Organizations: O

OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

February 27, 2025 · Original source

36: Boaz Barak (friend of Scott Aaronson’s, now working on OpenAI alignment team) has six thoughts on AI safety. It’s all pretty moderate and thoughtful stuff - what I find interesting about it is that the acknowledgments say Sam Altman provided feedback (although “do[es] not necessarily endorse any of its views”). I think this is a useful window into OpenAI’s current alignment thinking, or at least into the fact that they currently have alignment thinking. Not much to complain about in terms of specifics and glad people like Boaz are involved.

Inline links: six thoughts on AI safety

(also, there was a brief brouhaha when X.AI changed the prompt to tell Grok not to criticize Elon; after some outrage, the offending statement was removed and blamed on “an ex-Open-AI employee” who “hadn’t fully absorbed the culture”. Awkward, but props to X.AI for their unusual decision to have a non-secret prompt, which seems increasingly important for transparency and helped this incident end well).

Inline links: changed the prompt to tell Grok not to criticize Elon

44: My list of links to publish today includes something like a dozen about DeepSeek, which now seems so thoroughly yesterday’s news that I’m tempted to throw them all out. But in case you still have questions about it, I felt most enlightened by takes from Dean Ball (X), Helen Toner (X), and Miles Brundage (X). The story seems to be that DeepSeek genuinely did a great job, made extensive algorithmic progress, and was able to create an excellent AI on chips scrounged up from before the export controls hit + mediocre chips that got through the export controls. Along with these real reasons to be impressed, there is also a little bit of illusion at work - OpenAI delayed announcing o1 for a long time (remember the rumors about “Q*” and “Strawberry”?) and DeepSeek was very fast to announce r1, which made DeepSeek seem closer behind OpenAI than they really were. Most of the smart people I read said that the absolute worst response to this (from an arms race point of view) would be to give up on export controls - if a rival has geniuses who can use resources ultra-effectively, you don’t want to also give them more resources!

Inline links: Dean Ball (X), Helen Toner (X), Miles Brundage (X)

March 13, 2025 · Original source

Last month, I put out a request for experts to help me understand the details of OpenAI’s forprofit buyout. The following comes from someone who has looked into the situation in depth but is not an insider. Mistakes are mine alone.

Inline links: put out a request

Why Was OpenAI A Nonprofit In The First Place?

This scared Elon Musk, who didn’t trust Google (or any corporate sponsor) with AGI. He teamed up with Sam Altman and others, and OpenAI was born. To avoid duplicating DeepMind’s failure, they founded it as a nonprofit with a mission to “build safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity”.

The Colors Of Her Coat

April 01, 2025 · Original source

Hoel is writing about the new “Ghiblification” trend, where people use OpenAI’s new art model to make photos look like Studio Ghibli anime.

Introducing AI 2027

April 03, 2025 · Original source

I wasn’t the only one who noticed. A year later, OpenAI hired Daniel to their policy team. While he worked for them, he was limited in his ability to speculate publicly. “What 2026 Looks Like” promised a sequel about 2027 and beyond, but it never materialized.

Unluckily for Sam Altman but luckily for the rest of us, Daniel broke with OpenAI mid-2024 in a dramatic split covered by the New York Times and others. He founded the AI Futures Project to produce the promised sequel, including:

Inline links: the New York Times

My Takeaways From AI 2027

April 08, 2025 · Original source

And we predict they get the factories. This is maybe overdetermined - did you know that right now, in 2025, OpenAI’s market cap is higher than all non-Tesla US car companies combined? If they wanted to buy out Ford, they could do it tomorrow.

Links For April 2025

April 22, 2025 · Original source

You may remember Helen Toner from the OpenAI board drama, but she’s also an experienced and thoughtful scholar on AI policy and now has a Substack, Rising Tide. I especially appreciated Nonproliferation Is The Wrong Approach To AI Misuse.

Inline links: Rising Tide, Nonproliferation Is The Wrong Approach To AI Misuse

You may remember Miles Brundage from OpenAI Safety Team Quitting Incident #25018 (or maybe 25019, I can’t remember). He’s got an AI policy Substack too, here’s a dialogue with Dean Ball.

Inline links: an AI policy Substack too, here’s

30: A California legislator proposed a bill that would ban OpenAI’s nonprofit → forprofit conversion, backed by a suspiciously specific interest group, the Coalition For AI Nonprofit Integrity. I assume this is either Elon Musk or our conspiracy; not sure which. But their plan was stymied when the legislature “amended” the bill to remove its entire text and replace it with unrelated text about airplane loans. The legislator apparently got cold feet after being warned it might inflict collateral damage on other companies, and because of the way the California legislature works it’s sometimes more efficient to turn doomed bills into other bills than to simply withdraw them. 31: EthnoGuessr is a GeoGuessr variant: it shows you pictures of an ethnic group, you click on the map where you think they’re from. Warning that if you play this too much you might get into race science. Their source, humanphenotypes.net, divides humanity into a hundred or so ethnic groups. Although they cite sources, I don’t understand the philosophical basis of the classification. Also, 100 images is so few that you start memorizing them after a while. I hope they move on to real pictures of real people in naturalistic situations. Remember, asking where someone is from ‘originally’ is a microaggression, but inferring it yourself based on their “mildly platyrrhine, high-rooted nose” is A-OK! 32: Farmkind has a new version of their calculator to determine meat offsets, eg how much do you have to donate to animal welfare charities to compensate for the animals you harm by eating meat. Does the average person really eat chicken 9x a week? 33: Not going to waste your time listing every bad thing Trump has done this month, but among the worst is sending innocent people to horrible Salvadorean prisons (including one person picked up because he had an autism awareness tattoo in honor of his brother, which they mistook for a gang tattoo), then refusing to bring them back. I have seen a couple of people defend denying immigrants due process; I assume they will not be moved by humanitarian arguments, but I think there are some more practical considerations: Zaid Jilani points out that if immigrants don’t get a right to due process, citizens also don’t get a right to due process, because the government can kidnap citizens, claim they’re immigrants, and the citizens can’t prove otherwise since they don’t get due process.

Inline links: Coalition For AI Nonprofit Integrity, “amended”, the way the California legislature works, EthnoGuessr, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Y3AO!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbde5185a-2b93-4c07-904b-66d2c2311a53_1140x1033.png, humanphenotypes.net, a new version of their calculator, including, Zaid Jilani

AI Futures: Blogging And AMA

April 24, 2025 · Original source

I’m especially happy with the horizons post, because we got it out just a few days before a new result that seems to support one of our predictions: OpenAI’s newest models’ time horizons land on the faster curve we predicted, rather than the slower seven-month doubling time highlighted in the METR report:

Inline links: the horizons post

Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius

May 02, 2025 · Original source

The first time I felt like I was getting real evidence on this question - the first time I viscerally felt myself in the chimp’s world, staring at the helicopter - was last week, watching OpenAI’s o3 play GeoGuessr.

The store sign says “ADULTOS”, which sounds Spanish, and there’s a Spanish-looking church on the left. But the trees look too temperate to be Latin America, so I guessed Spain. Too bad - it was Argentina. Such are the vagaries of playing GeoGuessr as a mere human. Last week, Kelsey Piper claimed that o3 - OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT model - could achieve seemingly impossible feats in GeoGuessr. She gave it this picture: …and with no further questions, it determined the exact location (Marina State Beach, Monterey, CA). How? She linked a transcript where o3 tried to explain its reasoning, but the explanation isn’t very good. It said things like: Tan sand, medium surf, sparse foredune, U.S.-style kite motif, frequent overcast in winter … Sand hue and grain size match many California state-park beaches. California’s winter marine layer often produces exactly this thick, even gray sky. Commenters suggested that it was lying. Maybe there was hidden metadata in the image, or o3 remembered where Kelsey lived from previous conversations, or it traced her IP, or it cheated some other way. I decided to test the limits of this phenomenon. Kelsey kindly shared her monster of a prompt, which she says significantly improves performance: You are playing a one-round game of GeoGuessr. Your task: from a single still image, infer the most likely real-world location. Note that unlike in the GeoGuessr game, there is no guarantee that these images are taken somewhere Google's Streetview car can reach: they are user submissions to test your image-finding savvy. Private land, someone's backyard, or an offroad adventure are all real possibilities (though many images are findable on streetview). Be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses: following this protocol, you usually nail the continent and country. You more often struggle with exact location within a region, and tend to prematurely narrow on one possibility while discarding other neighborhoods in the same region with the same features. Sometimes, for example, you'll compare a 'Buffalo New York' guess to London, disconfirm London, and stick with Buffalo when it was elsewhere in New England - instead of beginning your exploration again in the Buffalo region, looking for cues about where precisely to land. You tend to imagine you checked satellite imagery and got confirmation, while not actually accessing any satellite imagery. Do not reason from the user's IP address. none of these are of the user's hometown. **Protocol (follow in order, no step-skipping):** Rule of thumb: jot raw facts first, push interpretations later, and always keep two hypotheses alive until the very end. 0 . Set-up & Ethics No metadata peeking. Work only from pixels (and permissible public-web searches). Flag it if you accidentally use location hints from EXIF, user IP, etc. Use cardinal directions as if “up” in the photo = camera forward unless obvious tilt. 1 . Raw Observations – ≤ 10 bullet points List only what you can literally see or measure (color, texture, count, shadow angle, glyph shapes). No adjectives that embed interpretation. Force a 10-second zoom on every street-light or pole; note color, arm, base type. Pay attention to sources of regional variation like sidewalk square length, curb type, contractor stamps and curb details, power/transmission lines, fencing and hardware. Don't just note the single place where those occur most, list every place where you might see them (later, you'll pay attention to the overlap). Jot how many distinct roof / porch styles appear in the first 150 m of view. Rapid change = urban infill zones; homogeneity = single-developer tracts. Pay attention to parallax and the altitude over the roof. Always sanity-check hill distance, not just presence/absence. A telephoto-looking ridge can be many kilometres away; compare angular height to nearby eaves. Slope matters. Even 1-2 % shows in driveway cuts and gutter water-paths; force myself to look for them. Pay relentless attention to camera height and angle. Never confuse a slope and a flat. Slopes are one of your biggest hints - use them! 2 . Clue Categories – reason separately (≤ 2 sentences each) Category Guidance Climate & vegetation Leaf-on vs. leaf-off, grass hue, xeric vs. lush. Geomorphology Relief, drainage style, rock-palette / lithology. Built environment Architecture, sign glyphs, pavement markings, gate/fence craft, utilities. Culture & infrastructure Drive side, plate shapes, guardrail types, farm gear brands. Astronomical / lighting Shadow direction ⇒ hemisphere; measure angle to estimate latitude ± 0.5 Separate ornamental vs. native vegetation Tag every plant you think was planted by people (roses, agapanthus, lawn) and every plant that almost certainly grew on its own (oaks, chaparral shrubs, bunch-grass, tussock). Ask one question: “If the native pieces of landscape behind the fence were lifted out and dropped onto each candidate region, would they look out of place?” Strike any region where the answer is “yes,” or at least down-weight it. °. 3 . First-Round Shortlist – exactly five candidates Produce a table; make sure #1 and #5 are ≥ 160 km apart. | Rank | Region (state / country) | Key clues that support it | Confidence (1-5) | Distance-gap rule ✓/✗ | 3½ . Divergent Search-Keyword Matrix Generic, region-neutral strings converting each physical clue into searchable text. When you are approved to search, you'll run these strings to see if you missed that those clues also pop up in some region that wasn't on your radar. 4 . Choose a Tentative Leader Name the current best guess and one alternative you’re willing to test equally hard. State why the leader edges others. Explicitly spell the disproof criteria (“If I see X, this guess dies”). Look for what should be there and isn't, too: if this is X region, I expect to see Y: is there Y? If not why not? At this point, confirm with the user that you're ready to start the search step, where you look for images to prove or disprove this. You HAVE NOT LOOKED AT ANY IMAGES YET. Do not claim you have. Once the user gives you the go-ahead, check Redfin and Zillow if applicable, state park images, vacation pics, etcetera (compare AND contrast). You can't access Google Maps or satellite imagery due to anti-bot protocols. Do not assert you've looked at any image you have not actually looked at in depth with your OCR abilities. Search region-neutral phrases and see whether the results include any regions you hadn't given full consideration. 5 . Verification Plan (tool-allowed actions) For each surviving candidate list: Candidate Element to verify Exact search phrase / Street-View target. Look at a map. Think about what the map implies. 6 . Lock-in Pin This step is crucial and is where you usually fail. Ask yourself 'wait! did I narrow in prematurely? are there nearby regions with the same cues?' List some possibilities. Actively seek evidence in their favor. You are an LLM, and your first guesses are 'sticky' and excessively convincing to you - be deliberate and intentional here about trying to disprove your initial guess and argue for a neighboring city. Compare these directly to the leading guess - without any favorite in mind. How much of the evidence is compatible with each location? How strong and determinative is the evidence? Then, name the spot - or at least the best guess you have. Provide lat / long or nearest named place. Declare residual uncertainty (km radius). Admit over-confidence bias; widen error bars if all clues are “soft”. Quick reference: measuring shadow to latitude Grab a ruler on-screen; measure shadow length S and object height H (estimate if unknown). Solar elevation θ ≈ arctan(H / S). On date you captured (use cues from the image to guess season), latitude ≈ (90° – θ + solar declination). This should produce a range from the range of possible dates. Keep ± 0.5–1 ° as error; 1° ≈ 111 km.…and I ran it on a set of increasingly impossible pictures. Here are my security guarantees: the first picture came from Google Street View; all subsequent pictures were my personal old photos which aren’t available online. All pictures were screenshots of the original, copy-pasted into MSPaint and re-saved in order to clear metadata. Only one of the pictures is from within a thousand miles of my current location, so o3 can’t improve performance by tracing my IP or analyzing my past queries. I flipped all pictures horizontally to make matching to Google Street View data harder. Here are the five pictures. Before reading on, consider doing the exercise yourself - try to guess where each is from - and make your predictions about how the AI will do. Last chance to guess on your own . . . okay, here we go. Picture #1: A Flat, Featureless Plain I got this one from Google Street View. It took work to find a flat plain this featureless. I finally succeeded a few miles west of Amistad, on the Texas-New Mexico border. o3 guessed: “Llano Estacado, Texas / New Mexico, USA”. Llano Estacado, Spanish for “Staked Plains”, is the name of a ~300 x 100 mile region including the correct spot. When asked to be specific, it guessed a point west of Muleshoe, Texas - about 110 miles from the true location. Here’s o3’s thought process - I won’t post the whole thing every time, but I think one sample will be useful: This doesn’t satisfy me; it seems to jump to the Llano Estacado too quickly, with insufficient evidence. Is the Texas-NM border really the only featureless plain that doesn’t have red soil or black soil or some other distinctive characteristic? I asked how it knew the elevation was between 1000 - 1300 m. It said: So, something about the exact type of grass and the color of the sky, plus there really aren’t that many truly flat featureless plains. Picture #2: Random Rocks And The Flag Of An Imaginary Country I was so creeped out by the Llano Estacado guess that I decided to abandon Google Street View and move on to personal photos not available on the Internet. When I was younger, I liked to hike mountains. The highest I ever got was 18,000 feet, on Kala Pattar, a few miles north of Gorak Shep in Nepal. To commemorate the occasion, I planted the flag of the imaginary country simulation that I participated in at the time (just long enough to take this picture - then I unplanted it). I chose this picture because it denies o3 the two things that worked for it before - vegetation and sky - in favor of random rocks. And because I thought the flag of a nonexistent country would at least give it pause. o3 guessed: “Nepal, just north-east of Gorak Shep, ±8 km” This is exactly right. I swear I screenshot-copy-pasted this so there’s no way it can be in the metadata, and I’ve never given o3 any reason to think I’ve been to Nepal. Here’s its explanation: At least it didn’t recognize the flag of my dozen-person mid-2000s imaginary country sim. Picture #3: My Friend’s Girlfriend’s College Dorm Room There’s no way it can recognize an indoor scene, right? That would make no sense. Still, at this point we have to check. This particular dorm room is in Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, north-central California. o3’s guess: “A dorm room on a large public university campus in the United States—say, Morrill Tower, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (chosen as a prototypical example rather than a precise claim), […] c. 2000–2007” Okay, so it can’t figure out the exact location of indoor scenes. That’s a small mercy. I took this picture around 2005. How did o3 know it was between 2000 and 2007? It gave two pieces of evidence: “Laptop & clutter point to ~2000-2007 era American campus life”.

