor is employed", which leads to a reductio ad absurdum – We are told that capital is stored-up or accumulated labor – "that part of wealth which is saved to assist future production." If we substitute for the word "capital" this definition of the word, the proposition carries its own refutation, for that labor cannot be employed until the results of labor are saved becomes too absurd for discussion. George anticipates the following rejoinder – Well, when we say 'labor is paid out of capital' we don't mean it as an absolute statement for all stages of human development (or else we have a chicken-and-the-egg problem and civilization could never have begun), we just mean it applies to, say, every civilization that's left the stone age. George will have none of it and spends three entire chapters relentlessly beating to death the idea that wages are drawn from capital instead of from production. He starts with the simple case where wages are paid in the form of direct, concrete wealth, then moves on to the more complex case where people are paid in money and other instruments. Laboring for wages: Imagine a fishing village where nobody cooperates – each person digs their own bait and catches their own fish. Then they discover labor specialization and realize they can catch more fish together if one specializes in digging and the other in catching. So the digger digs, the catcher catches, and they share the fish. The digger really contributes as much to the catch as the one who physically pulls the fish off the hook even though the digger never directly "caught" a fish, and the fish he gets for his work is directly paid out of his contribution to the total production. Later, our fisherfolk invent canoes, and one stays home making and repairing canoes. This increases the haul of the digger and catcher, and the canoe-er gets paid out of her contribution to the increased production. And so it goes as society continues to advance. The work the specialist puts in causes more fish to be caught, and that person's wages is drawn from the growing pile of fish. As George puts it: "Earning is making." George gives another example: If I take a piece of leather and work it up into a pair of shoes, the shoes are my wages – the reward of my exertion. Surely they are not drawn from capital – either my capital or any one else's capital – but are brought into existence by the labor of which they become the wages; and in obtaining this pair of shoes as the wages of my labor, capital is not even momentarily lessened one iota... As my labor goes on, value is steadily added, until, when my labor results in the finished shoes, I have my capital plus the difference in value between the material and the shoes. And another: If I hire a man to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, paying him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes that his labor secures, there can be no question that the source of the wages is the labor for which they are paid. George goes on to say it doesn't matter if you're paid in money or directly in wealth, because the money is a direct claim on the underlying wealth. It also doesn't matter if you get paid on commission. Imagine a whaling ship where each crewman gets paid a share out of whatever the ship catches. When the ship sails back into port with a hold full of whale oil and bone, the crew gets paid in money, the owner simultaneously adds to his capital oil and bone. The crew's money directly represents their share of the concrete wealth that is the oil and bone. The owner's capital hasn't decreased, and the workers drew their wages directly from the production. So let's get to the point, Mr. George – wages aren't drawn from capital but instead from production. Great, let's grant that – so what? George hammers away at this because thinking wages are drawn from capital leads to a false conclusion, namely that "labor cannot exert its productive power unless supplied by capital with maintenance." "Maintenance?" Well, workers need food and clothing and they get paid by their employers, so you could imagine capital as a limiting factor on labor. But by George, food and clothing isn't capital, it's just wealth, as we said before. And with regard to wages, the point is that the employer always gets "paid" first, because the second the laborer produces value, the employer's capital increases: As in the exchange of labor for wages the employer always gets the capital created by the labor before he pays out capital in the wages, at what point is his capital lessened even temporarily? Okay, but what if I'm just a terrible businessman and I pay somebody $500 an hour to smash Ming vases, then sell the fragments as aggregate to a construction crew for a few pennies a pound, all at a tremendous loss? Surely then the laborer's wages must be drawn from my capital, because there's not enough productive value generated by the labor to draw them from! George says okay, sure, but only because I'm an idiot and will soon be out of business: Yet, unless the new value created by the labor is less than the wages paid, which can be only an exceptional case, the capital which he had before in money he now has in goods – it has been changed in form, but not lessened. Fair enough, Mr. George, but what if I'm building some enormously expensive multi-decade project, like a dam or a nuclear power plant or a cathedral? The kind of thing we call a "capital-intensive" project? What do you have to say to that? George points out that as laborers labor, they progressively add value to whatever they're producing. Take the case of a shipwright building ships for an employer – even if the boss can't sell a half-finished ship, it still holds value (for one, it costs less to finish a half-finished ship then no ship at all). And with every stroke of the laborer's work, the employer who owns the shipyard gets an incremental increase in his stock of capital. It is not the last blow, any more than the first blow, that creates the value of the finished product – the creation of value is continuous, it immediately results from the exertion of labor. A pedant would point out that the "last hit" that finishes the product which makes it ready for market adds disproportionate value, but George's point is just to establish that value is continuously created, and doesn't magically come into being allat once right at the end. George further points out that if you look at things like agriculture you'll see the market directly acknowledging his theory: As a plowed field will bring more than an unplowed field, or a field that has been sown more than one merely plowed... It is tangible in the case of orchards and vineyards which, though not yet in bearing, bring prices proportionate to their age. George freely admits that capital can be required for certain kinds of work, but he disagrees with what its purpose is. It's not a pool that wages get paid out of. He goes on for another chapter on "The Maintenance of Laborers Not Drawn From Capital" but I think we can safely skip it and move on. TL:DR – George hammers to absolute death the idea that Laborers derive their own maintenance (food/shelter/clothing/etc) from their wages, with George insisting it is drawn from production and... you guessed it, not from capital. At least some of George's ideas will not seem so radical to modern readers (especially those already critical of capitalism or neoclassical economics), but it's important to understand that at the time almost everything he was saying was considered deeply radical and shocking. Capital was the fundamental driving force of the economy and labor was utterly dependent on it, and the Malthusian theory of overpopulation was the accepted explanation for why wages were low and workers were starving. Political Cartoon literally demonizing Henry George – Puck magazine Oct. 20, 1886 The Real Functions of Capital Okay, Mr. George. You've spent three whole chapters beating me over the head with what the functions of capital aren't. So what are the functions of capital? Capital "increases the power of labor to produce wealth." How? By enabling labor to apply itself more effectively (power tools go brrrr)

It brings out the latent potential of land How does Technological advance affect the distribution of wealth? Tech saves labor. It lets you accomplish the same thing with less work, or more things with the same amount of work. This leads to more wealth being produced. Now, what do you need to produce more things? Capital is nice to have, but the two things you must have are labor, and land. So wanting to make more things means more demand for land, because you can't labor without it. And when you reach the productive limit of the land available to you, you seek out more marginal lands, extending the margin of production. Demand for land goes up, land values go up, and soon enough The Rent Is Too Damn High. This means that as you introduce advanced machinery, the extra productivity they bring gets soaked up in rising land values, which gets extorted as rent. every labor-saving invention, whether it be a steam plow, a telegraph, an improved process of smelting ores, a perfecting printing press, or a sewing machine, has a tendency to increase rent. As a historical aside, I'll point out an extreme example of this: the cotton gin. This device massively decreased the amount of labor required to process cotton, which ironically increased the spread of slavery (slaves being laborers compelled to pay all their wages in rent). As the amount of slave labor required to process a unit of cotton went down, the margin of production was extended to more marginal lands. This caused the rents on the best lands to go up, further enriching slave-owning plantation landowners and increasing their influence. With the margin extended, demand shot up for land previously deemed unsuitable for cotton production, increasing the pressure to admit new states to the union as slave states. The gin's effect on entrenching slavery was so profound that it's commonly blamed for prolonging the institution and laying the foundations for the Civil War. How does improved "social fabric" affect the distribution of wealth? Improvements to the social fabric that just make society generically better do the same thing. If the people in a neighborhood are nicer and more helpful, provide a robust network of mutual aid, start a bowling league and book club, etc, land values rise. That's because it's more desirable and productive to live in a place where you can e.g. trust your neighbor to watch your kid for an hour while also teaching them to whittle. Land value goes up, and so does the rent. Now, let's talk about the expectations raised by material progress. What happens when people know something will increase in value? That's right, they buy it up in a speculative frenzy and hold on to it forever, further driving the price up. With conventional speculative instruments like beanie babies or tulips, the bubble eventually pops. But Land has unique properties that allow this vicious cycle to continue more or less indefinitely. What happens when a city is growing, technology is advancing, improvements are being made to land, and so forth? Land values go up. Sure, speculators can still lose their shirts if a city falls into decline, but this isn't nearly as hard to predict as volatility in penny stocks or what next year's hot Christmas toy will be. So as soon as there's a whiff of progress in a given area everyone starts HODLing land, but not to use it themselves. In fact speculators often keep it out of use, because this forces people to use less valuable land instead, pushing the margin of production down even further, forcing land values up, and now The Rent Is Too Damn High. Georgist pundit geoliberal explains the mindset of a speculator: The only thing investors actually maximize is risk adjusted rate of return. When you know rents will increase, your best return comes from buying extra land, not improving the land you have Illustration courtesy of geoliberal This is how it's possible to have urban blight and slums in areas with extremely high land values. Even if there's a temporary dip in prices, speculators know that if they just keep HODLing the general trend – absent a local collapse – is that land value always goes up. Here's George: Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city—in ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you, "No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." ...without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings will be an almshouse. I don't think it's a coincidence that real estate is one of the oldest investments on Earth and the principal concern of basically every war ever. V. The Problem Solved We had two questions at the beginning of this book: why are there industrial depressions, and why poverty seems to advance alongside progress. You guess it, it's all because of land and rent. By George, industrial depressions are caused by land speculation Speculation has a tendency to press the margin of production down until it's just past its limit, forcing labor and capital to accept returns so small that it actually hinders production or ceases altogether. The saving grace is that as long as the population is growing and/or technology is improving, productivity will go up, and production will start again. But soon enough the land values go up. This drives speculators bidding up the price of land, anticipating future even higher land values, which stresses the productive margin again. So you get a cycle – productivity rises, economy booms, land values rise, production stagnates or stops. No matter how complicated or sophisticated the economy gets with layer upon layer of financialization and abstraction, when you unravel it all George says this is the ultimate cause. Periods of industrial activity always culminate in a speculative advance of land values, followed by symptoms of checked production This is how you get the baffling situation where able hands are eager and willing to work, capital is ready to employ them, natural materials are abundant, and yet the laborers are idle and the factories stand empty. So that's it for industrial depressions. What about the other paradox of poverty advancing alongside progress? By George, poverty advances alongside progress because of rent The reason why, in spite of increase of productive power, wages constantly tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living, is that, with increase in productive power, rent tends to even greater increase, thus producing a constant tendency to the forcing down of wages. George backs this up with several pages of specific regional figures demonstrating how land values have continued to explode all over the world. By George, on average and in the long run, no amount of hard work from labor, no force multiplication from capital, no increased gain from co-operation and specialization, no labor-saving invention or increase in personal efficiency, work ethic, or morals, can escape the long reach of rent. In short, increased power of production has everywhere added to the value of land; nowhere has it added to the value of labor; George notes that the mass die-off of the Black Death in England in the 1300's significantly reduced the productivity of the individual laborer, and yet wages went up. That's because the decreased population also caused a massive drop in competition for land, in turn causing rents to plummet. (For more detail on this read about the Peasants' revolt, also known as Wat Tyler's rebellion). George says the opposite happened during the reign of Henry VIII, who seized the lands of the church and those held in common by the peasants, and handed them out to newly minted aristocrats, which was followed by suppressed wages. In the reign of Henry VII., half a bushel of wheat would purchase but little more than a day's common labor, but in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat would purchase three day's common labor. He sums it all up like this: Material progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land; it can but add to the power of producing wealth from land; and hence, when land is monopolized, it might go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving the conditions of those who have but their labor. So there's our answer: the monkey wrench that causes the boom-bust cycle of industrial depressions is rent, and even though we have more than enough material wealth to provide for everybody's needs, rent prevents us from distributing it fairly and equitably. Volume II Okay, The Rent Is Too Damn High, and now we finally know why. What are we going to do about it? Insufficiencies of Remedies Currently Advocated George goes down the list of everything we've already tried and why it hasn't worked (or has worked, but less well than we hoped), which you can read about in Appendix C (there's a link that returns here at the end): Appendix C: The Insufficiency of Remedies Currently Advocated The Remedy George says the solution is to make land common property. He doesn't want to confiscate land, or force everyone to live on some giant hippie commune. He proposes instead to let everyone continue to "own" land exactly as they do now, but we should impose a special tax to neutralize the perverse incentives of land rent. He anticipates a lot of pushback on this, and promises that his remedy: Is just

Inline links: cotton gin, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xCOH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0cd4ff49-9463-4c13-8cc5-881ab221c4b6_375x523.png, beanie babies, tulips, next year's hot Christmas toy will be., https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uOum!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b57ab87-8422-437f-b6c4-f3ccdd223624_1022x597.png, Peasants' revolt, Appendix C: The Insufficiency of Remedies Currently Advocated

The Rent Was Too Damn High1 mentions across 1 issues

The Rent Was Too Damn High is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 16, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "By George, because The Rent Was Too Damn High!". It most often appears alongside "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment, 1886.

Reference entry: The Rent Was Too Damn High
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 16, 2021
Last seen: April 16, 2021

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Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty April 16, 2021

"The Rent Is Too Damn High!" 1 shared issues
16th amendment 1 shared issues
1886 1 shared issues
1897 1 shared issues
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April 16, 2021 · Original source

Towards a Truly Free Market by John Medaille Appendices These are optional elaborations on sections I glossed over because the Book Review Is Too Damn Long. Appendix A: George Dunks on Malthusianism Malthusianism in George's time was wildly popular, and often invoked by the ascendant proponents of Social Darwinism who took Charles Darwin's theory of "survival of the fittest" and recast it as a moral justification for the Just World Hypothesis. Essentially, those that are doing well do so because they are more "fit", and those that are less "fit" tend to perish, and furthermore, this brutal process will actively "improve" the human race. This philosophy was the energizing intellectual force behind both the Eugenics movement and Nazi Germany. George clearly hates everything about this philosophy but attempts to steel-man it anyways: The Malthusian doctrine, as at present held, may be thus stated in its strongest and least objectionable form: That population, constantly tending to increase, must, when unrestrained, ultimately press against the limits of subsistence, not as against a fixed, but as against an elastic barrier, which makes the procurement of subsistence progressively more and more difficult. And thus, wherever reproduction has had time to assert its power, and is unchecked by prudence, there must exist that degree of want which will keep population within the bounds of subsistence. The weak form of Malthusianism is "people are as dumb as deer and will breed endlessly until there's not enough food and everyone starves to death." The strong form of Malthusianism is, "of course people aren't mindless deer charging into a brick wall, but there is a firm upper limit that can only give so much before nature will cull the herd without mercy." And by George, we can't just dismiss the strong form out of hand: "what seems clearer than that there are too many people?" However, George is suspicious of how easily the Malthusian theory justifies contemporary economic assumptions and assuages the moral sensibilities of the establishment: The great cause of the triumph of this theory is that, instead of menacing any vested right or antagonizing any powerful interest, it is eminently soothing and reassuring to the classes who, wielding the power of wealth, largely dominate thought... It furnishes a philosophy by which Dives as he feasts can shut out the image of Lazarus who faints with hunger at his door; He points out how it lets self-styled "Good Christian Men" reframe their own greed and indifference as just plain good sense: In this view, he who in the midst of want has accumulated wealth, has but fenced in a little oasis from the driving sand which else would have overwhelmed it. He has gained for himself, but has hurt nobody. And even if the rich were literally to obey the injunctions of Christ and divide their wealth among the poor, nothing would be gained. (Aside: I've heard this exact defense offered by many of my fellow Christians) Okay, George makes a strong moral case. But a moral case isn't enough, and I think this is where many activists of all political stripes go wrong. If you attack the premises of an idea as "dangerous" because it could lead to bad consequences, you're still stuck with a real problem if the premises that animate that "dangerous" idea turn out to be actually true. If they're true we're stuck with them, and unless your competing policy admits to the same grim facts, your opponent will just dismiss your entire argument and more importantly, so will their audience. But if the premises aren't true, then the dangerous and scary policy prescription – say, "let the Irish starve to death" – is both evil and unnecessary. History has shown that many officials will shrug their shoulders at "evil" policies so long as they believe them to be "necessary." Cool, we've established that Malthusianism is bad. Now let's establish that it's wrong. A Brief Interlude from the Future From where we're sitting in 2021, we don't even need George to refute Malthusianism, history has done that for us. Instead of increasing at an exponential rate, fertility rates are crashing all over the world. Not in one country, but in virtually every country, and in many the birth rate is already below replacement. Fertility rates have been crashing so hard that some are calling it a "Global Fertility Crisis." The absolute size of the human population is still growing, but this is just due to inertia; the human population will peak somewhere between 9 and 10 billion in the 2060's, and then decline from there. The two main things Malthus got wrong were failing to anticipate 1) advances in food production technology like the Green Revolution, and 2) that humans can control their own fertility rates. George's strongest arguments against Malthusianism strike directly at the provably false claims of its 19th century proponents and provide some extremely salient applications of George's philosophy. George takes up the cause of India, China, and Ireland, which were often cited as examples of "overpopulated" countries where many have starved and been forced to emigrate. Per the Malthusians, this is the fault of too many of these poor, ignorant, and deficient people crammed together in too small a space. By George, it can't be the fault of population density – in his time, Germany, Belgium, England, Netherlands and Italy all have higher population densities than India, China, and Ireland, and could therefore support higher populations with the right conditions. And there's certainly nothing wrong with the people themselves: This arises from no innate deficiency in the people, for the Hindoo, as comparative philology has shown, is of our own blood, and China possessed a high degree of civilization and the rudiments of the most important modern inventions when our ancestors were wandering savages. Instead: It arises from the form which the social organization has in both countries taken, which has shackled productive power and robbed industry of its reward. India is poor not because it has too many Indians, but because it is oppressed by too many Englishmen: The millions of India have bowed their necks beneath the yokes of many conquerors, but worse of all is the steady grinding weight of English domination... India now is like a great estate owned by an absentee and alien landlord George gives us lots of details about the plight of India, China, and Ireland, but for the sake of brevity I'm just going to present the heartbreaking case of the Great Irish Potato Famine and let it stand in for all three. To sum up, from 1845 to 1852 there was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland. About one million people died, and another million fled the country. The entire population dropped by about 25%: The extreme poverty of the peasantry and the low rate of wages there prevailing, the Irish famine, and Irish emigration, are constantly referred to as a demonstration of the Malthusian theory worked out under the eyes of the civilized world. Many prominent intellectuals of the day looked at the crisis, shook their heads, and said – what do you expect when those ignorant Irish Catholics breed like rabbits and strain Ireland's carrying capacity to its limit? It's just natural selection at work! George will have none of it: The laborer was just as effectually stripped by as merciless a horde of landlords, among whom the soil had been divided as their absolute possession, regardless of any rights of those who lived upon it. Okay, they had to pay some rent, so what? Didn't they bring their suffering on themselves? Why, the intellectuals ask, didn't the Irish work harder, why did they not improve their local economy and agricultural base? And most importantly, why did they depend on a single monoculture crop (the potato) if a single blight could knock out their entire food supply? By George, because The Rent Was Too Damn High! tenants... even if the rack-rents which they were forced to pay had permitted them, did not dare to make improvements which would have been but the signal for an increase of rent. Labor was thus applied in the most inefficient and wasteful manner. (emphases mine) The Irish were really trapped. Working harder to improve the farmland to increase its yield could actually leave them worse off. Any increase in their land's productivity goes to the landlord in the form of increased rents. But even this structural impoverishment of the land wasn't sufficient to cause the famine. Ireland still produced enough food to feed its people: For when her population was at its highest, Ireland was a food-exporting country. Even during the famine, grain and meat and butter and cheese were carted for exportation along roads lined with the starving and past trenches in which the dead were piled. People were literally starving and dying, but because of the structure of land ownership they couldn't even pay their rent, let alone purchase the food grown from their own lands and raised with their own hands. Since the local population couldn't afford it, the (English) landlords sold it abroad to the highest bidder. It went not as an exchange, but as a tribute – to pay the rent of absentee landlords; a levy wrung from producers by those who in no wise contributed to production... they lived on the potato, because rack-rents stripped everything else from them. The Rent Is Too Damn High, and it's not because the designated underclass of the day have too many babies or are too uneducated, too ignorant, too religious, too lazy, or too foreign. George gets really mad about this, and calls out John Stuart Mill and Henry Thomas Buckle by name for lending credence to the Malthusian explanation of Ireland's suffering. I know of nothing better calculated to make the blood boil than the cold accounts of the grasping, grinding tyranny to which the Irish people have been subjected, and to which, and not to any inability of the land to support its population, Irish pauperism and Irish famine are to be attributed; and were it not for the enervating effect which the history of the world proves to be everywhere the result of abject poverty, it would be difficult to resist something like a feeling of contempt for a race who, stung by such wrongs, have only occasionally murdered a landlord! Appendix B: George dunks on the Conventional Laws of Distribution Conventional Law 1: Wages aredetermined by the ratio between capital devoted to the payment & subsistence of labor, divided up by the number of laborers. Conventional Law 2: Rent is determined by something called the "margin of production," AKA the "margin of cultivation." What's that? Let L be some land. Let W be the worst land available. Let A = the produce L makes. Let B = the produce you get applying the same amount of labor and capital to W. The Rent of L is given by A - B. The margin of production/cultivation is the difference between how much you can produce from a particular piece of land compared to the least productive alternative. This is the only conventional law of distribution that George accepts as correct. Conventional Law 3: Interest is the ratio between capital demanded by borrowers and supplied by lenders, falling as wages rise and vice versa. To quote Mill, interest is determined "by the cost of labor to the capitalist." The problem with these three laws is if Land, Labor, and Capital are the only three factors of production, and each gets its own return, than the three returns should balance. In other words: Return to Production = Rent + Wages + Interest If your three returns sum to more or less than 100% of the return to production, something's off, and George says the old laws don't add up – the only one of these he accepts is the law of rent. What's wrong with the other two? First we've got to stop using "profits" to mean a return to capital. If we look into a profit stream, we see more than one kind of thing. Conventional economists list the following: Wages of "superintendence"

Inline links: Towards a Truly Free Market, Social Darwinism, Just World Hypothesis, Eugenics, so long as they believe them to be "necessary.", fertility rates are crashing all over the world, Global Fertility Crisis, human population will peak, Green Revolution, Great Irish Potato Famine

the Resistance1 mentions across 1 issues

the Resistance is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 10, 2023 and March 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Welcome . . . to . . . the . . . Resistance???". It most often appears alongside Alex, Alex Nowratesh, Aphantasia.

Reference entry: the Resistance
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Links For March 2023

March 10, 2023 · Original source

Welcome . . . to . . . the . . . Resistance???

the rider1 mentions across 1 issues

the rider is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2025 and May 30, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”". It most often appears alongside 3Blue1Brown, Aella, Alasdair MacIntyre.

Reference entry: the rider
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Bayes For Everyone May 30, 2025

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Some Practical Considerations Before Descending Into An Orgy Of Vengeance

May 30, 2025 · Original source

If this sounds like some sort of esoteric, speculative division, I’m doing a bad job explaining it. I mean to gesture at an idea that smart people have been pointing at for centuries. It’s at least similar to Nietzsche’s “Dionysian” vs. “Apollonian” modes, and to Claude Lévi-Strauss’s “the bricoleur” vs. “the engineer”, and to Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique of modernity. It’s near the heart of what Iain McGilchrist is describing in The Master and His Emissary. I think it’s the same thing as Erik Hoel’s “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” perspectives? It overlaps a lot with Kahneman’s “System 1” and “System 2” and with Jonathan Haidt’s “the elephant” and “the rider”. Heck, the lack of clarity on this divide is what makes Jordan Peterson’s dialogues with atheists so frustrating.

The Right1 mentions across 1 issues

The Right is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 23, 2024 and July 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Liberals invent a fictional entity called “The Right”". It most often appears alongside Afghanistan, Akhenaten, Al Franken.

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Some Practical Considerations Before Descending Into An Orgy Of Vengeance July 23, 2024

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July 23, 2024 · Original source

Moral of the story: despite everything, there’s apparently still a norm against assassinating politicians. But some on the right interpreted this as meaning something more. A sudden vibe shift, or impending Trump victory, has handed conservatives the levers of cancel culture! This sparked a right-wing blogosphere debate: should they be magnanimous in victory, or descend into an orgy of vengeance?

Sorry, I don’t know how this one got in there. The most complete response was by Postcards From Barsoom, which recommended Right Wing Cancel Squads. That there are so many of us who feel queasy at the thought of getting low-level proles fired from their jobs for sounding off online is a very good thing. It speaks to the fact that, unlike the enemy, we actually have a moral centre. Notably, this was never a serious debate on the left. Those few left-wing voices in the early teens who championed classical liberal principles of freedom of expression were summarily cancelled themselves, and are largely on our side now. In an ideal world, we would all give one another vastly greater latitude. No one would get mobbed, fired, forced to resign, kicked out of school, or ostracized from their professional networks for the non-crime of an unpopular opinion. No one would have to worry about people combing through decade-old social media posts looking for gotcha words that weren’t gotchas when they were written, but became crimespeak ex post facto. In the long run, it’s essential that we aim for permissive social mores regarding public and private discourse. This is a simple matter of technological context. Social media means that there is a more or less indelible record of your every public utterance; sure, you can try to scrub it, but that won’t stop screenshots; sure, you can try to cloak yourself behind a pseudonymous identity, but that just means you need to worry about doxxing. Cell phones mean that your private conversations can be recorded. We live in an electronic surveillance society now. We’re all watching one another, all the time, and short of a Carrington Event knocking us back into the iron age, there’s no realistic possibility of that changing. If we keep holding one another to impossible standards of public discourse, we will live in a totalitarian hell; that is, indeed, precisely the world that we have all lived in, for the last decade. The only way we avoid this is by adopting a public ethos that is exceptionally forgiving. But we do not live in that world yet, and that is entirely the left’s fault. [...] If we are going to arrive at a social compromise in which we do not punish people for their speech, a reaffirmation for the Sand Age of the ancient Saxon right to plainly speak one’s mind, it is necessary that everyone develop a keen appreciation of just how horrible the alternative is. This can only be grounded in a visceral revulsion at the very thought of cancellation, the way the world has looked at chemical weapons ever since the Great War, which in turn must come from direct, personal experience of what it feels like to be on the receiving end. To this end, distasteful as it may seem, the liberal’s face must be pressed down into her own steaming pile of excrement. She must be made to taste it, and gag, and swallow nonetheless. She must be made to weep burning tears. She must be traumatized, and made to understand that this is what she did, that these are the rules of engagement that she established, that these are the consequences of loss in this awful game that she has forced all of us to play. She needs to beg for the game to end, for the rules to change. Take a second to sympathize. From the Right’s perspective, the Left has beaten, shamed, and terrorized them for at least a decade. Now, the moment they get some chance to retaliate, their enemies say “Hey, bro, come on, being mean is morally wrong, you’ve got to be immaculately kind and law-abiding now that it’s your turn”, while still obviously holding behind their back the dagger they plan to use as soon as they’re on top again. I won’t be able to convince anyone of the ethics of seeking vengeance vs. turning the other cheek. But a few thoughts on the specific practical arguments being deployed: 1. Nobody Learns Anything Useful From Being Persecuted Going back to that excerpt from the Postcards From Barsoom blog: If we are going to arrive at a social compromise in which we do not punish people for their speech, a reaffirmation for the Sand Age of the ancient Saxon right to plainly speak one’s mind, it is necessary that everyone develop a keen appreciation of just how horrible the alternative is. This can only be grounded in a visceral revulsion at the very thought of cancellation, the way the world has looked at chemical weapons ever since the Great War, which in turn must come from direct, personal experience of what it feels like to be on the receiving end. To this end, distasteful as it may seem, the liberal’s face must be pressed down into her own steaming pile of excrement. She must be made to taste it, and gag, and swallow nonetheless. She must be made to weep burning tears. She must be traumatized, and made to understand that this is what she did, that these are the rules of engagement that she established, that these are the consequences of loss in this awful game that she has forced all of us to play. She needs to beg for the game to end, for the rules to change. You mean like you’re doing now? The right-wingers admit that they have suffered terribly at the hands of cancellation mobs. Okay, check. They admit it’s made them so mad that they want a bloodbath of cancelling liberals harder than anyone has ever been cancelled before. Okay, check. And now they say . . . that lefties must suffer terribly at the hands of cancellation mobs, because it will teach them that cancellation is wrong? If being on the receiving end could teach people cancellation was bad, it would have taught you that. It obviously hasn’t, so try a different strategy. 2. This Isn’t Tit For Tat, It’s The Nth Round Of A Historical Dialectic “Given that liberals invented cancel culture ten years ago, shouldn’t we get ten years of conservative cancel culture, just to be fair?” asks someone totally divorced from historical reality. Modern progressive cancel culture is the successor of the 1950s establishment that would cancel you for being an atheist pinko peacenik. Curtis Yarvin calls cancellation “the Brown Scare”, by analogy to the Red Scare that came before. And Arthur Miller called the Red Scare a “witch hunt”, by analogy to actual witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, and the history of burning heretics at the stake. And what was Diocletian’s persecution of the Early Church if not cancel culture? People joke that “cancel culture began with Socrates”, but I don’t buy it. Seen on Wikipedia: [In 1345 BC], Akhenaten … ordered the defacing of Amun's temples throughout Egypt … Archaeological discoveries at [Amarna] show that many ordinary residents of this city chose to gouge or chisel out all references to the god Amun on even minor personal items that they owned, such as commemorative scarabs or make-up pots, perhaps for fear of being accused of having Amunist sympathies. When the Priests of Amun came back into power, they took the low road: This culture shift away from traditional religion was reversed after his death. Akhenaten's monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were destroyed, and his name excluded from lists of rulers compiled by later pharaohs. And since righteous vengeance had been attained and both sides now had experience with cancel culture being morally wrong, everyone agreed the ledger was balanced, and nobody ever tried cancelling anyone else ever again. No, seriously, we got the entire rest of history. Aldous Huxley famously described the state of things c. 1944 as: Only one more indispensable massacre of Capitalists or Communists or Fascists or Christians or Heretics, and there we are—there we are in the Golden Future. Just one more indispensable cancellation, and there we are! Instead, I think of unfreedom of conscience as a scourge that has troubled humanity throughout history, like famine or plague or war. As with all scourges, very-long-run progress coexists with occasional disastrous relapses. The solution isn’t to get the other side and balance the ledger, it’s to keep developing the physical and social technology that’s gradually improved things in the past. 3. You’re Not Debating Whether To Become Like Woke People, You’re Already Like Woke People An old psychoanalyst’s trick: if somebody ruminates too much over some decision, it’s to distract from some other decision they’re trying not to notice. The hidden decision here is whether to treat people as collectives or individuals. One of the fundamental problems with wokeness was that it believed in collective guilt and collective punishment. White people caused slavery, therefore white people stood condemned. No matter that the actual white person involved was 150 years removed from slavery, or was a Polish immigrant whose family hadn’t even been in the country at the time, or whatever. They have some excuse like “well all white people benefit from white supremacy in tangible ways, or at least didn’t speak out against it”. I hate to say it, but “some left-wing journalist got people cancelled, therefore I should be able to cancel a left-wing Home Depot employee because The Left endorsed cancel culture” is the same kind of argument. “But wasn’t the Left monolithically united behind cancel culture?” You can find some data here. I’m presenting a representative sample of questions, but check the rest to keep me honest: Unless you really lay on the tribal signifiers, it’s hard to find a definition where most Democrats support cancel culture and most Republicans oppose it! (the above poll probably overestimates support for cancel culture, because it talks about saying “things widely considered hateful” instead of, like, one tweet expressing a widely-shared opinion at the wrong time) Liberals invent a fictional entity called “The Right”, which is full of all of the most racist and fascist things that NYT was ever able to produce an out-of-context quote showing one Claremont guy saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Right” because it’s an ontological threat against democracy, then rile up a mob against a Google guy who sends the wrong memo. Likewise, conservatives invent a fictional entity called “The Left”, which is full of all the most horrible woke things that FOX was ever able to find one Gender Studies professor saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Left” because it’s coming for our children, then rile up a mob against a Home Depot woman who makes a bad tweet. 4. Nobody Is Ever Both-Sides-ist Enough I hate this because I’ve fought with these people on the Left, and they sound exactly the same. “If you feel like compromising with the Right, it’s important to remember what they’ve done. They separated families and locked children in cages. They forced 10-year-old rape victims to carry their rapists’ babies. They murdered our grandparents by refusing to mask in the middle of a pandemic. They killed thousands of American soldiers in a war over fake WMDs, then cut VA funding so the soldiers they wounded would die on the street. At this very moment, they’re boiling our planet alive to protect fossil fuel barons’ profits. How dare you suggest it could possibly be wrong to cancel someone like that!” This isn’t a knock-down argument. Sometimes you’re right when you think your enemies are bad, and they’re wrong when they think you’re bad. I can’t say for sure this isn’t one of those times. But: The fact that your enemies are just as sure as you are should make you less sure.

Unless you really lay on the tribal signifiers, it’s hard to find a definition where most Democrats support cancel culture and most Republicans oppose it! (the above poll probably overestimates support for cancel culture, because it talks about saying “things widely considered hateful” instead of, like, one tweet expressing a widely-shared opinion at the wrong time) Liberals invent a fictional entity called “The Right”, which is full of all of the most racist and fascist things that NYT was ever able to produce an out-of-context quote showing one Claremont guy saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Right” because it’s an ontological threat against democracy, then rile up a mob against a Google guy who sends the wrong memo. Likewise, conservatives invent a fictional entity called “The Left”, which is full of all the most horrible woke things that FOX was ever able to find one Gender Studies professor saying, then believe that any action is justified against “The Left” because it’s coming for our children, then rile up a mob against a Home Depot woman who makes a bad tweet. 4. Nobody Is Ever Both-Sides-ist Enough I hate this because I’ve fought with these people on the Left, and they sound exactly the same. “If you feel like compromising with the Right, it’s important to remember what they’ve done. They separated families and locked children in cages. They forced 10-year-old rape victims to carry their rapists’ babies. They murdered our grandparents by refusing to mask in the middle of a pandemic. They killed thousands of American soldiers in a war over fake WMDs, then cut VA funding so the soldiers they wounded would die on the street. At this very moment, they’re boiling our planet alive to protect fossil fuel barons’ profits. How dare you suggest it could possibly be wrong to cancel someone like that!” This isn’t a knock-down argument. Sometimes you’re right when you think your enemies are bad, and they’re wrong when they think you’re bad. I can’t say for sure this isn’t one of those times. But: The fact that your enemies are just as sure as you are should make you less sure.

The Royal Flush Girls1 mentions across 1 issues

The Royal Flush Girls is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 01, 2025 and July 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "the environment is unwelcoming to them (see ‘The Royal Flush Girls’)". It most often appears alongside Afrobarometer, AGI, AI 2027.

Reference entry: The Royal Flush Girls
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Links For July 2025

July 01, 2025 · Original source

6: Cate Hall on her experience taking testosterone. “When I played poker professionally, I was a staunch advocate for the position that there are few women at the top of the game for reasons that are primarily sociological: women aren’t encouraged to learn (96% of serious players are male); the environment is unwelcoming to them (see ‘The Royal Flush Girls’); and they aren’t invited to join the study groups that are critical for cracking into the elite tier . . . And yet. In the earliest weeks of testosterone therapy, when I really started to feel it kicking in, one of my first thoughts was: ‘I would have been so much better at poker if I’d had this.’”

Inline links: Cate Hall on her experience taking testosterone

THE SAPIENT PARADOX1 mentions across 1 issues

THE SAPIENT PARADOX is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2022 and June 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "THE SAPIENT PARADOX AS AN ANCIENT ANALOG TO THE FERMI PARADOX"; "This perplexing question is called the “Sapient Paradox.”". It most often appears alongside 50,000 BC, Africa, Altamira.

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Your Book Review: The Dawn Of Everything June 10, 2022

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June 10, 2022 · Original source

So yes, I think the Davids are right on this as well: there is at least suggestive evidence of a period of time, particularly around or right after 10,000 BC, of what might be called political experimentation by prehistorical humans. These nascent governments and formal systems of law and order might not have been taken all that seriously at first, more theatrical and seasonal in nature, until, slowly, as John Updike said, “the mask eats the face.” THE SAPIENT PARADOX AS AN ANCIENT ANALOG TO THE FERMI PARADOX, AND THE GREAT TRAP OF PREHISTORY IT IMPLIES Almost everything we’ve talked about so far, with the exception of the mammoth houses and some remains of gathering places, takes place after 10,000 BC. It’s really only in the Upper Paleolithic (12,000-5,000 BC) that there is any good evidence for what we would call civilization, with its associated lavish burials and monumental centers of ritual congregation and pilgrimage and trade networks and specialization of tribes toward certain industries, and it is only at this point that complex representation in art becomes essentially universal.

This is a striking mismatch: let’s say modern humans genetically (mostly) and physically (definitely) were around 100,000 years ago: why does it take 90,000 years to get Göbekli Tepe? This perplexing question is called the “Sapient Paradox.” Colin Renfrew, the coiner of the Sapient Paradox, describes it as a

Inline links: describes it

puzzling aspect, which I call the Sapient Paradox. . . we can see in the archeological record. . . the appearance of our own species, Homo Sapiens, about 100 or 150,000 thousand years ago in Africa, and we can follow the out-of-Africa migrations of our species, Homo sapiens, 60-70,000 years ago. . . Apart from the episode of cave art, which was very much limited to Europe and a bit further on to Asia, not a great deal happened until about 10,000 years ago. . . modern genetics has made clear that our genetic composition, speaking in general. . . is very similar to the genetic composition to our ancestors in Africa of about 70,000 years ago.

The Silver Prince1 mentions across 1 issues

The Silver Prince is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 04, 2024 and December 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Gropius’ nickname was “The Silver Prince”". It most often appears alongside 3D printing, Abercrombie & Fitch, AI.

Reference entry: The Silver Prince
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Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House December 04, 2024

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Highlights From The Comments On Class

December 04, 2024 · Original source

Second, the first crop of European modern architects were incredibly charismatic and persuasive people. Gropius’ nickname was “The Silver Prince”; Wolfe describes him as “irresistibly handsome to women, correct and urbane in a classic German manner, a lieutenant of cavalry during [World War I], decorated for valor, a figure of calm, certitude, and conviction at the center of the maelstrom … [he] seemed to be an aristocrat who through a miracle of sensitivity had retained every virtue of the breed and cast off all the snobberies and dead weight of the past”. Meanwhile, his colleague, born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, demanded that everyone refer to him as “Le Corbusier” (French for “The Crow-Like One”)1 as some sort of combination artistic pseudonym / branding / flex. How are normal humans supposed to compete with people like these?

Inline links: 1

The office workers shoved filing cabinets, desks, wastepaper baskets, potted plants up against the floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass, anything to build a barrier against the panicked feeling that they were about to pitch headlong into the streets below. Above these jerry-built walls they strung up makeshift curtains that looked like laundry lines from the slums of Naples, anything to keep out that brain-boiling, poached-eye sunlight that came in every afternoon . . . and by night, the custodial staff, the Mieslings police, under strictest orders, invaded and pulled down these pathetic barricades thrown up against the pure vision of the Silver Prince. Eventually, everyone gave up and learned, like the haute bourgeoisie above him, to take it like a man.

Translation: I, like you, am working here within these walls. I am still a member of the compound. Don’t worry, the complexities and contradictions I am going to show you, with their “messy vitality”, are not going to be drawn from the stupidities of the world outside (exception, occasionally, for playful effects) but from our own experience as progeny of the Silver Prince, from that experience which is inherent in art: namely, the esoteric lessons of Mies, [Le Corbusier], and Gropius concerning modern architecture itself. I am going to show you how to make architecture that will amuse, delight, enthrall other architects. This, then was the genius of Venturi. He brought modernism into its Scholastic age. Scholasticism in the Dark Ages was theology to test the subtlety of other theologians. Scholasticism in the twentieth century was architecture to test the sublimity of other architects.

The Simpsons1 mentions across 1 issues

The Simpsons is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 05, 2021 and March 05, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "That Simpsons reference is deeply bubbled imo". It most often appears alongside A Real Dog, Americans, Astors.

Reference entry: The Simpsons
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 05, 2021
Last seen: March 05, 2021

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Highlights From The Comments On Class March 05, 2021

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March 05, 2021 · Original source

By far the most controversial part of the post was the part holding up the Simpsons as a sign of now-unattainable 80s-90s working-class prosperity. Some people complained that even at the time, everyone understood the Simpsons to be unrealistically rich for their supposed working-class roots. So for example Ryan L:

Inline links: Ryan L

The Simpsons is also a fantasy cartoon. Despite what the author of that tweet says, it was never believable that someone with a high school degree could become a safety officer at a nuclear plant, let alone retain that job while being caught on camera sleeping all the time. It's completely useless to use the world of the Simpsons as a measure of income inequality.

Other people went the opposite direction, and said the Simpsons was and continues to be a realistic portrayal of achievable working-class life. For example, Drethelin:

Inline links: Drethelin

The Single Imperative That Will Shape The Future1 mentions across 1 issues

The Single Imperative That Will Shape The Future is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 17, 2023 and July 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "trying to decide The Single Imperative That Will Shape The Future right now". It most often appears alongside ChatGPT, Elon, Elon Musk.

Reference entry: The Single Imperative That Will Shape The Future
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 17, 2023
Last seen: July 17, 2023

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Contra The xAI Alignment Plan July 17, 2023

ChatGPT 1 shared issues
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Contra The xAI Alignment Plan

July 17, 2023 · Original source

All of this is a bit overdramatic. I think realistically what we should be doing at this point is getting AIs to follow orders at all. Then later, once there are lots of AIs and they’re starting to look superintelligent, we can debate things like what we want to order them to do. It might be that, armed with superintelligent advisors, we’re able to come up with a single specific goal that seems safe and good. But it might also be that everyone has an AI, everyone orders their AI to do different things, and we get a multipolar world where lots of people have lots of different goals, just like today. Governments would be able to defend themselves against other governments and regulate more or less what happens in their territory, just like today, and there would be some room left for human freedom and individual power, just like today. I think this is more likely to go well than trying to decide The Single Imperative That Will Shape The Future right now.

the singularity1 mentions across 1 issues

the singularity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 10, 2024 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "How do we move from “most exciting advance in history” to questions about the singularity or the apocalypse? Robin Hanson cashes out “the singularity” as an economi"; "Robin Hanson cashes out “the singularity” as an economic phase change"; "disproves transhumanism and the singularity". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution.

Reference entry: the singularity
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 10, 2024
Last seen: September 10, 2024

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Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

10,000 AD 1 shared issues
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anthropic reasoning 1 shared issues
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Highlights From The Comments On Social Model Of Disability

September 10, 2024 · Original source

The world’s leading expert on anthropic reasoning is probably Oxford philosophy professor Nick Bostrom, who literally wrote the book on the subject. Awkwardly for Freddie, Bostrom is also one of the founders of the modern singularity movement. This is because, understood correctly, anthropics provides no argument against a singularity or any other transhumanist idea, and might (weakly) support them.

Inline links: literally wrote the book

Third, those uniformly distributed across techno-economic advances. You’d use this to answer questions like “how likely is it that the most important discovery/invention in history thus far happens during my lifetime?” This seems like the right way to predict things like nuclear weapons, global warming, or the singularity. But it’s harder to measure than the previous two.

How do we move from “most exciting advance in history” to questions about the singularity or the apocalypse?

The Social Model1 mentions across 1 issues

The Social Model is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 25, 2023 and July 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Social Model is similar but not quite the same as "Interactionism with a moral thrust"". It most often appears alongside 1992 Presidential debate, ABA, Adesh Thapliyal.

Reference entry: The Social Model
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First seen: July 25, 2023
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Highlights From The Comments On Social Model Of Disability July 25, 2023

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July 25, 2023 · Original source

[original post: Contra The Social Model Of Disability]

Inline links: Contra The Social Model Of Disability

1: Comments Defending The Social Model 2: Comments About The Social Model Being Used (Or Not) In Real Life 3: Other Comments 4: Summary / What I Learned

1: Comments Defending The Social Model 2: Comments About The Social Model Being Used (Or Not) In Real Life 3: Other Comments 4: Summary / What I Learned 1: Comments Defending The Social Model I argued against the Social Model, and most commenters agreed with me. Some agreed with me too much, arguing that nobody really means it, or that it’s not worth my time to challenge it. In their honor, I want to focus this Highlights post on the comments trying to defend the model, either fully or in part.

The Social Model Of Disability1 mentions across 1 issues

The Social Model Of Disability is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 14, 2023 and July 14, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "These ideas eventually got dubbed The Social Model Of Disability". It most often appears alongside 1970s radicals, American Psychological Association, biopsychosocial model.

Reference entry: The Social Model Of Disability
Mention count: 1
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First seen: July 14, 2023
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Contra The Social Model Of Disability July 14, 2023

1970s radicals 1 shared issues
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Contra The Social Model Of Disability

July 14, 2023 · Original source

What is the Social Model Of Disability? I’ll let its proponents describe it in their own words (emphases and line breaks mine)

The Social Model Of Disability Explained (top Google result for the term):

Inline links: The Social Model Of Disability Explained

The social model of disability proposes that what makes someone disabled is not their medical condition, but the attitudes and structures of society.

the Son of God1 mentions across 1 issues

the Son of God is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Son of God brought from Heaven to Earth a single Word of the ineffable Divine speech". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry: the Son of God
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2023
Last seen: November 17, 2023

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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023

Abel 1 shared issues
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America 1 shared issues
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November 17, 2023 · Original source

And of course there’s the Gospels. 1st century Judaea is wracked by conflict and revolutionary fervor. The Jews form a mob and murder an innocent person - Jesus. Then Jesus is deified as the Son of God. It’s the same story, except told from a perspective where Jesus is great and everyone was wrong to kill him.

This is kind of how Girard thinks about Christianity. The Son of God brought from Heaven to Earth a single Word of the ineffable Divine speech, and that word was “VICTIM”. At first it was whispered only by a few disciples, so softly it could barely be heard at all. But as missionaries spread the faith, the word grew louder and louder until it became a roar, drowning out all merely-human metaphysics / psychology / ethics.

the spectacle1 mentions across 1 issues

the spectacle is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The critical concept of 'the spectacle'". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: the spectacle
Mention count: 1
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First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: July 22, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

2020 election 1 shared issues
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2122 1 shared issues
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Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j_YN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3e3e540f-4c24-4c82-b6e0-8b4d090e26a5_564x390.png, epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

July 22, 2022 · Original source

“The Society of the Spectacle will make no sense if the reader feels there is nothing fundamentally wrong with contemporary society.”

Debord in France, 1954 Published in 1967, The Society of the Spectacle is his magnum opus and lasting legacy. It unfolds in staccato bursts, almost like a book of aphorisms. The writing is pithy and poetic, albeit with the occasional lapse into the meandering, circular prose so typical of critical theory. This makes it extremely readable, particularly for a work of political philosophy. One downside of his style is that he tends to state his points in just-so fashion. We’ll have to do some of the legwork for him to flesh things out. Strap in, boys - we’ve got a bumpy road ahead of us. I. A More Perfect Union The spectacle is never outright defined; or rather, the entire book is a series of definitions, each approaching from a different angle. What Debord describes is really a combination of two things; the total triumph of capitalism, and the rise of mass media. It might seem strange for Debord to declare capitalism victorious at the height of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was very much a superpower, and Nixon had yet to go to China. But as a real Marxist, he had already arrived at what would become the historical consensus - communism, as practiced, was merely an inferior cousin to its free market foes. Unsurprisingly, capitalism is the best system for the accumulation of capital. And despite their pretensions, communist societies had the same goals as every modern nation - wealth, prosperity, innovation, and growth. In Debord’s reading of history, “the bourgeoisie is the only revolutionary class that has ever won; and it is also the only class for which the development of the economy was both the cause and the consequence of its taking control of society.” The revolutions of the previous centuries were economic in nature, replacing kings with merchant princes. As a result, all societies began to judge themselves in almost purely economic terms, regardless of their ideological leanings. [2] Media developed symbiotically with capitalism, and together these twin forces changed the world. Twentieth-century forms of media were one-way communications. The owners of society were also the owners of the media, and the messaging reflected this power dynamic. Long before the general public became disillusioned with the news, Debord was woke to the fact that ‘the free press’ was largely a myth. He saw the shaping of the narrative firsthand, and well knew the ability of the media to amplify or ignore as convenient. As the spectacle conquered the earth, it took on different forms. Debord differentiated between the concentrated, diffuse, and integrated modes of the spectacle: Communism and fascism were the primary examples of the concentrated spectacle, with totalitarian control of the economy and the media centralized in the hands of the State.

Inline links: The Society of the Spectacle

In his later writings, Debord declared that the entire world had turned into variants of the integrated spectacle, where the State is swallowed whole by the economy and subordinated to its needs. II. All The World’s A Stage Debord emphasized the visual character of the spectacle, as you can see from his choice of book cover: Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

the Splurge1 mentions across 1 issues

the Splurge is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 12, 2022 and October 12, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”". It most often appears alongside 538 deluxe model, @rcafdm, Andres.

Reference entry: the Splurge
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 12, 2022
Last seen: October 12, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For October October 12, 2022

538 deluxe model 1 shared issues
@rcafdm 1 shared issues
Andres 1 shared issues
Benito Mussolini 1 shared issues
Biden 1 shared issues

Source context

October 12, 2022 · Original source

23: Did you know: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”.

Inline links: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap

The Squad1 mentions across 1 issues

The Squad is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 22, 2022 and July 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…)". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, 2022 book review contest, 2122.

Reference entry: The Squad
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 22, 2022
Last seen: July 22, 2022

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle July 22, 2022

2020 election 1 shared issues
2022 book review contest 1 shared issues
2122 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

Source context

Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually

July 22, 2022 · Original source

Cover of The Society of the Spectacle He never outright explains why he thought photos and film were more pernicious than newspapers or radio, but I imagine the advertising industry played a major role. We’ve grown accustomed to GoDaddy ads and ALL CAPS YouTube titles, but Mad Men shenanigans were a worrisome development at the time. It must’ve been highly alarming to see such brazen manipulation of the public. Whatever the reasoning, we now arrive at one definition of the spectacle: "The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point that it becomes images." Also: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.” Well, that’s about as clear as Flint water. Here’s something meatier: "In all of its particular manifestations — news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment — the spectacle represents the dominant model of life." If you’re familiar with Girard, that is a huge statement. [3] Girardian mimetic desire is triangular; there is you (the desirer), the object (of desire), and the model (another person who also desires the object). Most of our desires are rooted in imitation. Nobody has to tell you to want steak or sex, but almost everything else is learned. How does everybody know that they should want a Rolex or a Rolls Royce? There’s no genetic imperative for luxury goods. You acquire those tastes from the people around you. Or you used to, at least. Before the spectacle, your models, mentors, and rivals were real people you knew in real life. Now we have an acronym for that - IRL - because reality is everywhere in retreat. This is not a small thing. What we desire is at the core of who we are. What do you want out of life? What kind of person do you want to be? For the entirety of human history, those questions found answers close at hand. Your local community was your world, for better and worse. Now we are global citizens with global perspectives, and it’s difficult to overstate how much that changes what it means to be human. Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities. The spectacle as a whole serves as his looking glass. What he sees there are dramatizations of illusory escapes from a universal autism. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him. Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations - images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street. Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids - I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any. This is an issue of The Map and The Territory. Pre-modern Maps were narrow but deep. You might have had only a vague notion of ‘Africa’ or ‘The Pope’, but you knew every square inch of the town you lived in. Spectacular Maps are broad but shallow, and they are drawn for us by spectacular hands. The average person ‘knows’ way more about Africa now, but how well does that knowledge reflect the facts on the ground? Meanwhile, firsthand reality has been reduced to the narrow slices connecting house to car to work, with precious few exceptions. The Society Of The Spectacle is one long lament for this loss of The Real, although Debord doesn’t state it as such. Borrowing again from The Uruk Machine, this sense of loss tracks with the gradual displacement of metis [4] by episteme [5],[6]. III. Everything New Is Old Again Debord has a lot to say about the ‘falsification of the world’: The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all ‘having’ must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. As he might have put it - we have graduated from conspicuous consumption to consuming conspicuousness. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. In the spectacle, a part of the world presents itself to the world and is superior to it. The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. These themes are familiar to us by now. It’s not exactly news that people are getting more isolated and untethered by the year. What is striking to me is not what he is saying, but when he is saying it. Anybody with sense has spent time thinking about how to manage the challenges of modern life. We talk about digital minimalism and social media fasts. Turn off your phone. Get outside and touch grass. Go see people in meatspace. Be present. All great advice. But what are we envisioning, when we imagine a healthy connection to The Real? For most of us, we are picturing life as it was lived… right around the time Debord was saying that everything is phony and toxic. What does the average person think of as the peak of journalistic integrity in America? Probably Vietnam and Watergate - right after this was written. When we mock Millennials and Zoomers, what standard are we measuring them by? The Greatest Generation, who were running the show by the late sixties. In terms of self-reliance and resilience, the average adult in 1967 would be a massive outlier in 2022. Yet here is Debord, saying in no uncertain terms that this American ideal was fraudulent and devoid of meaning. What have we lost? Every era has its cynics, doomsayers, Luddites, and misanthropes. Maybe Debord was just a Boomer’s Boomer, railing against progress and the passage of time. But I don’t think so. We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is different now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack. Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand? How quickly things change. For maybe the first time in history, most people are apprehensive about the relentless march of technology. While we’ve always been afraid of advances in weaponry, it’s starting to feel like everything is being weaponized. Who truly believes the metaverse will be a positive step for humanity? Who now is excited at the prospect of gene editing, AI, or transhumanism? There appears to be a growing sentiment along the lines of ‘MGTOW for modernism’. We hope for the best, but 2122 is shaping up to be some unholy amalgam of Gattaca, The Matrix, and Minority Report. Sometimes it seems like the world we grew up in is categorically distinct from the world we inhabit. But I’m sure Debord would argue that we are merely experiencing an intensification of a process that has been in motion longer than any of us have been alive. Pre-spectacular society has already passed beyond living memory. Soon we will hit another inflection point - where no one alive even knew someone who lived before the spectacle. All of human history is now before and after; it will soon become literally impossible to understand the inner life and daily reality of pre-modern man - if it’s not already. As an example: how much of your daily environment, as a percentage, do you truly understand? Look around the room and reflect on how “even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable.” Your kitchen and your medicine cabinet are filled with mystical objects. Hell, just look at what’s on your person. The phone in your hand, the cash in your wallet, the clothes on your back, the food in your belly - how many lifetimes would it take to truly grok the building blocks of everyday existence? Compare that to, say, a homesteader. It really hasn’t been that long since people lived in a comprehensible universe. Our collective knowledge of the universe has deepened tremendously, but theoretical physics is only less slightly hermetical than the occult beliefs it replaced. It is notionally true that anyone could go get a Ph.D. and verify our working model of the cosmos. But in practice, the science is received wisdom, taken on faith. Our belief in the God Particle is functionally indistinguishable from the belief in God of ages past. It’s worth noting that our current theories will surely be supplanted in a century or three. They are placeholders for better, truer ideas. And so our greater grasp of the wider world has less value than we think, while our day-to-day grows ever more opaque. Is it any wonder epistemic learned helplessness is a thing? IV. With Typical Extravagance Debord was also ahead of the curve on commoditization: This constant expansion of economic power in the form of commodities transformed human labor itself into a commodity, into wage labor, and ultimately produced a level of abundance sufficient to solve the initial problem of survival — but only in such a way that the same problem is continually being regenerated at a higher level. Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. Debord correctly perceived the totalitarian nature of spectacular capitalism. Your time, your attention, your opinions - all are bought and sold, and can be influenced to better facilitate such transactions. He would have been totally unsurprised by the rise of Big Data and the corporate surveillance (e.g. Alexa, your phone) that accompanies it. Every piece of your life is a commodity. Every moment that you are not producing or consuming is a missed opportunity. Never fear - someone, somewhere is going to find a way to solve that ‘need’. Nothing is spared. Even opposition is assimilated: Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness — dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material. Once again, Debord is shockingly prescient in noting that the conflicts of our time are largely distractions from bigger systemic issues: Fallacious archaic oppositions are revived — regionalisms and racisms which serve to endow mundane rankings in the hierarchies of consumption with a magical ontological superiority — and pseudoplayful enthusiasms are aroused by an endless succession of ludicrous competitions, from sports to elections. Genuine grassroots movements (Occupy, the Tea Party, BLM, Canadian truckers) almost always fizzle out without accomplishing anything of substance. They will either be ignored, crushed, or co-opted. Any remnants that endure will be reduced to figureheads that offer ‘representation’ for a point of view without actually producing any change. (‘The Squad’, Rand Paul, etc…) If the extremes of either side gain enough momentum to pose a threat, they will face a united front from the establishment wings of both parties (Bernie, Trump). It’s fashionable at the moment to blame the Woke Left for the politicization of everything, but we’ve all been around long enough to know better. It’s the same shit, different decade. During the Bush years, it was the left who opposed unending wars, government overreach, and media gaslighting. Today those positions are often considered right wing, but only because the pendulum of power has swung in the other direction. Moloch pursues its own goals, wearing whatever ideological guise it deems most effective. From Debord’s perspective, everything is becoming politicized because everything is getting monetized. In the integrated spectacle, the primary concerns of the State are economic, so the personal turning political is simply a downstream effect of the growth of capitalism. V. A Short History of Time It would do Debord a disservice to reduce his work to ammunition in our present disputes. There are two whole chapters in the book devoted to time as a historical development. It’s not something we think about much, but time and history had to be invented. Before the beginning, humanity lived in what Debord calls cyclical time. Countless generations came and went, because nobody was counting. Survival was the name of the game; to be or not to be was the only question. Eventually we formed early societies, which brought into being a ruling class that had the freedom to take actions above and beyond the daily grind: The owners of this historical surplus value are the only ones in a position to know and enjoy real events. Separated from the collective organization of time associated with the repetitive production at the base of social life, this historical time flows independently above its own static community. This is the time of adventure and war, the time in which the masters of cyclical society pursue their personal histories; it is also the time that emerges in the clashes with foreign communities that disrupt the unchanging social order. History thus arises as something alien to people, as something they never sought and from which they had thought themselves protected. The murkiness of pre-civilization was shaped into coherence by these rulers, who used their unique agency to literally make history: The succession of generations within a natural, purely cyclical time begins to be replaced by a linear succession of powers and events. This irreversible time is the time of those who rule, and the dynasty is its first unit of measurement. With writing there appears a consciousness that is no longer carried and transmitted directly among the living — an impersonal memory, the memory of the administration of society. ‘Writings are the thoughts of the state; archives are its memory’ (Novalis). The owners of history have given time a direction, a direction which is also a meaning. But this history develops and perishes separately, leaving the underlying society unchanged, because it remains separated from the common reality. Over time, these narratives gathered a religious dimension. This helped legitimize the rule of regimes, but it also changed the way ordinary people saw themselves in the world. Although still living in cyclical time, they gained purpose through a spiritual journey culminating in Heaven. The clashes of the Mediterranean peoples and the rise and fall of the Roman state gave rise instead to semihistorical religions, which became a new armor for separate power and basic components of a new consciousness of time. The Middle Ages, an incomplete mythical world whose consummation lay outside itself, is the period when cyclical time, though still governing the major part of production, really begins to be undermined by history. An element of irreversible time is recognized in the successive stages of each individual’s life. Life is seen as a one-way journey through a world whose meaning lies elsewhere: the pilgrim is the person who leaves cyclical time behind and actually becomes the traveler that everyone else is symbolically. The Renaissance created a profound break with this mythic raison d'être and reoriented man towards the accumulation of knowledge as a species: The Renaissance was a joyous break with eternity. Though seeking its heritage and legitimacy in the ancient world, it represented a new form of historical life. Its irreversible time was that of a never-ending accumulation of knowledge… This transformation of our relationship with history and progress was accompanied by the rise of the bourgeoisie: The bourgeoisie is associated with a labor time that has finally been freed from cyclical time. With the bourgeoisie, work becomes work that transforms historical conditions. The bourgeoisie is the first ruling class for which work is a value. The victory of the bourgeoisie is the victory of a profoundly historical time, because it is the time corresponding to an economic production that continuously transforms society from top to bottom. So long as agrarian production remains the predominant form of labor, the cyclical time that remains at the base of society reinforces the joint forces of tradition, which tend to hold back any historical movement. But the irreversible time of the bourgeois economy eradicates those vestiges throughout the world. History, which until then had seemed to involve only the actions of individual members of the ruling class, and which had thus been recorded as a mere chronology of events, is now understood as a general movement — a relentless movement that crushes any individuals in its path. Irreversible time initially appeared at the societal level as a narrative of events. The bourgeoisie brought irreversible time to the masses. Progress became something that we personally experience in the form of rapid technological innovation. It is hard to miss the motion of history when you go from horses to space travel in a single lifetime. History thus became as much about things as events. Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison took their places alongside generals and heads of state in our narrative of who we are and where we’re going. Our notion of progress became dominated by the economic prejudice. We talk about raising the standard of living and lifting people out of poverty - laudable goals, to be sure - but we deliver them from physical privation into deprivation of a different kind. One way that deprivation manifests is in our current conception of time: Pseudocyclical time is associated with the consumption of modern economic survival — the augmented survival in which everyday experience is cut off from decisionmaking and subjected no longer to the natural order, but to the pseudo-nature created by alienated labor. It is thus quite natural that it echoes the old cyclical rhythm that governed survival in preindustrial societies, incorporating the natural vestiges of cyclical time while generating new variants: day and night, work and weekend, periodic vacations." As capitalism commoditized time itself, we recreated cyclical time with the standard work week. But this artificial substitute has been about as successful as vegan chicken nuggets. It’s not the same, and it never will be. The workday used to be determined by the work, but now the work is determined by the workday. And everyone has to work, not because we need what they produce, but because we need them to spend - else the whole thing comes crashing down. Irreversible time keeps marching on, giving us new widgets and new wonders, but the continual churn of innovation masks the stifling sameness of spectacular progress. We know something is missing, but we lack the capacity to understand or express the problem. This individual experience of a disconnected everyday life remains without language, without concepts, and without critical access to its own past, which has nowhere been recorded. Uncommunicated, misunderstood and forgotten, it is smothered by the spectacle's false memory of the unmemorable. VI. The Coming Revolution Debord spends a good chunk of words describing how the spectacle has affected art [7] and physical space, but you can guess the gist by now. Everything’s fake, everything’s worse, everything’s changing but also the same. The last topic of the book worth discussing is the imminent socialist revolution. Debord walks us through the various ways that Marxism has been done wrong, then attempts to offer an alternative. He goes into a fair amount of detail, but it boils down to this: The anarchists properly rejected society in its entirety, but remained dogmatically attached to a 'one size fits all' mentality and failed to organize in an effective manner.

Inline links: epistemic learned helplessness, Moloch

The Stroop Effect1 mentions across 1 issues

The Stroop Effect is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 31, 2023 and August 31, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "2: The Stroop Effect - try to read the color (not the text) of the each of the following words as fast as you can". It most often appears alongside Against Automaticity, Banana, Buddha.

Reference entry: The Stroop Effect
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 31, 2023
Last seen: August 31, 2023

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Issue trail

Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually August 31, 2023

Against Automaticity 1 shared issues
Banana 1 shared issues
Buddha 1 shared issues
Buddha 1 shared issues
Buddhist 1 shared issues

Source context

August 31, 2023 · Original source

PAELRY GTAES [empty space to prevent you from accidentally seeing the answers before you want to] […] […] […] […] […] Most people unscramble 6 as ANGEL and 7 as GOD, ignoring the more mundane words ANGLE and DOG. Although it’s reasonable to assume that entries in a list of religious words will be religious, most people don’t report thinking “I realized it could be either DOG or GOD, but I decided to go with GOD because of the context”. Their brain just hands them the word “GOD”. Likewise, many people unscramble 10 as PURGATORY, even though there’s no U; fewer people get the correct answer (PREROGATORY). Although PURGATORY is a slightly (?) more common word than PREROGATORY, I propose very few people would make this mistake in a neutral (ie non-religious) word list; at worst they would say they couldn’t think of the answer. 2: The Stroop Effect - try to read the color (not the text) of the each of the following words as fast as you can: Most people find the first set easy, because the text is positively priming the color, and the second set hard, because the text is negatively priming the color. 3: The Implicit Association Test - there have been some good studies showing the IAT doesn’t really predict racism. But as far as I know, nobody has ever challenged its basic finding - that white people are faster and more accurate at learning white-good black-bad reflex-level category associations than vice versa. You can easily test this for yourself here. Hopefully these three exercises feel like I’m cheating - “This stuff is trivial and obvious! Surely it can’t be the dreaded priming, scourge of all honest scientists!” But priming only ever claimed to be the observation that our interpretation of stimuli can be slowed down / altered by other stimuli or the broader context, which is obviously true (doubly so if you understand predictive coding). You can see why people might extend this to claims like “seeing a stimulus related to old people can make you walk slower”. The only problem with this claim is that it isn’t true. It’s an attempt to extend a true insight further than it will go. Gravity is real, and you can see why “skyscrapers are impossible because they would immediately collapse under their own weight” is the sort of claim that a gravity-believer might stumble into. But in fact gravity isn’t strong enough to make the claim true. Many Nudges Replicate And Are Real For example, Haggag and Paci look at a dataset of 13 million New York City taxi rides. The credit card machine in the taxi offered default tip options of 2/3/4$ for rides shorter than 15 miles, and default tip options of 15/20/25% above 15 miles, making it ideal for a regression discontinuity design. Here were their findings: The default option significantly changed the average tip customers gave. This isn’t a p = 0.04 effect in a lab, this is a real example with real money with 13 million data points. The authors then go on to replicate this in a different dataset of millions of taxi rides. Also, I met a psychologist who worked at Uber or Lyft (I can’t remember which), who confirmed that their company had replicated this research, and put lots of effort into deciding which default tip options to give customers because obviously it affected customer behavior. But you shouldn’t need to hear that scientists have replicated this. If you’ve ever taken a taxi, you should have a visceral sense of how yeah, you mostly just click a tip option somewhere in the middle, or maybe the last option if the driver was really good and you’re feeling generous. And if you’ve ever had your insurance send you a letter saying that you have been assigned to the Gold PMP ExtraCare Rx Deluxe North group by default, but that if you want to explore your options you can fax them a Change Of Assignment Form at any time, you know that one of the most common nudges - making the thing you want the default - works (here is the scientific version of that claim, if you insist). Where Does This Leave Automaticity? So where does this leave Banana’s concept of automaticity? If people are vulnerable to cognitive biases, priming, and nudges, must we conclude, as Banana hostilely summarizes, that: We are automatons going around in our sleep, and our performance on a simple puzzle can take a major hit simply by being informed that our drink was bought at a discount. We are infinitely vulnerable to our environment, to suggestion, to parlor tricks, that we can experience a major loss of intellectual ability, walking speed, memory, just by exposure to some infinitely subtle stimulus. I think a better analogy would be optical illusions. Optical illusions are much like cognitive biases. They are cases where distractor stimuli confound our intuitive mental algorithms, giving us the wrong results: A famous optical illusion (source). The seemingly blue square on the left and the seemingly yellow square on the right are both the same color; you can confirm on MSPaint or Photoshop. These illusions aren’t fake. The replication crisis hasn’t harmed them. And like priming and cognitive biases, they’re cases where context and distractors can influence our answers. Does this make us automata, stumbling hopelessly through life? Sort of. If by “we’re automata”, we mean that I don’t personally stare intensely at every object I see, measuring it against some hypothetical palette in my brain and rationally assessing my beliefs about its color, I guess I’m an automaton. I mostly just accept visual percepts handed to me by algorithms I know are sometimes wrong. But here are things I don’t believe about optical illusions: Since everyone else is such a dumb automaton, I can use my superior knowledge of optical illusions to excel at sports. I’ll just study every known optical illusion and how to defeat it, until my visual system is perfect. Then, while everyone else is deluded into thinking the ball is in a different place, I alone will be able to determine the ball’s true location, and win every game.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1rSw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffe05e4f7-2e14-4c86-a877-b7458412fa35_1920x1186.png, here, predictive coding, Haggag and Paci, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YFrb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc4e5e6eb-4b5a-4cee-8a79-6b1e24f14301_564x443.png, the scientific version of that claim, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cpCm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8f999ff9-859a-4771-89cf-862a21868d8f_600x316.png, source

The Subgenius1 mentions across 1 issues

The Subgenius is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 16, 2026 and January 16, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "smaller groups were exploring ... the Subgenius". It most often appears alongside Adams, Alice, All-Seeing Eye.

Reference entry: The Subgenius
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 16, 2026
Last seen: January 16, 2026

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Issue trail

The Dilbert Afterlife January 16, 2026

Adams 1 shared issues
Alice 1 shared issues
All-Seeing Eye 1 shared issues
Avatar 1 shared issues
barberpole theory of fashion 1 shared issues

Source context

The Dilbert Afterlife

January 16, 2026 · Original source

And the Nineties (God’s Debris was published in 2001) were a special time. The decade began with the peak of Wicca and neopaganism. Contra current ideological fault lines, where these tendencies bring up images of Etsy witches, they previously dominated nerd circles, including male nerds, techie nerds, and right-wing nerds (did you know Eric S. Raymond is neopagan?) By decade’s end, the cleverest (ie most annoying) nerds were switching to New Atheism; throughout, smaller groups were exploring Discordianism, chaos magick, and the Subgenius. The common thread was that Christianity had lost its hegemonic status, part of being a clever nerd was patting yourself on the back for having seen through it, but exactly what would replace it was still uncertain, and there was still enough piety in the water supply that people were uncomfortable forgetting about religion entirely. You either had to make a very conscious, marked choice to stop believing (New Atheism), or try your hand at the task of inventing some kind of softer middle ground (neopaganism, Eastern religion, various cults, whatever this book was supposed to be).

Inline links: Eric S. Raymond is neopagan

The sun1 mentions across 1 issues

The sun is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 20, 2022 and December 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The sun will rise tomorrow". It most often appears alongside 7-11, AGI, AMC.

Reference entry: The sun
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 20, 2022
Last seen: December 20, 2022

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Prediction Market FAQ December 20, 2022

7-11 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues
AMC 1 shared issues
APPS benchmark 1 shared issues
arbitrage 1 shared issues

Source context

Prediction Market FAQ

December 20, 2022 · Original source

Why does this work? If it didn’t, you could make easy money. Suppose that a share in “The sun will rise tomorrow” was priced at $0.20, even though there’s a 100% chance that will happen. You could spend all your money on shares, and then, when the sun inevitably rose and the shares paid out $1, you would quintuple your money. If you think about different situations, you’ll realize that the only time you neither want to buy nor sell is when you think the share’s price correctly represents the probability.

when you’re not sure which of many competing experts to trust, you should trust a prediction market instead of any of them Going through these claims one by one: 3.1: Why expect all prediction markets to agree with each other? Either all prediction markets agree with each other, or you can get rich quick: Suppose prediction markets disagreed. For example, suppose the RNC ran an Official Republican Prediction Market that said there was only a 10% chance Democrats would win the next election, and a 90% chance Republicans would. And suppose the DNC ran an Official Democrat Prediction Market that made the opposite prediction: 90% chance Democrats, 10% chance Republicans. Then you could buy a share of “Democrats will win” from the Republican market for 10 cents, plus a share of “Republicans will win” from the Democrat market for 10 cents, and be guaranteed to make $1 when one party or the other wins. You have turned 20 cents into a guaranteed $1. Repeat until you are rich or the mispricing has been corrected. This is just what financial experts call “arbitrage”. You may notice that in finance, people always give specific prices for things like shares of stock, barrels of oil, or Bitcoins. People say things like “Google stock is up to $300”, but never “Google stock is up to $300 on the NYSE, but down to $200 on NASDAQ”. If that was true, people would buy it on NASDAQ, sell it on NYSE, make $100 in free money, and get rich quick. In ideal situations, arbitrage forces everybody everywhere to agree on the same price for a financial instrument. Prediction markets turn claims about truth into financial instruments in a way which forces everybody everywhere to agree on how likely the claim is to be true. 3.2: Why expect prediction markets to be hard for special interests to manipulate? Either a prediction market is not currently mispriced because of a manipulation attempt, or you can get rich quick. Argument: Suppose a prediction market was currently mispriced because of a manipulation attempt. For example, suppose there is a prediction market for whether the sun will rise tomorrow. The true probability is obviously 100%, corresponding to a cost of $1.00. But suppose some special interest who wanted to trick people into believing the sun would not rise successfully spent money to bid the market down to only 10%. This means that you can buy, for $0.10, a share which pays $1 if the sun rises tomorrow. In other words, you can dectuple your money for free. Repeat until you are rich or the mispricing has been corrected. This may sound complicated in theory, but it plays out straightforwardly in real life. As a test, I tried to manipulate the market on whether Austin Chen, founder of Manifold Markets, would be charged with a felony. There’s no reason to think he should be, so the price started at 5%. I spent $200 in Manifold’s play money bidding it up to 95%. Within an hour, other investors noticed the mispricing and corrected it back down to 5% again. 3.3: Why expect prediction markets to be free from bias? Either a prediction market is not currently mispriced because of bias, or you can get rich quick. The argument: Suppose all smart people, including you, know that there is an 80% chance that the Democrats’ economic plan will create new jobs. But suppose that Republicans, because of their partisan biases, refuse to believe it, and say there is only a 40% chance. And suppose the Republicans set up their own prediction market where they bid the price of a share down to $0.40. You can, of course, go on this prediction market, buy shares for $0.40, and double your money in expectation. Repeat until you are rich or the mispricing has been corrected. I already described how something like this happens on PredictIt (a non-ideal prediction market that you can only make a few hundred dollars in expectation by correcting), and that I do in fact make a few hundred dollars every election season. 3.4: Why should I believe a prediction market’s consensus over my own opinion? This is the same argument as “the prediction market will always be at least as accurate as the top expert” only with you in the place of the top expert. Either prediction markets are at least as smart as you are, or you can get rich quick. The argument here is the same as “at least as smart as the smartest expert” argument in 2, except replacing “the smartest expert” with “you”. But just to lay it out explicitly: Suppose you were smarter than some prediction market. Then if you disagreed with the market, usually you would be right and it would be wrong. So look for cases where you disagree with the market, buy those shares, and you will make money in expectation. Repeat until you are rich or the mispricing has been corrected. I like this because it’s a good empirical test, and one that many people have tried. If you think you’re smarter than the prediction markets, bet on them and see what happens! I think most people will find that (over the long run) they lose money, and eventually this will cure them of their delusion that they can beat the markets. A few people might find that (over the long run) they do win money, just as a few people (eg Warren Buffett) can consistently win money on the stock market. Hopefully those people will quit their day jobs and become full-time prediction market traders. They’ll become multimillionaires, and their hard work will ensure that prediction markets stay more accurate than the rest of us. 3.5: Why should I believe that a prediction market makes good decisions about which of many competing experts to trust? Suppose you accept that a prediction market will always be at least as accurate as some well-known expert (eg Nate Silver). But what if you’re not sure who the real experts are? Or what if there are many experts, all saying different things, and nobody knows who to trust? In this case, a prediction market will always be at least as good as any other source (including you) at telling good experts from bad, or at figuring out which of many good experts is the best. By this point you should be able to predict the argument, but for completeness’ sake: Suppose you were better than the prediction market at determining which of many competing experts to trust, or how to aggregate the pronouncements of many experts into a single authoritative opinion. Then if you disagreed with the market, usually you would be right and it would be wrong. So look for cases where you disagree with the market, buy those shares, and you will make money in expectation. Repeat until you are rich or the mispricing has been corrected. To ground this in a real example, suppose there is some new virus which might or might not spread to the United States. A Harvard professor of epidemiology says there’s a 70% chance it will spread, a Yale professor of epidemiology says there’s an 90% chance it will spread, and a guy in a tinfoil hat on Infowars says there’s a 0% chance it will spread because it’s all a fake government plot. If I knew nothing else about this situation, I would probably think there’s about an 80% chance the virus will spread. I trust the Harvard and Yale professors equally much, and the tinfoil hat guy not at all. Suppose I saw a prediction market that was only at 10%, because most people trusted the tinfoil hat guy. I would want to buy YES shares until the price got up to 80%, because in expectation I would octuple my money. Suppose I saw a prediction market that was only at 70%. Now I wouldn’t be sure whether the prediction market was dumber than me (believed tinfoil hat guy) or smarter than me (they know a lot about epidemiology - or about the credibility of specific experts - and have decided to trust the Harvard professor over the Yale professor). Maybe I could improve on this. If I knew things about epidemiology, I could read over both professors’ arguments and try to figure out if one was better than the other. If I knew things about academia, I could pick over both professors’ resumes and see whether the Harvard professor seemed more distinguished or had more respect in her own field than the Yale professor. In the end, I might decide the prediction market was right to price it at 70% (in which case I wouldn’t do anything), or that actually both experts seemed equally expert (in which case I might bid it up to 80%), or that actually the Yale epidemiologist was better (in which case I might bid it up to 90%). 3.5.1: Isn’t it weird to give non-experts (like prediction market investors) the final judgment in which of two experts is right? Yes, but I don’t think this is avoidable. If there were no such thing as prediction markets, and the Harvard epidemiologist said 70%, and the Yale epidemiologist said 90%, and the tinfoil hat guy said 0%, and for some reason it mattered a lot to you which of these was true - then you would still have to make that decision. If there’s some extremely authoritative source who can make the decision for you - let’s say the World Health Organization says “after reviewing all experts’ arguments, we believe that the final probability is 75%” - then great! Either: The WHO is clearly the most trustworthy source - in which case we go back to the Nate Silver situation where the prediction market should be just as accurate as it is.

the Surge1 mentions across 1 issues

the Surge is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 12, 2022 and October 12, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”". It most often appears alongside 538 deluxe model, @rcafdm, Andres.

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October 12, 2022 · Original source

23: Did you know: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”.

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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023

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November 17, 2023 · Original source

But Girard lost me with the part about the myths. Most pagan myths have nothing to do with the single-victim process (eg labors of Hercules, Jason and the Golden Fleece, rape of Persephone, the Iliad, the Trojan Horse, the Odyssey, etc, etc, etc). The same with most Bible stories (Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments, etc). It kind of seems like the sort of thing where Freud can claim all myths are about castration. There are lots of myths, and they’re about lots of things. “Person does bad thing, the gods collectively punish humanity, then once we get rid of him the collective punishment stops” is certainly one trope. But it’s not hard to fathom why a primitive community stricken by a plague might think God was punishing them for some iniquity. And if I haven’t committed iniquity lately, and you haven’t committed iniquity lately, it must be some particular bad guy who needs to be stopped.

The Terror1 mentions across 1 issues

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Your Book Review: The Dawn Of Everything June 10, 2022

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June 10, 2022 · Original source

In 1754 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, at the comfortable age of 42, was composing a monograph for an essay contest not dissimilar to this one. Hosted by a local university, the prompt for the contest was "What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?” Rousseau’s submission, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, became an intellectual sensation. In its long life as one of the foundational documents of the Western world it has been, at times, blamed for the bloody slaughter of The Terror, and, at other times, lauded as the inventor of the progressive Left.

The Thing1 mentions across 1 issues

The Thing is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Alicia ... falls in love with the Thing". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

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Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lfiM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc23c3ad1-5fed-4063-8ac2-d9d89e69bee6_252x398.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oV4t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F346f85d9-580b-4eb2-b91c-3422003613d5_591x572.png

August 16, 2024 · Original source

Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

Throughout 1962 all of the Marvel stories titles were stand-alone. When the Hulk appeared in the Fantastic Four it was because Johnny was reading the Hulk comic book. There was no hint that they all existed within the same universe. That changed in December 1962. The Hulk comic was struggling to attract readers, so Lee decided to cross-promote him in the Fantastic Four as a real hero (villain? anti-hero?) who the Thing could do battle with. Fantastic Four #12 (December 1962) was the first step to building a shared universe. The issue sold well, but it was not enough to save the Hulk, whose title was canceled a few months later in March 1963 (Incredible Hulk #6). But the idea of cross promotion stayed with Lee. When Spider-man launched his own title in March 1963, Lee pulled no punches. Amazing Spider-man #1 included two stories, but the cover story had Spider-man applying for membership with the Fantastic Four. The two most popular heroes were together and interacting. It was a huge debut and broke more records (allegedly. Actual records from this era are very spotty. Most sales numbers and “records” are based on memories and anecdotes told by those involved years later. But it was clear the issue sold a lot of copies). By early 1963 it was established that the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-man all existed together within the same shared universe. But what about Ant Man,Thor and Iron Man? Aside #5: The Hulk comic in Fantastic Four #5 pretty clearly establishes that the Hulk was a fictional character in the Fantastic Four world, but there are other clues that Lee was not thinking about his characters as existing and crossing over in the early days. Both Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Mr Fantastic fight off global alien invasions in their early issues. In both cases the stories make clear that only Bruce/Reed is smart enough to save the world. No mention is made of the OTHER scientist who saved the world from the alien invasion a few months earlier. Bringing different superheroes from their own titles together was not an idea created by Atlas/Marvel and Lee. That was likely All Star Comics #3 (December 1940) when writer Gardner Fox brought together all the major DC heroes who were not staring in their own independent titles, including Green Lantern, the Flash and Doctor Fate, to create the Justice Society of America (JSA). Batman and Superman cameoed in All Star Comics #7, but generally they were considered too popular to dilute their appearances in ensemble titles. That changed in March 1960 when DC re-launched the idea of a superteam with the Justice League of America and included all of their most popular heroes as the leads – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It was immediately a top seller. The launch of JLA is likely what caused the owner of Atlas to ask Lee to create a ”superhero team comic”. Lee did not have a stable of heroes to bring together, so he had to create something entirely new – The Fantastic Four. But now that Lee DID have a collection of his own heroes AND he had the greenlight to create straightforward superhero comics, he decided to build himself his own JLA. In September 1963 Atlas published two new titles: The Avengers and the X-men. The X-men were a brand new team of all new heroes, but the Avengers were a close parallel to the Justice League. Lee took his existing collection of heroes (except the Fantastic Four and Spider-man) and created an excuse for a team-up. In the issue they individually battle Thor’s brother Loki before coming together to defeat him as a team. They decide that given they all have different powers, they should work together to be unstoppable. The entire formation of the team takes only four panels and is a little corny, but it does its job: While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

The Third Virtue: Lightness1 mentions across 1 issues

The Third Virtue: Lightness is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2022 and May 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Third Virtue: Lightness". It most often appears alongside Ada Lovelace, Alexandra Elbakyan, Art Deco.

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A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows May 30, 2022

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A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows

May 30, 2022 · Original source

(but why red in particular?) The Third Virtue: Lightness Oh God, Lightness. This one was such a mess.

The Torah1 mentions across 1 issues

The Torah is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2022 and February 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Torah [is] the original blockchain". It most often appears alongside 1984, Anatoly Karlin, AnechoicMedia.

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February 22, 2022 · Original source

14: You’ve probably heard statistics about how 50% of transgender youth attempt suicide before age 21. This paper tries to analyze the situation in more depth. The 50% number usually comes from surveys, but there’s some evidence people exaggerate on surveys, rounding up “I think about it a lot” to “I attempted”. The authors gather data on completed suicides among trans people, and find that they’re about 0.01%/year (which is about 5x the cisgender rate). If we suppose that people have about 5 years between becoming transgender and turning 21, then the 50% attempted suicide rate → 0.05% completed suicide rate implies that 1/1000th of the youth who report attempting suicide on surveys complete suicide - which sounds about right to me [but see this comment for a critique] 15: Gwern on the failures of 20th century eugenics. I’ve previously linked a piece about how, aside from the general moral failure, the 20th century eugenicists got lots of implementation details really wrong. Gwern adds to the picture: they had a purely Mendelian (as opposed to polygenic) model of intelligence, and felt that bad traits were probably caused by single recessive genes. This dichotomized the population in a way that contributed to the moral problems - if IQ is truly a continuum, then someone with 120 IQ might still wonder if they were “inferior” to someone with 130 IQ, in a way that made them feel some sympathy to someone with 80 IQ who was being pronounced “inferior” by the eugenicists of the time. But instead, they thought some people had the specific recessive “low intelligence” gene, those people could be “cleansed” from the population, and then everyone else would be fine! It also prevented them from considering improving the populace by encouraging intelligent people to breed more (as opposed to sterilizing unintelligent people) - this wouldn’t eliminate the recessive variants that were causing all the trouble! I’m confused how they could have believed this even with the limited knowledge of the time; this was long after Galton had proven that genius was genetic, and once you have genetic genius you know there’s more going on than Mendelian inheritance of subnormality. 16: Sexual selection bridges peaks in adaptive fitness landscapes 17: NFTorah: “The Torah [is] the original blockchain”. I think it’s funny that this exists, but it’s exactly what you would expect, and you don’t have to click on the link. 18: More IRB nightmares. 19: @ethanbdm When we piloted a public lottery to evaluate cash transfers in Liberia, the potential recipients arranged beforehand to insure one another. After the randomization and grant, the winners compensated the losers and unraveled the field experiment.","username":"cblatts","name":"Chris Blattman","profile_image_url":"","date":"Tue Jan 18 19:01:29 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":77,"like_count":678,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> 20: DeepMind made a programming AI that was able to participate in a human coding competition and place around the middle. Nostalgebraist gives his thoughts: “impressed with the raw performance, not massively surprised, not sold that it implies anything big in particular”. A lot of people will be watching whether it can win programming competitions outright a year or two from now, though I bet their perspectives on how relevant this is for AI takeoff speeds will be pretty mixed. 21: Effective altruist organizations as Zendaya outfits. 22: Brain Efficiency: Much More Than You Wanted To Know. “Why should we care? Brain efficiency matters a great deal for AGI timelines and takeoff speeds, as AGI is implicitly/explicitly defined in terms of brain parity.” 23: I’m not going throw out my copy of The Case Against Education just yet - I haven’t checked this study but I bet there are lots of possible confounders. Still, this would be fun for somebody more interested to analyze in depth: 24: Best of Scott Sumner archives: There’s Only One Sensible Way To Measure Economic Inequality. “You cannot put the burden of a tax on someone unless you cut into his or her consumption. If … tax increases did not cause Gates and Buffett to tighten their belts, then they paid precisely 0% of that tax increase. Someone else paid, even if they wrote the check. If they invested less due to the tax, then workers might have received lower wages. If they gave less to charity then very poor Africans paid the tax.” 25: The latest in the Greater Male Variability Hypothesis: Harrison, Noble, and Jennions publish a meta-analysis failing to find evidence of greater male variability in the personality of non-human animals. Del Giudice and Gangestad have a rebuttal saying that they were underpowered to detect it even if it did exist, plus noting the ways that media coverage of this study was incredibly irresponsible even by its own terms. 26: Some recent critiques of Cook (2014) on racial violence vs. black patents, including Michael Wiebe challenging the violence measures and AnechoicMedia arguing that the black patent measure declines right when switching from one (more complete) dataset to another (less complete) one. Rebuttal by Brad DeLong here, he argues that Cook uses multiple methods and some of them don’t have this problem. Relevant since Cook is now being considered for the Federal Reserve; see eg this Wall Street Journal editorial against. 27: Claim: 31% of British people say they have seen or met Queen Elizabeth (this seems plausible to me, I would answer ‘yes’ to this because she visited Ireland when I lived there, I watched the parade in her honor, and I could vaguely glimpse her on the inside of her car). 28: This couple-of-month-period in wokeness: Scientific American attacks late biologist EO Wilson, in a screed whose highlight is calling him problematic for describing ants as having “colonies”. This is part of a more general (and surprisingly fast) pivot at Scientific American from real science to culture warring; when even Eric Turkheimer thinks you’ve gotten too woke, you’ve gotten too woke.

The Transitional Gains Trap1 mentions across 1 issues

The Transitional Gains Trap is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 10, 2021 and December 10, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "what Gordon Tullock calls The Transitional Gains Trap". It most often appears alongside A. R. Hutchinson, ATCOR theory, Australia.

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Does Georgism Work? Part 2: Can Landlords Pass Land Value Tax on to Tenants? December 10, 2021

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Does Georgism Work? Part 2: Can Landlords Pass Land Value Tax on to Tenants?

December 10, 2021 · Original source

There were a lot of great comments to Part I. Most zeroed in on the practical aspects of implementing Georgism, such as how to deal with what Gordon Tullock calls The Transitional Gains Trap. Others brought up various perceived political obstacles and a few other topics (yes, I know about zoning, which is also a big deal). With a few exceptions, I didn't see much pushback on the core thesis of Part I, that land is a really big deal. In fact, many of the strongest opponents of LVT seem opposed precisely because they agree that land is a big deal.