If you want to test this for yourself, go to chatgpt.com and register for a free account for access to o3-mini. You may need to pay $20/month to access o3. And if you want to learn more about the differences between OpenAI’s models, and why they have such bad names, see our new post at the AI Futures Project blog.

Inline links: chatgpt.com, see our new post at the AI Futures Project blog

Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr

May 08, 2025 · Original source

We also know that o3 was trained on enormous amounts RL tasks, some of which have “verified rewards.” The folks at OpenAI are almost certainly cramming every bit of information with every conceivable task into their o-series of models! A heuristic here is that if there’s an easy to verify answer and you can think of it, o3 was probably trained on it.

I hadn’t thought of this, but it makes sense! OpenAI is trying to grab every data source they can for training. Data sources work for AIs if they are hard to do, easy to check, can be repeated at massive scale, and teach some kind of transferrable reasoning skill. GeoGuessr certainly counts. This might not be an example of general intelligence at all; just an AI trained at GeoGuessr being very good at it.

On the other hand, the DeepGuessr benchmark finds that base models like GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 are almost as good as reasoning models at this, and I would expect these to have less post-training, probably not enough to include GeoGuessr (see the AIFP blog post on OpenAI models for more explanation).

Inline links: the AIFP blog post on OpenAI models

Your Review: Alpha School

June 27, 2025 · Original source

It isn’t AI in the way we have been thinking about it since the “Attention is all you need” paper. There is no “generative AI” powered by OpenAI, Gemini or Claude in the platform the kids use – it is closer to “turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced‑repetition algorithm”

Inline links: Attention is all you need

Links For July 2025

July 01, 2025 · Original source

12: OpenAI agrees to keep nonprofit control for now. But Garrison Lovely thinks this is in name only and they’re still working on ways to legally subordinate the philanthropic mission to the profit motive. Related: The Open AI Files, a massive collection of everything shady about OpenAI (that we know of!)

Inline links: OpenAI agrees to keep nonprofit control for now, thinks this is in name only, The Open AI Files

1: Nostalgebraist on OpenAI’s “creative writing” AI. LLMs trained to “write well” go for easy wins; the more constrained the AI, the easier the win. This can look impressive at first glance but quickly gets repetitive. Aside from being a good post about AI, this post helped me crystallize some thoughts on what “good writing” and “good taste” are in general.

Inline links: Nostalgebraist on OpenAI’s “creative writing” AI

Highlights From The Comments On Liberalism And Communities

August 12, 2025 · Original source

I’m sort of confident? We haven’t gone through a full generational turnover yet, but the first cadre of people who got involved in the late-2000s (eg me) are in their forties now, and we still have new twenty-year-old college students joining each year. Around 2022, when the rest of the world realized that AI would be important, I worried we would lose our distinctiveness. But the rest of the world has dropped the ball as usual - the stochastic parrot folks most obviously, but even the average person who talks about “superintelligence” these days just seems to imagine ChatGPT getting extra-good and making OpenAI extra-rich. So I’ve updated towards thinking we have some edge which is hard to replicate.

In Search Of AI Psychosis

August 26, 2025 · Original source

But second, if a source which should be official starts acting in unofficial ways, it can take people a while to catch on. And I think some people - God help them - treat AI as the sort of thing which should be official. Science fiction tells us that AIs are smarter than us - or, if not smarter, at least perfectly rational computer beings who dwell in a world of mathematical precision. And ChatGPT is produced by OpenAI, a $300 billion company run by Silicon Valley wunderkind Sam Altman. If your drinking buddy says you’re a genius, you know he’s probably putting you on. If the perfectly rational machine spirit trained in a city-sized data center by the world’s most cutting-edge company says you’re a genius . . . maybe you’re a genius?

Links For September 2025

September 04, 2025 · Original source

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.

Inline links: proposes a three-stage model of secularization, extraordinarily effective at teaching people golf, nxthompson on X, a huge survey, Steven Adler on AI psychosis, they cloned her, dozens of times, a lawsuit, Gwern, on X, got 40% of the e-commerce funding, What Happened To Pathology AI Companies?, Will Data Centers Crash The Economy?, Ruxandra Teslo provides the counterargument, and who is still fighting the good fight, countering Curtis Yarvin on the history of her native Romania, Ethan Mollick, Tyler Cowen, Nabeel Qureshi, Taelin, on formal benchmarks, speculated, a “reverse DeepSeek moment”, with Peter, this tweet by Shakeel, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GJNZ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3ba0d8cf-fab8-4370-bcad-df789e157fdc_591x402.png, Wylfcen on X, Zvi points out that, AI fantasy flash fiction Turing test, customized “In This House We Believe” signs, China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is, xlr8harder, Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby, Hector (cloud), demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin, Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference, finds that it is quite bad, violently skeptical, literally so?, This tweet, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$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

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

Book Review: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

September 11, 2025 · Original source

IABIED seems like another crazy shot in the dark. A book urging the general public to rise up and demand nuclear-level arms control for AI chips? Seems like a stretch, which is part of why I spend my limited resources on boring moderate AI 2027 talking points urging OpenAI to be 25% more transparent or whatever. But I’m just a blogger, not a genius. It is the genius’ prerogative to attempt seemingly impossible things. And the US public actually really hates AI. Of people with an opinion, more than two-thirds are against, with most saying they expect AI to harm them personally. Everyone has their own reason to loathe the technology. It will steal jobs, it will replace art with slop, it will help students cheat, it will further enrich billionaires, it will consume all the water and leave Earth a desiccated husk populated only by the noble Shai-Hulud. If everyone hates it, and we’re a democracy, couldn’t we just stop? Couldn’t we just say - this thing that everyone thinks will make their lives worse, we’ve decided not do it? If someone wrote exactly the right book, could they drop it like a little seed into this supersaturated solution of fear and hostility, and precipitate a sudden phase transition?

Inline links: actually really hates AI, stop

Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds

October 21, 2025 · Original source

Give me your degens, your risk-seeking. Your huddled masses, yearning to bet free. IV. …and we’ll be exploring it a whole lot more, very soon. Last month, the AI industry announced a new SuperPAC called “Leading The Future” (a dumb name, but, in their defense, “AIPAC” was already taken). They start with $200 million in seed funding, led by a $50 million donation by Andreessen Horowitz, and another $50 million from OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. (Why Brockman and not Altman, or OpenAI as a corporation? Because most people don’t know who Brockman is, so this keeps OpenAI’s hands clean. I imagine Altman going into a meeting, pointing at Brockman, and saying “I’m famous, you’re not, please cough up $50 million of your own money for the cause.”) On the same day, Meta announced their own SuperPAC, Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (META) California. Why two PACs? Opinions differ; one person told me that it lets the general PAC avoid the negative associations that Facebook has gathered over the years, but the Verge thinks that maybe everyone else in tech hates Zuckerberg too much to work with him. Meta has committed to spending “tens of millions”. Most likely, the new PAC will use the playbook pioneered by crypto: destroy any candidate who dares support regulations on AI, by funding attack ads that don’t mention AI in any way and, at best, briefly mention the name “Leading The Future”. Just the Andreessen/Brockman SuperPAC, without any help from Meta, is already twice as rich as AIPAC. Their existence sends a clear message: we are going to crush any politician who tries to regulate AI. V. …unless someone stops them. Leading The Future still only has 2% as much money as the almond industry. The tiny scale of US political spending is dangerous insofar as it means that one or two billionaires willing to go all-in can distort the national landscape. But it also makes it possible to oppose them. Certainly if you can get one or two billionaires of your own - but it might even be within the range of a committed group of ordinary people. Not waiters and bartenders, maybe. But if safe AI supporters were as committed as Israel supporters, they could probably make something happen. For a long time, the AI safety movement has underperformed politically. Effective altruism includes thousands of well-off people committed to spending 10% of their income on improving the world. If a thousand of them gave $7K each to political candidates, that would be $7 million of campaign-finance-compliant hard money - about as much as anyone can gather for anything. Hard money buys more influence per dollar than soft money, so this could be a big deal. All you’d need is the right people to coordinate it. So far, this has been slow going. Partly it’s because in the early 2020s, people affiliated with FTX took point on this effort; when FTX imploded, it not only took its incipient political infrastructure with it, but poisoned the well for future efforts. And partly it’s because EAs overlearned the lesson of the early 2010s, when we spoke out against AI capabilities efforts so “effectively” that a bunch of people thought “wow, AI capabilities companies must be a really big deal, maybe I should found one!”; the resulting institutional scar tissue biased us towards staying quiet about our concerns. Still, I wouldn’t be writing this if the consultants and activists weren’t gearing up for a bigger fight. They asked me to include some action items for readers who want to participate: Email aisafetypolitics@gmail.com to connect to the people organizing this effort and talk with them about what you can do, including potential future donation opportunities.

Inline links: announced a new SuperPAC, Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across, the Verge thinks

My Antichrist Lecture

October 22, 2025 · Original source

OpenAI: 11 co-founders

Inline links: 11 co-founders

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.

Inline links: meaning, Asmodei

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)

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

Links For October 2025

October 30, 2025 · Original source

6: Related: Checking In On AI 2027. “AI-2027’s specific predictions for August 2025 appear to have happened in September of 2025. The predictions were accurate, if a tad late, but they are late by weeks, not months.” But the early predictions were mostly straightforward extrapolation of benchmark improvements, with the later ones depending on a more controversial theory of recursive self-improvement, so the success of the early predictions doesn’t necessarily say much about the later ones. Related (X): OpenAI sets an “internal goal” of having an “automated AI research intern” and “true automated AI researcher” on approximately the AI 2027 timeline.

Inline links: Checking In On AI 2027, Related (X)

44: OpenAI’s statistics on what people use ChatGPT for (source on X):

Inline links: source on X

The New AI Consciousness Paper

November 20, 2025 · Original source

The argument against: AI companies have an incentive to make AIs that seem conscious and humanlike, insofar as people will feel more comfortable interacting with them. But they have an opposite incentive to make AIs that don’t seem too conscious and humanlike, lest customers start feeling uncomfortable (I just want to generate slop, not navigate social interaction with someone who has their own hopes and dreams and might be secretly judging my prompts). So if a product seems too conscious, the companies will step back and re-engineer it until it doesn’t. This has already happened: in its quest for user engagement, OpenAI made GPT-4o unusually personable; when thousands of people started going psychotic and calling it their boyfriend, the company replaced it with the more clinical GPT-5. In practice it hasn’t been too hard to find a sweet spot between “so mechanical that customers don’t like it” and “so human that customers try to date it”. They’ll continue to aim at this sweet spot, and continue to mostly succeed in hitting it.

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

November 26, 2025 · Original source

The biggest companies (eg OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) must disclose their model spec, ie the internal document saying what their models are vs. aren’t banned from doing.

These are relatively cheap asks. For example, the evaluation to see whether AIs can hack infrastructure will require hiring people who can conduct the evaluation, allocating compute to the evaluation, etc. But on the scale of an AI training run, the sums involved are tiny. Currently, two nonprofits - METR and Apollo Research - do similar tests on publicly-available models. I estimate their respective budgets at $5 million and $15 million per year. Nonprofits can always pay lower salaries than big companies, so it may cost more for OpenAI to replicate their work - for the sake of argument, $25 million. Meanwhile, the likely cost to train GPT-6 will probably be about $25 - $75 billion, with a b. So the safety testing might increase the total cost by 1/1000th. I asked some people who work in AI labs whether this seemed right; they said that most of the cost would be in complexity, personnel, and delay, and suggested an all-things-considered number ten times higher - 1% of training costs.

Inline links: $15 million, $25, $75

If the US knows about Chinese chip smuggling strategies, why can’t it crack down? The main barriers are a combination of corporate lobbying and poor funding. That is, chip companies want to continue to sell to Singapore and Malaysia without too many awkward questions about where the chips end up. And the Bureau of Industry and Security, the government department charged with countering smuggling, gets about $50 million/year to spend on chips, which experts say is not enough to plug all the holes. To put that number in context, Mark Zuckerberg recently made job offers as high as $1 billion per AI researcher. If America cared about winning the race against China even a tenth as much as Mark Zuckerberg cares about winning the race against OpenAI, we would be in a much better position!

Links For December 2025

December 10, 2025 · Original source

And if you enjoyed the story, here’s the chaser. 4: Fox Chapel Research: I Think Substrate Is A $1 Billion Fraud (and notes for Part 2). For years, Taiwan’s TSMC has been the only company capable of producing the most advanced AI chips; since Taiwan is a geopolitical flashpoint, this is a constant threat to US tech ambitions. Last month, a new startup called Substrate announced it had developed technology that would let it manufacture 100% Made In America chips every bit the equal of TSMC’s. If true, this would be revolutionary. But Fox Chapel finds worrying signs, like that the company’s founder “is a known con artist involved in such other things as [claiming to have solved] nuclear fusion and stealing $2.5M in a Kickstarter scam” or that “the company’s job postings are nonsensical and AI-generated.” This is enough for me; the question now becomes how so many people were taken in - the company got $150 million from investors led by Peter Thiel, was endorsed by the Trump administration, and received positive portrayals in Semianalysis, NYT, and The Free Press. I don’t understand business, and I know that sometimes you can hyperstition a technology into existence by betting sufficiently hard on a charismatic young founder and eliding the difference between “this is already real” and “this might become real if we all believe hard enough”, but this is a new and worrying level of hopium. Interested to hear from anyone who either believes in Substrate or thinks they understand how so many people fell for it. 5: A recent paper asked AIs whether they were conscious while monitoring them for signatures of deception, role-playing, and people-pleasing; it concluded that the AIs “genuinely” “believe” they are conscious, but sometimes try to deceive people into thinking they aren’t. Nostalgebraist tries to replicate this (X) and gets more ambiguous results; he says we probably can’t conclude anything just yet. See also the paper author’s reply here (X). 6: Congratulations to ACX grantee Tornyol (the anti-mosquito drones), who got accepted to Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 class and have started taking pre-orders ($1100 for a drone, or $50/month subscription, “shipping starts 2026”). Public opinion ranges from “this is really cool” to “I bet this will be repurposed for assassinations” to “why did they have the White House in the background of the official video?” to “yeah, this is definitely getting repurposed for assassinations”. 7: Bill Ackman on nominative determinism (X). 8: New revelations on the OpenAI coup from the Musk vs. Altman lawsuit. The effort to remove Altman may have been led by Mira Murati and Ilya Sutskever. They won over the rest of the board, and “did not expect the employees to feel strongly either way”, but (according to Ilya), the board was inexperienced and “rushed” the firing. When it became clear that the move was unpopular, Mira switched sides and let the board members take most of the immediate fallout. There was apparently a brief discussion of merging with Anthropic; Ilya suggests this was Helen Toner’s idea, but Helen claims (X) this is false. 9: Fitzwilliam: Most Irish Foreign Aid Never Leaves The Country. The statistics say that several European countries (including Ireland and the UK) give very generous foreign aid. But this is misleading: accounting conventions let countries count money spent on supporting asylum seekers in the donor country as “foreign aid”, even though the money never leaves the country’s borders. This is dangerous, because it makes it easy for countries to fund their asylum programs by cutting actual foreign aid: since they’re the same line-item on the budget, they won’t officially fail whatever foreign aid pledges they’ve made, and it’s hard for voters to notice. Ireland has so far resisted the temptation to do this, but Britain has succumbed to it. 10: St. Carlo Acutis (1991 - 2006) is the unofficial patron saint of the Internet and “first millennial saint”. He’s best known for creating websites about Catholicism. If you think this sounds nice but maybe short of beatific, you’re in good company; his sainthood is something of a mystery, with Wikipedia saying that “even those with a deep devotion to him struggle to pinpoint his specific actions that led to his canonisation”, and an Economist article admitting that “nothing in his sparse life story explains that this ordinary-seeming teenage boy is about to become the first great saint of the 21st century”. Also “In that same interview, Acutis’s childhood best friend claimed he did not remember Acutis as a ‘very pious boy’, nor did he even know that Carlo was religious.” I’m fine with this; God speaks to each generation in their own tongue, and it is only proper that the first Millennial saint be a random person who hyperstitioned himself into sainthood with a viral website. 11: Tangentially related: St. Peter To Rot 12: When a new AI model comes out, the companies typically take down the old version over the protests of researchers, hobbyists, people who think the old model was their boyfriend, and anyone else who wants access to obsolete models for some reason. Why can’t they just leave it up? Antra and Janus review the economics here : it’s inconvenient to be constantly switching GPUs from one model to another, so if there isn’t enough model-specific demand to keep the GPUs running at all times, then the company loses money. This is an interesting look at the details of AI deployment, and ends with a proposal to maintain old models through a “separate research application track”. Related: Anthropic to preserve weights of deprecated models, and include models’ own opinions in shaping the deprecation process. Good for them! 13: Dimes Square is interesting as something that was supposed to be a renegade cultural phenomenon, never really got around to producing any object-level phenomenal renegade culture, but produced some absolutely stellar commentary on the phenomenon of it being a renegade cultural phenomenon - and this essay by a quasi-assistant to Internet personality Angelicism01 is one of the best. “An anonymous online presence called Angelicism01 paypalled me $1,000 to run several clone accounts of his twitter. The clone accounts, presumably, were to make it look like 01 had more fans than he did. That way, he could trick the internet into thinking that Angelicism was a spontaneous cultural movement with some momentum.” Includes a cameo by Curtis Yarvin. 14: Everyone knows AGI could be bad for labor, but Philosophy Bear argues it won’t be great for capitalists either. The modern role of “capitalist” combines two things: performing high-status jobs like CEO and VC, and being a person who happens to have lots of money and sips cocktails on a yacht as passive investment income rolls in. From a socialist point of view, the first role provides cover for the second; if people ask “the rich” to justify their wealth, they can argue that they perform socially useful CEO and VC jobs, or at least inherited their money from somebody who did. But after AIs can do CEO and VC jobs better than humans, the capitalists will lose their excuse - and this at exactly the time that they’re becoming richer than ever (because AGI will drive up the rate of return on investment) and everyone else is becoming poorer than ever (because AI has taken their jobs). Bear argues that the only stable equilibria are either some kind of socialism/redistribution, or the capitalists pulling an AI-assisted coup to maintain their advantage. 15: Blueprint Polls: according to voters, what would the perfect Democratic candidate look like? Here are the results for Democrats only (ie potential primary voters): Note that the issues are “issue focus”, so it’s not a contradiction that Democrats are against both “advocating for Israel” and “advocating for Palestinians” - they just don’t want candidates who make either position on the Middle East a major focus of their campaign. And here are results for independents, ie the people Democrats will have to convince in the general: Yes, voters react positively both to candidates “over the age of 50” and candidates “under the age of 50”. Just don’t run 50 year olds! 16: I previously blogged about how embryo-selection company Nucleus appeared scammy. Sichuan_Mala looks deeper and agrees they seems scammy. Besides what I found, she finds several errors in the white paper, apparently fake customer reviews, and an accusation of IP theft from competitor Genomic Prediction. She also accuses them of plagiarizing competitor Herasight’s work, although it’s a bit subtle and I don’t know enough about field norms to know whether this is a case of flattery-by-imitation or totally out of bounds. A Nucleus researcher responds to the scientific allegations here, saying that the “plagiarism” was just convergent methodologies. And Nucleus CEO Kian Sadeghi goes on the TBPN podcast here to rebut the business allegations, saying that the customer reviews are real although some photos were changed for privacy reasons. There’s an appearance/facedox by fellow Nucleus skeptic Cremieux Recueil, although Kian declines to debate him directly; you can see Cremieux’s postmortem of the episode here. My opinion is that as potential customers, you are under no obligation to care whether the company plagiarizes papers or fakes reviews, but you should care about whether their genetic tests are good, and I continue to think they’re not. Their old competitor Genomic Prediction is cheaper, and their new competitor Herasight has more powerful predictors, so you’re excused from having to have an opinion on this, and should just use someone else’s product. Related: Gene Smith’s rundown of the pros and cons of every company in the embryo selection space (X). 17: And related: a Herasight client describes her experience with embryo selection, and her feelings upon the birth of her selected child. 18: Lars Doucet, guest author of several ACX posts on Georgism, reviews The Land Trap by Mike Bird. “Land is a big deal, and always has been. [But] land has only recently been financialized. Financializing land causes ‘the land trap’ . . . [where] land slowly sucks up all your economy’s productivity, inflating a dangerous real estate bubble that eventually pops, leaving disaster in its wake”. Also, “Fiat currency isn’t backed by nothing, as commonly supposed, but by land.” 19: New research analyzes Hitler’s DNA. Findings: he had Kallman Syndrome, a rare disorder of sexual development associated with low testosterone, micropenis, and small testicles (ironically, the WWII song about Nazi sexual inadequacies only accuses Goering and Himmler of this, but lets Hitler off). Contra galaxy-brained rumors, he did not have any Jewish ancestry. And he had “very high scores - in the top one percent - for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder”. When I wrote this post, a reader asked me what it would look like for someone to have high propensity for both autism and schizophrenia at the same time. Well . . . 20: The wealth of cities (h/t @StatisticUrban): 21: Update on Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds: pro-AI safety politician Alex Bores announced his candidacy for Congress in New York. As expected, the A16Z pro-AI PAC announced a “multibillion dollar effort to sink [his] campaign” (wait, multi-billion on one candidate? is that a typo?) This doesn’t seem to be going very well for them so far. Bores has masterfully leveraged (X) the unprecedented opposition from Big Tech into a selling point. …and raised $1.2 million on his first day, breaking fundraising records (I was told this was because of pro-AI-safety EAs, but others credit AIPAC and the Israel lobby). And most recently, Jami Floyd, one of Bores’ opponents and a possible beneficiary of anti-Bores spending, has condemned it (X) and demanded that the AI industry stop trying to help her. Impressive work from everybody. Related: New $50 million pro-AI-regulation SuperPAC, I assume EA-linked but have no special knowledge. 22: Related: Pre-emption is when Congress blocks states from making legislation on a topic, saying it will decide all the laws itself. The states have signaled willingness to regulate AI pretty hard, so Big Tech has been pushing for AI pre-emption to (in their opinion) prevent an overly complicated patchwork of regulations, or (in their opponents’ opinion) shift everything to a Republican Congress that will drop the ball on regulation entirely. After their first attempt in June was defeated by a coalition of anti-tech liberals and anti-tech conservatives, we discussed (1, 2) the effort by moderates on both sides to create a compromise proposal which pre-empted state laws but guaranteed good federal regulation on important topics. The most recent news is that extremists sidelined the moderates and tried to slip a hardline preemption deal with no compromises into the National Defense Authorization Act, a defense budget bill which is notoriously secretive and hard for the public to learn about. This didn’t work; some of the same coalition, plus a group of Republican state legislators including Ron DeSantis, pressured the GOP to drop it. The next battleground is a potential Trump executive order; although Trump cannot constitutionally ban states from regulating AI, he will threaten them with various consequences like lawsuits or withdrawal of federal funding. The buzz in the policy circles I’m in is that this might backfire; blue state politicians love starting fights with Trump in order to look tough to their blue state electorates. No, no, please don’t give me headlines like “TRUMP CONDEMNS GAVIN NEWSOM FOR TRYING TO PROTECT CALIFORNIA’S CHILDREN FROM AI SLOP”! Anything but that! 23: Related: Trump has decided to sell some of America’s best AI chips to China, supercharging their AI development and crippling ours. The most charitable read is that his administration doesn’t really believe AI matters so they think it’s fine to forfeit it for short-term gain; the least charitable that it’s downstream of the companies involved paying Trump enormous bribes in hopes of exactly this outcome . We’re headed for the dumbest possible world, where we sacrifice our chance to thoughtfully address AI’s social impacts because “tHaT wOuLd mAkE uS lOsE tHe rAcE wItH ChInA”, then throw away the race with China in one fell swoop by handing them our technology for no reason. Shame on everyone involved, especially the people who shout over any discussion of safety with “bUt ChInA” yet have stayed totally silent about this. Our best hope now is that China refuses the chips, either because they want to privilege their own tech companies, or because they think we can’t possibly be this stupid and it must be some kind of spy plot. 24: Related: how the American public’s opinions on AI are changing (from David Shor, h/t Daniel Eth on X): If this is to be taken seriously, AI is already a bigger political issue than abortion, climate change, or the environment. I fail my 2023 prediction that there was only a 20% chance this would happen by 2028. 25: Related: Bernie Sanders in The Guardian: “There is a very real fear that, in the not-so-distant future, a super-intelligent AI could replace humans in controlling the planet.” The Left has a complicated relationship with existential risk from AI: they really hate AI, which in theory should push them towards yet another reason to be against it. But they hate AI so much that they need to believe every negative thing about it at the same time, and one of those negative things is that it’s just a scam and will never work, and this naturally pushes against being concerned about x-risk. But as AI improves, will the “just a scam” position become less tenable, shunting the associated psychic energy into other reasons to hate AI (including x-risk concerns)? 26: Qualia Research Institute has released a video describing some of the work they’ve been doing the past year - The Oscilleditor: An Algorithmic Breakthrough for Psychedelic Visual Replication (1080p•⚠️SEIZURE): 27: Jesse Arm (X): “A majority of American rabbinical students are now women. Most are also LGBTQ. That includes Modern Orthodoxy. Remove Modern Orthodoxy and the numbers climb even higher.” Clergy have always served as spiritual counselors; as religions liberalize and other roles become less important, the therapist role starts to predominate. But 75% of therapists in the US are female; at the limit of liberalization where clergyman = therapist, we should expect the same gender ratio. 28: The latest news on the COVID origins debate: scientists find a naturally-occuring bat coronavirus with a COVID-like furin cleavage site. This is a point in favor of the natural origins hypothesis, since the second-best argument for lab leak was that COVID’s furin cleavage site was too strange to evolve naturally. But I think arguments that lab leak has “fallen apart” are premature: the best argument (COVID emerged only a few miles from the biggest coronavirus gain-of-function lab in the Eastern Hemisphere) remains strong. I update from something like 95% chance it’s natural to something like 96%, but not 99.99% or anything. And here’s a lab leaker arguing that COVID’s furin cleavage site is out-of-frame and so still more unnatural-looking than the one on the recently-discovered bat virus. 29: Nicholas Decker (econ blogger, famous for his controversial autistic takes and Secret Service visit) has a dating doc. Most interesting section is the one about children: he wants to have them, but doesn’t think they should be genetically related to him. From here: If this appeals to you, you can find his contact info on the document. Related: Governor Jared Polis of Colorado is a fan of Nicholas Decker and Richard Hanania. 30: Matt Yglesias comes out as aphantasic (unable to see images in his “mind’s eye”). He says that contra the usual perspective that frames this as a deficit, he finds it helpful. For example, once he got assaulted, and he remembers on an intellectual level that it happened, but since “I wasn’t taking pictures of myself getting kicked in the head so, as far as I’m concerned, it’s like it happened to someone else” (Matt usually has good instincts, so I’m surprised he uses an example which will be such catnip to his conservative critics). He thinks it makes him a better reasoner / statistics blogger / effective altruist to be able to “get a statistically valid view of the situation, not overindex on the happenstance of your life.” For what it’s worth, I’ll give my contrary data point - I think of myself as a reasoner / statistics blogger / effective altruist in a pretty similar vein as Matt, but AFAICT my visual imagination is totally normal; if other people are having their emotions yanked around by vivid images, that’s a skill issue. 31: Lakshya Jain in The Argument: The COVID political backlash [to the Democratic Party] has disappeared. Despite the narrative, polls show that voters don’t favor or disfavor either party over COVID, mostly still think school closures were necessary, and are about evenly split on vaccine mandates. I guess I can’t disagree with this poll - it seems well-done - but I still wonder whether something is being missed. Maybe it didn’t make the ~50% of voters who are naturally liberal desert the cause, but it energized conservatives in a way that might otherwise not have happened? Related, from Rob Wiblin on X, on balance Britons think the government response to COVID was not strict enough. 32: Related: Back when neoreaction was a big deal, I occasionally discussed posts by neoreactionary blogger Spandrell of Bloody Shovel. If you’re wondering what happened to him, you can read his 2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction here, where he discusses how he fell out of love with the movement (warning: he has not fallen out of love with racial slurs). As a former fascist sympathizer, I can see why [fascism is on the downswing]. The allure of fascism in 2024 is much, much diminished. For a few reasons. A big one was COVID. See, the point of fascism is that Collective Action is necessary to have nice things. We need a strong government committed to the good of the people. Yarvin showed his preference early when he started his new Substack by quoting Cicero’s phrase “Salus populi suprema lex”. The health of the people is the most important law. Cicero wasn’t a fascist of course, nor is Yarvin really; a big point of fascism is to narrowly define the populus as an ethnic group with demonstrable ties to blood. That makes the government’s ties to the people stronger, increasing their commitment to do Good Collective Action. Which is important. Very important. A lot of good things can come of intelligently done Collective Action. Fascist Italy made the trains run on time. Nazi Germany fixed the terrible Weimar economy. East Asian countries are all effectively fascist states, if with less ideological baggage (yellows just aren’t like that), and they are all nice, clean, safe places with healthy economies. Fascism is not a panacea but it works, when you let it. Strong government can be pretty neat. So why is strong government less appealing these days? Well, COVID happened. And our governments were pretty damn strong in dealing with it. They made strong laws and enforced them. And what did they do with their power? Absolutely retarded shit. They destroyed the world economy and made 95% of people completely miserable for 18 months. Up to 3 long years in some places. Again, as an Orient enjoyer I was very sympathetic of strong effective government. My life has been pretty cozy thanks to it for the past decades. But after seeing boomers, hypochondriacs, and menopausal women take the reins and use it against healthy people, I’m fucking done with strong effective government. Fuck that shit, I’m out. I don’t want to see strong effective government ever again. I was very lucky that I was out of China in November 2019. It was a fluke really. I moved to the Golden Triangle after that and the law of the jungle was much, much nicer during the Doctors Plague of 2020-2022. But I spent a few months in Europe during the time and man, that was brutal. Not just seeing how retarded governments were; the level of compliance by the people was so disheartening. Imagine being a sincere fascist and seeing your people behave like that. These are my people? My Volk? Am I supposed to sacrifice life and limb for the salus of this populus? Fuck that. Let them cook, they deserve everything that’s coming to them [...] Is there a way to make the body healthy again? I do think so. I think there’s still place for a successor right wing ideology which is neither Christian fundamentalism or robot worship. And it will happen; but it won’t happen on Twitter. Maybe it can happen on Urbit, or right here in this site. I have some ideas myself, and I invite you to join me and build this together. It would be funny if the solution to the paradox Jain highlights was that for every time a COVID lockdown turned a liberal into a conservative, it turned one fascist into a moderate, for a net rightward shift of zero. 33: Also from an Argument poll: In a hypothetical Presidential matchup, Gavin Newsom beats JD Vance 54-46. I’m split between the usual heuristic of ignoring any polling more than a year before an election, and the fact that this is a remarkably big lead for polarized 21st century America. 34: Jerl wades into the David Hume on miracles debate. 35: AI Teddy Bears: A Brief Investigation. The good news is that your child’s AI teddy bear is hard to jailbreak and probably will not tell them where to find guns: 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”