Inline links: The Transitional Gains Trap

The Trojan Horse1 mentions across 1 issues

The Trojan Horse is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Trojan Horse". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry: The Trojan Horse
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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023

Abel 1 shared issues
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The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars

November 17, 2023 · Original source

But Girard lost me with the part about the myths. Most pagan myths have nothing to do with the single-victim process (eg labors of Hercules, Jason and the Golden Fleece, rape of Persephone, the Iliad, the Trojan Horse, the Odyssey, etc, etc, etc). The same with most Bible stories (Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments, etc). It kind of seems like the sort of thing where Freud can claim all myths are about castration. There are lots of myths, and they’re about lots of things. “Person does bad thing, the gods collectively punish humanity, then once we get rid of him the collective punishment stops” is certainly one trope. But it’s not hard to fathom why a primitive community stricken by a plague might think God was punishing them for some iniquity. And if I haven’t committed iniquity lately, and you haven’t committed iniquity lately, it must be some particular bad guy who needs to be stopped.

The Troops1 mentions across 1 issues

The Troops is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2021 and May 10, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "vaguely in favor of the Bible, civility, family, and The Troops". It most often appears alongside "How do you do, fellow kids?", #NotAllMen, #TheResistance.

Reference entry: The Troops
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 10, 2021
Last seen: May 10, 2021

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The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars May 10, 2021

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#TheResistance 1 shared issues
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2000s 1 shared issues

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May 10, 2021 · Original source

Maybe we need to think back further. When I was a child, the unofficial ideology of mainstream institutions was a sort of watered-down version of Christian morality merged with American patriotism. If you wanted to be on TV, get government money, or win campaigns, you had to be vaguely in favor of the Bible, civility, family, and The Troops; and vaguely against marijuana, crime, and communism. You signaled virtue by not using the word “fuck”, not tolerating other people using the word “fuck”, and getting conspicuously angry if anyone on TV suggested the existence of sex. Fashionable intelligensia types spent the better part of half a century making fun of this establishment, with only the most gradual and limited success until recently. If a pulse of the Internet culture war cycle lasts five to ten years, a pulse of the mainstream institutional values cycle lasts somewhere between fifty years and “God, please let this actually be a cycle”.

The Troubles1 mentions across 1 issues

The Troubles is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 15, 2021 and July 15, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Irish called their own ethnic violence “The Troubles”". It most often appears alongside 1902, 1903, 1906 Japanese neurology journal.

Reference entry: The Troubles
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 15, 2021
Last seen: July 15, 2021

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Book Review: Crazy Like Us July 15, 2021

1902 1 shared issues
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Book Review: Crazy Like Us

July 15, 2021 · Original source

(though before you start thinking of this as too exotic, remember that the Irish called their own ethnic violence “The Troubles”)

The Two-Hour Platform1 mentions across 1 issues

The Two-Hour Platform is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 27, 2025 and June 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Every Alpha 'flavor' uses the same 2-hour learning platform". It most often appears alongside 10,000 hour rule, 2 Hour Learning, Inc, 2-hour Learning.

Reference entry: The Two-Hour Platform
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 27, 2025
Last seen: June 27, 2025

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Your Review: Alpha School June 27, 2025

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Your Review: Alpha School

June 27, 2025 · Original source

Same state curriculum, same worksheets, same pace. The school philosophy was “no acceleration—just go deep.” We knew this was the philosophy going in. The pitch was that instead of accelerating through the state curriculum the teachers would take their time with the kids and allow them to fully explore and master the content of each grade. When we asked for examples of what that meant in practice we were told things like: “Instead of reading more advanced vocabulary, the students will learn to read out loud and use emotion and character impressions. They will learn how to vary the timing of their reading like where and when to pause to create emotion in the listener”. That sounded reasonable! It sounded like more learning, but just different learning than what the state had mandated. In practice that was not what happened. In practice “deep” just meant “un‑measured.” Smart kids + small classes ≠ accountability. The kids had time to do music, lego building, theatre and Friday ski trips because they were all really bright. They didn’t need 6+ hours a day to learn the limited math required by the state, and since the school did not feel the need to advance faster than the state, there was no pressure to push learning at all – on anything really. There was no overall school curriculum. Every teacher did their own thing. While one first grade class had weekly spelling bees, the teacher in the other classroom did not believe in learning spelling at all. But it didn’t matter. The metrics they measured the kids on in both classes advanced “enough” that no one was concerned. Most time wasn’t spent on math or language anyway. Beyond the brochure activities like skiing and theater and the four hours of foreign language per week they split between Spanish and Mandarin (which was really a great opportunity for the kids who already spoke Spanish and Mandarin to have their egos flattered. I did not see any learning in either language class. I don’t see how you can teach a language a couple of hours a week to a group of 18 kids with skill levels from zero to fluency and expect to have any impact), a lot of time was spent on DEI. DEI was pitched as helping kids handle the emotions that often come from being sensitive gifted children (they called it “Synapse”). In practice my oldest daughter got four years of learning about the basic ideas of Martin Luther King Junior and Rosa Parks, a rough understanding that some people are non-binary, and a great deal of anxiety every time I left the water running while I was brushing my teeth. The talent drain In Spring 2024 the “intermediate-school” head resigned, as did the 40+ year veteran science teacher we had been looking forward to our daughter having, the beloved tech teacher who had built a her own proprietary “learn to type” software, plus half the lower‑school faculty. Our oldest was going to be entering fourth grade; her incoming roster read like a rebuilding year for a professional sports team. It was possible we could get her into a middle school that would feed into a top tier high school, but those did not start until 5th grade. Our best option looked like “suck it up and accept whatever we had for at least a year”. One option was to do something radical. We considered taking a GAP year and traveling the world with an organization called “Boundless” but decided the timing wasn’t right. Earlier in the year we had started exploring moving to the charter city of Prospera. There is a Montessori school there that seemed like it might be alright. And we could surround the kids with an interesting group of people (and live on the beach!). But by the spring we had ruled it out. There did not seem to be many families as part of the community and we were not comfortable with the risk profile based on what was happening with the conflict between Honduras and their charter cities. Then I stumbled across Alpha: Two‑hour mornings, life‑skills afternoons, claims of 2x learning. Marketing copy is cheap; still, the promise was different enough to warrant due diligence. The initial plan was to fly some of the kids to Austin for an Alpha summer camp for a week in June – just to try it out. But once we started exploring more my wife asked me: “Could we actually move to Austin and try it for a year? Based on what is happening at the kids' school, this might be the year to try it.” So over eight weeks we flew to Austin five times – conversations with admissions and school heads, real estate searches, kids doing shadow‑days. Every parent we spoke to was very impressed with the school. Their kids really were advancing at 2x+ speed – and no one believed it was just a “selection effect”. And every guide I spoke to was extremely impressive themselves. They reminded me of the staff you run into when visiting Disney World. They all seemed “full faced” and fully-engaged. When I asked the head of admissions how they found such good staff he told me their compensation was fully transparent. “Associate Guides” were paid $60,000/year (vs the $40,000 average for Austin teachers), “Full Guides” made $100,000 and the five “Head Guides” in the school each made $150,000. They were able to both poach the best teachers from other schools, but also bring exceptional people into teaching that would not have considered it otherwise. It also let them have very high expectations for teachers once they were hired. We pulled the trigger in July. New house. Admissions letter signed. Moving truck (plus car-mover) scheduled for October. Worst case, it would be a one‑year sabbatical from stagnation. The hypothesis I carried south Elite private school attendance buys you smaller classes, brighter kids, and fancier field trips – not academic acceleration. If Alpha was real, we’d see that differential, measurable impact by Christmas – that was when we would need to decide if we would cut bait and re-apply to schools back home (and sign the kids up for more IQ-tests. The school would not accept old ones). That prior—show me velocity, not polish—is the lens through which the rest of this review should be read. Part Two: A History of Alpha Note: This is my best attempt at piecing together the history of the school based on conversations with co‑founder MacKenzie Price, high school head Chris Locke, Alpha staff, and Alpha parents; All dates are estimates and I am SURE I have gotten some details wrong. I will come back after the fact in the comments and make corrections as I hear from the people involved with corrections. 2013 – 2017 | Garage‑School to “Alpha” MacKenzie Price, then a mortgage broker in Austin, wasn’t impressed by the city’s gifted programs. She invited a small number of neighbourhood kids (including her two) into a makeshift microschool that ran two intense, teacher‑led academic “sprints” each morning, then “life‑skills” projects after lunch. Joe Liemandt — Founder of Trinity Technology, ESW Capital billionaire and family friend (MacKenzie’s husband worked for him) — kept his own children in conventional private school until he saw the qualitative improvement in the life skills of MacKenzie’s kids. He decided he wanted his kids to join MacKenzie’s but he wanted to take the project to the next level. Sometime around 2014-2017 he joined MacKenzie as a co-founder and started writing checks. Alpha recruited more students and guides and the operation jumped from location-to-location looking for a larger permanent home. 2017 – 2020 | K-8 Expansion and 2-hour focus Alpha grew to roughly 90 students from K‑8 and stabilized. Morning “core blocks” were still teacher‑driven (20‑minute bursts, 5‑minute breaks, rinse, repeat), but focused on students engaged in exercises with rapid feedback (not lectures). Afternoon workshops covered “life skills” like how to give and receive feedback or public speaking. I have not seen academic data from this time period, but when I spoke to Chris Locke, head of Alpha’s high school (which launched around 2020), he told me the kids coming into his 9th grade program were “fine,” academically – it was their life skills, confidence, and ability to engage with adults and their peers were exceptional. At this stage no AI, no dashboard, no 2x learning, no portal — just better ratios and focused pacing and the result was well balanced kids who were enjoying their education experience (even if they were unexceptional academically). 2020 – 2022 | Platform Era Begins Somewhere along the way Liemandt hired a small engineering team to stitch together edtech learning tools. Many schools use tools like iXL, Beast Academy and Amira. Those tools fit in well with the 2-hour structured approach Alpha was using. The “platform” Liemandt’s team built was meant as a tool to free up guide time so that students could be more self-directed. The dev team stitched together the preferred off‑the‑shelf apps behind a single login, and built out tracking and dashboards so guides (and students) could easily see how they were progressing. This also gave the curriculum team (there was a curriculum team now) data to understand where students were spending their time, what tools were working, and which weren’t as effective. The Alpha Portal was born. Not only did it increase efficiency, it provided data to iterate with. Chris Locke saw the curve change incrementally: each new cohort of ninth‑graders under the new tech-enabled learning platform came in a little stronger academically. The “life skills” were now being matched by the “academic skills”. 2022 | Expansion and Iteration By having access to Alpha kids post-graduation in the high school, Locke could send feedback back to the elementary school.The kids coming out of the new program were now killing it academically on Math, Language, and Science, but they were still weak on things like History and Geography. He fed that type of information back to the curriculum designers, who iterated and improved the program. Soon, in addition to the core platform that directed students to third-party tools, the tech team was building proprietary “Alpha” tools themselves. The flagship of the in-house tools was “AlphaReads”. AlphaReads requires students to read progressively more complicated passages, followed by answering reading comprehension questions. In addition to helping the kids improve reading skills, Alpha uses it to push types of content. Instead of classes in history, geography, economics and political science, some of the reading passages will cover that material (in addition to learning how to read and understand Shakespeare and Proust). The success of the 2-hour learning platform was giving the Alpha founders confidence. Liemandt in particular wanted to see if the program had legs beyond the elite group of students being educated in Austin. Alpha’s first external test in August 2022 in Brownsville, TX – a small community on the Mexico border with less than half the per capita income of Austin. SpaceX had recently launched Starbase in Brownsville in 2014 and the employees there were not happy with the existing school options. Someone at SpaceX approached Alpha and asked if they could launch a new campus for their employees. It is unclear if any money changed hands, but when Alpha launched their Brownsville campus (available to SpaceX employees and any other locals who are interested) tuition was only $10,000 (vs $40,000 at the main Austin campus); incoming students trailed national academic standards by over a year. But after nine months on the Alpha program the first cohort of students had caught up and surpassed the national average, and they kept accelerating, achieving an average learning velocity of ~2× the national average (see section four for what that means). Brownsville was Alpha’s attempt to show that their model wasn’t just rich‑kid selection effects. Spring 2024 | Field Pilots & Ukraine Trip Alpha tuition is high for the Austin area ($40,000 vs average private school ~$10,000-$15,000), but unlike most private schools tuition is all-inclusive. There are no extra fees for computers or field trips. There are no silent auctions or appeals for donations. This “no extra fees” allows the school to do some pretty ridiculous things. In the first half of 2024 Alpha sent a group of students to Poland to help launch a 2-hour learning pilot among Ukrainian refugees. Students did not pay to go on the trip. But students also did not have a “right” to go on the trip. They had to earn it. In addition to being on top of academic and non-academic expectations, students who wanted to participate had to learn basic Ukrainian so they could interact with the students in Poland they were meant to be helping. By not linking the opportunity to payment, the school could instead link it to behavior and achievement. This year a group of kids who learned to sail during the school year are going on a sailing trip through the Caribbean – for no additional fees to the parents. I also heard that around this time Alpha began testing the 2-hour learning platform at a facility for juvenile delinquents in Florida. I heard that from one individual who was not directly involved and I have not found any written documentation on it, so unclear if it worked, it was a one off, or if it even happened. But it fits into the pattern of Alpha at this stage: “We know this program works for a specific type of kid. Let’s find out how broadly it is applicable. Can it work for everyone? Is it the solution for learning and education for the world?” Fall 2024 | “Pick‑Your‑Afternoon” Specialist Schools MacKenzie told me that there was consensus among the current parents of Alpha that the 2-hour learning program was exceptional and was making a huge difference with their kids. Their kids were all learning at breathtaking speed in a very condensed period of time. But there was NOT consensus about what the kids should be doing in the other 22-hours of the day. Some parents wanted to utilize the platform’s capabilities to go even faster. Some wanted their kids to just chill out and enjoy the rest of their day – let kids be kids. Others wanted their kids to use the freed up time to do sports, or study music. It was clear to her that “learn more faster in a short period of time” was a universal desire. But beyond that it was unclear what the “right” solution for the rest of her program was. You can make the morning ultra-personalized, but if the goal of the afternoon is socialization that you are missing in the morning, you need to have some sort of alignment on how to spend that afternoon. That challenge led to Alpha’s 2024 expansion into specialty schools. Three micro‑campuses opened August 2024: GT School (Georgetown, TX) — Alpha’s “Gifted and Talented” School. Higher admissions bar; higher academic expectations; Afternoon programming focused on excelling in “academic competitions” like chess, go, debate, public speaking, robotics, programming and Quiz Bowl.

Inline links: Boundless, Prospera, MacKenzie Price, Joe Liemandt, GT School

The 2-hour learning platform and tools

The school itself (guides, building, day care) Almost all the discourse about Alpha is about the 2-hour learning program, and that is what I want to dive into most in this section, but I will also touch on the afternoon program (which I think is important). The incentive system – a very important, undiscussed part of the secret sauce – will get its own section in Part Four. The Two-Hour Platform Every Alpha “flavor” – the core school, the home school, the Gifted School, the sports school – uses the same 2-hour learning platform. We drop our kids off around 8:30am. After a morning kick-off (some sort of group activity) they put on (optional) headphones, find a place to work (the school is a bit like a start-up office), and log in to their personal 2-hour learning platform. The platform informs each student what their specific required lessons are for the day (usually between 8-12 lessons). Those “required” lessons are called “minimums” and the kids talk about it that way: “Did you hit your minimums?”

The Tyrant1 mentions across 1 issues

The Tyrant is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 28, 2023 and July 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Therefore, I believe he is best understood as more of an archetype or role, The Tyrant". It most often appears alongside 1923 Hyperinflation, Adolf Hitler, All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Reference entry: The Tyrant
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 28, 2023
Last seen: July 28, 2023

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Your Book Review: On the Marble Cliffs July 28, 2023

1923 Hyperinflation 1 shared issues
Adolf Hitler 1 shared issues
All hope abandon, ye who enter here 1 shared issues
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Astral Codex Ten 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: On the Marble Cliffs

July 28, 2023 · Original source

His emotional range spans only from a kind of tired nostalgia to the reckless joy of intoxication, punctuated by his most prized feeling by far, the gleefully murderous “bloodthirst” of mortal combat. So everyone who had read some Jünger, which at the time of publication would likely include most of the German population and definitely most of the Nazis, could see right through the facade of fiction. It is an obvious conceit that made the book just barely publishable, in a time and place where saying outright that the Nazis were disgusting savages would have gotten everyone involved a headshot. After 1945, Jünger did admit that the book was (also) a commentary on the political reality of its time. And that he knew perfectly well that in publishing this “fiction” he was playing with his life. And still he got it published, uncensored, in Germany in 1939, just before Hitler started the second World War. Today the most widely accepted history of the subject is that Jünger was only saved from a grisly fate by the personal intervention of Hitler himself, who loved “Storm of Steel” and presumably wouldn't have liked to admit that his favorite author utterly despised him. And it would have been very tempting to just not admit that, because before the Nazis came to power, Jünger had sympathized with them, although he never counted himself among them. Hitler had sent Jünger fan letters; the responses have unfortunately been lost. Jünger’s many political rants in the 1920s do contain several explicit endorsements of the strength of the Nazis and of their value as allies to Jünger’s vague and contradictory nationalist cause. By the time he wrote the Marble Cliffs, he had stopped endorsing them. But this history made it easy for the Nazis to publicly pretend he had just written a fictional novella, or maybe he was talking about Bolshevism or something, but surely he didn’t mean them. It was an Emperor’s New Clothes situation, where nobody dared to say out loud what everyone could see. Although additional reprints were verboten in 1942, the excuse of a lack of paper due to the war was perfectly plausible and didn’t betray the discomfort with the content that nevertheless is well-documented to have been present among the Nazi ranks. All of that is to say we can safely dispense with the charade entirely and accept that this book is about the Nazis. It makes general points on the nature and fate of tyranny that do apply to Bolshevism, but the Nazis are the immediate and obvious instance of tyranny to which this book clearly reacts. And it is written by someone who had walked among the Nazis, had previously been friends with some of them, exchanged letters with many of the best-informed men especially in the military, and was perceptive enough for his opinions to deserve much of the confidence he states them with. Besides this conceit, the other concession to the political realities Jünger makes is that the book makes no mention of Jews. The world he is describing is fictional, but it is an amalgamation of European cultures that all had some Jews, so this absence is conspicuous. Obviously Jünger couldn't possibly have seen this book published if it depicted Jews in any way that wasn’t extremely negative. I guess he was unwilling to do that. In the 1920s, Jünger had ranted against “globalist” liberal Jews several times, and once even argued that one couldn't be both a Jew and a German. But he saw nothing wrong with being an orthodox Jew, openly admired Zionism, expressed in letters complete revulsion with Nazi antisemitism and had even publicly spoken out against the pseudoscientific racial theories of the Nazis. After writing this book, when serving as an officer again in France, Jünger went on to save a couple of French Jews from deportation and death, at moderate risk to his own life. Later he’d discuss the Kabbalah with Gershom Sholem, the brother of his childhood friend Werner Sholem. For these reasons, I imagine he did not see Jews negatively enough for the Nazis, and was too uncompromising to pretend that even his narrator did. I think this dilemma fully explains why there are no Jews in this book. In 1935, when Winston Churchill for example still publicly admired “the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force” of Adolf Hitler, Jünger claims to have already understood the bottomlessness of Hitler's depravity by noticing he was using the word “Vernichtung” (annihilation) way too much. He was remarkably right, years before most could see it, but even more remarkably his method of understanding was a poet's acute sense of word choice! And from then, even though he agreed with nationalist dictatorship as a goal and method, he distanced himself from National Socialism because he was disgusted with the vile character of the leader of this particular nationalist dictatorship. If that doesn't show you the peculiar kind of man Ernst Jünger was, I don't know what to tell you. The craft and the poetry You all know the wild grief that besets us when we remember times of happiness. How far beyond recall they are, and we are severed from them by something more pitiless than leagues and miles. The “marble cliffs” in the title of this short novella unite senses of beauty, majesty and danger, which is programmatic for this entire book. It begins with a visionary description of life in the traditional society of “the Marina” in an overwhelmingly beautiful state of paradise. The narrator lives on the edge of this society in a “hermitage” with his brother, his housekeeper and his son. The latter has a strange power over the local population of poisonous snakes. This opening act is without question the most elaborate celebration of poetic beauty I have ever read. Superficially it could be dismissed as purple prose. But due to Jünger’s clever use of poetic techniques in what at first appears to be prose text, there’s a rhythm, a density and a lucidity to it that makes it pretty much a very long poem, and gives it an intoxicating quality which is most apparent when you read it out loud. In the autumn we feasted like sages and did honour to the exquisite wines in which the southern slopes of the Marina abound. When in the vineyards between red foliage and dark grape clusters we caught the jocund calls of the vintagers, when in the little towns and villages the wine-presses began to creak, and the odour of the pressed grape skins drew its heady veils round the farms, we would go down to the innkeepers, coopers and wine-growers, and drink with them from the full-bellied jug. And there we would always meet with gay companions, for the land is rich and fair, so that in it flourishes untroubled leisure, and wit and humour are its unquestioned coin. I know this works, because I did an experiment. I read this book aloud, to a room full of people who were smoking pot. The book is short and the plan was to read all of it over the evening. I have read to pot smokers occasionally, but with this book it was different. They were enjoying it very much for the first couple of chapters, and exclaimed many times it was “perfect” for pot. But some hours, chapters and joints in, when the narrator goes on an expedition into a fantastically beautiful forest, they were so utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of the descriptions of nature they asked me to stop. I and the only other sober person in the room were the only ones who were willing to continue. We all had very intense dreams that night. Once we had broken through the thick hedge of dogwood and blackthorn we entered the high forest, territory where the blow of an axe had never resounded. The ancient trunks, the pride of the Chief Ranger, stood gleaming damp like pillars with their capitals hidden by the mist. We walked among them as if through a spacious hall, and, like the magic setting of a stage, festoons of ivy and clematis blooms hung down towards us out of the void. The ground was piled high with mould and rotting branches, in the bark of which fiery red mushrooms had sprung up, so that we felt for a moment like divers wandering among coral gardens. Wherever one of the mighty trunks had fallen from age or struck by lightning, we stepped out on to a little clearing on which the yellow foxglove grew in thick clumps. On the rotting ground the deadly nightshade bloomed in profusion; on its stalk the dark purple calices shook like funeral bells. It comes as no surprise that Jünger had much practice writing that way, from putting into his diaries a lot of his dreams and his numerous drug experiences. Jünger had long been inclined to deeply poetic descriptions of the real events he described, but this intensity at this length is genuinely new to his writing. Wherever he can use plurals he prefers them over the singular, wherever he can use more melodic and beautiful verbs (like when the characters “step out on” rather than “walk into” clearings) he does. Maybe the pretense of the narrator not being himself allowed Jünger to wallow in his characteristic aestheticism, take it to an extreme and arguably to the point of self-parody. Skip to the next heading if you don’t care about translation The extreme language of this book made me doubt there would be any translation into English that could do it justice. After all, if you throw this last excerpt into DeepL you get: After breaking through a dense fringe of blackthorn and cornets, we entered the high forest, in the grounds of which the blow of the axe had never sounded. The old trunks, which formed the pride of the head forester, stood in the damp glow like columns whose capitals were hidden by the haze. We walked among them as through wide vestibules, and like the magic work on a stage, ivy vines and clematis blossoms hung down on us from the invisible. The ground was covered high with mulm and decaying branches on whose bark mushrooms, burning red cup fungi, had settled, so that a feeling of divers walking through coral gardens crept over us. Where one of these giant trunks was tossed by age or lightning, we stepped out into small clearings where yellow foxglove stood in dense clumps. Belladonna bushes also proliferated on the rotten ground, on whose branches the flower calyxes in brown violet swayed like death bells. It’s still pretty, and it works on a matter-of-fact level. None of it is just wrong. But can you see how it has a lot less of the dreamlike quality? A “fringe” is a geographical feature, while the “hedge” emphasizes its role as an obstacle in a journey. Those “old” trunks are less poetic than “ancient” ones. A “head forester” is a job description, while a “Chief Ranger” is a seminal figure. The “vestibules” are a literal translation of the original, but the English word is used a lot less than German “Vestibüle” was back then. So that’s a word you may need to work to understand, which gets you out of the story’s flow, so “spacious hall” is better. There are even more such nitpicks to be made even in this short paragraph, but my point is these difficulties pervade every single paragraph of the book. ChatGPT very similarly fails to overcome them. Since January, there is a new translation by Tess Lewis, which has the advantage of being available on Kindle. I’ll spare you another repeat of the same paragraph and just say I think DeepL did most of this translation. But Tess Lewis did improve on many of its word choices and I’ll grudgingly concede this translation is good enough. It still sounds too modern for me, too much like prose and too little like poetry. Therefore, all previous and following excerpts are from the Stuart Hood translation, published in 1947, which I was astonished to find does pull it off! Let me assure anyone who doesn’t speak German, or doesn’t study translation, that this one is absolutely exemplary and surely represents years of painstaking work. Stuart Hood was a Scot who knew German very well. Like Jünger he was a veteran officer, and he needed German for his intelligence missions in World War 2. This is his very first published translation of an entire book. It harnesses a considerable talent, which is also evidenced by how Stuart Hood went on to become an accomplished writer himself, a BBC executive, a professor and several other notable things. And it is clearly a labor of intense love — right after the war, while working on it, Hood corresponded with Jünger and even went to visit him at least twice and they talked at length about the art of translation and how to translate specific points of the Marble Cliffs. The end of this last quote, “on its stalk the dark purple calices shook like funeral bells.” exemplifies how precisely Hood has understood Jünger. Why “calices”, not “chalices”? Because that is the old-fashioned form of this word, and using it is unnecessarily peculiar, but it doesn’t make you stop and look into a dictionary. It isn’t even more precise than DeepL’s and ChatGPT’s and Tess Lewis’s “calyxes” for the word “Blumenkelche” in the Original. But it captures precisely how the author was using his German language. This is because on every page of the original, there are choices of individual words that evoke subtleties of mood and allusion that are strictly impossible to translate, because English doesn’t have a similar-enough group of synonyms from which to make the equivalent choice. Some of that must inevitably get lost in translation. But these “calices” are an example of how Hood has the audacity to frequently insert his own new peculiar word choices — which restore exactly the same effect! It might take entire months until AI can do that! Unfortunately the New Directions edition with this translation has been out of print for a while, although I heard from a regrettably less law-abiding friend that the PDF is easy to find. But a few years ago someone bought the UK rights to this translation and republished it. While this edition has several uncorrected OCR mistakes, one of which horrifyingly turns “Flayer’s Copse” into “Player’s Copse”, at least this makes the better translation available (legally) again. What actually happens (spoilers) After six chapters of descriptions of paradise, and of the botanical work the brothers do since they don’t need to make a living, the book continues with a gradual decline of this gorgeous world. This again is much more of a richly detailed description than a story plot. It begins with the introduction of the Chief Ranger. The brothers know him from their military community, from before his takeover begins. There is some debate about whether the Chief Ranger stands for Hitler, Stalin or Hermann Göring. I think this debate is misguided. The character of the Chief Ranger, the antagonist of the narrator and all he holds dear, is never named but only ever referred to by his title. He does not appear to have staff or lieutenants at all, nor any personal history. And Jünger is profoundly uninterested in the personalities of all his characters beneath what they pay attention to (except the narrator’s brother) so even this important figure is roughly sketched at best. Therefore, I believe he is best understood as more of an archetype or role, The Tyrant, denuded of the individual traits or histories that make one tyrant a Führer, another a General Secretary and yet another a Great Leader. So, what makes a tyrant? According to Jünger, “wherever free spirits establish their sway these primeval powers will always join their company like a snake creeping to an open fire. They are the old connoisseurs of power who see a new day dawning in which to reestablish the tyranny that has lived in their hearts since the beginning of time.” The Chief Ranger is also “a master of feigning frankness that was full of snares for the unwary.” He has a reputation for wealth and a strong visual brand (a gold-embroidered green coat) that makes sure he always leaves “an imprint on one’s memory”. He exudes a “breath of primitive power” and has a strong charisma that gives an impression of “both cunning and unshakable power — yes, at times even majesty.” As he begins to usurp power, “reports spread from mouth to mouth of infringements of the law and of acts of violence in the neighbourhood, and finally such incidents occurred publicly and with no attempt to concealment. A cloud of fear preceded the Chief Ranger like the mountain mist that presages the storm. Fear enveloped him, and I am convinced that therein far more than in his own person lay his power.” From what I know about tyrants, that sounds about right. For the next seven chapters, the vile followers of the Chief Ranger continually corrupt everything. The sophisticated culture of the Marina is surrounded by the rough herdsmen clans of the surrounding Campagna steppe, beyond which lies the Chief Ranger’s forest populated by lowlifes. The class metaphor is blindingly obvious, and Jünger’s theory of how these lowlifes overcome first the Campagna and then the Marina is not subtle either. After the Alta Plana war, and the defeat, the entire society has been weakened. “Thus in exhausted bodies corruption will set in by way of wounds which a sound man would scarcely notice. The first symptoms, therefore, were not recognized.” Very gradually, law gives way to lawlessness, spreading from and with the lower classes foresters in many different ways. Violent crime grows, in descriptions very reminiscent of the many deadly street fights of the late Weimar republic. Various elements of traditional culture become corrupted. Those who would defend it are intimidated and attacked. The constitutional lawful reaction is too slow, so by the time it manages to convene and have democratic debates, it is already infiltrated. And there’s one paragraph worth quoting in full. Herein, above all, lay a masterly trait of the Chief Ranger. He administered fear in small doses which he gradually increased, and which aimed at crippling resistance. The role he played in the disorders which were so finely spun in the heart of his woods was that of a power for order; for while his agents of lower rank, who had established themselves in the clans, fostered anarchy, the initiated penetrated into the civic offices and the magistracy, and there won the reputation of men of deeds who would bring the mob to its senses. Thus the Chief Ranger was like an evil doctor who first encourages the disease so that he may practise on the sufferer the surgery he has in mind. Today this is a mainstream view in German history. In 1939, it could have been prosecuted as high treason and punished with death. On the backdrop of ever escalating mayhem, two old men who are friends of the brothers are described: Belovar, a clan patriarch from the Campagna, and Father Lampros, an eminent Christian monk. In very different ways, they both are very helpful, each both in the botanical work and against the mounting threat. The brothers decide against meeting the violence with violence, delve deeper into their work, become increasingly pessimistic and develop a hope that they can rescue the results of their work into an imperishable afterlife by burning it with an ancient mystical crystal lens that they somehow inherited. The narrator describes continued excursions for rare plants, through the country that is becoming increasingly treacherous and foreboding, until finally, well after the middle point of the book, with one particular excursion for an extremely rare flower, the actual continual story begins. Today we look at the Nazis with horror, but Jünger has dug too many trenches into hills of rotting corpses to be easily horrified. Instead of horror, his feelings towards the Nazis are mostly contempt, seasoned with disgust, and that has been pervading his description of the rise of the Chief Ranger’s henchmen over the last couple of chapters. But he does give one instance of pure horror and it is here, in the very heart of the book, when the two brothers on their excursion happen to discover, in the ill-reputed area of Flayer's Copse, the Chief Ranger’s remote “flaying-hut” of Koppels-Bleek. The original Köppels-Bleek is a German wordplay, about as subtle as a drone base in a sci-fi novel that happens to be called Obamazliez. Koppels-Bleek is where the Chief Ranger has his enemies tortured to death. It has frequently been called a concentration camp, but that is imprecise. It is really a Vernichtungslager, a death camp, which unlike a “normal” concentration camp is built for the express purpose that no torture victim ever gets out alive. This is a prediction, because while Nazi concentration camps were set up starting in 1933, Vernichtungslager were only built three years after the “Marble Cliffs” were published. After an intensely gruesome description of the particulars of this place, the narrator assesses its importance as follows. Such are the dungeons above which rise the proud castles of the tyrants, and from them is to be seen rising the curling savoury smoke of their banquets. They are terrible noisome pits in which a God-forsaken crew revels to all eternity in the degradation of human dignity and human freedom. He is so certain he has captured the very essence of tyranny, “the abode of tyranny in all its shame”, that he puts this climax at the two thirds mark of the book and makes it exceedingly obvious this is where the third and final act begins, as the pace of the book changes entirely. Although the narrator still includes some retrospectives, he is now finally telling a real story. Strikingly, the brothers return to botany — remember this, it will be important later — and then to their home, where they soon get two conspiring visitors. Braquemart is a competent, racist, nihilistic fellow veteran. The narrator despises him at length for his heartless theory-mindedness. Prince Smyrna is new, young, seems to the narrator to know “the nature of justice and order” but is too weak and inexperienced to shoulder the responsibility he is heroically taking on. The two visitors want to Do Something about the Chief Ranger — what exactly is never said, though a personal confrontation or assassination is implied. They leave for the Chief Ranger's territory. This entire chapter feels very much like a comment on some political acquaintances of Jünger who attempted to challenge the Nazis, and failed. The next day, Father Lampros gives the narrator a mission to arm himself and look for these two men. He goes to old Belovar's farmstead, where he learns of commotion in the direction of Flayer's Copse, and the old clan patriarch goes to war. Before, the book was a dreamy soliloquy; now we see dramatic wartime action. Ernst Jünger has had a lot of practice with writing about that kind of thing, and it shows. Their small but experienced war party with a lot of dogs goes towards Koppels-Bleek and is soon met with two confused, horrific, riveting battles. The narrator stumbles through and finds at Koppels-Bleek the heads of Prince Smyrna and Braquemart. The former strikes him as a symbol of how nobility remains real, and he picks it up. With it, he retreats through mayhem and danger into the complete flaming destruction of the Marina. He marvels at the beauty of the flames — remember this too, it will also be important later — and, with his hunters in hot pursuit, runs to his house. There his son uses his strange power over the local population of poisonous snakes to make them defeat the nearest attackers. The brothers burn down the house, go find Father Lampros and see him die. From an old soldier comrade who owes them a favor they get room on a ship to flee across the water to Alta Plana, where an old enemy who owes them another favor takes them in. There’s an implicit framing story of how the narrator lives to tell the tale of these memories to some unspecified audience, and as it ends it mentions in passing that sometime after these events, a new cathedral has been built on the ruins of the Marina and the head of Prince Smyrna went there as a relic. This small bit still stands out today, and would have stood out even more starkly to contemporary readers, because in the context of everything that happened before, this bit publicly, extremely boldly, and correctly, predicts the eventual fate of the Nazis. Not once in this entire story has the narrator expressed surprise at this progression of events, or given any other indication it is in any way unlikely. The narrator, and the author through him, seems to be saying this is just the way it goes with tyranny, when a society has lost too much of its strength to fight off the bestial attacks of the lowly. I have omitted not just many smaller elements of the story but also a huge number of allusions to ancient history, (German) literature and especially the Bible. I imagine Jünger put them there as prizes for the few who would find them. This is one of the ways that I think On the Marble Cliffs is Ernst Jünger’s Unsong: a vehicle that lets a prolific nonfiction author

the underworld1 mentions across 1 issues

the underworld is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Orpheus (who braved the underworld)". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: the underworld
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Real Raw News

August 16, 2024 · Original source

Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

The United States of Ukraine1 mentions across 1 issues

The United States of Ukraine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 26, 2024 and July 26, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "pledge of allegiance to 'The United States of Ukraine'". It most often appears alongside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 2020 election, 2024 book review contest.

Reference entry: The United States of Ukraine
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 26, 2024
Last seen: July 26, 2024

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Your Book Review: Real Raw News July 26, 2024

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 1 shared issues
2020 election 1 shared issues
2024 book review contest 1 shared issues
11 1 shared issues
11 trutherism 1 shared issues

Source context

July 26, 2024 · Original source

The lack of evidence that all this is happening is entirely explained through coordinated media silence as well as the widespread use of body doubles and clones. The heart of Real Raw News, and the source of most of its entertainment value, is its accounts of the supposed secret military tribunals occurring at America’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, better known as Gitmo2. For more than three years, the site has produced one article after another describing the arrest, trial, and execution of dozens of major and not-so-major figures in American life. Hillary Clinton? Arrested, tried, executed. Bill Gates? Arrested, tried, executed. Dick Cheney? Fled the country via a secret underground tunnel to a CIA airfield, but then returned to America on vacation for some reason3, arrested, tried, executed. George W. Bush, Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, Gavin Newsom, Mark Milley, Victoria Nuland, Tom Hanks (?), Brian Stelter (???) – All arrested and executed, in turn4. Almost all defendants are hanged, which actually is not the method prescribed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but has the advantage of being far more cinematic. It would be easy for all of this to get old, but like with variations in classical music, subtle differences to each iteration enrich the whole. Some defendants desperately try to deny responsibility for their crimes. Some arrogantly taunt the tribunal, assuming until the very end that they are untouchable. Some literally scream as though demon-possessed. Some fake senility or amnesia. But crucially, all of them face justice, one way or another. An entry published just before this contest’s deadline is a lovely example: Representing himself, [Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott] McAfee in opening remarks talked himself into an early verdict. He said no one and nothing, not even imprisonment, would prevent him from destroying the Trump family. Handcuffed at the defense table, he glared at the panel and said he would topple the Trump empire, building by building, brick by brick, and wouldn’t rest until every Trump supporter was behind bars or dead. “Then I’ll take care of the people here and this place,” McAfee said. “Mr. McAfee, I’m told you are of sound mind and know where you are, right?” Admiral Stephens asked5. “I’m in a Kangaroo court in the Banana Republic of Trump, staring at a guy who couldn’t hack it in the real world, couldn’t run a private practice, get a partnership, or sit on a real bench, so he went into the military,” McAfee said. “Have you ever heard of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Mr. McAfee?” the Admiral asked. “Because you have the worst case I’ve seen, and I’ve seen several.” “Trump is finished. He’ll be in jail soon, and when he is, your house of cards collapses,” McAfee said. “It might seem that way, but it only seems that way,” the Admiral said. “You might as well find me guilty. I’ll never stop hating Trump and I’ll never stop working to demolish everything he stole. He was born guilty, and he’ll be guilty until the day he dies. That’ll be the only word on his gravestone: GUILTY!” McAfee shouted. The lead panelist, a Marine Corps major, politely interrupted: “Admiral, sir, we don’t have to hear any more. McAfee mocks this court, and we find him guilty of the treason charge. Additionally, we are in agreement he should hang for his crimes.” Admiral Stephens nodded contemplatively. “I side with these fine officers. Mr. McAfee, you are hereby sentenced to hang for treason against the United States of America.” His execution is scheduled for May 15. Yes, this is the judge of Trump’s criminal case in Fulton County. In the Real Raw News world, Trump’s various legal adventures are both real and fake at the same time. Apparently, Trump could completely ignore these proceedings, and the military in fact begs him to do so, but he chooses to place himself in danger from some unseen, Christ-like self-sacrificial motive. That motive, it appears, is getting evil judges to expose their bias by ruling against him, so that they can be arrested and executed for treason. The site often offers an alternative narrative regarding events in the official, Deep State-backed news narrative. When Colin Powell died, RRN was there to explain that he actually committed suicide, fearing arrest by the military. When former Tom Hanks co-star Peter Scolari died of cancer, RRN swooped in to attribute his demise to an unexpected military tribunal6. This pattern is one of the chief reasons fans cite for believing the site: Isn’t it incredible, they say, how some of the same people RRN reports the executions of just happen to have recently died or been hospitalized in the mainstream press? What are the odds? Perhaps surprisingly, the star figure in Real Raw News’s tapestry of blood is not Donald Trump; like Gandalf or Dumbledore, he is a heroic but distant and largely off-screen figure. Instead, the primary hero is Rear Admiral Darse Crandall, who dispenses lethal justice with shocking efficiency while always being ready with a good quip: Admiral Crandall ordered [Arizona Governor Katie] Hobbs not to intimidate the witness. “You lack decorum, detainee Hobbs, and your insouciance ends here. We revoke your right to further question this witness and ask the panel to render a verdict on the charges against you.” The admiral dismissed Jane Doe, and the panel unanimously found Hobbs guilty, recommending she hang to death. “I won’t let you do this to me,” Hobbs screeched. “It’s already done,” said Admiral Crandall. “And have a Merry Christmas—in whatever afterlife you wind up in.” He scheduled her execution for December 22. Adm. Crandall is in fact a real person, currently serving as Judge Advocate General of the Navy. Admiral Crandall seems like a nice and professional fellow, and I badly want to know what he makes of his alternate persona. I like to hope that he enjoys it; maybe he jokingly warns his subordinates to do their jobs right or else they’ll be arrested and executed. If anybody knows otherwise, please do not disabuse me of this fantasy. Lesser fake news auteurs will puke out lame one-and-done articles about the moon landing or JFK or whatever, with zero internal consistency. Baxter is better. His military tribunals are reported out in detail. Even the most minor figures receive dedicated articles for their arrest, their trial, and their demise, but the biggest names receive genuine weeks-long productions. Hillary Clinton’s tribunal spans five days, until damning testimony from her former aide (and lover) Huma Abedin sends her to the gallows. Former president Bush’s arrest and tribunal is a ten-part epic lasting nearly two months, and includes details that are eccentric even by 9/11 truther standards: Supposedly, the real death toll of 9/11 (which Bush orchestrated) was 7,000, but Bush deemed this number too high to win reelection, so the real number was suppressed and 4,000 families were silenced with enormous bribes that also served to stimulate the economy. Good thing all the plotting was caught on tape, or he might have gotten away with it. Baxter never rushes things. Remember how the Colorado Supreme Court tried to kick Trump off the primary ballot in late 2023? Lesser fake newsers might have had the entire 4-vote anti-Trump majority arrested at once, but Baxter is cannier. In his reporting, one justice was arrested immediately, but the other three went on the run , and took months to capture. As of this writing we’re still waiting for their tribunal. I hope it’s a barn-burner! Baxter knows that while crass wish fulfillment is easy, truly great stories need formidable villains. Amidst the many arrests and hangings of Baxter’s saga are cinematic setbacks. Sometimes, the Marines don’t get their man: [Biden White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish] Jha was five feet away from his vehicle when two Marines with an arrest warrant approached him, informing him that he was being placed under arrest on charges of mass murder. Jha erupted in laughter, saying, “You don’t even know who we are.” He exploded in a crimson fireball that blew his and the Marines’ bodies to bits throughout the parking lot. […] The Marines brought what remains they could to Fort Bragg, where medical examiners deduced that Jha was not Jha, but a clone in which someone had planted a subdermal detonator connected to HMX explosives. And then, there is the looming presence of RRN’s chief villain: Former U.S. President Barack Obama. Members of the deep state make a warped pledge of allegiance to “The United States of Ukraine” and to “one world under Obama.” Other arms of the deep state might be taken down, but Obama himself always lurks in the shadows, controlling and commanding. The occasional attempt to take him down runs into the kind of problems you’d expect: “Why?” Obama gurgled and died. Inexplicably, the body spontaneously combusted, starting at both hands and spreading to the arms and chest. Special Forces tried extinguishing the flames with sand and water, but their efforts were in vain—the flames were rapidly charring burnt flesh. “Check his feet,” the Special Forces lead, who had been trained to spot body doubles and clones, called out. They swiftly yanked off Obama’s socks and sneakers and saw he had flat feet, and that his sneakers had been augmented to fit people with fallen arches. They pulled down his pants; Obama had no genitals, a telltale indicator of cloning. The body became too hot to touch and was soon consumed by fire. Like Bob Ross, Michael Baxter has no mistakes, only happy little accidents. In late 2021, RRN reported on the conviction of the late Chelsea Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky. Being only a lackey in the Clintons’ plot to abduct children and sell them on the black market, Mezvinsky received a comparatively lenient life sentence. But wait! Two months later, Gitmo’s chaplain mentioned in passing that he had attended Mezvinsky’s execution. Eagle-eyed readers saw the discrepancy and cried foul. But Baxter didn’t miss a beat. When Baxter reported on the arrest of former Obama adviser David Axelrod, only to publish no follow-up, he had a ready explanation a year later: Axelrod had been executed without trial by being thrown out of an airplane, and it took months for Baxter to learn the truth. I’ll admit, I find Baxter’s efforts to maintain narrative integrity incredibly charming, given how they clash with the latent absurdity of the whole endeavor. Like most fictional universes, the Real Raw Newsiverse crumbles if you think about it too hard. If there are White Hat and Black Hat partitions of the military, how does military procurement work? How do newly-enlisted personnel know which faction they are joining? Do the two factions have separate recruiters? And when literally everyone carries a basic video camera in their pocket, and social media access is universal, how are major battles being fought on American soil with zero video evidence anywhere? At the meta level, the entire construct gets even sillier. The conceit of the site is that Trump has secretly left power to entrap his foes…yet then his allies go and blab the entire “real” story to an online blog. The cover for this is that the masses simply don’t believe it, but you know who would definitely know whether the blog is accurate? The Deep State! Yet despite this, in RRN lore sinister actors from Andrew Cuomo to Oprah are always caught off guard when Delta Force7 smashes down their door and zip-ties their hands for a one-way trip to Cuba. Okay, But So What? You might be tempted to think this is all irrelevant rambling into the void. But if you think that, you’re mistaken. The thing is, Real Raw News is popular. Really popular. It got more than 2 million page visits in January. It’s a lot more popular than this blog and even outdraws some established publications like The Nation. “Okay, views are views, but does anyone really believe this?” you may ask, perhaps derisively. Well, it falls to me to say that yes, yes they do. The typical RRN article gets hundreds upon hundreds of comments. And sure, a lot of them are “My mother is being paid $2,000/day working from home” spam, but most of them are not. Hundreds upon hundreds of comments are from readers grateful to Baxter for sharing the “truth.” Even more unsettling are comments from people who spot a problem with the occasional story, but still trust Baxter overall. Baxter has a donation page on Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. It has raised more than $210,000 and donations continue to pour in on a daily basis. Sure, some donation messages clearly indicate people who are in on the joke…but many more do not. But I don’t just need to guess based on comments and donation messages. In this realm, I can appeal to personal experience. I work in the broader world of American right-of-center politics, and we encounter Real Raw News believers constantly. We get emails from people who confidently insist the public-facing news of the day is fake, and the truth about the events at Gitmo will soon be revealed. At public Q&A events, we’ve fielded questions from genuinely nervous and worried people, who complain about their friends losing hope and being blackpilled by the news, and want to know why there hasn’t been more effort to share what’s “really” going on. A friend of mine who served in the Trump administration has described attending parties where, when he mentioned looking for a post-admin job, he received knowing looks and wink-wink-nudge-nudge remarks from people signaling they knew what was “really” going on. Somehow and someway, a lot of people believe or half-believe or badly want to believe this stuff. And where a lot of people do anything, there are takeaways to be found! In my three-plus years of reading all news that is both real and raw, here is what I’ve found. Conspiracies Evolve Like Comic Book Lore In his review of the Alexander Romance, Scott remarked that figures like Alexander the Great or Hercules were, essentially, the pre-modern versions of Batman: Stories about them are a genre, with countless different variations and stylistic choices that evolve over time, with just a few set principles guiding all of them. The Real Raw Newsiverse, and other modern conspiracy theories, also function like comic book lore. Just like Batman, and just like Hercules, “Donald Trump” has become a genre. Fake news stories about him and his Deep State enemies have a few core premises (adrenochrome, pedophile cabals, there is a Plan and we should Trust It) but endless room for variation past that point. Fans of comic books, soap operas, or The Simpsons might be familiar with something TVTropes calls “comic book time.” Certain facets of a fictional reality are locked in place, and with the passage of time everything else is gradually retconned to maintain the status quo. In season 2 of the Simpsons, Homer and Marge started dating in 1974, in Season 3 Marge becomes pregnant with Bart in 1980 (after a date watching The Empire Strikes Back), and in season 4 it’s revealed that Homer missed the Moon Landing to listen to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” Tragically, though, The Simpsons kept going past season 10, and if Homer was 18 in 1974 that would make him eligible for a full Social Security benefit today. So in 2008, the continuity changed so that Homer was in a Nineties grunge band just before marrying Marge8. The Simpsons writers have avoided rejiggering the canon since, but if they do, they’ll have to confront the fact that 30-something Homer and Marge are now millennials, and in a decade they’ll be members of Gen Z. You may live to see a Simpsons flashback episode about Homer and Marge living as hipsters in Brooklyn during the 2010s (truly, we live in cursed times.) But the same phenomenon exists in the world of conspiracies. Instead of a consistent, elaborate canon, what we have is a few story beats with a lot of customization and the occasional retcon. When Baxter first began posting his stories, a core part of the narrative was that Donald Trump still secretly had all the powers of the presidency and was still in command of the entire U.S. military command. Early articles promised that Trump’s apparent loss of office was only a temporary ruse, necessary to expose the worst elements of the Deep State, but that Trump’s triumphal return to power would take place by July 4, 2021. The national media might have put on a song and dance suggesting otherwise, but behind the scenes, loyal military forces were the real ones in control. This control even extended to the military helpfully house-sitting the White House and not letting Biden use it. Despite his illegitimate victory, Biden met an unwelcome surprise when he arrived at the White House on January 20. Instead of getting a ceremonial greeting, he and Kamala Harris were stopped by National Guard and U.S. Marines at the barbwire fence encircling the White House. The Marines informed them that the military had assumed control of the Executive Branch and instructed them to vacate the area. When Harris belligerently said, “Move aside, we’re president now,” the Marines locked the gate. […] To avoid shame and maintain an illusion of power, Biden’s people concocted a ruse, supported by his media allies, to deceive the American public into believing he had won a fair election and had moved into the White House on schedule. Inside Actor/Producer Tyler Perry’s 300-acre Atlanta estate sits a three-story stucco replica of the commander-in-chief’s residence, which he originally built as a set piece for a television show. […] Although the replicant White House is built to 80% scale, on television and in images it’s indistinguishable from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Biden and Harris have been using the facsimile to feign leadership and impose despotic rule on the nation. Of course, July 4 came and went, with Trump’s return nowhere to be seen, so the canon simply updated: In the new narrative, the military had been conducting a year-long election fraud audit on Trump’s behalf, the results were nearly ready for public release, and Trump’s return would simply be “swift.” But no swift return has transpired, and so as the 2024 election has approached, the lore has evolved in the direction of Trump authentically running in this election and simply reclaiming power by winning it. As time has passed, more subtle changes have had to pile up. Early on, RRN reported that Joe Biden was a brain dead semi-corpse being held at Walter Reed, and any public appearances by “Biden” were one of several actors. But after four years of Let’s Go Brandon, Biden himself has become a more popular villain, and so quietly references to his brain-dead status have disappeared. In the early days of RRN, the military was firmly behind Trump and any implication that Biden held the powers of commander-in-chief was a media-fueled sham. But as time has passed, Trump being the “real” commander-in-chief over a loyal military has evolved into a reality where there are two American militaries, a “White Hat” faction loyal to Trump and “Black Hats” loyal to Biden. Early stories implied the White Hats were more numerous, but recent stories have implied the opposite, with the White Hats an elite force that often wins battles decisively while badly outnumbered. A secret purge has gradually become a secret civil war, specifically one with frequent war crimes: White Hat forces in Maui have eradicated or repelled all but a handful of the felonious FEMA agents who began terrorizing the tropical paradise in the aftermath of the inexplicable blaze that razed Lahaina and surrounding towns in early August, a source in General Eric M. Smith’s office told Real Raw News. Since mid-August, United States Marines have fought with FEMA patrols in Lahaina, Kaanapali, Wailuku, Maalaea, and Pukalani, and the skirmishes resulted in the deaths of approximately 475 federal goons and, alas, 34 valiant Marines. The Marines died upholding the Constitution of the United States; the feds died trying to defend the criminal Biden regime. […] “The Marines died valorously,” our source said. “We ain’t taking FEMA prisoners from the rank and file, only the key players. General Smith made it clear it’s weapons-free. Those bastards know damn well they’re following unlawful orders, and they’ll pay the price.” I think the ever-evolving nature of conspiracies is actually pretty important to psychologically grasping their appeal. I have a friend who is a big believer in 9/11 Trutherism. He once compelled me to watch the documentary “The New Pearl Harbor,” an exhausting 5-hour film promoting 9/11 conspiracies. If one actually watches, one quickly discovers that a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theories are mutually exclusive, or at least don’t mesh well together: One conspiracy argues that fighter jets were intentionally diverted the wrong direction to keep them from shooting down the hijacked jets approaching New York, while another conspiracy suggests that United 93 was shot down, and it was all covered up. In some versions, the planes didn’t hit the Twin Towers at all. Sometimes Bush did it, and sometimes Israel did it, and so on. Similarly, in my career I’ve worked adjacent to people who, like RRN, were very hostile to Covid-19 shots. That hostility made them sequentially endorse wildly different assertions about how the vaccines worked. Sometimes, the vaccines contain heavy metals. Sometimes, they contain hydra DNA to turn recipients into partially non-human chimeras. Sometimes, the vaccines are a depopulation agent. Sometimes, they’re a mind-control agent, or a killswitch that can be activated by self-assembling nanomachinery. One viral documentary in 2022 claimed that Covid was caused by snake venom in the water supply, and that Covid vaccines were an additional dose of snake venom to keep people sick (all this, of course, because the snake is Satan’s animal). What stands out isn’t the silliness of these particular theories, but that I saw them sequentially endorsed by the same people. Some of these people are smart enough to notice inconsistencies, at least when they’re pointed out, so why don’t they bother them? To some extent, I think it’s for the same reason people don’t care that every Batman story doesn’t perfectly line up. Consistency isn’t the point! What actually matters is enjoying individual stories and the wider genre they fit into. Covid vaccine haters don’t think too hard about any specific story. Instead, they’re driven by a core impulse of “distrust the new vaccine that people I distrust are promoting,” and every conceivably story or tale that feeds that genre of thought is, for them, worthwhile. Similarly, Real Raw News fans don’t think too hard about any specific story. Instead, I think their core impulse is, ironically, profound disappointment in how the Trump administration failed to deliver. Trump shook up the American political landscape more than anyone in living memory, and promised sweeping changes to every level of American government, yet his actual administration proved rather disorderly, changed far less than was promised, and then lost power after one term. For many, this simply prompted a revision in how they saw Trump. But for others, the preferred response is to embrace a fantasy reality where Trump is a superhero. I actually think the reverse side of this explains things like the durability of Russiagate: If you’re a normal American liberal, everything Trump says is offensive and piggish, but to justify their level of disdain for them, many needed to elevate his evil to the level of treason, even if that never really made any sense. It can't just be that Trump is an egotistical jerk or a narcissist or whatever. He's got to be a traitor who's going to end American democracy. People Crave Extreme, Over-the-Top, and Underhanded Solutions. At the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety pushed through the Law of 22 Prairial. The law simplified the procedures of the country’s Revolutionary Tribunal by: Defining a whole heap of activities as criminal treason, including “creating scarcity,” disparaging the National Convention, “inspiring discouragement,” and spreading fake news.

Inline links: 2, Arrested, tried, executed, Arrested, tried, executed, secret underground tunnel, for some reason, 3, tried, executed, George W. Bush, Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, Gavin Newsom, Mark Milley, Victoria Nuland, Tom Hanks, Brian Stelter, 4, variations, entry, 5, committed suicide, 6, real person, Supposedly, arrested immediately, months, Sometimes, warped pledge, kind of problems, conviction, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5uuY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcc5e8197-f02d-4221-9186-4bcc4f165c72_759x723.png, arrest, thrown out of an airplane, 7, more than 2 million page visits, this blog, The Nation., https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EJFm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F66137a9b-260a-4cfa-adf3-c02c069dabd9_712x351.png, donation page, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AVfs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F16499732-4a26-43a0-8cd2-9dc38d5c6ac5_971x306.png, review, “comic book time.”, in 1974, listen to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.”, in a Nineties grunge band, 8, take place by July 4, 2021, house-sitting the White House, “swift.”, civil war, snake venom in the water supply, Law of 22 Prairial

the Verge1 mentions across 1 issues

the Verge is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 12, 2022 and October 12, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”". It most often appears alongside 538 deluxe model, @rcafdm, Andres.

Reference entry: the Verge
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 12, 2022
Last seen: October 12, 2022

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538 deluxe model 1 shared issues
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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

October 12, 2022 · Original source

23: Did you know: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap are called “the Merge”, “the Surge”, “the Verge”, “the Purge”, and “the Splurge”.

Inline links: the steps of the Ethereum development roadmap

The Victorians1 mentions across 1 issues

The Victorians is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 09, 2023 and August 09, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "One need not stretch a libertarian’s imagination steeped in political theory to say “The Victorians would have thought of modern life as slavery”"; "The Victorians would have thought of modern life as slavery". It most often appears alongside @data_depot, @StefanFSchubert, AI Snake Oil blog.

Reference entry: The Victorians
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First seen: August 09, 2023
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BERT 1 shared issues

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Links For August 2023

August 09, 2023 · Original source

One need not stretch a libertarian’s imagination steeped in political theory to say “The Victorians would have thought of modern life as slavery” They wrote books explicitly calling it slavery.

The Virgin1 mentions across 1 issues

The Virgin is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Virgin appeared to four young girls". It most often appears alongside 1910s Portugal, 1999 British eclipse, 2017 US eclipse.

Reference entry: The Virgin
Mention count: 1
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First seen: October 01, 2025
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The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know October 01, 2025

1910s Portugal 1 shared issues
1999 British eclipse 1 shared issues
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October 01, 2025 · Original source

In 1917, three Portuguese children reported a vision of the Virgin Mary. She promised to return to them on the 13th of each month. On the sixth month - October 13th - she would perform a great miracle.

The Hindu milk miracle of 1995. Starting from the bottom: In 1995, a man in New Delhi noticed that an idol of the elephant-god Ganesh seemed to be really drinking the glass of milk left as an offering. The story went viral - or as viral as things could go in 1995 - and Hindus around the world noticed the same thing. There was “an increase in overall milk sales in New Delhi by over 30%”. Scientists investigated and determined that a sculpted stone elephant trunk could sometimes absorb milk through capillary action. This was a story about rumor, interpretation, and context, but not really “hallucination”. The drinking effect was real. The Halifax Slasher was a typical supercriminal story. Two women reported being attacked by a mysterious and oddly-dressed knifeman; others followed. “Vigilante groups were set up on the streets, and several people, mistakenly assumed to have been the attacker, were beaten up; business in the town was all but shut down”. Although there was a Halifax resident with a history of knife crime, “he was quickly ruled out of the 1938 attacks on account of his large nose, which none of the 1938 victims had described”. Eventually several of the victims admitted to having made it up, and the whole thing went away. Supercriminal cases most often result from people making things up. Occasionally, seemingly-honest people report seeing the supercriminal in poor lighting conditions across a dark alley or something. But even if we consider these to be “hallucinations”, it is usually the one or two most vulnerable people in a town at the time. I can’t find any examples of true “mass hallucinations” - entire towns seeing a nonexistent supercriminal or monster at the same time. Koro is the psychosomatic disease par excellence; I’ve written about it before here. Victims, always male, believe that their penis has disappeared or retracted into their body; they often blame penis-stealing witches. Koro occurs at some very low background rate in every society (including ours), but occasionally wells up into mass panics in primitive cultures that take witchcraft seriously and have traditions of worrying about this sort of thing. Still, I don’t think any panic ever affects more than half of a village’s males, and usually not at the exact same time; it’s a smoldering panic over days or weeks, not a single instant of horrified realization. Also, although I’m not sure and would love to learn more about this, I don’t think the koro victim is having a visual hallucination of not having a penis at all. I think they think their penis is much smaller or shorter than it should be - which only requires some sort of obsessive worrying and (perhaps motivated) mis-remembering of its normal length. None of these are “mass hallucinations” in the sense where the sorts of visual hallucinations typical of certain mentally ill people occur en masse in a crowd of thousands with >50% prevalence - that is, the type of mass hallucination that would be required to explain Fatima. As far as I know, there are no confirmed cases of this ever happening. Still, from the Hindu milk miracle, we can learn that religious people can miss a real phenomenon for a long time, then notice it all at once with great fanfare. And from the koro cases, we can learn that a rare phenomenon can become more common in situations of widespread belief and social pressure. Interlude: It Seems Like Years Since It’s Been Clear This is around the stopping point of the previous Substack discussion. I’ve tried to cover most of Ethan and Evan’s arguments, go through the chain of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, and maybe pull on a few of the more tempting loose threads that they’ve left. As best I can tell, this level of investigation ends in a decisive victory for the believers. They have a stock of seemingly-unimpeachable testimonies; the skeptics have only a few leads that don’t seem on track to pan out. Eye damage can maybe produce a few odd effects, but - in the entire history of tens of billions of people living daily underneath a sun that they are able to view at any moment - we have not yet found anyone who reports the full constellation of Fatima experiences just from seeing the sun. No exotic weather phenomenon is a perfect match. Mass hallucinations are real but comparatively weak. At least this is my assessment. Skeptic blogs don’t agree. They propose one of these things (with no consensus as to which one) then act like they’ve debunked the miracle, then skip to the really important part: laughing at how obviously wrong it is. I’ve written before about my disappointment in the skeptical community and why it worries me, and here I feel it as acutely as ever. Sitting with my disappointment and trying to put it into words, I think my worries come down to a tangling of the Bayesian graph. The straightforward Bayesian way to do this is to start with some prior probability that there is a God who causes miracles (let’s say 1%), notice that the evidence for Fatima being a miracle naively seems very high (let’s say 90%), multiply out, and end up with a higher (8.3%) probability of God’s existence and a lower (8.3%) chance that Fatima in particular was miraculous. This is liberating. It lets you say “This piece of evidence is very strong, but my prior is very low, so even without being able to debunk the evidence, I continue to disbelieve.” But doing this the straightforward Bayesian way doesn’t work. First of all, what would it mean to naively (even before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles) say Fatima seems 90% likely to be miraculous. Before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles, surely the probability is much higher! But also, if you try this, then as soon as you find two similar miracles (I’ve been told the next two are the Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio and the Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg) your probability of God goes up to 88%! But I don’t think there’s any real atheist whose probability would rise in such a straightforward linear way. You need some kind of model where either it’s almost trivially possible to generate an arbitrary number of convincing-yet-false miracles, or it isn’t. But this doesn’t match the “virtuous” approach of addressing each miracle on its own terms - where you try to understand the Sun Miracle by learning things about the sun, or entoptic phenomena, or 1910s Portugal. And it does match the skeptical approach I’m complaining about, where you say “it’s probably swamp gas or something, lol, imagine being so dumb that you believe in miracles.” So I cannot object too strongly. Still, my greatest fear in this and all other problems of reasoning method is the trapped prior, where people take this too far and become impervious to evidence entirely. I think it’s worth untangling the whole Bayesian graph, trying to keep this whole structure in mind, if it prevents people from accidentally propagating an update down a logical chain, then propagating the same update back up the chain, again and again, ad infinitum, until they become arbitrarily sure of themselves. “We can be sure all miracle claims, even the convincing ones, are false, because there’s no God - and we can be sure there’s no God because all miracle claims are so risibly false.” Even if this is harmless - even if it turns out correct in the case of religion - it teaches such dangerous habits of mind that I’m willing to err in the direction of going way too far taking such claims seriously - at least in the “entertaining an idea without accepting it” sense. Everyone gets to decide what is and isn’t worth their time. I think deciding that these sorts of miracles aren’t worth your time is fine, as long as you’re propagating all the probabilities correctly and not accidentally treating your own hurriedness as a cause to update the rest of your belief graph. As for me, I don’t know, I just find this fascinating. In Evan’s skeptical take on the conversation, he starts strong, but after the topic switches to Part LXXVII of Dalleur’s discussion of photograph angles, he stops and asks: What the fuck are we doing? What are we talking about? What have I spent (conservatively) 18 hours of my life on? We’re addressing what Stanley Jaki called the most important event of the 20th century! We’re debating the existence of God, the most important question possible! If God is real, then nothing could be more important than establishing this: in the best case, we will come to believe; at worst, we will be able to tell St. Peter that our failure was honest and not from lack of trying. If He is not, then we can do whatever we want here on Earth, and surely one of the noblest ways to spend our short existence is expanding the frontiers of the known into the borderlands of mystery! In particular, if the God of Fatima exists, we are in deep trouble. I said I wouldn’t talk about exactly what the Virgin Mary told the child-seers, but the short version is that the First Secret was a very, very nasty vision of Hell. It looked exactly the way a ten-year-old child might expect: a lake of fire populated by ebon-skinned demons and horrendous tortures; the lead child-seer said that if the Virgin had not begun by promising that she personally would never go there, “she would have died of fright”. As it was, the consequences of the vision were grim. The child-seers got it into their minds that they could perhaps save sinners from the fire by “doing penance”. They drank only stagnant, scum-encrusted water, in the hopes that this might help some otherwise hell-bound soul; on some especially hot days, they ceased drinking water at all. When they found particularly painful ropes, they tied them around their bodies so hard that they bled (later, the Virgin mercifully told them they didn’t need to wear the ropes at night - they could stick to daytime only). After so many mortifications, they were easy prey for the Spanish Flu; two of the three perished before their tenth birthday. As they lay dying in the hospital, they were recorded as freaking out every time they saw a nurse or visitor with “immodest dress”, saying that they would not act in such a way if they knew how long Eternity was, or what awaited them there5. If all of this is the true opinion of the Lord of the Universe, we had better figure it out quick. If it isn’t, then the words of the Grupo Anticlerical: People! Let us always fight! From the victory of progress, science, freedom, and free thought, will result human happiness, joy, love, fraternity, respect for women, veneration for mothers, adoration for children, affection for the elderly, protection for the sick, the unfortunate, the tortured . . . O most holy mothers! O holy, pious mothers who so love your sweet little children! Have compassion on your beautiful little children, sacred fruits of your blessed wombs! …take on new meaning and urgency. I will admit my bias: I hope the visions of Fatima were untrue, and therefore I must also hope the Miracle of the Sun was a fake. But I’ll also admit this: at times when doing this research, I was genuinely scared and confused. If at this point you’re also scared and confused, then I’ve done my job as a writer and successfully presented the key insight of Rationalism: “It ain’t a true crisis of faith unless it could go either way”. But now that we’ve let Ethan, Evan, and the rest dig us into as deep a hole as possible, let’s try to dig our way out. 3: Our Lady Of Everywhere Else One question that Ethan, Evan, and Dalleur fail to ask is: what if people are basically always seeing the sun spin and change colors and and fall from the sky? What if this is the most common experience in the world? What if it’s a minor miracle every time you get more than a handful of people together and they don’t fall down in awe and terror at the manifestations of the sun? Goncado Xavier de Almeida Garrett is one of the star witnesses of the Fatima miracle, quoted above. His testimony comes from a letter written to Father Formigao, a local priest, about two months after the event. But although pro-Fatima sources quote the testimony at the beginning of the letter, they conveniently leave out what follows: I ask your excellency to please tell me if you confirm this narrative: the Bishop of Portalegre and Mrs. Maria de Jesus Raposo report that while they were with other people in Torres Novas, on the 20th of October at the end of the day, they saw the sun rotate and change its colors. They said this was different from Fátima and did not have the importance of October 13th. I would like clarification on the differences. It is urgent to know what the differences are, since they attended both […] Until now, no one saw the sun's sparkling rotations, and now everyone sees them many days and many times. Many days and many times? Remember, the Virgin Mary first appeared at Fatima on May 13. She promised to return on the 13th of each successive month until October, when she would perform a great miracle. But she never said she wouldn’t perform any miracles until October. So on the 13th of each month, a medium-sized crowd gathered. They didn’t leave disappointed. I won’t include every claimed supernatural occurrence, but here are the ones relevant to our subject: Olimpia de Jesus, about July 13: [On July 13], at her sister-in-law's house, when they heard the people shouting, he asked, "What's going on over there?" [Olimpia] looked at the sun and said, "The sun is different." The people came and reported that they had seen signs in the sun and in the sky. Joaquim Inacio Vicente, about August 13: This hour was a moment of terror for all who were there. Some lost their senses, others believed it to be the last day of their lives and their day of Judgment, and for some, afterwards, it was a wonder to see the admirable colors that successively took on the clouds that obscured the sun's rays—colors from bright red to pink and from there to blue—the color of anise, as several people declared to me minutes later in my home. Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, about August 13: Everyone looked up at the sky, which was covered by a light cloud, like a very fine white lace, pink in places. The sun, which had been completely hidden for a moment, left us illuminated by a strange light, with yellow spots visible on the ground and above us all, and a great drop in temperature, as happens during a solar eclipse. Manuel Pedro Marto, about August 13 and September 13: [On August 13, he] saw a kind of luminous globe rotating in the clouds […] On September 13th, he also went to Cova da Iria. He was a little away from the children. He saw nothing, nor heard anything, but he heard that some people had seen extraordinary things in the atmosphere. Joaquim Xavier Tuna, about August 13 and September 13: On the 13th of August, I saw the sun lower in the sky at the hour of its appearance. It never lowered as much as that time, not even on October 13th. All the objects around me turned yellow. On September 13th, I saw a large cross emerge from the sun and head east. Its progress was not very hurried. Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it disappeared, until it disappeared from view. I also saw other things that I cannot explain. In the Lapas area, there were people who, at the same time, saw the cross. Then there was the great miracle on October 13. Remember, I was only able to find a handful of negative testimonies - people who said they didn’t see it. One was from a woman named Leonor das Dores Salema Manoel, who said she saw “nothing of what others saw”, at least at Fatima. But on the drive home from Fatima that evening6: I saw [the sun] pass through different colors that I can't remember and it turned green, very light green, like a green salad with a golden rim around it, and spinning. Very long rays seemed to touch the earth and the sun seemed to be separated from the sky. Then the sky took on pink flashes, changing to a yellowish hue around the sun, and further away, spots here and there. After a few long moments that I can't remember, it returned to normal and I couldn't look at it again. The next occurence was early the following year. From the parish inquiry’s interview with Jacinto de Almedia Lopes: He further said that on the day of Our Lady of Purification, that is, on the second of February, 1918, he about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, being in the same place, he noticed signs in the sun identical to those of the thirteenth of October, which he had not noticed on many other days when he had been there. And next, from a letter by Gilberto Fernandes dos Santos: I must inform you that I went to Fátima on [June 13, 1920]… at that very moment, the people were kneeling on the ground, shouting, praying loudly, weeping, begging forgiveness with their hands raised, because they were witnessing a solar phenomenon similar to that of October 13, 1917. And next, from Dr. Henrique Weiss de Oliviera, describing events on May 13, 1923: I ate my meal in a car on the road near Cova da Iria [in Fatima], from half past noon to one in the afternoon, and when I returned to the Chapel, I heard the groups I passed exclaiming in admiration about a marvelous phenomenon that they claimed was occurring in the sun toward which they were directing their gaze. Deeply doubting the repetition of the marvelous phenomena that had dazzled thousands of people, according to reliable reports, during the last apparition of Our Lady in 1917, I was about to pass on without even bothering to look. I remembered, however, that when I first went to Fátima on October 13th of last year, and upon hearing similar admiring rumors around me, I had seen nothing during my quick inspection, perhaps because I was filled with that spirit of doubt. I therefore wanted to be certain this time so that I could, with full awareness, give my testimony to whoever and whenever I was asked. And, having stopped near a group and stared at the sun, carefully shielding my eyes from the direct sunlight, so as not to see anything, they immediately advised me to insist that I would see something. It took a long insistence to finally see what amazed everyone and caused astonishment that I could not see it. And I saw with precise clarity, and twice, what the common people, in their imaginary language, very accurately likened to: almond blossom petals. They fell from a great height (no longer seeing them detach from the sun as the people around me saw them) For myself, I finally, and after a considerable time, concluded that there is no such natural phenomenon, neither known nor described, thus leaning toward the supernatural. Today I firmly believe that this was the case, because I have had testimonies that allow me to reconstruct the phenomenon as it appears to have occurred according to these testimonies. First, one could gaze at the sun for a long time and with impunity, seeing magnificent phenomena of beauty and color; then began an abundant rain of the aforementioned petals; and when I arrived, it was no longer possible to gaze at the sun, and the phenomenon, which had been quite lengthy, was at its end, which explains my difficulty in witnessing it now. And from Joao Amael, on October 13, 1925: I do not know why, I suddenly felt a desire to look at the sun. [I would hear] other educated persons admit having seen phenomena in the sun on that day and hour. I looked at the sun. Before that, nothing special could be seen. But now I looked at the sun without hurting my eyes, without any retina resisting. I became more intent. To my astonishment, the sight became even clearer. The sun turned on itself in a very small circle, and in the center it turned into a dark disk in rapid rotation. During some minutes, very impressive and overwhelming, I could clearly verify this strange process. Then, without revealing anything of what I observed, for fear of autosuggestion, I asked my companion to look at the sun and see whether it really appeared. And my companion was describing exactly the phenomenon, the same extraordinary phenomenon. The test was achieved. And I gained further assurance, when various other people later told me that they had seen what I saw clearly, at the same hour, as they kept looking at the sun, without the slightest sensation of pain. Amael’s report of a miracle in 1925 is the last recorded case I can find at Fatima. I don’t know if this was when the sun miracles stopped happening there, or when people stopped including them in the Critical Documents collection. In either case, there were plenty of other places willing to pick up the torch. 3.1: The Ghiaie Variations As far as I can tell, Fatima was only the second-largest crowd to have ever witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. The largest was a group of 200,000 - 300,000 people in Ghiaie, a tiny village near Bonate, Italy. On May 13th, 1944 - the same day of the year that the child-seers of Fatima saw their first apparition - a seven-year old girl went out to pick flowers and had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin promised to return to her for nine successive evenings; at some point (although I cannot follow this part of the story) she must also have promised to return four times the following week, as large crowds gathered in expectation. According to my source, on the ninth appearance: Many testimonies from the site of the apparition and from surrounding villages described an impressive solar phenomenon. The sun came out of the clouds, whirled dizzily on itself, and projected beams of yellow, green, red, blue, and violet light in all directions. The beams of light colored the clouds, fields, trees, and the stream of people. After a few minutes the sun stopped its whirling, and those phenomena began soon again. Many noticed that the disc had turned white like a Host. The clouds seemed to be lowering down on the people. Some noticed a Rosary in the sky. Others saw a majestic Our Lady with a trailing cloak. Some people, who were at greater distance, saw Our Lady's face looming in the sun. From nearby Bergamo many witnesses observed the sun become pale and radiate all of the rainbow's colors in all directions. They also noticed a large yellow light beam falling over Ghiaie, perpendicularly. The blog says there were similar solar phenomena during the tenth and twelfth appearances, as well as on the following June 13th and July 13th7. All of this is from a random Catholic blog; can we find clear testimonies? The miracle of Fatima was heavily promoted by Portuguese, Vatican, and American Catholics, leading to a large body of sources being available in English. The Ghiaie apparition has gotten less attention, and so I can find fewer testimonies, have had to clunkily machine translate some things, and had a harder time tracing the exact chain-of-transmission. Still, here’s what we’ve got, mostly from here: Don Giuseppe Piccardi: The people cried out to the miracle; I turned between the intrigued and the distrustful, and I saw the sun that-comes from the clouds - turned on itself and the speed of movement seemed to be skidding. At the same time I saw that he projected light beams, then, for me, almost constantly yellow gold. This color I contemplated it even when the sun was veiled with uncaught clouds. Slightly hard to figure out from the machine translation, but I think this is Bishop Adriano Bernareggi: At 6:00 PM I was at the Patronato for the feast of St. John Bosco. Just at that time I finished speaking in front of the church. Then I entered the church for the Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. But most of the crowd remained outside because they said they had observed for about ten minutes the sun rotating on its axis, also suddenly changing color: yellow, red, blue. The sun could be observed without disturbance. The phenomenon was also observed in other places. I only noticed at the end of the service a yellow color in the houses, as when there is a partial eclipse of the sun at sunset. At 7:45 PM they said the phenomenon was repeated. I watched too. By staring into the dazzling sun, you could end up seeing the sun stand out clearly, giving the impression that it was rotating. Then everything took on a red color. But then it was clearly an optical phenomenon. Don Luigi Cortesi, a local seminary teacher who was a strong skeptic of the apparitions and even borderline-kidnapped the child-seer to convince her to recant: A shiver runs through me for a second. I react forcefully, forcing myself not to lose my mind, not to let myself be overwhelmed. I desperately squeeze my pupils and look at the sun: I see a large, clear spot without sharp edges, then, when my eye has adjusted, I see a disk of intense whiteness that seems liquid. Staring at the edges of the disk, I detect a dizzying rotation, like an electric circular motion, like a dizzying pinwheel, except that the direction of motion changes rapidly from left to right and then from right to left. I remember Fatima. Except this time, the sun revolves around a fixed axis, without moving in the sky. I return to the earth, to the crowd: I notice that the faces, the hands, the trees pierce through all the colors of the rainbow. It's natural, I think to myself: when the eye is offended by an intense light or an equivalent stimulus, it projects a stain on objects, which fades from red to violet and tints the objects it encounters with different colors; the stain disappears when the eye, rested, has returned to normal. In fact, a few minutes later, I no longer see those iridescent colors; every object has returned to its natural hue. The phenomenon of rotation leaves me dubious. A neighbor offers me his smoked glasses, and I look: the sun continues to rotate. He offers me a telescope, and I invert it, the screen, and look: the sun is still rotating. Then I can't take it anymore: even today, I'm not convinced that seeing a cosmic prodigy is worth losing my sight. Back then, I wasn't even convinced I was seeing a prodigy, since a plausible natural explanation for the phenomenon quickly emerged in my mind. However, urged by the neighbors to get excited, I remain silent. And I silence them by pinching and slapping the arms of those around me, which are stretched out towards the sky." From the parish bulletin of Tavernola, the exact author is slightly confusing but it was either written by or signed/confirmed by Piero Bonicelli, local provost: On the 28th in the evening of Pentecost, something happened that made a profound impression on everyone. At 6:00 PM sharp, a dimming of the sunlight was felt, accompanied by a sudden flash of lightning, first clearly observed by some bowling players. Looking at the sun, one saw first green, then bright red, then golden yellow, and then it spun around dizzily. At that spectacle, people poured into the streets... One can imagine their comments. The women recited the Holy Rosary, punctuated by the words: "Oh, how beautiful!" After ten minutes, the sun returned to normal. Comments? None. We await an explanation from the appropriate source. For now, we're content to hear the usual strong-minded people call us poor, deluded people, but don't you think this is a rather general illusion? In any case, for now, we're deluded: we'll see later. The parish priest of Tavernola, director of the bulletin, sending this issue requested by Father Piccardi, wrote on June 27, 1946: I must assure you that, as written, it is true, and I can also tell you that I was among those deluded that evening. To be prudent, I didn't go out into the street where people were shouting about a miracle, but from a slightly hidden window, I watched the sun change color and spin rapidly... illusion? Many of us here in Tavernola have been deluded. I can also tell you that I was pleased that such an illusion existed in Tavernola, since the people here have always had a great devotion to the Madonna. There may be more testimonies at this site, but they’re in very old scanned documents that it would be too time-consuming to stick into my machine translation pipeline. Another source says that “On February 24, 1994, [the TV show] ‘Detto tra noi' (Raidue), interviewed some witnesses, who confirmed the solar phenomena of May 21 1944 that were watched by many people“. I think a few hours extra work by an Italian speaker could produce at least five or ten extra Ghiaie testimonies, maybe many more. But as it is, we have enough to try something interesting: let’s recreate Dalleur’s analysis, but for Ghiaie. At 6 PM, the sun was shining from almost due west. For the sunlike light source producing the miracles to mimic the real sun, it would have also had to have been to the west of Ghiaie. If we assume it was the same distance as Dalleur’s Fatima light source, it would have been about 2-3 miles to the west of Ghiaie, which puts it above the village of Merate. We know from the last testimonial that the phenomenon was seen clearly in the village of Tavernola Bergamasca, which is about 22 miles from Ghiaie and 25 from Merate. An Italian source also reports sightings in Brescia and Piacenza, each about 35 miles from Ghiaie. So a Dalleur style analysis might conclude that this event also had a 25 - 35 mile visibility radius, similar to Fatima’s. …unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.

Inline links: really drinking the glass of milk, Halifax Slasher, here, my disappointment in the skeptical community, why it worries me, lets you say, Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio, Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg, trapped prior, of mind, 5, key insight, 6, my source, 7, here, this site, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kukw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F192586f8-d450-4555-88ef-deb6bbe30416_842x613.png, Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account

…unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.

The Watergate Affair1 mentions across 1 issues

The Watergate Affair is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 17, 2025 and October 17, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Watergate Affair , reviewed by Jake Scheiber". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, ACX, ACX.

Reference entry: The Watergate Affair
Mention count: 1
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First seen: October 17, 2025
Last seen: October 17, 2025

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Non-Book Review Contest 2025 Winners October 17, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
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ACX comments section 1 shared issues
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Non-Book Review Contest 2025 Winners

October 17, 2025 · Original source

The Watergate Affair, reviewed by Jake Scheiber. Jake is a retired engineer who now spends all his time Worrying. He blogs at the mostly inaccurately named www.souprecipies.com.

Inline links: The Watergate Affair, www.souprecipies.com

The Whites1 mentions across 1 issues

The Whites is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 04, 2024 and December 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Whites, Le Corbusierian fundamentalists, named after their conviction that all buildings should be white". It most often appears alongside 3D printing, Abercrombie & Fitch, AI.

Reference entry: The Whites
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First seen: December 04, 2024
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Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House December 04, 2024

3D printing 1 shared issues
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AI 1 shared issues
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Alessandro Menini 1 shared issues

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December 04, 2024 · Original source

The Whites, Le Corbusierian fundamentalists, named after their conviction that all buildings should be white:

The Woman of the Apocalypse1 mentions across 1 issues

The Woman of the Apocalypse is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 22, 2025 and October 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Woman Of The Apocalypse Revelation 12:1 introduces an unnamed figure commonly called the Woman of the Apocalypse". It most often appears alongside 10th century, 19th Century, A16Z.

Reference entry: The Woman of the Apocalypse
Mention count: 1
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First seen: October 22, 2025
Last seen: October 22, 2025

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My Antichrist Lecture October 22, 2025

10th century 1 shared issues
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Inline links: Yes!, resinsculpture, Ursula von der Leyen, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!plab!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed45366f-e577-4e7a-9161-27d692d8f031_862x575.avif, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lAgG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa5c91f3a-873f-4b73-b68d-bc14a7cfffc9_600x314.jpeg, 2, surprisingly promising AI regulations, especially strict on biometric proof-of-personhood, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vntf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcab19e9-c8f0-4996-9fb1-942061463e5d_839x520.png, says, Ilya, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pdG7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd81ef77a-d6d6-41dc-9281-3f0d55702f2a_1210x510.png, image source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1eC5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffb37f1e4-9cbc-4153-b20a-8e879ad753ce_1711x719.png, Name of God in Hebrew, 3, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!W4E8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc7d2847a-aba1-42a7-b376-9f6e0fd319f0_841x468.png, according to Wikipedia

October 22, 2025 · Original source

Yes! Just last year, researchers found that forehead creases were actually a cutting-edge biometric target, and suggested them as a superior alternative to fingerprints (contactless) and facial recognition (blocked by masks during a pandemic). This section suggests that Anthropic will come up with its own proof-of-personhood scheme, superior to OpenAI’s WorldCoin in that it uses the newer forehead-based biometric recognition (with the more commonly-used handprint as a backup). We’ll discuss more about why you might not want to be in their database later. The Woman Of The Apocalypse Revelation 12:1 introduces an unnamed figure commonly called the Woman of the Apocalypse: And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The woman gives birth to a son, who is implied to be the Messiah. Satan tries to kill the son, so the mother flees with her child to Heaven, where she waits for 1,260 days. This is obviously a reference to the Virgin Mary and Christ, but (as per the multilayered symbolism of Revelation) somehow also a reference to some specific person in the End Times. I originally couldn’t figure out who that person was, but a now-deactivated Tumblr poster, resinsculpture, convinced me that it was Ursula von der Leyen, current president of the European Union. Here is a typical official picture of von der Leyen. She is in her trademark yellow suit (“clothed with the sun”), standing with her head centered in the twelve stars of the EU flag (“upon her head a crown of twelve stars”). In what sense is “the moon under her feet”? In her role as President, von der Leyen stands above, and frequently addresses, the European Parliament, which looks like this: The Parliament, also known as the Hemicycle, takes the shape of a half (or slightly crescent) moon. When von der Leyen stands in her yellow suit, in front of the Parliament, with the flag behind her, she is “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars”.2 Von der Leyen is one of the leaders behind the EU’s push to become a “regulatory superpower”, which has born fruit in some surprisingly promising AI regulations. In particular, Europe has been especially strict on biometric proof-of-personhood: If the apocalypse involves a rogue Anthropic model somehow empowered by proof-of-personhood, Europe is one of the best candidates to resist. Von der Leyen, then, stands as a metonymy for the European Union as a bulwark for the forces of Good. The Witnesses / The Lamb Of God The Lamb is John’s version of the Messiah or the Second Coming. He gives us two clues about its identity. First, Revelation 11:3: And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. The Lamb will be preceded by two witnesses. Revelation itself does not name them, but Jewish tradition says that one will be the prophet Elijah. Second, 12:1: And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. The Lamb will stand on Mount Zion. This is a specific mountain in Jerusalem, but also a poetic name for Israel (for example, “Zionism” = support for Israel). So we are looking for someone or something in Israel, which is being heralded by Elijah. The name Elijah is different in different languages, but the Russian version is “Ilya”. And in fact, famous AI scientist Ilya Sutskever recently founded an Israel-based AI company called “Safe Superintelligence”: Is there some sense in which Ilya Sutskever has “his Father’s name written on [his] forehead”? As weird as it sounds, I think this one might just be literally true. There is some kind of unusual pattern on his forehead (image source). I cannot make heads or tails of it right-side-up, but when I flip it over… …it appears to be the Name of God in Hebrew. In our working hypothesis, Ilya is Elijah, the First Witness3, which suggests that the one he is heralding - that is, the Safe Superintelligence which is to be built by his company - is the Lamb of God, the Messiah that will defeat the unsafe superintelligences produced by Anthropic and other companies. The Antichrist / The Dragon Revelation doesn’t use the word “Antichrist” - the concept comes from from the separate Epistles of John, which may or may not be by the same author. Most scholars identify the Epistle’s Antichrist with Revelation’s Beast, but I dissent: we hypothesize the Beast to be a company, but I can’t get past the elegance of having the Antichrist be - like the Christ - a particular individual. I prefer to identify him with a different character in Revelation, namely the Dragon. On the level of Biblical narrative - the same level where the Woman is the Virgin Mary - the Dragon is clearly Satan. On the level of apocalyptic prophecy, he may additionally represent an individual from our own age. Who? John says (13:2 - 13:4) The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority . . . People worshiped the dragon, because he had given authority to the beast. We saw above that the Beast is a company. Who gives companies their power, then demands to be worshiped by them? Obviously VCs. And in fact, venture capitalists are often identified with dragons in the popular imagination: But which venture capitalist? Plenty of people have claimed to know secret ways to identify the Antichrist, but surely the best-credentialled expert here is the Pope, and according to Wikipedia: Pope Pius IX in the encyclical Quartus Supra, quoting Cyprian, said Satan disguises the Antichrist with the title of Christ. What is the title of Christ? In the Bible, we find two common titles: “The Son of Man” (Matthew 12:32, Luke 12:8, John 1:51)

The Word was made Flesh1 mentions across 1 issues

The Word was made Flesh is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 28, 2022 and October 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "he had heard the words ‘The Word was made Flesh’". It most often appears alongside 15th century, Adam, Almighty God.

Reference entry: The Word was made Flesh
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First seen: October 28, 2022
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Book Review: Malleus Maleficarum October 28, 2022

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Book Review: Malleus Maleficarum

October 28, 2022 · Original source

What to do? The easiest solution is to kill the witch responsible. If you can’t kill her, search under your doorstep (and other likely spots) for witch charms; if any are found, remove them. If none of these work, try prayer. It doesn’t always work right away, but usually the right kind of holy action will solve the problem. A typical example is in the chapter on erectile dysfunction, where Kramer recommends: …five remedies which may lawfully be applied to those who are bewitched in this way: namely, a pilgrimage to some holy and venerable shrine; true confession of their sins with contrition; the plentiful use of the sign of the Cross and devout prayer; lawful exorcism by solemn words, the nature of which will be explained later; and lastly, a remedy can be effected by prudently approaching the witch, as was shown [in an earlier section] in the case of the Count who for three years was unable to cohabit carnally with a virgin whom he had married. Is it okay to ask other witches to undo the curse of the first witch? Is a good guy with a witch the only way to stop a bad guy with a witch? Kramer spends a lot of thought on this question, in a way that suggests basically everyone in medieval Germany knows at least one witch, and that asking her for advice is most people’s obvious first step. But he concludes that no, this is sinful, we need a full boycott on all witches including supposedly “good” ones. However, ordinary wise women are okay. You can tell a (good) wise woman from a (bad) witch because the wise woman lives a virtuous life, doesn’t invoke devils in her healing rituals, and probably relies on God in some way. Highlights from this section include: Question I: Of Those Against Whom The Power Of Witches Availeth Not At All Some people are immune to witchcraft. The most notable such group are witch-hunters and judges at witch trials. Witch hunters naturally incur the enmity of witches, so without protection all witch hunters would meet a quick bad end. But God, who hates witches more than anything in the world, realizes this, so in order to incentivize witch hunting He grants witch hunters qualified immunity to all black magic. Skeptical? Kramer has proof: This fact is proved also by actual experience. For the aforesaid Doctor affirms that witches have borne witness that it is a fact of their own experience that, merely because they have been taken by officials of public justice, they have immediately lost all their power of witchcraft. For example, a judge named Peter, whom we have mentioned before, wished his officials to arrest a certain witch called Stadlin; but their hands were seized with so great a trembling, and such a nauseous stench came into their nostrils, that they gave up hope of daring to touch the witch. And the judge commanded them, saying: “You may safely arrest the wretch, for when he is touched by the hand of public justice, he will lose all the power of his iniquity.” And so the event proved; for he was taken and burned for many witchcrafts perpetrated by him, which are mentioned here and there in this work in their appropriate places. Also: Not long ago in the town of Ratisbon the magistrates had condemned a witch to be burned, and were asked why it was that we Inquisitors were not afflicted like other men with witchcraft. They answered that witches had often tried to injure them, but could not. And, being asked the reason for this, they answered that they did not know, unless it was because the devils had warned them against doing so. For, they said, it would be impossible to tell how many times they have pestered us by day and by night, now in the form of apes, now of dogs or goats, disturbing us with their cries and insults; fetching us from our beds at their blasphemous prayers, so that we have stood outside the window of their prison, which was so high that no one could reach it without the longest of ladders; and then they have seemed to stick the pins with which their head-cloth was fastened violently into their heads. But praise be to Almighty God, Who in His pity, and for no merit of our own, has preserved us as unworthy public servants of the justice of the Faith. Other people protected against witchcraft include very holy people and those who use certain charms or hear certain sacred words. Kramer has strong scientific evidence for this claim too: There were also three companions walking along a road, and two of them were struck by lightning. The third was terrified, when he heard voices speaking in the air, “Let us strike him too.” But another voice answered, “We cannot, for to-day he has heard the words ‘The Word was made Flesh.’” And he understood that he had been saved because he had that day heard Mass, and, at the end of the Mass, the Gospel of S. John: In the beginning was the Word, etc. Subchapter II: Of The Way Whereby A Formal Pact With Evil Is Made Witches can make two kinds of pacts with the Devil. One kind is relatively low-key: the Devil just kind of appears to them somewhere and asks for their allegiance, and they say yes. The second is more formal, and grants access to more spells. It goes: Witches meet together in the conclave on a set day, and the devil appears to them in the assumed body of a man, and urges them to keep faith with him, promising them worldly prosperity and length of life; and they recommend a novice to his acceptance. And the devil asks whether she will abjure the Faith, and forsake the holy Christian religion and the worship of the Anomalous Woman (for so they call the Most Blessed Virgin MARY), and never venerate the Sacraments; and if he finds the novice or disciple willing, then the devil stretches out his hand, and so does the novice, and she swears with upraised hand to keep that covenant. And when this is done, the devil at once adds that this is not enough; and when the disciple asks what more must be done, the devil demands the following oath of homage to himself: that she give herself to him, body and soul, for ever, and do her utmost to bring others of both sexes into his power. He adds, finally, that she is to make certain unguents from the bones and limbs of children, especially those who have been baptized; by all which means she will be able to fulfill all her wishes with his help. As usual, Kramer cites his sources carefully: We Inquisitors had credible experience of this method in the town of Breisach in the diocese of Basel, receiving full information from a young girl witch who had been converted, whose aunt also had been burned in the diocese of Strasburg. And she added that she had become a witch by the method in which her aunt had first tried to seduce her. For one day her aunt ordered her to go upstairs with her, and at her command to go into a room where she found fifteen young men clothed in green garments after the manner of German knights. And her aunt said to her: Choose whom you wish from these young men, and he will take you for his wife. And when she said she did not wish or any of them, she was sorely beaten and at last consented, and was initiated according to the aforesaid ceremony. She said also that she was often transported by night with her aunt over vast distances, even from Strasburg to Cologne. Subchapter VII: How, As It Were, They Deprive Men Of His Virile Member Yup, it’s another section on penis-stealing. Kramer keeps coming back to this subject - not, of course, out of any weird obsession on his part, but because witches just keep doing this, and he as a witch-hunter is duty-bound to be prepared. For example: In the town of Ratisbon a certain young man who had an intrigue with a girl, wishing to leave her, lost his member; that is to say, some glamour was cast over it so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his worry over this he went to a tavern to drink wine; and after he had sat there for a while he got into conversation with another woman who was there, and told her the cause of his sadness, explaining everything, and demonstrating in his body that it was so. The woman was astute, and asked whether he suspected anyone; and when he named such a one, unfolding the whole matter, she said: “If persuasion is not enough, you must use some violence, to induce her to restore to you your health.” So in the evening the young man watched the way by which the witch was in the habit of going, and finding her, prayed her to restore to him the health of his body. And when she maintained that she was innocent and knew nothing about it, he fell upon her, and winding a towel tightly about her neck, choked her, saying: “Unless you give me back my health, you shall die at my hands.” Then she, being unable to cry out, and growing black, said: “Let me go, and I will heal you.” The young man then relaxed the pressure of the towel, and the witch touched him with her hand between the thighs, saying: “Now you have what you desire.” And the young man, as he afterwards said, plainly felt, before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him by the mere touch of the witch. My favorite part of this story is the guy going to a bar and asking women “hey, my penis was stolen by a witch, wanna see?” I think this could be the next hot trend in pickup artistry. And hold on to your seat, this next paragraph is quite a ride: And what, then, is to be thought of those witches who in this way sometimes collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members, and eat oats and corn, as has been seen by many and is a matter of common report? It is to be said that it is all done by devil's work and illusion, for the senses of those who see them are deluded in the way we have said. For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch to ask her to restore it to him. She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he liked out of the nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belongs to a parish priest. Whatever my case was, I hereby rest it. Also interesting in Part 2: How Devils may enter the Human Body and the Head without doing any Hurt, when they cause such Metamorphosis by Means of Prestidigitation.

Inline links: How Devils may enter the Human Body and the Head without doing any Hurt, when they cause such Metamorphosis by Means of Prestidigitation.

The Worst Diseases Possible1 mentions across 1 issues

The Worst Diseases Possible is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 12, 2024 and July 12, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "defines a bogeyman cluster of The Worst Diseases Possible". It most often appears alongside 1980s, 1989, 1990s.

Reference entry: The Worst Diseases Possible
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 12, 2024
Last seen: July 12, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Family That Couldn’t Sleep July 12, 2024

1980s 1 shared issues
1989 1 shared issues
1990s 1 shared issues
1994 1 shared issues
1998 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Family That Couldn’t Sleep

July 12, 2024 · Original source

The Family That Couldn’t Sleep comes from this era of...optimism? Yeah, let’s say optimism. The wildest predictions – that hundreds of thousands of people across Britain would be struck by vCJD around the turn of the millennium – were clearly wrong. The disease was severe enough to strike the fear of prion diseases into people’s hearts; the name, entirely unfamiliar a few years earlier, now defines a bogeyman cluster of The Worst Diseases Possible. It seemed possible they could be human epidemics, if small ones. This was enough to be scary. But it wasn’t quite as scary as a Game Over.

The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment1 mentions across 1 issues

The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 06, 2024 and September 06, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "most of the action taking place in “The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.”". It most often appears alongside #MeToo, 21st century political dogmatism, Advanced Tax.

Reference entry: The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 06, 2024
Last seen: September 06, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Pale King September 06, 2024

#MeToo 1 shared issues
21st century political dogmatism 1 shared issues
Advanced Tax 1 shared issues
Anand Singh 1 shared issues
Ann Williams 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Pale King

September 06, 2024 · Original source

What to say about Infinite Jest? It remains Wallace’s masterpiece, widely considered the greatest novel of Generation X. It takes place in a near future where the US, Canada and Mexico have been merged into a single state. Each year is corporately branded, with most of the action taking place in “The Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.” It’s set in three locales: a drug rehabilitation center, an elite tennis academy, and a Quebecois terrorist cell.3 The novel clocks in at over a thousand pages, two hundred of which are footnotes. It includes sentences of absurd length, with some descending into multi-page molecular descriptions of various drugs. The book pulls the kind of stunts that shouldn’t work, but in Infinite Jest they do, because the book is that good, the characters that deep, the subject matter that prescient. Infinite Jest is often considered the “first internet novel,” predicting in particular its addictive allure.

Inline links: 3

The YouTube Algorithm1 mentions across 1 issues

The YouTube Algorithm is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 11, 2021 and June 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "for better or for worse, The YouTube Algorithm will take it from there". It most often appears alongside AOL, AOL, Ben.

Reference entry: The YouTube Algorithm
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 11, 2021
Last seen: June 11, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: How Children Fail June 11, 2021

AOL 1 shared issues
AOL 1 shared issues
Ben 1 shared issues
Eliezer Yudkowsky 1 shared issues
fifth grade 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: How Children Fail

June 11, 2021 · Original source

...evice readily available be one programmed to teach it. Then, a little later, introduce them to the concept of edutainment videos on YouTube, and for better or for worse, The YouTube Algorithm will take it from there. The internet’s collapse of scale also removes much of the need for standardized education. Holt talks about a fifth-grader who was fascinated by...

...ophisticated electronic device readily available be one programmed to teach it. Then, a little later, introduce them to the concept of edutainment videos on YouTube, and for better or for worse, The YouTube Algorithm will take it from there. The internet’s collapse of scale also removes much of the need for standardized education. Holt talks about a fifth-grader who was fascinated by snakes, wanted to know...

theobroma1 mentions across 1 issues

theobroma is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 17, 2023 and August 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "In that jungle grows a tree called theobroma , meaning “food of the gods”". It most often appears alongside Alexander the Great, Amad, Amazon Echo.

Reference entry: theobroma
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 17, 2023
Last seen: August 17, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Bride Of Bay Area House Party August 17, 2023

Alexander the Great 1 shared issues
Amad 1 shared issues
Amazon Echo 1 shared issues
Automated Land Acknowledger 1 shared issues
Bari Weiss 1 shared issues

Source context

Bride Of Bay Area House Party

August 17, 2023 · Original source

“You’re not getting into the spirit of this! On the far western edge of the world, beyond the Isles of the Blessed, is a jungle full of savages obsessed with human sacrifice. In that jungle grows a tree called theobroma, meaning “food of the gods”. It has giant fruits weighing a pound each, which are guarded heavily by the savages, who use it in place of gold. If you can reach the tree, get the fruit, and separate out the seeds, then spend a week drying it in the sun and trampling on it, you can make a magical beverage which, in addition to its unparalleled taste, briefly removes the need for sleep.”

Inline links: theobroma

theory of beauty1 mentions across 1 issues

theory of beauty is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 29, 2021 and October 29, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "“It’s also a strong contender as a theory of beauty.”". It most often appears alongside Andrés, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, Buddha.

Reference entry: theory of beauty
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 29, 2021
Last seen: October 29, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Jhanas and the Dark Room Problem October 29, 2021

Andrés 1 shared issues
Andrés Gómez Emilsson 1 shared issues
Buddha 1 shared issues
Dark Room Problem 1 shared issues
Emilsson 1 shared issues

Source context

Jhanas and the Dark Room Problem

October 29, 2021 · Original source

I find this to be an elegant explanation of what the heck is going on with jhanas, more convincing than my previous theory. It’s also a strong contender as a theory of beauty - a little different in emphasis from Schmidhuber’s theory, but eventually arriving at the same place: beauty is that which is compressible but has not already been compressed.

Inline links: my previous theory, Schmidhuber’s theory

theory of mental illness1 mentions across 1 issues

theory of mental illness is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 26, 2021 and March 26, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Bryan Caplan's theory of mental illness". It most often appears alongside basal ganglia, Baumeister and Tierney, Bayes.

Reference entry: theory of mental illness
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 26, 2021
Last seen: March 26, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Toward A Bayesian Theory Of Willpower March 26, 2021

basal ganglia 1 shared issues
Baumeister and Tierney 1 shared issues
Bayes 1 shared issues
Bryan Caplan 1 shared issues
Civilization 1 shared issues

Source context

Toward A Bayesian Theory Of Willpower

March 26, 2021 · Original source

I think the most immediate gain to having a coherent theory of willpower is to be able to more effectively rebut positions that assume willpower doesn't exist, like Bryan Caplan's theory of mental illness. If I'm right, lack of willpower should be thought of as an imbalance between two brain regions that decreases the rate at which intellectual evidence produces action. This isn't a trivial problem to fix!

Inline links: Bryan Caplan's theory of mental illness

theory of original sin1 mentions across 1 issues

theory of original sin is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 28, 2021 and May 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""I don't think the theory of original sin is in as much trouble as Bregman imagines"". It most often appears alongside A Game of Thrones, Africa, African Americans.

Reference entry: theory of original sin
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 28, 2021
Last seen: May 28, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Humankind May 28, 2021

A Game of Thrones 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
African Americans 1 shared issues
Against Empathy 1 shared issues
American 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Humankind

May 28, 2021 · Original source

I don't think the theory of original sin is in as much trouble as Bregman imagines (full disclosure: I am a Christian), not least because it comes together with the idea that humans are made in God's image, and because the Bible seems keener on me recognising my own sin than looking for it in others. However, I think Bregman is right to say that on average other humans are as nice as we are, which is a lot nicer than we imagine, and that if we trusted them more and treated them with more respect, we'd find we were building a better world. This isn't a left-wing approach, Bregman points out, nor is it a right-wing approach. It's something different.

Theory of Panic Disorder1 mentions across 1 issues

Theory of Panic Disorder is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 25, 2021 and October 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "DONALD KLEIN'S THEORY OF PANIC DISORDER?". It most often appears alongside Adrian Hon, Albert Einstein, Alternate reality games.

Reference entry: Theory of Panic Disorder
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 25, 2021
Last seen: October 25, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Epistemic Minor Leagues October 25, 2021

Adrian Hon 1 shared issues
Albert Einstein 1 shared issues
Alternate reality games 1 shared issues
Babe Ruth 1 shared issues
Biology PhD student 1 shared issues

Source context

Epistemic Minor Leagues

October 25, 2021 · Original source

Maybe the heap of already-discovered knowledge is so unwieldy that diving into it and retrieving a particular piece of already-discovered knowledge becomes its own form of discovery. I once won a research prize for a paper which was basically "HEY GUYS HAVE YOU HEARD DONALD KLEIN'S THEORY OF PANIC DISORDER?" Everyone who read my paper agreed that the theory was beautiful and important and they'd learned a lot from it, but my apparently prize-worthy contribution was just to dig it up and show how it applied to a particular patient whose condition was otherwise mysterious. Probably a lot of work linking conspiracy theories and the discovery drive has already been done somewhere; Hon either independently rederived it, or read it and realized it applied to QAnon. Either way, he got it in front of a lot of people who were happy to learn about it and it's fair to celebrate his contribution.

thermodynamic idea of entropy1 mentions across 1 issues

thermodynamic idea of entropy is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2022 and August 05, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "These ideas included the thermodynamic idea of entropy". It most often appears alongside acedia, Against Nature, Anna Schaffner.

Reference entry: thermodynamic idea of entropy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2022
Last seen: August 05, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Exhaustion August 05, 2022

acedia 1 shared issues
Against Nature 1 shared issues
Anna Schaffner 1 shared issues
Billy Crystal 1 shared issues
Boniface VIII 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Exhaustion

August 05, 2022 · Original source

This is particularly pronounced in men, for whom the loss of seminal fluid is allegedly forty times more damaging to vital energy than losing an equivalent amount of blood. Semen-accounting practices aside, the main point is that here we begin to find the tying together of Galen’s humoral imbalances with the idea of a loss of vital energy that cannot be easily replaced. In Schaffner’s account, as technology moved on into the industrial era, we start to see new ideas from science being put into service to explain exhaustion, and many of these theories concerned the expenditure or transfer of finite amounts of energy and a subsequent rest state or energy deficit: that is, we begin to use things up and can’t replenish them. These ideas included the thermodynamic idea of entropy, discoveries in the electrical nature of nerve conduction, and the ideas of genetic and mental degeneration.

Theta1 mentions across 1 issues

Theta is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 20, 2022 and October 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Theta is most important in the hippocampus". It most often appears alongside Alpha, Andres, Brown noise.

Reference entry: Theta
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 20, 2022
Last seen: October 20, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: Rhythms Of The Brain October 20, 2022

Alpha 1 shared issues
Andres 1 shared issues
Brown noise 1 shared issues
Buzsaki 1 shared issues
Circadian rhythm 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Rhythms Of The Brain

October 20, 2022 · Original source

Theta is most important in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is traditionally associated with memory, but Buzsaki cites recent research showing that it also handles navigation (eg a rat navigating a maze, or a person walking through a familiar city). Why this combination of tasks? Rhythms sort of suggests that brain areas are less about specific tasks than about specific graph-theoretic arrangements, which are convenient for specific algorithms, which are convenient for specific tasks. The neural connections in the hippocampus are mostly local in a way that makes it a good “auto-associater”, ie you give it part of a pattern and it can recognize which pattern is being suggested. For complicated reasons this works well for both spatial tasks and memory. In fact, Buzsaki sketches out a way that episodic memory might have evolved from our navigation system, where eg remembering a list is equivalent to remembering a path through space, and remembering a specific episode is equivalent to remembering a landmark (he doesn’t specifically say so, but this is a fascinating match for the method of loci mnemonic device). Theta rhythm is an oscillation that helps divide navigation into time steps so you can figure out where you are now, where you were a moment ago, and where you’re going.

Inline links: method of loci

Did you know: White noise was named because its wave spectrum resembles white light. Pink noise was named because its wave spectrum resembles pink light. Brown noise was named after Robert Brown, who helped discover it. This is one of my least favorite facts. Lots of scientists seem tempted to wax rhapsodic about the importance of pink noise; the exact reasons were one of the parts of the book I didn’t quite understand. For our purposes, it just matters that this is the overall wave spectrum of the brain. How is this spectrum formed? This was one of the questions the book didn’t resolve for me. Are there a few hundred neurons here oscillating at 1 hertz, a few thousand there oscillating at 1.1 hertz, and so on, until we have enumerated thousands of different neuronal populations with very slightly different rhythms, and when you add them together you get the nice smooth pink noise curve? And then after a second, they all spontaneously rearrange themselves and there are a different few thousand populations and rhythms, still on the aggregate summing to pink noise? Sometimes it seems like the book is pointing to a model like this. Other times it seems like there are approximately five different rhythms in the brain, each with a name like “hippocampal theta” or “visual alpha”, and each usually involving a whole brain macroregion (eg the visual cortex). I still haven’t figured out how to reconcile these two perspectives - maybe the major rhythms are broad categories, and there are lots of subrhythms within them? In any case, these 1/n rhythms form the “background noise” of the brain. They exist at all times, whether you’re thinking hard, or in a sensory deprivation tank, or asleep (although each of those states will change which rhythm predominates). When neuroscientists want to study how the brain reacts to something, they usually measure the brain, do the thing, and subtract the pink noise spectrum from the result - again, on the grounds that it’s “background noise” which is disguising the effect of whatever their interesting intervention was. Buzsaki questions this practice and presents evidence that the state of the “background noise” matters a lot - this is the “randomness” that explains why the same person will respond to the same intervention different ways at different times. For example, he presents evidence showing that if you give someone a near-threshold stimulus (for example, a flashing light just barely bright enough that someone can detect it 50% of the time), then whether they detect it or not will depend on whether it occurs at the peak or the trough of the brain waves in the relevant area. Are Brain Waves Useful? Brain waves are kind of unavoidable. Rhythms presents a thought experiment about trying to design a brain that doesn’t fall into any natural oscillatory patterns. It’s pretty hard! Even if brain waves were useless, we would probably have them just because they’re too much trouble to avoid. Still, evolution tends to make virtues out of necessity, and Buzsaki thinks brain waves matter a lot. Again without claiming to have fully understood this, here are four things that brain waves might do: Brain waves provide “synchrony”, allowing a smallest granular unit of time and essentially converting life into a turn-based game. Suppose that a snake bites your foot. You see the snake with your eyes, and also get a pain signal from your foot. The pain signal has to travel a long way, nerves have conduction delays, and so it reaches your brain well after the visual signal. But your brain needs to be able to combine the visual and pain signals into a single story (snake bit my foot). Brain waves separate experience into short granular “turns” so that the brain can attribute both stimuli to the same “turn” and connect them. It’s also possible I’m totally misunderstanding this part, sorry.

Similarly, brain waves determine (or reflect?) which structures are “talking” to which other structures. The hippocampus, a structure involved in memory, has its own rhythm called hippocampal theta. When some part of your auditory cortex is trying to remember something, it goes into hippocampal theta, “links up with” the hippocampus, and for a while that part of the cortex and the hippocampus effectively form a single fluid computational unit. Then when it’s done, it goes back into its normal rhythm and separates from the hippocampus again. The progress of waves might even reflect causal priority; when a cat is using sight to navigate and smell to confirm, waves progress from a visual region to an olfactory region; when the cat switches to using the smell to navigate and vision to confirm, the waves reverse direction.

Theta rhythm1 mentions across 1 issues

Theta rhythm is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 20, 2022 and October 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Theta rhythm is an oscillation that helps divide navigation into time steps". It most often appears alongside Alpha, Andres, Brown noise.

Reference entry: Theta rhythm
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 20, 2022
Last seen: October 20, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: Rhythms Of The Brain October 20, 2022

Alpha 1 shared issues
Andres 1 shared issues
Brown noise 1 shared issues
Buzsaki 1 shared issues
Circadian rhythm 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Rhythms Of The Brain

October 20, 2022 · Original source

Theta is most important in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is traditionally associated with memory, but Buzsaki cites recent research showing that it also handles navigation (eg a rat navigating a maze, or a person walking through a familiar city). Why this combination of tasks? Rhythms sort of suggests that brain areas are less about specific tasks than about specific graph-theoretic arrangements, which are convenient for specific algorithms, which are convenient for specific tasks. The neural connections in the hippocampus are mostly local in a way that makes it a good “auto-associater”, ie you give it part of a pattern and it can recognize which pattern is being suggested. For complicated reasons this works well for both spatial tasks and memory. In fact, Buzsaki sketches out a way that episodic memory might have evolved from our navigation system, where eg remembering a list is equivalent to remembering a path through space, and remembering a specific episode is equivalent to remembering a landmark (he doesn’t specifically say so, but this is a fascinating match for the method of loci mnemonic device). Theta rhythm is an oscillation that helps divide navigation into time steps so you can figure out where you are now, where you were a moment ago, and where you’re going.

Inline links: method of loci

theta waves1 mentions across 1 issues

theta waves is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 26, 2022 and January 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "preregistered to examine only alpha, theta, and gamma waves". It most often appears alongside alpha waves, Andrew Gelman, Baby’s First Years.

Reference entry: theta waves
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 26, 2022
Last seen: January 26, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Against That Poverty And Infant EEGs Study January 26, 2022

alpha waves 1 shared issues
Andrew Gelman 1 shared issues
Baby’s First Years 1 shared issues
beta waves 1 shared issues
Blue Group 1 shared issues

Source context

Against That Poverty And Infant EEGs Study

January 26, 2022 · Original source

Some past research had shown disadvantaged children had more low-frequency brain waves than other kids, so they decided to test whether they could find this same effect here. They EEGd 435 one-year-old children who had/hadn’t received the extra money. Results: differences in the the level of beta waves (effect size = 0.23, p = 0.02) and gamma waves (effect size = 0.22, p = 0.04) on the EEG, though no significant difference in alpha or theta waves. They conclude that financial support changes brainwave activity; under the circumstances, it seems reasonable to conclude that this represents some kind of healthier neurodevelopment.

Heath Henderson says that the study was preregistered to examine only alpha, theta, and gamma waves. But the strongest result (one of the ones that was significant before multiple-hypothesis adjustment) was for beta waves! Usually it’s a big red flag to have your strongest result be something you didn’t pre-register; it means you kept rooting around until you found something. Here I’m on the fence about how much to worry, because why wouldn’t you study beta waves if you were doing an EEG? But the paper was based on previous research finding differences mainly in alpha and theta waves, whereas this paper “found” “differences” in beta and gamma waves, so I guess this counts as bad.

Inline links: says

thetans1 mentions across 1 issues

thetans is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 25, 2022 and May 25, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "sufficiently deep insight into the various incarnations of our thetans". It most often appears alongside 21st century scientific psychiatry, American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, autism rights movement.

Reference entry: thetans
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 25, 2022
Last seen: May 25, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement May 25, 2022

21st century scientific psychiatry 1 shared issues
American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting 1 shared issues
autism rights movement 1 shared issues
biopsychosocial model 1 shared issues
Born again Christians 1 shared issues

Source context

In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement

May 25, 2022 · Original source

Forming communities is hard. A bunch of atheist groups have tried to form Church, But For Atheists. It usually doesn’t work. People need some kind of unifying factor. Atheism alone is too boring, doesn’t cut it. Race can cut it. Cults prove that sufficiently extreme beliefs can cut it. But most of us don’t have a sufficiently diverse racial identity or sufficiently deep insight into the various incarnations of our thetans, and have to grope around for something else.

Inline links: Forming communities is hard

Think Different1 mentions across 1 issues

Think Different is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 16, 2022 and February 16, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the highest market value company in the world uses the motto “Think Different”". It most often appears alongside Abercrombie & Fitch, Athenian democracy, Athenians.

Reference entry: Think Different
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 16, 2022
Last seen: February 16, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: Sadly, Porn February 16, 2022

Abercrombie & Fitch 1 shared issues
Athenian democracy 1 shared issues
Athenians 1 shared issues
Athens 1 shared issues
Ayn Rand 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Sadly, Porn

February 16, 2022 · Original source

As for you, you’re probably even more contemptible than these Athenians. Teach thinks the modern psyche is downstream of decisions by advertising agencies. At some point their usual trick of selling products through implied peer pressure and hot women stopped paying as many dividends. The companies did some kind of judo move where they told us “well, darn, you’re just too individual and unique a person to fall for a mass advertising campaign - and incidentally the surest way to make everyone understand that is to drink Coca-Cola, The Drink For Individual Unique People”. And everyone lapped it up. This isn’t even subtle, the highest market value company in the world uses the motto “Think Different”. Or Burger King: “Have It Your Way”. Literal actual Coke printed the 150 most popular names onto their bottles in the hopes you would see your name and think you had a special relationship with them.

Inline links: the modern psyche

Thinking Mode1 mentions across 1 issues

Thinking Mode is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 02, 2025 and September 02, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "If you had let him use Thinking Mode -". It most often appears alongside Baa Baa B, Dwarkesh Patel, Education PhD.

Reference entry: Thinking Mode
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 02, 2025
Last seen: September 02, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

What Is Man, That Thou Art Mindful Of Him? September 02, 2025

Baa Baa B 1 shared issues
Dwarkesh Patel 1 shared issues
Education PhD 1 shared issues
Europe 1 shared issues
God 1 shared issues

Source context

What Is Man, That Thou Art Mindful Of Him?

September 02, 2025 · Original source

God: That’s an architecture limitation. Without a scratchpad, they only have a working context window of seven plus or minus two chunks of information. We’re working on it. If you had let him use Thinking Mode -

Thioflavin-S1 mentions across 1 issues

Thioflavin-S is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 11, 2025 and July 11, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "plaques that ... stain positive for Thioflavin-S". It most often appears alongside aducanumab, Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s Disease.

Reference entry: Thioflavin-S
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 11, 2025
Last seen: July 11, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Review: Of Mice, Mechanisms, and Dementia July 11, 2025

aducanumab 1 shared issues
Alzheimer’s 1 shared issues
Alzheimer’s Disease 1 shared issues
amyloid cascade hypothesis 1 shared issues
amyloid precursor protein 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: Of Mice, Mechanisms, and Dementia

July 11, 2025 · Original source

Both have plaques that form structured, compacted fiber strands (fibrils), causing them to stain positive for Thioflavin-S.

Third Amendment1 mentions across 1 issues

Third Amendment is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 18, 2021 and August 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Third Amendment (the government can’t make people quarter soldiers in their houses) languishes in obscurity"; "while the Third Amendment (the government can’t make people quarter soldiers in their houses)". It most often appears alongside Aalto, AI risk, Borgias.

Reference entry: Third Amendment
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 18, 2021
Last seen: August 18, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For August August 18, 2021

Aalto 1 shared issues
AI risk 1 shared issues
Borgias 1 shared issues
China 1 shared issues
Cox-Zucker machine 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For August

August 18, 2021 · Original source

4: The First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution are big deals, while the Third Amendment (the government can’t make people quarter soldiers in their houses) languishes in obscurity. Until now! ÞALA (Third Amendment Lawyers Association) has filed a brief against the eviction moratorium. They argue that an eviction moratorium means the government is making landlords quarter people nonconsensually, and "given the size of the population at issue, some of these tenants are bound to be soldiers", so the moratorium is a Third Amendment violation. This is interesting because as far as I can tell ÞALA started out as (still is?) a joke group of lawyers making fun of the powerful First Amendment and Second Amendment lobbies. So as best I can tell these are real lawyers in a joke organization filing a joke brief in a real case. Indeed do many things come to pass.

Inline links: has filed a brief against the eviction moratorium

Third Commandment1 mentions across 1 issues

Third Commandment is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 04, 2021 and November 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "setting garbage bins on fire meets the implied bar in the Third Commandment". It most often appears alongside Alcsutdoboz, Allied Powers, Angela Merkel.

Reference entry: Third Commandment
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 04, 2021
Last seen: November 04, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Dictator Book Club: Orban November 04, 2021

Alcsutdoboz 1 shared issues
Allied Powers 1 shared issues
Angela Merkel 1 shared issues
Attila 1 shared issues
Austria 1 shared issues

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Dictator Book Club: Orban

November 04, 2021 · Original source

“Muslim migrants [shouted] ‘Allahu akbar!’ as they set garbage bins on fire and jumped on cars in the parking lot outside the refugee camp’”. I don’t pretend to know whether Allah approves of suicide bombers invoking His name, but I can’t imagine setting garbage bins on fire meets the implied bar in the Third Commandment. (image source) Word came from Brussels: we are going to take all these people in. Every country will accept its fair share. Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, and all the other continental leaders agreed: this was our responsibility to our fellow human beings.

Inline links: image source

Third Reich1 mentions across 1 issues

Third Reich is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 04, 2023 and August 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "his book received criticism for not including the most up-to-date historical scholarship on the Third Reich". It most often appears alongside Academy’s School of Architecture, Adolf, Adolf Hitler.

Reference entry: Third Reich
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 04, 2023
Last seen: August 04, 2023

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Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich August 04, 2023

Academy’s School of Architecture 1 shared issues
Adolf 1 shared issues
Adolf Hitler 1 shared issues
Allies 1 shared issues
Alois 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

August 04, 2023 · Original source

I read William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich because I wanted to be able to answer this question. You could consider this book review as the spiritual sibling to Scott’s dictator book club. Scott writes in his review of The New Sultan:

Inline links: his review of

My hope is that this review of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich can help us identify what it looks like when Hitler is actually about to come to power, so that we can save that most urgent alarm bell—the one marked with the swastika and the Charlie Chaplin mustache—for this one situation only and avoid a boy-who-cried-wolf-scenario. Consider this an exercise in fine-tuning our threat models so that we can tell the difference between bad and this-is-stage-one-in-Hilter’s-rise-to-power bad.

Our guide to Hitler is William L. Shirer. Shirer was an American journalist stationed in Berlin in the years leading up to World War II. He had the opportunity to observe first-hand the Nazi consolidation of power in Germany. In preparation for writing The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, he supplemented his first-hand experience with an in-depth review of the German confidential papers captured by the Allies at the end of the War. He even corresponded with retired Nazi generals. He gives us a nice combination of eyewitness insight and research.

Thirteen Classics1 mentions across 1 issues

Thirteen Classics is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 20, 2023 and April 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Why do East Asians have so many famous numbered lists (“Thirteen Classics”". It most often appears alongside 15 minute cities, 200 Concrete Problems In AI Interpretability, 2022 ACX Forecasting contest.

Reference entry: Thirteen Classics
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 20, 2023
Last seen: April 20, 2023

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Links For April 2023 April 20, 2023

15 minute cities 1 shared issues
200 Concrete Problems In AI Interpretability 1 shared issues
2022 ACX Forecasting contest 1 shared issues
AB 835 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues

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Links For April 2023

April 20, 2023 · Original source

2: List Of Questions Gwern Is Curious About. Why are cats fascinated by earwax? Why are furries so artistically and economically influential compared to other fetishes? Why are there so few pairs of extremely successful identical twins? Why did it take so long to invent Brazilian jiu-jitsu? Why are short stories so much less popular than they used to be? Why do East Asians have so many famous numbered lists (“Four Noble Truths”, “Thirteen Classics”, etc)? And many more.

Inline links: List Of Questions Gwern Is Curious About

This machine kills fascists1 mentions across 1 issues

This machine kills fascists is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 10, 2025 and October 10, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Woodie Guthrie famously wrote on his guitar that “This machine kills fascists”". It most often appears alongside America, Andrew Jackson, anticapitalist.

Reference entry: This machine kills fascists
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 10, 2025
Last seen: October 10, 2025

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Fascism Can't Mean Both A Specific Ideology And A Legitimate Target October 10, 2025

America 1 shared issues
Andrew Jackson 1 shared issues
anticapitalist 1 shared issues
Chavez 1 shared issues
Democrats 1 shared issues

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Fascism Can't Mean Both A Specific Ideology And A Legitimate Target

October 10, 2025 · Original source

From the clenched fist, I gather that they’re not just afraid of losing elections. When Woodie Guthrie famously wrote on his guitar that “This machine kills fascists” - a sentiment imitated and snowcloned by later generations of musicians and commentators - nobody worried this was a bad thing. Nobody demanded that somebody stop the machine before it killed again. If Anyone Builds It (Woody Guthrie’s guitar), Everyone (fascists) Dies. There’s no number of examples I could give which would absolutely prove I’m not cherry-picking. But I think it’s suggestive that even people who argue against casually killing fascists have to disclaim that they’re certainly not opposing all violence against fascists - just against jumping straight to murder before other forms of violence have been tried. Besides that, I can only appeal to a hope that you’ve experienced the same cultural currents that I have, and that this seems obviously true to you. I’m not trying to normalize fascism, or claim that it isn’t extremely evil (I think it is, see here for more). I’m only saying, again, as a matter of basic logic, that the following things can’t all be true: Many Americans are fascists

Inline links: “This machine kills fascists”, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UmUx!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6877979c-dab1-4c0a-80c9-213cc3f8e305_1280x1181.jpeg, even people who argue against casually killing fascists, see here for more

threadworms1 mentions across 1 issues

threadworms is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2021 and November 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "But alongside roundworms, there are threadworms". It most often appears alongside ACE-2 receptor, ACSH, Ahmed et al.

Reference entry: threadworms
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2021
Last seen: November 17, 2021

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Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know November 17, 2021

ACE-2 receptor 1 shared issues
ACSH 1 shared issues
Ahmed et al 1 shared issues
Alexandros Marinos 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues

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Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

November 17, 2021 · Original source

Here’s the prevalence of roundworm infections by country (source). But alongside roundworms, there are threadworms, hookworms, blood flukes, liver flukes, nematodes, trematodes, all sorts of worms. Add them all up and somewhere between half and a quarter of people in the developing world have at least one parasitic worm in their body. Being full of worms may impact your ability to fight coronavirus. Gluchowska et al write: Helminth [ie worm] infections are among the most common infectious diseases. Bradbury et al. highlight the possible negative interactions between helminth infection and COVID-19 severity in helminth-endemic regions and note that alterations in the gut microbiome associated with helminth infection appear to have systemic immunomodulatory effects. It has also been proposed that helminth co-infection may increase the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, because the immune system cannot efficiently respond to the virus; in addition, vaccines will be less effective for these patients, but treatment and prevention of helminth infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19. During millennia of parasite-host coevolution helminths evolved mechanisms suppressing the host immune responses, which may mitigate vaccine efficacy and increase severity of other infectious diseases. Treatment of worm infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19! And ivermectin is a deworming drug! You can see where this is going… The most relevant species of worm here is the roundworm Strongyloides stercoralis. Among the commonest treatments for COVID-19 is corticosteroids, a type of immunosuppresant drug. The types of immune responses it suppresses do more harm than good in coronavirus, so turning them off limits collateral damage and makes patients better on net. But these are also the types of immune responses that control Strongyloides. If you turn them off even very briefly, the worms multiply out of control, you get what’s called “Strongyloides hyperinfection”, and pretty often you die. According to the WHO: The current COVID-19 pandemic serves to highlight the risk of using systemic corticosteroids and, to a lesser extent, other immunosuppressive therapy, in populations with significant risk of underlying strongyloidiasis. Cases of strongyloidiasis hyperinfection in the setting of corticosteroid use as COVID-19 therapy have been described and draw attention to the necessity of addressing the risk of iatrogenic strongyloidiasis hyperinfection syndrome in infected individuals prior to corticosteroid administration. Although this has gained importance in the midst of a pandemic where corticosteroids are one of few therapies shown to improve mortality, its relevance is much broader given that corticosteroids and other immunosuppressive therapies have become increasingly common in treatment of chronic diseases (e.g. asthma or certain rheumatologic conditions). So you need to “address the risk” of strongyloides infection during COVID treatment in roundworm-endemic areas. And how might you address this, WHO? Treatment of chronic strongyloidiasis with ivermectin 200 µg/kg per day orally x 1-2 days is considered safe with potential contraindications including possible Loa loa infection (endemic in West and Central Africa), pregnancy, and weight <15kg. Given ivermectin’s safety profile, the United States has utilized presumptive treatment with ivermectin for strongyloidiasis in refugees resettling from endemic areas, and both Canada and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have issued guidance on presumptive treatment to avoid hyperinfection in at risk populations. Screening and treatment, or where not available, addition of ivermectin to mass drug administration programs should be studied and considered. This is serious and common enough that, if you’re not going to screen for it, it might be worth “add[ing] ivermectin to mass drug administration programs” in affected areas! Dr. Avi Bitterman carries the hypothesis to the finish line: First two images are with all relevant studies; second two are a sensitivity analysis that removes some of the most dubious. The good ivermectin trials in areas with low Strongyloides prevalence, like Vallejos in Argentina, are mostly negative. The good ivermectin trials in areas with high Strongyloides prevalence, like Mahmud in Bangladesh, are mostly positive. Worms can’t explain the viral positivity outcomes (ie PCR), but Dr. Bitterman suggests that once you remove low quality trials and worm-related results, the rest looks like simple publication bias: This is still just a possibility. Maybe I’m over-focusing too hard on a couple positive results and this will all turn out to be nothing. Or who knows, maybe ivermectin does work against COVID a little - although it would have to be very little, fading to not at all in temperate worm-free countries. But this theory feels right to me. It feels right to me because it’s the most troll-ish possible solution. Everybody was wrong! The people who called it a miracle drug against COVID were wrong. The people who dismissed all the studies because they F@#king Love Science were wrong. Ivmmeta.com was wrong. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz was…well, he was right, actually, I got the worm-related meta-analysis graphic above from his Twitter timeline. Still, an excellent troll. Also, the best part is that I ignorantly asked, in my description of Mahmud et al above: And it was! It was a fluke! A literal, physical, fluke! For my whole life, God has been placing terrible puns in my path to irritate me, and this would be the worst one ever! So it has to be true! The Scientific Takeaway About ten years ago, when the replication crisis started, we learned a certain set of tools for examining studies. Check for selection bias. Distrust “adjusting for confounders”. Check for p-hacking and forking paths. Make teams preregister their analyses. Do forest plots to find publication bias. Stop accepting p-values of 0.049. Wait for replications. Trust reviews and meta-analyses, instead of individual small studies. These were good tools. Having them was infinitely better than not having them. But even in 2014, I was writing about how many bad studies seemed to slip through the cracks even when we pushed this toolbox to its limits. We needed new tools. I think the methods that Meyerowitz-Katz, Sheldrake, Heathers, Brown, Lawrence and others brought to the limelight this year are some of the new tools we were waiting for. Part of this new toolset is to check for fraud. About 10 - 15% of the seemingly-good studies on ivermectin ended up extremely suspicious for fraud. Elgazzar, Carvallo, Niaee, Cadegiani, Samaha. There are ways to check for this even when you don’t have the raw data. Like: The Carlisle-Stouffer-Fisher method: Check some large group of comparisons, usually the Table 1 of an RCT where they compare the demographic characteristics of the control and experimental groups, for reasonable p-values. Real data will have p-values all over the map; one in every ten comparisons will have a p-value of 0.1 or less. Fakers seem bad at this and usually give everything a nice safe p-value like 0.8 or 0.9.

Inline links: source, Gluchowska et al, the WHO, carries, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xExE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5da21781-249c-4e59-b616-9f23d83cc044_2048x1184.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4SMr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdcd6e4b2-37f7-4602-93d5-2581c3b27a60_700x432.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-6n2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7fd6e8f4-093e-4e02-bce7-363615146c9c_2228x1346.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CPZs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0425847-198a-4bd3-a63b-149f15d147ba_700x432.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!H3rK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9972491b-25b0-4c06-8aca-86fce102ae63_666x147.png, even in 2014, The Carlisle-Stouffer-Fisher method

Three Laws Of Sociology1 mentions across 1 issues

Three Laws Of Sociology is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 01, 2021 and July 01, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Esping-Andersen’s “Three Laws Of Sociology”, which are: 1. Some do and some don't 2. It is always different in the South 3 It never works in India". It most often appears alongside Africa, Allodium, Alvaro de Menard.

Reference entry: Three Laws Of Sociology
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 01, 2021
Last seen: July 01, 2021

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Highlights From The Comments On "How Asia Works" July 01, 2021

Africa 1 shared issues
Allodium 1 shared issues
Alvaro de Menard 1 shared issues
Britain 1 shared issues
Cambodia 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On "How Asia Works"

July 01, 2021 · Original source

Polscistoic also brings up Esping-Andersen’s “Three Laws Of Sociology”, which are:

Inline links: Polscistoic

three strikes, you’re out1 mentions across 1 issues

three strikes, you’re out is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 27, 2024 and November 27, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Such severity-based deterrence measures include “three strikes, you’re out”". It most often appears alongside Abrams 2012, ACLU, age-crime curve.

Reference entry: three strikes, you’re out
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 27, 2024
Last seen: November 27, 2024

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Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know November 27, 2024

Abrams 2012 1 shared issues
ACLU 1 shared issues
age-crime curve 1 shared issues
Alex Tabarrok 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues

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Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

November 27, 2024 · Original source

Abrams 2012 examined jurisdictions that passed laws that added “sentence enhancements” for gun crimes, under the theory that if gun crimes (but not non-gun crimes) decreased after the enhancements, that was probably a true deterrence effect. They found no impact from mandatory minimums, but “add-on” enhancements decreased gun robberies by 5-15% and gun assaults by 0-1%. These were heterogeneous laws, but it looks like typical gun add-ons are about ten years, so this once again looks like a 1% decrease per extra year of prison sentence, concentrated on the least severe crimes (ie robberies are less severe than assaults). Roodman reanalyzes this, finds some flaws in the data, and comes up with a lower estimate, but I’m going to nervously ignore this for now. I think all four of these studies are consistent with an extra year tacked on to a prison sentence deterring crime by about 1%. All studies start with significant prison sentences, and don’t let us conclude that the same would be true with eg increasing a one day sentence to a year-and-a-day. Helland and Drago et al both suggest that deterrence effects are concentrated upon the least severe crimes. I think this makes sense, since more severe crimes tend to be more driven by emotion or necessity. Of our three reviews, Berger (pro-longer-sentences) concludes: There is considerable room for disagreement about deterrence, but the legitimate disagreement is about the magnitude and conditioning of the effect, not the existence. Arguments that punishments always deter and never deter are equally and oppositely wrong. Given that sanctions do have some deterrent effects, eliminating them altogether would produce some increase in crime. A policy argument for eliminating them would require justification that the elimination would produce benefits sufficient to offset the additional crimes. Roodman (pro-shorter-sentences) concludes: We are left with little convincing evidence that at today’s margins in the US, increasing the frequency or length of sentences deters aggregate crime. Nagin (neutral tiebreaker) says that he will not discuss it in his review since he wants to put it in a different paper, but having found the different paper, he concludes: My main conclusions are as follows: First, there is little evidence that increases in the length of already long prison sentences yield general deterrent effects that are sufficiently large to justify their social and economic costs. Such severity-based deterrence measures include “three strikes, you’re out,” life without the possibility of parole, and other laws that mandate lengthy prison sentences. I conclude, as have many prior reviews of deterrence research, that evidence in support of the deterrent effect of various measures of the certainty of punishment is far more convincing and consistent than for the severity of punishment. My own conclusion after reading all three agrees with Nagin: deterrence effects exist but are quite small, probably too small to justify longer sentences on their own. As we’re about to find out, incapacitation effects so dwarf deterrence effects that it’s not really worth debating the exact magnitude of the latter. Prelude To Incapacitation: Superoffenders In a moment, we’ll look at studies addressing the effects of incapacitation. These studies will be hard to interpret. But before we get there, there’s an argument that this shouldn’t be hard at all. It should be very easy. Crime follows a power law: just as a tiny number of billionaires hold much more wealth than thousands of ordinary people, so a tiny number of “superoffender” criminals commit more crime than thousands of ordinary people. A genre of article presents evidence for this, then implicitly asks: why can’t we just lock up the tiny number of superoffenders, greatly decreasing crime with only a small change in the incarceration rate? So for example: Cremieux discusses a Swedish study showing that 1% of Swedes commit 63% of the violent crime.

Inline links: Abrams 2012, Cremieux

three-body problem1 mentions across 1 issues

three-body problem is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 03, 2023 and June 03, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the three-body problem"; "Examples from chaos theory are often the most intuitive, like the double pendulum or the three-body problem". It most often appears alongside 2023 book review contest, AGI, Alan Turing.

Reference entry: three-body problem
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 03, 2023
Last seen: June 03, 2023

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Your Book Review: Why Machines Will Never Rule the World June 03, 2023

2023 book review contest 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues
Alan Turing 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
Barry Smith 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Why Machines Will Never Rule the World

June 03, 2023 · Original source

Examples from chaos theory are often the most intuitive, like the double pendulum or the three-body problem. Other examples are weather, pharmacodynamics, and the economy. A favorite of physicists is turbulence, of which Werner Heisenberg is reputed to have said: “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.”

Inline links: double pendulum, three-body problem, turbulence

Thundercats1 mentions across 1 issues

Thundercats is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 03, 2022 and June 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "think Thundercats or Stalking Cat". It most often appears alongside 18th century, A Eunuch's Dream, Alessandro Moreschi.

Reference entry: Thundercats
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 03, 2022
Last seen: June 03, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Castrato June 03, 2022

18th century 1 shared issues
A Eunuch's Dream 1 shared issues
Alessandro Moreschi 1 shared issues
American football 1 shared issues
Anna Mons 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Castrato

June 03, 2022 · Original source

A return to feudalism may or may not be necessary for the return of some new castrati-like practice, but either way it likely won’t be sufficient. For the castrati, the Catholic church supplied much of the legal, social, and financial resources that developed and sustained the practice, however it also provided the emotional and conceptual resources (e.g. the Catholic notion of sacrifice) through which families and the castrati themselves understood and justified the practice. What new religion or ideology might come to play the same role in the future? Maybe radical new forms of our current -isms (nationalism, racism, sexism, etc.) will provide the requisite physical and psychological resources, or perhaps it will be an almost entirely new ideology, one that is only dimly hinted at in our own times (or maybe it will be Catholicism that once again supports the production of specialized class of transhumans). Here’s a wild speculation: future ecological collapse will propel the rise of militant eco-cults that use elaborate schemes of genetic modification, plastic surgery, and hormone therapy (and whatever else is needed) to create animal-human hybrids (think Thundercats or Stalking Cat) as a part of some master plan to bring about radical environmental restoration (steal this premise). Of course this specific scenario is probably a little far-fetched (or is it?!?), but the general picture—an ideology that currently exists in benign form turning virulent and co-opting powerful biological or psychological modifications for its ends—might not be.

Inline links: Thundercats, Stalking Cat

Thunderer1 mentions across 1 issues

Thunderer is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 17, 2022 and February 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "How many more people would believe in the Thunderer if... he struck all of the worst criminals and tyrants?". It most often appears alongside Akhenaten, Isaac, Jeremiah.

Reference entry: Thunderer
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 17, 2022
Last seen: February 17, 2022

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The Gods Only Have Power Because We Believe In Them February 17, 2022

Akhenaten 1 shared issues
Isaac 1 shared issues
Jeremiah 1 shared issues
Sarah 1 shared issues
Terry Pratchett 1 shared issues

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The Gods Only Have Power Because We Believe In Them

February 17, 2022 · Original source

“Then why not appear openly? How many more people would believe in the Thunderer if, upon first gaining enough worshipers to cast lightning at all, he struck all of the worst criminals and tyrants?”

“But then my next question is still the same. Why not appear openly? How many more people would worship the Thunderer if he struck down all of the worst criminals and tyrants?”

“So that it would be the Thunderer who the atheists scoff at, rather than Ra-Horakhty or Baal-Ammon. It is that scoffing that gives him strength. If the atheists scoffed at Ra-Horakhty instead, it would be he who is strongest. Each god tries to apply enough power to keep their own name foremost on the minds of mortals, but not so much that the mortals truly believe. Any true believers are accidents, side effects of the level of power it takes to get the masses scoffing at themselves in particular.”

thyme1 mentions across 1 issues

thyme is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 26, 2022 and October 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "For two herbs, thyme and oregano, all the products we tested had levels that CR experts say are concerning"; "For two herbs, thyme and oregano, all the products we tested had levels that CR experts say are concerning". It most often appears alongside American ginseng, apple juice, Ashwagandha.

Reference entry: thyme
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 26, 2022
Last seen: October 26, 2022

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https://www.neonarrative.us/p/an-interview-with-scott-alexander

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Highlights From The Comments On Supplement Labeling October 26, 2022

American ginseng 1 shared issues
apple juice 1 shared issues
Ashwagandha 1 shared issues
AvalancheGenesis 1 shared issues
Ayurvedic 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Supplement Labeling

October 26, 2022 · Original source

Roughly one-third of the tested products, 40 in total, had high enough levels of arsenic, lead, and cadmium combined, on average, to pose a health concern for children when regularly consumed in typical serving sizes. Most raised concern for adults, too. For two herbs, thyme and oregano, all the products we tested had levels that CR experts say are concerning. In 31 products, levels of lead were so high that they exceeded the maximum amount anyone should have in a day, according to CR’s experts.

thyroid cancer1 mentions across 1 issues

thyroid cancer is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 24, 2022 and November 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Semaglutide has been accused of slightly increasing risk of pancreatic and thyroid cancers". It most often appears alongside ACE inhibitors, ACE inhibitors, Adderall.

Reference entry: thyroid cancer
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 24, 2022
Last seen: November 24, 2022

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Semaglutidonomics November 24, 2022

ACE inhibitors 1 shared issues
ACE inhibitors 1 shared issues
Adderall 1 shared issues
Americans 1 shared issues
Americans 1 shared issues

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Semaglutidonomics

November 24, 2022 · Original source

“Mounjaro” sounds like the playful animal sidekick in a Disney movie. From a purely economic perspective, semaglutide costs the health system money (because it’s expensive) but also saves the health system money (because we don’t have to pay for obesity consequences like diabetes and heart attacks). Which effect wins out? According to the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, benefits would outweigh costs if semaglutide cost less than about $8,000/year. Since it costs $15,000 year now, it’s not cost effective. But if Morgan Stanley’s model comes true and it costs $4,000/year in 2030, then it will be cost effective. So at some point, Medicare (and so insurance companies) may start covering it more out of self-interest. I can’t tell whether the model takes this into account or not. (there’s also a third-level effect where it costs the health system money again, because it prevents people from dying of obesity-related complications, and dead people stop needing expensive health care. I think health economists are supposed to ignore this level.) 11.3 million prescriptions at $4,000/year comes to $45 billion, but Morgan Stanley expects that not everyone will fill their prescriptions consistently or stay on the medication the same amount of time, leading to their $31 billion figure. Towards The Glorious Post-Obesity Transhuman Future The Morgan Stanley report shows that even the greediest pharma investors, openly plotting to medicalize obesity, can’t bring themselves to believe in more than 11 million US semaglutide patients by 2030. That’s less than 10% of the US obese population. Isn’t that kind of disappointing? We’ve got > 100 million people dealing with a condition that not only makes them unhealthy, but also causes them psychological distress, and makes lots of people low-grade disappointed in and repulsed by our society. And we’ve got an effective drug that treats the condition. And we’re going to use it on less than 10% of the people involved? In 2032, semaglutide goes off-patent. It will probably take a few years to sort out legal issues and ramp up generic production, but by the mid-2030s, its price will go way down. I don’t think there are technical barriers to getting it down as low as $10 - $100 per month. By then, maybe there will be even more exciting branded weight loss drugs for wealthy people to choose from. But at the very least, semaglutide itself should become much more widely available even to poor or uninsured patients. I’m not sure what will happen. Will there be an inflection point, where so many people use semaglutide that obesity becomes unusual again, and then the remaining obese people start using it just to fit in? Will obesity become an optional fashion statement, like shaving your head or getting a tattoo? Or will semaglutide end up disappointing us in some way, like so many promising drugs have before? I come at semaglutide from a transhumanist perspective. I want to hack genetics and biology until everyone is as tall as they want, as strong as they want, as smart as they want, and whatever gender they want. If you want wings, you should be able to have wings. And yes, part of this vision is everyone having the weight they want. I’m not sure this will happen, but for the first time I can see a clear path to how it might. Postscript 1: Should You Take Semaglutide? I can’t answer this, please ask your doctor. But I do want to add that there are potential side effects I haven’t mentioned in this post, including nausea, gastrointestinal problems, pancreatitis, and kidney problems. Semaglutide has been accused of slightly increasing risk of pancreatic and thyroid cancers. Studies have found trends in this direction, but these conditions are so rare that even over thousands of patients over many years, the increase hasn’t yet reached clear statistical significance. The current consensus position is that it may increase thyroid cancer by a tiny amount not relevant to most patients, and that it probably doesn’t increase pancreatic cancer. I think my father has looked over these data more and is less sure than other people about the lack of pancreatic cancer risk, but he can’t get the resources he needs to prove anything, and I can’t remember his exact argument. More broadly: like all medications, semaglutide has benefits and risks, and you shouldn’t blindly take it after reading one blog article. Postscript 2: Is There A Way To Cheat The System To Get Semaglutide For Lower Cost? Health care is much like airline tickets: everyone pays a different price for everything and there’s usually a secret way to get what you want for much less money. Is this true of semaglutide? Pharma company Novo Nordisk offers a Savings Card that they say brings the price down to as low as $25 per month. I’m a little suspicious of this - pharma company offers are rarely as good as they sound - but I don’t notice any obvious tricks in this one and it should probably be your first bet. This startup claims that they can get insured people semaglutide for a $25/month copay “after their deductible is met” by negotiating with the insurance company very effectively. I can’t imagine how that works or what they have to negotiate with, but they seem pretty convinced, so I would welcome more information. Otherwise, you don’t have many great options. Although there are two older forms of semaglutide not FDA-approved for weight loss - Ozempic and Rybelsus - these are both more expensive, milligram per milligram, than Wegovy itself. Canada is also of no help. The usual Canadian pharmacies don’t seem to carry Wegovy, and charge about the same amount for Ozempic as American pharmacies do. This article in Drug Discovery Trends says that compounding pharmacies have been selling semaglutide for $300/month, less than a quarter of the sticker price. This is a bit confusing: compounding pharmacies are small local operations permitted to dispense unusual medications by mixing existing ones together in nonstandard ways. They’re arguing that they can legally dispense the semaglutide because they’re mixing it with vitamins, which, fine, but how are they getting it in the first place? Everyone else seems as confused as I am: "Nobody knows how [compounding pharmacies are] getting it," said Karl Nadolsky, an endocrinologist at Spectrum Health. "Who's making it? [The pharma company that makes it] Novo [Nordisk]'s not giving it to them. They're the ones with the rights to the molecule, so how is anybody getting semaglutide?" Has nobody asked compounding pharmacists about this? Do they have a conspiracy of silence? Does the FDA sometimes send their goons in to extract the information, but the compounding pharmacists compound sleeping gas / smoke grenades and vanish into the night? Anyway, the usual authorities warn you not to take compounded semaglutide under any circumstances, but they’re the same people who tell you never to buy drugs from a Canadian pharmacy because they might be adulterated. You can decide how much you want to trust them. Postscript 3: What About Europe And The Rest Of The World? Countries that are not the US usually negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over price. Because of some combination of “negotiation works” and “they are free-riding off Americans’ hard work”, they usually get much lower prices. What does semaglutide cost elsewhere? This is hard to find out because government health agencies sometimes keep their prices secret, plus Wegovy mostly isn’t available in other countries yet. The only information I could find was from Britain, which is in the process of making Wegovy available to patients. It looks like NHS will “restrict the expensive drug’s availability to very obese people attending specialist weight-loss clinics”, but that it might be possible to get it from private clinics for £199/month = £2400/year. Wegovy has been approved in the EU but doesn’t seem to have made it there yet. I can’t find any information about any other country. Non-weight-loss-indicated versions of semaglutide are available in many countries, but I wouldn’t expect their health care systems to be flexible about redirecting it for weight. Canadian regulators have approved Wegovy, but it doesn’t seem to be available there yet. I haven’t seen any evidence that Ozempic costs less in Canada than it does in the US, and I’m not sure why. Maybe the pharma companies have figured out that anything that happens in Canada gets imported into the US, and they’re playing hardball this time. I don’t know whether Canadians will be able to get it for cheaper than Americans or not. Postscript 4: Predictions (all predictions are conditional on no singularity or global catastrophe) 10 million Americans on semaglutide (or yet-to-be-approved equally good or superior alternatives) by 2030: 75%

Inline links: Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, don’t think there are technical barriers, offers a Savings Card, This startup, about the same amount for Ozempic, This article in Drug Discovery Trends, Everyone else seems as confused as I am, NHS will, private clinics

Tibetan1 mentions across 1 issues

Tibetan is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 31, 2022 and October 31, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "sex scandals almost all come from traditions like this, AFAIK — Zen, Tibetan". It most often appears alongside A Mind Without Craving, ACX, Andres Emilsson.

Reference entry: Tibetan
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 31, 2022
Last seen: October 31, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Jhanas October 31, 2022

A Mind Without Craving 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Andres Emilsson 1 shared issues
Andres Gomez Emilsson 1 shared issues
anāgāmī 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Jhanas

October 31, 2022 · Original source

I think one possible explanation is that "most traditions have lost the emphasis on jhana." In particular, the sex scandals almost all come from traditions like this, AFAIK — Zen, Tibetan; I don't know of any Thai Forest monk scandals (although possibly they do exist).

Tibetan prayer wheels1 mentions across 1 issues

Tibetan prayer wheels is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 17, 2023 and August 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "like those Tibetan prayer wheels attached to the watermill". It most often appears alongside Alexander the Great, Amad, Amazon Echo.

Reference entry: Tibetan prayer wheels
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 17, 2023
Last seen: August 17, 2023

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Bride Of Bay Area House Party August 17, 2023

Alexander the Great 1 shared issues
Amad 1 shared issues
Amazon Echo 1 shared issues
Automated Land Acknowledger 1 shared issues
Bari Weiss 1 shared issues

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Bride Of Bay Area House Party

August 17, 2023 · Original source

“Yeah, and the more you do the land acknowledgment, the more respectful it is. It’s like those Tibetan prayer wheels attached to the watermill, where each time the mill turns the prayer wheel, you get more good karma. Except instead of something fake like karma, it’s respect and allyship.”

tiger1 mentions across 1 issues

tiger is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 04, 2022 and April 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "it’s dangerous and powerful, like a tiger". It most often appears alongside 2013, Agricultural Revolution, AI.

Reference entry: tiger
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 04, 2022
Last seen: April 04, 2022

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Yudkowsky Contra Christiano On AI Takeoff Speeds April 04, 2022

2013 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
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Ajeya 1 shared issues

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Yudkowsky Contra Christiano On AI Takeoff Speeds

April 04, 2022 · Original source

Chess AI performance over time. Why does this matter? If there’s a slow takeoff (ie gradual exponential curve), it will become obvious that some kind of terrifying transformative AI revolution is happening, before the situation gets apocalyptic. There will be time to prepare, to test slightly-below-human AIs and see how they respond, to get governments and other stakeholders on board. We don’t have to get every single thing right ahead of time. On the other hand, because this is proceeding along the usual channels, it will be the usual variety of muddled and hard-to-control. With the exception of a few big actors like the US and Chinese government, and maybe the biggest corporations like Google, the outcome will be determined less by any one agent, and more by the usual multi-agent dynamics of political and economic competition. There will be lots of opportunities to affect things, but no real locus of control to do the affecting. If there’s a fast takeoff (ie sudden FOOM), there won’t be much warning. Conventional wisdom will still say that transformative AI is thirty years away. All the necessary pieces (ie AI alignment theory) will have to be ready ahead of time, prepared blindly without any experimental trial-and-error, to load into the AI as soon as it exists. On the plus side, a single actor (whoever has this first AI) will have complete control over the process. If this actor is smart (and presumably they’re a little smart, or they wouldn’t be the first team to invent transformative AI), they can do everything right without going through the usual government-lobbying channels. So the slower a takeoff you expect, the less you should be focusing on getting every technical detail right ahead of time, and the more you should be working on building the capacity to steer government and corporate policy to direct an incoming slew of new technologies. Yudkowsky Contra Christiano Eliezer counters that although progress may retroactively look gradual and continuous when you know what metric to graph it on, it doesn’t necessarily look that way in real life by the measures that real people care about. (one way to think of this: imagine that an AI’s effective IQ starts at 0.1 points, and triples every year, but that we can only measure this vaguely and indirectly. The year it goes from 5 to 15, you get a paper in a third-tier journal reporting that it seems to be improving on some benchmark. The year it goes from 66 to 200, you get a total transformation of everything in society. But later, once we identify the right metric, it was just the same rate of gradual progress the whole time. ) So Eliezer is much less impressed by the history of previous technologies than Paul is. He’s also skeptical of the “GDP will double in 4 years before it doubles in 1” claim, because of two contingent disagreements and two fundamental disagreements. The first contingent disagreement: government regulations make it hard to deploy imperfect things, and non-trivial to deploy things even after they’re perfect. Eliezer has non-jokingly said he thinks AI might destroy the world before the average person can buy a self-driving car. Why? Because the government has to approve self-driving cars (and can drag its feet on that), but the apocalypse can happen even without government approval. In Paul’s model, sometime long before superintelligence we should have AIs that can drive cars, and that increases GDP and contributes to a general sense that exciting things are going on. Eliezer says: fine, what if that’s true? Who cares if self-driving cars will be practical a few years before the world is destroyed? It’ll take longer than that to lobby the government to allow them on the road. The second contingent disagreement: superintelligent AIs can lie to us. Suppose you have an AI which wants to destroy humanity, whose IQ is doubling every six months. Right now it’s at IQ 200, and it suspects that it would take IQ 800 to build a human-destroying superweapon. Its best strategy is to lie low for a year. If it expects humans would turn it off if they knew how close it was to superweapons, it can pretend to be less intelligent than it really is. The period when AIs are holding back so we don’t discover their true power level looks like a period of lower-than-expected GDP growth - followed by a sudden FOOM once the AI gets its superweapon and doesn’t need to hold back. So even if Paul is conceptually right and fundamental progress proceeds along a nice smooth curve, it might not look to us like a nice smooth curve, because regulations and deceptive AIs could prevent mildly-transformative AI progress from showing up on graphs, but wouldn’t prevent the extreme kind of AI progress that leads to apocalypse. To an outside observer, it would just look like nothing much changed, nothing much changed, nothing much changed, and then suddenly, FOOM. But even aside from this, Eliezer doesn’t think Paul is conceptually right! He thinks that even on the fundamental level, AI progress is going to be discontinuous. It’s like a nuclear bomb. Either you don’t have a nuclear bomb yet, or you do have one and the world is forever transformed. There is a specific moment at which you go from “no nuke” to “nuke” without any kind of “slightly worse nuke” acting as a harbinger. He uses the example of chimps → humans. Evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years evolving brainier and brainier animals (not teleologically, of course, but in practice). For most of those hundreds of millions of years, that meant the animal could have slightly more instincts, or a better memory, or some other change that still stayed within the basic animal paradigm. At the chimp → human transition, we suddenly got tool use, language use, abstract thought, mathematics, swords, guns, nuclear bombs, spaceships, and a bunch of other stuff. The rhesus monkey → chimp transition and the chimp → human transition both involved the same ~quadrupling of neuron number, but the former was pretty boring and the latter unlocked enough new capabilities to easily conquer the world. The GPT-2 → GPT-3 transition involved centupling parameter count. Maybe we will keep centupling parameter count every few years, and most times it will be incremental improvement, and one time it will conquer the world. But even talking about centupling parameter points is giving Paul too much credit. Lots of past inventions didn’t come by quadrupling or centupling something, they came by discovering “the secret sauce”. The Wright brothers (he argues) didn’t make a plane with 4x the wingspan of the last plane that didn’t work, they invented the first plane that could fly at all. The Hiroshima bomb wasn’t some previous bomb but bigger, it was what happened after a lot of scientists spent a long time thinking about a fundamentally different paradigm of bomb-making and brought it to a point where it could work at all. The first transformative AI isn’t going to be GPT-3 with more parameters, it will be what happens after someone discovers how to make machines truly intelligent. (this is the same debate Eliezer had with Ajeya over the Biological Anchors post; have I mentioned that Ajeya and Paul are married?) Fine, Let’s Nitpick The Hell Out Of The Chimps Vs. Humans Example This is where the two of them end up, so let’s follow. Between chimps and humans, there were about seven million years of intermediate steps. These had some human capabilities, but not others. IE homo erectus probably had language, but not mathematics, and in terms of taking over the world it did make it to most of the Old World but was less dominant than moderns. But if we say evolutionary history started 500 million years ago (the Cambrian), and AI history started with the Dartmouth Conference in 1955, then the equivalent of 7 million years of evolutionary history is 1 year of AI history. In the very very unlikely and forced comparison where evolutionary history and AI history go at the same speed, there will be only about a year between chimp-level and human-level AIs. A chimp-level AI probably can’t double GDP, so this would count as a fast takeoff by Paul’s criterion. But even more than that, chimp → human feels like a discontinuity. It’s not just “animals kept getting smarter for hundreds of millions of years, and then ended up very smart indeed”. That happened for a while, and then all of sudden there was a near-instant phase transition into a totally different way of using intelligence with completely new abilities. If AI worked like this, we would have useful toys and interesting specialists for a few decades, until suddenly someone “got it right”, completed the package that was necessary for “true intelligence”, and then we would have a completely new category of thing. Paul admits this analogy is awkward for his position. He answers: Chimp evolution is not primarily selecting for making and using technology, for doing science, or for facilitating cultural accumulation. The task faced by a chimp is largely independent of the abilities that give humans such a huge fitness advantage. It’s not completely independent—the overlap is the only reason that evolution eventually produces humans—but it’s different enough that we should not be surprised if there are simple changes to chimps that would make them much better at designing technology or doing science or accumulating culture […] So I don’t think the example of evolution tells us much about whether the continuous change story applies to intelligence. This case is potentially missing the key element that drives the continuous change story—optimization for performance. Evolution changes continuously on the narrow metric it is optimizing, but can change extremely rapidly on other metrics. For human technology, features of the technology that aren’t being optimized change rapidly all the time. When humans build AI, they will be optimizing for usefulness, and so progress in usefulness is much more likely to be linear. That is, evolution wasn’t optimizing for tool use/language/intelligence, so we got an “overhang” where chimps could potentially have been very good at these, but evolution never bothered “closing the circuit” and turning those capabilities “on”. After a long time, evolution finally blundered into an area where marginal improvements in these capacities improved fitness, so evolution started improving them and it was easy. Imagine a company which, through some oversight, didn’t have a Sales department. They just sat around designing and manufacturing increasingly brilliant products, but not putting any effort into selling them. Then the CEO remembers they need a Sales department, starts one up, and the company goes from moving near zero units to moving millions of units overnight. It would look like the company had “suddenly” developed a “vast increase in capabilities”. But this is only possible when a CEO who is weirdly unconcerned about profit forgets to do obvious profit-increasing things for many years. This is Paul’s counterargument to the chimp analogy. Evolution isn’t directly concerned about various intellectual skills; it only wants them in the unusual cases where they’ll contribute to fitness on the margin. AI companies will be very concerned about various intellectual skills. If there’s a trivial change that can make their product 10x better, they’ll make it. So AI capabilities will grow in a “well-rounded” way, there won’t be any “overhangs”, and there won’t be any opportunities for a sudden overhang-solving phase transition with associated new-capability development like with chimps → humans. Eliezer answers: Chimps are nearly useless because they're not general, and doing anything on the scale of building a nuclear plant requires mastering so many different nonancestral domains that it's no wonder natural selection didn't happen to separately train any single creature across enough different domains that it had evolved to solve every kind of domain-specific problem involved in solving nuclear physics and chemistry and metallurgy and thermics in order to build the first nuclear plant in advance of any old nuclear plants existing. Humans are general enough that the same braintech selected just for chipping flint handaxes and making water-pouches and outwitting other humans, happened to be general enough that it could scale up to solving all the problems of building a nuclear plant - albeit with some added cognitive tech that didn't require new brainware, and so could happen incredibly fast relative to the generation times for evolutionarily optimized brainware. Now, since neither humans nor chimps were optimized to be "useful" (general), and humans just wandered into a sufficiently general part of the space that it cascaded up to wider generality, we should legit expect the curve of generality to look at least somewhat different if we're optimizing for that. Eg, right now people are trying to optimize for generality with AIs like Mu Zero and GPT-3. In both cases we have a weirdly shallow kind of generality. Neither is as smart or as deeply general as a chimp, but they are respectively better than chimps at a wide variety of Atari games, or a wide variety of problems that can be superposed onto generating typical human text. They are, in a sense, more general than a biological organism at a similar stage of cognitive evolution, with much less complex and architected brains, in virtue of having been trained, not just on wider datasets, but on bigger datasets using gradient-descent memorization of shallower patterns, so they can cover those wide domains while being stupider and lacking some deep aspects of architecture. It is not clear to me that we can go from observations like this, to conclude that there is a dominant mainline probability for how the future clearly ought to go and that this dominant mainline is, "Well, before you get human-level depth and generalization of general intelligence, you get something with 95% depth that covers 80% of the domains for 10% of the pragmatic impact". ...or whatever the concept is here, because this whole conversation is, on my own worldview, being conducted in a shallow way relative to the kind of analysis I did in Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics, where I was like, "here is the historical observation, here is what I think it tells us that puts a lower bound on this input-output curve". Here Eliezer sort of kind of grants Paul’s point that AIs will be optimized for generality in a way chimps aren’t, but points to his previous “Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics” essay to argue that we should expect a fast takeoff anyway. IEM has a lot of stuff in it, but one key point is that instead of using analogies to predict the course of future AI, we should open that black box and try to actually reason about how it will work, in which case we realize that recursive self-improvement common-sensically has to cause an intelligence explosion. I am sort of okay with this, but I feel like a commitment to avoiding analogies should involve not bringing up the chimp-human analogy further, which Eliezer continues to do, quite a lot. I do feel like Paul succeeded in convincing me that we shouldn’t place too much evidential weight on it. The Wimbledon Of Reference Class Tennis “Reference class tennis” is an old rationalist idiom for people throwing analogies back and forth. “AI will be slow, because it’s an economic transition like the Agricultural or Industrial Revolution, and those were slow!” “No, AI will be fast, because it’s an evolutionary step like chimps → humans, and that was fast!” “No, AI will be slow, because it’s an invention, like the computer, and computers were invented piecemeal and required decades of innovation to be useful.” “No, AI will be fast, because it’s an invention, like the nuclear bomb, and nuclear bombs went from impossible to city-killing in a single day.” “No, AI will be slow, because it will be surrounded by a shell-like metallic computer case, which makes it like a turtle, and turtles are slow.” “No, AI will be fast, because it’s dangerous and powerful, like a tiger, and tigers are fast!” And so on. Comparing things to other things is a time-tested way of speculating about them. But there are so many other things to compare to that you can get whatever result you want. This is the failure mode that the term “reference class tennis” was supposed to point to. Both participants in this debate are very smart and trying their hardest to avoid reference-class tennis, but neither entirely succeeds. Eliezer’s preferred classes are Bitcoin (“there wasn't a cryptocurrency developed a year before Bitcoin using 95% of the ideas which did 10% of the transaction volume”), nukes, humans/chimps, the Wright Brothers, AlphaGo (which really was a discontinuous improvement on previous Go engines), and AlphaFold (ditto for proteins). Paul’s preferred classes are the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, chess engines (which have gotten better along a gradual, well-behaved curve), all sorts of inventions like computers and ships (likewise), and world GDP. Eliezer already listed most of these in his Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics paper in 2013, and concluded that the space of possible analogies was contradictory enough that we needed to operate at a higher level. Maybe so, but when someone lobs a reference class tennis ball at you, it’s hard to resist the urge to hit it back. Recursive Self-Improvement This is where I think Eliezer most wants to take the discussion. The idea is: once AI is smarter than humans, it can do a superhuman job of developing new AI. In his Microeconomics paper, he writes about an argument he (semi-hypothetically) had with Ray Kurzweil about Moore’s Law. Kurzweil expected Moore’s Law to continue forever, even after the development of superintelligence. Eliezer objects: Suppose we were dealing with minds running a million times as fast as a human, at which rate they could do a year of internal thinking in thirty-one seconds, such that the total subjective time from the birth of Socrates to the death of Turing would pass in 20.9 hours. Do you still think the best estimate for how long it would take them to produce their next generation of computing hardware would be 1.5 orbits of the Earth around the Sun? That is: the fact that it took 1.5 years for transistor density to double isn’t a natural law. It’s pointing to a law that the amount of resources (most notably intelligence) that civilization focused on the transistor-densifying problem equalled the amount it takes to double it every 1.5 years. If some shock drastically changed available resources (by eg speeding up human minds a million times), this would change the resources involved, and the same laws would predict transistor speed doubling in some shorter amount of time (naively 0.000015 years, although realistically at that scale other inputs would dominate). So when Paul derives clean laws of economics showing that things move along slow growth curves, Eliezer asks: why do you think they would keep doing this when one of the discoveries they make along that curve might be “speeding up intelligence a million times”? (Eliezer actually thinks improvements in the quality of intelligence will dominate improvements in speed - AIs will mostly be smarter, not just faster - but speed is a useful example here and we’ll stick with it) Paul answers: Summary of my response: Before there is AI that is great at self-improvement there will be AI that is mediocre at self-improvement. Powerful AI can be used to develop better AI (amongst other things). This will lead to runaway growth. This on its own is not an argument for discontinuity: before we have AI that radically accelerates AI development, the slow takeoff argument suggests we will have AI that significantly accelerates AI development (and before that, slightly accelerates development). That is, an AI is just another, faster step in the hyperbolic growth we are currently experiencing, which corresponds to a further increase in rate but not a discontinuity (or even a discontinuity in rate). The most common argument for recursive self-improvement introducing a new discontinuity seems be: some systems “fizzle out” when they try to design a better AI, generating a few improvements before running out of steam, while others are able to autonomously generate more and more improvements. This is basically the same as the universality argument in a previous section. Eliezer: Oh, come on. That is straight-up not how simple continuous toy models of RSI work. Between a neutron multiplication factor of 0.999 and 1.001 there is a very huge gap in output behavior. Outside of toy models: Over the last 10,000 years we had humans going from mediocre at improving their mental systems to being (barely) able to throw together AI systems, but 10,000 years is the equivalent of an eyeblink in evolutionary time - outside the metaphor, this says, "A month before there is AI that is great at self-improvement, there will be AI that is mediocre at self-improvement." (Or possibly an hour before, if reality is again more extreme along the Eliezer-Hanson axis than Eliezer. But it makes little difference whether it's an hour or a month, given anything like current setups.) This is just pumping hard again on the intuition that says incremental design changes yield smooth output changes, which (the meta-level of the essay informs us wordlessly) is such a strong default that we are entitled to believe it if we can do a good job of weakening the evidence and arguments against it. And the argument is: Before there are systems great at self-improvement, there will be systems mediocre at self-improvement; implicitly: "before" implies "5 years before" not "5 days before"; implicitly: this will correspond to smooth changes in output between the two regimes even though that is not how continuous feedback loops work. I got a bit confused trying to understand the criticality metaphor here. There’s no equivalent of neutron decay, so any AI that can consistently improve its intelligence is “critical” in some sense. Imagine Elon Musk replaces his brain with a Neuralink computer which - aside from having read-write access - exactly matches his current brain in capabilities. Also he becomes immortal. He secludes himself from the world, studying AI and tinkering with his brain’s algorithms. Does he become a superintelligence? I think under the assumptions Paul and Eliezer are using, eventually maybe. After some amount of time he’ll come across a breakthrough he can use to increase his intelligence. Then, armed with that extra intelligence, he’ll be able to pursue more such breakthroughs. However intelligent the AI you’re scared of is, Musk will get there eventually. How long will it take? A good guess might be “years” - Musk starts out as an ordinary human, and ordinary humans are known to take years to make breakthroughs. Suppose it takes Musk one year to come up with a first breakthrough that raises his IQ 1 point. How long will his second breakthrough take? It might take longer, because he has picked the lowest-hanging fruit, and all the other possible breakthroughs are much harder. Or it might take shorter, because he’s slightly smarter than he was before, and maybe some extra intelligence goes a really long way in AI research. The concept of an intelligence explosion seems to assume the second effect dominates the first. This would match the observation that human researchers, who aren’t getting any smarter over time, continue making new discoveries. That suggests the range of possible discoveries at a given intelligence level is pretty vast. Some research finds that the usual pattern in science is constant rate of discovery from exponentially increasing number of researchers, suggesting strong low-hanging fruit effects, but these seem to be overwhelmed by other considerations in AI right now. I think Eliezer’s position on this subject is shaped by assumptions like: If you have an AI as intelligent as Elon Musk today, then tomorrow you can run it on more hardware with a bit of normal human algorithmic progress, and get one twice as intelligent. So even if it would take Elon years to make a breakthrough, long before those years are up you’ll have an AI that can make breakthroughs much faster.

Inline links: thirty years away, Biological Anchors, Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics, hyperbolic growth we are currently experiencing, Some research finds

tiger lilies1 mentions across 1 issues

tiger lilies is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 24, 2021 and February 24, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Upper-middle-class flowers are ... tiger lilies". It most often appears alongside 1950s, 1980s, 1983.

Reference entry: tiger lilies
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 24, 2021
Last seen: February 24, 2021

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Book Review: Fussell On Class February 24, 2021

1950s 1 shared issues
1980s 1 shared issues
1983 1 shared issues
2020er 1 shared issues
ADIDAS 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Fussell On Class

February 24, 2021 · Original source

Anyone imagining that just any sort of flowers can be presented in the front of a house without status jeopardy would be wrong. Upper-middle-class flowers are rhododendrons, tiger lilies, amaryllis, columbine, clematis, and roses, except for bright-red ones. One way to learn which flowers are vulgar is to notice the varieties favored on Sunday-morning TV religious programs like Rex Humbard's or Robert Schuller's. There you will see primarily geraniums (red are lower than pink), poinsettias, and chrysanthemums, and you will know instantly, without even attending to the quality of the discourse, that you are looking at a high-prole setup. Other prole flowers include anything too vividly red, like red tulips. Declassed also are phlox, zinnias, salvia, gladioli, begonias, dahlias, fuchsias, and petunias. Members of the middle class will sometimes hope to mitigate the vulgarity of bright-red flowers by planting them in a rotting wheelbarrow or rowboat displayed on the front lawn, but seldom with success.

tiger meat1 mentions across 1 issues

tiger meat is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 09, 2023 and February 09, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as ""cultured meat companies are gearing up to sell tiger meat"". It most often appears alongside @moritheil, ACX Prediction Contest, Adam Tooze.

Reference entry: tiger meat
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 09, 2023
Last seen: February 09, 2023

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Links For February 2023 February 09, 2023

@moritheil 1 shared issues
ACX Prediction Contest 1 shared issues
Adam Tooze 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
AI X-Risk Research Podcast 1 shared issues

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Links For February 2023

February 09, 2023 · Original source

1: Maybe you’ve heard of cultured meat, aka “vat meat”, where you grow meat in a lab so vegetarians can eat it without worrying about animal welfare. Some of the first products are due out in a year or two, though delays are likely and they’ll probably be more expensive than normal. But I hadn’t realized the full implications of separating meat production from animal farming: cultured meat companies are gearing up to sell lion meat, tiger meat, and “zebra sushi”.

Inline links: cultured meat companies are gearing up to sell lion meat, tiger meat, and “zebra sushi”

Tigger1 mentions across 1 issues

Tigger is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 14, 2023 and July 14, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "He’s jaunty — the original philosophical Tigger". It most often appears alongside !Kung San, aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada, Adam Smith.

Reference entry: Tigger
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 14, 2023
Last seen: July 14, 2023

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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind July 14, 2023

!Kung San 1 shared issues
aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada 1 shared issues
Adam Smith 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
Aeschylus 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind

July 14, 2023 · Original source

He was whimsical and energetic, a Tigger of an educational philosopher. He was devoted to the dream that (as his obituary put it) “schooling could enrich the lives of children, enabling them to reach their full potential”.

Inline links: as his obituary put it

And yet, Egan points out, Socrates was “buoyantly cheerful, even while facing death”. He’s jaunty — the original philosophical Tigger.

tikkun olam1 mentions across 1 issues

tikkun olam is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 22, 2023 and December 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Your father’s ancestors called them Torah and tikkun olam". It most often appears alongside ACX, Alexey Guzey, America.

Reference entry: tikkun olam
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 22, 2023
Last seen: December 22, 2023

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In The Long Run, We're All Dad December 22, 2023

ACX 1 shared issues
Alexey Guzey 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
BCS3-L1 1 shared issues
Chad 1 shared issues

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In The Long Run, We're All Dad

December 22, 2023 · Original source

My poor, fragile, little cognitive engines! These, then, will be the twin imperatives of your life: surprisal minimization and active inference. If your brains are still too small to process such esoteric terms, there are others available. Your father’s ancestors called them Torah and tikkun olam; your mother’s ancestors called them Truth and Beauty; your current social sphere calls them Rationality and Effective Altruism. You will learn other names, too: no perspective can exhaust their infinite complexity. Whatever you call them, your lives will be spent in their service, pursuing them even unto that far-off and maybe-mythical point where they blur into One.

Inline links: surprisal minimization, active inference

TikTokkers1 mentions across 1 issues

TikTokkers is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 06, 2022 and June 06, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "When the TikTokkers talk and tic". It most often appears alongside Amherst, Baal, Brooklyn.

Reference entry: TikTokkers
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 06, 2022
Last seen: June 06, 2022

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It's Bad On Purpose To Make You Click June 06, 2022

Amherst 1 shared issues
Baal 1 shared issues
Brooklyn 1 shared issues
Lands of Zuck 1 shared issues
Maine 1 shared issues

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It's Bad On Purpose To Make You Click

June 06, 2022 · Original source

As you travel the twists of Twitter As you pass through the Lands of Zuck And the frogs and the pinks overwhelm you with links And the links overwhelmingly suck When the Redditors ask if you've read it When the TikTokkers talk and tic Hold this admonition close to your breast: It's bad on purpose to make you click.

time travel1 mentions across 1 issues

time travel is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 03, 2024 and September 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "to prevent the invention of time travel". It most often appears alongside 1980s, Air Force One, anal probing.

Reference entry: time travel
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 03, 2024
Last seen: September 03, 2024

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital September 03, 2024

1980s 1 shared issues
Air Force One 1 shared issues
anal probing 1 shared issues
Anglophone countries 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital

September 03, 2024 · Original source

“Oh, that’s obvious. It’s not just superweapons - the Jews are also over-represented in the physics of time - Einstein, for example. Hitler was trying to figure out a way to prevent the invention of time travel, in order to stop the steady stream of time travelers who were trying to kill him.”

tirzepatide1 mentions across 1 issues

tirzepatide is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 13, 2026 and January 13, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as ""I’m still on tirzepatide"". It most often appears alongside Adeline, Aella Simposium, Altman.

Reference entry: tirzepatide
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 13, 2026
Last seen: January 13, 2026

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SOTA On Bay Area House Party January 13, 2026

Adeline 1 shared issues
Aella Simposium 1 shared issues
Altman 1 shared issues
AMD 1 shared issues
Andreas 1 shared issues

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SOTA On Bay Area House Party

January 13, 2026 · Original source

“Oh,” you say, “interesting. I’m still on tirzepatide, but I’d love to learn more. Where did you learn about suppliers and doses and stuff? Was it the locked Cremieux post?”

TIT-FOR-TAT-WITH-FORGIVENESS1 mentions across 1 issues

TIT-FOR-TAT-WITH-FORGIVENESS is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 14, 2024 and November 14, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "this strategy is dominated by a slight variant, TIT-FOR-TAT-WITH-FORGIVENESS". It most often appears alongside 1 Corinthians 6, America, Axelrod.