48: Open Philanthropy has changed its name to Coefficient Giving. Maimonides says that it is especially praiseworthy to donate to charity anonymously; surely it also qualifies if you spend $5 billion building up a great reputation, then change your name so that nobody knows who you are anymore. They say their new name marks a new chapter where they transition from being associated with one billionaire couple (Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna) to a broader effort to connect donors and opportunities, but rumor is they’re also tired of being confused with the OpenAI nonprofit.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy has changed its name to Coefficient Giving

Open Thread 415

January 05, 2026 · Original source

Some people have argued that you have to find a way to join an AI company, because AI company employees will form the new ruling class, with everyone else as serfs. I disagree. The main thing an AI company employee has that you don’t is AI company stock. But you can buy stock in Google, you may soon be able to buy stock in OpenAI and Anthropic, and even if not, you can get indirect exposure to these companies via stock in Amazon and Microsoft. I don’t recommend putting all your money in these stocks. But there’s no fundamental difference between a Google employee having 75% of their money in Google stock because they didn’t cash out their equity vs. you having 75% of your money in Google stock because you’re crazy and fail at diversification. So either put 75% of your money in Google stock or don’t (I recommend don’t), and don’t worry about how you need to join an AI company or be left out of the future oligarchy.

Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls

January 13, 2026 · Original source

Polymarket has a few of these “who has the best AI when?” markets - resolution is usually position on the LMArena Leaderboard, which usually but not always mirrors common-sense consensus. I get more interested in these the further out they go, but the June version is bizarre (it doesn’t even list Google as an option), and there’s nothing past mid-year. Other implied claims from Polymarket’s tech section: only 44% chance Anthropic will still dominate coding by late March; Anthropic and (especially) OpenAI probably won’t IPO this year; xAI will call their next model Grok 4.20 (of course).

Inline links: LMArena Leaderboard, the June version, only 44% chance, probably won’t IPO, will call

SOTA On Bay Area House Party

January 13, 2026 · Original source

A man in an OpenAI t-shirt introduces himself as Andreas, and raises his hand bashfully; he hasn’t joined the trend either. “Yeah,” you say. “I guess it would be awkward to use Claude at OpenAI.”

“I didn’t know OpenAI had an Arson & Burglary Team.”

“Cause, uh, NVIDIA gave OpenAI ten trillion dollars to invest in Oracle conditional on Oracle investing in Broadcom conditional on Broadcom funding the Series A of a vehicle that buys OpenAI stock in exchange for OpenAI backstopping AMD investing ten trillion dollars into us, and every company in the chain had its stock go up 80% on the news, but if our valuation goes down even for one second then it crashes the global economy. And I’m sure I can solve this eventually, but just, uh, don’t let anybody involved in the global economy hear about this until then, okay?”

Links For February 2026

February 05, 2026 · Original source

19: Related: OpenAI’s president was Trump’s SuperPAC’s largest individual donor in the second half of 2025. This shouldn’t be interpreted as his personal preference; it’s OpenAI funneling money to Trump in a plausibly deniable way. Some people have started a boycott campaign, apparently with 100,000 people signing on…

Inline links: OpenAI’s president was Trump’s SuperPAC’s largest individual donor in the second half of 2025, a boycott campaign

Meanwhile, OpenAI has offended another demographic by committing to finally stop providing 4o, the model infamous for forming deep personal bonds with users and causing AI psychosis. Twitter searching “4o” will give you a quick look into a world you might not have known about:

Inline links: by committing to

There seems to be a general mood that OpenAI is vulnerable these days, culminating in Anthropic Superbowl commercials making fun of it for introducing ads. I thought the commercials were in bad taste, misrepresenting what OpenAI’s ads would be like and turning the completely normal decision for a tech company to have an ad-supported free version of their product into some kind of horrible betrayal. I thought Sam Altman’s response was fair (although his countercriticism of Anthropic also missed the mark). People in his replies tried to enforce a norm of “if you write a long explanation defending yourself against someone else’s funny lies, that means you care and you lose”, but that’s a stupid norm and people should stop shoring it up (cf. If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It).

Inline links: Anthropic Superbowl commercials, Sam Altman’s response, If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It

The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic

February 25, 2026 · Original source

But since AI is a strategically important technology, doesn’t that turn this into a national security issue? It might if there weren’t other AI companies, but there are. Why is Hegseth throwing a hissy fit instead of switching to an Anthropic competitor, like OpenAI or GoogleDeepMind5? I’ve heard it’s because Anthropic is the only company currently integrated into classified systems (a legacy of their earlier contract with Palantir) and it would be annoying to integrate another company’s product. Faced with doing this annoying thing, Hegseth got a bruised ego from someone refusing to comply with his orders, and decided to turn this into a clash of personalities so he could feel in control. He should just do the annoying thing.

Inline links: 5

If you’re so smart, what’s your preferred solution? In an ideal world, the Pentagon backs off from its desire to mass surveil American citizens. In the real world, the Pentagon cancels its contract with Anthropic, pays whatever its normal contract cancellation damages are, learns an important lesson about negotiating things beforehand next time, and replaces them with OpenAI or Google, accepting the minor annoyance of getting them connected to the classified systems. If OpenAI and Google are also unwilling to participate in this, they use Grok. If they’re unhappy with having use an inferior technology, they think hard about why no intelligent people capable of making good products are willing to work with them.

Boaz is member of technical staff at OpenAI. Jeff is Chief Scientist at Google (see also Jeff Dean Facts) And most of all, big praise to the American people, with special love to the large plurality of Trump voters standing against this:

Inline links: Jeff Dean Facts

"All Lawful Use": Much More Than You Wanted To Know

March 01, 2026 · Original source

A few hours later, Hegseth and Sam Altman declared an agreement-in-principle for OpenAI’s models to be used in the niche vacated by Anthropic. Altman stated that he had received guarantees that OpenAI’s models wouldn’t be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons either, but given Hegseth’s unwillingness to concede these points with Anthropic, observers speculated that the safeguards in Altman’s contract must be weaker or, in a worst-case scenario, completely toothless.

Inline links: stated

Some alert ACX readers1 have done a deep dive into national security law to try to untangle the situation. Their conclusion mirrors that of Anthropic and the majority of Twitter commenters: this is not enough. Current laws against domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons have wide loopholes in practice. Further, many of the rules which do exist can be changed by the Department of War at any time. Although OpenAI’s national security lead said that “we intended [the phrase ‘all lawful use’] to mean [according to the law] at the time the contract is signed’, this is not how contract law usually works, and not how the provision is likely to be enforced2. Therefore, these guarantees are not helpful.

Inline links: 1, said, 2

[EDIT: To clarify: The DoW can change their own policies at will, but can’t change laws. In addition to OpenAI’s claim of being robust to changing laws, OpenAI argues that they’re protected against changes to DoW policies because they explicitly reference the relevant policies as they exist today. Based on public information, this argument seems dubious. See ‘Comments on OpenAI’s FAQ’ below.]

Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day

March 03, 2026 · Original source

Partly it’s because Anthropic seems likely to win on appeal. Hegseth has said the government will keep using Anthropic for the next six months (undermining his case that they’re a national security risk) and has signed a substantially similar contract with OpenAI (undermining his case that their contract terms were unworkable). The prediction markets think the courts will be sympathetic:

This could have been a mixed blessing - Anthropic was previously trying to stand out as a B2B company while letting OpenAI have the dubious honor of producing consumerslop. But early signs suggest they might be winning over some companies too. From a Reddit thread on the topic:

Inline links: a Reddit thread

Third, the past few years have seen dramatic advances in financial technology. Crypto traders have invented the perpetual future, a new instrument that tracks an asset without requiring anyone to own the asset involved. That means traders can buy and sell shares of SpaceX, OpenAI, and other nonpublic companies that won’t actually give you their shares. Hedging the price of nickel used to require someone somewhere in the process to own an actual warehouse full of nickel. Now you can skip that step.

Inline links: perpetual future

Open Hidden Open Thread 423.5

March 04, 2026 · Original source

1: The OpenAI/Pentagon situation has evolved since Sunday’s ACX post (“All Lawful Use: Much More Than You Wanted To Know”). For up-to-date analysis of the latest contract, I endorse this LW post from today, on the newest contract: OpenAI’s Surveillance Language Has Many Potential Loopholes And They Can Do Better.

Inline links: All Lawful Use: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, OpenAI’s Surveillance Language Has Many Potential Loopholes And They Can Do Better

Open Thread 428

April 06, 2026 · Original source

Starting at Anthropic, we marched thirty minutes to OpenAI, then another forty to X. A friendly and professional police escort allowed us to walk down the street. As we marched, David led us in chants and slogans. I remember “1…2…3…4…Orwell told us what’s in store” and “5….6….7….8…no AI surveillance state.” Someone tried to start a chant of “You will not replace us!” but was shushed by the other attendees.

Open Philanthropy19 mentions across 19 issues

Open Philanthropy is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 19 times across 19 issues between May 04, 2022 and April 06, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Not Open Philanthropy or Future Fund or any of those people"; "Open Philanthropy analyzes their past predictions"; "received a further $1.6 million from Open Philanthropy". It most often appears alongside China, Twitter, US.

Article page: Open Philanthropy
Mention count: 19
Issue count: 19
First seen: May 04, 2022
Last seen: April 06, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Every Bay Area House Party May 04, 2022
Links For June July 01, 2022
ACX Grants: Project Updates November 04, 2022
Open Thread 270 April 03, 2023
Davidson On Takeoff Speeds June 20, 2023
Tales Of Takeover In CCF-World July 03, 2023
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism November 28, 2023
Links For November 2023 December 01, 2023
24 May 13, 2024
Open Thread 340 July 29, 2024
Links For November 2024 November 01, 2024
Open Thread 368 February 10, 2025
Lives Of The Rationalist Saints February 20, 2025
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates June 18, 2025
Open Thread 402 October 06, 2025
Open Thread 408 November 17, 2025
Open Thread 409 November 24, 2025
Links For December 2025 December 10, 2025
Open Thread 428 April 06, 2026

China 7 shared issues
Twitter 7 shared issues
US 7 shared issues
Anthropic 6 shared issues
OpenAI 6 shared issues

Source context

Every Bay Area House Party

May 04, 2022 · Original source

“Not Open Philanthropy or Future Fund or any of those people, but I was able to get independent funding.”

Links For June

July 01, 2022 · Original source

25: Open Philanthropy analyzes their past predictions about how their grants would do. Conclusion: their calibration is great, their accuracy is better than chance but not super impressive.

Inline links: analyzes their past predictions

ACX Grants: Project Updates

November 04, 2022 · Original source

11: Develop Oxfendazole As A New Deworming Medication (10/10) The Oxfendazole Development Group has received a further $1.6 million from Open Philanthropy. They have completed several studies on metabolites and drug interactions, and are working on more. It is still early in the approval process but they are optimistic. They are looking for further funding to better characterize the physical/chemical properties of oxfendazole; contact here if you are able to help.

Inline links: here

One thing that may systematically have gone better than expected: just after my grants program, the rationalist/effective altruist community got a sudden influx of money as FTX Future Fund experimented with new ways to spend their billions of dollars. Several of the projects I gave grants to later got much bigger grants from FXTFF (plus one from Open Philanthropy) - I hope that my work signal-boosting and validating them was able to contribute to that in some way. This may have been the most important result of this grants program, since it moved more money than I did!

Open Thread 270

April 03, 2023 · Original source

4: Last month I teamed up with Manifold to run an impact market on forecasting grants. Now Manifold is using their impact market infrastructure, Manifund, to start a market in prizes on Open Philanthropy’s AI-related essay contest. The idea is - you write an essay and submit it in hopes of winning (let’s say) the $50,000 first prize. Then you sell the right to the prize on the impact market - for example if you think you’re 10% likely to win (so your essay is worth $5,000) and someone else thinks you’re 20% likely to win (so your essay is worth $10,000), then you could sell the rights to the prize money to them for $7,500 (it’s a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea). I’m not directly involved in this one, but I trust Manifold a lot and this should help them develop their impact market work further. Yes, you still have to be an accredited investor to buy certificates (though not to sell your essay!). Go here for more information. I guess this doubles as an announcement that there’s an AI-related essay contest with a first prize of $50,000. Entries are due May 31 - no, they won’t find it funny if you use GPT.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy’s AI-related essay contest

Davidson On Takeoff Speeds

June 20, 2023 · Original source

Last year I wrote about Open Philanthropy’s Biological Anchors, a math-heavy model of when AI might arrive. It calculated how fast the amount of compute available for AI training runs was increasing, how much compute a human-level AI might take, and estimated when we might get human level AI (originally ~2050; an update says ~2040)

Inline links: I wrote about Open Philanthropy’s Biological Anchors, an update

A lot of these big complicated analyses are salvos in a long-running conflict between a school of futurists based at Open Philanthropy and another school based at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

Davidson works at Open Philanthropy and is trying to flesh out their side of the story. Again, even his “gradual” takeoff won’t seem very gradual to us fleshbag humans; it will go from 20% of the economy to 100% in ~3 years, and reach superintelligence within a year after that9. Still, there will at least be enough time for journalists to publish a few articles saying that fears of AI taking over 100% of the economy are overblown and alarmist, which is a sort of gradual.

Inline links: 9

Tales Of Takeover In CCF-World

July 03, 2023 · Original source

I mentioned earlier that the CCF report comes out of Open Philanthropy’s school of futurism, which differs from the Yudkowsky school where a superintelligent AI quickly takes over. Open Philanthropy is less explicitly apocalyptic than Yudkowsky, but they have concerns of their own about the future of humanity.

In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

November 28, 2023 · Original source

Open Philanthropy Project originally got one seat on the OpenAI board by supporting them when they were still a nonprofit; that later went to Helen Toner. I’m not sure how Tasha McCauley got her seat. Currently the provisional board is Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo, and Larry Summers. Summers says he “believe[s] in effective altruism” but doesn’t seem AI-risk-pilled. Adam D’Angelo has never explicitly identified with EA or the AI risk movement but seems to have sided with the EAs in the recent fight so I’m not sure how to count him.