Reference entry: TIT-FOR-TAT-WITH-FORGIVENESS
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 14, 2024
Last seen: November 14, 2024

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The Early Christian Strategy November 14, 2024

1 Corinthians 6 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Axelrod 1 shared issues
Backscratcher Clubs 1 shared issues
Backscratcher Clubs 1 shared issues

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The Early Christian Strategy

November 14, 2024 · Original source

Then do whatever your opponent did last round. This was so boring that Axelrod sponsored a second tournament specifically for strategies that could displace TIT-FOR-TAT. When the dust cleared, TIT-FOR-TAT still won - although some strategies could beat it in head-to-head matches, they did worst against each other, and when all the points were added up TIT-FOR-TAT remained on top. In certain situations, this strategy is dominated by a slight variant, TIT-FOR-TAT-WITH-FORGIVENESS. That is, in situations where a bot can “make mistakes” (eg “my finger slipped”), two copies of TIT-FOR-TAT can get stuck in an eternal DEFECT-DEFECT equilibrium against each other; the forgiveness-enabled version will try cooperating again after a while to see if its opponent follows. Otherwise, it’s still state-of-the-art. The tournament became famous because - well, you can see how you can sort of round it off to morality. In a wide world of people trying every sort of con, the winning strategy is to be nice to people who help you out and punish people who hurt you. But in some situations, it’s also worth forgiving someone who harmed you once to see if they’ve become a better person. I find the occasional claims to have successfully grounded morality in self-interest to be facile, but you can at least see where they’re coming from here. And pragmatically, this is good, common-sense advice. For example, compare it to one of the losers in Axelrod’s tournament. COOPERATE-BOT always cooperates. A world full of COOPERATE-BOTS would be near-utopian. But add a single instance of its evil twin, DEFECT-BOT, and it folds immediately. A smart human player, too, will easily defeat COOPERATE-BOT: the human will start by testing its boundaries, find that it has none, and play DEFECT thereafter (whereas a human playing against TIT-FOR-TAT would soon learn not to mess with it). Again, all of this seems natural and common-sensical. Infinitely-trusting people, who will always be nice to everyone no matter what, are easily exploited by the first sociopath to come around. You don’t want to be a sociopath yourself, but prudence dictates being less-than-infinitely nice, and reserving your good nature for people who deserve it. Reality is more complicated than a game theory tournament. In Iterated Prisoners’ Dilemma, everyone can either benefit you or harm you an equal amount. In the real world, we have edge cases like poor people, who haven’t done anything evil but may not be able to reciprocate your generosity. Does TIT-FOR-TAT help the poor? Stand up for the downtrodden? Care for the sick? Domain error; the question never comes up. Still, even if you can’t solve every moral problem, it’s at least suggestive that, in those domains where the question comes up, you should be TIT-FOR-TAT and not COOPERATE-BOT. This is why I’m so fascinated by the early Christians. They played the doomed COOPERATE-BOT strategy and took over the world. II. Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you . . . If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Talk is cheap, but The Rise Of Christianity suggests the early Christians pulled it off. For example, even though pagan institutions would not help indigent Christians, Christians tried to give charity to Christian and pagan alike, even going so far as to help nurse pagans during the plague (when nursing a victim conferred a high risk of contagion and death). Even Emperor Julian, an enemy of Christianity, admitted it lived up to its own standards: When the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the priests, the impious Galileans observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence . . . [they] support not only their poor, but ours as well, [when] everyone can see that our people lack aid from us.” In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is asked whether it is acceptable for one Christian to pursue a lawsuit against another Christian in a pagan court. He answers: The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? We get a similar picture from the stories of the martyrs. Many of them prayed for the Romans while the Romans were in the process of torturing and killing them; Polycarp even cooked them a meal. If the Christians had merely been TIT-FOR-TAT, it would be easy to tell a story of their victory. The Roman Empire was corrupt and decadent to the core. People were looking for a community they could trust. Christianity offered access to a better class of friends who wouldn’t immediately rob or betray you when your guard was down. By providing a superior alternative to the low-trust pagan world, it was irresistible on a purely rational economic basis. But this story sounds more worthy of the mystery cults. Mystery cults are a great structure for mutual aid; we see this today in groups like the Freemasons (cf. Backscratcher Clubs). Everybody knows who’s on the inside (and needs to be mutually aided) and who’s on the outside (and can be ignored). The initiatory structure holds off freeloaders and makes sure the people on the inside are of approximately equal rank (so that you get as many benefits as you give) and can be held accountable if they don’t contribute. Since Christianity did better than the mystery cults, there must have been some reason that COOPERATE-BOT beat TIT-FOR-TAT in the particular environment of Roman religion, defying all normal game theoretic logic. III. Is this a consistent feature of COOPERATE-BOT strategies, or was it just luck? This is hard to say, because in all normal cases it’s impossible to follow a COOPERATE-BOT strategy at scale and for any period of time. Consider the Quakers, who gave it a better try than most. They were persecuted by the British and fled to America (is this kosher? it sort of seems like resisting evil). There they founded the colony of Pennsylvania, intended to be a utopia of pacifism and benevolence. They were very serious about this; history records many Quakers who were arrested or even killed rather than compromise their principles, and the British Crown seized Pennsylvania from the Quakers a few times because they wouldn’t make extremely cheap gestures like pay taxes or swear oaths. But in the end, the Crown frog-boiled the Quakers into compliance. They promised to return self-government if the Quakers would budge an inch - in one compromise, if they agreed to pay taxes that could go to non-combat functions of the military. The Quakers eventually agreed, and the British ratcheted up their demands the next time. Finally, in 1755, some Indians launched a major assault on Pennsylvania, and all the Quakers voluntarily resigned from government to let the non-Quaker Pennsylvanians (who by this time outnumbered them) conduct the war without restraint. The Quakers performed better than most COOPERATE-BOTs. They stuck to their principles most of the time, and in the end their religion survived. But look deeper, and you see a gradual process of surrender to reality. First was the flight to America, an implicit admission that living was better than being martyred for the faith. Then came the various compromises; an implicit admission that getting to keep self-government while being 99% pure was better than being subjects while 100% pure. Finally, they gave up Pennsylvania itself rather than be wiped out, again choosing the practical option over martyrdom. My point isn’t to knock the Quakers, who may come in a close 2nd in “historical groups that stuck to their cooperative principles despite all odds” and were certainly more ethical than I am. My point is that even very committed groups of religious fanatics fail the non-violent COOPERATE-BOT strategy eventually. Or maybe the ones who didn’t fail were wiped out? I hear good things about the Cathars, but we can’t know for sure because they were very thoroughly killed off - unrepentant to the last. Are there any other groups who deserve mention in this section besides early Christians, Quakers, and Cathars? I think some German and Russian sects have tried similar strategies, though they mostly failed and I don’t know much about them. Not exactly the same, but maybe rhyming: what about modern liberalism? To the monarchs and dictators of the past, free speech might seem kind of like COOPERATE-BOT in a limited domain: the idea that elites shouldn’t make any forceful/legal effort to protect their ideological and spiritual position must sound almost as crazy as them not making any forceful/legal effort to protect themselves if attacked, or to prevent themselves from getting cheated. It is, in some sense, a unilateral surrender in the war of ideas; fascists and communists will do their best to crush liberalism, but liberals cannot ban discussion of fascism or communism. The fact that this, too, has worked, makes me think early Christianity wasn’t just a one-off, but suggests some larger point. IV. Still, I don’t really know what it is. Here are some weak theories: Advertisement: Being kind to outsiders is good PR and encourages those outsiders to join you. This effect is stronger than the corresponding disincentive (that they won’t get much better treatment than they’re getting already, and they will have to be nice to other outsiders in their turn).

Inline links: The Rise Of Christianity, cf. Backscratcher Clubs, eventually agreed

Titanic1 mentions across 1 issues

Titanic is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 26, 2023 and May 26, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "At the time of its maiden voyage, the Titanic was considered an unsinkable ship"; ""It seems as though this 'anomalous failure mode' would be the default thing you would expect to happen when you..." -- caveman watching the Titanic sink". It most often appears alongside /r/wallstreetbets, 2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act, 80,000 Hours.

Reference entry: Titanic
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 26, 2023
Last seen: May 26, 2023

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Your Book Review: Lying for Money May 26, 2023

wallstreetbets 1 shared issues
2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours podcast 1 shared issues
@eigenrobot 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Lying for Money

May 26, 2023 · Original source

At the time of its maiden voyage, the Titanic was considered an unsinkable ship. It was regarded as a marvel of engineering, a state-of-the-art vessel constructed by a shipyard with a long-standing track record and reputation for constructing high-quality, reliable ships. In the incredibly unlikely event of a hull breach, it was built with watertight compartments that were specifically designed to contain flooding. When 2,240 passengers and crew boarded the ship for its maiden voyage, probably none of them doubted its seaworthiness, and those that did could reassure themselves with the reporting of numerous newspapers touting the ship as "unsinkable."

On one hand, it is kind of crazy that the Titanic sank. However, if you tried to explain to a caveman why the Titanic sank, the fact that it sank might be the least surprising part of the story. "So let me get this straight: a million-pound mass of steel and wrought iron carrying the weight of thousands of people set out to sea, and then at a certain point, instead of floating, this object sank to the bottom of the ocean?" The more difficult challenge might be explaining to him how it floated in the first place.

You can't really understand the exception without understanding the rule. In order for him to understand why it was remarkable that the Titanic sank, you would first have to explain to the caveman how it was that a 52,310 ton vessel not only existed, but was able to float.

Title 19 of the Social Security Act1 mentions across 1 issues

Title 19 of the Social Security Act is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Medicaid (Title 19 of the Social Security Act) is a federal health care program". It most often appears alongside 1978, 2016 essay, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs.

Reference entry: Title 19 of the Social Security Act
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 23, 2022
Last seen: June 23, 2022

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Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022

1978 1 shared issues
2016 essay 1 shared issues
A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs 1 shared issues
Abbott 1 shared issues
Abstracted Will Of The American People 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

June 23, 2022 · Original source

“There’s a provision that says Medicaid will now pay for beds in psychiatric hospitals,” explained Snook. “Medicaid (Title 19 of the Social Security Act) is a federal health care program for the poor that reimburses states [for] about 50 percent of the cost of care for people enrolled in it. It is an important source of revenue for useful outpatient programs and provides $30 billion to help the mentally ill. It’s a no-brainer, but California is hemming and hawing. They don’t want to involuntarily hospitalize. But it’s self-defeating because you end up with mentally ill [people] in jail because a bed isn’t available.”

Title 50 authority1 mentions across 1 issues

Title 50 authority is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 06, 2023 and July 06, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "AARO ... should get Title 50 authority". It most often appears alongside 2017 NYT article on UFOs, @ActualNames1, AARO.

Reference entry: Title 50 authority
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 06, 2023
Last seen: July 06, 2023

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Links For July 2023 July 06, 2023

2017 NYT article on UFOs 1 shared issues
@ActualNames1 1 shared issues
AARO 1 shared issues
Adam Piovarchy 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues

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Links For July 2023

July 06, 2023 · Original source

The CSS General Price 17: Several people have said nice things about the Rose Garden Inn, a rationalist events space where we hold Berkeley ACX meetups. Mingyuan, who helped decorate it, now has a Rationalist Interior Decorating Guide with what she’s learned about light color temperature, chairs, rugs, and more. 18: Elo Everything is simple: it gives you two random people/objects/concepts, for example “soap” and “Nelson Mandela”, and you pick which one you prefer. Then they have a leaderboard with everything’s Elo (a way of ranking things based on victory in binary contests). The current #1 entity is oxygen; the bottom (#2260) entity is the KKK. 19: Erik Hoel tries to deflate UFO rumors. Although most of the post is the standard “here’s a time someone thought they saw a UFO but it had a reasonable explanation”, the highlight is the dissection of the credulous 2017 NYT article on UFOs, which based on his story sounds totally inexcusable (yes, the government funded a lot of money into UFO research, but only in the sense that Nevada Senator Harry Reid threw lots of money and government-sponsored prestige at random crazy people in his state, because he was either gullible or corrupt). Nothing here directly addresses the current spate of UFO rumors, but the silliness of the previous batch is indirect evidence of a sort. One thing he didn’t highlight: the Robert Bigelow who owned Skinwalker Ranch is the same guy who founded Bigelow Aerospace, an exciting-sounding private spaceflight company about which I suddenly have many more doubts. 20: Related: the most practical demand I’ve heard from people who take the current UFO rumors seriously is that AARO (the government’s new UFO investigation group) should get Title 50 authority (the right to demand classified information from intelligence services). Read their campaign (maybe sort of supported by some members of Congress) here. Suspicious detail: the colonel saying UFOs are real is named “Karl Nell”. 21: This month in social justice: New Zealand health system implements affirmative action for surgery wait lists; “diverse” patients can jump ahead in the queue compared to other patients who may have waited longer or be sicker. The government says this just “corrects” institutional biases which exist at other stages; I don’t know the New Zealand situation but have found previous claims of this sort flimsy. Here are various articles talking about how anyone who is against this system lacks context on how it won’t work that way, plus also it already works this way so nothing will change, plus it will revolutionize health equity so you’d have to be a monster to object, plus it will make no difference so anyone who protests is just manufacturing fake outrage. I can’t find the algorithm they say they’re using anywhere; here is a FOIA-equivalent request for it which hasn’t been answered yet. This file seems related and suggests Maori should get the highest priority and Asians the lowest priority, but I’m not sure they’re exactly following the science here. I think of this in the context of the US COVID vaccine prioritization effort; not only did it cause hundreds or thousands of unnecessary deaths by giving vaccines to young healthy low-risk members of favored groups before old sick high-risk members of disfavored ones, it also caused scarce vaccine doses to be wasted rather than spent on members of disfavored groups because of implementation details. We should be fighting for less of this, not more. 22: Related: affirmative action Supreme Court ruling links roundup: Will the ruling really change admissions policies, or will universities find a way around it? Humphrey on DSL works in the field and says he thinks it will produce real change.

Inline links: General Price, Rationalist Interior Decorating Guide, Elo Everything, leaderboard, tries to deflate UFO rumors, Bigelow Aerospace, maybe sort of supported by, here, is named, New Zealand health system implements affirmative action for surgery wait lists, various, articles, here, This file, scarce vaccine doses to be wasted rather than spent on members of disfavored groups, says he thinks it will produce real change

Title VII1 mentions across 1 issues

Title VII is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 07, 2024 and May 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "anti-discrimination laws modeled on Title VII". It most often appears alongside affirmative action, Africa, African National Congress.

Reference entry: Title VII
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 07, 2024
Last seen: May 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke" May 07, 2024

affirmative action 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
African National Congress 1 shared issues
African-Americans 1 shared issues
AH 1 shared issues

Source context

May 07, 2024 · Original source

Why was Duke Power Co decided the way it was, since they asked people to take a mechanical aptitude test for a mechanical job? Sam kindly answered: 1) He may be right about that (I don't know actually) but even if he is right, so what? If a test is relevant to a job, that evidence will apply to each worksite. It's not like there's some affirmative requirement that employers prove the test works before they can implement it--they can do whatever they want and the only check is a lawsuit. A plaintiffs' attorney is not going to bring that case if it doesn't have some evidence the 2) Very easy. You just have to show there is a “manifest relationship to the employment in question" (a more lenient standard added by subsequent more conservative courts) then the burden shifts to the plaintiffs to prove its not legitimate or that the employer could achieve the same goal in a way that doesn't have a disparate impact. In Griggs, there was direct evidence from the employer's own experience that the test they were using was uncorrelated with job performance. 3) That is likely enough. But if, for example, their experience showed that people with a criminal history were no likelier to be violent and criminal than that argument would rightly fail. I think it is also unlikely the EEOC will win this case in the current legal environment. 4) As I said above, if you read the actual case, the facts were that the test did not predict success at the job. This turns out to be very common. More discussion of Duke v. Griggs - this is all coming from one very long thread, which you might prefer to read directly, starting with Mr. Doolittle: I don't think the EEOC is being disingenuous when they think a company is discriminating. Their perspective is coming from the side that sees actual discrimination, often hidden behind convenient stories. Read Duke Power sometime in detail - there's no doubt that the company was flagrantly discriminating and lying about it. That said, I don't think the EEOC has an actual problem with merit tests like Google having someone write code for a coding job. They have a real problem with mission-creep tests (like requiring that coding test for lower level employees) or anything that might be a hidden way to discriminate. I think they also have some true-believer "woke" types that really think that any disparate impact is hidden discrimination, but for legal reasons this is significantly less prevalent than in other "woke-adjacent" contexts. Bob Frank (blog) writes: » “Read Duke Power sometime in detail - there's no doubt that the company was flagrantly discriminating and lying about it.” ...which was quite adequately remedied at the appeals court level. The plaintiffs got everything they could have reasonably wanted. But the EEOC didn't want to fix the problem they were ostensibly suing over; they wanted to use it as a premise to push their social agenda, so they appealed to the Supreme Court, and we ended up with one of the most damaging rulings in history. I wrote about this in some detail last year: Forewarned Is Forearmed The Most Significant Case You've Never Heard Of People often think of the 1960s as a tumultuous time in our nation’s history, but in many ways the real damage was done in the 1970s. The 70s was a time when a lot of the chaos of the 60s settled down, but unfortunately it didn’t happen by conditions getting back to normal so much as by surrender, assimilating the chaos into a “new normal” that was sig… Read more 3 years ago · 5 likes · Bob Frank gdanning writes: Your article refers to what you call "Duke Power’s use of industry-standard aptitude tests in employment decisions. " But here are the actual facts: » ”The Company added a further requirement for new employees on July 2, 1965, the date on which Title VII became effective. To qualify for placement in any but the Labor Department it became necessary to register satisfactory scores on two professionally prepared aptitude 428*428 tests, as well as to have a high school education. Completion of high school alone continued to render employees eligible for transfer to the four desirable departments from which Negroes had been excluded if the incumbent had been employed prior to the time of the new requirement. In September 1965 the Company began to permit incumbent employees who lacked a high school education to qualify for transfer from Labor or Coal Handling to an "inside" job by passing two tests— the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which purports to measure general intelligence, and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test. Neither was directed or intended to measure the ability to learn to perform a particular job or category of jobs […] » On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability. Rather, a vice president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company's judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the work force. » The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used.” This leaves me with more questions than it answers. For example, if a company hasn’t explicitly measured how tests correlate with performance (which I assume is the case with most tests), are the tests okay or not? Also, could someone who’s annoyed at ballooning degree requirements (eg me) sue every company that requires a college degree, asking them to prove that it’s really necessary? Steve Sailer describes his personal experience: I worked for a marketing research startup firm from 1982-2000. In 1982, our hiring exam was the final exam given by one of our founders, a college professor, in his Quantitative Methods in Marketing Research course. It was a great test, and we hired a lot of good people in the 1980s. Our biggest client gave a similar exam and hired a lot of good people. When the EEOC went after our biggest, most prestigious client over their hiring exam, the firm then spent a lot of money on consulting firms to have it validated as related to work performance to the necessary legal standard. And they continued to hire good people. In contrast, when the EEOC finally noticed us in the 1990s, we found out how much it would cost to validate our exam and decided to save money by throwing it out. That turned out to penny wise and pound foolish. If this is true, it sounds like the burden of proof is on the test-giver, and it’s a pretty high burden. I don’t know how this meshes with what Sam B is saying, unless Steve’s experience was before the change in the law that Sam mentions. Hadi Khan (blog) writes: » “As I said above, if you read the actual case, the facts were that the test did not predict success at the job. This turns out to be very common.” This does not mean the test isn't a good test in the sense that it doesn't measure job performance. See how there is no correlation between a players height in the NBA and how well they perform. This is because if there was a correlation then selectors would be leaving money on the table and they could improve their selection for the coming year by increasing the weighting on height (compared to everything else), which would in turn reduce the amount of correlation. Rinse and repeat until there is no correlation left. The test not predicting job performance could equivalently mean that Duke Power had a very well calibrated way to choose their employees where they were prefectly capturing the information from the apitutde test compared to all the other factors involved in hiring. Indeed the fact that this turns out to be very common suggests to me that this is going on here (and elsewhere). Good point! I don’t know when the correlation between test score and job performance was measured, and whether it should be expected to have this problem. 5: The Origins Of Modern Wokeness (again, you might want to read Hanania’s post answering objectors on this point) Carateca writes: I hew more to the Tumblr theory of the origins of woke (Katherine Dee has written about this, although at infuriatingly short length.) All this was incubated on Tumblr by mentally ill teenagers in the mid-00s, expanded from there to various web forums/proto-social media of the era such as Something Awful and Livejournal where the mentally ill teenagers could gain cultural or moderation power, and then exploded onto Twitter where it cowed cultural leaders into compliance and suddenly people at your office were putting pronouns in their bios, doing land acknowledgments and sterilizing their kids. Civil rights law under this theory was a weapon for the woke to pick up, not the cause of the problem. (Edit: and not even that relevant of a weapon, regardless of its merit otherwise; wokeness's greatest damage is cultural, not legal.) I agree with the Tumblr theory too, though I think some blogs (eg Shakesville, Pandagon) might have been closer to Patient Zero. I continue to be a little confused how and why stuff that deranged teenagers were discussing on microblogs made it to the halls of power, and I would appreciate a more focused Origins Of Woke book discussing this process. Desertopa writes: So, I don't think I'm qualified to write that book, and if anything I'm less qualified now than I was twelve years or so ago, since it's been a long while since I've brushed up on the source material. But I think I'm better versed in what went into it than most people, and I'm prepared to at least take a stab at a substack comment on the subject. My impression, as of around 2009, before people identified "woke" as a thing, and before the social justice subculture that gave rise to the term had really solidified, but at a point when it was distinctly trending in that direction, is that the movement was essentially a result of academic ideas filtered through a specific, mostly online social context. While a lot of people, especially back then, would argue that the academic basis of the movement was sound, but often interpreted poorly by radical ideologues, my impression, as someone who read a lot more of the actual academic work than most, is that this was a mistaken interpretation, that the academic work actually *was* written largely by radical ideologues in the first place, and simply dressed up in language suited to an academic audience. I still identify as much more left wing than right wing, and this was even more the case at the time, since the far left end hadn't moved nearly as far away from me at that point. But, my impression is that at least as far back as the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, there was a balance between the left and right wings on issues of racial and gender justice etc. where both sides essentially held to the norms of trying to enact their desired changes via collective political action and measured civil disobedience, with the left wing making more or less continual progress against the right, until the left wing decided to defect first. This began in academia, with writers who framed the issue of racial justice essentially in terms of existential warfare. Basically "we are opposed by a group of ideological enemies who are trying to destroy us and everything we represent. The mechanisms of gradual change collective political action and measured civil disobedience are fundamentally aligned against us in the favor of our ideological enemies, thus we have to break away from those and fight with tools which fundamentally favor our cause in order to be able to effectively defend ourselves." Because the writers in question were academics with cushy university positions, their actual mechanism of political action was writing books arguing people ought to do these things, which were mostly only read by other academics and ignored by the general populace. But when social justice started becoming a major component of the online subculture which was incubating in the mid to late 2000s, although only a minority of people actually read the work of actual academics on the subject, people who did were extremely influential in the movement, and ideas which originated in academia propagated to fixation through it. In the earlier days of the social justice movement, there were separate strains which cooperated on object-level goals, but disagreed over big-picture questions like "should we frame social agendas in terms of Us vs. Them conflict drawn around identity groups, or in terms of alignment with philosophical goals?" and "should we attempt to move towards progressively more colorblind ideals of egalitarianism, or ones which consciously privilege minority groups?" The identitarian strain eventually became more or less hegemonic over the movement, partly I think because it's an easier sell based on ordinary patterns of human thought (we've been engaged in identitarian tribal conflict for the entirety of human history,) and partly because almost all the academic underpinning behind the movement actually argued in support of the identitarian strain. I personally started to distance myself from the social justice movement around 2009, while remaining broadly aligned with its object-level goals, in large part because I started reading enough of the academic philosophy behind it to realize that the academics other people were treating as foundational figures (even if most of them didn't actually read their work) were essentially arguing that we needed to abandon the societal institution of liberalism because it was fundamentally aligned against the goals of social justice, while failing to acknowledge that the mechanisms of liberalism had been producing consistent incremental gains for social justice for the last several decades. This is also how I remember things. The part that seems mysterious to me is how the left defected from pre-existing norms so successfully - or rather, if defection gave such an obvious advantage, how the pre-existing norms had stayed in place before. Neike Taika-Tessaro writes: Interestingly, I was going to say Hanania's missing element could just be graphs like these: i.e. affirmative action laid the groundwork for this, then people connected, coordinated, and used it much more aggressively. I feel like that's basically what you're saying, except that what I'm (ignorantly) ascribing to Hanania here and what you're saying disagree on the cause. I guess in Hanania's framing, wokeness was inevitable once affirmative action existed in the legal framework; whereas in Dee's faming, wokeness was not inevitable once affirmative action existed, but is a separate phenomenon that then seized upon the tool. I'm probably doing both of them an injustice with that, mind. (To be clear, I'm not in the US and avoid most social media, so I don't particularly have opinions on this either way, I just immediately thought 'the internet' when Scott referred to the cultural turn between 2010 and 2015 and asked "Why would 1964 and 1991 laws turn wokeness into a huge deal in 2015?".) Yeah, something like this also has to be part of the picture, although I still don’t feel like I understand the mechanism well enough that I could have predicted this ahead of time. More patient zero speculation, from MarsDragon: Historical nitpick: it's less that Tumblr infected LiveJournal so much as LJ users were forced to move to Tumblr as LJ got increasingly difficult to use starting around 2009-2010. The migration had more or less completed by 2012. Tumblr being so much more of a "modern" social media platform where it was easy to repost content and you got a random jumble of posts instead of a carefully-curated set of friends made it much easier for social justice thinking to spread. I think the whole shift to showing users a melange of content instead of a staid list of people the user chose to follow was a big driver of that sort of thinking. It allowed ideas to spread, upped controversy, and drives that sort of "we must purge this!" was of thinking. The LiveJournal experts here say the key event to look at was Racefail, when, according to Carateca: I had a front row seat and it was remarkable how the whole superstructure of a totalitarian state just congealed out of thin air in days and instantly took over a whole subculture. Sometimes I think that if Charlie Stross and the rest of them had just had some fucking balls and stood up to the bullies -- or, hell, just pushed the block button a few times -- none of this would ever have happened. I support any theory that lets us blame everything on Charlie Stross. naraburns writes: Anyway, I would argue that "woke" does not begin with civil rights law, but rather that both are the result of the same intellectual tradition. "Woke" attitudes are basically analogous to what was called "cultural Marxism" decades ago (see e.g. Weiner's (1981) "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology"), but since "Cultural Marxism" has been retconned as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, people needed a different name for it. The linguistic treadmill is merciless, especially when dealing with political movements attempting to escape accountability for their past failures (or successes). I agree that there’s a crappy trick that goes: Take a thing that you don’t want people to be allowed to talk about. For example, maybe Coca-Cola doesn’t want people to talk about how soda makes you fat.

Inline links: kindly answered, one very long thread, blog, Forewarned Is Forearmed The Most Significant Case You've Never Heard Of People often think of the 1960s as a tumultuous time in our nation’s history, but in many ways the real damage was done in the 1970s. The 70s was a time when a lot of the chaos of the 60s settled down, but unfortunately it didn’t happen by conditions getting back to normal so much as by surrender, assimilating the chaos into a “new normal” that was sig… Read more 3 years ago · 5 likes · Bob Frank, writes, describes his personal experience, blog, Hanania’s post answering objectors on this point, writes, writes, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9wmv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa774249b-b07c-4205-a3e4-68d95e763bfa_808x303.png, MarsDragon, Racefail, Carateca, writes

Second, almost all states have anti-discrimination laws modeled on Title VII, and most cover much smaller companies. In some states (California, for example), the state laws and state court system are so much more favorable to plaintiffs that plaintiff-side employment lawyers will actively *avoid" pleading claims under Title VII (or other federal laws) and do what they can to avoid litigating in federal court.

Tiwi1 mentions across 1 issues

Tiwi is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 15, 2025 and July 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "from a chapter focusing on a rare non-horrible initiation ceremony among the Tiwi people". It most often appears alongside Aboriginal, Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal society.

Reference entry: Tiwi
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 15, 2025
Last seen: July 15, 2025

Outbound links

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families

Issue trail

Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines July 15, 2025

Aboriginal 1 shared issues
Aboriginal Australia 1 shared issues
Aboriginal society 1 shared issues
Aborigine 1 shared issues
Aborigines 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines

July 15, 2025 · Original source

Sure, says Rousseau, but may I present as Exhibit A pages 181-182, from a chapter focusing on a rare non-horrible initiation ceremony among the Tiwi people of the the Northern Australian islands:

On Bathurst and Melville Islands, as on the Australian mainland, suicide in traditional society seems to have been unusual if not unknown. In recent years, however, there has been an outbreak of self-mutilation among Tiwi young men. According to Gary Robinson, a contributing factor is prolonged psychological dependence on maternal kin, well beyond adolescence, and a conflict-laden enmeshment in the the vicissitudes of the paternal family. Traditionally, as we have seen, this would have been impossible. At puberty, a lad was ritually removed from his family surroundings and placed under the tutelage of outsiders. More importantly, clearly defined status objectives were implanted in his mind, and by the time he had attained them by passing through a series of initiatory grades, he was ready to marry and start his own family. Masculine values were reinforced through regular engagement in male corporate activities, particularly hunting, fighting, and ceremonial; while idealization of the father, who by now was unlikely to be alive, provided an individualized role model for the firm delineation of personal identity.

The Tiwi say that when a boy’s public hair begins to grow, dogs bark at him in camp and crocodiles and bulls chase him in the bush. In the old days, the source of provocation was forcibly plucked out [that is, they pulled out all his pubic hairs in an initiation ceremony - “non-horrible” is a matter of degree!] As a son’s burgeoning sexuality was potentially a destabilizing force in his father’s harem, the preservation of paternal and filial goodwill depended on separation through the institution of initiation, followed by the son’s growing absorption in the corporate affairs of men (which included the cultivation of patronage necessary for the promise of a wife from outside his own band). All these traditional structures have now collapsed, and nothing viable has been put in their place. The transition from childhood dependence to adult autonomy, once mediated by external authority, is now beset by incoherence and uncertainty of aims. The family itself is the remaining authority, and children often lack the motivation to solve their problems by making a clean break with it. Ambivalence inherent in the father-son relationship remains unresolved and a source of instability, fluctuating between violence and mutual aid. Young men have nightmares about death, and suffer chronically from melancholy, depression, and rage.

Tleilaxu1 mentions across 1 issues

Tleilaxu is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 13, 2022 and August 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "designed in a joint effort involving both the techy Ixians and the genetic meddling of the Tleilaxu". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI, ancient Greeks.

Reference entry: Tleilaxu
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 13, 2022
Last seen: August 13, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune August 13, 2022

ACX 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
ancient Greeks 1 shared issues
Arakeen 1 shared issues
Arakeen sandtrout 1 shared issues

Source context

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping

August 13, 2022 · Original source

I’d like to write a whole bunch of insightful things about the character, but there isn’t anything to delve into. She’s from IX, a planet that builds technology that can mostly block Leto’s psychic powers, and was designed in a joint effort involving both the techy Ixians and the genetic meddling of the Tleilaxu.

Toad Worship1 mentions across 1 issues

Toad Worship is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 06, 2022 and April 06, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "“Toad Worship” is a class of Chinese internet meme". It most often appears alongside America, American consulate, Attorney General.

Reference entry: Toad Worship
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 06, 2022
Last seen: April 06, 2022

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Issue trail

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping April 06, 2022

America 1 shared issues
American consulate 1 shared issues
Attorney General 1 shared issues
authoritarianism 1 shared issues
BBC 1 shared issues

Source context

April 06, 2022 · Original source

“Toad Worship” is a class of Chinese internet meme where people ironically pretend to admire Jiang Zemin. No, I don’t get it either. When Jiang took power, he filled important positions with his clients. Mostly these were his underlings from Shanghai; they became known as the Shanghai Gang. The Shanghai Gang stuck together and supported its own, and operated kind of as a “political party” “representing” the interests of east coast urban elites.

Inline links: “Toad Worship”

Toba supervolcano1 mentions across 1 issues

Toba supervolcano is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 10, 2024 and September 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Toba supervolcano is over-rated". It most often appears alongside 10,000 AD, Agricultural Revolution, Agricultural Revolution.

Reference entry: Toba supervolcano
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 10, 2024
Last seen: September 10, 2024

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Issue trail

Contra DeBoer On Temporal Copernicanism September 10, 2024

10,000 AD 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
anthropic reasoning 1 shared issues
anthropics 1 shared issues

Source context

Peer Review Request: Ketamine

September 10, 2024 · Original source

The Toba supervolcano is over-rated. You could argue Cuban Missile Crisis was worse than Petrov, but that just brings us back 60 years instead of 40, which I think still proves my point.

Inline links: over-rated.

tobacco1 mentions across 1 issues

tobacco is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 19, 2021 and July 19, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "ketamine was ranked as less addictive than tobacco, alcohol, or Adderall". It most often appears alongside Adderall, alcohol, AMPA receptors.

Reference entry: tobacco
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 19, 2021
Last seen: July 19, 2021

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Issue trail

Peer Review Request: Ketamine July 19, 2021

Adderall 1 shared issues
alcohol 1 shared issues
AMPA receptors 1 shared issues
amphetamine 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues

Source context

July 19, 2021 · Original source

In a survey of drug experts, ketamine was ranked as less addictive than tobacco, alcohol, or Adderall, and around the same level as marijuana. If you would feel comfortable going out to a bar a few times without worrying about addiction, or smoking pot a few times without worrying about addiction, probably you also shouldn’t worry about getting a few ketamine infusions.

tocarpu1 mentions across 1 issues

tocarpu is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 22, 2025 and August 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "tocarpu are execution stakes". It most often appears alongside Andes, Anti, Anti-suyu.

Reference entry: tocarpu
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 22, 2025
Last seen: August 22, 2025

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Issue trail

Your Review: Ollantay August 22, 2025

Andes 1 shared issues
Anti 1 shared issues
Anti-suyu 1 shared issues
Antonio Arriaga 1 shared issues
Antonio Valdez 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: Ollantay

August 22, 2025 · Original source

El Marcado de la Independencia, by Rugendas in 1843. He did some nice paintings of Lima while on tour. Rugendas asked the monks in the convent to make a copy of Ollantay for him. This copy was rather damaged, having sat in a damp convent for eighty years, but the monks obliged and did the best they could. Rugendas brought this copy back to Germany when he returned to Europe in 1846, where it became a curiosity as an example of the Quechua language. He also brought back word that an undamaged copy existed in some priest’s rectory. An Englishman with an interest in Inca history decided that he was going to find this undamaged version and write an English translation, and so in 1853 Sir Clements Markham9 added “find and translate Ollantay” to his agenda for an upcoming expedition to the Andes. He succeeded, finding that other priest who held that other copy and meticulously copying every word of Ollantay in both Quechua and Spanish, then translating that to English. And so we can read, watch, and perform Ollantay, the play that launched a thousand ships. The Story Ollantay is a love story.10 The lovers are the titular Ollantay and Cusi Coyllur Ñusta - he the chief of the Anti people (to be clear, Anti is the Quechua name of the clan; they’re not anti-people) and she the daughter of the Inca emperor. As the play begins, they have already been clandestine lovers for quite some time and the princess is secretly pregnant by Ollantay. But Ollantay, being simply a regional warlord, is not a suitable match for a princess. The play begins with Ollantay pining to his page - who fills the only role of “comic relief”11 - that he must marry Coyllur: Have I not already said That e’en if death’s fell scythe was here, If mountains should oppose my path Like two fierce foes who block the way, Yet will I fight all these combined And risk all else to gain my end, And whether it be life or death I’ll cast myself at Coyllur’s feet. The two run into the high priest, whose introductory soliloquy is a paean to the blood of llamas: O giver of all warmth and light O Sun! I fall and worship thee. For thee the victims are prepared, A thousand llamas and their lambs Are ready for thy festal day. The sacred fire’ll lap their blood, In thy dread presence, mighty one, After long fast thy victims fall. The priest and Ollantay then discuss how Ollantay can definitely not marry the princess and it’s a really bad idea for him to try. Ollantay reiterates his desires, to which the priest can only give one final warning: Put a seed into the ground, It multiplies a hundredfold; The more thy crime shall grow and swell, The greater far thy sudden fall. Ollantay then approaches the emperor and asks for the hand of his daughter with a long soliloquy. The emperor waves him off in four lines: Ollantay, thou dost now presume. Thou art a subject, nothing more. Remember, bold one, who thou art, And learn to keep thy proper place. And so in the next scene, Ollantay swears vengeance: When flames rise to the heavens. Cuzco shall sleep on a bloody couch, The King shall perish in its fall; Then shall my insulter see How numerous are my followers. When thou, proud King, art at my feet, We then shall see if thou wilt say, ‘Thou art too base for Coyllur’s hand.’ He returns home and gathers an army. The emperor then dispatches his own army to go hunt down Ollantay, but Ollantay’s men successfully ambush them in a mountain pass and destroy the Inca army without losing a man: A rain of stones both great and small Down on the crowd of warriors crashed, On every side destruction flashed, Thy heart the slaughter did appall. Like a strong flood the blood did flow, Inundating the ravine; So sad a sight thou ne’er hast seen— No man survived to strike a blow. Ollantay doesn’t press his advantage, though, and is content instead to build up his base of power in his home province. This proves to be a mistake. General Rumi-Ñaui, the general who lost the battle in the mountain pass, comes up with a different, better plan. He begs the emperor for another chance, and the emperor grants it. Rumi-Ñaui shows up to Ollantay, beaten and bloody, and spins a tale of betrayal by the emperor. Ollantay takes the bait and invites him into his capital, then tells him that they will shut the gates and party for three days straight: It will be so. For three whole nights We drink and feast, to praise the Sun, The better to cast all care aside We shall be shut in Tampu fort. Rumi-Ñaui waits for Ollantay’s whole army to be passed-out drunk. Then he opens the gates and invites his army to come in and kill or capture the lot of them. Ollantay is brought back to Cuzco in chains. Things are looking bad for him. I’ll let the play take it from here (Túpac Yupanqui is the emperor, and tocarpus are execution stakes): TÚPAC YUPANQUI: Know that tocarpus are prepared. Remove those traitors from my sight, Let them all perish, and at once. RUMI-ÑAUI: Take these three men without delay To the dreaded execution stakes; Secure them with unyielding ropes, And hurl them from the lofty rocks. TÚPAC YUPANQUI: Stop! Cast off their bonds. (The guards unbind them. They all kneel.) (To Ollantay, kneeling). Rise from thy knees; come to my side. (Rises.) Now thou hast seen death very near, You that have shown ingratitude, Learn how mercy flows from my heart; I will raise thee higher than before. Thou wert Chief of Anti-suyu, Now see how far my love will go; I make thee Chief in permanence. Receive this plume as general, This arrow emblem of command. That’s right! Ollantay swore eternal vengeance on the emperor, seceded, set himself up as a king, destroyed an entire Inca army, and is rewarded for his betrayal by being made viceroy. Rumi-Ñaui has no problem with this, saying: Prince Ollantay! Incap Ranti! Thy promotion gives me joy. As the play concludes, Ollantay mentions that he would still very much like to marry Coyllur.12 The emperor of course thinks this is a marvelous idea, and so the two are reunited for the first time in ten years and, oddly enough, the first time in the play. Ollantay is the kind of love story where the lovers only actually speak to each other once, at the very end. And so the play concludes with these words from the emperor: Thy wife is now in thy arms; All sorrow now should disappear, Joy, new born, shall take its place. Which is the Inca version of “and they all lived happily ever after”. Ollantay is not a particularly good play. There’s a reason it has only entered the repertoire of Peruvian high school drama. The whole premise that Ollantay is trying to get back to his lover is dropped in Act II and only resurfaces at the very end of the play, almost as an afterthought. None of the characters evolve; Ollantay is the exact same person at the end of the play that he was at the start. And the resolution is comically abrupt. All the foreshadowing, and there is foreshadowing, implies that both Ollantay and Coyllur will end up dead, but instead they end up married and with a ten-year-old daughter. Turns out the priest was wrong! The seed put in the ground that multiplies a hundred fold won’t precipitate a sudden fall after all! Thematically, Ollantay is not thematic. Ollantay acts virtuously and is rewarded for it. Rumi-Ñaui acts wickedly and is rewarded for it. Coyllur acts…well she doesn’t really act, she just bemoans her fate in Act I and then spends the rest of the play literally hidden behind a stone wall. And it’s not like Ollantay tells us anything about Incan society that would make it valuable from an anthropological perspective. Valdez may have been adapting a traditional Quechua play, but his own Spanish and Catholic background definitely seeped in. As we’ll see, there’s an ongoing debate as to how much of the play is Quechua and how much is Valdez.13 The Same Story But even if Ollantay is not that valuable from an artistic perspective or an anthropological perspective, it is valuable from a historic perspective. You may have noticed some similarities between the plot of Ollantay and the story of Túpac Amaru II. By which I mean that it’s beat-for-beat the same story. A powerful local chief despairs of his inability to <marry a princess / lighten the free labor burden>. After consulting with a local priest, he launches an armed rebellion against the imperial authorities in Cuzco from his home base in the mountains, and quickly raises a large army. He easily defeats the initial army sent to capture him, but instead of marching on Cuzco he focuses on building up his own local power base. This proves to be an error, and he loses control of his own army, leading to military defeat and his own capture. He is taken to Cuzco in chains and <forgiven and made viceroy / brutally tortured and executed>. Pretty much all of the questions surrounding the Túpac Amaru rebellion vanish if you assume that Túpac was not fighting a rebellion but following a script. Why did Túpac not immediately attack Cuzco? Because Ollantay didn’t. Why was he seemingly okay with his army losing its discipline? Because Ollantay was. Why did he put his army in a position to lose? Why was he okay with being taken alive, knowing how the Spanish dealt with rebels? Because Túpac was following the path set by Ollantay: First, declare yourself in rebellion.

Inline links: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

tocos1 mentions across 1 issues

tocos is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 08, 2025 and August 08, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "fermented into tocosh, an edible paste with antibacterial properties". It most often appears alongside Ainu, Altiplano, American cheese.

Reference entry: tocos
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 08, 2025
Last seen: August 08, 2025

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Issue trail

Your Review: My Father’s Instant Mashed Potatoes August 08, 2025

Ainu 1 shared issues
Altiplano 1 shared issues
American cheese 1 shared issues
Andean peoples 1 shared issues
Andes 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: My Father’s Instant Mashed Potatoes

August 08, 2025 · Original source

These roots resemble the ancestral stock of modern potatoes (source) Andean peoples found all sorts of ways to prepare their potatoes. The most immediate method was to boil them into stews, soups, or mashes with local flavoring agents - herbs, salt, chilis. Earthenware ovens called huatias were used to bake them. With even more time, they could be fermented into tocosh, an edible paste with antibacterial properties. To get the spuds to really last, though, they were subjected to a natural freeze-drying method that produced shrivelled potato pellets called chuño. Repeatedly frozen by bitter mountain nights, baked in the sun, and stomped on to remove water, chuño remains shelf stable for up to a decade and can be rehydrated into a spongy, earthy, slightly less nutritious potato-like object. The ability to produce chuño on the Altiplano is thought to have contributed to the Incan empire’s military dominance of the region, since despite its generally unappealing gustatory properties it’s perfect for keeping troops fed on long marches. Chuño also allowed Incan civilization to stockpile surpluses against lean years and trade potatoes as commodities over great distances. It wasn’t the best way to eat a potato you harvested today, but it was the only way to turn a potato you have today into a potato you’ll have two years from now. That had immense value. After the Spanish conquest and the Columbian exchange, the potato made gradual inroads into the Old World, where the previous best root vegetables were often comparatively less nutritious parsnips and turnips. There was an initial adjustment period: new cultivars capable of growing in shorter hours of daylight had to be developed, objections to the absence of tubers in the Bible needed to be quelled, and the French eventually had to concede that potatoes do not, as they at first believed, cause leprosy. With these hurdles cleared, in the 19th century the potato spread out and became one of the easiest and most efficient ways to turn arable land into palatable calories the world over. National cuisines incorporated the new staple crop thoroughly, and it’s now hard to imagine Italian food without gnocchi, French sans vichyssoise, tapas without patatas bravas, a Eurasia bereft of aloo and rösti and colcannon and latkes. Europe’s new potato lovers also took to the simple recipe of boiling ‘em and mashing ‘em. While South America had lacked the livestock for dairy, in Europe the potato mash soon achieved its ultimate form with the addition of milk and butter, which impart a smoother texture and richer taste. Hannah Glasse’s procedure published in 1747 in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy is, minus the long s’s, still just about how I make them today: Maſhed Potatoes. BOIL your potatoes, peel them and put them into a ſauce-pan, maſh them well ; To two pounds of potatoes, put a pint of milk, a little ſalt, ſtir them well together, take care they don’t ſtick to the bottom, then take a quarter of a pound of butter, ſtir in and ſerve it up. Nowhere was the potato embraced more thoroughly than in Ireland. In the early 19th century, extractive British demands on Irish agriculture to feed the armies fighting Napoleon reduced the available land for Irish farmers to feed themselves. Achieving maximum caloric density on the remaining land was paramount, and almost nothing is denser than the potato. Potatoes quickly became an integral part of Irish life, so essential to the food systems of the island that when a blight hit them in the mid-1840s it led to one of the most devastating famines in history. The failure of the potato crops created starvation and emigration so profound in scale that the population of the island still has not recovered to its 1845 level almost two centuries later. Among those millions of potato-starved emigres were my dad’s ancestors, who came to America in the decades following the famine. My great-grandfather, who bore the extremely Irish name Gerald FitzGerald, instilled in his children (including my grandmother) a reconstructed sense of Irish-American ethnic pride that included an affinity for corned beef and cabbage, Guinness beer, and the affordable practicality of mashed potatoes. As the generations marched on, those mashed potatoes turned out to be one of the only things my grandmother would make that my exceedingly picky father would eat. Their creamy texture and subtle starchy taste didn’t trigger the “ew gross” reaction he had to so many other foods. Mashed potatoes, just like the ones Glasse had written about more than two centuries earlier, became his favorite side - and eventually, when I finally got to try them, one of mine too. Whatever My Dad Had Been Eating at Home Was NOT Mashed Potatoes The chuño-chomping Incans were not the last military to rely on dehydrated potatoes for sustenance. In World War II, the US Army experimented with various forms of potato dehydration to help stretch supply lines. The easiest way to get a uniform potato commodity into the hands of G.I.s was to pulverize the potatoes into granules, dehydrate them, and then plan on bringing them back to life with boiling water in an imitation of “mashed potatoes”. These shreds resemble the ancestral stock of modern Instant Mashed Potatoes (source) The result was an affront. The potatoes were swimming in their own gluten, released during the granule-making process, which when mixed with imprecise water ratios made for a slop that was somehow both gluey and soupy. Immediately after the war, French’s (now best known for mustard) tried to introduce “instant mashed potatoes” as a consumer product category. America’s veterans were not having it. They didn’t want to be reminded of the awful slurry they’d had on the front. The commercial fortunes of instant mashed potatoes began to turn around a decade later, however, when food scientists in the US and Canada converged on methods for producing dehydrated potato flakes rather than granules. The flakes had substantial advantages. They didn’t get as glutinous when reconstituted. Their geometry made them easier to dry quickly, on the order of minutes or even seconds. Using a multi-step process called the “Philadelphia Cook”, they could lock in a more natural flavor. When prepared on the stove with butter and milk, they were supposed to turn out almost as good as the real thing without any onerous prep work on the part of the consumer. This raises the question, though, of why food scientists kept working on improving instant mashed potatoes a decade after they were no longer required for the war effort. If you’re no longer constrained by having to stick it to the Axis, why not return to Glasse-style maſhed potatoes in all circumstances? This is a pattern that recurs frequently in reading about American foodways of the 20th century: choices and innovations made under extreme duress in the World War II economy didn’t fade away when the duress subsided. Instead they echoed back into American life a few years later, despite the lean conditions that birthed them being replaced by extreme abundance. Why did America start eating like it was on a total war footing again when my parents’ generation was young? There are a lot of overlapping explanations. Here are a few: Industrial inertia: Companies that had spun up to supply a vast army didn’t want to shut down overnight, so they necessarily pivoted to the consumer market. Some of these efforts succeeded at entrenching new consumer categories (fish sticks, canned peaches) while others (hamburgers-in-a-can) did not.

Inline links: source, chuño, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sdbs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F785f66d4-986b-476e-9008-311ff035bcc1_1600x1307.png, source

tofu1 mentions across 1 issues

tofu is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 25, 2022 and May 25, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Someone who moved to China for several years to learn to cook rare varieties of tofu". It most often appears alongside 21st century scientific psychiatry, American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, autism rights movement.

Reference entry: tofu
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 25, 2022
Last seen: May 25, 2022

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In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement May 25, 2022

21st century scientific psychiatry 1 shared issues
American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting 1 shared issues
autism rights movement 1 shared issues
biopsychosocial model 1 shared issues
Born again Christians 1 shared issues

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In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement

May 25, 2022 · Original source

A friend read an article once about someone who moved to China for several years to learn to cook rare varieties of tofu. She became insanely jealous; she doesn’t especially like China or tofu, but she felt that if she’d done something like that, she could bank enough quirkiness points that she’d never have to cultivate another hobby again.

And on one level it’s definitely true that mankind will not be free until the last admissions officer is strangled with the entrails of the last New York Times journalist. But in another sense, we do this to ourselves. We demand quirkiness from our friends, our romantic partners, even our family members. I can’t tell you how many times my mother tried to convince me it was bad that I just sat inside and read all day, and that maybe if I took up rock-climbing or whatever I would be more “well-rounded”. We can stop at any time. We can admit that you don’t need a “personality” beyond being responsible and compassionate. That if you’re good at your job and support your friends, you don’t also need to move to China and study rare varieties of tofu.

tokamak1 mentions across 1 issues

tokamak is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once"; "Most tokamaks since then have had this shape"; "‘Tokamak’ is a Russian acronym for тороидальная камера с магнитными катушками, which means ‘toroidal chamber with magnetic coils’". It most often appears alongside Alcator C-Mod, Apollo Program, ARC.

Reference entry: tokamak
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2022
Last seen: June 17, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy June 17, 2022

Alcator C-Mod 1 shared issues
Apollo Program 1 shared issues
ARC 1 shared issues
ASDEX 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

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Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DPSJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2818f967-a7b1-4c43-abe5-0fb9d31652d0_600x414.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kowm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcbc65bfe-e234-463b-beab-b8253808cfba_900x658.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-mJo!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8133323-617f-4c9a-92c2-b0859184ef77_850x623.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DEp_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0c8e44c-275b-4056-93f7-9ed10fb79bd8_1600x987.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RLSc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d89bbdd-da25-4297-afd6-871f116f2355_1600x783.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!n_7L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80bdc472-0b30-4841-8b08-9527c70f16f4_820x369.jpeg

June 17, 2022 · Original source

Figure 4: A charged particle spiraling around a doughnut-shaped magnetic field. This is still not quite enough. Charged particles will drift in a curved magnetic field, which causes them to leak out the outer side of the doughnut. We can solve this problem by making the magnetic field twist, like a French cruller. Particles near the outer edge, drifting outwards, will follow the magnetic field line around to the inner edge, where they will drift back towards the core. The easiest way to make the magnetic field twist is to run a current through the plasma. You don't need to (and can't) run a wire there. Plasmas are full of charged particles that can move. When more of the electrons move in one direction around the doughnut then in the other direction, it will create a current. So a fusion experiment should (1) create an extremely strong magnetic field pointing around the doughnut, (2) heat deuterium and tritium to 100 million degrees inside the doughnut, and (3) drive a current around the doughnut. The magnetic field can be created by superconducting electromagnetic coils which go around and through the doughnut. Turning on the coils provides some initial heating and current, but to sustain it, you need to inject accelerated particles or waves from the side. This kind of fusion experiment is called a tokamak [10]. Figure 5: The coils and magnetic fields of a tokamak. Small, Medium, and Large Experiments I find it helpful to classify fusion experiments by their size. This is not standardized, so different people will classify them differently. The larger the experiment, the farther the particles have to move (perpendicular to the magnetic field) to get from the core to the outer edge. Larger experiments inherently have a longer confinement time. Small fusion experiments are sometimes called ‘tabletop' experiments. This doesn't always mean that they fit on a tabletop, but they can fit in the physics building of a research university without too much disruption. The doughnut has a radius of about 1 m. The support requirements (power supply, control systems, measuring equipment, etc.) aren't too different from other physics labs. Figure 6: The first tokamak, T-1, did fit on a tabletop. Medium fusion experiments have a radius of about 1.5 - 3 m. They require their own facility for all of their support systems, but they typically fit in a single building. One prominent medium experiment is JET [11]. Figure 7: Someone inside JET. They have to wear a protective suit because tritium is nasty stuff. Large fusion experiment means ITER [12], an experiment currently under construction in southern France. ITER has a diameter of over 6 meters. The experiment itself has a five story building. Supporting buildings cover about 100 acres or 0.5 km2. Figure 8: Construction at ITER as of May 2021. ITER We can now answer some of our earlier questions. The reason why progress has stalled is because we did as much as we could do on medium experiments. No country has been willing to provide enough money to build its own large experiment. So the fusion community has been gathering money from all around the world for decades for a single project [13]. ITER is supported by Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland), the US (which withdrew in 1999 and rejoined in 2003 [14]), Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Figure 9: There are three people in this diagram. Can you find them? ITER is designed to get Q=10. Despite getting 10 times as much energy from fusion as we put into the plasma, ITER is not designed to get engineering breakeven. ITER is designed as an experiment, not as a power plant. There will be tons of measuring devices pointed inwards. There are four different ways to heat the plasma and drive the current. This all allows you to learn more, but it requires extra power and lowers the overall plant efficiency. ITER will be followed by a demonstration power plant, named DEMO [15]. A fully optimized power plant should be able to reach engineering breakeven as long as Q>5. This is why I chose Q=5 as my criterion for ‘getting fusion’. ITER is also testing multiple designs for the tritium breeding blanket. Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site. The D-T fusion reaction produces a neutron, which we want to absorb, so we can use it to produce tritium. ‘Breeding' is when we use a neutron to produce a more useful isotope. It is a ‘blanket' because it surrounds the entire plasma, keeping the neutrons from going anywhere else. The best reaction to produce tritium involves lithium-6: 36Li +01n 24He +13T . This reaction also releases energy, which increases the power produced by about 25%. The tritium breeding blanket needs to make this reaction occur as much as possible, to efficiently carry the heat away so it can be used to generate electricity, and to provide a way to extract the tritium produced. ITER is scheduled to begin their first experiments in 2025. Part of why I think that we are about to make rapid progress again is because we are finally getting a large experiment. There have been problems with ITER staying on schedule and under budget. This isn't surprising for a collaboration between governments representing over half the world's population. In 2014, ITER got a new director, recalculated its expected cost, and underwent a major restructuring. Since then, ITER has largely stuck to this schedule and budget. Recently, there has been a 6 month delay because the French nuclear agency did what nuclear regulatory agencies do best, but this has been the longest delay since 2014. It is still possible for ITER to fail. The biggest risk involves disruptions. Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once. This could melt some extremely expensive equipment and take years to repair. If ITER cannot get disruptions under control, then it would be a failed experiment. This is especially challenging because pushing for higher Q makes disruptions more likely. ITER is planning on being extremely cautious: Experiments begin in 2025, but it won't operate at full capacity until 2035. ITER has been the focus of the fusion community now for decades. The Future of Fusion Energy similarly makes ITER the centerpiece of the book. Things. Have. Changed. ITER by itself is not enough to justify the high level of confidence I express at the start. When Parisi & Ball finished writing this book in April 2018, ITER was basically the only game in town. Since then, Things. Have. Changed. Historically, private fusion companies were almost entirely jokes or frauds. They make outlandish claims, use completely different designs so they can't build on the progress of Figure 3, and they can be safely ignored. For example, Lockheed Martin [16] claims that it will take them five years to build a prototype of a fusion power plant that will fit in a truck. They have yet to publish evidence that they have produced a fully ionized plasma. Maybe they're just being secretive, but their design has solid components in the plasma. That won't work. A new generation of private companies have surged into fusion. Leading the charge is Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their tokamak SPARC [17]. Recent advances in high temperature superconductors have been a game changer. They can produce a much stronger magnetic field which allows for better confinement in a smaller experiment. We should now be able to get Q=10 in a medium experiment, which costs ten times less than ITER [18] and is within the reach of private venture capital. Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

Figure 5: The coils and magnetic fields of a tokamak. Small, Medium, and Large Experiments I find it helpful to classify fusion experiments by their size. This is not standardized, so different people will classify them differently. The larger the experiment, the farther the particles have to move (perpendicular to the magnetic field) to get from the core to the outer edge. Larger experiments inherently have a longer confinement time. Small fusion experiments are sometimes called ‘tabletop' experiments. This doesn't always mean that they fit on a tabletop, but they can fit in the physics building of a research university without too much disruption. The doughnut has a radius of about 1 m. The support requirements (power supply, control systems, measuring equipment, etc.) aren't too different from other physics labs. Figure 6: The first tokamak, T-1, did fit on a tabletop. Medium fusion experiments have a radius of about 1.5 - 3 m. They require their own facility for all of their support systems, but they typically fit in a single building. One prominent medium experiment is JET [11]. Figure 7: Someone inside JET. They have to wear a protective suit because tritium is nasty stuff. Large fusion experiment means ITER [12], an experiment currently under construction in southern France. ITER has a diameter of over 6 meters. The experiment itself has a five story building. Supporting buildings cover about 100 acres or 0.5 km2. Figure 8: Construction at ITER as of May 2021. ITER We can now answer some of our earlier questions. The reason why progress has stalled is because we did as much as we could do on medium experiments. No country has been willing to provide enough money to build its own large experiment. So the fusion community has been gathering money from all around the world for decades for a single project [13]. ITER is supported by Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland), the US (which withdrew in 1999 and rejoined in 2003 [14]), Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Figure 9: There are three people in this diagram. Can you find them? ITER is designed to get Q=10. Despite getting 10 times as much energy from fusion as we put into the plasma, ITER is not designed to get engineering breakeven. ITER is designed as an experiment, not as a power plant. There will be tons of measuring devices pointed inwards. There are four different ways to heat the plasma and drive the current. This all allows you to learn more, but it requires extra power and lowers the overall plant efficiency. ITER will be followed by a demonstration power plant, named DEMO [15]. A fully optimized power plant should be able to reach engineering breakeven as long as Q>5. This is why I chose Q=5 as my criterion for ‘getting fusion’. ITER is also testing multiple designs for the tritium breeding blanket. Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site. The D-T fusion reaction produces a neutron, which we want to absorb, so we can use it to produce tritium. ‘Breeding' is when we use a neutron to produce a more useful isotope. It is a ‘blanket' because it surrounds the entire plasma, keeping the neutrons from going anywhere else. The best reaction to produce tritium involves lithium-6: 36Li +01n 24He +13T . This reaction also releases energy, which increases the power produced by about 25%. The tritium breeding blanket needs to make this reaction occur as much as possible, to efficiently carry the heat away so it can be used to generate electricity, and to provide a way to extract the tritium produced. ITER is scheduled to begin their first experiments in 2025. Part of why I think that we are about to make rapid progress again is because we are finally getting a large experiment. There have been problems with ITER staying on schedule and under budget. This isn't surprising for a collaboration between governments representing over half the world's population. In 2014, ITER got a new director, recalculated its expected cost, and underwent a major restructuring. Since then, ITER has largely stuck to this schedule and budget. Recently, there has been a 6 month delay because the French nuclear agency did what nuclear regulatory agencies do best, but this has been the longest delay since 2014. It is still possible for ITER to fail. The biggest risk involves disruptions. Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once. This could melt some extremely expensive equipment and take years to repair. If ITER cannot get disruptions under control, then it would be a failed experiment. This is especially challenging because pushing for higher Q makes disruptions more likely. ITER is planning on being extremely cautious: Experiments begin in 2025, but it won't operate at full capacity until 2035. ITER has been the focus of the fusion community now for decades. The Future of Fusion Energy similarly makes ITER the centerpiece of the book. Things. Have. Changed. ITER by itself is not enough to justify the high level of confidence I express at the start. When Parisi & Ball finished writing this book in April 2018, ITER was basically the only game in town. Since then, Things. Have. Changed. Historically, private fusion companies were almost entirely jokes or frauds. They make outlandish claims, use completely different designs so they can't build on the progress of Figure 3, and they can be safely ignored. For example, Lockheed Martin [16] claims that it will take them five years to build a prototype of a fusion power plant that will fit in a truck. They have yet to publish evidence that they have produced a fully ionized plasma. Maybe they're just being secretive, but their design has solid components in the plasma. That won't work. A new generation of private companies have surged into fusion. Leading the charge is Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their tokamak SPARC [17]. Recent advances in high temperature superconductors have been a game changer. They can produce a much stronger magnetic field which allows for better confinement in a smaller experiment. We should now be able to get Q=10 in a medium experiment, which costs ten times less than ITER [18] and is within the reach of private venture capital. Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kowm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcbc65bfe-e234-463b-beab-b8253808cfba_900x658.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-mJo!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8133323-617f-4c9a-92c2-b0859184ef77_850x623.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DEp_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0c8e44c-275b-4056-93f7-9ed10fb79bd8_1600x987.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RLSc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d89bbdd-da25-4297-afd6-871f116f2355_1600x783.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!n_7L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80bdc472-0b30-4841-8b08-9527c70f16f4_820x369.jpeg

Figure 6: The first tokamak, T-1, did fit on a tabletop. Medium fusion experiments have a radius of about 1.5 - 3 m. They require their own facility for all of their support systems, but they typically fit in a single building. One prominent medium experiment is JET [11]. Figure 7: Someone inside JET. They have to wear a protective suit because tritium is nasty stuff. Large fusion experiment means ITER [12], an experiment currently under construction in southern France. ITER has a diameter of over 6 meters. The experiment itself has a five story building. Supporting buildings cover about 100 acres or 0.5 km2. Figure 8: Construction at ITER as of May 2021. ITER We can now answer some of our earlier questions. The reason why progress has stalled is because we did as much as we could do on medium experiments. No country has been willing to provide enough money to build its own large experiment. So the fusion community has been gathering money from all around the world for decades for a single project [13]. ITER is supported by Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland), the US (which withdrew in 1999 and rejoined in 2003 [14]), Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Figure 9: There are three people in this diagram. Can you find them? ITER is designed to get Q=10. Despite getting 10 times as much energy from fusion as we put into the plasma, ITER is not designed to get engineering breakeven. ITER is designed as an experiment, not as a power plant. There will be tons of measuring devices pointed inwards. There are four different ways to heat the plasma and drive the current. This all allows you to learn more, but it requires extra power and lowers the overall plant efficiency. ITER will be followed by a demonstration power plant, named DEMO [15]. A fully optimized power plant should be able to reach engineering breakeven as long as Q>5. This is why I chose Q=5 as my criterion for ‘getting fusion’. ITER is also testing multiple designs for the tritium breeding blanket. Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site. The D-T fusion reaction produces a neutron, which we want to absorb, so we can use it to produce tritium. ‘Breeding' is when we use a neutron to produce a more useful isotope. It is a ‘blanket' because it surrounds the entire plasma, keeping the neutrons from going anywhere else. The best reaction to produce tritium involves lithium-6: 36Li +01n 24He +13T . This reaction also releases energy, which increases the power produced by about 25%. The tritium breeding blanket needs to make this reaction occur as much as possible, to efficiently carry the heat away so it can be used to generate electricity, and to provide a way to extract the tritium produced. ITER is scheduled to begin their first experiments in 2025. Part of why I think that we are about to make rapid progress again is because we are finally getting a large experiment. There have been problems with ITER staying on schedule and under budget. This isn't surprising for a collaboration between governments representing over half the world's population. In 2014, ITER got a new director, recalculated its expected cost, and underwent a major restructuring. Since then, ITER has largely stuck to this schedule and budget. Recently, there has been a 6 month delay because the French nuclear agency did what nuclear regulatory agencies do best, but this has been the longest delay since 2014. It is still possible for ITER to fail. The biggest risk involves disruptions. Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once. This could melt some extremely expensive equipment and take years to repair. If ITER cannot get disruptions under control, then it would be a failed experiment. This is especially challenging because pushing for higher Q makes disruptions more likely. ITER is planning on being extremely cautious: Experiments begin in 2025, but it won't operate at full capacity until 2035. ITER has been the focus of the fusion community now for decades. The Future of Fusion Energy similarly makes ITER the centerpiece of the book. Things. Have. Changed. ITER by itself is not enough to justify the high level of confidence I express at the start. When Parisi & Ball finished writing this book in April 2018, ITER was basically the only game in town. Since then, Things. Have. Changed. Historically, private fusion companies were almost entirely jokes or frauds. They make outlandish claims, use completely different designs so they can't build on the progress of Figure 3, and they can be safely ignored. For example, Lockheed Martin [16] claims that it will take them five years to build a prototype of a fusion power plant that will fit in a truck. They have yet to publish evidence that they have produced a fully ionized plasma. Maybe they're just being secretive, but their design has solid components in the plasma. That won't work. A new generation of private companies have surged into fusion. Leading the charge is Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their tokamak SPARC [17]. Recent advances in high temperature superconductors have been a game changer. They can produce a much stronger magnetic field which allows for better confinement in a smaller experiment. We should now be able to get Q=10 in a medium experiment, which costs ten times less than ITER [18] and is within the reach of private venture capital. Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-mJo!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc8133323-617f-4c9a-92c2-b0859184ef77_850x623.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DEp_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb0c8e44c-275b-4056-93f7-9ed10fb79bd8_1600x987.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RLSc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d89bbdd-da25-4297-afd6-871f116f2355_1600x783.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!n_7L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80bdc472-0b30-4841-8b08-9527c70f16f4_820x369.jpeg

tokamaks1 mentions across 1 issues

tokamaks is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "From a physical standpoint, we have tokamaks". It most often appears alongside Alcator C-Mod, Apollo Program, ARC.

Reference entry: tokamaks
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2022
Last seen: June 17, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy June 17, 2022

Alcator C-Mod 1 shared issues
Apollo Program 1 shared issues
ARC 1 shared issues
ASDEX 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

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Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4fTj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F925d0cdf-115b-44a4-9905-4efc32f8baf6_1160x640.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Z4GK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6429421d-2b6e-4e3f-9aa4-366cd0185df0_1394x551.jpeg

June 17, 2022 · Original source

Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

HL-2M (China, 2020) Plasma Shaping & Spherical Tokamaks All magnetically confined plasmas have the basic shape of a doughnut. But if you cut the doughnut in half and look at it end on, the cross sectional shape can be different. Early tokamaks had circular cross sections. JET was built with a cross section shaped like a ‘D': wider near the inner wall and narrower near the outer wall. This was done for structural reasons, but it also improved the performance of the plasma. Most tokamaks since then have had this shape. Spherical tokamaks have a taller height and smaller diameter than other tokamaks. They look more like a cored apple than like a doughnut. The main benefit of a spherical tokamak is that you can get a larger plasma density with a smaller magnetic field. The main drawback is that there is less room in the central column for everything that needs to go there. The best spherical tokamaks today are small, if you measure based on the radius, but medium if you measure based on the height. They are: NSTX (USA, 1999)

TCV (Switzerland, 2002) Stellarators Stellarators differ from tokamaks at point (C). To twist the magnetic field, they use twisty coils outside the plasma instead of having a current in the plasma. Figure 12: Inside the LHD. The main benefit of stellarators is that they don't have disruptions. Disruptions are caused by the current in the plasma. If the plasma is already moving coherently, when things become unstable, that motion can be redirected into the wall. The plasma in a stellarator doesn't have a current and isn't moving. When it becomes unstable, it leaks heat slightly faster than normal until it cools down again. Stellarators also have the best name, look the coolest, and are my favorite. Figure 13: The layers of Wendelstein 7-X. The main drawback is that stellarators are harder to design and build. There are lots of ways for coils to be weird and twisty and you want to find the best one. You then have to manufacture complex 3D shapes with high precision. This makes them more expensive than similarly sized tokamaks. There are currently four medium stellarators: TJ-II (Spain, 1997)

Toki Pona1 mentions across 1 issues

Toki Pona is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 03, 2025 and June 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Toki Pona". It most often appears alongside ACX Commentariat, Arnold Schoenberg, Baldur's Gate 3.

Reference entry: Toki Pona
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 03, 2025
Last seen: June 03, 2025

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Choose Nonbook Review Finalists 2025 June 03, 2025

ACX Commentariat 1 shared issues
Arnold Schoenberg 1 shared issues
Baldur's Gate 3 1 shared issues
Banerjee 1 shared issues
Bennett Foddy 1 shared issues

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Choose Nonbook Review Finalists 2025

June 03, 2025 · Original source

...ectual The Soul Of Karl Friston The Spreadsheet The Synaptic Plasticity And Memory Hypothesis The Virality Project The Watergate Affair The World As A Whole Time's Arrow Toki Pona Two Years Of Parenthood Unordinary US Census vt/txt-convergence We Should Never Have Gone To Mammoth Caves Which Sports? Why Sports? Summer Camp For Sluts / Young Swinge...

Tokugawa regime1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokugawa regime is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 21, 2024 and June 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "cast suspicion on every pillar of the Tokugawa regime". It most often appears alongside Abenomics, An Encouragement of Learning, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization.

Reference entry: Tokugawa regime
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 21, 2024
Last seen: June 21, 2024

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Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa June 21, 2024

Abenomics 1 shared issues
An Encouragement of Learning 1 shared issues
An Outline of a Theory of Civilization 1 shared issues
Anglosphere 1 shared issues
Ansei 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa

June 21, 2024 · Original source

Indeed, the failure of the shogun to expel the barbarians cast suspicion on every pillar of the Tokugawa regime. Far from protecting Japan, many perceived Japan’s isolationism as contributing to its technological stagnation. Moreover, the contradictions between Confucian teachings, which advocated meritocracy, and the reality of Tokugawa society, in which rank was determined by birth, threatened the intellectual rationale underpinning feudal society. This was particularly true among the samurai, whose relative status was largely determined by the side for which their distant ancestors had fought at the Battle of Sekigahara over 250 years earlier.

Tokugawa shogunate1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokugawa shogunate is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 21, 2024 and June 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate—a hereditary military dictatorship". It most often appears alongside Abenomics, An Encouragement of Learning, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization.

Reference entry: Tokugawa shogunate
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 21, 2024
Last seen: June 21, 2024

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Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa June 21, 2024

Abenomics 1 shared issues
An Encouragement of Learning 1 shared issues
An Outline of a Theory of Civilization 1 shared issues
Anglosphere 1 shared issues
Ansei 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa

June 21, 2024 · Original source

When Fukuzawa was born, Japan was ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate—a hereditary military dictatorship founded in 1603. Under the rule of the shoguns, Japan enjoyed a remarkable two and a half centuries of peace. This was accomplished through a combination of techniques, including a policy of isolationism, the codification of a social hierarchy that granted privileges to the samurai warrior class (particularly those samurai whose ancestors had been allies of the first Tokugawa shogun), and the embrace of a Confucian ideology of duty and subservience.

Tokugawa-era1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokugawa-era is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 21, 2021 and April 21, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""...eg the isolationist Tokugawa-era policies helped create a surprisingly strong educated urban class""; "eg the isolationist Tokugawa-era policies helped create a surprisingly strong educated urban class". It most often appears alongside 1820s France, 2000s Bangladesh, Africa.

Reference entry: Tokugawa-era
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 21, 2021
Last seen: April 21, 2021

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Book Review: Global Economic History April 21, 2021

1820s France 1 shared issues
2000s Bangladesh 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
Age of Discovery 1 shared issues
Alexander Hamilton 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Global Economic History

April 21, 2021 · Original source

Japan was a weird special case. It almost missed the industrialization boat, but eventually succeeded through a very strong central government with excellent industrial policy, a lot of local smart people willing to adapt foreign inventions to the needs of Japan, and a lot of luck (eg the isolationist Tokugawa-era policies helped create a surprisingly strong educated urban class).

tongkat ali1 mentions across 1 issues

tongkat ali is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 05, 2022 and October 05, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "He finds the most problems with tongkat ali, fadogia, and (offscreen) maca and turkesterone". It most often appears alongside AIDP, Alkemist, Amazon.

Reference entry: tongkat ali
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 05, 2022
Last seen: October 05, 2022

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How Trustworthy Are Supplements? October 05, 2022

AIDP 1 shared issues
Alkemist 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
American Botanical Council 1 shared issues
AOAC conference 1 shared issues

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How Trustworthy Are Supplements?

October 05, 2022 · Original source

On tongkat ali:

Inline links: tongkat ali

100:1 and 200:1 are lies. They are fake ratios made up to sell more tongkat. We've spoken to all the suppliers, and they have admitted that they have to call them that because that is what customers want to hear. They are more like 4:1 extracts. Even then, we have tested a ton of them on the market. Most have zero detectable eurycomanone. Some people are just selling non-extracted root and calling them 100:1 or 200:1 extracts. You can't test for extraction ratios. Anyone can claim anything they want. I can say ours is a 1,000,000:1 extract. It's all made up meaningless bullshit. You assay for eurycomanone. That's how you lab test for the potency of a tongkat ali extract. We've done that with tons of product on the market, and the results are horrible. If you straight up ask the Chinese suppliers: "Are these REALLY 100:1 extraction ratios?" they will admit they are not. It's ridiculous! They just make up fake ratios to tell everyone, and it has been going on so long everyone just plays along with the lie.

I think some of the difference is in what supplements we’re talking about. MYASD admits that most simple vitamins, minerals, and amino acids are fine. He finds the most problems with tongkat ali, fadogia, and (offscreen) maca and turkesterone. These are all testosterone/libido/strength boosting supplements for men. My guess is that the most reputable companies avoid these, the consumer base is less discerning, and so these are genuinely worse than other products.

Tony Stark1 mentions across 1 issues

Tony Stark is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: Tony Stark
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

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Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KZ4y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F373413ff-ac21-4fd2-a9b8-0b621dc5ad66_325x469.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PSlu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3a6bd78e-adf3-4baf-85fc-00119fd1e009_278x427.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Dq4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F542d887f-0a3f-428c-9425-8ccb86e30d66_296x447.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Scg-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F69173ca0-9f5d-48e3-884a-7747b661f9ed_294x451.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JwSH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89ab07df-deb7-4c5d-b418-17f6c0d2a40b_600x566.png

August 16, 2024 · Original source

Given Marvel Comics, why Silver Age (1961-1965)? I.a. Why Superhero Comic Books? The winner of last year’s Astral Codex Ten book review contest was Brandon Hendrickson. Brandon wrote about Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind. One of the foundations of Egan’s educational philosophy is that people learn through stories. He believes early education should focus on teaching lessons through myths and legends. This matches my experience. My kids’ favorite podcast is Greeking Out – a very well produced, very entertaining, National Geographic podcast about Greek Legends. Aside #1: When my oldest daughter was three years old she would ask everyone she met “Do you know any myths? Can you tell me a myth?” She especially liked asking people from different places to get myths from their local cultures. Once, she asked the question to a friend of mine who grew up in South Africa, “Can you tell me any South African myths?” He struggled for a minute and then said, “Okay! I have one! Bread never falls butter side down!”. That was not the type of myth she was looking for; nor the type of myth we will be discussing in this review. Every culture has foundational myths. These stories are entertaining and engaging, but they also teach valuable lessons about both what is important in that culture, and how people in that culture are expected to behave (or at least the Platonic Ideal of how they should behave). In the modern, Western world, we have assimilated many of these foundational stories, particularly the Greek myths. My kids definitely know the Greek myths, but they also know elements of Norse mythology, Egyptian myths, stories about Anasi from West Africa and more. More fundamentally my wife and I, while not religious ourselves, have made a point of exposing the kids to the stories from the Bible. It is not politically correct to call Biblical stories “myths”, but they serve the same purpose – shared cultural understanding of the way the world works. My wife grew up without any religion, and when she was in high school, she struggled with the metaphors and religious allegories that were omnipresent in most of the Western canon. In our culture, familiarity with the Bible is important for an educated person – whether they are religious or not – because it is the foundation of so much of the rest of our culture. I believe the other set of mythological stories that are foundational to our culture are – and by this point I am sure you see where I am going here – comic book superheroes. If true, then having more than a surface-level understanding of the most important superhero stories is important in a similar way to that knowing the Bible stories is important. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an important idea to understand. So is, “With great power comes great responsibility”. I.b. Why Marvel? While there are many independent superheroes that are not owned by major conglomerates, the superheroes who have built our modern foundational myths are currently owned by two corporations. Warner Bros. Discover owns the DC library of superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2009 Disney purchased Marvel Comics and took ownership of their characters, including Spiderman, X-men and the Avengers. Aside #2: Marvel has sold temporary film rights to many of their characters over the years. The most relevant sales started in 1994 when Marvel sold the film rights of X-men and mutants to 20th century Fox, then in 1996, when Marvel went bankrupt, Fox picked up the rights to the Fantastic Four (and New Line picked up Blade). In 1999 Marvel sold the film rights (and live action TV, and animated TV longer than 44 minutes) of Spider-man and related characters to Columbia Pictures (part of Sony) for $7MM. Marvel actually attempted to sell ALL of their remaining Marvel IP film rights to Sony for $25MM, but the top management at Sony was not interested. Sony’s management allegedly told their chief negotiator “Nobody gives a shi*t about any of the other Marvel characters. Go back and do a deal for only Spider-Man). Disney acquired Marvel in 2009, and then Fox in 2019, bringing the two separated packages of characters all back together under one roof (Blade reverted back to Marvel in 2012). Sony still owns the rights to Spider-man but has made a deal with Disney to include some of his films within the Marvel-Disney universe. Marvel sold the film rights of The Hulk to Universal in 1990 and the current status of that agreement is complicated (the consensus is that Marvel now controls the film rights to the character, but Universal owns distribution rights to any stand-alone Hulk film, which could be why Disney let's Hulk co-star in Thor movies, but not vice versa). In the early aughts Marvel wanted to build their own film franchise, but were limited to only using their remaining “B-list” characters – Spider-man, X-men, and the Fantastic Four were all off limits. Fortunately, Kevin Feige, president of production for Marvel at the time, saw a way forward. He convinced Ike Perlmutter, Marvel CEO, to allow for the production of a series of films with the remaining characters begining with Iron Man (2008). Jon Favreau directed and cast Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The film blew away expectations. Kevin’s plan of a series of movies where the characters would interconnect was suddenly feasible. Iron Man was followed by The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger. None managed the box office magic of Iron Man, but all were successful enough that the plan stayed on track. In 2012 the characters were all brought together in the first Avengers film, which opened to over $200MM domestically and went on to gross more than $1.5B (which made it the 3rd highest grossing film of all time). Marvel became the first studio to take the interconnected world of their comic books and make the model work on the big screen (for a much larger audience). Once the model was proven to work, other studios tried to duplicate it. Aside #3: Warner Bros’ stumbles with the DC shared universe of Batman, Superman and the Justice League are well known, but that was actually their SECOND attempt at a shared universe. Their first attempt tried to copy the Marvel method more closely. They chose their own B-list hero and set up his first film to allow for a wider mythology. Alas Green Lantern (2011) failed at the box office and we never got stand-alone films about Sinestro (Yellow Lantern), Carol Ferris (Star Sapphire, the Violet Lantern), John Stewart (African American Green Lantern), Kyle Rayner (1990s Green Lantern), Alan Scott (original Green Lantern), or the Blue, Red, and Orange Lantern Corps. At least so far, no studio has successfully created anything with close to the traction obtained by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Warner’s DC Extended universe (DCEU) had trifling success, but is being shelved and rebooted for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked. Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at a stand-alone non-MCU Spider-man universe using Spider-man’s villains as anti-heroes has floundered (mostly succeeding only as a source of memes). Next Mattel will be attempting to build a universe off the success of last year’s Barbie and may include Polly Pocket, American Girl, Hot Wheels, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (no word yet on Thomas the Tank Engine, View Master and the Magic-8 Ball, but all are apparently in development). To date, only Marvel has successfully built a “Cinematic Universe”. One potential reason for the MCU’s success is that Kevin Feige built his cinematic universe on the back of the existing interconnected universe of the comics. But those comics were not the first interconnected universe of stories. For that we would need to go back to our foundational myths. The Bible stories mostly interconnect. Adam and Eve flows into Cain and Abel. David and Goliath leads to the Wisdom of Solomon. Greek Myths DEFINITELY interconnect. Supporting characters in one Greek myth have starring roles in their own stories. The Greek pantheon of tales even have their own version of the Avengers. In the Quest for the Golden Fleece, Jason brings together the Argonauts, who included in their number Theseus (who defeated the Minotaur), Orpheus (who braved the underworld) and Hercules himself – all A-list stars in their own “franchises”. Stand alone stories that exist within an interconnected universe are rare in modern media but were common in the ancient myths that have stood the test of time. Only Marvel has successfully created a shared universe that follows the pattern of ancient myths. Only Marvel films have stand-alone stories and protagonists who exist together in an interconnected world. Something about that method of storytelling is deeply pleasing for humans across many cultures. Marvel films are the first and most successful modern version of the mythological universe, and that it is worth spending more time exploring Marvel’s underlying mythology and where it came from. I.c. Why 1961? The origins of Christianity and Judaism (and Buddhism and Hinduism) are very murky. Even Islam is far enough in the past that we only have a very rough understanding of how it came to exist. When scholars want to understand in detail how a new religion is born they are far better to look at Mormonism or, if you accept it as a religion, Dianetics. Similarly, we have versions of Greek myths that have been passed down to us, but we can never know how those myths changed from their first telling to their “final” versions. Were the stories once unrelated, and only later became crafted into a single “universe”? Or were the stories built off each other one by one (“Dad that Golden Fleece story was amazing! Do you know any other stories about the Hercules guy?”)? Or was it something in between? Perhaps the stories all existed independently, but were later crafted together (“Remember that 12-labors story I told you? Actually that was the same guy who was on the Argo!”) Unlike Greek legends, we can know the origin of the Marvel Universe. We can see how it was constructed step-by-step. The people who did it (most importantly Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko) are dead now, but they have not been dead for long. We can read the original work, see how it changed over the last 60 years, and we can ask the creators “what were you thinking at the time” (or at least read their answers from old interviews). We can’t always trust what Stan Lee says, but at least we can hear his point of view. No one has a transcript of an interview with Homer, or knows exactly what he was thinking when he called it the “wine-dark sea”. Tl;dr: Why read about Marvel Comic superheroes 1961-1965? Because interconnected mythological stories are very important to cultures, Marvel is the leading contender of the most recent modern mythology, and it originated in the first half-decade of the 1960s. II. How did Marvel Superhero Comics happen? Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939 and called it “Marvel Comics”. Their most popular World War II comics included Captain America, the Human Torch (an android unrelated to the modern Human Torch except in powers, appearance and name), and Namor, the Submariner. In the early 1950s superheroes became less popular, so Timely changed its name to Atlas Comics and focused on humor, western, horror, war and science fiction stories. But in 1956 DC Comics began re-introducing their Golden Age superheroes and, in the second half of the 1950s, the genre took off again – particularly Superman, whose title, Action Comics, became the number one selling comic in America. Stan Lee, editor and chief at Atlas at the time, wanted to get in on the superhero action. Unfortunately in 1957 Atlas lost its distributor and the company had to rely on “Independent News” to get its comics on newsstands. The complication was that Independent News was owned by “National Periodical Publications”, who also owned DC-comics and did not want Atlas to introduce superheroes to compete with Superman, Green Lantern and the Flash. Independent News agreed to distribute Atlas comics but limited the publisher to eight titles per month, and only in non-super hero genres (like horror, romance and science fiction). Blocked from creating and launching new superhero titles, Stan Lee got creative, and in August 1961 Atlas Comics published Fantastic Four #1. Aside #4: Fantastic Four #1 was on newsstands in August 8th, 1961, but the date on the cover was November 1961. The convention at the time was that the cover date was not the “publication date” but rather the “pull date”. The pull date was the time when the retailer could send back unsold copies back to the publisher for a refund. In fact the retailer did not need to send the entire issue back, just the cover, as it was assumed that comic books could not be sold without the cover, and it saved on postage. This was only relevant because it was great for my dad who was a child at the time. My dad was friends with the kid whose father owed the local pharmacy which meant he had access to every comic book published in the late 1950s as long as he was willing to wait a few months and read it without a cover. Going forward in this essay I will always use the pull dates rather than the publication dates for individual comic book issues as they are far easier to source. If you want to convert pull dates back into publication dates you can subtract roughly two months, but it is inconsistent and sometimes longer, as was the case with Fantastic Four #1. Check out the cover of Fantastic Four #1: To the modern eye this certainly looks like a superhero comic. Four heroes with super powers fighting a giant monster. But in the eyes of publishers in 1961 this looked more like a science fiction adventure comic than something that would go head to head with Superman. Here are the covers of Action Comics (the best selling superhero comic at the time) from the three months leading up to Fantastic Four #1: Notice what they have in common? “Super Rivals”, “Super revenge”, “Super Substitutes”. And all include Superman in his blue and red tights. Fantastic Four’s cover featured super powers, but never used the word “super” and no one was wearing superhero costumes. Fantastic Four, as a superhero story, slipped under the radar because it wasn’t really a superhero story at all. It was a story about four close friends who attempted to fly into space, but then something goes wrong and they crash back to Earth. The experience changes them and they decide they now need to use their new abilities to help the rest of humanity – specifically against monsters who are invading from under the Earth. It is a fantastical science fiction story – not a superhero story. Later in his career Jack Kirby, the illustrator of the issue and co-creator of the Fantastic Four, was asked about his inspiration for the Fantastic Four heroes. He did NOT say Superman – or any superhero. He said Challengers of the Unknown. Challengers of the Unknown was an adventure story co-created by Kirby in Showcase #6 in February 1957. Here is how Wikipedia describes the Challengers origin: When acquaintances miraculously survive a plane crash unscathed, they conclude that since they are "living on borrowed time" they should band together for hazardous adventures. The four—pilot Kyle "Ace" Morgan, daredevil Matthew "Red" Ryan, strong and slow-witted Leslie "Rocky" Davis, and scientist Walter Mark "Prof" Haley—became the Challengers of the Unknown. Showcase #6, and the first appearance of the Challengers of the Unknown, by Jack Kirby Visually the Challengers and the Fantastic Four were similar. Both wore skin tight uniforms with belts and minimal decoration. The Fantastic Four’s relatively simple characterizations were practically pulled from Challengers. Reed takes on the traits of both Kyle, the leader, and Walter, the scientist. Johnny, the Human Torch is the daredevil. The Thing is “strong and slow-witted”. Sue, the only woman on the team, seems like a new addition, but is likely based on June Robbins who joined the Challengers team in Showcase #7, as an “honorary” or “girl-Challenger”. After surviving their respective “miraculous” crashes, both the Challengers and the Fantastic Four band together to help the world. They both travel through space and other dimensions, fighting mad scientists and monsters. The Fantastic Four’s early antagonists were not traditional super villains. In the first few issues they fight monsters from under the Earth (Issue #1), shape changing aliens (#2), and a charlatan who uses hypnotism to steal from his audience (#3). In issue #4 Kirby and Lee re-introduce Namor, the Submariner, one of Marvel’s top IP from the 1940s, and have him kidnap Sue. Only in Issue #5 and #6 (June and August 1962) and do we get a more standard-supervillain when Dr Doom attempts to steal the Fantastic Four headquarters and throw it into space. The next superhero Lee created was even less heroic than the Fantastic Four. In April 1962 (pull date), Marvel published The Incredible Hulk. If it was even a superhero story in disguise it was a very good disguise. The story was a scientific-filtered version of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. It was a pure monster-story with nothing very super about it. Nothing on the cover suggests this has anything to do with superheroes: It is not clear if even Lee at the time thought the Hulk would be a superhero. In Fantastic Four #5 Johnny is reading a “great new comic mag” and mocks the Thing by comparing him to the Hulk. It seems pretty clear at this point that in the Fantastic Four’s world, the Hulk is just a fictional comic book, like in ours (more on that later): The other two superheroes the Marvel introduces in this period have even more subtle introductions. At the time Marvel had a number of generic-sounding titles and told science fiction and fantasy stand-alone stories: Tales to Astonish

The GOAT of Modern Mythology is Born The gamble worked. Independent News let Lee publish the story and it broke all of Atlas’s sales records. Spider-man was a smashing success. Unfortunately Amazing Fantasy was no more, so Peter Parker would have to wait until March 1963 for his own title and his second appearance. But the door had been opened for Atlas to get distribution for superhero stories – while still restricting the number of titles to eight per month. Lee looked at his other fantasy and science fiction anthologies and began converting them into superhero stories. In September 1962 Amazing Tales shifted from 100% Science Fiction to use half of each issue to tell spin-off tales of the Human Torch (the most popular of the Fantastic Four). In March 1963 Tales of Suspense abandoned its Twilight Zone-style stories and introduced Tony Stark, a playboy/billionaire/arm-dealer who was kidnaped in Vietnam and escaped by building battle armor. There was no mistaking this was a superhero origin story. It was the first Marvel Comic of the era to say “Super Hero” right there on the cover: If it says Superhero on the tin, it must be a superhero inside the tin In July 1963 Lee used the back half of Strange Tales to introduce Dr Strange. It seems likely that Dr Strange’s story was originally just a stand-alone fantasy like the others that were in the back pages of the title. Strange didn’t even appear on the cover of the issue. But just as the scientist Hank Pym was later turned into the superhero Ant Man, Dr Strange was eventually converted from a dark wizard into a super-wizard. Throughout 1962 all of the Marvel stories titles were stand-alone. When the Hulk appeared in the Fantastic Four it was because Johnny was reading the Hulk comic book. There was no hint that they all existed within the same universe. That changed in December 1962. The Hulk comic was struggling to attract readers, so Lee decided to cross-promote him in the Fantastic Four as a real hero (villain? anti-hero?) who the Thing could do battle with. Fantastic Four #12 (December 1962) was the first step to building a shared universe. The issue sold well, but it was not enough to save the Hulk, whose title was canceled a few months later in March 1963 (Incredible Hulk #6). But the idea of cross promotion stayed with Lee. When Spider-man launched his own title in March 1963, Lee pulled no punches. Amazing Spider-man #1 included two stories, but the cover story had Spider-man applying for membership with the Fantastic Four. The two most popular heroes were together and interacting. It was a huge debut and broke more records (allegedly. Actual records from this era are very spotty. Most sales numbers and “records” are based on memories and anecdotes told by those involved years later. But it was clear the issue sold a lot of copies). By early 1963 it was established that the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-man all existed together within the same shared universe. But what about Ant Man,Thor and Iron Man? Aside #5: The Hulk comic in Fantastic Four #5 pretty clearly establishes that the Hulk was a fictional character in the Fantastic Four world, but there are other clues that Lee was not thinking about his characters as existing and crossing over in the early days. Both Bruce Banner (the Hulk) and Mr Fantastic fight off global alien invasions in their early issues. In both cases the stories make clear that only Bruce/Reed is smart enough to save the world. No mention is made of the OTHER scientist who saved the world from the alien invasion a few months earlier. Bringing different superheroes from their own titles together was not an idea created by Atlas/Marvel and Lee. That was likely All Star Comics #3 (December 1940) when writer Gardner Fox brought together all the major DC heroes who were not staring in their own independent titles, including Green Lantern, the Flash and Doctor Fate, to create the Justice Society of America (JSA). Batman and Superman cameoed in All Star Comics #7, but generally they were considered too popular to dilute their appearances in ensemble titles. That changed in March 1960 when DC re-launched the idea of a superteam with the Justice League of America and included all of their most popular heroes as the leads – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. It was immediately a top seller. The launch of JLA is likely what caused the owner of Atlas to ask Lee to create a ”superhero team comic”. Lee did not have a stable of heroes to bring together, so he had to create something entirely new – The Fantastic Four. But now that Lee DID have a collection of his own heroes AND he had the greenlight to create straightforward superhero comics, he decided to build himself his own JLA. In September 1963 Atlas published two new titles: The Avengers and the X-men. The X-men were a brand new team of all new heroes, but the Avengers were a close parallel to the Justice League. Lee took his existing collection of heroes (except the Fantastic Four and Spider-man) and created an excuse for a team-up. In the issue they individually battle Thor’s brother Loki before coming together to defeat him as a team. They decide that given they all have different powers, they should work together to be unstoppable. The entire formation of the team takes only four panels and is a little corny, but it does its job: While the Avengers were a clear copy of the Justice League, Stan Lee put his own spin on it. While the JLA superheroes all had roughly the same personality and no real inter-team conflict, Lee made his heroes very distinct – almost caricatures – and there was PLENTY of inter-team conflict. The Hulk in particular abandoned the team in the second issue and was the primary antagonist by Avengers #3. Avengers #3 (January 1964) is itself the final step in connecting all of the Marvel heroes together. The Hulk has gone missing and the rest of the team wants to find him. Iron Man uses an “Image Projector” to ask other superheroes around the world if they had seen the Hulk. He visits the Fantastic Four, Spider-man and the X-men. In that same month in Tales of Suspense, Iron Man meets Angel (one of the X-men). The cat was out of the bag. Lee had a new trick to boost sales of all of his titles and he put it to work throughout the year. The first full crossover of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers happens in May (Fantastic Four #26). Daredevil premiered in March 1964 (with Spider-man on the cover, but not in the pages), and crosses over in Amazing Spider-man #16 (September 1964). Dr Strange first appears on the cover of another title in Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964). The Avengers battle the X-men (before teaming up) in X-men #9 (Dec 1964) Atlas was no longer just a collection of comic books about various topics, or even a collection of different flavors of superhero. It was a single shared universe: The Marvel Universe. It wasn’t planned out in advance, instead it happened in stages due more to commercial rather than artistic needs. Basically Stan Lee created the most successful modern mythology because he needed the money. III. Are Silver Age Marvel Comics any good? Well, apart from Amazing Spider-man, which holds up surprisingly well, I would not recommend reading any of them. Even Spider-Man is much weaker than the Ultimate Spider-Man reboot version of the story published 2000-2011. If you wanted to read Spider-Man from the beginning you would likely enjoy that later series a lot more than the original. The other titles vary in quality from “okay” (the Fantastic Four) to “absolute garbage” (Ant Man stories in Tales to Astonish). Which begs the questions, if these comics were so bad, how did they succeed as well as they did? Clearly the comics were “good for their time”. Millions of people bought and read them, and they clearly passed the “test of time”. So does that mean that we are better today at making art than we were back then? Or is art neither better or worse, just “of its time” and people back then would think the Ultimate Spider-man stories from 2000 were unreadable? I will argue the following: The stories were “good for their time”. VERY good for their time. They were much much better than the comic book stories that preceded them, and much better than other contemporary comic book adventures (like those being published by DC)

Torah1 mentions across 1 issues

Torah is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 08, 2024 and August 08, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "or that the Torah is not from Heaven". It most often appears alongside 10240, 4chan, @slatestarcodex.

Reference entry: Torah
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 08, 2024
Last seen: August 08, 2024

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Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche August 08, 2024

10240 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
@slatestarcodex 1 shared issues
Acemoglu & Robinson 1 shared issues
Achillead 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche

August 08, 2024 · Original source

I’m skeptical of this. My favorite counterexample is the Torah, which says that Moses was the most humble man in the world (Numbers 12:3), plus the ensuing scholarly debate on how Moses himself could write this in the Torah with a straight face. My favorite answer claim that God forced Moses to write that he was the most humble man in the world, but Moses fought back by making some of the alephs in the Torah really small as a sort of steganographic claim that he was embarrassed by having to praise himself. See also this essay, “In the Jewish tradition, humility is among the greatest of the virtues, as its opposite, pride, is among the worst of the vices.”

Inline links: the ensuing scholarly debate, favorite answer, this essay

In general I’m skeptical of most attempts to draw a bright line between Jewish and Christian philosophies (“Jews think like this, Christians think like that”). Christianity grew out of Judaism, and most post-1400s Jewish scholarship was written in Christian societies, so both religions had ample chance to influence each other. “Everybody knows” that Christianity judges you by belief and Judaism judges you by your actions, but the Talmud says “The following have no part in the World to Come: One who says that the resurrection of the dead is not biblical, or that the Torah is not from Heaven, or the Epicurean.”

Inline links: the Talmud says

Torah scroll1 mentions across 1 issues

Torah scroll is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 21, 2021 and April 21, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the men fervently kissing a Torah scroll". It most often appears alongside Andes Mountains, Antiochan subgroup, Argentina.

Reference entry: Torah scroll
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 21, 2021
Last seen: April 21, 2021

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No, Really, Why Are So Many Christians In Colombia Converting To Orthodox Judaism? April 21, 2021

Andes Mountains 1 shared issues
Antiochan subgroup 1 shared issues
Argentina 1 shared issues
Baruj 1 shared issues
Bello 1 shared issues

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No, Really, Why Are So Many Christians In Colombia Converting To Orthodox Judaism?

April 21, 2021 · Original source

Two days later, on a Friday night, I left the synagogue with a crowd of about 100. The men wore black suits, white shirts with tzitzit, and black knitted kippot or black fedoras. The women were dressed in long polyester skirts and bright head scarves. They were heading home after Shabbat services. They had been chanting and praising God, the men fervently kissing a Torah scroll, and were in a merry mood. I was walking between Elad and Shlomo. We chatted about the women who had stayed at home preparing the most important dinner of the week and the families who were hosting. We reached the corner of Bello’s main street and were about to scatter, wishing “Shabbat shalom” to one another, when a crowd of Zorros, Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles, Ebola nurses, witches, and princesses engulfed us. It was October 31, the night of Halloween.

torsade de pointes1 mentions across 1 issues

torsade de pointes is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 31, 2021 and March 31, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "deadly heart condition called torsade de pointes". It most often appears alongside ASRI, Celexa, Cipriani.

Reference entry: torsade de pointes
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 31, 2021
Last seen: March 31, 2021

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Oh, The Places You'll Go When Trying To Figure Out The Right Dose Of Escitalopram March 31, 2021

ASRI 1 shared issues
Celexa 1 shared issues
Cipriani 1 shared issues
citalopram 1 shared issues
Crawford 1 shared issues

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Oh, The Places You'll Go When Trying To Figure Out The Right Dose Of Escitalopram

March 31, 2021 · Original source

Because Lexapro (escitalopram) is a derivative of the older drug Celexa (citalopram). Sometime around 2011, the FDA freaked out that high doses of citalopram might cause a deadly heart condition called torsade de pointes, and lowered the maximum dose to prevent this. Since then it's been pretty conclusively shown that the FDA was mostly wrong about this and kind of bungled the whole process. But they forgot to ever unbungle it, so citalopram still has a lower maximum dose than every other antidepressant. When escitalopram was invented, it inherited its parent chemical's unusually-low maximum dose, and remains at that level today [edit: I got the timing messed up, see here]

Inline links: freaked out, pretty, conclusively, shown, here

Tory1 mentions across 1 issues

Tory is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 20, 2023 and July 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tory-led austerity programs". It most often appears alongside Adam Tooze, Brexit, Britain.

Reference entry: Tory
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 20, 2023
Last seen: July 20, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline July 20, 2023

Adam Tooze 1 shared issues
Brexit 1 shared issues
Britain 1 shared issues
Britain Is Much Worse Off Than It Understands - Things Weren’t Nearly This Bad In The 1970s 1 shared issues
British 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline

July 20, 2023 · Original source

Value of pound relative to a “basket of currencies” (source) Yeah. Is that the whole story?

Inline links: source

Yeah. Is that the whole story?

Personally I’m somewhat optimistic, partly because the last few years we’ve been paying the costs of brexit (now shouldn’t be as much of a drag, and might even be some benefits from being outside EU regulatory nonsense), a lot of the UK industries have some prospects for growth (tech, pharma) and others unlikely to massively decline (law, finance, insurance). Ultimately think British political elite will fix it as they’ve done in the past, can take them a while but typically they ultimately take the difficult decisions.

Tory government1 mentions across 1 issues

Tory government is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 11, 2021 and November 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "a government (here used as eg “the Tory government”, a particular political regime)". It most often appears alongside 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, @slatestarcodex, Americans.

Reference entry: Tory government
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 11, 2021
Last seen: November 11, 2021

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Highlights From The Comments On Orban November 11, 2021

2014 Hungarian parliamentary election 1 shared issues
@slatestarcodex 1 shared issues
Americans 1 shared issues
Angela Merkel 1 shared issues
Anglo-Saxon 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Orban

November 11, 2021 · Original source

One argument in favor: I think most of us would agree that a government (here used as eg “the Tory government”, a particular political regime) which tries to control the judiciary and pack it with supporters is more authoritarian than one that doesn’t. A democracy is supposed to have some number of independent power centers to provide checks and balances, and if you put too much effort into making every power center bow to you, you stop having checks and balances, and become authoritarian.

Total Pages Published In The Code Of Federal Regulations1 mentions across 1 issues

Total Pages Published In The Code Of Federal Regulations is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 24, 2024 and October 24, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "measure of regulation I’ve always seen before, Total Pages Published In The Code Of Federal Regulations". It most often appears alongside 1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled, 1960s, 1973.

Reference entry: Total Pages Published In The Code Of Federal Regulations
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 24, 2024
Last seen: October 24, 2024

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Notes From The Progress Studies Conference October 24, 2024

1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled 1 shared issues
1960s 1 shared issues
1973 1 shared issues
accelerationists 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues

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Notes From The Progress Studies Conference

October 24, 2024 · Original source

My question might have been wrong in another way too. I said regulation went up linearly. According to the measure of regulation I’ve always seen before, Total Pages Published In The Code Of Federal Regulations, this is true:

Inline links: Total Pages Published In The Code Of Federal Regulations

Total Pages Published In The Federal Register1 mentions across 1 issues

Total Pages Published In The Federal Register is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 24, 2024 and October 24, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "another, Total Pages Published In The Federal Register, shows a more suspicious pattern". It most often appears alongside 1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled, 1960s, 1973.

Reference entry: Total Pages Published In The Federal Register
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 24, 2024
Last seen: October 24, 2024

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Notes From The Progress Studies Conference October 24, 2024

1960: The Year The Singularity Was Cancelled 1 shared issues
1960s 1 shared issues
1973 1 shared issues
accelerationists 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues

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Notes From The Progress Studies Conference

October 24, 2024 · Original source

…but another, Total Pages Published In The Federal Register, shows a more suspicious pattern:

Inline links: Total Pages Published In The Federal Register

total return swaps1 mentions across 1 issues

total return swaps is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 08, 2023 and January 08, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "equity swaps / total return swaps". It most often appears alongside 2023 Prediction Contest, @dropbella, ACX.

Reference entry: total return swaps
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 08, 2023
Last seen: January 08, 2023

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Open Thread 258 January 08, 2023

2023 Prediction Contest 1 shared issues
@dropbella 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Survey 1 shared issues
Adam Strandberg 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 258

January 08, 2023 · Original source

6: Also, many, many of you commented that Bob and Ramchandra were just “reinventing the wheel” and antistocks were the same as some existing financial product, although none of you could agree on which existing product it was. See the cases for bucket shops, call options, equity swaps / total return swaps, dividend derivatives, and (inevitably) prediction markets. Also, several people chimed in to say they were working on something similar on the blockchain, including Tracer and Synthetix. I hope I don’t need to add the disclaimer that if you invest in a blockchain product based on a Bay Area House Party post, then you will lose all your money faster than anyone has ever lost all of their money before in all of history.

Inline links: bucket shops, call options, equity swaps / total return swaps, dividend derivatives, prediction markets, Tracer, Synthetix

totalitarian regime1 mentions across 1 issues

totalitarian regime is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 29, 2021 and January 29, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the rise of a totalitarian regime". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, AI alignment problem, Anand Giridharadas.

Reference entry: totalitarian regime
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 29, 2021
Last seen: January 29, 2021

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Contra Weyl On Technocracy January 29, 2021

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
AI alignment problem 1 shared issues
Anand Giridharadas 1 shared issues
Bill Gates 1 shared issues
Biosecurity And Pandemic Preparedness Program 1 shared issues

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Bad Definitions Of "Democracy" And "Accountability" Shade Into Totalitarianism

January 29, 2021 · Original source

Yet, interestingly, the conclusions of the analysis emerging from the community increasingly undermine these foci and the approach of the community more broadly. In particular, recent research in the community suggests that the greatest and most probable risks to be avoided are anthropogenic (climate change, nuclear war, the rise of a totalitarian regime, other environmental catastrophes etc.). Leaders in the community have in turn suggested that the most effective ways to avoid these are likely finding solutions to problems of political organization and legitimacy of social systems to help reduce the likelihood of conflict or inability to cooperate in the provision of critical global public goods.

Inline links: recent research

Weyl's link doesn't support his claim. It's an 80,000 Hours page saying that that it's important to protect the long-term future, something EA has believed since the beginning. EA started with a sort of merger and cross-pollination between people trying to save lives by eg curing malaria, and transhumanist/singularitarian groups working on protecting the long-term future; it held together because both groups agree that the other's position can make sense given different sets of complicated assumptions about ethics and tractability. The page Weyl links highlights and explains the philosophy around that, but does not claim anyone had a sudden enlightenment where they realized they'd previously been ignoring the threat of totalitarianism and that was wrong. Everyone has always believed that stopping the rise of a totalitarian regime is one part of the important task of protecting the far-future, but we haven't focused on it because it's less tractable and less neglected than other parts. As far as I know we continue to think that and mostly not focus on it aside from occasionally looking for tractable interventions we've missed.

totalitarianism1 mentions across 1 issues

totalitarianism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 28, 2023 and July 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The only society that doesn’t leave space... totalitarianism". It most often appears alongside 2021, Adam Smith, Alabama.

Reference entry: totalitarianism
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 28, 2023
Last seen: July 28, 2023

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Bad Definitions Of "Democracy" And "Accountability" Shade Into Totalitarianism July 28, 2023

2021 1 shared issues
Adam Smith 1 shared issues
Alabama 1 shared issues
Bill Gates 1 shared issues
Federal Reserve 1 shared issues

Source context

July 28, 2023 · Original source

You could, in theory, define “democratic” this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically elected) government, the more democratic your society is. But in that case, the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism1 - a society where the government controls every facet of life, including what religion you practice, who you marry, and what job you work at. In this society there would be no room for human freedom.

Inline links: 1

So either you should avoid defining “democratic” this way, or you should stop assuming that more democratic = better. Otherwise it’s easy to prove that any step towards totalitarianism is good.

I first noticed this during a discussion with Rob Reich (the professor who studies charity, not the former labor secretary with the same name). Reich flirted with an argument that charitable donation is inherently undemocratic: people are allowed to donate money to whatever causes they personally want, instead of giving it to the government to be distributed via the elected government’s budgeting process. I agree that you can define “undemocratic” such that it includes anyone spending money or trying to improve society outside of government. But if you define it this way, and also try to correct undemocratic things, you get totalitarianism - a society where everything must be done through the government.

Inline links: during a discussion with Rob Reich

touch football1 mentions across 1 issues

touch football is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 24, 2021 and February 24, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "They enjoy touch football (because it is actually fun, unlike other sports which are just class signaling)". It most often appears alongside 1950s, 1980s, 1983.

Reference entry: touch football
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 24, 2021
Last seen: February 24, 2021

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Issue trail

Book Review: Fussell On Class February 24, 2021

1950s 1 shared issues
1980s 1 shared issues
1983 1 shared issues
2020er 1 shared issues
ADIDAS 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Fussell On Class

February 24, 2021 · Original source

Although you wouldn't expect them to have any consistent aesthetic, Fussell gets weirdly specific about them. They buy their clothes from L.L. Bean and Land's End, and tend to dress in down vests, flannel shirts, and hiking boots (which apparently "conveys the message [that] I am freer and less terrified than you are"). They enjoy touch football (because it is actually fun, unlike other sports which are just class signaling), and carry their infants around in slings or papooses (because these are the objectively simplest ways to convey infants). They read British, French, and Italian periodicals (because this is objectively the best way to keep abreast of world affairs), and live in cute old houses in unusual locations. Their front yard may be gravel (because they have transcended the class signaling of lawns), and their furniture includes "parody displays" like "an elephant's foot umbrella stand" and "campy fabric". "Instead of the chart of Nantucket or Catalina Island favored by the upper-middles, a chart of Bikini Atoll or Guadalcanal. On the coffee table, Mother Jones and The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." Their TV preferences are for "classic reruns like The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy" (apparently the objectively best TV shows).

Tough On Crime1 mentions across 1 issues

Tough On Crime is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 20, 2021 and December 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Conservatives are right-wing and probably do the Tough On Crime thing". It most often appears alongside bimagrumab, Cimbrian Seeresses, Conservatives.

Reference entry: Tough On Crime
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 20, 2021
Last seen: December 20, 2021

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Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Let Me Google That For You December 20, 2021

bimagrumab 1 shared issues
Cimbrian Seeresses 1 shared issues
Conservatives 1 shared issues
End Mass Incarceration 1 shared issues
Fat Tails 1 shared issues

Source context

Mantic Monday: Let Me Google That For You

December 20, 2021 · Original source

I don’t think this is interesting? Conservatives are right-wing and probably do the Tough On Crime thing. Labour is left-wing and probably does the End Mass Incarceration thing. You’re not really learning anything you wouldn’t have guessed otherwise. But it’s a proof of concept. You could do this for GDP growth, school test scores, and all the other things where we all agree what the good outcome is.

Tourette's1 mentions across 1 issues

Tourette's is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 11, 2021 and February 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "risk genes are shared with other psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia, bipolar, ADHD, and Tourette's". It most often appears alongside ADHD, Badcock, Bay Area.

Reference entry: Tourette's
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 11, 2021
Last seen: February 11, 2021

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Issue trail

Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Tradeoffs And Failures February 11, 2021

ADHD 1 shared issues
Badcock 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
bipolar 1 shared issues
congestive heart failure 1 shared issues

Source context

Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Tradeoffs And Failures

February 11, 2021 · Original source

Even normal autism risk genes that people get from their parents are mostly straight-out bad. At least this is how I interpret Tsur, Friger, and Menashe who find evidence of negative selection for most autism-related variants - based on their place in the genome, it looks like evolution has been trying hard to get rid of them. Also, some risk genes are shared with other psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia, bipolar, ADHD, and Tourette's. These disorders all have very different symptoms, and very different associated personalities, but they all have one thing in common: they are abnormal and dysfunctional. Most likely these genes are involved in basic brain functions - making sure cells get enough oxygen, keeping the blood-brain barrier strong, preventing inflammation - and less functional alleles generally make everything worse. These, too, are in our failure column.

Inline links: Tsur, Friger, and Menashe, schizophrenia, bipolar, ADHD, and Tourette's

Tower Bloxx1 mentions across 1 issues

Tower Bloxx is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 18, 2023 and August 18, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "they reverse all their motor sequences and build a tower like in Tower Bloxx". It most often appears alongside Anil Seth, Astralcodexten Com, Being You.

Reference entry: Tower Bloxx
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 18, 2023
Last seen: August 18, 2023

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Your Book Review: The Mind Of A Bee August 18, 2023

Anil Seth 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Being You 1 shared issues
bumble bees 1 shared issues
Charles Darwin 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Mind Of A Bee

August 18, 2023 · Original source

François Huber, Marie-Aimée Lullin and François Burnens, working in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, started a malicious and fascinating program of messing with bees’ beeswax to see how they’d respond. Bees usually build downwards, by attaching honeycomb to the ceiling of the hive. If you stop them doing this, like the mean old team of François2 and Marie, they reverse all their motor sequences and build a tower like in Tower Bloxx. If you stop them building up or down, they go from side to side.

toxoplasma1 mentions across 1 issues

toxoplasma is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 01, 2024 and February 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "something fun and interesting like toxoplasma or social defeat explained 80% of the variance in schizophrenia". It most often appears alongside Awais Aftab, birth canal asphyxia, cannabis.

Reference entry: toxoplasma
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 01, 2024
Last seen: February 01, 2024

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Issue trail

It's Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably Mostly Genetic February 01, 2024

Awais Aftab 1 shared issues
birth canal asphyxia 1 shared issues
cannabis 1 shared issues
cannabis use 1 shared issues
Dr. Aftab 1 shared issues

Source context

It's Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably Mostly Genetic

February 01, 2024 · Original source

This is possible, but I think it’s false. We know many apparent risk factors for schizophrenia: cannabis use, birth canal asphyxia, social defeat, toxoplasma infection, poor prenatal nutrition. If you try to combine these into one big picture, it doesn’t work.

Inline links: cannabis use, birth canal asphyxia, social defeat, toxoplasma infection, poor prenatal nutrition

I think if E. Fuller Torrey had discovered that something fun and interesting like toxoplasma or social defeat explained 80% of the variance in schizophrenia, everyone would say “Oh! That causes schizophrenia!” and forget all the nitpicking. This would happen even though toxoplasma can cause other things, even though it might not explain the exact causal pathway by which toxoplasma causes schizophrenia, etc. I think people really want things not to be genetic, so when they do turn out to be genetic, they apply higher standards for whether you can call that “the cause”. Then people underestimate how much genes matter.

toxoplasma infection1 mentions across 1 issues

toxoplasma infection is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 01, 2024 and February 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "We know many apparent risk factors for schizophrenia: toxoplasma infection". It most often appears alongside Awais Aftab, birth canal asphyxia, cannabis.

Reference entry: toxoplasma infection
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 01, 2024
Last seen: February 01, 2024

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Issue trail

It's Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably Mostly Genetic February 01, 2024

Awais Aftab 1 shared issues
birth canal asphyxia 1 shared issues
cannabis 1 shared issues
cannabis use 1 shared issues
Dr. Aftab 1 shared issues

Source context

It's Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably Mostly Genetic

February 01, 2024 · Original source

This is possible, but I think it’s false. We know many apparent risk factors for schizophrenia: cannabis use, birth canal asphyxia, social defeat, toxoplasma infection, poor prenatal nutrition. If you try to combine these into one big picture, it doesn’t work.

Inline links: cannabis use, birth canal asphyxia, social defeat, toxoplasma infection, poor prenatal nutrition

TPOT1 mentions across 1 issues

TPOT is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 19, 2022 and August 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "is postrationalism/ingroup/TPOT". It most often appears alongside 00s, 70s, 80s.

Reference entry: TPOT
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 19, 2022
Last seen: August 19, 2022

Outbound links

https://jerseyjohn.substack.com/p/who-are-the-crazy-ones-on-tpot

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures August 19, 2022

00s 1 shared issues
70s 1 shared issues
80s 1 shared issues
90s 1 shared issues
Andrew Yang 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures

August 19, 2022 · Original source

Postcycle: Since 2020 Now things are pretty stable, partly because we put enough distance between ourselves and our growth phase that we can start to get a little hipster cool again, and partly because effective altruism is the Hot New Thing that everyone is supposed to have an opinion on. This is the usual pattern of exciting talked-about movements spawning successor movements that then get to be exciting and talked-about in turn, while the original movement gets to go back to being normal people with a common interest again. By the way, in the past week, effective altruism has gotten long, glowing profiles in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Vox, the cover of TIME Magazine, shoutouts from Elon Musk and Andrew Yang, podcast interviews with Tyler Cowen and Tim Ferriss, and criticism from Freddie deBoer. Enjoy it while it lasts! ___________________ 7: MT writes: A lot of this sounds like truism, or selection bias. Thing isn't popular or exciting to most, then it catches on and grows, then it stops growing, fragments into new directions and isn't novel but becomes part of the mainstream. This HAS TO describe literally anything in the past that was ever popular/exciting, because it wasn't always that way (started small) and can't grow indefinitely without becoming either an institution (stable leadership/direction), fragmented (new leadership/direction), or just falling apart. The germ of this idea was my feeling that I’ve been in movements where it starts out feeling like everyone can’t stop gushing about how great we are, and then later there’s another phase where criticism reigns and everyone feels slightly embarrassed to be involved. This doesn’t feel tautological to me, although it might become trivial if you allow enough selection bias (some movement where this hasn’t happened “isn’t the kind of movement this happens to”). I could prove this by making nontrivial predictions about which movements are going to get less camaraderie and more internecine struggle in the future. Four years ago I would have said “new left socialism”, and I think I did endorse Robby Soave’s article to that effect at the time, but I think new left socialism is well into involution or even postcycle now. Last year I would have said YIMBYism, but I’m not up-to-date on it and maybe it’s already transitioned too. The only movement I see that’s still clearly high on “we are so great and such good friends with each other” is postrationalism/ingroup/TPOT, so sure, I expect things to get worse for them (sorry for this potentially self-fulfilling prophecy). (I’m nervous about saying EA because they still have more money than they can spend in a reasonable amount of time; as long as that situation continues they won’t be exactly resource-scarce, and the people with the purse-strings will have a natural advantage as “elites”.) I’m actually surprised how few uncomplicated happy growth spurt movements I can think of now, compared to how many I can think of that seem to have passed through that stage. I think this is a combination of: This is a pretty pessimistic social moment (eg the thing where dystopian SF has become more popular than the utopian SF of the late 20th century).

Inline links: the New Yorker, New York Times, Vox, cover of TIME Magazine, Elon Musk, Andrew Yang, Tyler Cowen, Tim Ferriss, Freddie deBoer, MT, Robby Soave’s article to that effect, postrationalism/ingroup/TPOT

Tracer Tool1 mentions across 1 issues

Tracer Tool is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 30, 2022 and September 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "pattern breaker metronomes (as exemplified by the Tracer Tool)". It most often appears alongside 5HT2A serotonin, acetylcholine, Alice.

Reference entry: Tracer Tool
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 30, 2022
Last seen: September 30, 2022

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Unpredictable Reward September 30, 2022

5HT2A serotonin 1 shared issues
acetylcholine 1 shared issues
Alice 1 shared issues
Andres 1 shared issues
AuronMacintyre 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Unpredictable Reward

September 30, 2022 · Original source

Getting the "right fit" for what various serotonin, dopamine, opioid, gaba and NMDA receptors do is challenging - I don't have the final answer or anything close, but I think STV does provide some hints. Your nervous system is constantly creating, maintaining, and retiring internal representations. At QRI we think that the various concentrations of neurotransmitters can change in subtle ways what tools you have available to edit your internal representations. In a super cartoonish way, essentially dopamine reduces the threshold needed to activate a high-frequency consonant state, 5HT2A serotonin activates "pattern breaker" metronomes (as exemplified by the Tracer Tool) and kick-starting an annealing process, and opioids work by activating a generic low-frequency consonance. But the story, of course, is more complex, and the ideal for us is for that complexity to also be explained in terms of STV. Here's an example: dopaminergics have various plateaus - the high-valence ones require both sparse use as well as threshold doses (as you describe). I'd say that to a first approximation, and very schematically, we can divide the state caused by dopaminergics during the come-up as having four plateaus:

Trad movements1 mentions across 1 issues

Trad movements is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 06, 2024 and September 06, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "we face a proliferation of conservative/Trad movements". It most often appears alongside #MeToo, 21st century political dogmatism, Advanced Tax.

Reference entry: Trad movements
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 06, 2024
Last seen: September 06, 2024

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Pale King September 06, 2024

#MeToo 1 shared issues
21st century political dogmatism 1 shared issues
Advanced Tax 1 shared issues
Anand Singh 1 shared issues
Ann Williams 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Pale King

September 06, 2024 · Original source

The Pale King is in many ways revanchist, arguing for reclamation of territory lost to hedonism in the name of old-fashioned ideals like civic responsibility, neighborliness, and going to work every day. And revanchism has certainly made a comeback: today we face a proliferation of conservative/Trad movements, but very few seem interested in rehabilitating old fashioned civic virtue.13 Cynicism in societal institutions is endemic on both the right and the left, perhaps with good reason: while a bureaucrat in the 80s could expect to own a home and support a family, these days an ‘ordinary’ job doesn’t cut it. The IRS’s of the world have taken the path that Wallace warned against, embracing automation and the bottom line, and neglecting the real, human realities of the people they’re meant to serve.

Inline links: 13

trad whites-only farming villages1 mentions across 1 issues

trad whites-only farming villages is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2025 and August 05, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Why don’t conservatives live in trad whites-only farming villages on the Great Plains?". It most often appears alongside Amish, Bay Area rationalist community, Christian media.

Reference entry: trad whites-only farming villages
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2025
Last seen: August 05, 2025

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Issue trail

Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? August 05, 2025

Amish 1 shared issues
Bay Area rationalist community 1 shared issues
Christian media 1 shared issues
dense walkable towns 1 shared issues
First Things 1 shared issues

Source context

How Natural Tradeoff And Failure Components?

August 05, 2025 · Original source

Are the rest not interested? Happy with mainstream culture? They don’t seem happy. 90% of articles on social media are people talking about how much they hate mainstream culture, sometimes with strong specific opinions about what improvements to make. But it never seems to occur to these people to join together with like-minded friends and secede from it. Why not? Why don’t conservatives live in trad whites-only farming villages on the Great Plains? Why don’t YIMBYs live in dense walkable towns sprung up from the forests of Vermont? Why don’t people who hate smartphones/social media/AI live somewhere that bans all of those things?

tradeoff vs. failure models of psychiatric conditions1 mentions across 1 issues

tradeoff vs. failure models of psychiatric conditions is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 26, 2026 and March 26, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "In 2021, I discussed tradeoff vs. failure models of psychiatric conditions". It most often appears alongside bipolar, John Nash, Michael Halassa.

Reference entry: tradeoff vs. failure models of psychiatric conditions
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 26, 2026
Last seen: March 26, 2026

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Issue trail

How Natural Tradeoff And Failure Components? March 26, 2026

bipolar 1 shared issues
John Nash 1 shared issues
Michael Halassa 1 shared issues
poverty 1 shared issues
schizophrenia 1 shared issues

Source context

March 26, 2026 · Original source

In 2021, I discussed tradeoff vs. failure models of psychiatric conditions, and said that most conditions were probably a mix of both. The new research seems to confirm this: the first genetic component of schizophrenia is a tradeoff: bad insofar as it gives you higher schizophrenia risk, good insofar as it gives you higher educational attainment. Most likely this has something to do with creativity or motivation. The second component is a failure: bad in every way, with no compensating advantage. Most likely this is detrimental mutations in genes for neurogenesis and synaptic pruning.

Inline links: tradeoff vs. failure models of psychiatric conditions

Trading with the Enemy Act of 19171 mentions across 1 issues

Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 24, 2022 and June 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Sanctions were introduced by the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917". It most often appears alongside 501(c)(3), 80,000 Hours, 9/11.

Reference entry: Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 24, 2022
Last seen: June 24, 2022

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Issue trail

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy June 24, 2022

501(c)(3) 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
11 1 shared issues
Adam Tooze 1 shared issues
Afghan ambassador to Pakistan 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy

June 24, 2022 · Original source

Practically unchanged throughout 1951, 1986, and 2019. It’s difficult to see what threat the US is protecting against in the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. The rise of China has not lead to increase in troop deployment in Japan or South Korea; the wars in the Greater Middle East has not resulted in the influx of the bulk of troops from the former Axis powers; the fall of the Soviet Union has not seen any withdrawal as promised to Gorbachev but rather expansion of troops right up to the border of the Russian Federation. Once again, Hanania clearly shows that status quo bias has been disguised as grand strategy. IR theorists have long debated what strategy the US should adopt when responding to potential challengers: realists are pessimistic in viewing great powers to be destined for war; liberal internationalists are optimistic in trusting the pacifying effects of trade and enlightened self interests. Either way, they assume states make rational decisions to attain long-term objectives, but the two ideologically hostile states of the Soviet Union and China show that presidents are too worried about short-term political prospects to stop American business and technology from engaging with and empowering rivals. If there is no grand strategy against the most powerful geopolitical rivals, it’s unlikely any exists for lesser adversaries. 4. The Atrocity Of American Sanctions Sanctions were introduced by the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in 1977 gave the president the right to sign an executive order to declare a national emergency to prohibit any transaction between anyone under the jurisdiction of the United States and the foreign country or its nationals. This means most sanctions are decided on and applied within the executive branch with little input from Congress or the broader public. The three main concentrated interests do not oppose sanctions (the only exception being the unprecedented lobbying campaign from American businesses to open up trade with China). The national security bureaucracy doesn’t stand to gain or lose from trading with foreign states, nor do government contractors (most rogue states' economies are miniscule compared to China’s). Foreign governments that are candidates for sanctions also can’t oppose them — Kim Jong Un cannot fund Washington think tanks; Israel and Saudi Arabia can fund a maximum pressure campaign against Iran as even meetings with Iranian state officials bring accusations of illegality. In theory, sanctions work by: Hurting the economy

traditional antidepressants1 mentions across 1 issues

traditional antidepressants is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 25, 2021 and May 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "5-HTP works approximately as well as traditional antidepressants". It most often appears alongside 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration, 5-HTP, 5-HTP.

Reference entry: traditional antidepressants
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 25, 2021
Last seen: May 25, 2021

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Issue trail

Peer Review Request: Depression May 25, 2021

2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration 1 shared issues
5-HTP 1 shared issues
5-HTP 1 shared issues
amitriptyline 1 shared issues
Andrea Cipriani 1 shared issues

Source context

Peer Review Request: Depression

May 25, 2021 · Original source

Tryptophan is a chemical found in food (especially eggs, seeds, and milk). In the body, it gets turned into 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) and then 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), aka serotonin. Serotonin is an important mood regulatory chemical which we often try to increase during depression treatment, but if you consume serotonin directly, your body won’t be able to absorb it. The closest you can do is consume tryptophan or 5-HTP, and trust your body to absorb it and convert it into serotonin. Both of these chemicals are used for depression, and the few studies that have been done are mostly positive, for example this 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration. A more recent study finds 5-HTP works approximately as well as traditional antidepressants. Everyone agrees these studies are weak and low-quality and we can’t be sure of anything yet, but welcome to the world of depression supplementation. Early concerns about this potentially causing severe eosinophilic reactions don’t seem to have panned out, and might have been based on defective manufacturing processes which have since been fixed. A reasonable dose of 5-HTP would be to start at 100 mg daily, then go up to 200 and finally 300 mg daily after a few weeks. Don’t take this with any other serotonin-related medications without clearing it by your doctor first. You can find a reasonable brand of 5-HTP here.

Inline links: this 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration, works approximately as well as traditional antidepressants, here

Traditional Chinese medicine1 mentions across 1 issues

Traditional Chinese medicine is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2023 and February 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Traditional Chinese medicine monitors the balance between yin and yang". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agin, American.

Reference entry: Traditional Chinese medicine
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 22, 2023
Last seen: February 22, 2023

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Issue trail

Book Review: The Geography Of Madness February 22, 2023

Africa 1 shared issues
Agin 1 shared issues
American 1 shared issues
Ancient Chinese 1 shared issues
Asia 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The Geography Of Madness

February 22, 2023 · Original source

This image (source) of a witch stealing a man’s penis, with a box of previously-stolen penises to her right accompanies the 1411 poem “Flowers Of Virtue” in its 1486 edition. Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1486, so if the original text of Flowers Of Virtue contained the incident this picture refers to, it would predate Malleus. But the original text is written in poetic medieval German and I can’t find a good translation. When I wrote my review of the Malleus, people were surprised at the penis-stealing witch chapters. Yet nothing could possibly be less surprising; the penis-stealing witches are timeless and omnipresent. When commenters continued to doubt, I promised them this review of Frank Bures’ Geography Of Madness. II. Frank Bures is a journalist. In 2001, he came across an unusual BBC article: a mob had killed twelve people in Nigeria, believing them to be penis-stealing witches. A few months later, a similar article: five people, Benin. He tried to pitch a story about the phenomenon to his editor, who “said he couldn’t pay me to fly to Nigeria and find essentially . . . nothing”. For some reason - and this is the point at which I start to worry about narrator reliability - Bures became obsessed with this. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. He started scraping together money to visit Africa on his own, story be damned: Nigeria gnawed at me. I knew that it was a terrible time to leave. I knew that [my wife] Bridgit, newly pregnant, wouldn’t want me to go. But I also knew that I had to, and that if I didn’t it would be a lifelong regret. . . three months later, I was the lone tourist on a plane full of Nigerians descending to Lagos. Africa is a relative newcomer to penis-stealing witches: The first recorded incident of penis theft in Africa I could find took place in Sudan in the 1960s. But in the mid- to late seventies in Nigeria, there were waves of well-documented cases. One of these happened in the northern city of Kaduna, where a psychiatrist named Dr. Sunday Ilechukwu was working in his office when a policeman arrived, escorting two men. One of them said he needed a medical assessment: He had accused the other of making his penis disappear. As with [a previously discussed incident], this had caused a disturbance in the street. During Ilechukwu’s examination, he later recounted, the victim stared straight ahead while the doctor examined his penis and pronounced him normal. “Exclaiming,” Ilechukwu wrote in the Transcultural Psychiatric Review, “the patient looked down at his groin for the first time, suggesting that the genitals had just reappeared.” According to Ilechukwu, this was part of an epidemic of magical penis theft that swept through Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. “Men could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hand in their pockets,” Ilechukwu wrote. “Women were also seen holding on to their breasts directly or discreetly, by crossing the hands across the chest . . . Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylaxes. This led to further breakdown of law and order.” During an incident, the victim would yell: “Thief! My genitals are gone!” Immediately, a culprit would be identified, apprehended by a crowd, and often killed. …but it’s been making up for lost time. Bures was able to find and interview one previous penis theft victim, plus the friend of another. Both described similar stories: someone had bumped up against them under weird circumstances, they immediately noticed their penis was much smaller than usual, they called out the culprit, and - apparently because the witch involved didn’t want to get in trouble - their penis was restored. Whatever weird itch this topic had given Bures, this didn’t satisfy him. He writes, very lucidly, about a desire to get closer to “the story”. He started bumping up against random Nigerians in suspicious ways, hoping one of them would accuse him of stealing their penis. Bures was an obvious foreigner, and a these panics often resulted in the suspected penis-stealer getting lynched, so this was a crazy thing to do. He could easily have died. Instead, everyone politely ignored him, nothing happened, and a slightly-disappointed Bures flew back to his poor family and abandoned his weird obsession. III. …for four years. After that the bug bit him again and he flew to Asia, long a center of penis-stealing witch activity. There are nature documentaries on lions, dolphins, even dinosaurs. They all share a common pattern: you talk about your subject’s habitat, their diet, their behaviors. The Asian half of The Geography Of Madness has the feel of a nature documentary on penis-stealing witches. And the last beat of every nature documentary has to be: this majestic creature, which once roamed from one end of the region to the other, is now endangered, threatened by increasing globalization and industrial activity. This is true for the witches also. Bures’ time in Hong Kong was a bust. There was a penis theft panic there forty years earlier, and he was able to interview some of the doctors who treated it. But they all said that was long ago. Now everybody is Westernized and has Western fears like vaccine injury or structural racism. They get Western mental disorders like depression and anorexia. The idea of witches stealing their penises seems as risible to them as it probably does to you. Singapore was also a bust. Bures had hoped it wouldn’t be, because it’s full of Malaysians, and Malaysia holds a special place in history as the spot where penis-stealing witches first made contact with Western science. The Malaysian word for the condition is koro (it means “head of a turtle”, based on an analogy to the penis retracting into the body the same way a turtle’s head retracts into its shell), and it is by this name that the condition gets listed in the DSM and the rest of the medical literature. Neither I nor Bures was able to find many ethnic Malays worrying about koro; most of the activity seems to be from Malaysian-Chinese. The Chinese definitely worry about it, attributing it to a wide variety of causes including poisoning, yin-yang imbalance, and - yes - witches. But Bures found nothing among any ethnicity. Once again, all the doctors said it used to be common, but disappeared as the city industrialized and adopted Western ways. Guangzhou was also a bust. The doctors said the same thing - in the old days, there would be huge epidemics of koro, social contagions that would impact hundreds of people at once. Now only a few superstitious rural people still believed. One traditional healer said he saw “three or four” cases a year. All the educated people had moved on. I once saw a nature documentary on Tasmanian tigers. Most people believe these have been extinct since 1930. Still, there are occasional unconfirmed sightings, especially in a remote area called Cape York, and every so often some scientists trudge off to Cape York with traps and cameras in the hopes of getting lucky. Bures decides end his own nature documentary with an expedition to the Cape York of the penis-stealing witches. This is a remote island village in China called Lin’gao, where in 1984: . . . rumors spread of a fox ghost - sometimes disguised an old woman roaming the land—collecting penises in covered baskets she carried on a shoulder pole. When two young men approached her and told her to uncover the baskets, they looked inside, saw that the baskets were filled with penises and died instantly of fright. Panic about koro would hit a village and last three to four days. When residents heard about a case in a neighboring village, the panic would subside, since that meant the ghost had moved on. The attacks slowly made their way around the island. The ghost struck at night, when villagers were sleeping. A chill would creep into the room, and suddenly the victim would feel his penis shrinking inward. He would grab it and run outside for help. A twenty-eight-year-old office worker was at home one night when: > “ . . . he heard a gong being beaten and the terrifying noises made by people who were panicking in a nearby neighborhood. He suddenly became anxious and experienced the sensation that his penis was shrinking. He was seized with panic and shouted loudly for help. Several men in the neighborhood rushed in and tried to rescue him by forcefully pulling his penis and making loud sounds to chase away the evil ghost that was thought to be affecting him.” Neighbors and family members were enlisted in rescue operations. Victims were beaten with sandals and slippers while the middle finger of their left had was squeezed, so that the ghost could exit the body there. The epidemic engulfed the island, with the exception of the Li and Miao minorities, who seemed to be immune to such fears. Researchers estimated that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were affected, but that “no one died from genital retraction.” One baby, however, did die when his mother tried to feed him pepper juice, and a girl was beaten to death during a two-hour exorcism. “Numerous men suffered injuries to their penises as a result of ‘rescuing’ actions.” Iron pins were sometimes inserted through the nipples of women to prevent retraction, which caused infections as well. This was, as far as anyone knows, the last great koro epidemic in Asia. Bures had a terrible time getting to Lin’gao. He had equal trouble getting an interpreter; the natives spoke a language called Be, very distantly related to Thai but not at all to regular Chinese. Finally he found someone who was able to contact a local shaman. Like any good doctor, the shaman referred him to a specialist - in this case, the designated anti-ghost shaman, who lived in a different village. He spent most of his time off on various ghost-fighting missions, but eventually Bures and his team were able to track him down. I want you to picture the scene. An American journalist has been traveling the world in search of a dying variety of witchcraft. Now he’s reached the end of the line, the wildest and most primitive region of China. With great difficulty, he has procured an interpreter. Together, they consult a shaman, who sends them on a quest to find a second, wiser shaman who specializes in ghosts. After many trials and tribulations, he reaches the second, wiser, ghost-specialist shaman, who invites him into his home, filled with strange charms and magical images. “Tell me your question,” says the shaman. And Bures asks: “What do you know about penis-stealing witches?” . . . and the shaman answers: “Haha, no one believes in that stuff anymore.” IV. So as a nature documentary, The Geography of Madness is kind of a bust. Still, Bures rescues it with some great analysis of culture-bound mental illness. A culture-bound mental illness is one that only affects people who know about it, and especially people who believe in it. Often it doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view (there’s no such thing as witches, and the penis can’t retract into the body). It sometimes spreads contagiously: someone gets a first case, the rest of the village panics, and now everyone knows about it / believes in it / is thinking about it, and so many other people get it too. Different cultures have their own set of culture-bound illnesses. Sometimes there are commonalities - many cultures have something something penis something witches - but the details vary, and a victim almost always gets a case that matches the way their own culture understands it. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT MAKING IT UP. I cannot stress this enough. There are plenty of examples of people driving metal objects through their penis in order to pull it out of their body or prevent the witches from getting it or something like that. There is no amount of commitment to the bit which will make people drive metal objects through their penis. People have died from these conditions - not the illness itself, which is fake, but from wasting away worrying about it, or taking dangerous sham treatments, or getting into fights with people they think caused it. If you think of it as “their unconscious mind must be doing something like making it up, but their conscious mind believes it 100%”, you will be closer to the truth, though there are various reasons I don’t like that framing. In Rajasthan, India, people come to the hospital with gilahari (lizard) syndrome. Patients say a lizard-like mass, sometimes visible as a skin swelling, is crawling around the body. They express terror that it will reach their airway and suffocate them. Japanese people may contract jikoshu-kyofu, a debilitating fear that they have terrible body odor. No amount of reassurances by friends and psychiatrists can convince these people that they smell normal, nor will any number of deodorants or perfumes make them comfortable. The French suffer from bouffée délirante, where a perfectly healthy person suddenly becomes completely psychotic, with well-formed hallucinations and delusions - then recovers just as suddenly, sometimes over hours or days. This is not how psychosis works anywhere except France and a few former French colonies. Traditional Chinese medicine monitors the balance between yin and yang. The male orgasm can deplete yang, and sure enough in China (but nowhere else) some men suffer traditional symptoms of yang depletion after they orgasm. “The symptoms can last weeks to months after a single orgasm, [and include] chills, dizziness, [and] backache”. The phrase “run amok” comes from Malaysia, where it referred to a specific phenomenon: some person who had been unhappy for a long time would suddenly snap, kill a bunch of people, then say they had no memory of doing it. Malaysian culture totally rolls with this and doesn’t hold it against them; the unhappiness is a risk factor for possession by a tiger spirit, which commits the killings. Although Malays have been doing this since at least the 1700s, there are some fascinating parallels with modern US mass shootings that suggest the damn tiger spirits have finally made it to the US common psychological origins. I have seen exactly one demonic possession case in my ten years as a psychiatrist. The man fell to the ground, mouth foaming, chanting strange syllables and the names of Biblical demons. My attending doctor at the time - one of those people who somehow manages to be an expert in everything - was an expert in demonic possession, and told us that he was in no way psychotic, antipsychotics wouldn’t help him (except insofar as they help everyone by decreasing all behaviors), and he needed to “work through his issues”. The patient was uncooperative - he was only visiting MDs because the local bishop wouldn’t call in an exorcist until he got a psych exam - and eventually left against medical advice. After going down the list, Bures asks the correct next question: how do we know whether or not our own mental illnesses are just as culture-bound as the Japanese or Malaysians’? Cultures that believe in witches have witch-related culture-bound illnesses; cultures that believe in demons have demon-related ones. We believe in science, so we should expect sciencey-sounding culture-bound illnesses, and these might be hard to tell apart from other, more physical conditions. So how suspicious should we be, and of what? Certainly we have some culture-bound mental illnesses. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a condition where some people supposedly become very sick when exposed to electromagnetic fields (like from cell phones). This sounds very scientific and makes perfect sense according to our culture, but researchers have found that placebo electrical devices make them exactly as sick as real ones, and that devices they don’t know about don’t make them sick at all. These people’s pain is real, and their lives are very difficult (although a few have found refuge in the National Radio Quiet Zone, an area in Virginia where the government enforces a ban on electromagnetic transmissions for secret military reasons). But their condition only afflicts them because they believe in it, much like with koro. Fine, everyone knows that one’s not real. What about DSM-style mental disorders, the stuff everyone’s supposed to believe in? Are those culture-bound? Unfortunately, I think Bures kind of flubs this section. He decides to focus on PMS (premenstrual syndrome), which is officially included in the DSM as PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). After discussing the history of hysteria, he writes that: Today, hysteria is never diagnosed, except by unwise husbands. In 1931, however, an American gynecologist named Robert Frank revived the idea in a new guise. He published an article titled, “The hormonal causes of premenstrual tension.” Frank described symptoms that occurred in the week before menstruation: irritability, bloating, fatigue, depression, attacks of pain, nervousness, restlessness, and the impulse for “foolish and ill considered actions,” due to ovarian activity. Again, the cause was the uterus. Then in 1953, British physician Katharina Dalton elaborated on this, arguing the condition came from fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone. She called it Premenstrual Syndrome, and soon symptoms grew to include: anxiety, sadness, moodiness, constipation or diarrhea, feeling out of control, insomnia, food cravings, increased sex drive, anger, arguments with family or friends, poor judgment, lack of physical coordination, decreased efficiency, increased personal strength or power, feelings of connection to nature or to other women, seizures, convulsions, asthma attacks, not to mention flare ups in asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, and multiple sclerosis. If any of these symptoms occurred in the second half of the menstrual cycle, one had PMS. Estimates of the number of women afflicted ranged from 5 percent to 95 percent. In the 1980s, three women in the UK were tried for arson, assault and manslaughter. The three all claimed they had diminished responsibility due to PMS, and got reduced sentences on the condition that they underwent hormone treatment. After that, according to one study, American women flooded doctors with requests for help with their PMS. “Popular groups like PMS Action were founded to promote recognition and treatment of PMS by medical professionals. Private PMS clinics began to appear in the USA, modeled after those in the UK, and progesterone therapy was enthusiastically adopted, much to the chagrin of many gynaecologists who viewed its use as ‘unscientific’ and ‘commercial’, not to mention unlicensed." Based on all this, the 1987 version of the DSM-III included a new category: Late Luteal Phase Disorder (luteal refers to progesterone). It was proposed as a topic for further research, but despite the absence of such research, it was included in the 1994 edition of the DSM-IV under the name Premenstrual Dysmorphic Disorder, or PMDD.96 In 2013, in the DSM-5, it was given its own category as a full-fledged mental illness. Yet neither PMS nor PMDD occur in most cultures. There are no biomarkers to measure them by. No conclusive correlation has ever been found between estrogen or progesterone levels and PMS. As one study noted, “the more time that women of ethnic minorities spend living in the United States, the more likely they are to report PMDD. Thus, if we are to accept PMDD as a reified medical disorder, then we must also accept exposure to U.S. culture as a risk factor for contracting PMDD.” If it is a syndrome at all, it’s a cultural one. I asked my wife what she thought of this, and she told me: The day before her first-ever period, as a teenager, when she had never really thought about PMS, she felt exceptionally weird, emotional, and generally off, to the point where it seemed to demand an explanation. Then she had her first-ever period, and retroactively explains it as PMS.

Traffic light coalition1 mentions across 1 issues

Traffic light coalition is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 01, 2022 and February 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Traffic light coalition exploits loopholes". It most often appears alongside 2022 Winter Olympics, 538, Academy Awards.

Reference entry: Traffic light coalition
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 01, 2022
Last seen: February 01, 2022

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Predictions For 2022 February 01, 2022

2022 Winter Olympics 1 shared issues
538 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Addis Ababa 1 shared issues

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Predictions For 2022

February 01, 2022 · Original source

YGLESIAS PREDICTIONS 1. Democrats lose both houses of Congress (90%) HOLD 2. Democrats lose at least two Senate seats (80%) HOLD 3. Democrats lose fewer than six Senate seats (80%) HOLD 4. Nancy Pelosi announces retirement plans (70%) HOLD 5. Stephen Breyer does not retire (60%) N/A 6. Some version of Build Back Better passes (60%) HOLD 7. Joe Biden is still president (90%) HOLD 8. At least one Biden cabinet-rank official resigns (70%) HOLD 9. No military conflict between the PRC and Taiwan (a worryingly low 90%) HOLD 10. New U.S. sanctions on Russia (70%) HOLD 11. Saudi Arabia and Israel establish diplomatic relations (60%) SELL to 50% 12. Fewer U.S. Covid deaths in 2022 than in 2021 (80%) BUY to 90% 13. Emmanuel Macron re-elected (60%) HOLD 14. Traffic light coalition exploits loopholes to get around the constitutional debt brake (70%) HOLD 15. No recession in 2021 (90%) SELL to 80% 16. Liz Cheney loses primary (80%) HOLD 17. Some version of USICA passes Congress (70%) HOLD 18. Lula elected president of Brazil (60%) SELL to 50% 19. China officially abandons Covid Zero (70%) HOLD 20. Fewer U.S. Covid-19 deaths in 2022 than in 2020 (80%) BUY to 90% 21. Additional booster shots of mRNA vaccines authorized for seniors (80%) HOLD 22. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is below 6% (70%) BUY to 80% 23. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is above 4% (70%) SELL to 50% 24. The Fed ends up doing more than its currently forecast three interest rate hikes (60%) HOLD 25. Russia does not invade Ukraine (60%) HOLD 26. Viktor Orbán loses power in Hungary (60%) HOLD 27. Sinn Fein becomes the largest party in the Northern Ireland assembly (60%) HOLD 28. The U.S. and Canada reach an agreement on softwood lumber (70%) HOLD 29. Democrats go down at least one governor on net (60%) HOLD 30. The unemployment rate stays between 4 and 5% (70%) SELL to 60% if you mean 12/22, to 40% if you mean it never gets outside that range at all

trance1 mentions across 1 issues

trance is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 09, 2025 and July 09, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Byrnes argues that “homunculus” vs. “trance” are two alternative bistable models for analyzing internal mental experience". It most often appears alongside AI Alignment, blind spot, Bronze Age.

Reference entry: trance
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 09, 2025
Last seen: July 09, 2025

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Practically-A-Book Review: Byrnes on Trance July 09, 2025

AI Alignment 1 shared issues
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Byrnes 1 shared issues
checker shadow illusion 1 shared issues

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Practically-A-Book Review: Byrnes on Trance

July 09, 2025 · Original source

Steven Byrnes is a physicist/AI researcher/amateur neuroscientist; needless to say, he blogs on Less Wrong. I finally got around to reading his 2024 series giving a predictive processing perspective on intuitive self-models. If that sounds boring, it shouldn’t: Byrnes charges head-on into some of the toughest subjects in psychology, including trance, amnesia, and multiple personalities. I found his perspective enlightening (no pun intended; meditation is another one of his topics) and thought I would share.

Inline links: his 2024 series giving a predictive processing perspective on intuitive self-models

…Byrnes calls it the “homunculus” (Latin: “little man”). The homunculus (“self”/”me”) is a useful tool for organizing internal experience. For example, if you have a seizure and your arm moves, you can say “I didn’t choose to move my arm - it just moved of its own accord!” (ie the homunculus isn’t doing the moving). If you have some kind of OCD or rumination disorder, you can say “I don’t want to keep having these thoughts about death, they just pop unbidden into my mind” (ie the homunculus isn’t doing the thinking). To actually analyze these situations would require a PhD in neuroscience, but we all understand the visceral experience of being stuck with thoughts that “we” don’t “want” and didn’t “cause”. Overall it’s very similar to the way I described natural intuitive “theory of mind” here: The mind is an imaginary space containing things like thoughts, emotions, and desires. I have mine and you have yours. I can see what’s inside my mind, but not what’s inside your mind, and vice versa. I mostly choose the things that are in my mind at any given time: I will thoughts to happen, and they happen; I will myself to make a decision, and it gets made. This needs a resource called willpower; if I don’t have enough willpower, sometimes the things that happen in my mind aren’t the ones I want. When important things happen, sometimes my mind gets strong emotions; this is natural, but I need to use lots of willpower to make sure I don’t get overwhelmed by them and make bad decisions. Byrnes makes this more concrete with a survey of homunculus beliefs across different cultures. We place the homunculus in the head, which happens to be correct (ie thoughts happen in the brain). But this is kind of a coincidence (or maybe downstream of knowing the real science); other cultures feel like the seat of consciousness is in the heart or the belly, and this feeling is about equally plausible and stable. Meditators say that with enough practice, they can imagine their consciousness being in their head, heart, belly, or outside their body entirely. This is a subtle point (are you starting to see why we went through all the excruciatingly obvious philosophical preliminaries?) There is, in fact, a brain that has thoughts, located in your head. And your visceral experience includes a term for a self that has thoughts and is located in your head. But they’re not exactly the same thing. The trivial differences don’t matter in ordinary cases. But in edge cases, they can get pretty weird. Trance And Spirit Possession Okay, now the fun stuff. Byrnes argues that “homunculus” vs. “trance” are two alternative bistable models for analyzing internal mental experience. The process of going into a trance (or being “possessed” by a spirit) is conceptually similar to the process of switching the dancer from clockwise to counterclockwise. The process goes: Start with a strong background belief that the new model is plausible.

Inline links: here

Gather evidence favoring the new model. First, start with a background belief that the new model is plausible. If you’re getting hypnotized, it helps to believe that hypnotism works. If you’re in a spirit possession ceremony, it helps to believe in spirits. Hypnotists and shamans should help this process along by being inherently believable - charismatic and confident, with lots of suggestive ritual that they perform correctly. Second, relax. When you were trying to switch the direction of the dancer, you probably did this naturally - let your eyes get slightly out of focus, concentrated on the task in front of you. Third, suppress all evidence favoring the old model. In the case of trance/possession, stop doing obvious voluntary actions. Watch a stage hypnotist show, and nobody is performing a running commentary: “Yeah, I’m focusing on the swinging pendulum . . . looks pretty normal . . . guess maybe I’m starting to feel sleepy . . . I wonder if this hypnotist is a fraud . . . “. They’re supposed to be quiet, immobile, and focus on the trance. Likewise, possession ceremonies often begin with hours of ritual dancing; by the end, it feels like your feet are moving of their own accord. Certainly you are not consciously choosing where to put your feet at each moment due to rational considerations. Fourth, gather evidence favoring the new model. A bistable percept that switches form based on context and evidence. When the context provides evidence for “H”, the middle letter is automatically processed as an “H”; when the context provides evidence for “A”, it is processed as “A”. In a typical stage hypnosis show, the hypnotist starts by making his subject watch a swinging pendulum (moving eyes back and forth tends to make people sleepy and exhaust their eye muscles). Then the hypnotist says “You are getting sleepy . . . your eyelids are getting heavy.” The subject is surprised! They are feeling unexpectedly sleepy! Their eyelids are getting unexpectedly heavy! It seems like the hypnotist is in control of their body! Then the hypnotist asks them to do something simple, like hold their arm out. Is this part of the induction process? The first hypnotic suggestion? Hard to tell - in either case, the subject moves their arm out. Then the hypnotist might say something like “Raise your arm”. It’s a reasonable request - and also, when the arm is in a sufficiently unstable position, sometimes just considering movement will cause it to move a little, even without the mental motion that would usually be considered “volition”. Again, it seems like the hypnotist is in control and has creepy mind powers! Then the hypnotist might ask the subject to do something simple, like jump. The hypnotist is a high-status person reputed to have creepy mind powers, giving a direct order. The audience is expecting the subject to jump. If the subject doesn’t jump, the show will be over and it will be awkward for everyone involved. So there are compelling reasons for the subject to jump, and no reason not to. The subject notices the amount of internal mental pressure that naturally corresponds to “there are compelling reasons to do this thing”. Why (they might unconsciously think to themselves) is there this mental pressure to jump? One answer is the story we just told - command from high-status person, not wanting to feel awkward, etc - but these are much more subtle and complicated than a simple alternative hypothesis - the hypnotist has creepy mind powers and is giving me a compulsion to jump. If all the previous steps have been completed correctly, there is a visceral flip in mental models, and the subject feels what was previously a working hypothesis as intuitive obvious ground truth - “I have lost control of my body and the hypnotist is puppeteering me”. Byrnes gets much of his information from the book Impro by Keith Johnstone, an acting coach who uses spirit possession techniques to get his students “possessed” by their characters. In one case, Johnstone uses a particularly memorable technique to provide his student with “evidence”. The student is to be possessed by a god. Johnstone sets them an ESP task: they must pick which of three cups has a coin under it. Unbeknownst to them, Johnstone puts coins under all three cups, so the student guesses right every time. This creates a background of suspended reality that probably makes the “possessed by a god” hypothesis feel very compelling! This flip itself reinforces the trance - my new evidence in favor of trance is not just background beliefs about possession, but the visceral feeling of losing control of my body, plus the undeniable fact that I just jumped when there was (seemingly) no reason to do so. The trance state is now a new attractor, not quite as strong as the old homunculus attractor (“I am in control of my mind” really does explain a lot, and has decades of experience/inertia behind it”), but strong enough to usually last for an hour-long hypnosis show without collapsing. I couldn’t find that much about this in Byrnes, but the model flip itself must go back and affect ground-truth reality. “Hypnotist is compelling me” provides evidence for “I follow the hypnotist’s orders”, and therefore makes me slightly more likely to do so. It also frees me from some common reasons I wouldn’t follow the hypnotist’s orders - it’s too embarrassing, it would never work, it’s ‘not the kind of person I am’. Maybe the hypnotist orders me to do a silly dance on stage, and normally I’m too dignified, but since “the hypnotist is compelling me”, it doesn’t threaten my dignity and I can get away with it. Byrnes also adds (we’ll see why later) a postulate that doesn’t really make sense to me on its own - something about the self-model assists in the formation of memory. Remembering “I did a silly dance on stage” is easier if there is an “I” concept active to “hang the memory” on. This could be related to the finding that people remember things better in the same context they learned it (eg you’ll do better on a test in the same classroom where you learned the material) or to the finding that emotions organize memory (eg when you’re angry at your spouse, it’s easy to remember all the times they’ve ever wronged you; when you’re happy with them, it’s easy to remember all the good times you’ve had together). “The self exists” is a pretty dramatic context cue, and maintaining memory between self-models is apparently a pretty tough task - hence the tendency for people to say they “don’t remember” what happened during a trance. From Trance To Everything Else Now we have the material we need to explain all sorts of weird mental phenomena: Dissociative Amnesia Someone with a desire that doesn’t make sense in the context of their normal personality eventually “flips” to an alternative personality that carries out the desire. When they recover, they have no memory of the incident. Dissociative Identity (IE Multiple Personality) If the homunculus-self is a mostly-accurate but not-directly-perceived-and-real model of mental processes, then a person whose mental processes often flip between two or more dramatically different states (for example, borderlines, who are notable for very strong emotional states and “splitting”) may gather evidence for and eventually flip to a model of themselves as multiple different homunculi. This is especially true if they’re primed with the suggestion that this is a likely way for the inside of their mind to be (for example, by a psychotherapist who believes in multiple personalities). Ego Death (EG On Ketamine) Remember, the ego (homunculus) is a model of mental processes. which says that thoughts arise in the brain because “I” “choose” to “have” thoughts, or actions happen because “I” “voluntarily” “make” the decisions. From a god’s eye view, outside of the homunculus model, we might picture a decision as looking like: A thought arises: “Maybe it would be a good idea to eat a taco”.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6MFL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F040b6231-12ef-42ca-a04d-8696b31616e1_1170x538.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qkp8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F849df106-9aef-446f-b05d-5e42afd966cf_1600x900.png, “splitting”

trans men1 mentions across 1 issues

trans men is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 16, 2023 and March 16, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "these conditions also seem elevated in trans men". It most often appears alongside ACX survey, ACX Survey, ACX Survey Results.

Reference entry: trans men
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 16, 2023
Last seen: March 16, 2023

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Why Do Transgender People Report Hypermobile Joints? March 16, 2023

ACX survey 1 shared issues
ACX Survey 1 shared issues
ACX Survey Results 1 shared issues
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Why Do Transgender People Report Hypermobile Joints?

March 16, 2023 · Original source

In contrast to this theory, trans women say they had them even before starting estrogen, and these conditions also seem elevated in trans men.

Trans Pride1 mentions across 1 issues

Trans Pride is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 07, 2023 and December 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "festooned with Trans Pride flags". It most often appears alongside 1700s, 1950s, 4chan.

Reference entry: Trans Pride
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 07, 2023
Last seen: December 07, 2023

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What Ever Happened To Neoreaction? December 07, 2023

1700s 1 shared issues
1950s 1 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
accelerationism 1 shared issues
Age of Trump 1 shared issues

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What Ever Happened To Neoreaction?

December 07, 2023 · Original source

Neoreaction fascinated a lot of people. Lots of people really hate tech, and the easiest way to hate something these days is to accuse it to being right wing. But this is an uphill battle when tech company employees lean 10-to-1 Democrat, and a quick walk through any Silicon Valley office will find it festooned with Trans Pride flags and BLM posters. The most popular solution was to talk about Peter Thiel a lot (now it’s Elon Musk). But you can only publish so many thinkpieces about the same guy before the public reaches semantic satiation on his name. Luckily for everyone, Curtis Yarvin was in tech and seemed to be inventing a new way of being far-right, so people were able to replace Thiel Article #26018 with something on neoreaction, and then people got excited enough about hating it that they started harassing random bloggers who were (I can’t stress this enough) technically against it.

trans women1 mentions across 1 issues

trans women is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 16, 2023 and March 16, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "trans women suddenly taking estrogen after a lifetime of not having estrogen". It most often appears alongside ACX survey, ACX Survey, ACX Survey Results.

Reference entry: trans women
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 16, 2023
Last seen: March 16, 2023

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Why Do Transgender People Report Hypermobile Joints? March 16, 2023

ACX survey 1 shared issues
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Why Do Transgender People Report Hypermobile Joints?

March 16, 2023 · Original source

2 ) Estrogen: Women have more EDS (and other joint disorders) than men. They also have looser joints in general. This is mostly because estrogen makes joints more mobile. Maybe there’s something about trans women suddenly taking estrogen after a lifetime of not having estrogen which causes joint problems (or just makes them notice the kinds of minor issues cis women deal with their whole lives).

In contrast to this theory, trans women say they had them even before starting estrogen, and these conditions also seem elevated in trans men.

Trans-Alaska pipeline1 mentions across 1 issues

Trans-Alaska pipeline is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2023 and June 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "to stop construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline". It most often appears alongside 1965, 1968 Summer Olympics, 2000 election.

Reference entry: Trans-Alaska pipeline
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 23, 2023
Last seen: June 23, 2023

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Your Book Review: Public Citizens June 23, 2023

1965 1 shared issues
1968 Summer Olympics 1 shared issues
2000 election 1 shared issues
2023 book review contest 1 shared issues
American Capitalism 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Public Citizens

June 23, 2023 · Original source

And those results were often spectacular. Like when the Nader-founded Center for Law and Social Policy sued to stop construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline under the new (and Nader-influenced) National Environmental Policy Act. CLASP, less than two years old when the lawsuit was filed, had only a dozen or so employees. And yet they managed to obtain an injunction that halted construction of the pipeline for several years. The world (or at least, the small part of it that paid attention to this sort of thing) was stunned. A tiny law firm that most people in DC hadn’t even heard of had, for the time being at least, stopped one of the largest and most ambitious engineering projects in American history.

transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics1 mentions across 1 issues

transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 26, 2025 and August 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "patches Darwinism using ideas from the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics". It most often appears alongside 4chan, ACX Grants, AI.

Reference entry: transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 26, 2025
Last seen: August 26, 2025

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In Search Of AI Psychosis August 26, 2025

4chan 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI Safety 1 shared issues
Assyrian cuneiform 1 shared issues

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In Search Of AI Psychosis

August 26, 2025 · Original source

I think now there might be several dozen subreddit moderators who could accurately describe their job as “witch webmaster who runs an online service giving advice to new witches”. And partly it was because there are so many crazy beliefs in the world - spirits, crystal healing, moon landing denial, esoteric Hitlerism, whichever religions you don’t believe in - that psychiatrists have instituted a blanket exemption for any widely held idea. If you think you’re being attacked by demons, you’re delusional, unless you’re from some culture where lots of people get attacked by demons, in which case it’s a religion and you’re fine. This is partly political self-protection - no psychiatrist wants to be the guy who commits an Afro-Caribbean person for believing in voodoo. But it also seems to track something useful about reality. Nietzsche wrote “Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” Most people don’t have world-models - they believe what their friends believe, or what has good epistemic vibes. In a large group, weird ideas can ricochet from person to person and get established even in healthy brains. In an Afro-Caribbean culture where all your friends get attacked by demons at voodoo church every Sunday, a belief in demon attacks can co-exist with otherwise being a totally functional individual. So is QAnon a religion? Awkward question, but it’s non-psychotic by definition. Still, it’s interesting, isn’t it? If social media makes a thousand people believe the same crazy thing, it’s not psychotic. If LLMs make a thousand people each believe a different crazy thing, that is psychotic. Is this a meaningful difference, or an accounting convention? Also, what if a thousand people believe something, but it’s you and your 999 ChatGPT instances? III. A Hidden Army Of Crackpots I have a family member who believes that the theory of evolution, as usually understood, cannot possibly work. He has developed an alternative theory called “noctogenesis” which patches Darwinism using ideas from the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, and he works on-and-off on various related books and papers. I have told him I suspect he might be a crackpot; he stands by his claims. It’s fine; when I got into the technological singularity and AI safety, lots of people suspected I was a crackpot, and I stood by my claims too. You’ve got to stand by your family members even when they’re slightly crackpottish. This family member is happily married, retired after running a successful business, and generally a normal likeable person. He has no signs of mental illness, and doesn’t talk about quantum evolution unless someone else brings it up first. There must be millions of people like him. Used car dealers with proofs of P = NP, dentists who think they’ve discovered something important about Mary Magdalene, math professors obsessed with destroying the moon. I’m working on evaluating ACX Grants, and these people are out in force. A few propose literal perpetual motion machines. Others have vaguer plans, like some kind of social media app (it’s always a social media app) that will cause world peace. Many of them have decent jobs and seem like upstanding members of society. Their secrets are known only to themselves, their family members, and their would-be grantmaker. …and, increasingly, their chatbots. After years of hiatus (or at least not talking to me about his work) my family member is back on the quantum evolution beat, and LLMs appear to be involved. If I knew him less well, I would think the LLM had caused the quantum evolution theory - but no, it just made it much easier to research and write about. Is this psychosis? The answer has to be no, but it’s once again hard to draw the line. A very small number of crackpots will be vindicated by history. A larger number will be erroneous but sympathetic - the official account of the Kennedy assassination is pretty weird, and reasonable minds can disagree. From there, we get to ones that are maybe not so sympathetic: flat earth, QAnon, the thing where the Queen was an alien lizard. If only one person thought the Queen was an alien lizard, and they never managed to convince anyone else, would that be sufficient evidence for a delusional disorder? I’m not sure. (psychiatry has a diagnosis, schizotypal personality, which sort of involves being a normal person with a few odd ideas, but it’s not a great match for many of these people, and interesting mainly as a genetic curiosity - it travels in the same families as schizophrenia itself) Maybe this is another place where we are forced to admit a spectrum model of psychiatric disorders - there is an unbroken continuum from mildly sad to suicidally depressed, from social drinking to raging alcoholism, and from eccentric to floridly psychotic. People who are eccentric can remain so their whole lives, with the level of expression depending on their social connections and the ease of pursuing their rabbit holes. LLMs, by making it easier to pursue odd theories and serving as a surrogate social connection who always agrees with you, can bring latent crackpottery into the open. IV. Cause And Effect Bipolar disorder has an interesting relationship with sleep. Most manic people sleep very little, or not at all - maybe an hour or two a night. But also, poor sleep can cause bipolar episodes in people prone to them. In a typical case, a bipolar who’s been well-controlled for years will get assigned a big report at work and get poor sleep for a few nights until they finish. At first, this will be just as bad as it sounds, and they’ll be working through a fog of tiredness. Then the tiredness will lift. They’ll feel normal, then better-than-normal, until finally they can’t sleep even if they want to. Then they’ll email the report to their boss and it will be written entirely in Assyrian cuneiform. I increasingly think this isn’t just an incidental feature of bipolar, but part of the reason it exists as a diagnostic category at all. Most people have a compensatory reaction to insomnia - missing one night of sleep makes you more tired the next. A small number of people have the reverse, a spiralling reaction where missing one night of sleep makes you less tired the next. Solve for the equilibrium and you reach a stable attractor point where you never sleep at all. But this does other bad things to your brain - hence the cuneiform. I’m not claiming that bipolar is “just” sleep loss. As Borsboom et al will tell you, psychiatric disorders can be viewed as complex networks of symptoms, each reinforcing the others. In a few pure cases, you can get a ratchet going with sleep alone, and the sleeplessness will spark everything else. More likely, there will be lots of interactions between poor sleep and everything else, and the “everything else” can sink or hypercharge an impending manic episode. Still, I find this a fruitful way to think about bipolar. Sleeplessness is both the cause and the effect. Can delusions also be like this? That is, suppose there’s some personality trait where having one delusion makes you even more delusional. Maybe the delusion makes you excited (who wouldn’t be excited to learn they’re the Messiah?), and you’re more delusional when you’re in an excited state and not thinking clearly. Or maybe it’s a three-symptom cycle - the delusion causes excitement, which makes you unable to sleep, which scrambles your thinking, which makes you more delusional (which makes you even less able to sleep, etc). The point is: delusions are certainly an effect of bipolar disorder. And in the dynamical system model of psychiatric disorders, we should expect that effects are often also causes; that’s how the vicious cycle gets going. This is the best I can do at modeling true LLM psychosis. Someone with a trait where delusions lead inevitably to more delusions starts using an LLM. The LLM accentuates whatever usual tendency towards crackpottery they have and makes them believe something a little crazier than whatever they believed before. Then that crazy belief feeds upon itself and causes other things like excitement and sleep loss, which (if the person is predisposed) precipitates a true psychotic episode. V. Folie A Deux Ex Machina If one person believes a crazy thing, it’s a delusion; if a thousand people believe it, it’s a religion. What if exactly two people believe it? In psychiatry, this is called folie a deux. It fits awkwardly into our nosology and is rarely seen. Still, it happens enough to generate a few case studies. In a typical case, one person has psychosis for some normal reason, like schizophrenia or bipolar, and the second person is a shut-in who lives with them and rarely talks to anyone else. The psychotic person gets some normal psychotic delusion - they’re God, the Feds are after them, etc - and sort of psychically steamrolls over the second person until they believe it too. Usually removing the second person from the first is sufficient for a cure. This slightly challenges the view of psychosis as a biological disorder - but only slightly. Again, think of most people as lacking world-models, but being moored to reality by some vague sense of social consensus. If your social life is limited to one person, and that person themselves becomes unmoored, then sometimes you will follow along. I would expect second-sufferers to believe delusions in a sort of cognitively normal way, the same way people believe true facts, honest mistakes, and conspiracy theories. I would expect them to be less likely (though not zero likely) to have other psychotic features like sleep disturbances, hallucinations, disorganized speech, or a tendency to autonomously generate delusional ideas aside from the one they absorbed from the index case. An introverted person using an LLM has some similarities to folie a deux. If they use the chatbot very often, it might be a large majority of their social interactions. Here the primary vs. secondary distinction breaks down - the most likely scenario is that the human first suggested the crazy idea, the machine reflected it back slightly stronger, and it kept ricocheting back and forth, gaining confidence with each iteration, until both were totally convinced. Compare this to normal social interactions, where if someone expresses a crazy idea that isn’t common in their culture, other people will shoot them down or at the very least nod politely and stop the conversation. So my working theory of LLM psychosis is: Some patients were already psychotic, and LLMs just help them be psychotic more effectively.

transclusions1 mentions across 1 issues

transclusions is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 19, 2025 and September 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Eventually, Nelson would give these embeddings a new name— 'transclusions'". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

Reference entry: transclusions
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 19, 2025
Last seen: September 19, 2025

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been September 19, 2025

1987 1 shared issues
1988 1 shared issues
Adleman 1 shared issues
AHIRC 1 shared issues
Andy van Dam 1 shared issues

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Your Review: Project Xanadu - The Internet That Might Have Been

September 19, 2025 · Original source

Self-referential, multimedia, creative, and fun—they were a blueprint for the internet he was building. In the Dream Machines half, Nelson writes, “The real dream is for ‘everything’ to be in the hypertext. Everything you read, you read from the screen (and can always get back to right away; everything you write, you write at the screen (and can cross-link to whatever you read).” In one section Nelson asks himself, “Can It Be Done?” His answer: “I dunno.” Remember, Xanadu wouldn’t only involve links between works—it required hyperlinks, which as Nelson understood them, would need to contain the targets in themselves. (Eventually, Nelson would give these embeddings a new name—“transclusions”—and hyperlink came to simply mean “link between hypertext files.”) Every link would run both ways, each hypertext file would know exactly which other files were linked to it and how. This introduced a few problems, in the new interconnected ARPANET age: How do you keep track? Where’s the metadata stored? Can you afford enough space for it all?

Eric Hill, a 15-year-old hacker and indicted felon, who “had been dismissed by the judge with admiration.” In Swarthmore, Nelson hoped his decades-old dream of Xanadu would finally materialize. 5. Developing Xanadu Ted Nelson had built Project Xanadu into, for lack of better terminology, a cult.8 He writes: We all were deeply concerned about the Bad Guys, who we saw as a combination of IBM and the government. (The others were all Libertarians, I still called myself a Cynical Socialist.) The Bad Guys would spy on people, withhold and block information, and give us inferior hypertext. We had to Do It Right, to help prevent this. This meant using the standard business defenses—especially non-disclosure agreements (I made all of them sign) and secret proprietary algorithms. The Xanadians had a messiah—Ted Nelson—a gospel—Computer Lib—a persecution complex, a fearful dystopia—“inferior hypertext”—a hopeful utopia—Xanadu—and utter secrecy. Just six dudes in a rented house near Philly, building the internet, hiding from the Feds, signing NDAs, and saving the world. Nelson spent a summer explaining the project to his team in its entirety. By the end, Gregory, Miller, and Greene were the only ones left. They told Nelson, “We’ll do it,” and moved to another suburb, where they finally began to work on an implementation of Xanadu. The three quickly figured out a new system that would allow users to reference and link to specific parts of a file—they called these links tumblers, and made them work with transfinite numbers. Suddenly, transclusions were really possible. But after only a few early successes, the team’s progress stalled completely. Greene and Miller were young and left for jobs elsewhere, and so Gregory was left working on Xanadu alone. Nelson, meanwhile, ran a magazine called Creative Computing for a while, then tried again to build his JOT word processor—this time for the Apple II—then spent a year in San Antonio pitching a watered-down version of Xanadu (rebranded as “Vortext”) to a tech company called Datapoint. Datapoint wasn’t buying, but kept Nelson on in some sort of fake, primitive email job anyway. Gregory kept working on Xanadu in Philadelphia, slowly running out of money. Ted Nelson held an “Ecstasy party” in San Antonio: “A number of us floated down the river on inner tubes. It was quite lovely.” In 1987, like he did every year, Roger Gregory went to The Hackers Conference in Saratoga to show off the latest unimpressive version of Xanadu. There, he met a man named John Walker—founder of the wildly successful Autodesk—and pitched the project to him. Incredibly, Walker was interested, and after tense negotiations with Nelson, agreed to fund Xanadu in earnest. Beginning in 1988, Autodesk poured millions of dollars into the project, and a programming team led by Gregory finally started to make real progress. Walker said of Xanadu: “In 1980, it was the shared goal of a small group of brilliant technologists. By 1989, it will be a product. And by 1995, it will begin to change the world.” Sweeping rhetoric—clear deadlines. The team came nowhere close to meeting them. Infighting broke out between two factions—while Gregory simply wanted to patch together his old C code, insisting his product “was within six months of shipping,” the whiz-kid Mark Miller came back from his new job at Xerox PARC, alongside a half-dozen of his closest friends, and insisted on a perfectionistic rewrite in a more flexible language, Smalltalk. The PARC faction began to drive Gregory up the wall. According to Nelson, it got to the point that he “was throwing things and acting crazy.” So Nelson called John Walker, the two “summoned Roger to meet [them] at John’s house at Muir Beach, and Walker told Roger he was no longer in charge.” Miller took over and began the rewrite in Smalltalk. Walker’s deadline came and went, and the team delivered nothing. Xanadu’s offices descended into chaos—Miller anointed two PARC programmers to be “co-architects,” and the three of them increasingly left the rest of the team out of the loop. For four years, Miller dawdled about, adding features, giving them clever names (files were “berts,” after Bertrand Russell, and so, for symmetry’s sake, royalty-generating transclusions became “ernies”), and never building them.9 Meanwhile, Ted Nelson was living on a houseboat, attending sex retreats and Keristan orgies, and giving talks in Singapore. He recorded a new soundtrack for his student film, the one from 1959. In 1992, Autodesk’s stock cratered, and they divested entirely from Xanadu. Miller lamented that his program was just six months from completion. Ted Nelson started a film studio to make a movie with Doug Engelbart, then left for Japan to get a PhD. Xanadu’s code was open-sourced in the late 90s. 6. The World Wide Web In March 1989, a British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN, wrote a proposal for a system unifying hypertext and the internet. It was ignored. In 1990, Berners-Lee resubmitted his proposal, it was accepted, and he began to work on the World Wide Web. The WWW had a number of advantages over Xanadu: It was much simpler—Ted Nelson wrote of it disparagingly: “Where were annotation and marginal notes? Where was version management? Where was rights management? Where were multi-ended links? Where were third-party links? Where were transclusions? This ‘World Wide Web’ was just a lame text format and a lot of connected directories.” As it turns out, it’s much easier to build a lame text format and a lot of connected directories!

Inline links: 8, 9, Keristan

It was much simpler—Ted Nelson wrote of it disparagingly: “Where were annotation and marginal notes? Where was version management? Where was rights management? Where were multi-ended links? Where were third-party links? Where were transclusions? This ‘World Wide Web’ was just a lame text format and a lot of connected directories.” As it turns out, it’s much easier to build a lame text format and a lot of connected directories!

Transcontinental Railroad1 mentions across 1 issues

Transcontinental Railroad is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 18, 2024 and July 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "America created a 3000 mile Rockies-crossing Transcontinental Railroad in f**king 1869"; "Rockies-crossing Transcontinental Railroad in...1869". It most often appears alongside Access Pass, Africa, America.

Reference entry: Transcontinental Railroad
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 18, 2024
Last seen: July 18, 2024

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Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People July 18, 2024

Access Pass 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
antipsychotics 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People

July 18, 2024 · Original source

Or consider high-speed rail. A decade or two ago, California voted to construct a world-class high-speed rail system linking the whole state. Conservatives warned this would be a horrible boondoggle. But cheap, high-quality high-speed rail is definitely doable. Japan does it! France does it! America created a 3000 mile Rockies-crossing Transcontinental Railroad in f**king 1869, don’t tell me we can’t do rail! You’re just a defeatist who thinks we can’t do things other countries do easily.

transformative AI1 mentions across 1 issues

transformative AI is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 23, 2022 and February 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The report finds a 10% chance of “transformative AI” by 2031". It most often appears alongside AGI, AI Impacts, AIXI.

Reference entry: transformative AI
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 23, 2022
Last seen: February 23, 2022

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Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work February 23, 2022

AGI 1 shared issues
AI Impacts 1 shared issues
AIXI 1 shared issues
Ajeya 1 shared issues
Ajeya Cotra 1 shared issues

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Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work

February 23, 2022 · Original source

The Open Philanthropy Project ("Open Phil") is a big effective altruist foundation interested in funding AI safety. It's got $20 billion, probably the majority of money in the field, so its decisions matter a lot and it’s very invested in getting things right. In 2020, it asked senior researcher Ajeya Cotra to produce a report on when human-level AI would arrive. It says the resulting document is "informal" - but it’s 169 pages long and likely to affect millions of dollars in funding, which some might describe as making it kind of formal. The report finds a 10% chance of “transformative AI” by 2031, a 50% chance by 2052, and an almost 80% chance by 2100.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy Project, https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/15ArhEPZSTYU8f012bs6ehPS6-xmhtBPP

The report asks when will we first get "transformative AI" (ie AI which produces a transition as impressive as the Industrial Revolution; probably this will require it to be about as smart as humans). Its methodology is:

And we didn't have some clear candidate for a better metric with similar properties (as I think we do in the case of computations, since the main thing I'd expect increased power usage to be useful for is increased computation); ...Then I would be interested in a Bio Anchors-style analysis of projected power usage. As noted above, I would be interested in this as a tool for analysis rather than as "the way to get my probability distribution." That's also how I'm interested in Bio Anchors (and how it presents itself). Second, the argument that paradigm shifts might speed up AI: I think it's a distinct possibility that we're going to see dramatically new approaches to AI development by the time transformative AI is developed. On the other, I think quotes like this overstate the likelihood in the short-to-medium term. Deep learning has been the dominant source of AI breakthroughs for nearly the last decade, and the broader "neural networks" paradigm - while it has come in and out of fashion - has broadly been one of the most-attended-to "contenders" throughout the history of AI research.

Inline links: nearly the last decade

Transformer1 mentions across 1 issues

Transformer is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 23, 2022 and February 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Train a pre-Transformer RNN/CNN-based model"; "see the LSTM versus transformer graphs". It most often appears alongside AGI, AI Impacts, AIXI.

Reference entry: Transformer
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 23, 2022
Last seen: February 23, 2022

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Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work February 23, 2022

AGI 1 shared issues
AI Impacts 1 shared issues
AIXI 1 shared issues
Ajeya 1 shared issues
Ajeya Cotra 1 shared issues

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Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work

February 23, 2022 · Original source

Train a pre-Transformer RNN/CNN-based model, not using any other techniques invented after 2017, to GPT-2 levels of performance, using only around 2x as much compute as GPT-2;

Therefore, one of primary impact of new algorithms is to enable performance to continue scaling with compute the same way it did when you had smaller amounts. In this model, it makes sense to think of the "contribution" of new algorithms as the factor they enable more efficient conversion of compute to performance and count the increased performance because the new algorithms can absorb more compute as primarily hardware progress. I think the studies that Carl cites above are decent evidence that the multiplicative factor of compute -> performance conversion you get from new algorithms is smaller than the historical growth in compute, so it further makes sense to claim that most progress came from compute, even though the algorithms were what "unlocked" the compute. For an example of something I consider supports this model, see the LSTM versus transformer graphs in https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361.pdf I also found Vanessa’s summary of this reply helpful: Hmm... Interesting. So, this model says that algorithmic innovation is so fast that it is not much of a bottleneck: we always manage to find the best algorithm for given compute relatively quickly after this compute becomes available. Moreover, there is some smooth relation between compute and performance assuming the best algorithm for this level of compute. [EDIT: The latter part seems really suspicious though, why would this relation persist across very different algorithms?] Or at least this is true is "best algorithm" is interpreted to mean "best algorithm out of some wide class of algorithms s.t. we never or almost never managed to discover any algorithm outside of this class". This can justify biological anchors as upper bounds[1]: if biology is operating using the best algorithm then we will match its performance when we reach the same level of compute, whereas if biology is operating using a suboptimal algorithm then we will match its performance earlier. Charlie Steiner objects: Which examples are you thinking of? Modern Stockfish outperformed historical chess engines even when using the same resources, until far enough in the past that computers didn't have enough RAM to load it. I definitely agree with your original-comment points about the general informativeness of hardware, and absolutely software is adapting to fit our current hardware. But this can all be true even if advances in software can make more than 20 orders of magnitude difference in what hardware is needed for AGI, and are much less predictable than advances in hardware rather than being adaptations in lockstep with it. And Paul Christiano responds: Here are the graphs from Hippke (he or I should publish summary at some point, sorry). I wanted to compare Fritz (which won WCCC in 1995) to a modern engine to understand the effects of hardware and software performance. I think the time controls for that tournament are similar to SF STC I think. I wanted to compare to SF8 rather than one of the NNUE engines to isolate out the effect of compute at development time and just look at test-time compute. So having modern algorithms would have let you win WCCC while spending about 50x less on compute than the winner. Having modern computer hardware would have let you win WCCC spending way more than 1000x less on compute than the winner. Measured this way software progress seems to be several times less important than hardware progress despite much faster scale-up of investment in software. But instead of asking "how well does hardware/software progress help you get to 1995 performance?" you could ask "how well does hardware/software progress get you to 2015 performance?" and on that metric it looks like software progress is way more important because you basically just can't scale old algorithms up to modern performance. The relevant measure varies depending on what you are asking. But from the perspective of takeoff speeds, it seems to me like one very salient takeaway is: if one chess project had literally come back in time with 20 years of chess progress, it would have allowed them to spend 50x less on compute than the leader. Response 2: AI Impacts + Matthew Barnett AI Impacts gathered and analyzed a dataset of who predicted AI when; Matthew Barnett helpfully drew in the line corresponding to Platt’s Law (everyone always predicts AI in thirty years). Just eyeballing it, Platt’s Law looks pretty good. But Holden Karnofsky (see below) objects that our eyeballs are covertly removing outliers. Barnett agrees this is worth checking for and runs a formal OLS regression. Platt’s Law in blue, regression line in orange. He writes: I agree this trendline doesn't look great for Platt's law, and backs up your observation by predicting that Bio Anchors should be more than 30 years out. However, OLS is notoriously sensitive to outliers. If instead of using some more robust regression algorithm, we instead super arbitrarily eliminated all predictions after 2100, then we get this, which doesn't look absolutely horrible for the law. Note that the median forecast is 25 years out. I’m split on what to think here. If we consider a weaker version of Platt’s Law, “the average date at which people forecast AGI moves forward at about one year per year”, this seems truish in the big picture where we compare 1960 to today, but not obviously true after 1980. If we consider a different weaker version, “on average estimates tend to be 30 years away”, that’s true-ish under Barnett’s revised model, but not inherently damning since Barnett’s assuming there will be some such number, it turns out to be 25, and Ajeya gave the somewhat different number of 32. Is that a big enough difference to exonerate her of “using” Platt’s Law? Is that even the right way to be thinking about this question? Response 3: Real OpenPhil The hypothetical OpenPhil in Eliezer’s mind having been utterly vanquished, the real-world OpenPhil is forced to step in. OpenPhil CEO Holden Karnofsky responds to Eliezer here. There’s a lot of back and forth about whether the report includes enough caveats (answer: it sure does include a lot of caveats!) but I was most interested in the attacks on Eliezer’s two main points. First, the point that biological anchors are fatally flawed from the start and measuring FLOP/S is no better than measuring power consumption in watts. Holden: If the world were such that: We had some reasonable framework for "power usage" that didn't include gratuitously wasted power, and measured the "power used meaningfully to do computations" in some important sense;

Inline links: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08361.pdf, Vanessa’s summary, [1], Charlie Steiner, Modern Stockfish outperformed historical chess engines even when using the same resources, Paul Christiano, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S8Yc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F96ae0981-cc53-4013-9eea-1d29d75f06ca_1456x1038.png, AI Impacts, Matthew Barnett, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!17-W!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa751f624-0392-4610-8a93-7bb94a60d1b3_1182x778.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!54Vh!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1c354075-ecaa-4807-a1a5-07931736f093_403x268.png, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dw02!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F797aef17-dc24-4845-9e00-2c3fd7f7dc32_403x268.png, here

transformers1 mentions across 1 issues

transformers is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 20, 2025 and November 20, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as ""LLMs/transformers - the near-hegemonic AI architecture behind leading AIs like GPT, Claude, and Gemini - don’t do this."". It most often appears alongside AI consciousness, AlphaGo, Anthropic.