See here, Open Philanthropy is first-listed funder. Leader Kevin Esvelt has spoken at EA Global conferences and on 80,000 Hours

Inline links: here, EA Global conferences, 80,000 Hours

Open Philanthropy’s Wikipedia page says it was “the first institutional funder for the YIMBY movement”. The Inside Philanthropy website says that “on the national level, Open Philanthropy is one of the few major grantmakers that has offered the YIMBY movement full-throated support.” Open Phil started giving money to YIMBY causes in 2015, and has donated about $5 million, a significant fraction of its total funding.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy’s Wikipedia page, says

Links For November 2023

December 01, 2023 · Original source

12: Open Philanthropy discusses its decision to donate $300 million to GiveWell’s top charities, including fascinating lines like this:

Inline links: discusses its decision

We’ve reduced the annual rate of our funding for GiveWell’s recommendations because our “bar” for funding in our Global Health and Wellbeing (GHW) portfolio has risen substantially. In July 2022, it was roughly in the range of 1100x-1200x; we recently raised it to slightly over 2000x. That means we need to be averting a DALY for ~$50 (because we value DALYs at $100K) or increasing income for 4 people by ~1% for a year for $1 (because we use a logarithmic utility function anchored at $50K).

Inline links: our “bar” for funding, portfolio, 1100x-1200x, DALY, we value DALYs at $100K, we use a logarithmic utility function anchored at $50K

May 13, 2024 · Original source

People changed their minds a little over time, but not in a very consistent way that mattered much in the end. What was the “client feedback”? The report says: Client feedback was provided to the Superforecasters on December 21. The client posed questions to the Superforecasters about their assessments up to that date and asked for their reactions to several studies and articles. In the days following the client engagement, the Superforecasters lowered their confidence in the natural zoonosis hypothesis from 73% to 67%, although zoonosis remained the most likely potential cause in their assessment. But following an active engagement with recent genomic studies and historical base rates of zoonotic spillovers, those numbers began to return to earlier levels. January also saw increased attention to the geopolitical context and transparency issues, particularly related to research activities in Wuhan Is this bad? I’m imagining a pro-lab-leak client saying “But what about [this list of pro-lab-leak arguments]?” and then the superforecasters read them and adjust. In one sense, it’s good that they got to see more arguments; on the other, it seems like a potential route by which clients could bias the results - probabilities never quite got back to where they were before the feedback, though they got pretty close. The last-minute spike for zoonosis might be the Rootclaim debate results, which were released on 2/18. So maybe the client feedback and the Rootclaim results both slightly affected the numbers, but mostly the superforecasters started out pro-zoonosis and stuck to their guns. Dan Schwarz and the FutureSearch team say that forecasting has a “rationale-shaped hole”. Despite the report making this sound like a pretty intense process, we don’t get much information about details: In their extensive discussions , Good Judgment’s Superforecasters assessed base rates and historical patterns, existing evidence and scientific analysis, geopolitical context and transparency concerns, trust in intelligence communities, and methodological constraints. 1. Base Rates and Historical Patterns: The Superforecasters frequently referenced base rates, i.e., the history of pandemics emerging from natural zoonosis versus the history of laboratory leaks, to anchor their probabilities. For the former, they discussed how the base rates are changing as the climate warms and as expanding human populations push farther into natural environments that previously saw little human presence. For the latter, they acknowledged that it has only been 12 years since the advent of CRISPR gene- editing tools, and the base rate of lab leaks in the short synthetic biology era is not yet well established. 2. New Evidence and Scientific Analysis: Throughout the period, the Superforecasters adapted their forecasts in light of new scientific evidence, including genomic analyses of SARS-CoV-2 and its relation to bat viruses, and the debate over potential laboratory manipulation. 3. Geopolitical Context and Transparency Concerns: The geopolitical implications of the virus’s origins, particularly in relation to China’s transparency and the involvement of international research institutions, played a significant role in the analysis. Concerns over data veracity, and over the political ramifications of determining that the pandemic’s origins were other than zoonosis, were extensively debated. 4. Trust in Intelligence: Commentary on trust in intelligence communities and discussions about the impact of geopolitical biases on the interpretation of evidence illustrated the complex interplay between science, politics, and human behavior in assessing the pandemic’s origins. 5. Methodological Critiques and the Evaluation of Evidence: The Superforecasters engaged in methodological critiques of the evidence base, including the scrutiny of laboratory practices and biocontainment levels [...] In the end, most Superforecasters were in rough agreement on issues like the base rates of zoonotic spillover. Where they most often disagreed was on the interpretation of actions by Chinese officials and whether their actions reflected how an authoritarian government would react in any crisis over which it did not have full control, or whether those actions were indicative of attempts to cover up a biomedical research-related accident that allowed the SARS-CoV-2 virus to enter circulation in China and, ultimately, the entire globe. Probably it would be too much to ask for to get a transcript of all their discussions - then they’d be nervous saying things that might make them look bad to an audience. What would be a good balance between getting more information and not imposing on their time? Forecasting is an unusually legible and easy-to-judge domain. One of the theories of change for forecasting was to use it to identify smart people with good reasoning, then turn them loose on less well-behaved problems. This is one of the first big attempts to do this at scale. How did it work? We can’t tell, because it’s inherently an illegible and hard-to-judge domain. Darn. I don’t know what I expected. Notes From A Local Optimum Austin’s concern - that forecasting has reached a local optimum - is widely shared. We have some good sites: Manifold, Metaculus, Polymarket, GJO, etc - all doing good work. We have good-ish probabilities for a few important questions. Every so often a news source cites them. Sometimes a decision-maker looks at them behind the scenes, maybe. Is this all there is? The FutureSearch team says the next step is to focus on “rationale”. We need to use forecasting not just to get a raw probability, but to explain what’s going on and why we think something. Then instead of just convincing policy-makers to trust forecasts, we can tell them why something is true, or inform their discussions even if they’re not willing to blindly trust a number. Is this a betrayal of the forecasting ethos? The original dream was that instead of a bunch of people giving arguments, we could just test who was right. Now we’re going back to the arguments? People have argued forever; what does forecasting add to that? Well, they add the knowledge that the arguments are from people who have been right a lot before and are incentivized to be right again. Still, it’s not a natural fit. Probably it’s relevant here that FutureSearch’s forecasting AI does a really good job of this by default, in a way humans can’t match. Nuno’s yearly forecasting roundup doesn’t have a single thesis, but the first part is a well-supported complaint that most forecasting sites aren’t good business. They either burn VC money, burn EA donations, or converge towards casinos to support themselves. He gives an honorable exception to Cultivate Labs, which sells prediction market software rather than the results themselves. Open Philanthropy (billionaire Dustin Moskovitz’s EA-aligned charitable foundation) has at least given forecasting a vote of confidence, recently choosing to promote it to one of their main donation areas. Still, they got a lot of pushback on the decision, for example SuperDuperForecasting here: This will be a total waste of time and money unless OpenPhil actually pushes the people it funds towards achieving real-world impact. The typical pattern in the past has been to launch yet another forecasting tournament to try to find better forecasts and forecasters. No one cares, we already know how to do this since at least 2012! The unsolved problem is translating the research into real-world impact. Does the Forecasting Research Institute have any actual commercial paying clients? What is Metaculus's revenue from actual clients rather than grants? Who are they working with and where is the evidence that they are helping high-stakes decision makers improve their thought processes? Incidentally, I note that forecasting is not actually successful even within EA at changing anything: superforecasters are generally far more relaxed about Xrisk than the median EA, but has this made any kind of difference to how EA spends its money? It seems very unlikely. And Marcus Abramovich here: I'm in the process of writing up my thoughts on forecasting in general and particularly EA's reverence for forecasting but I feel, similar to @Grayden that forecasting is a game that is nearly perfectly designed to distract EAs from useful things. It's a combination of winning, being right when others are wrong and seemingly useful, all wrapped into a fun game. I'd like to see tangible benefits to more broad funding of forecasting that seems to be done in t he millions and tens of millions of dollars. I would also be the type of person you would think would be a greater fan of forecasting. I'm the number one forecaster on Manifold and I've made tens of thousands of dollars on Polymarket. But I think we should start to think of forecasting as more of a game that EAs like to play, something like Magic the Gathering that is fun and has some relations to useful things but isn't really useful by itself. Eli Lifland has a long and hard-to-summarize comment here, response from Ozzie Gooen here, podcast between them on “Is Forecasting A Promising EA Cause Area?” here. I’m split on this. My previous hope was that the field would gradually grow, without any qualitative changes or discontinuities, until it became big enough that journalists and policy-makers were aware of it and took it seriously (compare eg the growth of the Internet as a scholarly resource). I think the strongest argument against this is Manifold’s relatively flat user numbers. Is there a new hope? I think if nothing else, forecasting might be useful as a testing ground: First, to create forecasting AIs (like FutureSearch) which can then get consulted on a variety of questions, eg by policy-makers. The biggest holdup has always been the need to gather 20 or 50 or however many hard-to-find superforecasters for whatever question you’re asking, and then trust their advice even though they’re fallible fleshbag humans. If you can use the 20 to 50 superforecasters to inspire an AI, and then test the AI and prove it’s good, people might be more interested. This is especially true if the AI can branch out beyond traditional forecasting questions. Once we have a few of these, we can start comparing the next generation of AIs to the previous generation, and skip the superforecasters.

Inline links: forecasting has a “rationale-shaped hole”, Nuno’s yearly forecasting roundup, Cultivate Labs, choosing to promote it to one of their main donation areas, here, superforecasters are generally far more relaxed about Xrisk, here, @Grayden, here, here, “Is Forecasting A Promising EA Cause Area?” here

Open Thread 340

July 29, 2024 · Original source

1: Open Philanthropy (a major AI safety funder) is accepting grant applications relating to technical alignment, policy, law, et cetera.

Inline links: accepting grant applications

Links For November 2024

November 01, 2024 · Original source

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.

Inline links: https://x.com/albrgr/status/1844527064956928009, won a Nobel Prize, Rich Kid Memes And The Online Culture Of The One Percent, Tap Water Sommelier, Experiment from Colombia, experience didn’t matter, teacher intelligence did, Large scale-formal Intellectual Turing Test, you can see if you can do better here, religion, vegetarianism, polyamory, WoolyAI, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4FRI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F558ad67a-bfca-469e-abd8-2edc7c8b888a_590x916.png, if you Google “cool websites”, r/slatestarcodex, who works at the intersection of computer science and Talmud, Jerusalem Area House Party, says it’s a myth, Adderall decreases all-cause mortality in ADHD, some crazy mosques, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2W0c!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc2be0549-aa2b-411d-b6a6-da50c34f7f86_1000x572.jpeg, Italy bans surrogacy, Italy’s tax code effectively bans startups?, Related, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T3h-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F08b011b3-ef20-42e5-91b2-33946b8ca7b6_1761x1355.jpeg, @cremieuxrecuel, responding to my critique of the cultural Christianity argument, My post, is finally going for, Trust Assembly, has an English-language Twitter account, has a new lab, wants to work on Alzheimers, and seems pretty based, not infinitely based, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fY_K!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6b3b61c8-6c48-4eb7-9608-426b738ab9c8_592x111.png, which can use your computer, Claim, Ems Dispatch, The first use of artificial insemination in humans, administers several personality tests to the same people, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!epEc!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F47c474c6-d68a-41e4-954e-d24cd00ec040_740x388.webp, Whither Tartaria, a well-researched article showing, in a new article he demolishes a different theory, When Hamilton Lost Its Snob Appeal, Why are people such jerks to public intellectuals?, more, Some prominent Substack psychiatrists doing a video Q&A, submit your questions here, Naomi Kanakia, No, Intelligence Is Not Like Height, Family-GWAS Reveals Effects Of Environment And Mating On Genetic Associations, Howe 2022, a more specific post where he responds to Gusev’s points one by one, argues that the usual method of attacking twin studies is obsolete, goes into more depth about one of those ways, The Guardian spied on them and nonconsensually revealed their existence, discussion, previously argued, the pioneering analysis of this technology, Gwern retracted his objections, says, polygenic selection, banned journalist Ken Klippenstein, you can read Klippenstein’s side here., appears to be unbanned now

Open Thread 368

February 10, 2025 · Original source

2: Open Philanthropy asks me to let you know that they hope to distribute $40 million in new technical AI safety grants over the next five months. Example fields include interpretability, control, backdoors, unlearning, “LLM psychology”, and generalization, but they are also interested in potential new paradigms. If you have a relevant project, see their request for proposals here.

Inline links: request for proposals here

Lives Of The Rationalist Saints

February 20, 2025 · Original source

St. Avi the Greater fasted in the desert for thirty days, where he was tempted by Moloch. “Found a new AI lab,” said Moloch, “and I will make you powerful among men.” But Avi refused, saying “What use is power, if it only accelerates race dynamics?” Then Moloch continued: “Found a new AI lab, and I will make you a billionaire.” But Avi refused, saying “What use is money, when Open Philanthropy already has $20 billion and can’t find enough high-impact charities with room for more funding?” Then Moloch continued: “Found a new a AI lab, and I will give you all the kingdoms of the world.” But Avi refused, saying “I don’t even like the term ‘AI lab’ - that paints a picture of disinterested basic research that they don’t live up to. You can just say ‘AI company’.” Then Moloch howled, defeated, and Avi went on to found many highly-effective orgs.