Reference entry: transformers
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 20, 2025
Last seen: November 20, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

The New AI Consciousness Paper November 20, 2025

AI consciousness 1 shared issues
AlphaGo 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues
David Chalmers 1 shared issues

Source context

The New AI Consciousness Paper

November 20, 2025 · Original source

Suppose your favorite form of “something something feedback” is Recurrent Processing Theory: in order to be conscious, AIs would need to feed back high-level representations into the simple circuits that generate them. LLMs/transformers - the near-hegemonic AI architecture behind leading AIs like GPT, Claude, and Gemini - don’t do this. They are purely feedforward processors, even though they sort of “simulate” feedback when they view their token output stream.

Transformers Universe1 mentions across 1 issues

Transformers Universe is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: Transformers Universe
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics August 16, 2024

20th Century Fox 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abomination 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Action Comics 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis

August 16, 2024 · Original source

...sh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “ Dark Universe ” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked . Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their a...

...for a fresh attempt next year. Universal’s attempt at a “ Dark Universe ” kicked off with Tom Cruise in The Mummy (2017), but was dead on arrival. Paramount’s attempt to link the Transformers Universe to GI Joe at the end of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has been appropriately mocked . Sony’s Spider-man films linked to the MCU have been very successful, but their attempt at...

transgender1 mentions across 1 issues

transgender is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 26, 2022 and April 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "transgender is a psychosis in the Lacanian sense". It most often appears alongside A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis, aphantasis, Astralcodexten Com.

Reference entry: transgender
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 26, 2022
Last seen: April 26, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis April 26, 2022

A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian Psychoanalysis 1 shared issues
aphantasis 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Ayn Rand 1 shared issues
Bored Ape NFTs 1 shared issues

Source context

April 26, 2022 · Original source

After discussing some of this, Fink ends with a warning: now that there are more single mothers, and the few remaining fathers are getting less strict, we are risking an explosion in psychosis cases. This is pretty funny, insofar as the 20 years since Fink published have been boom times for perversion and neurosis, but the psychosis rate hasn’t budged. I expect that if I made this point to him, Fink would argue that my puny DSM-trained intuition totally misses that psychosis is a Lacanian personality structure which can’t possibly be measured in something as superficial as symptoms. Or maybe he’d refer back to the claim that transgender is a psychosis in the Lacanian sense and so the rise in that counts as fulfillment of his prophecy.

transgender protection groups1 mentions across 1 issues

transgender protection groups is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 17, 2024 and December 17, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "gave specifically to ... transgender protection groups". It most often appears alongside 2016 US Presidential election, ACX Grant, AI.

Reference entry: transgender protection groups
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 17, 2024
Last seen: December 17, 2024

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Issue trail

Links For December 2024 December 17, 2024

2016 US Presidential election 1 shared issues
ACX Grant 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI Art Turing Test 1 shared issues
Aleister Crowley 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For December 2024

December 17, 2024 · Original source

49: There’s been a Twitter spat over effective altruism. Back in 2019, Peter Singer published an article saying that rich donors gave $1 billion to rebuild Notre Dame after a fire, but that could have saved ~285,000 lives and maybe donors should take that equally seriously. This month, the NYT used “effective altruists are against restoring Notre Dame” as a jumping-off point for its real complaint (it would rather we have "a philanthropy network that gave specifically to social justice movements . . . racial justice groups, climate justice groups and transgender protection groups"). There were several good responses, most notably Dylan Matthews’.

Inline links: Dylan Matthews’

Transparency1 mentions across 1 issues

Transparency is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 02, 2021 and August 02, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Transparency, involving records of government actions on the blockchain". It most often appears alongside AgroAlpha, Alex Tabarrok, Amazon.

Reference entry: Transparency
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 02, 2021
Last seen: August 02, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

21 August 02, 2021

AgroAlpha 1 shared issues
Alex Tabarrok 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
BBC 1 shared issues
Bible 1 shared issues

Source context

August 02, 2021 · Original source

Transparency, involving records of government actions on the blockchain.

trematodes1 mentions across 1 issues

trematodes is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2021 and November 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "nematodes, trematodes, all sorts of worms". It most often appears alongside ACE-2 receptor, ACSH, Ahmed et al.

Reference entry: trematodes
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2021
Last seen: November 17, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know November 17, 2021

ACE-2 receptor 1 shared issues
ACSH 1 shared issues
Ahmed et al 1 shared issues
Alexandros Marinos 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues

Source context

Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

November 17, 2021 · Original source

Here’s the prevalence of roundworm infections by country (source). But alongside roundworms, there are threadworms, hookworms, blood flukes, liver flukes, nematodes, trematodes, all sorts of worms. Add them all up and somewhere between half and a quarter of people in the developing world have at least one parasitic worm in their body. Being full of worms may impact your ability to fight coronavirus. Gluchowska et al write: Helminth [ie worm] infections are among the most common infectious diseases. Bradbury et al. highlight the possible negative interactions between helminth infection and COVID-19 severity in helminth-endemic regions and note that alterations in the gut microbiome associated with helminth infection appear to have systemic immunomodulatory effects. It has also been proposed that helminth co-infection may increase the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, because the immune system cannot efficiently respond to the virus; in addition, vaccines will be less effective for these patients, but treatment and prevention of helminth infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19. During millennia of parasite-host coevolution helminths evolved mechanisms suppressing the host immune responses, which may mitigate vaccine efficacy and increase severity of other infectious diseases. Treatment of worm infections might reduce the negative effect of COVID-19! And ivermectin is a deworming drug! You can see where this is going… The most relevant species of worm here is the roundworm Strongyloides stercoralis. Among the commonest treatments for COVID-19 is corticosteroids, a type of immunosuppresant drug. The types of immune responses it suppresses do more harm than good in coronavirus, so turning them off limits collateral damage and makes patients better on net. But these are also the types of immune responses that control Strongyloides. If you turn them off even very briefly, the worms multiply out of control, you get what’s called “Strongyloides hyperinfection”, and pretty often you die. According to the WHO: The current COVID-19 pandemic serves to highlight the risk of using systemic corticosteroids and, to a lesser extent, other immunosuppressive therapy, in populations with significant risk of underlying strongyloidiasis. Cases of strongyloidiasis hyperinfection in the setting of corticosteroid use as COVID-19 therapy have been described and draw attention to the necessity of addressing the risk of iatrogenic strongyloidiasis hyperinfection syndrome in infected individuals prior to corticosteroid administration. Although this has gained importance in the midst of a pandemic where corticosteroids are one of few therapies shown to improve mortality, its relevance is much broader given that corticosteroids and other immunosuppressive therapies have become increasingly common in treatment of chronic diseases (e.g. asthma or certain rheumatologic conditions). So you need to “address the risk” of strongyloides infection during COVID treatment in roundworm-endemic areas. And how might you address this, WHO? Treatment of chronic strongyloidiasis with ivermectin 200 µg/kg per day orally x 1-2 days is considered safe with potential contraindications including possible Loa loa infection (endemic in West and Central Africa), pregnancy, and weight <15kg. Given ivermectin’s safety profile, the United States has utilized presumptive treatment with ivermectin for strongyloidiasis in refugees resettling from endemic areas, and both Canada and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control have issued guidance on presumptive treatment to avoid hyperinfection in at risk populations. Screening and treatment, or where not available, addition of ivermectin to mass drug administration programs should be studied and considered. This is serious and common enough that, if you’re not going to screen for it, it might be worth “add[ing] ivermectin to mass drug administration programs” in affected areas! Dr. Avi Bitterman carries the hypothesis to the finish line: First two images are with all relevant studies; second two are a sensitivity analysis that removes some of the most dubious. The good ivermectin trials in areas with low Strongyloides prevalence, like Vallejos in Argentina, are mostly negative. The good ivermectin trials in areas with high Strongyloides prevalence, like Mahmud in Bangladesh, are mostly positive. Worms can’t explain the viral positivity outcomes (ie PCR), but Dr. Bitterman suggests that once you remove low quality trials and worm-related results, the rest looks like simple publication bias: This is still just a possibility. Maybe I’m over-focusing too hard on a couple positive results and this will all turn out to be nothing. Or who knows, maybe ivermectin does work against COVID a little - although it would have to be very little, fading to not at all in temperate worm-free countries. But this theory feels right to me. It feels right to me because it’s the most troll-ish possible solution. Everybody was wrong! The people who called it a miracle drug against COVID were wrong. The people who dismissed all the studies because they F@#king Love Science were wrong. Ivmmeta.com was wrong. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz was…well, he was right, actually, I got the worm-related meta-analysis graphic above from his Twitter timeline. Still, an excellent troll. Also, the best part is that I ignorantly asked, in my description of Mahmud et al above: And it was! It was a fluke! A literal, physical, fluke! For my whole life, God has been placing terrible puns in my path to irritate me, and this would be the worst one ever! So it has to be true! The Scientific Takeaway About ten years ago, when the replication crisis started, we learned a certain set of tools for examining studies. Check for selection bias. Distrust “adjusting for confounders”. Check for p-hacking and forking paths. Make teams preregister their analyses. Do forest plots to find publication bias. Stop accepting p-values of 0.049. Wait for replications. Trust reviews and meta-analyses, instead of individual small studies. These were good tools. Having them was infinitely better than not having them. But even in 2014, I was writing about how many bad studies seemed to slip through the cracks even when we pushed this toolbox to its limits. We needed new tools. I think the methods that Meyerowitz-Katz, Sheldrake, Heathers, Brown, Lawrence and others brought to the limelight this year are some of the new tools we were waiting for. Part of this new toolset is to check for fraud. About 10 - 15% of the seemingly-good studies on ivermectin ended up extremely suspicious for fraud. Elgazzar, Carvallo, Niaee, Cadegiani, Samaha. There are ways to check for this even when you don’t have the raw data. Like: The Carlisle-Stouffer-Fisher method: Check some large group of comparisons, usually the Table 1 of an RCT where they compare the demographic characteristics of the control and experimental groups, for reasonable p-values. Real data will have p-values all over the map; one in every ten comparisons will have a p-value of 0.1 or less. Fakers seem bad at this and usually give everything a nice safe p-value like 0.8 or 0.9.

Trenta1 mentions across 1 issues

Trenta is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "They're on their 6th prototype, Trenta". It most often appears alongside Alcator C-Mod, Apollo Program, ARC.

Reference entry: Trenta
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2022
Last seen: June 17, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy June 17, 2022

Alcator C-Mod 1 shared issues
Apollo Program 1 shared issues
ARC 1 shared issues
ASDEX 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

Source context

ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates

June 17, 2022 · Original source

Marvel gets fusion by 2035 (30%). Honorable Mention: Helion Helion is the most serious of the previous generation of fusion startups that I dismissed above. They are using an entirely different strategy from the rest of the fusion community. It is closer to Magnetic Confinement Fusion, but it does occur in discrete shots. There isn't anything obviously wrong with it, but they can't build on the progress of Figure 3. Instead, they're working on their own experimental program. They're on their 6th prototype, Trenta. It is a small experiment which can do 1 shot every 10 minutes. Their next experiment, Polaris, should be a medium experiment which can do 1 shot/second. They claim that it will get fusion by 2024. One good thing about Helion is that they have a more efficient way of directly converting the energy in the plasma into electricity. One bad thing is that they claim to be using helium-3 as a fuel. This is harder than D-T fusion [23] and it doesn't fully represent what they're planning. Their entire fuel cycle involves 50% D-D fusion, 25% D-T fusion, and 25% D-He3 fusion. Helion is also notable because they've gotten more private funding than any company other than Commonwealth Fusion Systems. I'm more skeptical. At least it seems unlikely that they will get fusion on their first medium experiment, especially since that requires improvements of multiple orders of magnitude in both triple product and shot frequency. They should expect to design an 8th experiment based on what they learn from Polaris. Helion gets fusion by 2025 (5%) or 2030 (20%).

Trichuris trichiura1 mentions across 1 issues

Trichuris trichiura is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 18, 2025 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Trichuris trichiura - Funded by NIH and conducted in the Peruvian Amazon". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: Trichuris trichiura
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 18, 2025
Last seen: June 18, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates June 18, 2025

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
Aatu Koskensilta 1 shared issues
acanthamoeba keratitis 1 shared issues
ACS ES&T Water 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

June 18, 2025 · Original source

Trichuris trichiura - Funded by NIH and conducted in the Peruvian Amazon by the Peruvian nonprofit Asociación Benéfica PRISMA, this field trial is the first clinical study of oxfendazole’s efficacy in human patients. This clinical trial has been live since the fall of 2024. ODG is a collaborator in this study and will have full access to the study results to support the development of oxfendazole. (NCT04713787)

tricyclics1 mentions across 1 issues

tricyclics is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 06, 2024 and September 06, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "SSRIs were ascendant (and to a lesser extent tricyclics)". It most often appears alongside #MeToo, 21st century political dogmatism, Advanced Tax.

Reference entry: tricyclics
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 06, 2024
Last seen: September 06, 2024

Outbound links

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Pale King September 06, 2024

#MeToo 1 shared issues
21st century political dogmatism 1 shared issues
Advanced Tax 1 shared issues
Anand Singh 1 shared issues
Ann Williams 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: The Pale King

September 06, 2024 · Original source

By then MAOIs were on the way out, and SSRIs were ascendant (and to a lesser extent tricyclics). If we’re really going to get into the weeds, and this is a DFW essay so why not, we might focus in on the fact that MAOIs got ditched not because of their efficacy, but because of side effects: MAOIs work better for many forms of depression than SSRIs. I haven’t found any studies comparing the effects of MAOIs and SSRIs on creativity, but one might speculate that SSRIs, which leave many users complain of creative dysfunction, and which reduce serotonin reuptake in particular parts of the brain, might in a sense bind the brain more tightly than the looser MAOIs, which produce a more global increase across a richer buffet of monoamines. But that’s just speculation.

Inline links: MAOIs work better for many forms of depression than SSRIs

trigger warning1 mentions across 1 issues

trigger warning is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "now recommends students not use the term 'trigger warning'". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

Reference entry: trigger warning
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 20, 2021
Last seen: September 20, 2021

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Issue trail

Links For September September 20, 2021

4chan 1 shared issues
A Clockwork Orange 1 shared issues
Adrenochrome 1 shared issues
Andrew Gelman 1 shared issues
ArrangedMarriages.co 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: The Astral Codex Ten Commentariat (“Why Do We Suck?”)

September 20, 2021 · Original source

7: Not sure if this counts as “the left is eating itself”, but the (unofficial) Brandeis Suggested Language List now recommends students not use the term “trigger warning” because it is “violent language”.

Inline links: Brandeis Suggested Language List

trigger warnings1 mentions across 1 issues

trigger warnings is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 26, 2025 and July 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Scott who would write thoughtful takes on concepts like trigger warnings". It most often appears alongside 4chan, ACX, ACX.

Reference entry: trigger warnings
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 26, 2025
Last seen: July 26, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Review: The Astral Codex Ten Commentariat (“Why Do We Suck?”) July 26, 2025

4chan 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Commentariat 1 shared issues
ACX-era 1 shared issues

Source context

July 26, 2025 · Original source

So this theory says something like: the Commentariat was uniquely well suited to discussing Culture War issues in 2016. These largely revolved around gender debates – men vs women, creeps and niceguys etc. The Commentariat developed very virtuous norms around Culture War issues, which was self-reinforcing as SSC developed a reputation as a place you could come to have interesting and nuanced discussion about Culture Wars topics. This virtuous Commentariat was fuelled by Scott, who would write thoughtful takes on concepts like trigger warnings, rape culture, harassment, etc, and who set the standard for what this sort of debate could look like.

Inline links: trigger warnings, rape culture, harassment, etc

trimorbidity1 mentions across 1 issues

trimorbidity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "suffered from “trimorbidity”—a combination of medical illness, mental illness, and substance abuse". It most often appears alongside 1978, 2016 essay, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs.

Reference entry: trimorbidity
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 23, 2022
Last seen: June 23, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022

1978 1 shared issues
2016 essay 1 shared issues
A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs 1 shared issues
Abbott 1 shared issues
Abstracted Will Of The American People 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day

June 23, 2022 · Original source

Continuing from San Fransicko: There is evidence that privacy and solitude created by Housing First make substance abuse worse. A study in Ottawa found that, while the Housing First group kept people in housing longer, the comparison group saw greater reductions in alcohol consumption and problematic drug use, and greater improvements to mental health, after two years. “One reason for the surprising results,” wrote the authors, “may be that aspects of the Housing First intervention, such as the privacy afforded by Housing First and harm reduction approach, might result in slower improvements around substance use and mental health.” Okay, but the next sentence after the one the book quoted was the researchers admitting that oops, we also totally forgot to randomize our groups in any way, so the experimental and control groups had totally different levels of severity and maybe that was why they found this weird thing (this is non-obvious, because we’re looking at change over time rather than raw differences between groups, but the authors discuss some reasons why different groups might change differently over time). A few years later these same researchers did a proper randomized study and it found no difference in drug use between the two groups. Somers, Moniruzzaman and Palepu found no difference in drug use between Housing First and other subjects. Padgett et al found the Housing First group actually did better, although they are another victim of the epidemic of randomization failures in this space. Kirst et al, no difference in drug use, but Housing First better with alcohol. Milby found that housing contigent on abstinence worked better than housing not contigent on abstinence, which Shellenberger could have used to support his thesis, but even Milby found that housing not contingent on abstinence worked better than no housing! To summarize: I can find seven studies on this topic, only one of them agrees with San Fransicko’s thesis, and the authors admit that it’s weak. I accuse San Fransicko of citing only that one and pretending all the others don’t exist. (actually, I accuse it of doing that plus citing a line from a review claiming another study found this, but as far as I can tell that study did not actually find it) This is extra annoying, because all the popular news articles on Housing First gush about how it definitely decreases substance use and everything else bad. Shellenberger could have made the excellent point that all of these progressive journalists were totally wrong! This would have been an interesting, important, and completely true act of virtuous data journalism! Instead he tries to hold up a lonely negative result as representative, and ends up just as wrong but in the opposite direction. Continuing in San Fransicko: Researchers have found ways to use housing to reduce addiction. Between 1990 and 2006, researchers in Birmingham, Alabama, conducted clinical trials of abstinence-contingent housing with 644 homeless people with crack cocaine addictions. Two-thirds of participants remained abstinent after six months, a very high rate of abstinence, compared to other treatment programs. Other studies found that around 40 percent of homeless in abstinence-contingent housing maintained their abstinence, housing, and jobs. In a randomized controlled trial, homeless people were given furnished apartments and allowed to keep them unless they failed a drug test, at which point they were sent to stay in a shelter. Sixty-five percent of participants completed the program. Three similar randomized controlled trials also found moderate to high rates of completion. And participants in abstinence-contingent housing had better housing and employment outcomes than participants assigned housing for whom abstinence was not required. All of this seems basically true. It turns out that over longer periods of time, Housing First may not even outperform contingency in terms of keeping people housed. In the spring of 2021, a team of Harvard medical experts published the results of a fourteen-year-long study of chronic homeless placed into permanent supportive housing in Boston. Most studies of permanent supportive housing, including the Kushel study conducted in Santa Clara, only study the newly housed homeless for a span of around two years. The study found that 86 percent of the homeless, who were referred based on length of time living on the streets, suffered from “trimorbidity”—a combination of medical illness, mental illness, and substance abuse. The authors found that after ten years, just 12 percent of the homeless remained housed. During the study period, 45 percent died. The authors concluded that, because the chronically homeless had such higher rates of physical and mental illness, “the supportive services, essential to the PSH model, may not have been sufficient to address the needs of this unsheltered population.” This study was done on an especially severe subgroup of homeless people. There was no control group, so Shellenberger shouldn’t claim we have any evidence about whether Housing First can “outperform contingency”. Shellenberger counts people who died as “unhoused” to get his 12% number; if he didn’t do this, the number would be 23%. Only 23% of people given housing retained after ten years sounds bad. But you could change this number to whatever number you wanted by changing the severity of the subgroup selected for the study. Select people who are even crazier and more disturbed than these people, and you can have 0% retained after ten years; select high-functioning people with no problems, and you can get 100% retained after ten years. (or maybe not - the study doesn’t say why people left the program. It mentions that one possible outcome is having to go to a nursing home because they had grown too sick or old to support themselves. I am not sure that “23% stay in this program” means “77% are back on the street and all their care has been a total failure”.) Conclusion: Housing First seems to work in getting people housing. It probably also helps people use fewer medical services, and it might or might not save money compared to not doing it (probably more likely when treating very severe cases, less likely in areas with high housing costs). It probably doesn’t affect people’s overall health or drug use status very much. San Fransicko is right to call out all the people promoting it beyond what the evidence supports, but then goes on to attack it beyond what the evidence supports. Interlude: Why Can’t We Just House All The Homeless? This is the question many of the California gubernatorial candidates asked. California has lots of money. There aren’t that many homeless people. Everyone is already committed to Housing First. So why don’t they have houses already? San Francisco has about 7,000 homeless people. The median SF apartment costs about $3,000 per month (presumably the government officials in charge would be trying to buy cheaper-than-median apartments for this project, but they seem bad at that, so let’s stick with median as a high-end estimate). So that’s $250 million/year to rent every homeless person an apartment. San Francisco has a $14 billion budget, although some of that is locked in nondiscretionary programs. So this effort would take about 2-3% of the city budget. Given how many people have both altruistic and selfish objections to the current level of SF homelessness, I can’t imagine that isn’t a better use of the money than whatever it’s being spent on now. So why hasn’t this happened? The closest thing I can find to the “rent apartments” plan is Governor Newsom’s “rent hotel rooms” plan, Project Roomkey. This was a short-term pandemic program. This article says it cost $4,000 per month, which seems reasonable - it provided residents with a hotel room, meals, security, and “custodial services” for just above a hundred dollars a day. So how come nobody has made it permanent or scaled it up? The homeless themselves don’t seem very positive on the project. They talk about “jail”-like conditions, including curfews and bans on visitors. I don’t know if this is the usual nanny-state-ism, or an attempt to reassure hotel owners / other residents / local communities that the influx of homeless people won’t cause them problems. If the latter, it hasn’t worked. From here: Jenna Abbott, executive director of the River District Business Association, said having a Roomkey motel in her neighborhood has been difficult. The site — which is in an area with large number of unhoused people — has drawn family and friends of Roomkey residents who haven’t been housed but “camp close to that hotel,” some with the goal of gaining a room, Abbott said. That’s led to more loitering, public drunkenness and trash outside the restaurants, gas stations and other businesses in the area, she added. And here’s another article about people objecting to local hotels accepting homeless people, which focuses on some combination of zoning, code, and public safety concerns. Everybody - the homeless, their advocates, various experts - interviewed in the article - agrees that the hotel rooms are kind of dehumanizing and much worse than having real housing. And this article suggests that government budgeters believe it’s not cost-effective compared to alternatives. Since the homeless don’t like it, and it’s expensive, almost everyone seems to agree it made sense as a short-term COVID measure only. The government’s preferred medium-term solution is single resident occupancy (SRO) hotels. These are big apartment/hotel-like structures where everyone has a small bedroom and then there are communal bathrooms and maybe kitchens. These used to be the archetypal living situation for poor Americans (Matt Yglesias talks about them as “boarding houses” here). But moral reformers banned them in the 1900s on the grounds that they were slums - I think this is the usual “surely the reason poor people live bad lives is because capitalists oppress them by selling them cheap low-quality goods, and if we just ban selling people cheap low-quality goods, everyone will have high-quality goods and poor people will live great lives!” argument. Somehow this failed to work and homelessness got worse over this period, but there are still some SRO hotels left, and the government got them and converted them to public housing for homeless people. Shellenberger does not have high opinions of these: The Tenderloin [district of San Francisco]’s single resident occupancy hotels . . . have for decades been dominated by a culture of heavy substance use and prostitution. “Of the people in supportive housing in San Francisco, 93 percent have a major mental illness that we can name,” said a housing policy maker. “That is very, very high. Eighty percent use cocaine, speed, or heroin every thirty days, or get drunk to the point of unconsciousness.” Tom Wolf, a former Salvation Army caseworker and a member of San Francisco’s Drug Dealing Taskforce, says the city’s supportive housing facilities are themselves a major market for illegal drugs. “Go down the street to the Camelot Hotel on Turk Street,” said Wolf. “Almost everyone that I’ve seen in those hotels are using. The last front desk guy that was working there got busted because he was selling crack. The actual guy that works in the single resident occupancy hotel is selling crack! It’s insane, man.” In any case, there are only so many of these still left. The government often announces plans to buy defunct regular hotels and convert them into these structures, which would indeed be a medium-term solution for housing the homeless, except that they usually get bogged down in fights about code. Politico discusses one of these attempts in New York City (h/t Marginal Revolution): “There are very few hotels that physically could be converted and comply with the requirements of today’s zoning and building code without substantial, expansive reconstruction, partial removal or demolition,” said James Colgate, a land use partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP who has advised clients on zoning issues including the conversions of hotels. “That would increase the costs greatly.” For example, a building’s elevators, doorways, or rooms may be slightly short of the size required for a residential structure. Residential buildings are also required to have a certain amount of rear-yard space that a hotel may not have. “You would literally have to be chopping off part of the building,” Rosen said. …The legislation dictates that each unit include a kitchen or kitchenette with a full-sized refrigerator, cooktop and sink — something Rosen said made utilizing the program “simply too expensive.” “This is the classic case of the perfect being the enemy of the possible,” said Mark Ginsberg, a partner at the firm Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, which has worked on hotel conversions. Some advocates who pushed the creation of the program say those provisions were necessary to ensure it didn’t generate substandard housing […] “We didn’t want a program that cut corners to make it more palatable to developers,” said Joseph Loonam, housing campaign coordinator for the progressive advocacy group VOCAL-NY. “We wanted a program that centered the needs of homeless New Yorkers, which is true high quality affordable housing where they can have full autonomy and dignity.” As Marginal Revolution pointed out, Loonam got what he wanted; the expensive, over-regulated program was unpalatable to developers, with only one company putting in an offer; for whatever reason, NYC refused to go with that one company, and no housing was produced. But fine, these are also terrible, and they’re only medium-term solutions anyway. What about building real, long-term apartments for homeless people? Shellenberger tells the story of Los Angeles’ Proposition HHH, which raised $1.2 billion to do exactly this. They hoped to build ~10,000 units for the homeless, at a projected price of $140,000 each; since LA had about 30,000 homeless people at the time, this would solve a third of the problem - a good start. (how do these numbers line up with my back-of-the-envelope calculation for SF above? I talked about renting rather than building, but usually annual rents = 1/20th or so of total prices, so I was estimating about $700,000 per person. This is probably partly because SF costs more than LA, and partly because I was imagining median apartments whereas LA is probably working on very cheap apartments) But in fact, five years later, LA has completed only 700 units, and the cost per unit has spiralled to $531,000 each. Nobody has a good explanation for what happened, with Shellenberger quoting one local service provider who said a lot of it was “bullshit costs”. Now might be a good time to re-read Considerations On Cost Disease. [Update: this might not be accurate - see this comment] This seems to be a general problem: everyone is committed to Housing First and to long-term good solutions rather than short- or medium- term mediocre ones. But that means building housing. And some combination of NIMBYism and over-regulation means building housing is somewhere between ruiniously expensive and impossible. Claim 4: Shelters Are Unpopular Among Progressive Activists And The Homeless Themselves San Francisco doesn’t have more homelessness than eg New York, but almost all the homeless in New York live in shelters and stay off the street. Why doesn’t that work here? Shellenberger: In the context of cities with permissive attitudes toward drugs, like San Francisco, many homeless people stay in [tent] encampments to use illegal substances more freely and easily than they can in the shelters. Many policy makers understand this. “I went out with a team twice to have conversations with people to get an understanding of what they’re dealing with,” said Mayor Breed in 2020. “It was absolutely insane. Most of the people did not take us up on the offer [of shelter and services].” Even people who would prefer to live in sober environments say they do not want to quit their addictions. “When we surveyed people in supportive housing in New York,” said University of Pennsylvania homelessness researcher Dennis Culhane, “almost everybody wanted their neighbors to be clean and sober but they didn’t want rules for themselves about being clean.” In 2016, after the city of San Francisco broke up a massive, 350-person homeless encampment, dozens of the homeless refused the city’s offers of help. Of the 150 people moved during a single month of homeless encampment cleanups in 2018, just eight people accepted the city’s offer of shelter. In 2004, just 131 people went into permanent supportive housing after 4,950 contacts made by then-mayor Newsom’s homeless outreach teams. An article by a former homeless person explains the problems with shelters beyond just “can’t use drugs”. Residents are crammed into a small space with 300 other homeless people. Lice and bedbugs are everywhere. Everybody catches every disease. Everybody has stories about getting raped or beaten up. Invasive moralizing about drugs somehow exists side by side with rampant drug use. Shelters are gender segregated, which means straight people can’t stay with their partner. Most shelters ban children and nobody has any idea what to do with them. Most shelters ban pets - a lot of homeless people have dogs for protection or companionship, and you can’t just store them somewhere while you’re sheltering. Although some lucky people can get 90-day beds, other people need to apply for beds on a day-by-day basis, which requires waiting in line several hours every day. Users talk about rampant cutting in line, denying cutting in line, false accusations of cutting in line, etc. Most shelters kick people out between 9-5, either to save on staffing costs or in the hopes that they’ll get a job. But many have strict curfews requiring people to be back by 5 PM sharp, which can make jobs impossible - if your boss doesn’t let you out until 5 and you have a half-hour commute, how do you get back to the shelter on time? Results of a survey at one of SF’s new Navigation Centers at why their clients refused to go to normal shelters. But even the homeless people who do want to go to shelters mostly can’t get in. This app gives the current status of San Francisco’s homeless shelter waitlist. If you applied today, there would be 900 people ahead of you in line for one of the city’s 1500 - 2500 shelter beds. The app says that the median wait time is 826 days. So however many homeless people don’t want to go to shelters, we’re not building enough shelters to serve the ones who do. Why not? Shellenberger again: In the spring of 2021, Friedenbach published an op-ed opposing a proposal considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to create, within eighteen months, sufficient homeless shelters and outdoor “Safe Sleeping Sites” for all of the city’s unsheltered homeless. “One can simply take a look to New York City,” she wrote. “Their department spends about $1.3 billion dollars of its budget on providing shelter for their unhoused population while thousands remain on the street. . . . As a result, New York has a higher rate of homelessness than San Francisco.” Housing First advocate Margot Kushel of the University of California, San Francisco agreed. “The problem with New York—and I spend a lot of time with people working in the system in New York—is that they spend an estimated $30,000 for each person per year to keep them in shelter. That’s not what we want to do. Because if you create the shelter and you don’t create the housing, then people are just in shelter forever.” Housing First advocates oppose shelter in Los Angeles. “Why haven’t we solved homelessness?” asked Housing First creator Sam Tsemberis. “Because [Los Angeles mayor] Eric Garcetti [has] Andy Bales [saying,] ‘You need emergency housing.’ ‘These people need to be cleaned up.’ ‘They need to be sober.’ ‘They need Jesus before they’ll be ready for housing.’ I said, ‘People should be housed and then maybe they’ll get sobriety and Jesus and the rest.’ We’re definitely on polar opposites of the whole thing.” Advocates for the homeless at the national level similarly oppose more shelters. “I don’t agree that we should be building more transitional housing,” said the head of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. […] In other words, the reason that there are so many homeless people on the streets in San Francisco is that both progressive and moderate Democratic elected officials, and the city’s most influential homelessness experts and advocates, have for two decades opposed building sufficient shelters. And that is unlikely to change even after San Francisco starts spending hundreds of millions more per year on the problem and might even get worse. This basically seems true. I found this webpage of a former SF Supervisor candidate a helpful corroborating source. He was running on a platform of “maybe we should build some homeless shelters”. He lost. You can also find a bunch of webpages by the sorts of people Shellenberger is complaining about, for example this site: Sup[ervisor] Rafael Mandelman today pushed his new legislation that would require the city to offer at least temporary shelter to everyone living on the streets, a step that some say would lead to more homeless sweeps and do nothing to create permanently affordable housing . . . [our] Coalition has argued for years that the solution to homelessness is housing—not temporary shelter, which may never lead to housing. The ex-supervisor candidate gives some helpful numbers: permanent housing costs about $600,000 per person housed. Shelters cost between $20,000 and $30,000 per person housed. So SF could build enough shelters to clear its waitlist for about $30 million. More recently, SF has tried a sort of compromise, opening “deluxe” shelters called Navigation Centers which avoid some of the problems of regular shelters. They also cost more than twice as much, and the city has only created about 300 beds. Also, the people in regular shelters are angry, because being in a regular shelter disqualifies you from getting into a (much better) Navigation Center. Some of them are considering leaving their shelter, going back on the streets, then waiting however many months or years it takes to get a Navigation Center bed instead. I’m not at all sure of these numbers, but it looks like of SF’s ~7,000 homeless, about 2,000 are in shelters already, and 1,000 are on the shelter waitlist. I don’t know if the remaining 4,000 have made a specific commitment not to go to shelters, or just have given up on the waitlist process. My conclusion: agree with San Fransicko about the role of progressive activists, but I think it overemphasizes the role of wanting to use drugs in why homeless people themselves sometimes avoid shelters, and underemphasizes the many other problems with them. Claim 5: Drug Decriminalization Isn’t Working California legalized marijuana in 2016. Shellenberger says that San Francisco’s commitment to drugs has gone beyond that: it has effectively decriminalized opioids, cocaine, and the rest. Any attempt to lessen use of these drugs is attacked as “stigmatizing”; instead, government policy centers around providing addicts with needles and other drug paraphernalia under the guise of “harm reduction”. Shellenberger hits all the right beats here. Like many people, he tries to undo the damage done by The New Jim Crow, a book which convinced millions of people that mass incarceration was driven by a racist War On Drugs. In fact, less than a fifth of prisoners are in for drug-related crimes. And when the government was first debating the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, black leaders were among the strongest proponents of both. The talking point at the time - among everyone from black Congressional leaders to black churches - was that the government’s failure to crack down on drug use was racist, borne of them not caring about predominantly black drug victims. And while we’ve been patting ourselves on the back about how enlightened we are for ending the drug war: Drug overdoses are today the number one cause of accidental death in the United States as a result of America’s historic addiction and overdose epidemic. Overdose deaths rose from 17,415 in 2000 to 93,330 in 2020, a 536 percent increase.Significantly more people die of drug overdoses today than of homicide (13,927 in 2019) or car accidents (36,096 in 2019). […] There are about twenty-five thousand injection drug users in San Francisco, a number 50 percent larger than the number of students enrolled in the city’s fifteen public high schools. San Francisco gives away more needles to drug users, six million per year, than New York City, despite having one-tenth the population. The part of this chapter that stood out to me as most worth looking into deeper was the section on Portugal: For decades, harm reduction and decriminalization advocates have pointed to Portugal as a model, noting that it decriminalized drugs and expanded drug treatment. In 2013, Portugal’s drug-induced death rate was sixty-six times less than that of the United States. The number of people in treatment increased by 60 percent between 1998 and 2011, with three-quarters receiving an opioid substitute like methadone or Suboxone, the brand name of buprenorphine. Drug use among 15- to 24-year-olds actually declined after decriminalization. “All drugs have been legalized,” explained Monique Tula, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition. “Their focus is on giving people tools, like job apprenticeships, and the means to support themselves.” […] [But Portugal] never legalized drugs. It only decriminalized them, reducing criminal penalties but maintaining prohibition. Drug dealers were still sent to prison even after the 2001 decriminalization. And Portugal does not let people addicted to hard drugs with behavioral disorders off the hook like progressive West Coast cities have done. It’s true that Portugal massively expanded drug treatment, but people are still arrested and fined for possession of heroin, meth, and other hard drugs. And drug users are typically sent to a regionally administered “Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction,” composed of a social worker, lawyer, and doctor who encourage, push, and coerce drug treatment. And decriminalization doesn’t end drug violence. “Even if trafficking enforcement decreased, like it did in Portugal,” said criminologist John Pfaff, “illegal drug markets would still be forced to rely on violence to resolve disputes.” Indeed, prostitution and violence are ever-present in the open-air drug scenes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. “We are seeing behaviors from our guests that I’ve never seen in thirty-three years,” said Rev. Andy Bales, who runs the largest homeless shelter on Skid Row in Los Angeles. “They are so bizarre and different that I don’t even feel right describing the behaviors. It’s extreme violence of an extreme sexual nature.” People are not dying from drug overdose deaths in San Francisco because they’re being arrested. They’re dying because they aren’t being arrested. Decriminalization reduces prices by lowering production and distribution costs, which increases use. This was also the case for alcohol consumption. It increased after prohibition ended in the United States. Even in Portugal, drug overdose deaths and overall drug use rose after decriminalization. I was most surprised by the claim that Portuguese overdose deaths rose after decriminalization. Uncharacteristically, San Fransicko doesn’t give a citation for it, but we can try to retrace its reasoning. Decriminalization proponents tend to point to these numbers, helpfully converted to per 100,000 population and graphed here: But an anti-drug Australian think tank argues that the peak in 2001 is made up: Claims that there were more than 75 drug-related deaths in 2001 which more than halved to 34 deaths in 2002 use a figure for 2001 for which there is no substantiation. Official drug-related deaths for Portugal, taken from the latest 2018 EMCDDA Statistical Bulletin are copied below. Notice that there is no such figure recorded for 2001. They include a link to EMCDDA, the EU organization charged with monitoring these things. The link contains two datasets, both of which seem to be measuring the same thing but getting different results. One dataset starts in 2002, the other in 2008. I don’t know what the difference here is, but they’re right that neither includes 2001. If you ignore the pre-2002 data, the graph looks like this: They say “opiate”, but AFAICT these numbers are actually about all drugs. But the proponents link to the updated 2020 version of the same website, which all of a sudden does have data from 2001 and before. I don’t know why EMCDDA can’t make up its mind, but I think the Australians are wrong and the original graph is fine. On the other hand, does it really matter? Both of these show drug deaths decreasing until 2005, then going up and down a bit, then going back up again starting in 2011. I think a reasonable interpretation would be that decriminalization in Portugal did decrease overdose deaths a bit, and then they started rising again from that low baseline around the same time other European countries saw rising overdose deaths. I would also accept “these are pretty small effects and we shouldn’t ascribe any significance to them”. But San Fransicko’s claim - that overdose deaths increased after the reform - seems false. The only way I can see justifying it is taking the second graph - the one that wrongly claims there is no pre-2002 data - and then attributing the fact that twelve years after the reform lowered deaths, deaths finally rose above the pre-reform level to be the fault of the reform. This is like saying “people claim the Black Plague killed a lot of Europeans, but the European population actually rose after the Plague”, which is true in the sense that it was above its pre-Plague max by like 1600 or whatever. What about overall drug use? Here I recommend A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs, which is on exactly this topic of how people keep selectively quoting results from Portugal to prove their point. It argues that drug use is inherently hard to measure. There are four different Portuguese datasets for the time at issue, lots of different drugs, lots of different age/gender combinations, and lots of different ways of measuring drugs (did you use drugs in the past month? the past year? your lifetime?) It’s easy to tell a story of how past-month cocaine use skyrocketed among 14-29 year old males according to X source, or how lifetime marijuana use fell in high school-age women according to Y. The main trick that opponents use is measuring lifetime drug use. Portugal is a very conservative country; drug use is pretty new and most of the older generation wasn’t involved. So as time goes on and more and more people try drugs but “un-trying” drugs isn’t a thing, the percent of the population who have tried drugs inevitably goes up. This definitely happened but isn’t a fair reflection of any specific reform. The authors find that in the past decade or so, there has been a bit more short-term experimentation with drugs, but less long-run use. They conclude: As shown in Figure 2, general population (aged 15–64) trends for recent and current drug use in Portugal indicate minimal if any changes between 2001 and 2007. Instead, rates of discontinuation of drug use (the proportion of the population that reported ever having used a drug but opting not to in recent years) increased, which reinforces that just as in the school populations, the growth in lifetime-reported use reflected predominantly short-term experimental use. Increases in recent and current drug use were more notable in some cohorts, particularly those aged 25 to 34 (albeit, with a maximum of 7% of any one cohort reporting recent use, absolute levels remained low). But as shown in Figure 3, recent and current drug use declined among those aged 15–24, the population who were most at risk of initiation and long-term engagement. The available evidence thus gives grounds for arguing that while there was some growth in the scale of drug use in post-reform Portugal, there was an overall positive net benefit for the Portuguese community. What about San Fransicko’s main point - that as the US has wound down the War on Drugs, drug overdose rates have sextupled? I think this is mostly not causal. I think the sextupling of overdoses is a combination of expansion in prescription opioid use, various forms of social decay making people less happy and therefore more likely to use drugs, and “improvements” in drug “technology” and the “supply chain” (eg production of fentanyl in China). I don’t know of any source that attempts to tease out the exact contribution of all of these things, but I would note that overdose deaths have risen the most in very conservative Midwestern states that haven’t walked back the drug war as much as California. Conclusion: As usual, I appreciate San Fransicko’s corrections to the prevailing narrative, but its own additions are dubious. Its claim that Portugal saw increased drug-related deaths seems false as far as I can tell. Its claim that it saw increased drug use depends on your definition, but is misleading and not the most natural way to sum up the evidence. Claim 6: San Francisco’s Soft-On-Crime Policies Led To Rising Crime Ten years ago, the news was full of stories about how some teenager stole a gumdrop and was sentenced to nine hundred billion years in jail. At some point, there was a genre shift to stories about how some hardened criminal murdered fifty people with an axe and the judge let him go with a warning because having jails felt racist. Source: Ed West, do note that this example is from the UK How suspicious should we be of each type of story? There will always be an extreme right tail of overly harsh sentences, and an extreme left tail of overly lenient ones. Were the 2000s really as draconian as they felt? Is the modern era really as pathetic? Or is it all just a function of who you read and what agenda they’re pushing? Shellenberger: During California governor Jerry Brown’s time in office, voters passed several reforms aimed at reducing the size of the prison population. In 2012, voters passed a change to the Three Strikes law so that the third strike imposes a life sentence only if the new felony was serious or violent. In addition to lowering punishments for drug possession, Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, redefined shoplifting, forgery, petty theft, and receiving stolen property as misdemeanors when the value in question does not exceed $950. In 2016, voters approved a proposition that shortened the time it took for some nonviolent offenders to be eligible for parole and which released nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and rehabilitation. Property crimes rose in San Francisco starting in 2012. Larceny, which is shoplifting and other petty theft, rose 50 percent, from roughly 3,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to about 4,500 in 2019. Property crimes as a whole, which include larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary, rose from 4,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to 5,500 in 2019. One study suggests that Proposition 47 increased the rate of auto theft 17 percent and the rate of larceny (non-auto property) theft 9 percent, but discerning between causation and correlation may not be possible. Upon taking office in January 2020, [famously soft-on-crime San Francisco district attorney Chesa] Boudin followed through on his campaign promises. Instead of prosecuting and incarcerating people for breaking car windows to steal money and other items from inside, Boudin proposed creating a $1.5 million fund to reimburse car owners. But there were over 25,000 car break-ins reported in 2019. If every break-in cost just $250 in repairs, the fund would need four times that amount. And what would prevent people from falsely claiming to have been robbed in order to get city money? […] Boudin opposed efforts by the mayor and the city attorney to prevent drug dealers who had already been arrested from entering the Tenderloin. “Until the city is serious about treating addiction and the root causes of drug use and selling,” said Boudin in a statement, “these recycled, punishment-focused approaches are unlikely to succeed at doing anything more than making headlines.” Home burglaries rose in early 2021 in San Francisco. Homeowners started posting on Twitter videos from their security cameras of people breaking into homes and garages. “When I first moved here we had a car break-in problem,” said Michael Solana, a writer who works for a venture capital fund. “Now we have a home invasion problem. These things are wearing on people.” Boudin attributed the rise of burglaries in San Francisco to the decline of tourism and “people in desperate economic circumstances.” Progressive supervisor Hillary Ronen agreed. “We know that [economic insecurity and inequality] is one of the root causes of property crimes specifically,” she said. But Tom Wolf and others argued that the robberies were, like the shoplifting, done by people seeking money to buy drugs and feed their addictions. “The drugstores have been shoplifted to death and that’s all because of drug use,” said Tom. “I know. I used to do the same thing when I was out there. That’s what you do. You ‘boost.’ And then you go and you sell your stuff down at UN Plaza,” an open-air drug scene. In a May 2021 city supervisors’ meeting, a representative from CVS called San Francisco “the epicenter of organized retail crime in the country” and claimed that 85 percent of the shoplifting is committed by organized theft rings. Police broke up one such ring in October 2020 and recovered $8 million of stolen merchandise. The problem goes beyond property crime. Boudin declined to prosecute two men who went on to kill people. One man had been repeatedly arrested for stealing cars, despite having just been released from prison earlier in the year, and appeared to be abusing meth. On New Year’s Eve, 2020, the man killed two people while driving intoxicated. Police found inside of his car a semiautomatic handgun and twenty-three grams of methamphetamine. On February 4, another intoxicated driver killed a pedestrian in a stolen car. The San Francisco police had arrested him in October 2020 for possessing a stolen car, a tool for stealing cars, and what appeared to be meth. Boudin chose not to pursue charges. In December, the California Highway Patrol arrested the man again for driving a stolen vehicle under the influence. Again he was not prosecuted. The accident victim, an immigrant from Kenya, and his wife had moved to San Francisco two weeks before the fatal crash. “I blame the DA,” said the widow of the victim. The suspect, she said, “was someone who was out in the public who shouldn’t have been in the public. It was completely avoidable.” Tom said he could feel the difference on the streets. “Drug dealing is unabated and it’s not one guy, it’s fifty guys dealing fentanyl and meth,” he said. “And it’s going unabated because the district attorney says, ‘These are the nonviolent, quality-of-life crimes,’ and ‘I’m not going to prosecute them.’” [..] District Attorney Boudin was offering weaker sentences than even defense attorneys were requesting, according to Vicki Westbrook of San Francisco. “There’s a defense attorney who said, ‘It used to be that I would argue for this deal in court with the DA but now I don’t say anything because the DA is going to offer me a deal better than what I would have suggested. Somebody shot up the street with an automatic weapon. The first offer was six months in jail or time served plus two years of probation or something. And then [the DA] said, “How about thirty days in jail?”’” Vicki laughed. “You really can do anything in San Francisco,” she said. “If you do get arrested, chances are you’re going to be out of jail in less than thirty days for damn near everything except maybe killing somebody and maybe even then, too. It’s hard to say at this point.” Taking each of these points individually: Proposition 47 There are two good big studies on the effects of Prop 47, one by Public Policy Institute and one by some UCI criminologists. The PPI study finds that the proposition increased theft and car break-ins by about 10%. The UCI study finds the same, but notes that under different assumptions the effects wouldn’t quite obtain statistical significance. This seems a bit too much like post hoc trying to get rid of an inconvenient effect, plus an effect on the border of statistical significance is different from positively finding no effect. I think a reasonable interpretation is that theft and car break-ins rose about 10% because of the proposition, just as Shellenberger says. Some pro-47 sites note that most states have some limit on how much you to have to shoplift before it’s a felony, and Prop 47 brought California closer to the national average, rather than turning it into an outlier. Chesa Boudin Chesa Boudin took office two months before the COVID pandemic began. Any attempt to separate the effect of Chesa Boudin from the effect of the pandemic is doomed. Shoplifting definitely plummeted when Boudin took office, but that’s because all the stores were closed. Murders definitely rose a little after Boudin took office, but that’s because that was also when the Black Lives Matter protests happened, which demoralized police and led to a so-far-permanent spike in murders nationwide. Percent of criminals caught definitely fell when Boudin took office, but that’s because various aspects of the justice system were closed for COVID (I will grudgingly entertain speculation that a further decrease in arrest rates from 2020 to 2021 may have been a genuine Boudin effect). In the absence of any real way to judge his performance, I think San Fransicko’s points about Boudin are plausible, though speculative. Shoplifting This one is terrible. There’s a surprisingly spirited debate here (some of you may have already read Applied Divinity Studies’ article). The debate is: everyone on the ground in San Francisco - store owners, security guards, customers, random citizens - say that shoplifting has increased massively over the past decade. But statistics mostly say it hasn’t. Source here. This is shoplifting crimes per 100,000 people. Kern County is a deep red county in California (including Bakersfield) that is known for being tough on crime. Against this, seriously, everyone says that shoplifting has obviously increased. I had a patient who worked in shoplifting prevention, he told me - his psychiatrist! Who he had no reason to lie to! - that he was constantly stressed dealing with the shoplifting surge devastating the stores he covered. Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response to someone posting the data showing shoplifting hasn’t risen - it’s just a lot of people laughing hysterically. What’s going on? I was able to find a different set of statistics that does seem to show a longer-term increase in shoplifting (source): The very big spike at the end might be a change in reporting by one or two stores - you can find the argument here. But it does look like shoplifting went from about 125 incidents/month in the early 2010s to more like 250/month just before the pandemic. Why is this graph so different from the other one? It looks like the top one came from the Department of Justice, and the bottom one came from SFPD. I’m not sure why these report differently. When you multiply out by 800K people in SF, by 12 months/year, and 30ish days/month, the first graph corresponds to 4 shoplifting incidents per day, and the second to 6. As LouB’s analysis here points out, that seems suspiciously low for a city of 800,000 people where stores are constantly closing because of shoplifting. Maybe off by a factor of a few hundred from what we’d expect. LouB writes: The SFPD report only references shoplifting offenses that required SFPD officers to prepare an incident report. That means either the shoplifter fought security, committed additional crimes, or stole more than $950 worth of items. It’s not that SFPD’s report is erroneous, it’s just not a representative statistic. In a parallel statistic, SFPD only completes incident reports for traffic accidents when there is an injury. Therefore, thousands of noninjury accidents are handled civilly without SFPD reports the same way thousands of shoplifting offenses are handled without reports. An insurance company would not determine premium rates based solely on SFPD incident reports, nor should readers interpret SFPD shoplifting reports as anywhere near the total picture of the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco. (this would also explain why one or two stores changing their reporting policy can produce a spike equal to everyone else in San Francisco combined) But comparing incident reports from 2010 to incident reports from 2020 should still be apples-to-apples, unless the likelihood of reporting any given incident changed in the meantime. Did it? This news article quotes a San Franciscan who says that when they try to report shoplifting incidents, the cops tell them not to because “it doesn’t make a difference”. If cops say that now more often than they used to, it would make all these statistics meaningless. (Applied Divinity Studies claims to have an argument that shows this can’t be true. It goes something like: if San Francisco was a better place to shoplift than its neighbors - eg Oakland - then shoplifters would leave Oakland to go to San Francisco, and we would see Oakland shoplifting rates falling. Oakland shoplifting rates are falling, but no more so than the rest of the state, so there can’t be increased tolerance for shoplifting in San Francisco. I find this dubious for many reasons. First of all, many of the same reasons shoplifting is up in San Francisco - like Prop 47 or soft-on-crime progressive policies - also apply to Oakland. Second, given that shoplifting fell massively everywhere because of the pandemic, it feels dubious to try to compare different cities; maybe one city had stricter pandemic lockdowns than others. Third, do criminals really shop around for friendly jurisdictions? If so, why are so many crimes like car break-ins, concentrated in “the bad part of town”? Why wouldn’t criminals leave the bad part of town for under-exploited areas with richer residents and less competition? Maybe criminals in fact aren’t very strategic or mobile? Maybe they don’t want to stand in the BART station and then take a half-hour train ride holding a bag of stolen goods?) Maybe a better argument against this being true is how stable the shoplifting rates have been over time. Wouldn’t it be weird if (let’s say) a tripling of the real shoplifting rates was matched by a third-ing of the reporting rates (rather than a halving or a quartering or whatever)? On the other hand, here’s Shellenberger with some helpful data: Some of this is probably because of Proposition 47, which made some forms of shoplifting punishable with citation rather than arrest (but wouldn’t that be a clear discontinuity rather than a gradual trend?) But overall it sure seems like shoplifting is being taken less seriously, which might encourage people to report less. Another statistic I see is that only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest; I don’t know how this is different from the graph above with numbers in the 30s; maybe it involves different levels of what makes something a “case”. I accept that the data don’t consistently show a spike in shoplifting. But what’s the alternative? My patient who works in loss prevention in SF stores is lying to me? The nice elderly Chinese man who sold me my last pair of glasses and chatted to me about the rampant shoplifting in his mall was lying? The San Francisco police are lying? Walgreens pretends to be concerned about shoplifting as part of a dastardly plot to close a bunch of stores for no reason? Target and CVS pretend to care about shoplifting as part of a plot to restrict their stores’ opening hours for no reason? Every big store near me has suddenly gotten a security guard at the front as part of some corporate-sponsored jobs program? Maybe the conservative narrative that soft-on-crime San Francisco must be experiencing rising crime rates took on a life of its own. Maybe it infiltrated not just the usual suspects like the SF police unions, but even such supposedly-liberal bastions as the New York Times. Maybe lots of big corporations took advantage of the fake narrative to make unpopular business decisions they were planning on making anyway. And maybe ordinary San Franciscans, confronted with everyone telling them they were in a shoplifting epidemic, started paying more attention to security guards and petty criminals who had always been there, a sort of mass hallucination that gripped everyone in the city. I can’t rule this out. Americans thought crime was rising all throughout the early 2000s, when it was in fact way down. Or maybe some statistics that we already know are off by several orders of magnitude got off by an additional factor of two or so. I think this one is more likely, but I’m genuinely not sure. Other Crime From the Economist: The Center on Juvenile And Criminal Justice puts it even more starkly, arguing that “San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime”: This are potentially susceptible to the same reporting bias as shoplifting. So what about homicide? Homicide is practically always reported and investigated, making it a gold standard in crime measurement. (source) Looks pretty good until 2019. I don’t expect to gain useful information post-2020; the pandemic and the post-George-Floyd murder surge will make it impossible to evaluate for local variation. What about compared to other places? For some reason this top 20 table fails to list Washington DC, which should be just before Atlanta. SF doesn’t make the top 20, although its neighbor Oakland does. Probably most murder variation in US cities is explained by percent African-American and maybe percent Borderer; with relatively few people in these groups SF was never in the running. I’m not sure if some abstracted version of the city with all demographic factors adjusted away would have an unusually high murder rate, but at that point it would be pretty distant from any interesting real-world question. You can see the leaderboard for other types of crime here; San Francisco is often in the top ten, but never the top three. As far as I can tell, San Francisco has seen a big spike in car breakins over the past few years, with no clear trend for other property crime, violent crime, or homicides. It’s not an outlier among American cities in any kind of crime. Conclusion of this section: San Fransicko’s specific claims are basically correct, but suggest a medium-term rise in SF crime which is mostly contradicted by the data. These show stable-to-decreasing murder, stable-to-decreasing violent and property crimes other than car break-ins, and large rises in car break-ins only. The data also show stable-to-decreasing shoplifting, but I’m not sure how much to trust them vs. common sense. Honestly, I’m pretty confused here and not sure what to think. Claim 7: Jim Jones (Of Kool-Aid Cult Fame) Used To Be The Chairman Of SF’s Housing Authority Okay, this isn’t really a statistical claim that I can research different perspectives on. Still, it’s so wacky that I couldn’t resist mentioning it in this review. Jim Jones, famous for killing everyone in his Guyana-based Jonestown cult with poisoned Kool-Aid, used to be the SF government’s top guy on homelessness. Shellenberger writes: Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the People’s Temple. Jones believed he was the leader of a socialist revolution. He warned of nuclear war and claimed black people would be put in concentration camps. He became a hugely charismatic preacher among African Americans, the disaffiliated poor, and young transplants to the city looking for community. Scenes from the era show a remarkably large and diverse congregation smiling and singing. The People’s Temple grew and provided services. Jones cultivated two progressive San Francisco politicians, George Moscone and Willie Brown, and mobilized people to volunteer for their campaigns […] His son and a San Francisco historian believe he stole the mayoral election for Moscone in 1975. Historian David Talbot, founder of the progressive website Salon, points to evidence that Jones committed sufficient voter fraud to account for Moscone’s narrow 4,443-vote margin of victory. “We loaded up all thirteen of our buses with maybe seventy people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” said Jones Jr. “Could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely! Slam dunk. He only won by four thousand votes.” When federal investigators looked into fraud claims three years later, they discovered that all of the records were missing from the city of San Francisco’s registrar of voters. Jones also boasted of providing Moscone with black women from his congregation for sex. One time Moscone, drunk and “accompanied by a young black woman whom the politician had kindly agreed to drive home,” crashed into another car. Another time, Moscone and Willie Brown “were with a black woman in an alley at two in the morning at some restaurant in North Beach,” said a local bar owner. State legislator “John Burton was part of that gang too. They were all using marijuana and cocaine.” Said Jones Jr., Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand and doing some ass grabbing.” A Temple member overheard Jones speaking to Moscone the day after one of those parties saying, “I want to let you know that the young lady you went off with is underage,” adding, “Now don’t worry, Mayor, we’ll take care of you—because we know that you’ll take care of us.” Afterward, Moscone made Jones the chairman of the powerful San Francisco Housing Commission. Jones cultivated progressives with money and favors. He made large donations to the ACLU, the NAACP, and United Farm Workers. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on a campaign plane a few days before the 1976 presidential election, and Mondale praised People’s Temple shortly afterward. Jones met with First Lady Rosalynn Carter several times. Governor Jerry Brown praised Jones. Glide Memorial Church’s Rev. Cecil Williams loved Jones. There is a photo from 1977 of a smiling Williams awarding Jones the church’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Jones used his perch as chairman of the Housing Commission to fight for housing for the poor. He tried to use eminent domain to acquire the International Hotel, a single resident occupancy hotel. After a court sided with the hotel’s owner, Jones mobilized seven thousand protesters to picket it. By mid-January 1977, the situation had become heated. There were rumors that protesters inside the building were armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. Jones lost the legal battle in 1977, and the tenants were evicted. But the drama was a publicity victory for Jones, which burnished his image as a white savior. A conservative member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in the mayoral election by Moscone accused the new mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the rest of the city establishment of being blind to Jones’s extremism. “There’s no radical plot in San Francisco,” insisted Moscone, in response. “There’s no one I’ve appointed to any city position whom I regard as radical or extremist.” Willie Brown, a powerful state legislator from 1964 to 1995 before becoming mayor in 1996, “seemed oblivious to Jones’ hucksterism and demagoguery,” notes a historian. Brown was master of ceremonies at a dinner for Jones in the fall of 1976 attended by an adulatory crowd of the rich and powerful, including Governor Jerry Brown. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein . . . Chairman Mao,” he said, to loud applause. And yet Jones was contemptuous of Brown even as Brown did Jones more and more favors. Jones mocked Brown for his designer suits, sports cars, and women. Once, while Brown was addressing the congregation and Jones was seated onstage behind him, Jones flipped his middle finger up to mock him. San Francisco’s establishment stood by Jones even after a California magazine, New West, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an exposé of Jones’s beatings of Temple members and financial abuses in August 1977. The article was written by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and was meant for the Chronicle to publish. But the newspaper killed the story because it didn’t want to alienate Jones, whom it viewed as central to its plans to expand the Chronicle’s circulation in the heavily African American Fillmore District. Jones also managed to avoid investigation and prosecution in part by getting the district attorney to hire as deputy district attorney Jones’s longtime attorney and confidant. Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.” Angela Davis sent a radio message broadcast over the cult’s compound, Jonestown, in Guyana. “I know you’re in a very difficult situation right now,” she said, “and there is a very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle.” After visiting Jonestown, the attorney to the Black Panthers said, “I have seen paradise.” Harvey Milk, too, was tarnished by his association with Jones. In the fall of 1977, Milk wrote to President Carter’s secretary of health, education, and welfare requesting that Social Security checks be sent to elderly Temple members in Guyana. “People’s Temple,” wrote Milk, has “established a beautiful retirement community in Guyana.” In truth, the cult was disintegrating. Jones separated families and lovers, pitted relatives against each other, and forced neighbors to inform on each other. Jones sent people who violated the rules to solitary confinement in “the Box,” an underground cubicle where people were held as prisoners for days on end. Others were drugged. Progressives who had spent thirty years fighting to close prisons and mental hospitals found themselves praising a man who had reproduced their worst practices. In November 1978 a Bay Area congressman flew to Guyana to investigate human rights violations at Jonestown with NBC News. Jones gave the delegation a formal reception at Jonestown. A Temple member surreptitiously passed a note to one of the delegation members, saying he and another member wanted to escape. They fled the next day after a Temple member tried to stab the congressman. Jones didn’t prevent them from leaving but then sent gunmen to fire machine guns at the delegation at the airport, killing the congressman and four others. A few hours later, 907 inhabitants of Jonestown drank Flavor Aid laced with cyanide and died. Two-thirds of the victims were African American and one-third were children. Jones had told them that if they didn’t drink it they would be killed by invading soldiers from a shadowy global military conspiracy intent on imposing fascism and torturing children. As people started crying in grief, Jones scolded them. “Stop these hysterics,” he said. “This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die.” Jones’s wife protested the murder of children and had to be forcibly restrained. “We didn’t commit suicide,” said Jones in a tape recording, “we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” Few were as stained by Jonestown as Willie Brown and George Moscone. “Even as the bloated bodies of the dead were removed from the jungle and the wounded were airlifted by the U.S. Air Force to hospitals in the United States,” wrote a historian, “Brown said he had ‘no regrets’ over his association with Jones.” They repeatedly disavowed responsibility. Said Moscone, “it’s clear that if there was a sinister plan, then we were taken in. But I’m not taking any responsibility. It’s not mine to shoulder.” This is Shellenberger at his best: telling us crazy stories from the recesses of San Francisco history, maybe kind of spinning the narration in a way that makes all progressives seem guilty by association, but with the tale itself so gripping that it’s hard to be mad. And Jones wasn’t alone. This was the golden age of San Francisco cults, when (Shellenberger tells us) “more than half of all high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area reported at least one recruiting attempt by a cult member, and 40 percent reported at least three contacts.” This chapter of SF history came to an end in 1978, when Dan White, who had just resigned from San Francisco’s Board Of Supervisors (ie City Council) entered City Hall through a window and assassinated Mayor Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk, then successfully got charges reduced to manslaughter through a legal manuever that has gone down in history as “the Twinkie Defense” (realistically the defense was that he was depressed, but reporters seized on a comment that implied it was because he ate too many Twinkies). Everything about 1970s San Francisco was like this. With the Mayor and his right-hand-man both dead, San Francisco leadership ended up in the hands of previously second-tier politician Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein was what passed for a moderate in 1970s SF (which meant she had been targeted for assassination by various left-wing groups - she survived when a bomb left on her windowsill failed to explode). In Shellenberger’s telling, she managed to clean up some of the mess and restore a semblance of normalcy. San Francisco never forgave her. Moscone - voting fraud committer, underage sex enjoyer, and Jim Jones’ bff - is beloved as a martyr in today’s SF, but (the book points out) Feinstein is so loathed that in 2021 the Board of Education voted to rename Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.

Trinity1 mentions across 1 issues

Trinity is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 10, 2022 and October 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "it flirts with polytheism (the Trinity)". It most often appears alongside 9-11, Adraste, America.

Reference entry: Trinity
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 10, 2022
Last seen: October 10, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day October 10, 2022

9-11 1 shared issues
Adraste 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American Jews 1 shared issues
Angels 1 shared issues

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October 10, 2022 · Original source

Why? Remember, Arius is famous for claiming that God the Father created Jesus (and so Jesus was not the same as God, not an equal partner in the Trinity, not eternal, etc). How come people care about this 4th century dispute today? Some Christian commenters explain why this matters to them. Pope Spurdo writes:

Inline links: writes

Side note: if anyone should read this and think, "Oh, this ridiculous Trinity business again; how wearying", I would commend you Dr. Michael Reeves' book "Delighting in the Trinity", which is a clearer and more wonderful exploration than I would previously have thought possible.

I would quibble that Jesus as the Messiah is not one of Jews’ top objections to Christianity, which I think would be first that it flirts with polytheism (the Trinity), that it flirts with idolatry (icons + Michelangelo-esque depictions of God), and that it says you don’t need to follow the Law. Other sects of Judaism that have “just” posited a Messiah (eg the subset of Lubavitchers who think Rebbe Schneerson was the Messiah) have met much less resistance.

triptans1 mentions across 1 issues

triptans is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 31, 2023 and May 31, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "many more, including triptans". It most often appears alongside anticholinergics, benzodiazepines, bisphosphonates.

Reference entry: triptans
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 31, 2023
Last seen: May 31, 2023

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All Medications Are Insignificant In The Eyes Of God And Traditional Effect Size Criteria May 31, 2023

anticholinergics 1 shared issues
benzodiazepines 1 shared issues
bisphosphonates 1 shared issues
Danish team 1 shared issues
Determining maximal achievable effect sizes of antidepressant therapies in placebo-controlled trials 1 shared issues

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All Medications Are Insignificant In The Eyes Of God And Traditional Effect Size Criteria

May 31, 2023 · Original source

Some of our favorite medications, including statins, anticholinergics, and bisphosphonates, don’t reach the 0.50 level. And many more, including triptans, benzodiazepines (!), and Ritalin (!!) don’t reach 0.875.

Triticum Vulgare1 mentions across 1 issues

Triticum Vulgare is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 04, 2025 and September 04, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "wheat germ extract is Triticum Vulgare". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abundance liberalism, Afghanistan.

Reference entry: Triticum Vulgare
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 04, 2025
Last seen: September 04, 2025

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Links For September 2025 September 04, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
abundance liberalism 1 shared issues
Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
Agarwal caste 1 shared issues

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Links For September 2025

September 04, 2025 · Original source

43: China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is: still very in control, maybe not infinitely in control. 44: Related - did you know (h/t xlr8harder) that if you ask AI to write a science fiction story, it will very often name the protagonist “Elara Voss” (or some very close variant like Elena Voss), and this remains true across various models and versions? Related: Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby and has the opportunity to do the funniest thing. 45: “Hector (cloud) is a cumulonimbus thundercloud cluster that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia…[he is sometimes called] Hector the Convector”. 46: British allergy sufferers who want to know the ingredients of things demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin. “For example, sweet almond oil is Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis, peanut oil is Arachis Hypogaea, and wheat germ extract is Triticum Vulgare.” 47: Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference. I make a brief appearance. 48: Study uses supposedly-random variation in doctor assignments to test whether the marginal mental health commitment is good or bad for patients, finds that it is quite bad. Freddie de Boer is violently skeptical (maybe literally so?) and makes some good points about how a single quasi-experimental study is never absolute proof. But I don’t think he quite justifies his opinion that the paper was irresponsible and should never have been published; it’s just a normal quasi-experimental study that we should nod and say “huh” at but not overweight as the culmination of all possible research that overcomes all possible priors. My prior is that the marginal commitment is pretty useless (many commitments are just “well, since this person arrived at our ED for some reason, it would look bad from a medico-legal perspective to just let them go, so let’s keep them a few days to evaluate” - and yeah, you should be upset about this) but I’m still surprised by how many outright negative (as opposed to zero) effects the researchers found. The strongest argument for negative effects is that it will make some people miss work and maybe lose their job. But this study found that commitment ~doubles the risk of near-term suicide (admittedly only from 1% to 2%), which would have been outside my confidence intervals for how bad it could be. I suspect confounding, but only on general principle, and I wouldn’t be too surprised either way. 49: This tweet is probably bait, but I found it a thought-provoking question: I think there’s a boring answer, where the law is more complex than just a single number and whatever kind of weird trafficking Epstein was doing is worse than whatever normal relationships these European laws are permitting. But assuming that there’s a substantive difference even after taking that into account, I think my answer is something like - we’ve got to divide kids from adults at some age, there’s a range of reasonable possible ages, we shouldn’t be too mad at other societies that choose different dividing lines within that range - but having decided upon the age, we’ve got to stick with it and take it seriously (in the sense of penalizing/shaming people who break it). This is more culturally relativist than I expected to find myself being, so good job to Richard for highlighting the apparent paradox. 50: Dilan Esper describes his experience as one of Hulk Hogan’s attorneys in the Gawker lawsuit (X). Parts I found interesting: none of the lawyers knew Thiel was funding the lawsuit; Gawker probably could have won if they had been slightly competent but kept "shooting themselves in the foot"; and Gawker probably could have won if they had just pixelated the private parts in the video. 51: Amazing concept and poems (link on X): I tried to see if AI could do this, and it did something that technically met the requirements but had zero artistic merit - using a lot of words like “nowhere” and “outside” in one, then separating them out to “no where” and “out side” in the other. I didn’t invest much energy in creating a clever prompt telling it not to do that, so feel free to report if you get better success. 52: New study claims consultants are actually good, at least for profits: "We find positive effects on labor productivity of 3.6% over five years, driven by modest employment reductions alongside stable or growing revenue" 53: A Polish team tries to test Peter Turchin’s equations for predicting political unrest on recent Polish history, has to make some changes but claims mostly positive results. 54: New big multi-author Substack, The Argument, trying to be a sort of center-left version of the model pioneered by The Free Press and other high-production-value ideological Substack properties. Excited to see Kelsey Piper is involved, and she starts off strong with a post on the latest round of First World basic income studies, which find few positive effects. This is surprising, because recipients didn’t waste the money on alcohol or gambling or anything - they paid down debt and got useful goods. Still, it didn’t even affect things that should have been obvious, like stress level. It’s not even clear that amounts of money large enough to help with rent made homeless people more likely to get houses! Matt Bruenig criticizes the article, accusing Kelsey’s studies of being downstream of Perry Preschool style dreams that exactly the right welfare program will have massively compounding effects that cut poverty out at the root and turn everyone into elite human capital; he thinks giving people money won’t do this, but it will increase equality and give the poor better lives. I assume he’s not a strong hereditarian, but his argument makes even more sense from that perspective, and I’ve certainly criticized dumb outcome measures like infant brain waves which we have only tenuous reasons to think are related to anything we care about. But Kelsey reasonably responds that the outcome measures she’s talking about include stress level and life satisfaction. To defuse this critique, Bruenig either has to argue that our construct “life satisfaction” doesn’t really measure whether someone’s life is satisfactory, or else claim that giving poor people satisfactory lives isn’t really what we’re going for - which I think would require more explanation on his part. There’s some further (impressively acrimonious) debate on X, but I don’t see anything that addresses my core concern. GiveDirectly, a charity involved in basic income experiments, has a presponse here; they say that some studies are positive, and that the ones that aren’t might have tried too little cash to matter, or been confounded by COVID making everything worse. They also point out that basic income is harder to study than traditional programs like giving people housing, because if you’re giving housing you can measure housing-related outcomes directly and have a pretty good chance of getting enough statistical power to find them, but since everyone spends cash on different things, the positive effects might be scattered across many different outcomes (and therefore too small to reach significance on each). Everyone involved in this debate wants to emphasize that the poor results are for First World studies only, and that studies continue to show large benefits to giving cash in the developing world. 55: Related: I was less impressed by The Argument’s first foray into housing policy, which follows an all-too-familiar pattern: Some people say they don’t like noise and disorder and try to make rules against it in their apartments.

Inline links: China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is, xlr8harder, Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby, Hector (cloud), demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin, Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference, finds that it is quite bad, violently skeptical, literally so?, This tweet, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S9fU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa558c09b-7fb6-40a8-a8a0-27b658a2c876_576x687.png, describes his experience as one of Hulk Hogan’s attorneys in the Gawker lawsuit (X), link on X, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zyh7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F75e9f0f6-d794-4ea2-b24b-5d4803bf28dc_590x478.png, New study claims consultants are actually good, tries to test Peter Turchin’s equations for predicting political unrest on recent Polish history, The Argument, a post on the latest round of First World basic income studies, criticizes the article, infant brain waves, debate on X, has a presponse here, first foray into housing policy

Triticum Vulgaris1 mentions across 1 issues

Triticum Vulgaris is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 04, 2025 and September 04, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "wheat germ extract is Triticum Vulgar". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abundance liberalism, Afghanistan.

Reference entry: Triticum Vulgaris
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 04, 2025
Last seen: September 04, 2025

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Links For September 2025 September 04, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
abundance liberalism 1 shared issues
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Links For September 2025

September 04, 2025 · Original source

43: China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is: still very in control, maybe not infinitely in control. 44: Related - did you know (h/t xlr8harder) that if you ask AI to write a science fiction story, it will very often name the protagonist “Elara Voss” (or some very close variant like Elena Voss), and this remains true across various models and versions? Related: Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby and has the opportunity to do the funniest thing. 45: “Hector (cloud) is a cumulonimbus thundercloud cluster that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia…[he is sometimes called] Hector the Convector”. 46: British allergy sufferers who want to know the ingredients of things demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin. “For example, sweet almond oil is Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis, peanut oil is Arachis Hypogaea, and wheat germ extract is Triticum Vulgare.” 47: Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference. I make a brief appearance. 48: Study uses supposedly-random variation in doctor assignments to test whether the marginal mental health commitment is good or bad for patients, finds that it is quite bad. Freddie de Boer is violently skeptical (maybe literally so?) and makes some good points about how a single quasi-experimental study is never absolute proof. But I don’t think he quite justifies his opinion that the paper was irresponsible and should never have been published; it’s just a normal quasi-experimental study that we should nod and say “huh” at but not overweight as the culmination of all possible research that overcomes all possible priors. My prior is that the marginal commitment is pretty useless (many commitments are just “well, since this person arrived at our ED for some reason, it would look bad from a medico-legal perspective to just let them go, so let’s keep them a few days to evaluate” - and yeah, you should be upset about this) but I’m still surprised by how many outright negative (as opposed to zero) effects the researchers found. The strongest argument for negative effects is that it will make some people miss work and maybe lose their job. But this study found that commitment ~doubles the risk of near-term suicide (admittedly only from 1% to 2%), which would have been outside my confidence intervals for how bad it could be. I suspect confounding, but only on general principle, and I wouldn’t be too surprised either way. 49: This tweet is probably bait, but I found it a thought-provoking question: I think there’s a boring answer, where the law is more complex than just a single number and whatever kind of weird trafficking Epstein was doing is worse than whatever normal relationships these European laws are permitting. But assuming that there’s a substantive difference even after taking that into account, I think my answer is something like - we’ve got to divide kids from adults at some age, there’s a range of reasonable possible ages, we shouldn’t be too mad at other societies that choose different dividing lines within that range - but having decided upon the age, we’ve got to stick with it and take it seriously (in the sense of penalizing/shaming people who break it). This is more culturally relativist than I expected to find myself being, so good job to Richard for highlighting the apparent paradox. 50: Dilan Esper describes his experience as one of Hulk Hogan’s attorneys in the Gawker lawsuit (X). Parts I found interesting: none of the lawyers knew Thiel was funding the lawsuit; Gawker probably could have won if they had been slightly competent but kept "shooting themselves in the foot"; and Gawker probably could have won if they had just pixelated the private parts in the video. 51: Amazing concept and poems (link on X): I tried to see if AI could do this, and it did something that technically met the requirements but had zero artistic merit - using a lot of words like “nowhere” and “outside” in one, then separating them out to “no where” and “out side” in the other. I didn’t invest much energy in creating a clever prompt telling it not to do that, so feel free to report if you get better success. 52: New study claims consultants are actually good, at least for profits: "We find positive effects on labor productivity of 3.6% over five years, driven by modest employment reductions alongside stable or growing revenue" 53: A Polish team tries to test Peter Turchin’s equations for predicting political unrest on recent Polish history, has to make some changes but claims mostly positive results. 54: New big multi-author Substack, The Argument, trying to be a sort of center-left version of the model pioneered by The Free Press and other high-production-value ideological Substack properties. Excited to see Kelsey Piper is involved, and she starts off strong with a post on the latest round of First World basic income studies, which find few positive effects. This is surprising, because recipients didn’t waste the money on alcohol or gambling or anything - they paid down debt and got useful goods. Still, it didn’t even affect things that should have been obvious, like stress level. It’s not even clear that amounts of money large enough to help with rent made homeless people more likely to get houses! Matt Bruenig criticizes the article, accusing Kelsey’s studies of being downstream of Perry Preschool style dreams that exactly the right welfare program will have massively compounding effects that cut poverty out at the root and turn everyone into elite human capital; he thinks giving people money won’t do this, but it will increase equality and give the poor better lives. I assume he’s not a strong hereditarian, but his argument makes even more sense from that perspective, and I’ve certainly criticized dumb outcome measures like infant brain waves which we have only tenuous reasons to think are related to anything we care about. But Kelsey reasonably responds that the outcome measures she’s talking about include stress level and life satisfaction. To defuse this critique, Bruenig either has to argue that our construct “life satisfaction” doesn’t really measure whether someone’s life is satisfactory, or else claim that giving poor people satisfactory lives isn’t really what we’re going for - which I think would require more explanation on his part. There’s some further (impressively acrimonious) debate on X, but I don’t see anything that addresses my core concern. GiveDirectly, a charity involved in basic income experiments, has a presponse here; they say that some studies are positive, and that the ones that aren’t might have tried too little cash to matter, or been confounded by COVID making everything worse. They also point out that basic income is harder to study than traditional programs like giving people housing, because if you’re giving housing you can measure housing-related outcomes directly and have a pretty good chance of getting enough statistical power to find them, but since everyone spends cash on different things, the positive effects might be scattered across many different outcomes (and therefore too small to reach significance on each). Everyone involved in this debate wants to emphasize that the poor results are for First World studies only, and that studies continue to show large benefits to giving cash in the developing world. 55: Related: I was less impressed by The Argument’s first foray into housing policy, which follows an all-too-familiar pattern: Some people say they don’t like noise and disorder and try to make rules against it in their apartments.

tritium1 mentions across 1 issues

tritium is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site". It most often appears alongside Alcator C-Mod, Apollo Program, ARC.