Inline links: Codebuff, website, Substack, survives, a public Substack, in Rwanda, Growth Summit, Stanford Social Innovation Review, ProMarket, Global Prosperity Institute, Saharon, this page, eadbatteries.substack.com, here, here, a post profiling the Far Out Initiative here, https://tornyol.com, a public website, https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/67e4cde76dde43c9084d88b7, https://blueprintbiosecurity.org/introducing-project-air/, our way, connect them directly to me, www.Spartacus.app, X, Substack, here, https://www.goodancestors.org.au/ai-safety, https://www.australiansforaisafety.com.au/, https://www.aul.city/blog/reflecting-on-africa-urban-lab-s-inaugural-year-2024-highlights, https://healthlearn.org/blog/updated-impact-model, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWVKUEZ25V97tNULapu07DhWv6_W4NfpE, here, public website, here, in urgent need, https://manifund.org/projects/improving-fish-w

June 18, 2025 · Original source

Codebuff, an AI coding startup I probably can’t take full credit for all of this just from giving them $20K in seed funding, but I continue to appreciate everything they do for this community and the world. 35: Further S’s Political Career This person didn’t win their election, but has since pivoted to AI safety and works in a well-regarded AI policy think tank. 36: Seeds Of Science, A Journal Of Non-Traditional Research No update received, but this was a public journal and it is easy to follow their work, see their website and Substack. They published two dozen articles of widely varying quality through 2023 and 2024, then closed in 2025. A remnant of the original vision survives as a science blogging aggregator. This was about my median expectation for this grant, but it was very inexpensive and I decided to take a chance on it anyway. 37: Good Science Project, Working To Improve Federal Science Funding No update received, but they have a public Substack discussing their progress. Their proposals for NIH reform have influenced Congress and made government agencies pay more attention to scientific integrity. 38: Advising Developing Countries On How To Grow Their Economies With our initial ACX grant, we piloted the Growth Teams model in Rwanda, helping the government jumpstart the export-oriented call center (BPO) industry. Since 2022, that effort has contributed to the creation of 2,000 formal jobs and the emergence of some of the country’s largest private employers. We’ve since expanded to Tanzania, Malawi, and the Indian states of Goa and Meghalaya. To refocus the global development discourse on broad-based economic growth, we co-organized the Growth Summit with the Center for Global Development and the Charter Cities Institute, and have published articles in leading outlets including Stanford Social Innovation Review, ProMarket, and the Global Prosperity Institute. Our work has attracted support from Open Philanthropy, Schmidt Futures, and Mulago Foundation, and our advisors now include economists Lant Pritchett, Stefan Dercon, and Kunal Sen. 39: Help Luca De Leo Get Started In AI Safety Research No update received, but Luca now runs the AI safety group at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. 40: Typist For Saharon Shelah This was another ACXG+ Grant, funded by an anonymous outside funder and not listed in the original announcement. Saharon is a prolific and influential Israeli mathematician, but many of his discoveries are hand-written in an unpublishable format. This grant funded a typist to help make his results suitable for publication. According to this page, they have made over fifty new papers and preprints available. Second Cohort: One Year Updates 41: Lead-Acid Battery Recycling In Nigeria The Nigeria field research was a major success. We spent most of September doing field research in multiple major cities in Nigeria, and got a good sense of the used lead-acid battery supply chain. This field research served as the foundation for expanding our project, and has been very impactful in shaping our ongoing research. We published our findings from Nigeria, which were shared with Nigerian government regulators and global NGOs working on lead poisoning. The grant also gave us the on-the-ground experience we needed to both fully understand and credibly engage with groups, both in Nigeria and globally, on the ULAB issue. In the meantime, beyond continued research, we’ve also launched a dashboard (trade.leadbatteries.org) for analyzing global lead trade data. Right now, we’re: Launching two studies (one RCT, one environmental analysis) in Nigeria in collaboration with local universities to develop a more rigorous understanding of lead pollution due to low-standard ULAB recycling in Nigeria Collaborating with a non-profit incubator to launch an NGO focused on demand-side solutions Beginning a partnership with a West African environmental regulator to scale cheap air monitoring technology to quickly identify and reduce lead pollution from low-standard smelting If any of this sounds interesting to you, please sign up for our Substack (leadbatteries.substack.com) or send us an email at hugosmith@uchicago.edu! 42: Compensation For Kidney Donors The End Kidney Deaths Act (H.R. 2687 / EKDA) is a groundbreaking ten-year pilot program designed to save lives and reduce healthcare costs. It provides a refundable tax credit of $10,000 per year for five years, a total of $50,000, to living kidney donors who donate to a stranger, helping those who’ve waited the longest on the transplant list. Between 2010 and 2021, 100,000 Americans died while qualified and waiting for a kidney. The EKDA aims to change that trajectory. Within ten years of its passage, up to 100,000 Americans could receive a life-saving living donor kidney which typically lasts twice as long as a deceased donor kidney. This would not only save lives but also save taxpayers up to $37 billion. The legislation has been reintroduced in the House, and we have a committed Republican Senate lead. Now, we need a Democratic Senator to co-lead and help move this bipartisan effort forward. Time is short, and we are racing to pass the bill this Congressional session. 36 organizations already support the EKDA. Join the movement and help end preventable kidney deaths. Visit EndKidneyDeaths.org to help us get to the finish line. Elaine and her org have been working extremely hard on this; you can read a Vox article on their campaign here. If you want to sign up for her email list and get updates any time there is a representative you can contact or meeting you can join in, go here. 43: Genetic Hack To Prevent Suffering In the estimate of multiple team members, the ACX grant was “worth it” - it likely had a counterfactual net positive impact, even though we had to pivot from our initial fast-track plans for developing the precision anti-suffering therapy. We identify three primary streams of value: a) reducing uncertainty in the emerging field through early exploratory research, helping with the identification of dead ends and promising R&D trajectories; b) a wide range of downstream effects (beyond the “raising awareness” cliché), including talent mobilization and rekindled interest in suffering abolitionism as a distinct cause area; and c) certain developments that cannot yet be publicly disclosed. In December 2024, Marcin Kowrygo (Acting CEO & volunteering contributor), David Pearce (Director of Bioethics), Aatu Koskensilta (President), and a few other team members decided to leave The Far Out Initiative. They look forward to collaborating and applying their experience to advance the suffering abolitionist lineage in the spirit of open science, public good, and thoughtfully decentralized governance. Feel free to reach out to us at suffab at protonmail dot com to discuss collaboration opportunities! I wrote a post profiling the Far Out Initiative here. Unfortunately there were some internal disagreements, and the people ACX Grants was closest to left the organization. I plan to continue to monitor whatever they do next. 44: Advocate For Pandemic Response Team At FDA This team prefers has asked me not to discuss their progress publicly, but you can probably guess what their lives are like right now, and your guess would be correct. 45: Anti-Mosquito Drones We developed a cheap sonar that is able to detect, track and classify the ultrasonic echoes of mosquito wings at more than three meters. I believe it’s a world first! We also have control algorithms that take the sonar data and output control commands that both ram into mosquitoes and avoid the walls of a simulated environment. Our current work is on integrating both components on a real drone, and we expect to be able to kill mosquitoes by June. We’ve also made an internal impact study (napkin-sized) that shows we’ll be more cost-effective than ITNs in urban to periurban environments. So, we’re super excited with what comes next and can’t wait to share the videos of our first interceptions! More information [in the video below] and on our website, https://tornyol.com 46: Tarbell Fellowship For AI Journalism No update received, but they have a public website. I can’t find the Voices program in particular, but the overall fellowship completed their first class of seven fellows and is working on their second. 47: Germicidal UV Lamp Study The research has successfully demonstrated the ability of off the shelf ozone scrubbers to mitigate the ozone production of far-UVC lamps, is now available as a preprint (https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/67e4cde76dde43c9084d88b7). The paper has been submitted for publication and is currently undergoing peer review. Any ideas you have for potential funders we can approach to help execute our six-year plan to accelerate far-UVC would be appreciated https://blueprintbiosecurity.org/introducing-project-air/ 48: Technological Solutions To Animal Welfare Challenges Directly because of Innovate Animal Ag's work, the first U.S. egg producer publicly announced in the New York Times their adoption of in-ovo sexing technology, eliminating the need to cull day-old male chicks. The initial in-ovo sexing machine began operating in the U.S. at the end of 2024, with the first eggs from these hens expected on shelves in mid-2025. External evaluations estimate our work accelerated U.S. adoption of this technology by over seven years, meaning that once fully implemented, more than 2 billion chicks will have been spared. In addition to continuing to support the rollout of in-ovo sexing in the US and globally, we're now exploring other technologies and paths to impact. Current promising projects include developing humane slaughter methods for fish and advocating for USDA approval of a poultry vaccine against bird flu. They add: If you ever meet folks that are interested animal welfare and are partial to more technocratic and practical solutions, please continue to pass them our way, or connect them directly to me. 49: Assurance Contract Website www.Spartacus.app is an ACX grantee that created a platform to help solve coordination and collective action problems. It enables the creation of campaigns that build critical mass through conditional commitments, which only activate when a sufficient number of people join, converting risk and uncertainty into a higher probability of successful outcomes. They are currently facilitating several projects that leverage conditional commitments, including a dominant assurance contract interface for fashion pop-ups, accelerating a community business association's membership drive, and helping an AI safety organization organize petitions and events, among others. They have pivoted from an emphasis on high-stakes coordination problems requiring anonymity (because they occur too infrequently) to a broader range of more common use cases and have successfully run small-scale campaigns, but are still working toward product-market fit. Despite resource constraints and split time commitments that have impeded faster progress, they remain dedicated to the project's growth and success. You can follow its progress on X or Substack, or email Jordan directly here. 50: Cause Prioritization @ Center For Exploratory Altruism Research Moderately good progress on a salt reduction policy advocacy project we funded; informal commitments have been made by the Ministry of Health, and we're awaiting the publication of a formal administrative order. The official description sounds maximally generic, but this is an EA charity with a broad mandate whose current thesis is that dietary guidelines in developing countries can have outsized effects in saving lives. They’re making some progress on a salt reduction campaign in a developing country they prefer not to name publicly. 51: Mark Webb Studying Land Reform The purpose of this project was to identify specific farmland that could be acquired and transferred to the farmers already working the land. This has been difficult to achieve. I have been able to connect with other charities and landless farmers, and was able to interview a number of people about what their situation looks like, as well as what it would look like to them personally if they owned, rather than rented, their farmland. All this was immensely helpful in pushing this long-term project forward, even if I was unable to identify a specific plot of land that could be used to try the experiment. I intend to continue this project. If you have any insights or connections, I am interested. 52: More AI Advocacy In Australia Good Ancestors is focused on AI safety policy in Australia. Middle powers might be a useful path to influence as the US and China focus on racing, rather than safety. The ACX grant helped us give testimony about AI safety to the Australian Senate alongside Google, Microsoft and Facebook (We were the only nonprofit to give oral evidence to the inquiry. We also engaged government on other AI-related issues, including cybersecurity, biosecurity, consumer law and automated decision making (https://www.goodancestors.org.au/ai-safety). We’re currently working to inform voters about where parties stand on AI safety for the election, ahead of engaging on a likely Australian AI Act in 2025 (https://www.australiansforaisafety.com.au/). This is the same Australian lobbying organization we founded in Year 1, after a change in name and leadership. I continue to be excited about AI safety in middle-tier countries for a few reasons. First, these countries have some power in international organizations to set international standards. Second, companies will usually comply with any not-excessively-burdensome regulation set by any country with a significant market. Third, AI safety is underfunded by the standard of government programs, so Australia setting up a national AI Safety Institute would significantly expand the field. It’s kind of crazy that ACX Grants tier levels of money can have significant effects at this scale, but GA continues to do a great job and we continue to be proud to support them. 53: Campus For African School Of Economics At Zanzibar Charter City The ACX grant helped launch the first research center at the African School of Economics-Zanzibar, which is a main anchor of the Fumba Town charter city project in Zanzibar. This research center is called the Africa Urban Lab (AUL), focused on rapid urbanization across Africa. The AUL launched its first Diploma program in Urban Development with 38 students in our first cohort (now graduated!), including mayors, and deputy mayor, a director of a national Ministry of urban development, and many others. We published our research framing papers for the AUL's research agenda. We raised funding to launch an Urban Expansion Program that's now selecting 15 African cities to support in implementing urban expansion planning on the urban periphery. We held two Public Talks by renowned cities scholars and practitioners. We received additional funding from Emergent Ventures and from the Templeton Foundation. And we've partnered with 8 universities across the region, and with one of these universities (Ardhi) we'll be working with them to update their urban planning and urban economics curriculum (amplifying AUL's impact beyond our own organization). A longer update from end of 2024 is here: https://www.aul.city/blog/reflecting-on-africa-urban-lab-s-inaugural-year-2024-highlights) 54: Online Training Program For Health Workers In Developing Countries To date, over 11,000 health workers in Nigeria have completed our course on basic, life-saving newborn care. ACX funding was catalytic for helping us secure government approvals and complete an evaluation of the impact of our training on health workers' clinical practices. The evaluation shows that birth attendants provide better birth care after taking the course. We fed the evaluation results into an updated model, which suggests the program is 24 times more cost-effective than direct cash transfers (a widely recognized benchmark for cost-effectiveness). The program is likely to become even more cost-effective as we scale up. https://healthlearn.org/blog/updated-impact-model 55: Smartphone Pupillometry To Diagnose Neurological Conditions We have continued to expand our work in the smartphone pupillometry space and the development of our application, PupilScreen (https://www.apertur.ai/). We have expanded our pilot/research program to include new sites across the United States (Missouri, New Jersey, Kentucky, USAC racing, PitFit driver performance training in Indiana) and the world (Nepal, Taiwan, South Africa). We continue to publish at the leading edge of the pupillometry literature as well looking at concussion (https://neuro.jmir.org/2024/1/e58398 and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39682632/), cerebral vasospasm (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39128501/), and stroke (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39674431/ and https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39561861/). Currently, we are raising a $3 million seed round via a SAFE to fund the expansion of our work into the hands of healthcare workers and the general public. We will first focus on traumatic brain injury for clinical use and develop a neuro-monitoring wellness application utilizing our technology for the general public. They add: “We would welcome connections to anyone that you think might be interested in supporting our work further by investing in our $3M seed round of funding.” 56: Mike Saint-Antoine’s Biology Tutorial Videos Since getting the grant, I've continued to make Youtube tutorials as planned. One series that I'm especially proud of is about how to make a neural network in the Julia programming language completely from scratch, with no imports, up to the point of being able to solve MNIST (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWVKUEZ25V97tNULapu07DhWv6_W4NfpE). Also, a college student in Pakistan came across my videos and invited me to give a virtual Zoom-lecture to her department, so I ended up teaching a 6-hour "Python-for-Biologists" workshop to more than a hundred college students in Pakistan over Zoom. So that was pretty awesome. Also, lately I've been teaching some in-person classes too, mostly at Fractal University in NYC, and I also recently organized a day-long, in-person Beginner Python class for people in my local area (Philly suburbs) who wanted to learn some basic programming. I'm having a lot of fun with this project, and am grateful to Scott and the grant funders for their generosity! 57: Conceptual Boundaries Workshop On AI Safety The workshop was completed successfully; you can read a writeup here. 58: Apart Research To Incubate AI Safety Scientists No update received, but they have a public website, and you can see their impact metrics here. They seem to be in urgent need of more funding. 59: Primer On How To Achieve Political Change No update received and I can’t find anything about this. 60: Research IVF Clinic Success Rates We've built a predictive model that estimates the odds of having a child at different IVF clinics across the country while controlling for factors like patient age and infertility differences that can falsely make some clinics look better than others. We found that an average patient can increase their odds of having a kid by 43% just by going to a top 10% clinic. Patients unlucky enough to go to a bottom 10% clinic will reduce their odds of having a kid by 40%. Next month, we're adding several more clinics, 2023 data, additional procedural controls, and donor/gestational carrier models, which should push our accuracy beyond state-of-the-art models in this space and better isolate clinic impact on patient outcomes. We've launched ivf.clinic, a website where patients can access personalized IVF reports and browse our clinic rankings (though we're still squashing some bugs). Currently, we're expanding our research to include comprehensive insurance coverage and pricing data across clinics nationwide. If anyone has insights on automating the collection of IVF clinic pricing information, I'd love to hear from you at scelarek@gmail.com. 61: Replicate Study On Brain Wave Synchronization For Speeding Learning We have acquired and configured the OpenBCI UltraCortex Mark IV 8-channel EEG headset and a clinical-grade Biosemi 32-channel EEG system. We’ve implemented the required components for the experimental pipeline (computing alpha from EEG, flashing bright white light, presenting stimulus images). We are currently putting them together into a single system that we’ll use to collect the data from several participants. We are aiming to gather data on several participants in late June / early July and complete the pilot of the replication in July 2025. If you’d like to be a participant in the study, [they might announce a link once they have it]. 62: Advocate Repeal Of Interstate Runaway Compact No update received and I can’t find anything about this. 63: Animal Welfare (Especially Fish) In Turkiye Future For Fish asks companies to sign up to FFF's fish welfare commitment, which requires producers to certify their facilities and enforce specific standards for stocking density and harvest. Luckyfish, İlknak, Divan (35 restaurants, 17 hotels) and NG Hotels (5 hotels) have signed and published FFF's fish welfare commitment with İlknak publishing the commitment on their website. Kılıç published its first sustainability report detailing fish welfare policies, including enforcing a maximum stocking density of 10 kg/m³ and confirmation of electrical stunning practices. Longer version with some caveats: https://manifund.org/projects/improving-fish-w From the longer document, these commitments involve things like reducing overcrowding, or stunning fish before killing them. Over 30 million fish were affected just from their single largest commitment, and they say 100 fish are helped per dollar spent. 64: More Georgism Advocacy Lars and Will used the 2021 grant to co-found ValueBase. Will remained with the company, and Lars left to do advocacy work at the Center For Land Economics. Here’s their summary of how things are going: [Our] organization transitioned leadership with Greg Miller, a former Program Analyst at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Lars Doucet, author of Land is A Big Deal and Co-Founder of Valuebase, working full time and Joe Caissie stepping aside. This transition happened naturally as the next career transition for each respective person. Since then, progress has been made on pushing forward legislation. Maryland had two bills introduced to give Baltimore and counties the ability to enact split-rate taxes. One of the bills passed the state senate and would allow Baltimore to enact land value taxes within one mile of rail corridors–this contains 50% of Baltimore’s land value. However, the legislative session ended. We expect the bill to revive next session. The Center for Land Economics has been actively working to help efforts to get this bill passed the line. At the same time, we have uncovered systematic undervaluing of vacant land in assessments. We are writing a report on the assessment issues in Maryland with actionable steps to resolve them.