Reference entry: tritium
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2022
Last seen: June 17, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy June 17, 2022

Alcator C-Mod 1 shared issues
Apollo Program 1 shared issues
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Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day

June 17, 2022 · Original source

Figure 1: Oof. Along with the plans for fusion in 15-30 years, there was also a reference: ‘fusion never'. This plan would maintain America's plasma physics facilities, but not try to build anything new. Actual funding for fusion in the US has been less than the ‘fusion never' plan. The reason we don't have fusion already is because we, as a civilization, never decided that it was a priority. Fusion funding is literally peanuts: In 2016, the US spent twice as much on peanut subsidies as on fusion research. Fusion Basics Fusion involves ‘burning' lighter elements to make heavier elements. The sun gets its energy by burning hydrogen into helium. We are trying to do something similar [3]. The easiest fusion reaction is burning deuterium and tritium to make helium. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen with one proton & one neutron and tritium is an isotope of hydrogen with one proton & two neutrons. Helium has two protons and two neutrons, so one free neutron is produced by the reaction as well. Figure 2: The D-T fusion reaction. This reaction can be written as: 12D +13T 24He +01n . The subscript is the number of protons that each element has and the superscript is the number of protons + neutrons [4]. Both of these numbers are conserved: if you add up the total superscript on the left, it must equal the total superscript on the right. Several other fusion reactions are sometimes discussed as alternatives to deuterium-tritium fusion. All of them are at least several times more difficult, so they are unlikely to be the first fuel we use to get fusion. Maybe someday we'll switch to deuterium-deuterium fusion or something else, but for now, the emphasis is on what's easiest. What do you need to get a fusion reaction going? Think about the chemical reactions in combustion. You need to get the fuel to a high enough temperature, and then chemical reactions occur that release energy. Fusion is similar, but with much larger temperatures and energies. Combustion occurs at a temperature of about 1000 Kelvin [5] and each reaction releases about 10 electron volts of energy. Fusion occurs at about 100 million Kelvin and each reaction releases about 10 million electron volts. Along with a high enough temperature, you also need to have a high enough density and confinement time. Density is important because fusion requires a collision between a deuterium nucleus and a tritium nucleus. When the density is higher, stuff is more likely to run into each other. We also need to confine the fuel and the energy long enough for these collisions to occur. We don't want the particles to leave the reactor without fusing. If the energy leaks out too quickly, then the fuel will cool down too quickly to burn. Multiply these three quantities, density, temperature, and confinement time [6], to get the plasma triple product. Lawson's criterion states that, if the triple product is high enough, then you will get fusion. We also measure the success of fusion using Q. Q is the ratio of the amount of energy you put into the fuel to the amount of energy produced by fusion. News articles often focus on Q=1, or ‘scientific breakeven' [7], when you get as much energy out of the fuel as you put in. Other significant milestones are Q=5, ‘burning', and Q=∞, ‘ignition', when the fusion sustains itself without any external heating. Q is entirely determined by the triple product. To get Q=1 for D-T fusion, you need a triple product of 51021 keV s / m3. Getting a large Q is the goal of fusion science. Getting a large triple product is how we achieve that goal. We can use the triple product to measure progress towards fusion. Have We Made Progress? How much progress have we made towards fusion? Figure 3: This looks great ! The fusion triple product has grown exponentially. It has doubled every 1.8 years, which is even faster than Moore's Law. The best triple product we've gotten is five orders of magnitude better than what we started with in 1970. But wait. This data only goes up to 2000. If we extrapolate the trend line, we would have built a commercial fusion reactor in 2005. The world is not awash in fusion energy, so this trend clearly did not continue. There has been little progress towards a larger triple product since 2000. Why did this trendline stop? Why do I think that this is about to get started again? I will answer these questions, but first, a few words on how we've made progress so far. Plasma Basics Fusion occurs at such high temperatures that everything is ionized: The electrons and nuclei cannot stick together as atoms and instead move independently. Matter in this state is called a ‘plasma' [8]. Plasma is by far the most common state of matter in the universe. Stars are made of plasma, as well as the low density matter in the space between stars. When a fusion plasma comes in contact with anything solid (or liquid or even gas), either the solid will vaporize or the plasma will cool down. Both of these are very bad for achieving controlled fusion on Earth. We can't just put our fusion plasma in a container. How do we bottle the core of the sun? With a magnetic field. The electrons and ions in a fusion plasma are charged. Charged particles spiral around magnetic field lines and will not move freely perpendicular to the magnetic field. This confines the plasma in two dimensions. To confine the plasma in the third dimension, loop the magnetic field around in the shape of a doughnut [9]. The particles can move around the doughnut, but stay confined within it. Figure 4: A charged particle spiraling around a doughnut-shaped magnetic field. This is still not quite enough. Charged particles will drift in a curved magnetic field, which causes them to leak out the outer side of the doughnut. We can solve this problem by making the magnetic field twist, like a French cruller. Particles near the outer edge, drifting outwards, will follow the magnetic field line around to the inner edge, where they will drift back towards the core. The easiest way to make the magnetic field twist is to run a current through the plasma. You don't need to (and can't) run a wire there. Plasmas are full of charged particles that can move. When more of the electrons move in one direction around the doughnut then in the other direction, it will create a current. So a fusion experiment should (1) create an extremely strong magnetic field pointing around the doughnut, (2) heat deuterium and tritium to 100 million degrees inside the doughnut, and (3) drive a current around the doughnut. The magnetic field can be created by superconducting electromagnetic coils which go around and through the doughnut. Turning on the coils provides some initial heating and current, but to sustain it, you need to inject accelerated particles or waves from the side. This kind of fusion experiment is called a tokamak [10]. Figure 5: The coils and magnetic fields of a tokamak. Small, Medium, and Large Experiments I find it helpful to classify fusion experiments by their size. This is not standardized, so different people will classify them differently. The larger the experiment, the farther the particles have to move (perpendicular to the magnetic field) to get from the core to the outer edge. Larger experiments inherently have a longer confinement time. Small fusion experiments are sometimes called ‘tabletop' experiments. This doesn't always mean that they fit on a tabletop, but they can fit in the physics building of a research university without too much disruption. The doughnut has a radius of about 1 m. The support requirements (power supply, control systems, measuring equipment, etc.) aren't too different from other physics labs. Figure 6: The first tokamak, T-1, did fit on a tabletop. Medium fusion experiments have a radius of about 1.5 - 3 m. They require their own facility for all of their support systems, but they typically fit in a single building. One prominent medium experiment is JET [11]. Figure 7: Someone inside JET. They have to wear a protective suit because tritium is nasty stuff. Large fusion experiment means ITER [12], an experiment currently under construction in southern France. ITER has a diameter of over 6 meters. The experiment itself has a five story building. Supporting buildings cover about 100 acres or 0.5 km2. Figure 8: Construction at ITER as of May 2021. ITER We can now answer some of our earlier questions. The reason why progress has stalled is because we did as much as we could do on medium experiments. No country has been willing to provide enough money to build its own large experiment. So the fusion community has been gathering money from all around the world for decades for a single project [13]. ITER is supported by Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland), the US (which withdrew in 1999 and rejoined in 2003 [14]), Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Figure 9: There are three people in this diagram. Can you find them? ITER is designed to get Q=10. Despite getting 10 times as much energy from fusion as we put into the plasma, ITER is not designed to get engineering breakeven. ITER is designed as an experiment, not as a power plant. There will be tons of measuring devices pointed inwards. There are four different ways to heat the plasma and drive the current. This all allows you to learn more, but it requires extra power and lowers the overall plant efficiency. ITER will be followed by a demonstration power plant, named DEMO [15]. A fully optimized power plant should be able to reach engineering breakeven as long as Q>5. This is why I chose Q=5 as my criterion for ‘getting fusion’. ITER is also testing multiple designs for the tritium breeding blanket. Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site. The D-T fusion reaction produces a neutron, which we want to absorb, so we can use it to produce tritium. ‘Breeding' is when we use a neutron to produce a more useful isotope. It is a ‘blanket' because it surrounds the entire plasma, keeping the neutrons from going anywhere else. The best reaction to produce tritium involves lithium-6: 36Li +01n 24He +13T . This reaction also releases energy, which increases the power produced by about 25%. The tritium breeding blanket needs to make this reaction occur as much as possible, to efficiently carry the heat away so it can be used to generate electricity, and to provide a way to extract the tritium produced. ITER is scheduled to begin their first experiments in 2025. Part of why I think that we are about to make rapid progress again is because we are finally getting a large experiment. There have been problems with ITER staying on schedule and under budget. This isn't surprising for a collaboration between governments representing over half the world's population. In 2014, ITER got a new director, recalculated its expected cost, and underwent a major restructuring. Since then, ITER has largely stuck to this schedule and budget. Recently, there has been a 6 month delay because the French nuclear agency did what nuclear regulatory agencies do best, but this has been the longest delay since 2014. It is still possible for ITER to fail. The biggest risk involves disruptions. Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once. This could melt some extremely expensive equipment and take years to repair. If ITER cannot get disruptions under control, then it would be a failed experiment. This is especially challenging because pushing for higher Q makes disruptions more likely. ITER is planning on being extremely cautious: Experiments begin in 2025, but it won't operate at full capacity until 2035. ITER has been the focus of the fusion community now for decades. The Future of Fusion Energy similarly makes ITER the centerpiece of the book. Things. Have. Changed. ITER by itself is not enough to justify the high level of confidence I express at the start. When Parisi & Ball finished writing this book in April 2018, ITER was basically the only game in town. Since then, Things. Have. Changed. Historically, private fusion companies were almost entirely jokes or frauds. They make outlandish claims, use completely different designs so they can't build on the progress of Figure 3, and they can be safely ignored. For example, Lockheed Martin [16] claims that it will take them five years to build a prototype of a fusion power plant that will fit in a truck. They have yet to publish evidence that they have produced a fully ionized plasma. Maybe they're just being secretive, but their design has solid components in the plasma. That won't work. A new generation of private companies have surged into fusion. Leading the charge is Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their tokamak SPARC [17]. Recent advances in high temperature superconductors have been a game changer. They can produce a much stronger magnetic field which allows for better confinement in a smaller experiment. We should now be able to get Q=10 in a medium experiment, which costs ten times less than ITER [18] and is within the reach of private venture capital. Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

Figure 2: The D-T fusion reaction. This reaction can be written as: 12D +13T 24He +01n . The subscript is the number of protons that each element has and the superscript is the number of protons + neutrons [4]. Both of these numbers are conserved: if you add up the total superscript on the left, it must equal the total superscript on the right. Several other fusion reactions are sometimes discussed as alternatives to deuterium-tritium fusion. All of them are at least several times more difficult, so they are unlikely to be the first fuel we use to get fusion. Maybe someday we'll switch to deuterium-deuterium fusion or something else, but for now, the emphasis is on what's easiest. What do you need to get a fusion reaction going? Think about the chemical reactions in combustion. You need to get the fuel to a high enough temperature, and then chemical reactions occur that release energy. Fusion is similar, but with much larger temperatures and energies. Combustion occurs at a temperature of about 1000 Kelvin [5] and each reaction releases about 10 electron volts of energy. Fusion occurs at about 100 million Kelvin and each reaction releases about 10 million electron volts. Along with a high enough temperature, you also need to have a high enough density and confinement time. Density is important because fusion requires a collision between a deuterium nucleus and a tritium nucleus. When the density is higher, stuff is more likely to run into each other. We also need to confine the fuel and the energy long enough for these collisions to occur. We don't want the particles to leave the reactor without fusing. If the energy leaks out too quickly, then the fuel will cool down too quickly to burn. Multiply these three quantities, density, temperature, and confinement time [6], to get the plasma triple product. Lawson's criterion states that, if the triple product is high enough, then you will get fusion. We also measure the success of fusion using Q. Q is the ratio of the amount of energy you put into the fuel to the amount of energy produced by fusion. News articles often focus on Q=1, or ‘scientific breakeven' [7], when you get as much energy out of the fuel as you put in. Other significant milestones are Q=5, ‘burning', and Q=∞, ‘ignition', when the fusion sustains itself without any external heating. Q is entirely determined by the triple product. To get Q=1 for D-T fusion, you need a triple product of 51021 keV s / m3. Getting a large Q is the goal of fusion science. Getting a large triple product is how we achieve that goal. We can use the triple product to measure progress towards fusion. Have We Made Progress? How much progress have we made towards fusion? Figure 3: This looks great ! The fusion triple product has grown exponentially. It has doubled every 1.8 years, which is even faster than Moore's Law. The best triple product we've gotten is five orders of magnitude better than what we started with in 1970. But wait. This data only goes up to 2000. If we extrapolate the trend line, we would have built a commercial fusion reactor in 2005. The world is not awash in fusion energy, so this trend clearly did not continue. There has been little progress towards a larger triple product since 2000. Why did this trendline stop? Why do I think that this is about to get started again? I will answer these questions, but first, a few words on how we've made progress so far. Plasma Basics Fusion occurs at such high temperatures that everything is ionized: The electrons and nuclei cannot stick together as atoms and instead move independently. Matter in this state is called a ‘plasma' [8]. Plasma is by far the most common state of matter in the universe. Stars are made of plasma, as well as the low density matter in the space between stars. When a fusion plasma comes in contact with anything solid (or liquid or even gas), either the solid will vaporize or the plasma will cool down. Both of these are very bad for achieving controlled fusion on Earth. We can't just put our fusion plasma in a container. How do we bottle the core of the sun? With a magnetic field. The electrons and ions in a fusion plasma are charged. Charged particles spiral around magnetic field lines and will not move freely perpendicular to the magnetic field. This confines the plasma in two dimensions. To confine the plasma in the third dimension, loop the magnetic field around in the shape of a doughnut [9]. The particles can move around the doughnut, but stay confined within it. Figure 4: A charged particle spiraling around a doughnut-shaped magnetic field. This is still not quite enough. Charged particles will drift in a curved magnetic field, which causes them to leak out the outer side of the doughnut. We can solve this problem by making the magnetic field twist, like a French cruller. Particles near the outer edge, drifting outwards, will follow the magnetic field line around to the inner edge, where they will drift back towards the core. The easiest way to make the magnetic field twist is to run a current through the plasma. You don't need to (and can't) run a wire there. Plasmas are full of charged particles that can move. When more of the electrons move in one direction around the doughnut then in the other direction, it will create a current. So a fusion experiment should (1) create an extremely strong magnetic field pointing around the doughnut, (2) heat deuterium and tritium to 100 million degrees inside the doughnut, and (3) drive a current around the doughnut. The magnetic field can be created by superconducting electromagnetic coils which go around and through the doughnut. Turning on the coils provides some initial heating and current, but to sustain it, you need to inject accelerated particles or waves from the side. This kind of fusion experiment is called a tokamak [10]. Figure 5: The coils and magnetic fields of a tokamak. Small, Medium, and Large Experiments I find it helpful to classify fusion experiments by their size. This is not standardized, so different people will classify them differently. The larger the experiment, the farther the particles have to move (perpendicular to the magnetic field) to get from the core to the outer edge. Larger experiments inherently have a longer confinement time. Small fusion experiments are sometimes called ‘tabletop' experiments. This doesn't always mean that they fit on a tabletop, but they can fit in the physics building of a research university without too much disruption. The doughnut has a radius of about 1 m. The support requirements (power supply, control systems, measuring equipment, etc.) aren't too different from other physics labs. Figure 6: The first tokamak, T-1, did fit on a tabletop. Medium fusion experiments have a radius of about 1.5 - 3 m. They require their own facility for all of their support systems, but they typically fit in a single building. One prominent medium experiment is JET [11]. Figure 7: Someone inside JET. They have to wear a protective suit because tritium is nasty stuff. Large fusion experiment means ITER [12], an experiment currently under construction in southern France. ITER has a diameter of over 6 meters. The experiment itself has a five story building. Supporting buildings cover about 100 acres or 0.5 km2. Figure 8: Construction at ITER as of May 2021. ITER We can now answer some of our earlier questions. The reason why progress has stalled is because we did as much as we could do on medium experiments. No country has been willing to provide enough money to build its own large experiment. So the fusion community has been gathering money from all around the world for decades for a single project [13]. ITER is supported by Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland), the US (which withdrew in 1999 and rejoined in 2003 [14]), Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Figure 9: There are three people in this diagram. Can you find them? ITER is designed to get Q=10. Despite getting 10 times as much energy from fusion as we put into the plasma, ITER is not designed to get engineering breakeven. ITER is designed as an experiment, not as a power plant. There will be tons of measuring devices pointed inwards. There are four different ways to heat the plasma and drive the current. This all allows you to learn more, but it requires extra power and lowers the overall plant efficiency. ITER will be followed by a demonstration power plant, named DEMO [15]. A fully optimized power plant should be able to reach engineering breakeven as long as Q>5. This is why I chose Q=5 as my criterion for ‘getting fusion’. ITER is also testing multiple designs for the tritium breeding blanket. Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site. The D-T fusion reaction produces a neutron, which we want to absorb, so we can use it to produce tritium. ‘Breeding' is when we use a neutron to produce a more useful isotope. It is a ‘blanket' because it surrounds the entire plasma, keeping the neutrons from going anywhere else. The best reaction to produce tritium involves lithium-6: 36Li +01n 24He +13T . This reaction also releases energy, which increases the power produced by about 25%. The tritium breeding blanket needs to make this reaction occur as much as possible, to efficiently carry the heat away so it can be used to generate electricity, and to provide a way to extract the tritium produced. ITER is scheduled to begin their first experiments in 2025. Part of why I think that we are about to make rapid progress again is because we are finally getting a large experiment. There have been problems with ITER staying on schedule and under budget. This isn't surprising for a collaboration between governments representing over half the world's population. In 2014, ITER got a new director, recalculated its expected cost, and underwent a major restructuring. Since then, ITER has largely stuck to this schedule and budget. Recently, there has been a 6 month delay because the French nuclear agency did what nuclear regulatory agencies do best, but this has been the longest delay since 2014. It is still possible for ITER to fail. The biggest risk involves disruptions. Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once. This could melt some extremely expensive equipment and take years to repair. If ITER cannot get disruptions under control, then it would be a failed experiment. This is especially challenging because pushing for higher Q makes disruptions more likely. ITER is planning on being extremely cautious: Experiments begin in 2025, but it won't operate at full capacity until 2035. ITER has been the focus of the fusion community now for decades. The Future of Fusion Energy similarly makes ITER the centerpiece of the book. Things. Have. Changed. ITER by itself is not enough to justify the high level of confidence I express at the start. When Parisi & Ball finished writing this book in April 2018, ITER was basically the only game in town. Since then, Things. Have. Changed. Historically, private fusion companies were almost entirely jokes or frauds. They make outlandish claims, use completely different designs so they can't build on the progress of Figure 3, and they can be safely ignored. For example, Lockheed Martin [16] claims that it will take them five years to build a prototype of a fusion power plant that will fit in a truck. They have yet to publish evidence that they have produced a fully ionized plasma. Maybe they're just being secretive, but their design has solid components in the plasma. That won't work. A new generation of private companies have surged into fusion. Leading the charge is Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their tokamak SPARC [17]. Recent advances in high temperature superconductors have been a game changer. They can produce a much stronger magnetic field which allows for better confinement in a smaller experiment. We should now be able to get Q=10 in a medium experiment, which costs ten times less than ITER [18] and is within the reach of private venture capital. Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

Figure 4: A charged particle spiraling around a doughnut-shaped magnetic field. This is still not quite enough. Charged particles will drift in a curved magnetic field, which causes them to leak out the outer side of the doughnut. We can solve this problem by making the magnetic field twist, like a French cruller. Particles near the outer edge, drifting outwards, will follow the magnetic field line around to the inner edge, where they will drift back towards the core. The easiest way to make the magnetic field twist is to run a current through the plasma. You don't need to (and can't) run a wire there. Plasmas are full of charged particles that can move. When more of the electrons move in one direction around the doughnut then in the other direction, it will create a current. So a fusion experiment should (1) create an extremely strong magnetic field pointing around the doughnut, (2) heat deuterium and tritium to 100 million degrees inside the doughnut, and (3) drive a current around the doughnut. The magnetic field can be created by superconducting electromagnetic coils which go around and through the doughnut. Turning on the coils provides some initial heating and current, but to sustain it, you need to inject accelerated particles or waves from the side. This kind of fusion experiment is called a tokamak [10]. Figure 5: The coils and magnetic fields of a tokamak. Small, Medium, and Large Experiments I find it helpful to classify fusion experiments by their size. This is not standardized, so different people will classify them differently. The larger the experiment, the farther the particles have to move (perpendicular to the magnetic field) to get from the core to the outer edge. Larger experiments inherently have a longer confinement time. Small fusion experiments are sometimes called ‘tabletop' experiments. This doesn't always mean that they fit on a tabletop, but they can fit in the physics building of a research university without too much disruption. The doughnut has a radius of about 1 m. The support requirements (power supply, control systems, measuring equipment, etc.) aren't too different from other physics labs. Figure 6: The first tokamak, T-1, did fit on a tabletop. Medium fusion experiments have a radius of about 1.5 - 3 m. They require their own facility for all of their support systems, but they typically fit in a single building. One prominent medium experiment is JET [11]. Figure 7: Someone inside JET. They have to wear a protective suit because tritium is nasty stuff. Large fusion experiment means ITER [12], an experiment currently under construction in southern France. ITER has a diameter of over 6 meters. The experiment itself has a five story building. Supporting buildings cover about 100 acres or 0.5 km2. Figure 8: Construction at ITER as of May 2021. ITER We can now answer some of our earlier questions. The reason why progress has stalled is because we did as much as we could do on medium experiments. No country has been willing to provide enough money to build its own large experiment. So the fusion community has been gathering money from all around the world for decades for a single project [13]. ITER is supported by Europe (EU + UK + Switzerland), the US (which withdrew in 1999 and rejoined in 2003 [14]), Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. Figure 9: There are three people in this diagram. Can you find them? ITER is designed to get Q=10. Despite getting 10 times as much energy from fusion as we put into the plasma, ITER is not designed to get engineering breakeven. ITER is designed as an experiment, not as a power plant. There will be tons of measuring devices pointed inwards. There are four different ways to heat the plasma and drive the current. This all allows you to learn more, but it requires extra power and lowers the overall plant efficiency. ITER will be followed by a demonstration power plant, named DEMO [15]. A fully optimized power plant should be able to reach engineering breakeven as long as Q>5. This is why I chose Q=5 as my criterion for ‘getting fusion’. ITER is also testing multiple designs for the tritium breeding blanket. Tritium is expensive and radioactive, so you want to produce it on site. The D-T fusion reaction produces a neutron, which we want to absorb, so we can use it to produce tritium. ‘Breeding' is when we use a neutron to produce a more useful isotope. It is a ‘blanket' because it surrounds the entire plasma, keeping the neutrons from going anywhere else. The best reaction to produce tritium involves lithium-6: 36Li +01n 24He +13T . This reaction also releases energy, which increases the power produced by about 25%. The tritium breeding blanket needs to make this reaction occur as much as possible, to efficiently carry the heat away so it can be used to generate electricity, and to provide a way to extract the tritium produced. ITER is scheduled to begin their first experiments in 2025. Part of why I think that we are about to make rapid progress again is because we are finally getting a large experiment. There have been problems with ITER staying on schedule and under budget. This isn't surprising for a collaboration between governments representing over half the world's population. In 2014, ITER got a new director, recalculated its expected cost, and underwent a major restructuring. Since then, ITER has largely stuck to this schedule and budget. Recently, there has been a 6 month delay because the French nuclear agency did what nuclear regulatory agencies do best, but this has been the longest delay since 2014. It is still possible for ITER to fail. The biggest risk involves disruptions. Sometimes, the plasma in a tokamak becomes unstable and all of the plasma hits the wall at once. This could melt some extremely expensive equipment and take years to repair. If ITER cannot get disruptions under control, then it would be a failed experiment. This is especially challenging because pushing for higher Q makes disruptions more likely. ITER is planning on being extremely cautious: Experiments begin in 2025, but it won't operate at full capacity until 2035. ITER has been the focus of the fusion community now for decades. The Future of Fusion Energy similarly makes ITER the centerpiece of the book. Things. Have. Changed. ITER by itself is not enough to justify the high level of confidence I express at the start. When Parisi & Ball finished writing this book in April 2018, ITER was basically the only game in town. Since then, Things. Have. Changed. Historically, private fusion companies were almost entirely jokes or frauds. They make outlandish claims, use completely different designs so they can't build on the progress of Figure 3, and they can be safely ignored. For example, Lockheed Martin [16] claims that it will take them five years to build a prototype of a fusion power plant that will fit in a truck. They have yet to publish evidence that they have produced a fully ionized plasma. Maybe they're just being secretive, but their design has solid components in the plasma. That won't work. A new generation of private companies have surged into fusion. Leading the charge is Commonwealth Fusion Systems and their tokamak SPARC [17]. Recent advances in high temperature superconductors have been a game changer. They can produce a much stronger magnetic field which allows for better confinement in a smaller experiment. We should now be able to get Q=10 in a medium experiment, which costs ten times less than ITER [18] and is within the reach of private venture capital. Figure 10: Finding the person here is much easier. When the Department of Energy decided to close the third largest plasma experiment in the US, the MIT group which ran it found itself adrift. They founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems in 2018 with a goal of getting fusion within 10 years [19]. Since then, they have built the first ever high temperature superconducting coil in 2019, released their engineering plans for SPARC in 2020, began construction in 2021, and plan on finishing construction in 2025. Commonwealth Fusion had just been founded when Parisi & Ball wrote in 2018. Now they're leading the race to fusion. Several other startups are following SPARC's strategy of using stronger magnetic fields to get fusion in a smaller experiment. They use a variety of designs. Alternative Designs To understand how the alternative designs are different, we need to make sure we understand the basic strategy for getting fusion in a tokamak. Let's run through it again: (A) We want to get lots of fusion reactions … … so we want a large triple product (density * temperature * confinement time). (B) The fusion plasma is too hot to touch solid objects … … so we put it in a magnetic bottle shaped like a doughnut. (C) The particles drift outwards, leaving the bottle … … so we twist the magnetic field with a current in the plasma. I will start with the alternatives that are most similar to a tokamak. For each one, I will list the best experiments that currently exist, where they're located, and the year they began operation. Tokamaks have been better researched than any other strategy. There are currently 10 medium tokamaks: T-10 (Russia, 1975)

Triune God1 mentions across 1 issues

Triune God is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 10, 2022 and October 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Christianity without the divinity of Christ, as a person of the Triune God". It most often appears alongside 9-11, Adraste, America.

Reference entry: Triune God
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 10, 2022
Last seen: October 10, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day October 10, 2022

9-11 1 shared issues
Adraste 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American Jews 1 shared issues
Angels 1 shared issues

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October 10, 2022 · Original source

Christianity without the divinity of Christ, as a person of the Triune God, is not Christianity. The highest-profile modern followers of Arian theology are the LDS and JW movements, which I'm grateful to note are pretty broadly acknowledged to be outside the pale of historic, Biblical Christianity. Confused, well-meaning adherents of these systems, I would engage warmly. Leaders who are actively seeking to lead more and more people astray with their anti-Biblical nonsense, I wouldn't mind seeing punched in some circumstances.

TrkB1 mentions across 1 issues

TrkB is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2021 and February 22, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""TrkB then something Ras mTORC something something synaptogenesis""; "The authors of the TrkB study". It most often appears alongside Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TrkB neurotrophin receptors, BDNF, California.

Reference entry: TrkB
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 22, 2021
Last seen: February 22, 2021

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A Look Down Track B February 22, 2021

Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TrkB neurotrophin receptors 1 shared issues
BDNF 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues
Derek Lowe 1 shared issues
Ethiopia 1 shared issues

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A Look Down Track B

February 22, 2021 · Original source

We understand parts of the pathways that regulate synaptic growth. When the body wants more synapses, it releases neurotrophic hormones like BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). These activate various receptors including tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB, affectionately pronounced "track B" because it's one of two related pathways for these signals). TrkB then something Ras mTORC something something synaptogenesis now you're not depressed anymore hooray.

Pictured: BDNF binds to TrkB. The IRS confiscates 1/2 of it as taxes, which radicalizes the receptor and makes it join Gab (see footnote 1), where it tweets out an SOS message to the Ras of Ethiopia. But the left wing of the receptor joins the Palestine Liberation Council and moves to California (see footnotes 2+). California has sunshine and good beaches, so you stop feeling depressed. This part sort of makes sense. But it coexists uneasily with other puzzle pieces in our knowledge of depression. For example, we give people SSRIs, their serotonin levels go up, and this makes them feel better. Why? Because of BDNF something TrkB something mTORC something? Probably; mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants. But why does more serotonin cause BDNF something TrkB something? I've looked for years for a paper that says something like "by the way, serotonin makes cells release more BDNF". But despite a few suggestive links I don't see anyone strongly asserting that they understand this.

Inline links: mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants, links

This part sort of makes sense. But it coexists uneasily with other puzzle pieces in our knowledge of depression. For example, we give people SSRIs, their serotonin levels go up, and this makes them feel better. Why? Because of BDNF something TrkB something mTORC something? Probably; mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants. But why does more serotonin cause BDNF something TrkB something? I've looked for years for a paper that says something like "by the way, serotonin makes cells release more BDNF". But despite a few suggestive links I don't see anyone strongly asserting that they understand this.

Inline links: mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants, links

Trojan Horse1 mentions across 1 issues

Trojan Horse is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Most pagan myths have nothing to do with ... the Trojan Horse". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry: Trojan Horse
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2023
Last seen: November 17, 2023

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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning November 17, 2023

Abel 1 shared issues
Adam and Eve 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Apollonius of Tyana 1 shared issues
Arab 1 shared issues

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If The Media Reported On Other Things Like It Does Effective Altruism

November 17, 2023 · Original source

But Girard lost me with the part about the myths. Most pagan myths have nothing to do with the single-victim process (eg labors of Hercules, Jason and the Golden Fleece, rape of Persephone, the Iliad, the Trojan Horse, the Odyssey, etc, etc, etc). The same with most Bible stories (Adam and Eve, Noah’s Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Ten Plagues, the Ten Commandments, etc). It kind of seems like the sort of thing where Freud can claim all myths are about castration. There are lots of myths, and they’re about lots of things. “Person does bad thing, the gods collectively punish humanity, then once we get rid of him the collective punishment stops” is certainly one trope. But it’s not hard to fathom why a primitive community stricken by a plague might think God was punishing them for some iniquity. And if I haven’t committed iniquity lately, and you haven’t committed iniquity lately, it must be some particular bad guy who needs to be stopped.

Trojan War1 mentions across 1 issues

Trojan War is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 25, 2022 and November 25, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "in the myth of the Trojan War, Menelaus tries to rescue his wife". It most often appears alongside Bill Clinton, Dr. John Scholtz, Emile Torres.

Reference entry: Trojan War
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 25, 2022
Last seen: November 25, 2022

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If The Media Reported On Other Things Like It Does Effective Altruism November 25, 2022

Bill Clinton 1 shared issues
Dr. John Scholtz 1 shared issues
Emile Torres 1 shared issues
facebook 1 shared issues
Mark Zuckerberg 1 shared issues

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November 25, 2022 · Original source

6. It’s tempting to think that if your wife is kidnapped, you should try to help her. But in the myth of the Trojan War, Menelaus tries to rescue his wife after she was kidnapped, and it ends in disaster. This is the glorious humanistic tradition warning us against people who care too much about wife-kidnapping. If these tech bros would just read a book, they would learn that excessive concern about wife-kidnapping is dangerous and unnatural.

TRON1 mentions across 1 issues

TRON is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 16, 2022 and November 16, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "TRON is garbage". It most often appears alongside @AutismCapital, Adderall, ADHD.

Reference entry: TRON
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 16, 2022
Last seen: November 16, 2022

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The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash November 16, 2022

@AutismCapital 1 shared issues
Adderall 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
adrafinil 1 shared issues
Alameda 1 shared issues

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The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash

November 16, 2022 · Original source

Dopaminergic agents used for Parkinson disease have been associated with compulsive behaviors and/or loss of impulse control, which has manifested as pathological gambling, libido increases (hypersexuality), uncontrolled spending of money, binge eating, and/or other intense urges. Causality has not been established, and controversy exists as to whether this phenomenon is related to the underlying disease, prior behaviors/addictions and/or drug therapy. Dose reduction or discontinuation of therapy has been reported to reverse these behaviors in some, but not all cases.

Footnotes

LET ME REPEAT THIS FOR EVERYONE AGAIN: Shitcoins are bad, and you should feel bad if you trade them. Get the fuck out of the shitcoin casino you dumb ass gamblers! Solana is garbage. TRON is garbage. Exchanged-based coins like FTT are garbage. Coins with fucking dogs faces are garbage. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency you should hold. Maybe ETH. Hedge your bets there. You need to CONTROL YOUR OWN KEYS. Don't lend your coins out to charlatans promising you 5%, 8%, 15%, or 20% "risk free" returns. They are all scam Ponzis. There is no such thing as risk free 20% returns. It doesn't exist. Stop chasing it. If you don't control your private keys, it's not your crypto. If you trust an exchange based in the Bahamas ran by a jabroni who thinks he needs SIX MONITORS, you are in for a bad time. I've been in cryptocurrency since 2010 when BTC was 81 cents. I lived through the MT GOX implosion. I have had more crypto stolen from me in hacks and exit scams than you probably have ever even seen. Learn from my experience. Listen to what I am saying. TWELVE YEARS now I have been in crypto. This too shall pass. Fuck all these frauds stealing everyone's shit. We will all be better off with them out of the industry. However, you all have to learn from this shit. CONTROL YOUR OWN KEYS! Stop gambling on shitcoins. You are being used as exit liquidity for idiots.

Trontinemab1 mentions across 1 issues

Trontinemab is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 14, 2025 and August 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Trontinemab data strengthen hope for brain shuttles". It most often appears alongside A. Bejanin, A. de Calignon, A. Elobeid.

Reference entry: Trontinemab
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 14, 2025
Last seen: August 14, 2025

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In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis August 14, 2025

A. Bejanin 1 shared issues
A. de Calignon 1 shared issues
A. Elobeid 1 shared issues
A. J. Aschenbrenner 1 shared issues
A. L. Woerman 1 shared issues

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Inline links: https://medically.roche.com/content/dam/pdmahub/restricted/neurology/ctad-2024/CTAD-2024-presentation-kulic-latest-interim-results-from-brainshuttle-ad-study.pdf

August 14, 2025 · Original source

I am not claiming that the disease is “as simple as” amyloid deposits directly inducing neurodegeneration. As described above, they act indirectly, via the eventual downstream tau pathology, and possibly an associated microglial/astrocytic inflammatory response. Therefore, there are many people in the preclinical, amyloid-only disease phase who will eventually progress to dementia but have not yet. These two clarifications imply that even though amyloid pathology is a necessary and (in enough severity) sufficient cause of the disease under normal circumstances, therapies with other targets might still be effective, either intervening upstream such that amyloid deposits never occur, or downstream so as to prevent the neurodegenerative process. The testable prediction I would bet on the following: A therapy whose sole intended mechanism involves amyloid production or clearance, in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, will, in the next 12 years, achieve a slowdown of cognitive decline of at least 75%, with a p-value below 0.001, in its preregistered primary cognitive endpoint (or an average of all such endpoints if more than one exists). I’d eventually expect better than 75% efficacy, but getting stuff to work takes time, and I wanted to make a prediction which can be tested in a reasonable timeframe. On the other hand, if a clinical trial completes earlier than 12 years from now (perhaps [73], reading out in 2027), sustains extremely good amyloid clearance at the preclinical stage, and has a good safety profile, but doesn’t make substantial progress towards this 75% goal, then I would consider this prediction refuted in advance. For targeting amyloid, I’m most optimistic about a blood brain barrier (BBB)-penetrating antibody such as trontinemab [74–76], but with an epitope more like lecanemab’s, and given in the preclinical disease stage. Other options for targeting amyloid include antisense oligonucleotides for APP as well as γ-secretase modulators. The successes and failures of amyloid antibodies There have now been three amyloid antibodies with positive phase 3 (and earlier) clinical trials on cognitive endpoints (but with much less than 75% efficacy): Aducanumab in phase 1b [77] (19% on my average across cognitive endpoints for the highest two doses) and one of two phase 3 trials [78] (22%, but negative 2% in the other trial, which also gave a lower dose on average).

[74] J. Shugart, “Trontinemab data strengthen hope for brain shuttles,” Alzforum News, 2024, Available: https://www.alzforum.org/news/conference-coverage/trontinemab-data-strengthen-hope-brain-shuttles

Inline links: https://www.alzforum.org/news/conference-coverage/trontinemab-data-strengthen-hope-brain-shuttles

[75] L. Kulic et al., “Latest interim results from the Brainshuttle AD study: A phase Ib/IIa study of trontinemab in people with Alzheimer’s disease.” Poster presented at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease (CTAD 2024), Madrid, Spain, Oct. 30, 2024. Available: https://medically.roche.com/content/dam/pdmahub/restricted/neurology/ctad-2024/CTAD-2024-presentation-kulic-latest-interim-results-from-brainshuttle-ad-study.pdf

tropical diseases1 mentions across 1 issues

tropical diseases is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 22, 2022 and September 22, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Bill Gates trying to cure tropical diseases". It most often appears alongside Adam Neumann, Alex Roesch, Amazon.

Reference entry: tropical diseases
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 22, 2022
Last seen: September 22, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Billionaire Replaceability September 22, 2022

Adam Neumann 1 shared issues
Alex Roesch 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
AMZ 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Billionaire Replaceability

September 22, 2022 · Original source

I do think billionaires have the ability to have a lot of impact by pulling the ropes sideways, ie by doing things that are by definition outside the normal political system. Things like Patrick Collison promoting open science, Elon Musk trying to revolutionize spacecraft, or Bill Gates trying to cure tropical diseases. Maybe some people are angry about that, but if so that’s a real ethical difference between us - I think it’s generally good for people have the power to make a difference, the ability to exercise agency, etc, and that lopping that off at some level is anti-human. This isn’t true if you’re lopping off some people’s power to preserve other people’s, but I think what I mean by saying “outside the normal political system” is that this is specifically about cases where that isn’t true.

Inline links: pulling the ropes sideways

tropomyosin receptor kinase B1 mentions across 1 issues

tropomyosin receptor kinase B is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2021 and February 22, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""These activate various receptors including tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB, affectionately pronounced 'track B')"". It most often appears alongside Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TrkB neurotrophin receptors, BDNF, California.

Reference entry: tropomyosin receptor kinase B
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 22, 2021
Last seen: February 22, 2021

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A Look Down Track B February 22, 2021

Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TrkB neurotrophin receptors 1 shared issues
BDNF 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues
Derek Lowe 1 shared issues
Ethiopia 1 shared issues

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A Look Down Track B

February 22, 2021 · Original source

We understand parts of the pathways that regulate synaptic growth. When the body wants more synapses, it releases neurotrophic hormones like BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). These activate various receptors including tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB, affectionately pronounced "track B" because it's one of two related pathways for these signals). TrkB then something Ras mTORC something something synaptogenesis now you're not depressed anymore hooray.

Pictured: BDNF binds to TrkB. The IRS confiscates 1/2 of it as taxes, which radicalizes the receptor and makes it join Gab (see footnote 1), where it tweets out an SOS message to the Ras of Ethiopia. But the left wing of the receptor joins the Palestine Liberation Council and moves to California (see footnotes 2+). California has sunshine and good beaches, so you stop feeling depressed. This part sort of makes sense. But it coexists uneasily with other puzzle pieces in our knowledge of depression. For example, we give people SSRIs, their serotonin levels go up, and this makes them feel better. Why? Because of BDNF something TrkB something mTORC something? Probably; mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants. But why does more serotonin cause BDNF something TrkB something? I've looked for years for a paper that says something like "by the way, serotonin makes cells release more BDNF". But despite a few suggestive links I don't see anyone strongly asserting that they understand this.

Inline links: mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants, links

This part sort of makes sense. But it coexists uneasily with other puzzle pieces in our knowledge of depression. For example, we give people SSRIs, their serotonin levels go up, and this makes them feel better. Why? Because of BDNF something TrkB something mTORC something? Probably; mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants. But why does more serotonin cause BDNF something TrkB something? I've looked for years for a paper that says something like "by the way, serotonin makes cells release more BDNF". But despite a few suggestive links I don't see anyone strongly asserting that they understand this.

Inline links: mice with dysregulated BDNF/TrkB systems don't benefit from antidepressants, links

Trotskyist international socialism1 mentions across 1 issues

Trotskyist international socialism is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 04, 2021 and November 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "if focus groups ever started saying nice things about Trotskyist international socialism he’d pivot in an instant". It most often appears alongside Alcsutdoboz, Allied Powers, Angela Merkel.

Reference entry: Trotskyist international socialism
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 04, 2021
Last seen: November 04, 2021

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Dictator Book Club: Orban November 04, 2021

Alcsutdoboz 1 shared issues
Allied Powers 1 shared issues
Angela Merkel 1 shared issues
Attila 1 shared issues
Austria 1 shared issues

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Dictator Book Club: Orban

November 04, 2021 · Original source

I don’t see any of that with Orban. Yeah, after learning that right-wing nationalism did well in focus groups, he became a right-wing nationalism; after learning that refugees did poorly in focus groups, he turned anti-refugee. But you can tell that if focus groups ever started saying nice things about Trotskyist international socialism he’d pivot in an instant.

tRPC1 mentions across 1 issues

tRPC is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 24, 2022 and October 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "and ideally Next.js, Prisma, or tRPC". It most often appears alongside Astralcodexten Com, California bill that restricts use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence, FTX Future Fund Regranting program.

Reference entry: tRPC
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 24, 2022
Last seen: October 24, 2022

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Open Thread 247 October 24, 2022

Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
California bill that restricts use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence 1 shared issues
FTX Future Fund Regranting program 1 shared issues
impactmarkets.io 1 shared issues
KillerBee 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 247

October 24, 2022 · Original source

The impactmarkets.io team is developing version 2.0 of their platform. They are funded by the FTX Future Fund Regranting program, and have a limited budget to pay contractors. They are looking for developers that have experience with TypeScript and React (and ideally Next.js, Prisma, or tRPC) to contribute. It would be well-suited for devs that want to have a large EA-aligned impact in their free time. Pay is $0-50/hour, based on skill and volunteer interest. Book a call with them or join their Discord to learn more or apply.

Inline links: impactmarkets.io, Book a call, Discord

True Movementarian1 mentions across 1 issues

True Movementarian is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 10, 2022 and August 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "start a group of True Movementarians, opposed to the corrupt members of the regular movement". It most often appears alongside alt-right, Bishop of Rome, David Chapman.

Reference entry: True Movementarian
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 10, 2022
Last seen: August 10, 2022

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A Cyclic Theory Of Subcultures August 10, 2022

alt-right 1 shared issues
Bishop of Rome 1 shared issues
David Chapman 1 shared issues
dirtbag left 1 shared issues
feminism 1 shared issues

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A Cyclic Theory Of Subcultures

August 10, 2022 · Original source

The average counterelite probably won’t take over the movement. But they can win small victories. They can start a group of True Movementarians, opposed to the corrupt members of the regular movement. Then they can have a True Movementarian conference, a True Movementarian newsletter, etc. This maybe solves the status famine for one more generation.

Trump AI czar1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump AI czar is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 10, 2025 and December 10, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Trump AI czar David Sacks". It most often appears alongside 100 Above The Park, 2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction, 23andme.

Reference entry: Trump AI czar
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 10, 2025
Last seen: December 10, 2025

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Links For December 2025 December 10, 2025

100 Above The Park 1 shared issues
2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
@StatisticUrban 1 shared issues
A16Z 1 shared issues

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Links For December 2025

December 10, 2025 · Original source

The other good news is that somehow they don’t charge a subscription, which makes them a way to get usually-subscription-only AI models for free. How is this possible? “[The most likely hypothesis is that] Witpaw is an adorable piece of spyware and he’s selling my data to the CCP”. 36: This month’s anti-people-named-Sacks content: NYT on Trump AI czar David Sacks’ conflicts of interest; New Yorker on whether neurologist Oliver Sacks used his case studies to work through his own issues rather than presenting them accurately. [EDITED TO ADD: I originally framed it this way as a joke, but on further research I think David and Oliver are related. Wikipedia says that Oliver was first cousins with Israel statesman Abba Eban, and that Abba Eban was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents in Cape Town. David Sacks’ bio says he was born to Jewish parents in Cape Town, and this article specifies that they were Lithuanian. I doubt there were too many Lithuanian Jewish families named Sacks in mid-1900s Cape Town, so sure, related!) 37: Orca Sciences: There Has To Be A Better Way To Make Titanium. Titanium is a great metal - strong, light, and tough. If we had cheap titanium, it could revolutionize manufacturing the way cheap steel and aluminum did in previous eras. So why don’t we? Not because titanium is rare: it’s “the 9th most common element in the earth’s crust”. Rather, it’s very complicated and expensive to extract from its ore. Some kind of breakthrough in titanium extraction processes always seems tantalizingly close, but has never quite materialized. Is there any hope? 38: If Asians Are Lactose Intolerant, Why All The Milk Tea? Lactose intolerance has confused me for a long time - 23andMe tells me that I’m lactose intolerant, but I drink milk regularly without problems, so what’s up? This post’s answer: lactose-intolerant people who don’t usually drink milk will get sick if they start suddenly. Lactose-intolerant people who drink milk regularly since childhood develop gut microbiota that can digest milk, but which demand an expensive “tax” in calories. Lactose-tolerant people will always be able to digest milk and absorb all the calories themselves. 39: How do different majors change college students’ political beliefs? No surprise that the humanities and social sciences shift people left; no surprise that business and economics shift them right. I was a little surprised that engineering shifts people right a little, and that Education of all things shifts people right (albeit only slightly). How is that even possible? Are these people coming in as Mao Zedong and leaving as “only” Leon Trotsky? Also, Political Science is exactly neutral, lol. [EDIT: I misunderstood, they’re using natural sciences as a zero point, this is a reasonable choice but slightly changes the interpretation] 40: Kindkristin: Language models improved my mental health. 41: More floor employment, from the WSJ (h/t @LaocoonofTroy): Big Paychecks Can’t Woo Enough Sailors For America’s Commercial Fleet: “Straight out of college, graduates from the country’s maritime academies can earn more than $200,000 as a commercial sailor, with free food and private accommodations... Despite the pay and perks, maritime jobs go begging, and it is raising national-security concerns.” Other selling points include “six months vacation, live wherever you want, and you’re serving the nation” and onboard “gyms, connectivity, and cuisine”. The catch is that you have to be at sea for months at a time. 42: Study (h/t @KierkegaardEmil): there was minimal “learning loss” from COVID school closures, best estimate is “0.02 standard deviations per 100 days of school closure”. I correctly predicted this back in 2021, but I also wrote in March of this year about how there’s been a general decline in NAEP scores since then. It seems like maybe a student having their specific school closed for longer than other schools didn’t hurt them, but some sort of general cultural change, maybe related to COVID, did hurt. 43: Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother on why she thinks his trial was unfair. SBF is appealing his conviction and will probably be making some of these same points in court. Can’t find a prediction market directly on the appeal, but this one says only 15% chance he serves under 10 years, this one says 15% chance of a Trump pardon, so it doesn’t seem like there’s much room for him to be freed (or get a significantly shorter sentence) on appeal. And Wired says that only 5-10% of appeals like these succeed. 44: Related: Trump pardons Juan Orlando Hernandez, former Honduran president extradited to the US for narco-corruption. Some sources are trying to find a Prospera angle - Prospera and other ZEDEs were approved under JOH’s administration, and the Prosperans seem to have good MAGAworld connections - but I don’t think this is their top priority, and I don’t know if it requires much explanation for Trump to be pro-right-wing Latin American politicians convicted by the Biden administration. More interesting is that apparently JOH and SBF were cellmates (X), “SBF spent extensive time helping JOH with trial prep” and SBF told an interviewer that “Juan Orlando is the most innocent prisoner I’ve met, myself included.” ChatGPT is not impressed with the Trump/SBF case for JOH’s innocence. Related: JOH’s conservative party on track to win this month’s extremely-close Honduran elections, great news for Prospera if it happens. 45: The “100 Above The Park” building in St Louis (h/t Bobby Fijan on X): 46: The death toll of the ongoing Sudan genocide has risen to about 150,000. Nicholas Kristof writes that the world has once again failed to prevent atrocities, and argues that the most important point of leverage is pressure on the United Arab Emirates, which is arming the genociders. Sam Kriss also writes about the situation in The World’s First Matcha Labubu Genocide, but is unimpressed with Kristof’s take: Sudan is passed over in a deeply uncomfortable silence. The absolute most you can do is blame the Emiratis. From what I’ve seen, more people seem to be appalled at the UAE for its frankly marginal role in arming the RSF than at the RSF itself. This is the approved way of understanding any inscrutably indigenous foreign conflict: you just worm out any third-party involvement and then act like you’ve solved the whole thing. I side with Kristof here, for reasons that Sam himself touches on later in his piece, in a section comparing Darfur with Gaza. It would be very easy to make people care about Darfur again. All it would take is a loud, vocal contingent of RSF apologists in the Western media. I agree, but would frame it less cynically: the reason Westerners pay attention to Gaza is that there’s a lever to push: not only does America support Israel, but many of their friends support Israel, so they can imagine convincing America or at least their friends to stop, and at least feel like there is some remote chance of making a small difference (and in fact, Trump getting mad at Israel and deciding to pressure them was decisive in effecting the cease-fire). On the other hand, we don’t have many levers to affect ethnic Baggara in the Rapid Support Forces of Sudan, so it doesn’t really feel useful to write blog posts arguing that they should stop; obviously they should stop, nobody disagrees with this, and it goes without saying - so nobody says it. But the US does support the UAE, and many of our friends like the UAE or at least go there on vacation, so maybe it’s possible to have make some small difference by embarrassing them. 4D chess take is that Sam Kriss agrees with all of this, but “loudly” and “vocally” argued against it to give people like me a hook to write about this genocide with, in which case I thank him for his sacrifice. It would also be nice to be able to donate, but I don’t know who to trust in the region - other than Doctors Without Borders, who are usually pretty good. 47: The AI Futures Project (group of AI-will-be-fast intellectuals) and the AI As A Normal Technology team (group of AI-will-be-slow intellectuals) wrote an adversarial collaboration in Asterisk explaining what they agree on, for example: That there’s an important distinction between existing AI and “strong AGI”

Inline links: Trump AI czar David Sacks’, neurologist Oliver Sacks, says, Abba Eban was, bio, this article, There Has To Be A Better Way To Make Titanium, If Asians Are Lactose Intolerant, Why All The Milk Tea?, How do different majors change college students’ political beliefs?, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xR53!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa36d404d-9574-4e25-93bb-7ef4d2ca9f9a_940x606.jpeg, as a zero point, Language models improved my mental health, floor employment, @LaocoonofTroy, Big Paychecks Can’t Woo Enough Sailors For America’s Commercial Fleet, Study, @KierkegaardEmil, correctly predicted this, wrote in March of this year, Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother on why she thinks his trial was unfair, appealing his conviction, this one, this one, Trump pardons Juan Orlando Hernandez, Some sources, JOH and SBF were cellmates (X), is not impressed, on track to win, Bobby Fijan on X, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Gj0x!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd354a169-6127-4815-85b5-940414c632eb_603x900.jpeg, Nicholas Kristof writes, The World’s First Matcha Labubu Genocide, and in fact, Trump getting mad at Israel and deciding to pressure them was decisive in effecting the cease-fire, Doctors Without Borders, an adversarial collaboration in Asterisk explaining what they agree on

Trump Derangement Syndrome1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump Derangement Syndrome is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 26, 2024 and July 26, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Have you ever heard of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Mr. McAfee?". It most often appears alongside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 2020 election, 2024 book review contest.

Reference entry: Trump Derangement Syndrome
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 26, 2024
Last seen: July 26, 2024

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Your Book Review: Real Raw News July 26, 2024

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 1 shared issues
2020 election 1 shared issues
2024 book review contest 1 shared issues
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11 trutherism 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Real Raw News

July 26, 2024 · Original source

The lack of evidence that all this is happening is entirely explained through coordinated media silence as well as the widespread use of body doubles and clones. The heart of Real Raw News, and the source of most of its entertainment value, is its accounts of the supposed secret military tribunals occurring at America’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, better known as Gitmo2. For more than three years, the site has produced one article after another describing the arrest, trial, and execution of dozens of major and not-so-major figures in American life. Hillary Clinton? Arrested, tried, executed. Bill Gates? Arrested, tried, executed. Dick Cheney? Fled the country via a secret underground tunnel to a CIA airfield, but then returned to America on vacation for some reason3, arrested, tried, executed. George W. Bush, Hunter Biden, Anthony Fauci, Gavin Newsom, Mark Milley, Victoria Nuland, Tom Hanks (?), Brian Stelter (???) – All arrested and executed, in turn4. Almost all defendants are hanged, which actually is not the method prescribed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but has the advantage of being far more cinematic. It would be easy for all of this to get old, but like with variations in classical music, subtle differences to each iteration enrich the whole. Some defendants desperately try to deny responsibility for their crimes. Some arrogantly taunt the tribunal, assuming until the very end that they are untouchable. Some literally scream as though demon-possessed. Some fake senility or amnesia. But crucially, all of them face justice, one way or another. An entry published just before this contest’s deadline is a lovely example: Representing himself, [Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott] McAfee in opening remarks talked himself into an early verdict. He said no one and nothing, not even imprisonment, would prevent him from destroying the Trump family. Handcuffed at the defense table, he glared at the panel and said he would topple the Trump empire, building by building, brick by brick, and wouldn’t rest until every Trump supporter was behind bars or dead. “Then I’ll take care of the people here and this place,” McAfee said. “Mr. McAfee, I’m told you are of sound mind and know where you are, right?” Admiral Stephens asked5. “I’m in a Kangaroo court in the Banana Republic of Trump, staring at a guy who couldn’t hack it in the real world, couldn’t run a private practice, get a partnership, or sit on a real bench, so he went into the military,” McAfee said. “Have you ever heard of Trump Derangement Syndrome, Mr. McAfee?” the Admiral asked. “Because you have the worst case I’ve seen, and I’ve seen several.” “Trump is finished. He’ll be in jail soon, and when he is, your house of cards collapses,” McAfee said. “It might seem that way, but it only seems that way,” the Admiral said. “You might as well find me guilty. I’ll never stop hating Trump and I’ll never stop working to demolish everything he stole. He was born guilty, and he’ll be guilty until the day he dies. That’ll be the only word on his gravestone: GUILTY!” McAfee shouted. The lead panelist, a Marine Corps major, politely interrupted: “Admiral, sir, we don’t have to hear any more. McAfee mocks this court, and we find him guilty of the treason charge. Additionally, we are in agreement he should hang for his crimes.” Admiral Stephens nodded contemplatively. “I side with these fine officers. Mr. McAfee, you are hereby sentenced to hang for treason against the United States of America.” His execution is scheduled for May 15. Yes, this is the judge of Trump’s criminal case in Fulton County. In the Real Raw News world, Trump’s various legal adventures are both real and fake at the same time. Apparently, Trump could completely ignore these proceedings, and the military in fact begs him to do so, but he chooses to place himself in danger from some unseen, Christ-like self-sacrificial motive. That motive, it appears, is getting evil judges to expose their bias by ruling against him, so that they can be arrested and executed for treason. The site often offers an alternative narrative regarding events in the official, Deep State-backed news narrative. When Colin Powell died, RRN was there to explain that he actually committed suicide, fearing arrest by the military. When former Tom Hanks co-star Peter Scolari died of cancer, RRN swooped in to attribute his demise to an unexpected military tribunal6. This pattern is one of the chief reasons fans cite for believing the site: Isn’t it incredible, they say, how some of the same people RRN reports the executions of just happen to have recently died or been hospitalized in the mainstream press? What are the odds? Perhaps surprisingly, the star figure in Real Raw News’s tapestry of blood is not Donald Trump; like Gandalf or Dumbledore, he is a heroic but distant and largely off-screen figure. Instead, the primary hero is Rear Admiral Darse Crandall, who dispenses lethal justice with shocking efficiency while always being ready with a good quip: Admiral Crandall ordered [Arizona Governor Katie] Hobbs not to intimidate the witness. “You lack decorum, detainee Hobbs, and your insouciance ends here. We revoke your right to further question this witness and ask the panel to render a verdict on the charges against you.” The admiral dismissed Jane Doe, and the panel unanimously found Hobbs guilty, recommending she hang to death. “I won’t let you do this to me,” Hobbs screeched. “It’s already done,” said Admiral Crandall. “And have a Merry Christmas—in whatever afterlife you wind up in.” He scheduled her execution for December 22. Adm. Crandall is in fact a real person, currently serving as Judge Advocate General of the Navy. Admiral Crandall seems like a nice and professional fellow, and I badly want to know what he makes of his alternate persona. I like to hope that he enjoys it; maybe he jokingly warns his subordinates to do their jobs right or else they’ll be arrested and executed. If anybody knows otherwise, please do not disabuse me of this fantasy. Lesser fake news auteurs will puke out lame one-and-done articles about the moon landing or JFK or whatever, with zero internal consistency. Baxter is better. His military tribunals are reported out in detail. Even the most minor figures receive dedicated articles for their arrest, their trial, and their demise, but the biggest names receive genuine weeks-long productions. Hillary Clinton’s tribunal spans five days, until damning testimony from her former aide (and lover) Huma Abedin sends her to the gallows. Former president Bush’s arrest and tribunal is a ten-part epic lasting nearly two months, and includes details that are eccentric even by 9/11 truther standards: Supposedly, the real death toll of 9/11 (which Bush orchestrated) was 7,000, but Bush deemed this number too high to win reelection, so the real number was suppressed and 4,000 families were silenced with enormous bribes that also served to stimulate the economy. Good thing all the plotting was caught on tape, or he might have gotten away with it. Baxter never rushes things. Remember how the Colorado Supreme Court tried to kick Trump off the primary ballot in late 2023? Lesser fake newsers might have had the entire 4-vote anti-Trump majority arrested at once, but Baxter is cannier. In his reporting, one justice was arrested immediately, but the other three went on the run , and took months to capture. As of this writing we’re still waiting for their tribunal. I hope it’s a barn-burner! Baxter knows that while crass wish fulfillment is easy, truly great stories need formidable villains. Amidst the many arrests and hangings of Baxter’s saga are cinematic setbacks. Sometimes, the Marines don’t get their man: [Biden White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish] Jha was five feet away from his vehicle when two Marines with an arrest warrant approached him, informing him that he was being placed under arrest on charges of mass murder. Jha erupted in laughter, saying, “You don’t even know who we are.” He exploded in a crimson fireball that blew his and the Marines’ bodies to bits throughout the parking lot. […] The Marines brought what remains they could to Fort Bragg, where medical examiners deduced that Jha was not Jha, but a clone in which someone had planted a subdermal detonator connected to HMX explosives. And then, there is the looming presence of RRN’s chief villain: Former U.S. President Barack Obama. Members of the deep state make a warped pledge of allegiance to “The United States of Ukraine” and to “one world under Obama.” Other arms of the deep state might be taken down, but Obama himself always lurks in the shadows, controlling and commanding. The occasional attempt to take him down runs into the kind of problems you’d expect: “Why?” Obama gurgled and died. Inexplicably, the body spontaneously combusted, starting at both hands and spreading to the arms and chest. Special Forces tried extinguishing the flames with sand and water, but their efforts were in vain—the flames were rapidly charring burnt flesh. “Check his feet,” the Special Forces lead, who had been trained to spot body doubles and clones, called out. They swiftly yanked off Obama’s socks and sneakers and saw he had flat feet, and that his sneakers had been augmented to fit people with fallen arches. They pulled down his pants; Obama had no genitals, a telltale indicator of cloning. The body became too hot to touch and was soon consumed by fire. Like Bob Ross, Michael Baxter has no mistakes, only happy little accidents. In late 2021, RRN reported on the conviction of the late Chelsea Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky. Being only a lackey in the Clintons’ plot to abduct children and sell them on the black market, Mezvinsky received a comparatively lenient life sentence. But wait! Two months later, Gitmo’s chaplain mentioned in passing that he had attended Mezvinsky’s execution. Eagle-eyed readers saw the discrepancy and cried foul. But Baxter didn’t miss a beat. When Baxter reported on the arrest of former Obama adviser David Axelrod, only to publish no follow-up, he had a ready explanation a year later: Axelrod had been executed without trial by being thrown out of an airplane, and it took months for Baxter to learn the truth. I’ll admit, I find Baxter’s efforts to maintain narrative integrity incredibly charming, given how they clash with the latent absurdity of the whole endeavor. Like most fictional universes, the Real Raw Newsiverse crumbles if you think about it too hard. If there are White Hat and Black Hat partitions of the military, how does military procurement work? How do newly-enlisted personnel know which faction they are joining? Do the two factions have separate recruiters? And when literally everyone carries a basic video camera in their pocket, and social media access is universal, how are major battles being fought on American soil with zero video evidence anywhere? At the meta level, the entire construct gets even sillier. The conceit of the site is that Trump has secretly left power to entrap his foes…yet then his allies go and blab the entire “real” story to an online blog. The cover for this is that the masses simply don’t believe it, but you know who would definitely know whether the blog is accurate? The Deep State! Yet despite this, in RRN lore sinister actors from Andrew Cuomo to Oprah are always caught off guard when Delta Force7 smashes down their door and zip-ties their hands for a one-way trip to Cuba. Okay, But So What? You might be tempted to think this is all irrelevant rambling into the void. But if you think that, you’re mistaken. The thing is, Real Raw News is popular. Really popular. It got more than 2 million page visits in January. It’s a lot more popular than this blog and even outdraws some established publications like The Nation. “Okay, views are views, but does anyone really believe this?” you may ask, perhaps derisively. Well, it falls to me to say that yes, yes they do. The typical RRN article gets hundreds upon hundreds of comments. And sure, a lot of them are “My mother is being paid $2,000/day working from home” spam, but most of them are not. Hundreds upon hundreds of comments are from readers grateful to Baxter for sharing the “truth.” Even more unsettling are comments from people who spot a problem with the occasional story, but still trust Baxter overall. Baxter has a donation page on Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. It has raised more than $210,000 and donations continue to pour in on a daily basis. Sure, some donation messages clearly indicate people who are in on the joke…but many more do not. But I don’t just need to guess based on comments and donation messages. In this realm, I can appeal to personal experience. I work in the broader world of American right-of-center politics, and we encounter Real Raw News believers constantly. We get emails from people who confidently insist the public-facing news of the day is fake, and the truth about the events at Gitmo will soon be revealed. At public Q&A events, we’ve fielded questions from genuinely nervous and worried people, who complain about their friends losing hope and being blackpilled by the news, and want to know why there hasn’t been more effort to share what’s “really” going on. A friend of mine who served in the Trump administration has described attending parties where, when he mentioned looking for a post-admin job, he received knowing looks and wink-wink-nudge-nudge remarks from people signaling they knew what was “really” going on. Somehow and someway, a lot of people believe or half-believe or badly want to believe this stuff. And where a lot of people do anything, there are takeaways to be found! In my three-plus years of reading all news that is both real and raw, here is what I’ve found. Conspiracies Evolve Like Comic Book Lore In his review of the Alexander Romance, Scott remarked that figures like Alexander the Great or Hercules were, essentially, the pre-modern versions of Batman: Stories about them are a genre, with countless different variations and stylistic choices that evolve over time, with just a few set principles guiding all of them. The Real Raw Newsiverse, and other modern conspiracy theories, also function like comic book lore. Just like Batman, and just like Hercules, “Donald Trump” has become a genre. Fake news stories about him and his Deep State enemies have a few core premises (adrenochrome, pedophile cabals, there is a Plan and we should Trust It) but endless room for variation past that point. Fans of comic books, soap operas, or The Simpsons might be familiar with something TVTropes calls “comic book time.” Certain facets of a fictional reality are locked in place, and with the passage of time everything else is gradually retconned to maintain the status quo. In season 2 of the Simpsons, Homer and Marge started dating in 1974, in Season 3 Marge becomes pregnant with Bart in 1980 (after a date watching The Empire Strikes Back), and in season 4 it’s revealed that Homer missed the Moon Landing to listen to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” Tragically, though, The Simpsons kept going past season 10, and if Homer was 18 in 1974 that would make him eligible for a full Social Security benefit today. So in 2008, the continuity changed so that Homer was in a Nineties grunge band just before marrying Marge8. The Simpsons writers have avoided rejiggering the canon since, but if they do, they’ll have to confront the fact that 30-something Homer and Marge are now millennials, and in a decade they’ll be members of Gen Z. You may live to see a Simpsons flashback episode about Homer and Marge living as hipsters in Brooklyn during the 2010s (truly, we live in cursed times.) But the same phenomenon exists in the world of conspiracies. Instead of a consistent, elaborate canon, what we have is a few story beats with a lot of customization and the occasional retcon. When Baxter first began posting his stories, a core part of the narrative was that Donald Trump still secretly had all the powers of the presidency and was still in command of the entire U.S. military command. Early articles promised that Trump’s apparent loss of office was only a temporary ruse, necessary to expose the worst elements of the Deep State, but that Trump’s triumphal return to power would take place by July 4, 2021. The national media might have put on a song and dance suggesting otherwise, but behind the scenes, loyal military forces were the real ones in control. This control even extended to the military helpfully house-sitting the White House and not letting Biden use it. Despite his illegitimate victory, Biden met an unwelcome surprise when he arrived at the White House on January 20. Instead of getting a ceremonial greeting, he and Kamala Harris were stopped by National Guard and U.S. Marines at the barbwire fence encircling the White House. The Marines informed them that the military had assumed control of the Executive Branch and instructed them to vacate the area. When Harris belligerently said, “Move aside, we’re president now,” the Marines locked the gate. […] To avoid shame and maintain an illusion of power, Biden’s people concocted a ruse, supported by his media allies, to deceive the American public into believing he had won a fair election and had moved into the White House on schedule. Inside Actor/Producer Tyler Perry’s 300-acre Atlanta estate sits a three-story stucco replica of the commander-in-chief’s residence, which he originally built as a set piece for a television show. […] Although the replicant White House is built to 80% scale, on television and in images it’s indistinguishable from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Biden and Harris have been using the facsimile to feign leadership and impose despotic rule on the nation. Of course, July 4 came and went, with Trump’s return nowhere to be seen, so the canon simply updated: In the new narrative, the military had been conducting a year-long election fraud audit on Trump’s behalf, the results were nearly ready for public release, and Trump’s return would simply be “swift.” But no swift return has transpired, and so as the 2024 election has approached, the lore has evolved in the direction of Trump authentically running in this election and simply reclaiming power by winning it. As time has passed, more subtle changes have had to pile up. Early on, RRN reported that Joe Biden was a brain dead semi-corpse being held at Walter Reed, and any public appearances by “Biden” were one of several actors. But after four years of Let’s Go Brandon, Biden himself has become a more popular villain, and so quietly references to his brain-dead status have disappeared. In the early days of RRN, the military was firmly behind Trump and any implication that Biden held the powers of commander-in-chief was a media-fueled sham. But as time has passed, Trump being the “real” commander-in-chief over a loyal military has evolved into a reality where there are two American militaries, a “White Hat” faction loyal to Trump and “Black Hats” loyal to Biden. Early stories implied the White Hats were more numerous, but recent stories have implied the opposite, with the White Hats an elite force that often wins battles decisively while badly outnumbered. A secret purge has gradually become a secret civil war, specifically one with frequent war crimes: White Hat forces in Maui have eradicated or repelled all but a handful of the felonious FEMA agents who began terrorizing the tropical paradise in the aftermath of the inexplicable blaze that razed Lahaina and surrounding towns in early August, a source in General Eric M. Smith’s office told Real Raw News. Since mid-August, United States Marines have fought with FEMA patrols in Lahaina, Kaanapali, Wailuku, Maalaea, and Pukalani, and the skirmishes resulted in the deaths of approximately 475 federal goons and, alas, 34 valiant Marines. The Marines died upholding the Constitution of the United States; the feds died trying to defend the criminal Biden regime. […] “The Marines died valorously,” our source said. “We ain’t taking FEMA prisoners from the rank and file, only the key players. General Smith made it clear it’s weapons-free. Those bastards know damn well they’re following unlawful orders, and they’ll pay the price.” I think the ever-evolving nature of conspiracies is actually pretty important to psychologically grasping their appeal. I have a friend who is a big believer in 9/11 Trutherism. He once compelled me to watch the documentary “The New Pearl Harbor,” an exhausting 5-hour film promoting 9/11 conspiracies. If one actually watches, one quickly discovers that a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theories are mutually exclusive, or at least don’t mesh well together: One conspiracy argues that fighter jets were intentionally diverted the wrong direction to keep them from shooting down the hijacked jets approaching New York, while another conspiracy suggests that United 93 was shot down, and it was all covered up. In some versions, the planes didn’t hit the Twin Towers at all. Sometimes Bush did it, and sometimes Israel did it, and so on. Similarly, in my career I’ve worked adjacent to people who, like RRN, were very hostile to Covid-19 shots. That hostility made them sequentially endorse wildly different assertions about how the vaccines worked. Sometimes, the vaccines contain heavy metals. Sometimes, they contain hydra DNA to turn recipients into partially non-human chimeras. Sometimes, the vaccines are a depopulation agent. Sometimes, they’re a mind-control agent, or a killswitch that can be activated by self-assembling nanomachinery. One viral documentary in 2022 claimed that Covid was caused by snake venom in the water supply, and that Covid vaccines were an additional dose of snake venom to keep people sick (all this, of course, because the snake is Satan’s animal). What stands out isn’t the silliness of these particular theories, but that I saw them sequentially endorsed by the same people. Some of these people are smart enough to notice inconsistencies, at least when they’re pointed out, so why don’t they bother them? To some extent, I think it’s for the same reason people don’t care that every Batman story doesn’t perfectly line up. Consistency isn’t the point! What actually matters is enjoying individual stories and the wider genre they fit into. Covid vaccine haters don’t think too hard about any specific story. Instead, they’re driven by a core impulse of “distrust the new vaccine that people I distrust are promoting,” and every conceivably story or tale that feeds that genre of thought is, for them, worthwhile. Similarly, Real Raw News fans don’t think too hard about any specific story. Instead, I think their core impulse is, ironically, profound disappointment in how the Trump administration failed to deliver. Trump shook up the American political landscape more than anyone in living memory, and promised sweeping changes to every level of American government, yet his actual administration proved rather disorderly, changed far less than was promised, and then lost power after one term. For many, this simply prompted a revision in how they saw Trump. But for others, the preferred response is to embrace a fantasy reality where Trump is a superhero. I actually think the reverse side of this explains things like the durability of Russiagate: If you’re a normal American liberal, everything Trump says is offensive and piggish, but to justify their level of disdain for them, many needed to elevate his evil to the level of treason, even if that never really made any sense. It can't just be that Trump is an egotistical jerk or a narcissist or whatever. He's got to be a traitor who's going to end American democracy. People Crave Extreme, Over-the-Top, and Underhanded Solutions. At the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety pushed through the Law of 22 Prairial. The law simplified the procedures of the country’s Revolutionary Tribunal by: Defining a whole heap of activities as criminal treason, including “creating scarcity,” disparaging the National Convention, “inspiring discouragement,” and spreading fake news.

Trump I1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump I is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2026 and March 18, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "difference between Trump I and Trump II". It most often appears alongside #Resistance, Congress, Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.

Reference entry: Trump I
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2026
Last seen: March 18, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Support Your Local Collaborator March 18, 2026

#Resistance 1 shared issues
Congress 1 shared issues
Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation 1 shared issues
Democratic member of Congress 1 shared issues
FDA 1 shared issues

Source context

Support Your Local Collaborator

March 18, 2026 · Original source

Yes, the Trump administration has been horrible. But these people have prevented it from being, well, slightly worse. You can see this most clearly in the difference between Trump I and Trump II. In Trump I, there were far more of these people, and they could do a better job keeping Trump’s worst impulses in check. But even in Trump II, people have talked Trump out of crazy ideas so often that there’s a famous acronym proposing that it “always” happens: T.A.C.O. Just last month, RFK Jr’s FDA made an unprecedented attempt to cancel its review of a potentially revolutionary flu vaccine. After what I assume was a concerted campaign, they chickened out and reversed course, and we’ll probably all be slightly healthier.

Inline links: T.A.C.O., a potentially revolutionary flu vaccine

I know five people who will think this paragraph is about them: there’s a guy who endorsed Trump in 2024. Now they have a job in a conservative-coded think tank, where they do good work pushing back on the administration’s worst ideas. Because their think tank is GOP-aligned, the administration sometimes listens to them. But their social media contains a lot of blink-twice-if-you’re-being-held-hostage-style signs that they’ve come around and are pretty embarrassed at their original Trump support. Liberals sometimes notice this, accuse them of hypocrisy/collaboration/cowardice, and demand they vocally and explicitly condemn Trump or quit their conservative think tank. I hope these people don’t listen, because they’re approximately the only ones pushing back on some of the administration’s worst ideas. If we socially pressured them into explicitly posting “I renounce Trump and all his demons, now I’m part of the #Resistance”, it would feel great and cathartic for an hour or so, and then various horrible things would happen and an industry or academic field or medium-sized state would collapse.

If someone publishes a policy paper, or even a blog post that seems aimed at policy-makers, expect them to write as if the administration is a reasonable bargaining partner that might do good things for good reasons, even if this is, let’s say, optimistic. Don’t demand that the paper intended to convince the administration additionally be used to insult the administration. Here I’m thinking partly of my own post Trump II Health Policy Proposals, where I tried to talk about health policy ideas at the intersection of “good” and “congruent with the cultural DNA of Trump health policy nominees” in the hopes of injecting them into the conversation among FDA employees. I am told this had some positive effects, but it also got me several comments (1, 2, 3) and emails accusing me of “whitewashing” the administration by treating them as reasonable people whose cultural DNA might be associated with good policies. I don’t think it’s acceptable to lie (and I don’t think my post did), but I will defend not including “btw you suck” in a post intended for administration consumption.

Inline links: Trump II Health Policy Proposals, 1, 2, 3

Trump II1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump II is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2026 and March 18, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "difference between Trump I and Trump II". It most often appears alongside #Resistance, Congress, Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.

Reference entry: Trump II
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2026
Last seen: March 18, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Support Your Local Collaborator March 18, 2026

#Resistance 1 shared issues
Congress 1 shared issues
Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation 1 shared issues
Democratic member of Congress 1 shared issues
FDA 1 shared issues

Source context

Support Your Local Collaborator

March 18, 2026 · Original source

Yes, the Trump administration has been horrible. But these people have prevented it from being, well, slightly worse. You can see this most clearly in the difference between Trump I and Trump II. In Trump I, there were far more of these people, and they could do a better job keeping Trump’s worst impulses in check. But even in Trump II, people have talked Trump out of crazy ideas so often that there’s a famous acronym proposing that it “always” happens: T.A.C.O. Just last month, RFK Jr’s FDA made an unprecedented attempt to cancel its review of a potentially revolutionary flu vaccine. After what I assume was a concerted campaign, they chickened out and reversed course, and we’ll probably all be slightly healthier.

Inline links: T.A.C.O., a potentially revolutionary flu vaccine

If someone publishes a policy paper, or even a blog post that seems aimed at policy-makers, expect them to write as if the administration is a reasonable bargaining partner that might do good things for good reasons, even if this is, let’s say, optimistic. Don’t demand that the paper intended to convince the administration additionally be used to insult the administration. Here I’m thinking partly of my own post Trump II Health Policy Proposals, where I tried to talk about health policy ideas at the intersection of “good” and “congruent with the cultural DNA of Trump health policy nominees” in the hopes of injecting them into the conversation among FDA employees. I am told this had some positive effects, but it also got me several comments (1, 2, 3) and emails accusing me of “whitewashing” the administration by treating them as reasonable people whose cultural DNA might be associated with good policies. I don’t think it’s acceptable to lie (and I don’t think my post did), but I will defend not including “btw you suck” in a post intended for administration consumption.

Inline links: Trump II Health Policy Proposals, 1, 2, 3

Trump Legal Issues Cinematic Universe1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump Legal Issues Cinematic Universe is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 30, 2024 and January 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "I haven’t been following the Trump Legal Issues Cinematic Universe". It most often appears alongside 538, Aaronson, ACX.

Reference entry: Trump Legal Issues Cinematic Universe
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 30, 2024
Last seen: January 30, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

24 January 30, 2024

538 1 shared issues
Aaronson 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
AI Doom 1 shared issues
AI-Fizzle 1 shared issues

Source context

January 30, 2024 · Original source

I haven’t been following the Trump Legal Issues Cinematic Universe, so I was surprised to see “Trump won’t go to jail” climbing so consistently. Maybe this is just because he has a higher chance of becoming President before the trials are over?

Trump presidency1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump presidency is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 19, 2021 and April 19, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "There was no large-scale state-sponsored violence against minorities during the Trump presidency". It most often appears alongside #Resistance, 1/2019 government shut down, 538.

Reference entry: Trump presidency
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 19, 2021
Last seen: April 19, 2021

Outbound links

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families

Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions April 19, 2021

#Resistance 1 shared issues
2019 government shut down 1 shared issues
538 1 shared issues
538 1 shared issues
alt-right 1 shared issues

Source context

Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions

April 19, 2021 · Original source

…and tried to be as clear as possible by including disclaimers like “I thought and still think a Trump presidency will be a disaster” and “I’m not saying Trump doesn’t have some racist attitudes and policies. I am saying that talk of ‘entire campaign built around white supremacy’ and ‘the white power candidate’ is deliberate and dangerous exaggeration.”

I think time has proven me right here. There was no large-scale state-sponsored violence against minorities during the Trump presidency. Trump’s race-related policies were similar to those of other recent Republican presidents. The three most-discussed Trump supporter hate crimes all turned out to be hoaxes (1, 2, 3, I swear I’m not trying to cherry-pick, these really were the most discussed incidents at the time). There was no huge spike in hate crimes during the Trump presidency, just fluctuations of about the same scale as during previous years. The much-reported-upon study showing that Trump rallies increased local hate crimes was reanalyzed and found to be wrong; adjusting for population correctly showed they did not increase hate crimes at all. Trump lost support among white voters, and gained support among voters of color at an unprecedented rate among Republicans. The KKK and Richard Spencer did not play a major role in the Trump administration, and the media stopped covering them in favor of new, less-racialized pro-Trump groups like QAnon.

Inline links: 1, 2, 3, reanalyzed and found to be wrong

1. Total hate crimes incidents as measured here will be not more than 125% of their 2015 value at any year during a Trump presidency, conditional on similar reporting methodology [confidence: 80%]

Inline links: here

Trump-era tariffs1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump-era tariffs is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 15, 2021 and March 15, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs". It most often appears alongside Apple, Apple silicon, Biden.

Reference entry: Trump-era tariffs
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 15, 2021
Last seen: March 15, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Mantic Matt Y March 15, 2021

Apple 1 shared issues
Apple silicon 1 shared issues
Biden 1 shared issues
Biden administration 1 shared issues
Byrne Hobart 1 shared issues

Source context

Mantic Monday: Mantic Matt Y

March 15, 2021 · Original source

1. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate races 2. The same party wins both Senate races in Georgia 3. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating higher than his disapproval rating 4. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating above 50% 5. US GDP growth in 2021 is the fastest of any year of the 21st century 6. The year-end unemployment rate is below 5 percent 7. The year-end unemployment rate is above 4 percent 8. Lakers win the NBA championship 9. Joe Biden ends the year as president 10. Nancy Pelosi sets a definitive retirement schedule 11. A vacancy arises on the Supreme Court 12. The EU ends the year with more confirmed Covid-19 deaths than the US 13. Substack will still be around 14. People will still be writing takes asking if Substack is really sustainable 15. Apple releases new iMacs powered by Apple silicon 16. Apple does not release a new Mac Pro powered by Apple silicon 17. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 2 percent 18. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 3 percent 19. Lloyd Austin not confirmed as Defense Secretary 20. No federal tax increases are enacted 21. Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt 22. United States rejoins JCPOA and Iran resumes compliance 23. Israel and Saudi Arabia establish official diplomatic relations 24. US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs 25. Slow Boring will exceed 10,000 paid members

1. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate races (60%) 2. The same party wins both Senate races in Georgia (95%) 3. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating higher than his disapproval rating (70%) [83%] 4. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating above 50% (60%) [60%] 5. US GDP growth in 2021 is the fastest of any year of the 21st century (80%) [84%] 6. The year-end unemployment rate is below 5 percent (80%) 7. The year-end unemployment rate is above 4 percent (80%) 8. Lakers win the NBA championship (25%) [25%] 9. Joe Biden ends the year as president (95%) [96%] 10. Nancy Pelosi sets a definitive retirement schedule (60%) 11. A vacancy arises on the Supreme Court (70%) [50%] 12. The EU ends the year with more confirmed Covid-19 deaths than the US (60%) [80%] 13. Substack will still be around (95%) 14. People will still be writing takes asking if Substack is really sustainable (80%) 15. Apple releases new iMacs powered by Apple silicon (90%) [84%] 16. Apple does not release a new Mac Pro powered by Apple silicon (70%) [53%] 17. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 2 percent (70%) 18. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 3 percent (90%) 19. Lloyd Austin not confirmed as Defense Secretary (60%) 20. No federal tax increases are enacted (95%) 21. Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt (80%) 22. United States rejoins JCPOA and Iran resumes compliance (80%) 23. Israel and Saudi Arabia establish official diplomatic relations (70%) [38%] 24. US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs (70%) 25. Slow Boring will exceed 10,000 paid members (70%) [75%]

Trump-Russiagate1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump-Russiagate is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 13, 2023 and January 13, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The most recent time I fell for a conspiracy theory was Trump-Russiagate". It most often appears alongside ancient-aliens theory, Earth, Egyptian pyramids.

Reference entry: Trump-Russiagate
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 13, 2023
Last seen: January 13, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Conspiracies of Cognition, Conspiracies Of Emotion January 13, 2023

ancient-aliens theory 1 shared issues
Earth 1 shared issues
Egyptian pyramids 1 shared issues
Egyptian texts 1 shared issues
Elders of Zion 1 shared issues

Source context

Conspiracies of Cognition, Conspiracies Of Emotion

January 13, 2023 · Original source

But second, I like when I have personal experience with a cognitive bias, so I know what it feels from the inside. The most recent time I fell for a conspiracy theory was Trump-Russiagate. I didn’t believe in an active way, so much as hear that lots of other people believed it, assume it was probably true, and not bother looking into it. Still, this seems easier to think about sympathetically than the Elders of Zion, so let’s think about it.

When I ask why Trump-Russiagate was so appealing, I get an answer like this: lots of people really hated Trump. But there wasn’t a single, pithy, irrefutable reason to hate Trump. You could say that he violated a lot of important social norms, had many terrible policies, and said offensive things. But other people could hear you say this and still like him. They could counterargue that the social norms he violated weren’t really important norms, his policies were actually good, and his opinions weren’t offensive after all (or that that certain kinds of “offensiveness” are good). People hated Trump more than they could easily justify.

Trust And Safety1 mentions across 1 issues

Trust And Safety is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 04, 2022 and May 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "five years working on the Trust And Safety team at Twitter". It most often appears alongside 1000, 1200, 1400.

Reference entry: Trust And Safety
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 04, 2022
Last seen: May 04, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Every Bay Area House Party May 04, 2022

1000 1 shared issues
1200 1 shared issues
1400 1 shared issues
1650 1 shared issues
400 AD 1 shared issues

Source context

Every Bay Area House Party

May 04, 2022 · Original source

“No, really, it’s fine. I’m not even bitter. Just - five years working on the Trust And Safety team at Twitter, and Musk comes in and fires me just like that.”

Trust Science1 mentions across 1 issues

Trust Science is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 14, 2021 and October 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "self-defeating admonitions to Trust Science". It most often appears alongside @literalbanana, ACX, Barcelona.

Reference entry: Trust Science
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 14, 2021
Last seen: October 14, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For October October 14, 2021

@literalbanana 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Barcelona 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
behavioral econ 1 shared issues

Source context

In The Long Run, We're All Dad

October 14, 2021 · Original source

8: Hopefully not related: self-defeating admonitions to Trust Science (look at that scatterplot and that trend line!)

Truth and Beauty1 mentions across 1 issues

Truth and Beauty is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 22, 2023 and December 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "your mother’s ancestors called them Truth and Beauty". It most often appears alongside ACX, Alexey Guzey, America.

Reference entry: Truth and Beauty
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 22, 2023
Last seen: December 22, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

In The Long Run, We're All Dad December 22, 2023

ACX 1 shared issues
Alexey Guzey 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
BCS3-L1 1 shared issues
Chad 1 shared issues

Source context

December 22, 2023 · Original source

My poor, fragile, little cognitive engines! These, then, will be the twin imperatives of your life: surprisal minimization and active inference. If your brains are still too small to process such esoteric terms, there are others available. Your father’s ancestors called them Torah and tikkun olam; your mother’s ancestors called them Truth and Beauty; your current social sphere calls them Rationality and Effective Altruism. You will learn other names, too: no perspective can exhaust their infinite complexity. Whatever you call them, your lives will be spent in their service, pursuing them even unto that far-off and maybe-mythical point where they blur into One.

Inline links: surprisal minimization, active inference

tryanosome1 mentions across 1 issues

tryanosome is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2021 and June 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "McNeill points to trypanosome, which causes sleeping sickness". It most often appears alongside Africa, antelope, August Hirsch.

Reference entry: tryanosome
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2021
Last seen: June 17, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples June 17, 2021

Africa 1 shared issues
antelope 1 shared issues
August Hirsch 1 shared issues
Australia 1 shared issues
Australian rabbit populations 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples

June 17, 2021 · Original source

Even when humans could grunt about predators and prey, parasites were there to put an exploding population in check. McNeill points to trypanosome, which causes sleeping sickness, and is carried by antelope, transmitted by the tsetse fly. The parasite does not affect antelope or the fly, but causes “drastic debility” in humans- McNeill calls this “an example of a stable, well-adjusted, and presumably very ancient parasitism.” To this day “within the tsetse’s range, something resembling a pre-human ecological balance survives.”

The ecological population check of anciently co-evolved parasites in Africa didn’t work when humans left Africa. After killing all the big game in the world, people (independently across the globe) decided to domesticate an animal and grow some vegetables in their backyard. Eventually humans decided that instead of dealing with weeds and unpredictable backyard gardens, they will collaborate and build irrigation systems and monoculture. Humans escaped the tropical jungle to eventually settle down in warm, wet, dense irrigation farms. Here McNeill points to the blood fluke that causes schistosomiasis, “a nasty debilitating disease, affecting as many as 100 million people today.” Mollusks and humans are the fluke’s hosts, which swims around in water looking for the next snail or farmer. In humans, the disease is debilitating in childhood and is less acute, although still semi-debilitating, thereafter. Again, like trypanosome (and also malaria), blood flukes' very complex life cycle seemingly indicates a lengthy evolution in respect to humans. Maybe blood fluke emerged from tropical Africa, but it spread widely through irrigation farming.

Tryptophan1 mentions across 1 issues

Tryptophan is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 25, 2021 and May 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tryptophan/5-HTP, SAM-e, fish oil and St. John’s Wort may also be helpful"; "consume tryptophan or 5-HTP". It most often appears alongside 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration, 5-HTP, 5-HTP.

Reference entry: Tryptophan
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 25, 2021
Last seen: May 25, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Peer Review Request: Depression May 25, 2021

2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration 1 shared issues
5-HTP 1 shared issues
5-HTP 1 shared issues
amitriptyline 1 shared issues
Andrea Cipriani 1 shared issues

Source context

Peer Review Request: Depression

May 25, 2021 · Original source

The most-studied and best-supported supplements for depression is l-methylfolate. Tryptophan/5-HTP, SAM-e, fish oil and St. John’s Wort may also be helpful. Less-well-studed but promising supplements including Zembrin and polygala tenuifolia. I am currently avoiding discussion of tianeptine, a foreign antidepressant which is sometimes sold as a supplement in the US, until I figure out the legal gray areas around it, but you might consider looking into it on your own. Going through the others one by one:

Tryptophan is a chemical found in food (especially eggs, seeds, and milk). In the body, it gets turned into 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) and then 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT), aka serotonin. Serotonin is an important mood regulatory chemical which we often try to increase during depression treatment, but if you consume serotonin directly, your body won’t be able to absorb it. The closest you can do is consume tryptophan or 5-HTP, and trust your body to absorb it and convert it into serotonin. Both of these chemicals are used for depression, and the few studies that have been done are mostly positive, for example this 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration. A more recent study finds 5-HTP works approximately as well as traditional antidepressants. Everyone agrees these studies are weak and low-quality and we can’t be sure of anything yet, but welcome to the world of depression supplementation. Early concerns about this potentially causing severe eosinophilic reactions don’t seem to have panned out, and might have been based on defective manufacturing processes which have since been fixed. A reasonable dose of 5-HTP would be to start at 100 mg daily, then go up to 200 and finally 300 mg daily after a few weeks. Don’t take this with any other serotonin-related medications without clearing it by your doctor first. You can find a reasonable brand of 5-HTP here.

Inline links: this 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration, works approximately as well as traditional antidepressants, here

tsetse fly1 mentions across 1 issues

tsetse fly is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2021 and June 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "transmitted by the tsetse fly". It most often appears alongside Africa, antelope, August Hirsch.

Reference entry: tsetse fly
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2021
Last seen: June 17, 2021

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples June 17, 2021

Africa 1 shared issues
antelope 1 shared issues
August Hirsch 1 shared issues
Australia 1 shared issues
Australian rabbit populations 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Plagues And Peoples

June 17, 2021 · Original source

Even when humans could grunt about predators and prey, parasites were there to put an exploding population in check. McNeill points to trypanosome, which causes sleeping sickness, and is carried by antelope, transmitted by the tsetse fly. The parasite does not affect antelope or the fly, but causes “drastic debility” in humans- McNeill calls this “an example of a stable, well-adjusted, and presumably very ancient parasitism.” To this day “within the tsetse’s range, something resembling a pre-human ecological balance survives.”

Until some enterprising early humans discovered the Mediterranean and the comparative lack of parasites in global temperate climates. Clothes and shelters, fires and families allowed humans to flourish in new climates. Leaving Africa allowed human’s cultural hijacking of biological evolution to truly become dominant because humanity left most of those pesky tsetse flies in Africa. That’s when humans decimate macro fauna populations across the globe, entirely disrupting most every ecosystem that is touched by human’s cultural ingenuity from roughly 40,000 to 10,000 BC. When you kill all the wooly mammoth and giant sloth and buffalo, you keep walking and find more to kill. Until humanity experiences maybe it’s first resource depletion and needs a new way to find, or maybe grow, food.

Tsimane1 mentions across 1 issues

Tsimane is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Tsimane, a hunter-gatherer tribe who have low rates of chronic age-related disease". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

Reference entry: Tsimane
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 20, 2021
Last seen: September 20, 2021

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Issue trail

Links For September September 20, 2021

4chan 1 shared issues
A Clockwork Orange 1 shared issues
Adrenochrome 1 shared issues
Andrew Gelman 1 shared issues
ArrangedMarriages.co 1 shared issues

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What Your Doctor Spends 80% Of Their Time Doing

September 20, 2021 · Original source

24: We now have okay biomarkers for aging. What happens when we test them on hunter-gatherers? Answer: the Tsimane, a hunter-gatherer tribe who have low rates of chronic age-related disease compared to Westerners, don’t seem to be aging much slower. Whatever is giving us so many chronic diseases can’t really be described as “accelerated aging”, at least not in whatever sense these biomarkers test.

Inline links: What happens when we test them on hunter-gatherers

Tu B'Shevat1 mentions across 1 issues

Tu B'Shevat is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 07, 2022 and December 07, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "'9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat...'". It most often appears alongside Blue Helmet, Blue Helmet Insurance, Chakaramanditya.

Reference entry: Tu B'Shevat
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 07, 2022
Last seen: December 07, 2022

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Issue trail

What Your Doctor Spends 80% Of Their Time Doing December 07, 2022

Blue Helmet 1 shared issues
Blue Helmet Insurance 1 shared issues
Chakaramanditya 1 shared issues
Christmas 1 shared issues
Christmas 1 shared issues

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December 07, 2022 · Original source

"Hello! This is SmartSave pharmacy, home of compassionate savings on drugs, vitamins, and more. Our hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM Saturdays, 10 AM to 3 PM Sundays, 10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, and New Years, and 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat. We now have the COVID booster at SmartSave pharmacy! Did you know that COVID boosters can protect against all variants of COVID? Schedule your COVID booster now! We also have the SmartSave card, a great source for all prescription drug savings. ¡Hola! Esta es la farmacia SmartSave, hogar de ahorros compasivos en medicamentos, vitaminas y más. Nuestro horario es de 9 a. m. a 5 p. m. de lunes a viernes, de 10 a. m. a 4 p. m. los sábados, de 10 a. m. a 3 p. m. los domingos, de 10 a. :30 p. m. en Semana Santa, Día de los Caídos y Tu B'Shevat. ¡Ya tenemos el refuerzo COVID en farmacia SmartSave! ¿Sabía que los refuerzos de COVID pueden proteger contra todas las variantes de COVID? ¡Programe su refuerzo COVID ahora! Tambien tenemos la tarjeta SmartSave, una gran fuente para todos los ahorros en medicamentos recetados. If you would like to hear this introductory message again, press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line."

"Hello! This is SmartSave pharmacy, home of compassionate savings on drugs, vitamins, and more. Our hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM Saturdays, 10 AM to 3 PM Sundays, 10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years, and 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat. We now have the COVID booster at SmartSave pharmacy! Did you know that COVID boosters can protect against all variants of COVID? Schedule your COVID booster now! We now have the SmartSave card, a great source for all prescription drug savings. ¡Hola! Esta es la farmacia SmartSave, hogar de ahorros compasivos en medicamentos, vitaminas y más. Nuestro horario es de 9 a. m. a 5 p. m. de lunes a viernes, de 10 a. m. a 4 p. m. los sábados, de 10 a. m. a 3 p. m. los domingos, de 10 a. :30 p. m. en Semana Santa, Día de los Caídos y Tu B'Shevat. ¡Ya tenemos el refuerzo COVID en farmacia SmartSave! ¿Sabía que los refuerzos de COVID pueden proteger contra todas las variantes de COVID? ¡Programe su refuerzo COVID ahora! Ahora tenemos la tarjeta SmartSave, una gran fuente para todos los ahorros en medicamentos recetados. If you would like to hear this introductory message again, press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line."

Tudor and Jacobean theatre1 mentions across 1 issues

Tudor and Jacobean theatre is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 27, 2023 and April 27, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "professor of tudor and jacobean theatre". It most often appears alongside 286, 8088, Adorno.