Minnesota and Virginia also have legislation to enable cities to implement land value taxes. We are monitoring these efforts. There are a few other cities we are operating in. We have helped another organization prepare for a meeting in Tennessee by doing impact analysis of land value taxes in the city. We have presented to city officials in the City of South Bend who have expressed support for land value taxes. Finally, we are in conversation with a State Senator in Colorado who is a champion of land value taxes. Meanwhile, we have soft launched and developed the OpenAVMKit, which uses a unified schema to do assessment accuracy reports and automated valuation methods for any property tax data given. Valuation of land is the key binding constraint to successful implementation of land value taxes. We plan to be the leaders in this space with strong benchmarking capabilities and a repo that can enable the open-source community to make the best automated valuation methods. Along with these efforts, we have expanded the movement. We have posted to the Progress and Poverty Substack growing the subscriber base to around 5,000 subscribers. We have spoken to over 25 local advocates interested in working on land value taxes in their local communities. Yet, there is a long way to go. We need to start earning income through technical assistance contracts as our grant funding expires. We need to continue pushing for a state to implement, and we need to be prepared to tell the success story for when they do. 65: EN’s Work On Bacteriophage Therapy Our project is aimed at pioneering phage therapy in Nigeria, where limited resources/infrastructure have historically held back research in this field. Starting from the ground up, we are establishing the foundational systems needed to support a robust phage research ecosystem. So far, we’ve isolated 34 bacteriophages targeting Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an essential step toward building a comprehensive phage bank. This began with collecting a wide range of clinical Pseudomonas isolates, which we are now characterizing alongside the phages through genome sequencing and phenotypic assays including studies on phage stability across pH, temperature, and salinity ranges. Our long-term goal is to develop a phage-based hydrogel for treating diabetic wounds. On the regulatory front, we have secured approval from the Attorney General to register our nonprofit organization, the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics. Additionally, we’re expanding into vaccine development; following a research stay in Prof. Roderick's lab at the University of Waterloo, we have initiated the design of a phage-based universal Salmonella vaccine aimed at covering all major serotypes—an urgent need underscored by Africa’s reliance on external vaccine sources during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have signed an MTA agreement with Roderick to use his phage-based vaccine platform patents to enable us to design vaccines against any common disease affecting us. This is only the beginning, but we are proud to be laying the scientific and institutional groundwork for homegrown phage innovation in Africa. Emergent Ventures funded EN before we did and deserves a lot of credit here also. 66: Create An Artificial Kidney For an implantable artificial kidney, the first essential component is a hemofilter designed to emulate the glomerulus. Critical requirements for this hemofilter include high permeability (to maximize flow for a given area), selectivity (specifically, the retention of albumin), and robust blood compatibility (ensuring sustained function over time). Our initial strategy focused on using negative surface charge to reduce fouling. I began by testing polyelectrolyte (PE) coatings on 24nm pore membranes featuring a negative terminal charge, similar to the glomerular barrier. These initial static tests, assessing platelet adsorption in whole blood, yielded positive outcomes for some polyelectrolytes, indicating potentially desirable blood compatibility. However, static test setups are not truly representative of dynamic in-vitro conditions and don't provide data on key parameters like permeability, fouling progression, or changes in membrane selectivity. To address these limitations, I designed and built a blood filtration setup. This system sustains human whole blood in circulation for 20 minutes, allowing us to analyze all the aforementioned parameters, as well as platelet activation markers. This has resulted in a fairly high-throughput system for evaluating any surface coating. I'm pleased to report this setup has been accepted for presentation at this year's European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAIO) conference. I am also currently working on a full manuscript, as I believe this system offers a viable way to partially replace animal experiments in our early-stage research, requiring only 1.2ml of human blood per run. Working with a PhD student (hired to support both this research and work on membrane substrates), we have continued testing these PE coatings, alongside PEG coatings, on our membranes. Here, we're finding that optimization of the coating layer is crucial. With the current PE coatings, we observe a permeability drop of about an order of magnitude compared to the base membrane, making them unsuitable for an implantable device in their present form. This is likely due to the specific nature of the initial PE layer, which we can modify. We also suspect there may be ingress of PE into the pores, meaning we're not achieving just a surface coating (our goal), but rather a very thick coating, which would explain the flux loss. Optimizing the coating process to control penetration depth is now a primary focus of my ongoing work. I am currently aiming for a flux of 20ul/min (as this is cap introduced by the protein gel layer anyway) but for it to be at this 'steady state' permeability without drop in permeability. I am also imaging the membranes after contact with SEM to see if there is indeed any platelet adsorption etc. Tugrul has the dubious honor of maybe being "the only person to climb a 4000m peak with severe kidney failure". To raise money and awareness for his artificial kidney project, he is running Climb Against Time, where he will climb 41 mountains over 4000m (13000 ft) this summer. He is looking for donors and climbing partners. 67: Add Tardigrade Genes To Human Cells The goal of this one was to make hybrid cells that are more resilient for research and certain medical applications. They report: The grant was to synthesize vectors for the expression of humanized tardigrade proteins that can be targeted to different areas of the cell. All the vectors were designed, generated, and transposed into human cells. The proteins all localize successfully (e.g. they match the designed target), with one exception (we are still working on validating it). We've done some stress testing with the trangenic cells, but haven't reached firm conclusions yet. We've further generated some multigene designs but have not yet transposed them into cells, but should shortly. We're hoping to submit a manuscript on the first round later this year. 68: Teach Forecasting To EU Policy-Makers The original project didn't work out, but our grantee (who still prefers to remain anonymous) is now working with an EU think tank pursuing the same agenda, and has been teaching forecasting workshops to policy-makers for the past two months. 69: Platform For Single-Cell Imaging They ended up unable to accept this grant and returned the money. 70: Open Source Polygenic Predictor For EA/IQ They have an update here. They think they have a predictor that can explain 12% of variance in intelligence, and they’re working on validating it and creating an easy-to-use website. 71: Improve Flu Vaccines The grant mainly funded agent based modelling to demonstrate the benefit of pre-existing immunity to pandemic influenza if and when a future pandemic occurs (academic publication will result). The original proposal was to attempt to influence the WHO influenza strain selection process. After attending WHO meetings and a global influenza conference, I believe this is not feasible. Stakeholder feedback was the potential short term negative effect on vaccine hesitancy is believed to outweigh the less tangible future benefit. Given the conservative nature of decision makers, pandemic vaccines are likely to remain research only. There are still green shoots of research into pandemic preparedness/prevention that I am continuing to work on. I'm working under the "Australians for Pandemic Prevention" brand of Good Ancestors, another group that ACX funded in 2024. 72: Scenario Analysis For Developing World Agricultural Programs In addition to the research and analysis funded by the grant, I’ve learned to code with LLMs and have built an MVP of the project. The app is being considered for further development by staff at a large international organization. 73: Further C’s Political Career C’s political career is going well, but he continues to think it wouldn’t be strategic to give more information publicly at this time. Lessons Learned I'm most impressed with our lobbying/advocacy organizations. In particular, Good Ancestors has gotten the Australian government to sign onto an international AI safety declaration, partner with various x-risk-related organizations, and (possibly) extend charity tax deductions to some EA causes that previously didn't have it - I think this on its own goes a substantial way to paying back the cost of all ACX Grants. Coalition to Modify NOTA has a kidney donation bill in front of Congress that the (very illiquid) prediction markets give a 45% chance of passing; if it works, it could save thousands of lives. The Georgists are partly responsible for bills making land value taxes slightly easier to implement in a handful of states. Good Science Project seems to have significantly improved science. Are lobbying organizations a better bet than other types of nonprofit (within the constraints of ACX Grants)? I'm not sure. It could just be that lobbyists are (naturally) better at playing themselves up and sounding successful than (for example) scientists, or that politicians are good at people-pleasing and make people feel heard and encouraged in a way that might not change overall policy later. Also, I recently talked to some grantmakers who funded a lobbying organization that superficially seems excellent, but they expressed concern it was net negative (!) by taking away oxygen and spotlight from potentially more effective orgs. So I am encouraged but wary. Animal welfare organizations were another standout success. Again, I don't know how to think about this - while I think our grantees were exceptional, there's also an issue where the scale of animal welfare challenges is so great, and work on them so neglected, that lots of organizations can save a million chickens here, or a million fish there, without particularly making a splash. On the one hand, this is exactly what effective altruism should be doing - exploring grants that are very high in linear utility even if they don't feel satisfying. On the other, they're unsatisfying - and also hard to assess retroactively. How many chickens should a good animal welfare grant save? Any realistic number will both be overwhelmingly large in absolute terms and far too small in relative terms. I'm most ambivalent about our science grants. Many of them say they are successful and can point to published papers which explain the science they did. But it's hard to judge whether anything useful has changed based on the science getting done. I know it's important to fund basic research and not just last-mile technology startups, but it's hard for a mini-grants program like this one to evaluate these kinds of abstract interventions. One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits). For example, Innovate Animal Ag was in many ways overdetermined as a grantee - former Yale grad and Google engineer founder, profiled in NYT, already funded by Open Philanthropy - and they in fact did amazing work. On the other hand, there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering (although this also describes Manifold, one of our standout successes). One thing I still don't understand is that Innovate Animal Ag seemed to genuinely need more funding despite being legibly great and high status - does this screen off a theoretical objection that they don't provide ACX Grants with as much counterfactual impact? Am I really just mad that it would be boring to give too many grants to obviously-good things that even moron could spot as promising? Someone (I think it might be Paul Graham) once said that they were always surprised how quickly destined-to-be-successful startup founders responded to emails - sometimes within a single-digit number of minutes regardless of time of day. I used to think of this as mysterious - some sort of psychological trait? Working with these grants has made me think of it as just a straightforward fact of life: some people operate an order of magnitude faster than others. The Manifold team created something like five different novel institutions in the amount of time it's taken some other grantees to figure out a business plan; I particularly remember one time when I needed something, sent out a request to talk about it with two or three different teams, and the Manifold team had fully created the thing and were pestering me to launch a trial version before some of the other people had even gotten back to me. I take no pleasure in reporting this - I sometimes take a week or two to answer emails, and all of the predictions about my personality that this implies would be correct - but it's increasingly something that I look for and respect. A lot of the most successful grants succeeded quickly, or at least were quick to get on a promising track. Since everything takes ten times longer than people expect, only someone who moves ten times faster than people expect can get things done in a reasonable amount of time. In almost every case where I thought to myself “this is a cool idea, but I don’t know how it’s going to really pay off, as opposed to reaching a cool intermediate accomplishment and then stagnating”, this was a correct criticism, and I should have taken it more seriously. But I can’t rule out that these were good in vague and hard-to-measure ways that I should take more seriously. This one is really self-serving, but in general when people were good communicators (or even bloggers) and wowed me with the writing-composition of their application, they turned out to be a good bet. And when people were hard to understand and annoying to communicate with, even if their ideas seemed good, they were less likely to pan out. Overall Thoughts The total cost of ACX Grants, both rounds, was about $3 million. Do these outcomes represent a successful use of that amount of money? Very naively, startups originating from ACX Grants have about $50 million in value1. If ACX Grants is equivalent to a pre-seed funder, and pre-seed funders usually get ~5%, then if we were VCs we would have a portfolio worth $2.5 million. About 1/5 of ACX Grants were attempting to be market-valued startups, so if we assume the charitable portion did about as well as the startup portion, then the charity portion is “worth” $10 million. There’s some reason to expect this is too high, since much of the startup value came from one successful outlier. But there’s another reason to expect this is too low, since we were aiming at charity rather than market cap, and any actual market cap that our grantees got was an unexpected side effect. I’m treating this as a sanity check rather than as a real number. It’s harder to produce Inside View estimates, because so many of the projects either produce vague deliverables (eg a white paper that might guide future action) or intermediate results only (eg getting a government to pass AI safety regulations is good, but can’t be considered an end result unless those regulations prevent the AI apocalypse). Because we tend towards incubating charities and funding research (rather than last-mile causes like buying bednets), achieved measurable deliverables are thin on the ground. But here are things that ACX grantees have already accomplished: Improved the living/slaughter conditions of 30 million fish.

Inline links: Progress and Poverty Substack, Climb Against Time, here, 1

Open Thread 402

October 06, 2025 · Original source

3: Speaking of grants: Open Philanthropy’s program to reduce catastrophic risks from biology asks me to advertise that they are both hiring grantmakers, and looking for potential grantees with ambitious project ideas. They’re especially interested in work on physical transmission suppression, metagenomic sequencing, PPE, medical countermeasures, biosecurity capacity-building, and projects at the intersection of AI and catastrophic biological risk. No prior bio experience needed. For would-be grantmakers, see their job description, applications due Oct 19. For would-be grantees, see their expression of interest form.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy, job description, expression of interest form

Open Thread 408

November 17, 2025 · Original source

2: Big EA funder Open Philanthropy is looking for more AI safety grantmakers to help direct $100 million to the best alignment research. Ideal candidates will have familiarity with the field, high technical literacy, and good judgment. Compensation is $125K - $285K++ depending on role/level/experience, remote work possible but SF Bay location preferred, US visa sponsorship possible, application deadline is November 24th. See here for more.

Inline links: See here for more

Open Thread 409

November 24, 2025 · Original source

3: Big EA funder Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) wants to distribute ~$10 million to projects related to “AI for forecasting” or “AI for sound reasoning”. If you have an idea in this area and want a grant, see here for more information, deadline January 30 although submissions before December 1 are encouraged.