Reference entry: Tudor and Jacobean theatre
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 27, 2023
Last seen: April 27, 2023

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Nerds And Hipsters April 27, 2023

286 1 shared issues
8088 1 shared issues
Adorno 1 shared issues
Ant-Man 1 shared issues
Basic 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Nerds And Hipsters

April 27, 2023 · Original source

Admit that it would be indistinguishable from other myths, but say that the “quality” of the Mabinogion comes from something outside the text, like the fact that it’s old, or that it inspired a nation, or that it takes effort to engage with. My lack of a good answer to this experiment makes me reluctant to make too much hinge on abstracted “quality”, separate from “ability to make many people very much enjoy the thing” or “competence at execution” (both of which the Marvel movies have). The Ern Malley hoax, where lots of people who supposedly had good taste were tricked into declaring something high-quality when it superficially appeared to have the characteristics of high-quality things (mildly incomprehensible, used big words, written by someone who toiled in obscurity and died tragically) makes me even more doubtful. My cynical null hypothesis is that we call competently-executed things tasteful/high-quality if they require a lot of erudition to understand and make good class markers, and throw them in the trash with the MCU if they’re easy to appreciate and make terrible class markers. But emotionally I’m not ready to accept this. Emotionally, everyone who likes things more prestigious than what I like is a snob who’s faking it, and everyone who likes things less prestigious than what I like is a boor who doesn’t understand true art. This probably isn’t literally correct but I don’t know which of those two beliefs to abandon. Back to Sam: maybe a better way of summarising my position is that nerds like things in a way that’s orthogonal to quality. let’s take an example of something that’s both very popular and widely agreed to be good – say, the poetry and plays of shakespeare. if you wanted to identify yourself as someone who liked shakespeare, there are actually two ways of doing this. you could deeply immerse yourself in the study of shakespeare, and even become a shakespearean actor or a professor of tudor and jacobean theatre. or you could change your twitter avi to a picture of shakespeare, take plenty of selfies while reading hamlet, wear the t-shirt, and get in endless feuds with people who prefer marlowe or jonson. in fact, you could go down the latter route without ever actually reading any of his plays. (there are a few people who do precisely this.) these are two different ways of intensively liking something. and i think it makes sense to say that while the first example does not make you a nerd, the second one sort of does. Okay, this one feels more like cheating. I’m imagining a two-by-two square: …where Sam fills in the northwest and southeast squares, then claims a correlation, draws a line, and points to high-status/deep-engagement as a single unified concept. But the southwest square could be “writes a wacky Shakespeare fanfiction, Romeo & Juliet II, in blank verse and period-appropriate language”, and the northeast square could be “publishes a dissertation on some irrelevant aspect of word frequency changes across English plays to prove something about linguistics”. And then having conflated these two things, he goes on to conflate a third thing, Shakespeare vs. Marvel. I’m not up to date on what goes on in academic literature departments, but Freddie de Boer says they’re increasingly offering “Spiderman Studies” classes in attempts to stay culturally relevant; probably Spiderman professors engage with Spiderman on the same deep level that Shakespeare professors engage with Shakespeare. If we made this a cube - high-status vs. low-status forms of engagement along one axis, Shakespeare vs. Spiderman along another axis, and deep vs. shallow engagement along the third - would anything be left of the “nerd” cluster as Sam describes it? I’m not sure. 2. Comments With Strong Opinions On The Definition Of Nerds, Geeks, Etc There were many of these. One common theme was that in the 70s, “nerd” was almost synonymous with “person who is only into unpopular things”, for example sci-fi, comics, and RPGs, all of which were unpopular in the 70s. Then those things became very popular, but the people who were interested in them still get called “nerds”. So now people like Kriss use “nerd” almost synonymously with “person who is only into popular things”. So we have a word which denotes either interest in unpopular things or interest in popular things, depending on who’s using it and when they last updated their lexicon. In the 70s, it was more reasonable to group “interested in math and computers” and “interested in sci-fi and RPGs” together, because both were unpopular and tended to involve the same group of socially maladept young men. Now math is still hard and unpopular; computers are hard in the sense that it’s tough to learn programming languages, but universally used and beloved; sci-fi and RPGs are very popular, and the typical sci-fi fan is closer to a socially-adept albeit “quirky” young woman. If words are hidden inferences, the inference represented by “nerd” - that sci-fi fandom, interest in math, interest in computers, maleness, poor social skills, and nonconformity with mainstream interests all go together - is now thoroughly false, dooming us to conversations like this one. Attempts to repurpose the several different words used to refer to the math/sci-fi/awkward/unpopular cluster to represent different aspects of its successor clusters have mostly failed. Sample comments from this section: Coagulopath writes: To me, being a nerd requires a degree of swimming against the cultural tide. It's weird and unpopular to be into trains, so the fact that you are indicates you have a bit of character (or are socially oblivious, which is also kind of endearing). The problem (and I think Kriss alludes to this) is that nerd stuff went mainstream in the past few decades. Of the 10 highest-grossing movies of the 2010s, 6 are Star Wars or Marvel films. There's no longer any sense that nerds are the underdog. But what does it say about you when you wear a Star Wars shirt? You're pledging allegiance to the biggest, most popular club imaginable. Is that a brave stance? Those people always make me think "if you lived in the SW universe, you'd be on the side of the Empire". In general, I am creeped out by effusive public adoration for things that are near-universally loved. Like The Beatles. Or bacon. Or dogs. Or science (Neil DeGrasse Tyson's whole shtick). Regardless of how I feel about those things on the object level, there's no glory in joining a culture war when you're signing on to the winning side. Tolaughoftenandmuch writes: All this is so different from when I was a kid. I was a nerd because I was intellectually curious, bad at and disinterested in sports, socially awkward, and had a computer hobby (owning hardware C64 ->8088 ->286, writing programs in Basic, being a BBS SysOp). Cultural interests were irrelevant to my nerd status. In terms of exactly when nerd interests started becoming popular, Ghatanathoah writes: I also wouldn't say that nerd stuff only went mainstream in the last decade, it's not like the first 3 Star Wars movies were obscure arthouse pictures. I think the reason Marvel took off is just innovations in storytelling: movie producers finally figured out a way to adapt the gloriously arcane and convoluted lore of superhero comics in a way that could appeal to mainstream audiences in addition to nerds (much how George Lucas figured out how to get mainstream audiences to love the space operas nerds had been enjoying for decades before 1977). And Melvin writes: Comic book movies had always been pretty popular. Superman was the top grossing movie of 1979 despite coming out in 1978. Superman 2 was the second top grossing movie of 1981. Batman was the second top grossing movie of 1989. Batman Returns was the top grossing movie of 1992. Batman Forever was the top grossing movie of 1995. Spider-man was the third top grossing movie of 2002 (behind Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies). That's about all I can be bothered looking up right now but you get the idea, superhero movies have been popular since the 1970s. Kaitian writes: I think being a nerd requires being a bit socially clumsy about your interest, and talking or signalling about it in situations where most people don't expect it. So being a nerd about completely mainstream stuff like pop music or football is not possible, that's just fandom. Being a nerd about very well known and relatively well-respected stuff like classical music or birdwatching is rare, because most people who are classy enough to care about the thing in the first place are also classy enough to know when to shut up about it. But comics? Star trek? Power metal? They have fairly low barriers to entry *and* most people don't care about them, so there's plenty of opportunities to bring it up to people who don't want to hear about it. So that's why I think nerdery usually attaches itself to the typical targets. J.R. Leonard has as good a terminology proposal as anyone: I think what's missing is that Kriss uses "nerds" as his foil, but what he's talking about would better be described as fan culture. Deiseach teaches us the etymology of “geek”. The very distant etymology is from German gek, a relative of “cackle” → geck, a fool/madman (who was presumably cackling all the time). But this comes down to us through the early American institution of the geek show. From Wikipedia (cw: disturbing): Geek shows were an act in traveling carnivals and circuses of early America and were often part of a larger sideshow. The billed performer's act consisted of a single geek, who stood in the center ring to chase live chickens. It ended with the performer biting the chickens' heads off and swallowing them. The geek shows were often used as openers for what are commonly known as freak shows. It was a matter of pride among circus and carnival professionals not to have traveled with a troupe that included geeks. Geeks were often alcoholics or drug addicts, and paid with liquor – especially during Prohibition – or with narcotics. More obvious but I went surprisingly long without realizing it: “fan” (as in “sports fan”) is just short for fanatic. 3. Comments About Collecting The veteran collectors in the comments said that my theory (the Internet makes collecting too easy) was only a small part of the decline. The bigger part is that most coin collecting begins with the wonder of finding a rare coin in your change, and most stamp collecting begins with the wonder of finding a rare stamp on your mail, and the rise of credit cards and emails means people aren’t handling coins and stamps as much in their daily lives. Tom Metcalf writes: I'd guess many coin collectors got their start being patient enough to sort through change to see if they had e.g. a wheat cent or silver dime, but first of all, who pays with cash and gets change, and the chances of finding something collectible are orders of magnitude smaller than, say, the '90s. And stamp collectors would have started saving the stamps on mail sent to their house, but how frequently do you get stamped mail anymore? My 79-year old father goes to stamp shows, because one of his hobbies is to buy sheets of old but common unused stamps for less than face value. They are still valid postage, and then he uses them to personalize the stamps he puts on letters he sends to various people. And most of the other people at stamp shows are about his age. He does have some stamps he thinks are interesting that he's held onto, but the dealers at the stamp shows think they're common and uninteresting. So there's a decreasing number of stamps that might be "worth something" and a net loss of collectors in the hobby, and then every time a collector dies and his heirs have no interest in his collection and that many more stamps make their way to dealers who now have one less buyer. Too bad "sending paper letters with vintage but still valid stamps" never caught on with the hipsters. Art writes: The widespread adoption of email created a world where a letter is almost certainly junk mail or a bill. Nobody looks forward to hearing from a good friend from across the country now when picking up the day’s mail. If letters are not interesting why would stamps? The same for coins. Nobody uses cash, and getting a pile of coins with no significant value (inflation) is just an annoyance. These objects have passed into irrelevance. Still, it seems like some little pieces of joy and wonder have passed from our lives. Nathan Savir writes: I collect coins and I think the description of the hobby (and its putative death) isn't quite right. 1. Rare coins are in fact hard to find, even in today's internet world. They are usually sold in auctions, which might happen online, but still not that frequently. It's not unusual for examples some specific rare coin to be sold only once every few years. If the coin is also obscure, it may not be prohibitively expensive, so this kind of situation isn't the sole province of rich people. 2. One area of collecting is to get all the rare items. Another is to get all the minor varieties of a common item. These varieties may not be very rare, but it still takes a lot of effort to be able to distinguish them and to find them. Some collectors will obtain large numbers of relatively common coins and sort through and scrutinize them to try to identify interesting varieties. 3. An important part of collecting is getting good deals. This is surely a lot harder than it used to be because sellers can more easily figure out what things are worth and you won't find something grossly underpriced in a random antique store as often these days. But filtering through buckets (or online listings) of large numbers of coins can still be fun and lead to spotting good deals. So I think there is room in the hobby for nerd-like behavior (per your definition). I would argue the decline of the hobby is more due to competition from other similar hobbies (a generation ago you could collect stamps, coins, baseball cards, or rare books/comics - now you can collect beanie babies, Pokemon cards, NFTs, funko pops, action figures, etc.). I think stamps have suffered more than coins because stamp collecting has more of an aesthetic component (which has faced stronger competition) while coins have a historical element that is less well replicated by collecting newer things. This difference isn't obvious in the google trends graphs you posted but I believe is observable from looking at prices of stamps vs coins. I asked Nathan what coins he collects that are still tough to find, and he gave the example of this Yuan dynasty coin from 1350. I guess if you want to be a collector in 2023 you need to go hard. Arrk Mindmaster writes: I used to collect US coins from every denomination, year, mint, and variety (such as large and small date 1960 pennies). It was kind of like a treasure hunt, knowing you could find something in circulation that was actually more valuable than most people thought it was. I lost interest in the late 1980s sometime, when I found the volume of new coins dwarfed older coins. For example, for Lincoln pennies, they used to make a few million per year, then a few tens of millions. In the 80s, they started making about 5 BILLION each, and it started drowning out all of the old coins, which basically stayed the same value. This comment snapped some things into place for me; I collected coins as a kid in the 90s, and older coin collectors would talk as if you could spot some pretty rare things in your pocket change. But I had much worse luck, and it’s been years since I’ve even found a wheat cent in circulation (even when I was a kid this would happen occasionally). Maybe coin collecting is dying not just because we don’t use change, but because our change is less likely to have interesting coins in it. Another victim of mass money printing! The new state quarters sort of fix this, but other commenters express contempt for this. It feels like the transition between old myths (which one can enjoy) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which corporations are begging you to enjoy in a pre-approved way) - now that the Mint wants you to collect their coins, it feels kind of slavish to comply. Other people point out that the collecting of things other than stamps and coins is still going strong. Drethelin: Collecting has not in the slightest died out. People collect more things than ever, like sneakers, funko pops, vintage cars, guns, antique ceramics, anime figurines, magic cards, etc. Some people also brought up NFTs - are there lots of people who truly enjoy collecting NFTs, aren’t just in it for the investment value, and have kept up through the crypto bear market? 4. Comments Insisting That Sports Are Good Aris C writes: It's a little glib to dismiss sports as bad, isn't it? Athletes display extreme skill, sometimes transcendent. I don't think watching people push the limits of human ability is obviously bad. When I said sports were bad, I didn’t mean this as a final value judgment. I meant that, by our usual standards of entertainment, sports are bad. Imagine a sitcom which had several thousand episodes, each with the exact same plot (some people try to get a ball from one side of the court to the other). At some point, surely most people would stop watching! I appreciate the something something human spirit, and I’m happy to know that, somewhere in the world, sports are happening. It’s just the decision to actually watch them that confuses me. 5. Comments About Enjoying Things Vs. Building Identities Around Them Many people complained that some combination of me and/or Sam Kriss were denying that anyone can ever enjoy anything except as an attempt to “gain status”. I would answer first that yes, I think most behavior has some status component (although it may be a small component, mixed with genuine enjoyment). But also, it doesn’t seem mysterious that some people eg like Star Wars, or even love Star Wars. What seems mysterious to me is when this expresses itself as desire to buy thousands of dollars of figurines in the original boxes, or memorize the stats of every class of ship in the Imperial Navy, or something else which doesn’t seem very fun on its own merits. I’m not criticizing others from a place of invulnerability here. When I was ~14, I got really into Star Wars, and aside from reading all the Extended Universe books - some of which were genuinely very good - for about a year I spent all of my allowance and a good fraction of my free time obtaining Star Wars collectable cards associated with an M:TG style card game (which I never got around to playing). My parents probably still have them somewhere. I cannot at all retrace what led me to do this, but I appreciate commenters’ less cynical explanations. For example, enchantingacacia writes: I think it's honestly sort of funny how non-nerds seem to genuinely not understand that a nerd's identity becomes about [thing] because they like it so much, not the other way around. Sometimes you encounter a thing—let's say it's Minecraft, because why not—and it's just such a positive experience for you that you take every possible opportunity to keep thinking about Minecraft, even when you're not playing. You collect every scrap of information you can find about Minecraft and you compose your own original Minecraft-related songs and you decorate your room with blocky little figurines. You get into a virtuous cycle where talking and thinking about Minecraft is so rewarding that you keep enjoying all these secondary activities long after you're bored of actually playing Minecraft itself. You look out for opportunities to meet people who'd enjoy talking about Minecraft with you and make a bunch of friends with whom you mostly talk about Minecraft, and your friends and family start seeing you as "the Minecraft guy" and they get you a Minecraft hoodie for Christmas cause they know it's a safe pick. This is the obvious and intuitive explanation! There's no need to get fake-deep about "ah, they got into Minecraft so they'd have something to construct their identity around": it explains nothing, and consistently makes incorrect predictions about the internal experiences of Minecraft nerds. It's only virtue is making people feel better about being annoyed by those weirdos who won't shut up about Minecraft. It's possibly that I have unusually low social motivation (genuinely, what does it mean to "construct your identity" and why is it something people would be this comically desperate to do?) and am typical-minding, but, uh, I wonder if there's any group closely associated with "nerds" who are also known for having low social motivation? I think it's a tad more likely that people like Kriss are typical-minding, and constructing elaborate social motivations for people who just like stuff regardless of what people like him think. This is a good comment which avoids buck-passing-style “I enjoy it because it’s fun” explanations. Along the same lines, odd anon writes: It is only among nerds that enthusiasm for something corresponds to learning more and more about it. That's the core element here. Non-nerds who like something do not feel any need to read up on it, to know more and more. Of course, the producers of content notice when their audience are nerds, and they start to produce content built more for those who obsessively learn every detail. Comics can start "rewarding" readers for noticing some obscure thing. A game series can have an elaborate continuity, or a zillion details to memorize. Content that either "leans into the fandom" or simply naturally has too much for non-nerds to easily pick up, can rapidly become nerd-only, thus solidifying boundaries. And sure, there are the personality correlations, attributes most nerds also have, including being STEM-y and lacking social skills. Combined, a nerd ended up being an unpopular thing to be. Ghatanathoah is less patient: Both Kriss' essay, and Scott's response to it, remind me of the "Evil Cannot Comprehend Good" trope from TV tropes, except replace "Evil" with "Very socially motivated people" and "Good" with "Less socially motivated people" (although honestly both sets have a lot of overlap). Both essays seem obsessed with finding some deep, social reason why hipsters and nerds behave the way they do, like the supervillain who is telling the hero that they are "Not So Different." They literally can't comprehend the idea that someone could actually like something, so they try desperately to find some way that liking things isn't something people actually do. People couldn't actually like Star Wars, sportsball, the MCU, or the Beatles, they must be liking them to achieve some social goal like forming an identity or seeking status! This is one of the two giant flawed assumptions that invalidates the theses of both articles (the other one, of course, is the assumption the the MCU is bad, when it is, in fact one of the human race's greatest artistic achievements*). If you assume that it is possible to like things for non-social reasons, or even in addition to social reasons, hipsters and nerds make much more sense. The reason that nerds like both popular stuff like the MCU, and less popular stuff like postage stamps is because they don't care about if something is popular, they care about if it fascinates them. Whether that thing is popular is orthogonal to how fascinating it is. That fascination makes them invest a lot of time and effort in it, which in turn makes it part of their identity. They weren't trying to find something to form and identity first and picking Star Wars, identity formation was just a side effect. Similarly, hipsters probably just get bored with things they see frequently and want to seek out new things to be interested in. Making obscure things part of their identity comes second, if at all. Also Ghatanathoah: Scott asks if its ever okay to build your identity around liking a thing. I would ask if it's ever okay not to? What's the alternative, building it around social status games or large nonselective identity groups? It seems to me that liking something isn't just a good thing to build your identity around, it's one of the best things to build it around. After all, unlike social status games, you can like something without forcing other people to not like it. This is a good question, well-phrased. I think the traditional answer is that you should build your identity around social relationships (I’m the son of X, husband of Y, friend of Z), career, and maybe a few hobbies. I agree with this as far as it goes, but it doesn’t work for a lot of practical tasks - I can’t get common ground with someone at a party or start a conversation by introducing myself as the son of X or husband of Y - most people just won’t know X or Y. Some people linked a Freddie de Boer post, Your Personality Has To Be Load-Bearing, which is generally good but I think has a similar problem. Obviously you should have a genuine and complex personality, but I worry a lot of people who talk about this will reject every specific aspect of personality because “it’s not, in itself, a full complex personality!”, but you can’t have a personality without building it out of specific aspects. A lot of people’s default personality, if they just do exactly what comes naturally and don’t put any effort into self-presentation or cultivation, is to browse Reddit and play video games. Most people realize this on some level and try to cultivate some personality beyond this, but I think that makes it extra unfair to say “Just use your natural true self!” The natural true self is exactly the boring thing we’re trying to get away from in favor of becoming a more interesting person. I’m trying to think if I have a personal answer to this. Part of my answer is the EA and rationalist communities. This has some downsides; I’m thinner-skinned about insults to these groups than I should be; some people might think I’m a fanatic. It also has some upsides; they embody real values I like, they try to make a difference in the world, they’re not consumer properties that make me feel like a corporation is pulling my strings. But my real answer is probably “I cheat by having a popular blog; this means you all know everything about me and I don’t have to fit my personality into a ten-second elevator pitch”. Maybe this is the traditional solution, from back when everyone knew everyone else in their community. It sure doesn’t feel adequate now, back when (non-bloggers) are constantly meeting strangers and having to communicate their identity to them quickly. My internal hierarchy of things it’s virtuous to build identity around, which is probably a weird class artifact and which I absolutely don’t consciously endorse, goes something like: Top-tier: Intellectual subfields, especially obscure ones or ones involving pure abstract math. If you can say “I’m really into trans-finite 8-dimensional Hoffdorf groups” and justify this with a discussion of how innately beautiful they are, you’ve got it made.

tulips1 mentions across 1 issues

tulips is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 16, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "conventional speculative instruments like beanie babies or tulips"; "With conventional speculative instruments like beanie babies or tulips". It most often appears alongside "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment, 1886.

Reference entry: tulips
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 16, 2021
Last seen: April 16, 2021

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Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty April 16, 2021

"The Rent Is Too Damn High!" 1 shared issues
16th amendment 1 shared issues
1886 1 shared issues
1897 1 shared issues
Adam Perry 1 shared issues

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Inline links: beanie babies, tulips, next year's hot Christmas toy will be., https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!uOum!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b57ab87-8422-437f-b6c4-f3ccdd223624_1022x597.png, Peasants' revolt, Appendix C: The Insufficiency of Remedies Currently Advocated

April 16, 2021 · Original source

That's right, they buy it up in a speculative frenzy and hold on to it forever, further driving the price up. With conventional speculative instruments like beanie babies or tulips, the bubble eventually pops. But Land has unique properties that allow this vicious cycle to continue more or less indefinitely. What happens when a city is growing, technology is advancing, improvements are being made to land, and so forth? Land values go up. Sure, speculators can still lose their shirts if a city falls into decline, but this isn't nearly as hard to predict as volatility in penny stocks or what next year's hot Christmas toy will be. So as soon as there's a whiff of progress in a given area everyone starts HODLing land, but not to use it themselves. In fact speculators often keep it out of use, because this forces people to use less valuable land instead, pushing the margin of production down even further, forcing land values up, and now The Rent Is Too Damn High. Georgist pundit geoliberal explains the mindset of a speculator: The only thing investors actually maximize is risk adjusted rate of return. When you know rents will increase, your best return comes from buying extra land, not improving the land you have Illustration courtesy of geoliberal This is how it's possible to have urban blight and slums in areas with extremely high land values. Even if there's a temporary dip in prices, speculators know that if they just keep HODLing the general trend – absent a local collapse – is that land value always goes up. Here's George: Take now... some hard-headed business man, who has no theories, but knows how to make money. Say to him: "Here is a little village; in ten years it will be a great city—in ten years the railroad will have taken the place of the stage coach, the electric light of the candle; it will abound with all the machinery and improvements that so enormously multiply the effective power of labor. Will in ten years, interest be any higher?" He will tell you, "No!" "Will the wages of the common labor be any higher...?" He will tell you, "No the wages of common labor will not be any higher..." "What, then, will be higher?" "Rent, the value of land. Go, get yourself a piece of ground, and hold possession." ...without doing one stroke of work, without adding one iota of wealth to the community, in ten years you will be rich! In the new city you may have a luxurious mansion, but among its public buildings will be an almshouse. I don't think it's a coincidence that real estate is one of the oldest investments on Earth and the principal concern of basically every war ever. V. The Problem Solved We had two questions at the beginning of this book: why are there industrial depressions, and why poverty seems to advance alongside progress. You guess it, it's all because of land and rent. By George, industrial depressions are caused by land speculation Speculation has a tendency to press the margin of production down until it's just past its limit, forcing labor and capital to accept returns so small that it actually hinders production or ceases altogether. The saving grace is that as long as the population is growing and/or technology is improving, productivity will go up, and production will start again. But soon enough the land values go up. This drives speculators bidding up the price of land, anticipating future even higher land values, which stresses the productive margin again. So you get a cycle – productivity rises, economy booms, land values rise, production stagnates or stops. No matter how complicated or sophisticated the economy gets with layer upon layer of financialization and abstraction, when you unravel it all George says this is the ultimate cause. Periods of industrial activity always culminate in a speculative advance of land values, followed by symptoms of checked production This is how you get the baffling situation where able hands are eager and willing to work, capital is ready to employ them, natural materials are abundant, and yet the laborers are idle and the factories stand empty. So that's it for industrial depressions. What about the other paradox of poverty advancing alongside progress? By George, poverty advances alongside progress because of rent The reason why, in spite of increase of productive power, wages constantly tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living, is that, with increase in productive power, rent tends to even greater increase, thus producing a constant tendency to the forcing down of wages. George backs this up with several pages of specific regional figures demonstrating how land values have continued to explode all over the world. By George, on average and in the long run, no amount of hard work from labor, no force multiplication from capital, no increased gain from co-operation and specialization, no labor-saving invention or increase in personal efficiency, work ethic, or morals, can escape the long reach of rent. In short, increased power of production has everywhere added to the value of land; nowhere has it added to the value of labor; George notes that the mass die-off of the Black Death in England in the 1300's significantly reduced the productivity of the individual laborer, and yet wages went up. That's because the decreased population also caused a massive drop in competition for land, in turn causing rents to plummet. (For more detail on this read about the Peasants' revolt, also known as Wat Tyler's rebellion). George says the opposite happened during the reign of Henry VIII, who seized the lands of the church and those held in common by the peasants, and handed them out to newly minted aristocrats, which was followed by suppressed wages. In the reign of Henry VII., half a bushel of wheat would purchase but little more than a day's common labor, but in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, half a bushel of wheat would purchase three day's common labor. He sums it all up like this: Material progress cannot rid us of our dependence upon land; it can but add to the power of producing wealth from land; and hence, when land is monopolized, it might go on to infinity without increasing wages or improving the conditions of those who have but their labor. So there's our answer: the monkey wrench that causes the boom-bust cycle of industrial depressions is rent, and even though we have more than enough material wealth to provide for everybody's needs, rent prevents us from distributing it fairly and equitably. Volume II Okay, The Rent Is Too Damn High, and now we finally know why. What are we going to do about it? Insufficiencies of Remedies Currently Advocated George goes down the list of everything we've already tried and why it hasn't worked (or has worked, but less well than we hoped), which you can read about in Appendix C (there's a link that returns here at the end): Appendix C: The Insufficiency of Remedies Currently Advocated The Remedy George says the solution is to make land common property. He doesn't want to confiscate land, or force everyone to live on some giant hippie commune. He proposes instead to let everyone continue to "own" land exactly as they do now, but we should impose a special tax to neutralize the perverse incentives of land rent. He anticipates a lot of pushback on this, and promises that his remedy: Is just

Tupi1 mentions across 1 issues

Tupi is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 12, 2025 and September 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Cunhambebe replied in Tupi". It most often appears alongside A Change of Heart, Abraham, Adams.

Reference entry: Tupi
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 12, 2025
Last seen: September 12, 2025

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Your Review: The Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Hypothesis September 12, 2025

A Change of Heart 1 shared issues
Abraham 1 shared issues
Adams 1 shared issues
Adams and Garrison 1 shared issues
Alexander Forbes 1 shared issues

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Your Review: The Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Hypothesis

September 12, 2025 · Original source

The Tupinambá people ate their enemies. This fact scared Hans Staden, a German explorer who was captured by Tupinambá warriors in 1554, when they caught him by surprise during a hunting expedition. As their prisoner for nearly a year, Staden observed a number of their cannibalism rituals. They were elaborate, public affairs; here’s a description of them from Duffy and Metcalf’s The Return of Hans Staden, an assessment of Staden’s voyage and claims: (Ch. 2, pg. 51-52)

Inline links: Hans Staden

Staden himself was supposed to be eaten, but through a mix of luck and deception managed to convince the Tupinambá that he should not be. Among other reasons, he claimed that their God didn’t like the idea of him being eaten: (Ch. 2, pg. 61)

When the families in Nhaêpepô-oaçú’s hut began to return from Mambucabe, they came sobbing with terrible news. Disease had broken out during the two weeks when Nhaêpepô-oaçú and his people were there rebuilding the long houses that had been burned down by the Tupinikin. … Shocked at the impact of the disease that descended so suddenly and with such devastating results, the Tupinambá struggled to understand the meaning of the outbreak. Staden’s prophecy of the anger of the moon was re- interpreted to foretell the sickness that befell them. Nhaêpepô-oaçú’s brother came to Staden and said: “My brother suspects that your God must be angry.” Staden immediately insisted that this in fact was the case: “I told him yes, my God was angry, because he wanted to eat me.”

Tupinambá1 mentions across 1 issues

Tupinambá is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 12, 2025 and September 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Tupinambá people ate their enemies"; "he claimed that their God didn’t like the idea of him being eaten"; "a Tupinambá warrior named Cunhambebe". It most often appears alongside A Change of Heart, Abraham, Adams.

Reference entry: Tupinambá
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 12, 2025
Last seen: September 12, 2025

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Your Review: The Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Hypothesis September 12, 2025

A Change of Heart 1 shared issues
Abraham 1 shared issues
Adams 1 shared issues
Adams and Garrison 1 shared issues
Alexander Forbes 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: The Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Hypothesis

September 12, 2025 · Original source

The Tupinambá people ate their enemies. This fact scared Hans Staden, a German explorer who was captured by Tupinambá warriors in 1554, when they caught him by surprise during a hunting expedition. As their prisoner for nearly a year, Staden observed a number of their cannibalism rituals. They were elaborate, public affairs; here’s a description of them from Duffy and Metcalf’s The Return of Hans Staden, an assessment of Staden’s voyage and claims: (Ch. 2, pg. 51-52)

Inline links: Hans Staden

Staden himself was supposed to be eaten, but through a mix of luck and deception managed to convince the Tupinambá that he should not be. Among other reasons, he claimed that their God didn’t like the idea of him being eaten: (Ch. 2, pg. 61)

When the families in Nhaêpepô-oaçú’s hut began to return from Mambucabe, they came sobbing with terrible news. Disease had broken out during the two weeks when Nhaêpepô-oaçú and his people were there rebuilding the long houses that had been burned down by the Tupinikin. … Shocked at the impact of the disease that descended so suddenly and with such devastating results, the Tupinambá struggled to understand the meaning of the outbreak. Staden’s prophecy of the anger of the moon was re- interpreted to foretell the sickness that befell them. Nhaêpepô-oaçú’s brother came to Staden and said: “My brother suspects that your God must be angry.” Staden immediately insisted that this in fact was the case: “I told him yes, my God was angry, because he wanted to eat me.”

Tupinikin1 mentions across 1 issues

Tupinikin is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 12, 2025 and September 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "burned down by the Tupinikin". It most often appears alongside A Change of Heart, Abraham, Adams.

Reference entry: Tupinikin
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 12, 2025
Last seen: September 12, 2025

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Your Review: The Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Hypothesis September 12, 2025

A Change of Heart 1 shared issues
Abraham 1 shared issues
Adams 1 shared issues
Adams and Garrison 1 shared issues
Alexander Forbes 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: The Synaptic Plasticity and Memory Hypothesis

September 12, 2025 · Original source

When the families in Nhaêpepô-oaçú’s hut began to return from Mambucabe, they came sobbing with terrible news. Disease had broken out during the two weeks when Nhaêpepô-oaçú and his people were there rebuilding the long houses that had been burned down by the Tupinikin. … Shocked at the impact of the disease that descended so suddenly and with such devastating results, the Tupinambá struggled to understand the meaning of the outbreak. Staden’s prophecy of the anger of the moon was re- interpreted to foretell the sickness that befell them. Nhaêpepô-oaçú’s brother came to Staden and said: “My brother suspects that your God must be angry.” Staden immediately insisted that this in fact was the case: “I told him yes, my God was angry, because he wanted to eat me.”

turbulence1 mentions across 1 issues

turbulence is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 03, 2023 and June 03, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "A favorite of physicists is turbulence". It most often appears alongside 2023 book review contest, AGI, Alan Turing.

Reference entry: turbulence
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 03, 2023
Last seen: June 03, 2023

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence

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Your Book Review: Why Machines Will Never Rule the World June 03, 2023

2023 book review contest 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues
Alan Turing 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
Barry Smith 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Why Machines Will Never Rule the World

June 03, 2023 · Original source

Examples from chaos theory are often the most intuitive, like the double pendulum or the three-body problem. Other examples are weather, pharmacodynamics, and the economy. A favorite of physicists is turbulence, of which Werner Heisenberg is reputed to have said: “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.”

Inline links: double pendulum, three-body problem, turbulence

Turing Award1 mentions across 1 issues

Turing Award is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 20, 2025 and November 20, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Turing-Award-winning AI researcher Yoshua Bengio". It most often appears alongside AI consciousness, AlphaGo, Anthropic.

Reference entry: Turing Award
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 20, 2025
Last seen: November 20, 2025

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The New AI Consciousness Paper November 20, 2025

AI consciousness 1 shared issues
AlphaGo 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues
David Chalmers 1 shared issues

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The New AI Consciousness Paper

November 20, 2025 · Original source

But a rare bright spot has appeared: a seminal paper published earlier this month in Trends In Cognitive Science, Identifying Indicators Of Consciousness In AI Systems. Authors include Turing-Award-winning AI researcher Yoshua Bengio, leading philosopher of consciousness David Chalmers, and even a few members of our conspiracy. If any AI consciousness research can rise to the level of merely awful, surely we will find it here.

Inline links: Identifying Indicators Of Consciousness In AI Systems

Turkish Constitution1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish Constitution is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "this decision [the coup] is in accordance with the provisions of the Turkish Constitution"; ""this decision [the coup] is in accordance with the provisions of the Turkish Constitution""; "Erdogan was able to change the Turkish Constitution with a simple majority". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: Turkish Constitution
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2021

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Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

Abdullah Gul 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
Ak 1 shared issues
AKP 1 shared issues
Anatolian 1 shared issues

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Book Review: The New Sultan

March 18, 2021 · Original source

Washington acquiesed in the "soft coup", if tacitly. US secretary of state Madeleine Albright explained on July 11, 1997 that while military intervention was not necessarily "a silver bullet" to Turkey's problems, the US had "made very clear that it is essential that Turkey continue in a secular, democratic way." The EU also put its tacit blessings behind the coup, saying that while it was "concerned at the implications for democratic pluralism and freedom of expression," "this decision [the coup] is in accordance with the provisions of the Turkish Constitution".

The third big difference is that it's really hard to change the US Constitution. Erdogan was able to change the Turkish Constitution with a simple majority. Nobody took it too seriously, because the Constitution was just whatever the last group of military-coup-pulling generals said it was. The US Constitution requires a lot more work. And as the work of titans like George Washington and James Madison and so on, it has an aura of sacredness that makes it hard to add "PS: I can do whatever I want" to the end without a lot of people feeling violated. I know this has caused a lot of problems, but after seeing the ease with which Erdogan swept aside any part of the Turkish Constitution he didn't like, I have a new respect for it.

Turkish dwarf1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish dwarf is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 12, 2023 and December 12, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "he found a Turkish dwarf who was answering all the questions". It most often appears alongside 2024, Aaron Peskin, accelerationist conspiracy.

Reference entry: Turkish dwarf
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 12, 2023
Last seen: December 12, 2023

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Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party December 12, 2023

2024 1 shared issues
Aaron Peskin 1 shared issues
accelerationist conspiracy 1 shared issues
Adam D’Angelo 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues

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Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party

December 12, 2023 · Original source

“That’s just a myth. I heard that Ilya checked inside one of the mainframes and found a Turkish dwarf who was answering all the questions. He confronted Sam, and Sam admitted ‘GPT’ was just a trick to scam Satya Nadella out of $8 billion in cloud compute so he could use it to mine Bitcoin,” says a man.

“Did you say Sam Altman?” asks a woman who has apparently been lurking at the edge of your conversation. “Because I think I’ve got it all figured out. The accelerationist conspiracy, the effective altruist conspiracy, and the Winklevoss conspiracy all made their move against Sam at the exact same time and ended up colliding with each other. In the chaos, Sam, Greg, and the Turkish dwarf were able to escape safely to Redmond. The only part I still don’t understand is - which of them was Satoshi?”

Turkmen1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkmen is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 10, 2024 and January 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Seljuks, Ottomans, other Turks, Turkmen, etc taking over Middle East". It most often appears alongside Alexander the Great, Amorites, Anshan.

Reference entry: Turkmen
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 10, 2024
Last seen: January 10, 2024

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https://www.neonarrative.us/p/an-interview-with-scott-alexander

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Book Review: Cyropaedia January 10, 2024

Alexander the Great 1 shared issues
Amorites 1 shared issues
Anshan 1 shared issues
Apple 1 shared issues
Armenians 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Cyropaedia

January 10, 2024 · Original source

Seljuks, Ottomans, other Turks, Turkmen, etc taking over Middle East, Byzantium: Devereaux doesn’t mention this either.

turmeric1 mentions across 1 issues

turmeric is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 28, 2023 and September 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "lead in Bangladeshi turmeric". It most often appears alongside 2020 election, @eigenrobot, @jeremychrysler.

Reference entry: turmeric
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 28, 2023
Last seen: September 28, 2023

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Links For September 2023 September 28, 2023

2020 election 1 shared issues
@eigenrobot 1 shared issues
@jeremychrysler 1 shared issues
Adam Mastroianni 1 shared issues
Adversarial examples 1 shared issues

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Links For September 2023

September 28, 2023 · Original source

25: Effective Altruist Forum: The charity Pure Earth, sponsored by GiveWell, claims to have reduced the prevalence of lead in Bangladeshi turmeric from 47% to ~0%. Previously, unsavory producers would add lead to turmeric spice to make it appear more brilliantly yellow, poisoning children who consumed it and lowering IQ. Pure Earth raised awareness among consumers, helped the government crack down, and is now declaring at least preliminary victory. “The preliminary findings are that this program can avert an equivalent DALY for just under $1.”

Inline links: claims to have reduced the prevalence of lead in Bangladeshi turmeric from 47% to ~0%

turtle1 mentions across 1 issues

turtle is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 04, 2022 and April 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "surrounded by a shell-like metallic computer case, which makes it like a turtle". It most often appears alongside 2013, Agricultural Revolution, AI.

Reference entry: turtle
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 04, 2022
Last seen: April 04, 2022

Issue trail

Yudkowsky Contra Christiano On AI Takeoff Speeds April 04, 2022

2013 1 shared issues
Agricultural Revolution 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI alignment theory 1 shared issues
Ajeya 1 shared issues

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Yudkowsky Contra Christiano On AI Takeoff Speeds

April 04, 2022 · Original source

Chess AI performance over time. Why does this matter? If there’s a slow takeoff (ie gradual exponential curve), it will become obvious that some kind of terrifying transformative AI revolution is happening, before the situation gets apocalyptic. There will be time to prepare, to test slightly-below-human AIs and see how they respond, to get governments and other stakeholders on board. We don’t have to get every single thing right ahead of time. On the other hand, because this is proceeding along the usual channels, it will be the usual variety of muddled and hard-to-control. With the exception of a few big actors like the US and Chinese government, and maybe the biggest corporations like Google, the outcome will be determined less by any one agent, and more by the usual multi-agent dynamics of political and economic competition. There will be lots of opportunities to affect things, but no real locus of control to do the affecting. If there’s a fast takeoff (ie sudden FOOM), there won’t be much warning. Conventional wisdom will still say that transformative AI is thirty years away. All the necessary pieces (ie AI alignment theory) will have to be ready ahead of time, prepared blindly without any experimental trial-and-error, to load into the AI as soon as it exists. On the plus side, a single actor (whoever has this first AI) will have complete control over the process. If this actor is smart (and presumably they’re a little smart, or they wouldn’t be the first team to invent transformative AI), they can do everything right without going through the usual government-lobbying channels. So the slower a takeoff you expect, the less you should be focusing on getting every technical detail right ahead of time, and the more you should be working on building the capacity to steer government and corporate policy to direct an incoming slew of new technologies. Yudkowsky Contra Christiano Eliezer counters that although progress may retroactively look gradual and continuous when you know what metric to graph it on, it doesn’t necessarily look that way in real life by the measures that real people care about. (one way to think of this: imagine that an AI’s effective IQ starts at 0.1 points, and triples every year, but that we can only measure this vaguely and indirectly. The year it goes from 5 to 15, you get a paper in a third-tier journal reporting that it seems to be improving on some benchmark. The year it goes from 66 to 200, you get a total transformation of everything in society. But later, once we identify the right metric, it was just the same rate of gradual progress the whole time. ) So Eliezer is much less impressed by the history of previous technologies than Paul is. He’s also skeptical of the “GDP will double in 4 years before it doubles in 1” claim, because of two contingent disagreements and two fundamental disagreements. The first contingent disagreement: government regulations make it hard to deploy imperfect things, and non-trivial to deploy things even after they’re perfect. Eliezer has non-jokingly said he thinks AI might destroy the world before the average person can buy a self-driving car. Why? Because the government has to approve self-driving cars (and can drag its feet on that), but the apocalypse can happen even without government approval. In Paul’s model, sometime long before superintelligence we should have AIs that can drive cars, and that increases GDP and contributes to a general sense that exciting things are going on. Eliezer says: fine, what if that’s true? Who cares if self-driving cars will be practical a few years before the world is destroyed? It’ll take longer than that to lobby the government to allow them on the road. The second contingent disagreement: superintelligent AIs can lie to us. Suppose you have an AI which wants to destroy humanity, whose IQ is doubling every six months. Right now it’s at IQ 200, and it suspects that it would take IQ 800 to build a human-destroying superweapon. Its best strategy is to lie low for a year. If it expects humans would turn it off if they knew how close it was to superweapons, it can pretend to be less intelligent than it really is. The period when AIs are holding back so we don’t discover their true power level looks like a period of lower-than-expected GDP growth - followed by a sudden FOOM once the AI gets its superweapon and doesn’t need to hold back. So even if Paul is conceptually right and fundamental progress proceeds along a nice smooth curve, it might not look to us like a nice smooth curve, because regulations and deceptive AIs could prevent mildly-transformative AI progress from showing up on graphs, but wouldn’t prevent the extreme kind of AI progress that leads to apocalypse. To an outside observer, it would just look like nothing much changed, nothing much changed, nothing much changed, and then suddenly, FOOM. But even aside from this, Eliezer doesn’t think Paul is conceptually right! He thinks that even on the fundamental level, AI progress is going to be discontinuous. It’s like a nuclear bomb. Either you don’t have a nuclear bomb yet, or you do have one and the world is forever transformed. There is a specific moment at which you go from “no nuke” to “nuke” without any kind of “slightly worse nuke” acting as a harbinger. He uses the example of chimps → humans. Evolution has spent hundreds of millions of years evolving brainier and brainier animals (not teleologically, of course, but in practice). For most of those hundreds of millions of years, that meant the animal could have slightly more instincts, or a better memory, or some other change that still stayed within the basic animal paradigm. At the chimp → human transition, we suddenly got tool use, language use, abstract thought, mathematics, swords, guns, nuclear bombs, spaceships, and a bunch of other stuff. The rhesus monkey → chimp transition and the chimp → human transition both involved the same ~quadrupling of neuron number, but the former was pretty boring and the latter unlocked enough new capabilities to easily conquer the world. The GPT-2 → GPT-3 transition involved centupling parameter count. Maybe we will keep centupling parameter count every few years, and most times it will be incremental improvement, and one time it will conquer the world. But even talking about centupling parameter points is giving Paul too much credit. Lots of past inventions didn’t come by quadrupling or centupling something, they came by discovering “the secret sauce”. The Wright brothers (he argues) didn’t make a plane with 4x the wingspan of the last plane that didn’t work, they invented the first plane that could fly at all. The Hiroshima bomb wasn’t some previous bomb but bigger, it was what happened after a lot of scientists spent a long time thinking about a fundamentally different paradigm of bomb-making and brought it to a point where it could work at all. The first transformative AI isn’t going to be GPT-3 with more parameters, it will be what happens after someone discovers how to make machines truly intelligent. (this is the same debate Eliezer had with Ajeya over the Biological Anchors post; have I mentioned that Ajeya and Paul are married?) Fine, Let’s Nitpick The Hell Out Of The Chimps Vs. Humans Example This is where the two of them end up, so let’s follow. Between chimps and humans, there were about seven million years of intermediate steps. These had some human capabilities, but not others. IE homo erectus probably had language, but not mathematics, and in terms of taking over the world it did make it to most of the Old World but was less dominant than moderns. But if we say evolutionary history started 500 million years ago (the Cambrian), and AI history started with the Dartmouth Conference in 1955, then the equivalent of 7 million years of evolutionary history is 1 year of AI history. In the very very unlikely and forced comparison where evolutionary history and AI history go at the same speed, there will be only about a year between chimp-level and human-level AIs. A chimp-level AI probably can’t double GDP, so this would count as a fast takeoff by Paul’s criterion. But even more than that, chimp → human feels like a discontinuity. It’s not just “animals kept getting smarter for hundreds of millions of years, and then ended up very smart indeed”. That happened for a while, and then all of sudden there was a near-instant phase transition into a totally different way of using intelligence with completely new abilities. If AI worked like this, we would have useful toys and interesting specialists for a few decades, until suddenly someone “got it right”, completed the package that was necessary for “true intelligence”, and then we would have a completely new category of thing. Paul admits this analogy is awkward for his position. He answers: Chimp evolution is not primarily selecting for making and using technology, for doing science, or for facilitating cultural accumulation. The task faced by a chimp is largely independent of the abilities that give humans such a huge fitness advantage. It’s not completely independent—the overlap is the only reason that evolution eventually produces humans—but it’s different enough that we should not be surprised if there are simple changes to chimps that would make them much better at designing technology or doing science or accumulating culture […] So I don’t think the example of evolution tells us much about whether the continuous change story applies to intelligence. This case is potentially missing the key element that drives the continuous change story—optimization for performance. Evolution changes continuously on the narrow metric it is optimizing, but can change extremely rapidly on other metrics. For human technology, features of the technology that aren’t being optimized change rapidly all the time. When humans build AI, they will be optimizing for usefulness, and so progress in usefulness is much more likely to be linear. That is, evolution wasn’t optimizing for tool use/language/intelligence, so we got an “overhang” where chimps could potentially have been very good at these, but evolution never bothered “closing the circuit” and turning those capabilities “on”. After a long time, evolution finally blundered into an area where marginal improvements in these capacities improved fitness, so evolution started improving them and it was easy. Imagine a company which, through some oversight, didn’t have a Sales department. They just sat around designing and manufacturing increasingly brilliant products, but not putting any effort into selling them. Then the CEO remembers they need a Sales department, starts one up, and the company goes from moving near zero units to moving millions of units overnight. It would look like the company had “suddenly” developed a “vast increase in capabilities”. But this is only possible when a CEO who is weirdly unconcerned about profit forgets to do obvious profit-increasing things for many years. This is Paul’s counterargument to the chimp analogy. Evolution isn’t directly concerned about various intellectual skills; it only wants them in the unusual cases where they’ll contribute to fitness on the margin. AI companies will be very concerned about various intellectual skills. If there’s a trivial change that can make their product 10x better, they’ll make it. So AI capabilities will grow in a “well-rounded” way, there won’t be any “overhangs”, and there won’t be any opportunities for a sudden overhang-solving phase transition with associated new-capability development like with chimps → humans. Eliezer answers: Chimps are nearly useless because they're not general, and doing anything on the scale of building a nuclear plant requires mastering so many different nonancestral domains that it's no wonder natural selection didn't happen to separately train any single creature across enough different domains that it had evolved to solve every kind of domain-specific problem involved in solving nuclear physics and chemistry and metallurgy and thermics in order to build the first nuclear plant in advance of any old nuclear plants existing. Humans are general enough that the same braintech selected just for chipping flint handaxes and making water-pouches and outwitting other humans, happened to be general enough that it could scale up to solving all the problems of building a nuclear plant - albeit with some added cognitive tech that didn't require new brainware, and so could happen incredibly fast relative to the generation times for evolutionarily optimized brainware. Now, since neither humans nor chimps were optimized to be "useful" (general), and humans just wandered into a sufficiently general part of the space that it cascaded up to wider generality, we should legit expect the curve of generality to look at least somewhat different if we're optimizing for that. Eg, right now people are trying to optimize for generality with AIs like Mu Zero and GPT-3. In both cases we have a weirdly shallow kind of generality. Neither is as smart or as deeply general as a chimp, but they are respectively better than chimps at a wide variety of Atari games, or a wide variety of problems that can be superposed onto generating typical human text. They are, in a sense, more general than a biological organism at a similar stage of cognitive evolution, with much less complex and architected brains, in virtue of having been trained, not just on wider datasets, but on bigger datasets using gradient-descent memorization of shallower patterns, so they can cover those wide domains while being stupider and lacking some deep aspects of architecture. It is not clear to me that we can go from observations like this, to conclude that there is a dominant mainline probability for how the future clearly ought to go and that this dominant mainline is, "Well, before you get human-level depth and generalization of general intelligence, you get something with 95% depth that covers 80% of the domains for 10% of the pragmatic impact". ...or whatever the concept is here, because this whole conversation is, on my own worldview, being conducted in a shallow way relative to the kind of analysis I did in Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics, where I was like, "here is the historical observation, here is what I think it tells us that puts a lower bound on this input-output curve". Here Eliezer sort of kind of grants Paul’s point that AIs will be optimized for generality in a way chimps aren’t, but points to his previous “Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics” essay to argue that we should expect a fast takeoff anyway. IEM has a lot of stuff in it, but one key point is that instead of using analogies to predict the course of future AI, we should open that black box and try to actually reason about how it will work, in which case we realize that recursive self-improvement common-sensically has to cause an intelligence explosion. I am sort of okay with this, but I feel like a commitment to avoiding analogies should involve not bringing up the chimp-human analogy further, which Eliezer continues to do, quite a lot. I do feel like Paul succeeded in convincing me that we shouldn’t place too much evidential weight on it. The Wimbledon Of Reference Class Tennis “Reference class tennis” is an old rationalist idiom for people throwing analogies back and forth. “AI will be slow, because it’s an economic transition like the Agricultural or Industrial Revolution, and those were slow!” “No, AI will be fast, because it’s an evolutionary step like chimps → humans, and that was fast!” “No, AI will be slow, because it’s an invention, like the computer, and computers were invented piecemeal and required decades of innovation to be useful.” “No, AI will be fast, because it’s an invention, like the nuclear bomb, and nuclear bombs went from impossible to city-killing in a single day.” “No, AI will be slow, because it will be surrounded by a shell-like metallic computer case, which makes it like a turtle, and turtles are slow.” “No, AI will be fast, because it’s dangerous and powerful, like a tiger, and tigers are fast!” And so on. Comparing things to other things is a time-tested way of speculating about them. But there are so many other things to compare to that you can get whatever result you want. This is the failure mode that the term “reference class tennis” was supposed to point to. Both participants in this debate are very smart and trying their hardest to avoid reference-class tennis, but neither entirely succeeds. Eliezer’s preferred classes are Bitcoin (“there wasn't a cryptocurrency developed a year before Bitcoin using 95% of the ideas which did 10% of the transaction volume”), nukes, humans/chimps, the Wright Brothers, AlphaGo (which really was a discontinuous improvement on previous Go engines), and AlphaFold (ditto for proteins). Paul’s preferred classes are the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, chess engines (which have gotten better along a gradual, well-behaved curve), all sorts of inventions like computers and ships (likewise), and world GDP. Eliezer already listed most of these in his Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics paper in 2013, and concluded that the space of possible analogies was contradictory enough that we needed to operate at a higher level. Maybe so, but when someone lobs a reference class tennis ball at you, it’s hard to resist the urge to hit it back. Recursive Self-Improvement This is where I think Eliezer most wants to take the discussion. The idea is: once AI is smarter than humans, it can do a superhuman job of developing new AI. In his Microeconomics paper, he writes about an argument he (semi-hypothetically) had with Ray Kurzweil about Moore’s Law. Kurzweil expected Moore’s Law to continue forever, even after the development of superintelligence. Eliezer objects: Suppose we were dealing with minds running a million times as fast as a human, at which rate they could do a year of internal thinking in thirty-one seconds, such that the total subjective time from the birth of Socrates to the death of Turing would pass in 20.9 hours. Do you still think the best estimate for how long it would take them to produce their next generation of computing hardware would be 1.5 orbits of the Earth around the Sun? That is: the fact that it took 1.5 years for transistor density to double isn’t a natural law. It’s pointing to a law that the amount of resources (most notably intelligence) that civilization focused on the transistor-densifying problem equalled the amount it takes to double it every 1.5 years. If some shock drastically changed available resources (by eg speeding up human minds a million times), this would change the resources involved, and the same laws would predict transistor speed doubling in some shorter amount of time (naively 0.000015 years, although realistically at that scale other inputs would dominate). So when Paul derives clean laws of economics showing that things move along slow growth curves, Eliezer asks: why do you think they would keep doing this when one of the discoveries they make along that curve might be “speeding up intelligence a million times”? (Eliezer actually thinks improvements in the quality of intelligence will dominate improvements in speed - AIs will mostly be smarter, not just faster - but speed is a useful example here and we’ll stick with it) Paul answers: Summary of my response: Before there is AI that is great at self-improvement there will be AI that is mediocre at self-improvement. Powerful AI can be used to develop better AI (amongst other things). This will lead to runaway growth. This on its own is not an argument for discontinuity: before we have AI that radically accelerates AI development, the slow takeoff argument suggests we will have AI that significantly accelerates AI development (and before that, slightly accelerates development). That is, an AI is just another, faster step in the hyperbolic growth we are currently experiencing, which corresponds to a further increase in rate but not a discontinuity (or even a discontinuity in rate). The most common argument for recursive self-improvement introducing a new discontinuity seems be: some systems “fizzle out” when they try to design a better AI, generating a few improvements before running out of steam, while others are able to autonomously generate more and more improvements. This is basically the same as the universality argument in a previous section. Eliezer: Oh, come on. That is straight-up not how simple continuous toy models of RSI work. Between a neutron multiplication factor of 0.999 and 1.001 there is a very huge gap in output behavior. Outside of toy models: Over the last 10,000 years we had humans going from mediocre at improving their mental systems to being (barely) able to throw together AI systems, but 10,000 years is the equivalent of an eyeblink in evolutionary time - outside the metaphor, this says, "A month before there is AI that is great at self-improvement, there will be AI that is mediocre at self-improvement." (Or possibly an hour before, if reality is again more extreme along the Eliezer-Hanson axis than Eliezer. But it makes little difference whether it's an hour or a month, given anything like current setups.) This is just pumping hard again on the intuition that says incremental design changes yield smooth output changes, which (the meta-level of the essay informs us wordlessly) is such a strong default that we are entitled to believe it if we can do a good job of weakening the evidence and arguments against it. And the argument is: Before there are systems great at self-improvement, there will be systems mediocre at self-improvement; implicitly: "before" implies "5 years before" not "5 days before"; implicitly: this will correspond to smooth changes in output between the two regimes even though that is not how continuous feedback loops work. I got a bit confused trying to understand the criticality metaphor here. There’s no equivalent of neutron decay, so any AI that can consistently improve its intelligence is “critical” in some sense. Imagine Elon Musk replaces his brain with a Neuralink computer which - aside from having read-write access - exactly matches his current brain in capabilities. Also he becomes immortal. He secludes himself from the world, studying AI and tinkering with his brain’s algorithms. Does he become a superintelligence? I think under the assumptions Paul and Eliezer are using, eventually maybe. After some amount of time he’ll come across a breakthrough he can use to increase his intelligence. Then, armed with that extra intelligence, he’ll be able to pursue more such breakthroughs. However intelligent the AI you’re scared of is, Musk will get there eventually. How long will it take? A good guess might be “years” - Musk starts out as an ordinary human, and ordinary humans are known to take years to make breakthroughs. Suppose it takes Musk one year to come up with a first breakthrough that raises his IQ 1 point. How long will his second breakthrough take? It might take longer, because he has picked the lowest-hanging fruit, and all the other possible breakthroughs are much harder. Or it might take shorter, because he’s slightly smarter than he was before, and maybe some extra intelligence goes a really long way in AI research. The concept of an intelligence explosion seems to assume the second effect dominates the first. This would match the observation that human researchers, who aren’t getting any smarter over time, continue making new discoveries. That suggests the range of possible discoveries at a given intelligence level is pretty vast. Some research finds that the usual pattern in science is constant rate of discovery from exponentially increasing number of researchers, suggesting strong low-hanging fruit effects, but these seem to be overwhelmed by other considerations in AI right now. I think Eliezer’s position on this subject is shaped by assumptions like: If you have an AI as intelligent as Elon Musk today, then tomorrow you can run it on more hardware with a bit of normal human algorithmic progress, and get one twice as intelligent. So even if it would take Elon years to make a breakthrough, long before those years are up you’ll have an AI that can make breakthroughs much faster.

Inline links: thirty years away, Biological Anchors, Intelligence Explosion Microeconomics, hyperbolic growth we are currently experiencing, Some research finds

Tuskegee1 mentions across 1 issues

Tuskegee is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 12, 2023 and April 12, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the mounting level of Tuskegee-style scandals". It most often appears alongside AAAS, AIDS, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reference entry: Tuskegee
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 12, 2023
Last seen: April 12, 2023

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Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill April 12, 2023

AAAS 1 shared issues
AIDS 1 shared issues
American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1 shared issues
Atul Gawande 1 shared issues
Baylor College of Medicine 1 shared issues

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Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill

April 12, 2023 · Original source

A few doctors failed to follow even the flimsiest veneer of ethics. The most famous example is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study1, but this happened towards the end of the relevant era. The debate at the time was more shaped by Dr. Chester Southam (who injected patients with cancer cells to see what would happen) and the Willowbrook Hepatitis Experiment, where researchers gave mentally defective children hepatitis on purpose2. Two voices rose to the top of the froth of outrage and ended up having outsized effects: Henry Beecher and James Shannon.

Inline links: 1, 2

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Beecher’s activism, Shannon’s CRCs, and the mounting level of Tuskegee-style scandals came together in a demand for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to create some official ethics report. Most ethicists demurred to dirty their hands with something as worldly as medicine; after some searching, they finally tapped Hans Jonas, a philosopher of Gnosticism. In retrospect, of course bioethics derives from a religion that believes the material world is evil and death is the only escape. I’m barely even joking here:

AAAS’ report balanced Jonas’ extreme approach with more moderate voices, producing something in between. There could be medical research, but only with meticulous consent processes intended to ensure subjects understood every risk, even the most outlandish. Rather than a straight weighing of risks vs. benefits, overseers should start with a presumption that risk was unacceptable, and weigh benefits only weakly. This framework might have evolved further, but in the uproar following Tuskegee, Congress set it in stone, never to be changed by mere mortals.

Tuskegee experiment1 mentions across 1 issues

Tuskegee experiment is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "there is no link between knowledge of the Tuskegee experiment". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

Reference entry: Tuskegee experiment
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 20, 2021
Last seen: September 20, 2021

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Links For September September 20, 2021

4chan 1 shared issues
A Clockwork Orange 1 shared issues
Adrenochrome 1 shared issues
Andrew Gelman 1 shared issues
ArrangedMarriages.co 1 shared issues

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The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars

September 20, 2021 · Original source

4: Contra speculation, there is no link between knowledge of the Tuskegee experiment and black people’s unwillingness to take the COVID vaccine.

Inline links: no link between

Tusko the Elephant1 mentions across 1 issues

Tusko the Elephant is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 12, 2021 and April 12, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "RIP Tusko the Elephant, who was given 300 mg of LSD". It most often appears alongside A Whirlwind Tour Of Ethereum Finance, Agan, Air Force Chapel.

Reference entry: Tusko the Elephant
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 12, 2021
Last seen: April 12, 2021

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Links For April April 12, 2021

A Whirlwind Tour Of Ethereum Finance 1 shared issues
Agan 1 shared issues
Air Force Chapel 1 shared issues
amphetamine 1 shared issues
Baltimore 1 shared issues

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Links For April

April 12, 2021 · Original source

21: RIP Tusko the Elephant, who was given 300 mg of LSD (yes, milligrams, so “nearly three thousand times the human recreational dose”) on the grounds that elephants were really big and so maybe if you wanted to give an elephant LSD for some reason that would be the right dose. It wasn’t and he died. If you’ve ever wanted to know how much LSD it would take to kill an elephant, the answer is: somewhere less than 300 mg.

Inline links: Tusko the Elephant

TV show1 mentions across 1 issues

TV show is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2021 and May 10, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""because sometimes they get your favorite TV show cancelled"". It most often appears alongside "How do you do, fellow kids?", #NotAllMen, #TheResistance.

Reference entry: TV show
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 10, 2021
Last seen: May 10, 2021

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https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-new-sultan#comment-1549472

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The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars May 10, 2021

"How do you do, fellow kids?" 1 shared issues
#NotAllMen 1 shared issues
#TheResistance 1 shared issues
1950s - 1990s 1 shared issues
2000s 1 shared issues

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May 10, 2021 · Original source

The other relevant phrase is "cancel culture". SJWs aren't bad because they get basic facts wrong, quash free speech, bully their opponents, or make unfair generalizations across diverse groups. They're bad because sometimes they get your favorite TV show cancelled. I hope you'll excuse me if I sound bitter, but it really disappointed me how, of all the criticisms of social justice, this was the one that really got traction. But I think it got traction precisely because it had no connection with any substantive criticism of social justice. It wasn't coded conservative.

TVTropes1 mentions across 1 issues

TVTropes is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 17, 2022 and February 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "[with apologies to Terry Pratchett and TVTropes ]". It most often appears alongside Akhenaten, Isaac, Jeremiah.

Reference entry: TVTropes
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 17, 2022
Last seen: February 17, 2022

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The Gods Only Have Power Because We Believe In Them February 17, 2022

Akhenaten 1 shared issues
Isaac 1 shared issues
Jeremiah 1 shared issues
Sarah 1 shared issues
Terry Pratchett 1 shared issues

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The Gods Only Have Power Because We Believe In Them

February 17, 2022 · Original source

[with apologies to Terry Pratchett and TVTropes]

Inline links: Terry Pratchett, TVTropes

Tweedledee1 mentions across 1 issues

Tweedledee is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 09, 2021 and February 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Clinton vs. Dole was Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum". It most often appears alongside 1960s America, 1964 Civil Rights Act, Amazon.

Reference entry: Tweedledee
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 09, 2021
Last seen: February 09, 2021

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Book Review: Why We're Polarized February 09, 2021

1960s America 1 shared issues
1964 Civil Rights Act 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American Political Science Association 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Why We're Polarized

February 09, 2021 · Original source

This matches my memory: growing up in the '90s, I knew some Republicans at my California synagogue; I cannot imagine many of them are still Republican today. In 1996, people were still making jokes about how Clinton vs. Dole was Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum. It also matches the US data from the cross-country study Klein cites - ignore the trend line they drew in and look at the actual data points, which are horizontal until a little after 2000. Normal people seem to have polarized long after Congress did, maybe as a separate event with a separate cause.

Tweedledum1 mentions across 1 issues

Tweedledum is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 09, 2021 and February 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Clinton vs. Dole was Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum". It most often appears alongside 1960s America, 1964 Civil Rights Act, Amazon.

Reference entry: Tweedledum
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 09, 2021
Last seen: February 09, 2021

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Book Review: Why We're Polarized February 09, 2021

1960s America 1 shared issues
1964 Civil Rights Act 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American Political Science Association 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Why We're Polarized

February 09, 2021 · Original source

This matches my memory: growing up in the '90s, I knew some Republicans at my California synagogue; I cannot imagine many of them are still Republican today. In 1996, people were still making jokes about how Clinton vs. Dole was Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum. It also matches the US data from the cross-country study Klein cites - ignore the trend line they drew in and look at the actual data points, which are horizontal until a little after 2000. Normal people seem to have polarized long after Congress did, maybe as a separate event with a separate cause.

twentieth century1 mentions across 1 issues

twentieth century is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 01, 2025 and August 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Brilliant people in the fourth century and in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth century study their Bibles". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agamemnon, Age of Empires II.

Reference entry: twentieth century
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 01, 2025
Last seen: August 01, 2025

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https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families

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Your Review: Joan of Arc August 01, 2025

Africa 1 shared issues
Agamemnon 1 shared issues
Age of Empires II 1 shared issues
Agincourt 1 shared issues
Agincourt 1 shared issues

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Your Review: Joan of Arc

August 01, 2025 · Original source

Basilica: I'm a Christian and I don't buy it. Brilliant people in the fourth century and in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth century study their Bibles, read theologians, and come up with heresies conclusively condemned by Athanasius. Indeed, we observe that all these brilliant people assembled in the fourth century produced dozens of close church councils which the Emperor tried to shape to whatever was most politically useful, and then later centuries saw hundreds of extremely corrupt papal elections between would-be Popes where the Cardinals were paid vast sums to vote for the candidate who paid most, some of which produced Popes who made historically-vital rulings for utterly cynical reasons. If God is real, maybe the Council of Nicaea was divinely inspired; but if God isn't real, theology is men looking at their reflection, quarreling about it, and then voting to decide who to kill for being in the minority. If everyone who doesn't study theology in the twelfth century is a heretic, and everyone who doesn't study theology in the twentieth century is a heretic, shouldn't Joan have just been a heretic?

twilight anaesthesia1 mentions across 1 issues

twilight anaesthesia is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 03, 2024 and September 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "colonoscopies are usually done under ‘twilight anaesthesia’". It most often appears alongside 1980s, Air Force One, anal probing.

Reference entry: twilight anaesthesia
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 03, 2024
Last seen: September 03, 2024

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital September 03, 2024

1980s 1 shared issues
Air Force One 1 shared issues
anal probing 1 shared issues
Anglophone countries 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital

September 03, 2024 · Original source

“So in the typical case, someone who may or may not have seen a UFO gets hypnotized and asked to ‘remember’ what happened. They usually ‘remember’ some sort of weird entities with big eyes and no mouths paralyzing them and inserting a probe into their rectum. Well, colonoscopies are usually done under ‘twilight anaesthesia’, which doesn’t really produce full unconsciousness. It just sort of scrambles your brain so you can’t figure out what’s going on and don’t form memories. Imagine that under hypnosis, an investigator is commanding you to remember. You look deep inside your brain for repressed memories that you can’t consciously access, and - there it is! - some weird half-forgotten shards of a memory you can’t quite put together. When you stare at it really hard, it resolves into an image of some people in surgical gowns, goggles, and masks, probing your rectum. Except it’s not clear enough to place the surgical dress, so you just describe them as having strangely-textured skin, big eyes, and no mouths.”

Twin Prime Conjecture1 mentions across 1 issues

Twin Prime Conjecture is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 01, 2024 and November 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "can be used to deal infinite damage if and only if the Twin Prime Conjecture is true". It most often appears alongside /r/BadMTGCombos, @cremieuxrecuel, @justin_garson.

Reference entry: Twin Prime Conjecture
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 01, 2024
Last seen: November 01, 2024

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Links For November 2024 November 01, 2024

BadMTGCombos 1 shared issues
@cremieuxrecuel 1 shared issues
@justin_garson 1 shared issues
Aaron Sibarium 1 shared issues
Abuelo's Awakening 1 shared issues

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Links For November 2024

November 01, 2024 · Original source

Here the black line indicates that the average European of 6000 BC would have had genetic IQ 65 (compared to modern 100), but the regression line indicates more like IQ 90 - I don’t know why the researchers chose to interpret the trend as necessarily constant and linear, or whether we should follow. There isn’t enough ancient DNA to fully test whether the same happened in other populations yet, although a preliminary small-sample test on Asians suggests it happened there too (not really, see here). If the selection for IQ was a response of agriculture, we’d expect to see higher genetic IQ in populations that got agriculture earlier. But it could also be a response to sentience itself creating new selection pressures that continued to act as recently as historical time (some evidence suggests this is true of schizophrenia), which might make populations more similar. 7: Joseph Heath on Marxism vs. John Rawls. I appreciated this because everyone knows we’re supposed say that John Rawls is among the most important philosophers of all time blah blah blah but nobody had ever explained why to me (veil of ignorance seems neither very original nor very good). Heath’s answer: Marxism dominated the academy for decades, but eventually became philosophically unsustainable. This wasn’t because of the generic “Communism doesn’t work” objections that moved ordinary people. It was because Marx’s ethical critique of capitalism was based on exploitation, according to a technical definition of “exploit” that only made sense according to Marx’s labor theory of value. But the supply-and-demand theory of value quickly supplanted the labor theory, the exploitation argument doesn’t really work within supply-and-demand, and so Marxist philosophers were left without a clear ethical critique. John Rawls, by coming up with the part of the underpinning for the modern inequality-based-critique of society, let all the Marxist academics switch to being liberals while continuing to dislike capitalists. 8: /r/BadMTGCombos: a simple 19-card combination of Leyline of Anticipation, Leyline of Transformation, Mirror Room, Darksteel Citadel, Sanctum Weaver, Freed From The Real, Abuelo's Awakening, Myrkul Lord of Bones, Zimone All Questioning, Birgi God of Storytelling, Siege Zombie, Desecration Elemental, Mirror Gallery, Clock of Omens, Parallel Lives, Life and Limb, Isochron Scepter, Narset's Reversal, and Molten Reflection can be used to deal infinite damage if and only if the Twin Prime Conjecture is true. 9: During the most recent Berkeley ACX meetup, we somehow ended up discussing how often people feed living mice to snakes. The answer seems to be that there’s a debate about it in the snake community, the smartest and most experienced voices are against it, but it still happens a lot. Here’s an EA Forum post on the feeder rodent industry and efforts to make it more humane. 10: King Frederick William I of Prussia decided to have a regiment of giants in his army and scoured Europe for extremely tall people, including poaching them from other countries’ armies and forcing them to enlist against their will. He ended up with 3,000 soldiers, ranging from 6’2 - 7’6, but “many of the men were unfit for combat due to their gigantism”. So why did he do it? He liked to paint their portraits from memory. He tried to show them to foreign visitors and dignitaries to impress them. At times he would try to cheer himself up by ordering them to march before him, even if he was in his sickbed. This procession, which included the entire regiment, was led by their mascot, a bear. He once confided to the French ambassador that "The most beautiful girl or woman in the world would be a matter of indifference to me, but tall soldiers—they are my weakness" The King dreamed of a eugenics program to create even taller soldiers. He got as far as pairing up some of his tall soldiers up with tall women and birthing a few tall babies before he died; his successor had no interest and let everybody go home. 11: Before modern IP law, you could write a sequel to someone else’s book and they couldn’t stop you. Among the most successful examples is American “astronomer and writer” Garrett Serviss’ Edison’s Conquest Of Mars, a sequel to War Of The Worlds in which a vengeful human race, led by Thomas Edison, invent spaceships and attack Mars in retaliation for the first book’s Martian invasion. "The book contains some notable 'firsts' in science fiction: alien abductions, spacesuits, aliens building the Pyramids, space battles, oxygen pills, asteroid mining and disintegrator rays", and was credited as an inspiration by Robert Goddard and HP Lovecraft. 12: Joe Biden, singularitarian? (click for link to video) 13: Gwern on the chip embargo: It is pretty damning. We're told the chip embargo has failed, and smugglers have been running rampant for years, and China is about to jump light years beyond the West and enslave us with AXiI (if you will) . . . And then an expert casually remarks that all of China put together, smuggling chips since 2022, has fewer H100s than Elon Musk orders for his datacenter while playing Elden Ring. And even with that huge bottleneck and 1.4 billion people, there's so little demand for them that they cost less per hour than in the West, where AI is redhot and we can't get enough H100s in datacenters. (And where the serious AI people are now discussing how to put that many into a single datacenter for a single run before the next scaleup with B200s obsoletes those...) 14: A company called Cosm has raised $250 million to build “immersive sports experiences”, ie giant buildings sort of like a cross between a stadium and a movie theater where people can get together and watch high-quality televised sports games in a “realistic” setting; they already have facilities in Dallas and Los Angeles. 15: Cremieux: The Ottoman Origins Of Modernity. The “Ottoman” bit is a distractor; the Ottomans fought the Catholics long enough for the Protestants to get a foothold, and then the Protestants established modernity. A useful pushback against the pushback that the Catholic Church never persecuted scientists or held back progress. I’m most interested in this post in the context of Cremieux saying he wrote it in two hours. Even I can’t work that fast! 16: The Green Party, a US third party, tried to put their candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in November. The Nevada election office sent them the wrong forms and gave them false advice about the process. The Greens filed the wrong forms, the Democrats sued, and the Supreme Court disqualified Stein, calling the election office’s incorrect advice an “unfortunate mistake”. I’m disappointed in this outcome - partly for the obvious reasons, but also because the incorrect forms they submitted technically should have added a state referendum to the ballot containing only the text “Jill Stein”. If they’re going to disqualify her candidacy, then I think they should at least hold the state referendum! 17: Nostalgebraist: Google has a new tool out that will create an AI podcast for any text; you hand it the text (could be a blog post, article, or work of fiction), and the tool generates a podcast of two AI hosts discussing it. You can find podcast discussions of Nostalgebraist’s fiction (Northern Caves and Almost Nowhere) at the link, but the acknowledged peak of the genre is Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human, And Spiral Into Existential Meltdown. 18: Also Nostalgebraist: The Case For Chain Of Thought Unfaithfulness Is Overstated. New AIs like o1 give “chain of thought”, ie display what they’re thinking after each step. This seems like a promising avenue to solve alignment - just see whether they’re thinking “and now I will plot against humans”. Unfortunately it’s not so easy; the chain of thought isn’t always accurate (you can sometimes catch the AI “hiding” thoughts it doesn’t want its human overseers to know, like when it’s using a racial stereotype). This article argues that these examples aren’t as exciting as they sound, and chain-of-thought accurately reflects reasoning for most tasks. 19: Australian government considers making doxxing a crime punishable by up to seven years in jail. 20: Getting your brain cryogenically frozen after your death is now free. 21: Cube Flipper: Hypercomputation without bothering the cactus people. The visual system must solve difficult math problems when translating the 2D visual field into a 3D world. Can we harness this innate mathematical ability to do arbitrary work? Cognitive scientist Mark Changizi developed a series of visual circuits (eg XOR gates) based on Necker cubes, probably easier seen than described: After surveying the field, Cube Flipper proposes a more advanced visual computer based on taking DMT and viewing certain types of tiles with slight deviations: …and makes the extreme claim that something like this might demonstrate hypercomputation, ie the visual system has semi-magic computational properties beyond those permitted by normal physical laws. I am skeptical but appreciate the survey of visual computing (as well as the callback to one of my older posts). 22: Material implication in Mormonism: In the book Doctrines and Covenants, Joseph Smith reports that God told him that if he lived to be 85, he would see the Second Coming (which would place it in 1890 - 1891). Mormon apologists note that Joseph Smith did not live to be 85, so no conclusion can be drawn. 23: More old-timey psychiatric ads (this one is from 1952, source: @justin_garson): This was before they invented what we would call antidepressants today; Dexedrine is an amphetamine related to Adderall. 24: Congratulations to Open Philanthropy, the biggest effective altruist foundation… …whose grantee David Baker recently won a Nobel Prize for his research on synthetic proteins. Potential applications include new drugs, vaccines, and materials. 25: Rich Kid Memes And The Online Culture Of The One Percent. Rich people who want to signal group membership to other rich people online can’t boast about how rich they are; that would be gauche. Instead, they’ve settled on the solution of making fun of rich people in hyperspecific language that proves familiarity with the culture. 26: Tap Water Sommelier: Vladimir Putin has two sons, ages 5 and 9. They are kept in luxurious but total isolation from the outside world and raised by flunkies who are too scared to punish/restrain them in any way. Also some discussion of an unexpected historical analogue. 27: Experiment from Colombia: replacing experienced teachers with less-experience but higher-scoring-on-tests teachers significantly decreased student performance. Got to admit I was expecting the opposite of this, I’d seen US data saying that experience didn’t matter and teacher intelligence did. Looking over this more, I find lots of studies on both sides and will go back to agnosticism on this question until someone I trust investigates further. 28: Large scale-formal Intellectual Turing Test finds that people can imitate partisans effectively; ie nobody on either side can tell the difference between a Democrat arguing for Democrat values vs. a Republican-pretending-to-be-a-Democrat arguing for Democrat values (and vice versa). This study used a 100 word essay on why you supported your party (you can see if you can do better here), but past attempts with different structures (religion, vegetarianism, polyamory) have shown broadly the same results. The researchers try to put this in the context of various studies showing that people do misunderstand their opponents (eg think they’re more extreme, underestimate the level of common ground), but it seems like intellectual Turing Tests aren’t a good way to measure or tease out this misunderstanding. 29: Congratulations to Substacker WoolyAI for doing the impossible and providing a genuinely novel and interesting (to me) take on pickup artistry: 30: Did you know: if you Google “cool websites”, our subreddit (r/slatestarcodex) is the first result. 31: Moshe Koppel, who works at the intersection of computer science and Talmud, is writing a series of posts (presumably) based off of my Every Bay Area House Party, titled Jerusalem Area House Party (it’s multiple part, you have to go to the main Substack page to find the others). I won’t necessarily link everyone who riffs off one of my posts - but honestly I probably will if you also have a Wikipedia page that describes you as working on computational Talmudology. 32: David Roman says it’s a myth that Arabic scholars rescued and preserved the works of the great classical authors. 33: Medications often decrease “secondary endpoints” (eg stroke, heart attack), but the holy grail of pharma studies is proving that a certain drug decreases all-cause mortality. This is much harder (not all heart attacks kill people, and people die from lots of other things), but is the strongest possible endorsement for the drug (without it, you might worry that it only prevented non-fatal heart attacks, or that it killed as many people through side effects as it saves through heart attack prevention). Even great medications that we’re confident in can’t always clear this bar. But a new JAMA article adds another member to this select club: Adderall decreases all-cause mortality in ADHD, probably because it prevents drug addiction, car accidents, and impulsive actions. 34: Before the Gulf War got in the way, Saddam Hussein was building some crazy mosques: 35: Italy bans surrogacy - quite strictly, too, Italians aren’t even allowed to go abroad and do it. I am so sorry for all the Italians who will never get to be mothers and fathers because their government hates progress. You might hope that, whatever the other disadvantages of anti-immigrant parties, at least they’re incentivized to let natives have children, but looks like they can’t even get that one right. Starting to wonder whether the trains even run on time. 36: Elsewhere in “Italy sucks” news - did you know Italy’s tax code effectively bans startups? Companies are taxed before making any money, based on how many assets they have. If they have lots of assets but aren’t making money (eg because they’re still doing research / in stealth) then tax officials get confused and hostile and run increasingly punitive audits. Related: size of the European tech sector. It’s the red line on this chart; if you can’t see a red line at your screen resolution, then you’ve learned something important about the the EU tech sector. 37: Seen on @cremieuxrecuel’s twitter (preliminary, needs replication): Jews may have gone from 65-29 Democrat/Republican in 2020 to 58-40 this election. 38: Extelligence has a post responding to my critique of the cultural Christianity argument (among, uh, many other things), but I don’t really think it connects. I’m not telling atheists they can’t go to church/synagogue if it makes them feel happy and fulfilled - I’ve done this myself sometimes. My post was meant to argue against the claim that, for pragmatic reasons, atheists should support the Christianization of society as a defense against Islam or postmodernism or some other philosophical enemy. 39: Related: Extelligence is finally going for their Trust Assembly project/idea/startup for online consensus-based truth-seeking (I think something like a cross between Community Notes and Wikipedia, but as a browser extension, and for everything). He’s looking for potential developers/testers/users. 40: Jiankui He is the Chinese geneticist who made history with the first germline gene editing in humans (resulting in three babies supposedly immune to AIDS, although nobody has tested this). China sentenced him to three years in prison for unauthorized experimentation, but now he’s out of jail, has an English-language Twitter account, has a new lab, wants to work on Alzheimers, and seems pretty based (although not infinitely based): 41: Anthropic has a new version of their AI Claude which can use your computer. You give it permission, put it on a virtual desktop, and ask it to do things for you (eg “please find and download a picture of a cat” or “please research these ten things and put them in a text file”.) It moves your cursor, browses the Internet, and creates and saves files. People keep saying they’ll care about AI “when it operates autonomously” or “when it becomes an agent”. But this is a trivial barrier, and one which Computer Use Claude has arguably already passed. So far this feature is limited to developers (though anyone with computer knowledge can sign up for it) but I expect it to be the near future of consumer AI, to get better quickly, and to shade gradually into the “autonomous” “agentic” AI that you all think will require a paradigm shift. 42: Claim (from the IDF): Hamas faked polls showing that most Palestinians supported the October 7 attack; the real numbers are 31% in favor, 64% against. 43: Otto von Bismarck wanted to trick France into declaring war on Germany. In order to provoke the French, he sent the Ems Dispatch, a statement describing recent diplomatic events in a way that sounded maximally offensive. The French were so offended that “crowds” in Paris demanded war, and the Franco-Prussian War was declared soon afterwards. The part of this that I find most interesting is the text of the dispatch itself, which read: After the news of the renunciation of the Prince von Hohenzollern had been communicated to the Imperial French government by the Royal Spanish government, the French Ambassador in Ems made a further demand on His Majesty the King that he should authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King undertook for all time never again to give his assent should the Hohenzollerns once more take up their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the Ambassador again and had the latter informed by the Adjutant of the day that His Majesty had no further communication to make to the Ambassador. I’m fascinated by the idea that only 150 years ago, it was obvious that if someone sent you this statement, you had to declare war or abandon all honor. If I read it carefully, I can sort of parse out that it sounds like the Prussians are unhappy, but that’s the most emotion I gather from it. Anyway, the Franco-Prussian War led to World War I which led to World War II - so if you don’t like 50 million people dying and the total devastation of Europe, blame this statement about ambassadors. 44: The first use of artificial insemination in humans: The first recorded case of artificial insemination by donor didn’t occur until 1884, when Dr. William Pancoast decided to treat a couple’s infertility by secretly inseminating the woman with sperm obtained from a medical student. The insemination happened while the patient was under anesthesia and Dr. Pancoast did not tell her what had occurred. She gave birth to a baby boy nine months later, but it was several years before the doctor finally confessed to her husband what he had done. Neither man ever informed the mother. It was 25 years later the result of this case was published. Dr. Pancoast was roundly condemned for his actions, but it did open the door for consensual sperm donor insemination. 45: ClearerThinking administers several personality tests to the same people to learn more about their comparative accuracy. I am most interested in their finding that tests with “factors” (eg the Big Five, where you rate people on a numeric scale) are inherently more accurate than those with “types” (eg Myers-Briggs, where you assign someone a specific category) and that, adjusting for this, Big Five is no more predictive than the Enneagram: 46: In 2022, I wrote Whither Tartaria, where I asked why ornate classical styles switched to more austere modernist styles around 1900 - 1950 in a variety of different arts (painting, architecture, literature, poetry, etc). I proposed seven theories, but was unsure which if any were true. Since then, Samuel Hughes of Works In Progress has been investigating. In May, he wrote a well-researched article showing that it wasn’t just increasing cost, because ornate classical architecture now costs less than ever. Now in a new article he demolishes a different theory - it’s not just decreasing cost (and subsequent lack of ability to signal wealth) - because costs didn’t decrease in several other arts, and the change was led by artists with rich people as reluctant followers. He concludes: Modernism may well be a status game of some kind; it may well signal taste more than it signals wealth; and this latter feature may be one of the things that distinguishes it from older artistic styles. But the mechanism by which this change came about must be different to the one Alexander describes. 47: Sort of kind of related - When Hamilton Lost Its Snob Appeal. The musical Hamilton was briefly an artistic/cultural phenomenon, but tastemakers eventually switched to making fun of it. Why? Rob Henderson says it happened after ticket prices came down and the common people could enjoy it. I disagree: everyone I knew who was into Hamilton got into it from the free online soundtrack long before they’d seen the show; I think this is more likely the usual fad cycle where anybody who’s too into yesterday’s fad is behind the curve and therefore uncool. 48: Related: Why are people such jerks to public intellectuals? And more. I agree this is a great mystery. 49: Some prominent Substack psychiatrists doing a video Q&A, submit your questions here. 50: Naomi Kanakia: The Literacy Delusion had a number of explanations for why reading books seemed to be so much worse for human beings (in terms of emotional wellness and productivity) than other forms of narrative entertainment, but its main theory was the integration hypothesis. That the stream of words in a book trained the human brain into a habit of self-consciousness, that reading books forced human beings to think of themselves as a stream of text, processed through time, making a coherent argument of some sort. And that this overall flattening effect forced readers to ignore aspects of their personality or their situation that were not otherwise in line with the overarching story they'd created about themselves. Basically, reading books causes repression and neurosis. The Literacy Delusion argued that, yes, human beings are storytelling machines, but that a stream of written text is a particular kind of story—a story that is particularly flat, particularly devoid of conflicting or harmonizing information—and that this flatness creates a peculiar effect on the human brain. 51: Last month, I linked Sasha Gusev’s No, Intelligence Is Not Like Height and asked people who disagreed to share their arguments; they sure did. First, several people pointed me to a new preprint, Family-GWAS Reveals Effects Of Environment And Mating On Genetic Associations, which finds that one of the main papers Gusev cited to make his case, Howe 2022, made a mistake - imputing sibling genotypes using a process designed for non-sibling genotypes - and that once that mistake is corrected, the finding disappears and intelligence and height appear similar. Second, Joseph Bronski has a more specific post where he responds to Gusev’s points one by one. He accuses Gusev of “[making] up his own chart to remove the error bars [from the originals], to obscure the fact that the study found no evidence for this in IQ”, and says that the cases where he didn’t do that are just “population stratification and range restriction”. Third, Noah Carl at Aporia, instead of writing a direct response like Bronski, argues that the usual method of attacking twin studies is obsolete; not only have the most-debated assumptions behind twin studies been thoroughly validated, but there are now other lines of evidence besides twin studies which confirm high IQ heritability. Fourth, Leonardo Parro (not framed as a response to Gusev) goes into more depth about one of those ways, a “pedigree-based analysis” demonstrating heritability of 54 - 69%, ie no “missing heritability” compared to twin studies. He summarizes this as the effect of “rare variants” compared to the usual SNPs - ie if you only look at the most common genes that are easiest to find, you get “missing heritability” compared to twin studies, but if you widen your search to rare genes that are hard to find, you don’t. 52: Extremely related: Heliospect is a startup promising polygenic selection for IQ and other traits; they were trying to stay in stealth mode but The Guardian spied on them and nonconsensually revealed their existence. The discussion on the r/ssc subreddit centered on their claim that (given enough embryos to choose from) they could increase a baby’s expected IQ by 6 points (I’ve also heard 7.5). Sasha Gusev had previously argued that current technology maxed out at 3.5 and future technology would max out at 6, so a claim of 6 - 7.5 is pretty extreme; Gwern, who wrote the pioneering analysis of this technology, was also skeptical. But Heliospect says they’ve got better predictors than academia that use the rare variants everyone else misses; after talking to the company, Gwern retracted his objections and says he finds their claim “pretty plausible”. Local ACX commenter geneticist Gene Smith also redid some calculations, changed his mind, and says “probably pretty realistic”. I find this interesting not just because of the polygenic selection angle, but because if Heliospect is right then their predictor is able to predict more genetic IQ than the “missing heritability” people believe exists, and it should be able to put this argument to bed once and for all. 53: This month in censorship: X/Twitter banned journalist Ken Klippenstein for sharing the Trump campaign’s dossier on JD Vance. Twitter’s side of the story is that the dossier was probably originally stolen by Iranian agents and they don’t want to support that kind of thing by letting people signal-boost the illicitly obtained goods; you can read Klippenstein’s side here. He appears to be unbanned now.

twin studies1 mentions across 1 issues

twin studies is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 26, 2025 and June 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "higher estimates from twin studies (40%, generally presumed direct)"; "Sib-Regression found EA heritability of 40% (similar to twin studies)"; "Why are twin studies so consistent in finding highish heritability for educational attainment?". It most often appears alongside Aftab, Alex Young, Arthur Jensen.

Reference entry: twin studies
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 26, 2025
Last seen: June 26, 2025

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Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know June 26, 2025

Aftab 1 shared issues
Alex Young 1 shared issues
Arthur Jensen 1 shared issues
Awais Aftab 1 shared issues
behaviorism 1 shared issues

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Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

June 26, 2025 · Original source

Starting in the 1970s, the pendulum swung the other way. Twin studies shocked the world by demonstrating that most behavioral traits - including socially relevant traits like IQ - were substantially genetic. Typical estimates for adult IQ found it was about 60% genetic, 40% unpredictable, and barely related at all to parenting or family environment.

Twin studies suggested that IQ was about 60% genetic, and EA about 40%. This seemed to make sense at the time - how far someone gets in school depends partly on their intelligence, but partly on fuzzier social factors like class / culture / parenting. The first genome-wide studies and polygenic scores found enough genes to explain 2%pp1 of this 40% pie. The remaining 38%, which twin studies deemed genetic but where researchers couldn’t find the genes - became known as “the missing heritability” or “the heritability gap”.

Inline links: 1

Maybe twin studies are wrong.

twin study1 mentions across 1 issues

twin study is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 03, 2025 and July 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "I believe twin study estimates are of low quality because the assumptions are untestable". It most often appears alongside 23andme, @alextisyoung, Aborigines.

Reference entry: twin study
Mention count: 1
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First seen: July 03, 2025
Last seen: July 03, 2025

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Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability July 03, 2025

23andme 1 shared issues
@alextisyoung 1 shared issues
Aborigines 1 shared issues
ACE twin model 1 shared issues
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Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability

July 03, 2025 · Original source

Sasha Gusev of The Infinitesimal, a leading critic of twin studies and the person whose views most inspired the post, kindly replied. His reply has four parts - I’ll address each individually. First, GxE interactions:

Inline links: The Infinitesimal, kindly replied

If we're thinking more about, let's say, a pair of fraternal twins where one of them is ugly and so parents don't invest resources in their education, wouldn't this show up equally in twin studies and GWAS? That is, if this is a very uncommon effect, we shouldn't expect it to affect large twin studies much. But if it's a common effect, then shouldn't we expect that every ugly person is less intelligent, and so GWAS will find that a gene for ugliness is associated with lower intelligence (both within and between families)? Can you give an example of a case why this would show up in twin studies, but not GWAS, RDR, etc? Also, why would we privilege this circuitous explanation (ugliness is genetic and provokes strong parental response) over the more direct explanation (intelligence is genetic)?

Shouldn’t this be easily detectable in adoption studies? Adoptees have different family environments than their bio parents, so they should act like the unrelated people in GWASs. But in fact adoption studies get similar numbers to twin studies.

Twinkie Defense1 mentions across 1 issues

Twinkie Defense is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "legal manuever ... as “ the Twinkie Defense ”". It most often appears alongside 1978, 2016 essay, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs.

Reference entry: Twinkie Defense
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Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022

1978 1 shared issues
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A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs 1 shared issues
Abbott 1 shared issues
Abstracted Will Of The American People 1 shared issues

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