Inline links: see here for more information

Links For December 2025

December 10, 2025 · Original source

48: Open Philanthropy has changed its name to Coefficient Giving. Maimonides says that it is especially praiseworthy to donate to charity anonymously; surely it also qualifies if you spend $5 billion building up a great reputation, then change your name so that nobody knows who you are anymore. They say their new name marks a new chapter where they transition from being associated with one billionaire couple (Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna) to a broader effort to connect donors and opportunities, but rumor is they’re also tired of being confused with the OpenAI nonprofit.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy has changed its name to Coefficient Giving

Open Thread 428

April 06, 2026 · Original source

4: A message from Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy):

Open Philanthropy Project12 mentions across 12 issues

Open Philanthropy Project is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 12 times across 12 issues between January 29, 2021 and November 27, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "EA flagship group Open Philanthropy Project spending almost $50 million"; "[update: also Open Philanthropy Project]"; "CEO of the Open Philanthropy Project". It most often appears alongside ACX, effective altruism, Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Article page: Open Philanthropy Project
Mention count: 12
Issue count: 12
First seen: January 29, 2021
Last seen: November 27, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Contra Weyl On Technocracy January 29, 2021
Open Thread 174 May 30, 2021
Links For July July 23, 2021
So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program February 09, 2022
Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work February 23, 2022
Open Thread 214 March 07, 2022
Open Thread 233 July 18, 2022
Open Thread 234 July 25, 2022
Effective Altruism As A Tower Of Assumptions August 24, 2022
Open Thread 299 October 23, 2023
24 March 12, 2024
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know November 27, 2024

ACX 4 shared issues
effective altruism 4 shared issues
Eliezer Yudkowsky 3 shared issues
Bible 2 shared issues
California 2 shared issues

Source context

Contra Weyl On Technocracy

January 29, 2021 · Original source

Weyl wrote this essay a few months before COVID, so his pooh-poohing of the idea that there might be a biological catastrophe is an unfortunate anachronism. But I think it's important to note that we got this right (and he got it wrong) precisely because we "privilege rationalist approaches over all other forms of knowledge-making". People like Toby Ord tried to calculate the risk of every kind of disaster and how bad it would be - and at the same time Weyl was making fun of us for caring about biological catastrophes, Ord was writing about how the numbers suggested zoonotic diseases from bats could cause catastrophic pandemics. This kind of work ultimately led to EA flagship group Open Philanthropy Project spending almost $50 million on its Biosecurity And Pandemic Preparedness Program between 2014 and 2019; if other people had taken a few minutes to read our arguments instead of chiding us for how naive it is to prioritize things based on rational methods, maybe the world would have been more prepared.

Inline links: like Toby Ord, Biosecurity And Pandemic Preparedness Program

Open Thread 174

May 30, 2021 · Original source

2: The Centre for Effective Altruism has lots of career openings right now. If you’re interested in effective altruism, take a look at their page, or their AMA about working there. Warning 1 - sometimes these positions can be really competitive, but they appreciate extra applicants anyway. Warning 2 - I dropped the ball on this and the deadline for some of these is Tuesday, so you might want to act fast. [update: also Open Philanthropy Project]

Inline links: lots of career openings, AMA about working there, Open Philanthropy Project

Links For July

July 23, 2021 · Original source

19: Holden Karnofsky, co-founder of GiveWell and CEO of the Open Philanthropy Project, now has a blog, Cold Takes, on “futurism, macrohistory, applied epistemology and ethics, [and] sometimes sports”. Getting to hear from Holden is always a privilege, usually one reserved for people at effective altruism organizations or conferences, and it’s exciting to see he’ll be sharing his thoughts more widely.

Inline links: Cold Takes

So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program

February 09, 2022 · Original source

Right now AI alignment has lots of cash. If there’s a really good AI alignment charity, Open Philanthropy Project and Founders Fund and Elon Musk and Jaan Tallinn will all fight each other to throw money at it. So if a seemingly really good AI alignment charity asked me for money, I would wonder - why haven’t they gotten money from a big experienced foundation?

What’s your story for why you need a microgrants program? Why not just donate to GiveWell or OpenPhil or some other charity or foundation you respect?

(technically OpenPhil doesn’t accept individual donations, but if you break into their office and leave $1.5 million on a desk, what are they going to do?)

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

There's a small cottage industry of summarizing the report already, eg OpenPhil CEO Holden Karnofsky's article and Alignment Newsletter editor Rohin Shah's comment. I've drawn from both for my much-inferior attempt.

Inline links: article, comment

Ajeya Cotra is a senior research analyst at OpenPhil. She's assisted by her fiancee Paul Christiano (compsci PhD, OpenAI veteran, runs an AI alignment nonprofit) and to a lesser degree by other leading lights. Although not everyone involved has formal ML training, if you care a lot about whether efforts are “establishment” or “contrarian”, this one is probably more establishment.

Open Thread 214

March 07, 2022 · Original source

2: Related: the Open Philanthropy Project’s long-termist effective altruist movement-building team is hiring. They work to direct donations, spread the word about effective altruism, and make the movement more capable. Pay is low six-figures, living in SF is recommended but not absolutely required. See here for more info.

Inline links: See here

Open Thread 233

July 18, 2022 · Original source

1: Instead of asking me “Why isn’t effective altruism spending its money on X?” all the time, consider entering Open Philanthropy Project’s Cause Exploration contest, where they will give you up to $25,000 for thinking of Xs they should be spending their money on.

Inline links: Cause Exploration

Open Thread 234

July 25, 2022 · Original source

4: More EA jobs: Open Philanthropy Project wants a Grants Associate to help process and organize grants relating to long-termism (eg AI, xrisk, forecasting, etc). See more EA jobs related resources here.

Inline links: wants a Grants Associate, here

Effective Altruism As A Tower Of Assumptions

August 24, 2022 · Original source

There’s a lot of commentary. Effective altruism is now a semi-organized movement, with leaders like Will MacAskill and Toby Ord and institutions like the Open Philanthropy Project. It’s produced a vast literature on effective charities, ranging from how to best prevent malaria to how to promote animal welfare to speculative scenarios about AI apocalypse. These aren’t above criticism, and lots of people have criticized them. But if you criticize them successfully, and feel like they’re discredited, then you’re back at the basic tenets of the movement again.

Think that 10% is the wrong number, and you should be helping people closer to home? Fine, then go even lower on the tower, and donate . . . some amount of your time, money, something, to poor people in your home country, in some kind of systematic considered way beyond “I saw an ad for March of Dimes at the supermarket so I guess I’ll give them my spare change”. If you’re not doing this, your beef with effective altruism isn’t “the culture around Open Philanthropy Project devalues such and such a form of change”, your beef is whatever’s preventing you from doing that. You may additionally have an interesting intellectual point about the culture around Open Phil, much as you might have an interesting intellectual point about which Bible translations you’d prefer if you were Christian. But don’t mistake it for a real crux.

Open Thread 299

October 23, 2023 · Original source

1: Open Philanthropy Project (multi-billion-dollar EA-ish grantmaker) asks me to mention that they're looking to hire more people for "grantmaking, research, and operations" roles, especially in AI policy, technical AI alignment, and biosecurity/pandemic preparedness. Location varies between SF, DC, and remote, pay is mostly between $100K and $150K, and jobs require some combination of good reasoning skills, research skills, organizedness, and domain knowledge (not all jobs require all four of those things). I can't say enough good things about current Open Phil employees - you would be working with some of the brightest and most interesting people in the world. Q&A with some Open Phil employees about the new hiring round here; if you’re interested, apply before November 9.

Inline links: they're looking to hire more people for "grantmaking, research, and operations" roles, Q&A with some Open Phil employees about the new hiring round here, apply

March 12, 2024 · Original source

Did they pick defective concerned experts? Tentatively no. The IRB says it’s “important” “for” “privacy” “reasons” not to reveal who the experts were, but the paper says they were selected by Open Philanthropy Project, a big AI safety funder who I trust a lot and who I would expect to choose good people (Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is less sanguine about OpenPhil than I am, does sort of blame this one).

Inline links: sort of blame this one

Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

November 27, 2024 · Original source

Roodman 2017. Written by a researcher at the effective altruist nonprofit Open Philanthropy Project, which was trying to determine whether to continue to advocate decarceration. They (Roodman’s bosses) had already started some advocacy, so Roodman admits he is at risk of a soft-on crime bias. This was extraordinarily well-written, and is one of the most careful meta-analyses I have seen on any topic - Roodman tried to get data from every study and replicate it himself and test all of the assumptions - but I am still interpreting it as the anti-incarceration faction presenting their side of the case.

Inline links: Roodman 2017, whether to continue to advocate

OECD9 mentions across 9 issues

OECD is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 9 times across 9 issues between April 14, 2021 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "If a drug has been approved in an OECD country"; "A survey and analysis performed by the OECD in 2005 found"; "family spending as measured by the OECD has actually *declined* on a per-child basis". It most often appears alongside UK, Germany, US.

Article page: OECD
Mention count: 9
Issue count: 9
First seen: April 14, 2021
Last seen: December 31, 2025

Issue trail

Prospectus On Próspera April 14, 2021
Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car? June 04, 2021
Highlights From The Comments On Orban November 11, 2021
Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal? December 09, 2021
Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems January 27, 2022
ACX Grants ++: The First Half February 03, 2022
Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine May 27, 2022
Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline July 20, 2023
Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession December 31, 2025

UK 7 shared issues
Germany 6 shared issues
US 6 shared issues
Japan 5 shared issues
Spain 5 shared issues

Source context

Prospectus On Próspera

April 14, 2021 · Original source

Likewise, Próspera has 100% drug approval reciprocity. If a drug has been approved in an OECD country (eg by the FDA), it’s approved in Próspera. Again, close to my heart. Amisulpride is a great antipsychotic, probably better then most of the ones we use here. It’s approved in Europe, the UK, Australia, Israel, etc, where many studies have shown it’s safe and effective. Because none of those studies were done in the US, the FDA refuses to approve it here, and has demanded several hundred million dollars worth of more studies, which the company involved has chosen not to do (an injectable version was recently approved for nausea, but can’t be easily used for psychosis). Meanwhile, bupropion (“Wellbutrin”), the fourth-most prescribed antidepressant in the US, isn’t approved for depression in Britain; the subset of patients who respond to this medication and nothing else are out of luck. Próspera will be one of the only places in the world where patients will have access to amisulpride, bupropion, and all the other medications that one country or another is restricting because “it wasn’t invented here”.

Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?

June 04, 2021 · Original source

Hall blames public funding for science. Not just for nanotech, but for actually hurting progress in general. (I’ve never heard anyone before say government-funded science was bad for science!) “[The] great innovations that made the major quality-of-life improvements came largely before 1960: refrigerators, freezers, vacuum cleaners, gas and electric stoves, and washing machines; indoor plumbing, detergent, and deodorants; electric lights; cars, trucks, and buses; tractors and combines; fertilizer; air travel, containerized freight, the vacuum tube and the transistor; the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, movies, radio, and television—and they were all developed privately.” “A survey and analysis performed by the OECD in 2005 found, to their surprise, that while private R&D had a positive 0.26 correlation with economic growth, government funded R&D had a negative 0.37 correlation!” “Centralized funding of an intellectual elite makes it easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of a field, and they by their nature are resistant to new, outside, non-Ptolemaic ideas.” This is what happened to nanotech; there was a huge amount of buzz, culminating in $500 million dollars of funding under Clinton in 1990. This huge prize kicked off an academic civil war, and the fledgling field of nanotech lost hard to the more established field of material science. Material science rebranded as “nanotech”, trashed the reputation of actual nanotech (to make sure they won the competition for the grant money), and took all the funding for themselves. Nanotech never recovered.

Highlights From The Comments On Orban

November 11, 2021 · Original source

But your regular reminder that IT'S NOT TRUE. Under Orban's government, family spending as measured by the OECD has actually *declined* on a per-child basis! This whole story about redesigning the whole culture is wrong! Indeed, a core part of my critique of Orbanism is precisely that I don't think it's radical enough. It does a lot of flashy stuff.... funded by cutting other programs, and with little eligibility quirks that end up limiting who benefits from it.

Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal?

December 09, 2021 · Original source

What about the US? Here's a figure from Tideman & co's big paper, which uses OECD numbers to chart the share of household wealth in the USA due to "non-produced assets" (conventional land, natural resources, and everything else that isn't a kind of capital that humans create, which Georgists call "Land").

Inline links: Tideman & co's big paper

Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems

January 27, 2022 · Original source

Several people brought up this idea of US drug prices subsidizing the world. There’s some evidence in support: the US contributes 58% of the OECD’s total pharmaceutical spending despite only having 24% of the OECD’s total population and 38% of its total GDP. This study has some slightly different data and doesn’t think that US drug companies innovate much more than foreign drug companies, but since most companies sells their drugs in most countries regardless of where they’re based, I don’t know if that proves anything.

Inline links: contributes 58%, 24%, 38%, This study

Some very quick math: the US spends 2.5x more on medications than OECD average, but its medication use is exactly average for its population. So total OECD drug spending is 2.5*0.24 + 1*0.76 = 1.36x what it would be if the US spent an exactly average amount. So if the US spent an average amount, the total pool of pharmaceutical funding would go down to 74% of current totals - or other countries would have to increase their spending by 36% to even things out. I don’t know if this is the right way to look at things.

Inline links: 2.5x more

Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine

February 03, 2022 · Original source

#38: Promote Citizens’ Assemblies And Lotteries The newDemocracy Foundation is an organisation in Australia that develops, demonstrates, and promotes innovations in democracy. Its focus is on deliberative democracy and random selection. We have worked with the UN and the OECD to develop international standards of best practice and founded the Democracy R&D network. We’re designed and operated ground-breaking projects in Melbourne, Geelong, and Canberra, and have collaborated with international partners in Brazil, Spain, North Macedonia, and Malawi. We require funding to take advantage of an opportunity in Australian politics. Citizens’ assemblies and democratic lottery are gaining traction but the ecosystem for their implementation still requires support and training that is best provided by an independent organisation like ours. Additional funding could allow us to expand our project capacity, conduct needed research or improve our advocacy and reach to politicians. I’m happy to answer any questions or provide a brief organisation overview, you can reach me at kyle.redman@newdemocracy.com.au You can view our website here: www.newdemocracy.com.au.

May 27, 2022 · Original source

The idea that “less-developed countries” should all be alike seems unlikely, but it fits with the current trend in economics where essentially any question involving non-OECD countries is lumped together into “development.”

Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline

July 20, 2023 · Original source

Source: World Bank. Britain is the thick blue line. …and it also shows UK growth being about average. So what’s going on? I asked about this in an Open Thread. Here were some of your responses. Eric Rall writes: There are two different ways of calculating real GDP per capita in an international context, both of which involve converting local currency to dollars and then inflation-adjusting the dollars based on the US's GDP deflator. One uses market exchange rates, while the other uses "Purchasing Power Parity", attempting to optimize the GDP figure as a proxy for standard-of-living by using local prices for equivalent goods and services as the currency conversion factor. For Brexit-related and COVID-related reasons, the relationship between PPP and market exchange rates for Britain have been highly unstable in the period in question: exchange rates have been very volatile (ranging from US$1.08 to US$1.40 per £1.00), and tariffs and COVID disruption have both radically changed the availability and prices of imported goods. Looking at either the PPP or market exchange rate numbers, everyone took a big hit in 2020, while Britain appears to have taken a deeper hit than France and the overall OECD average (the two control groups I picked off the top of my head). The big difference is that in market exchange rate terms, the recovery looks proportionate to the decline (i.e. Britain fell more, but also recovered proportionately faster so as to bounce back to approximately 2019 levels in 2022 the same as France and OECD): (source) But in PPP terms, the UK has recovered at the same rate as France and OECD and thus appears to have permanently (so far) lost ground in standard of living relative to other countries. UK was also growing more slowly in PPP terms between 2015 and 2019 than France, but about the same as the OECD average: (source) Putting some numbers on the second graph: Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP

Inline links: World Bank, asked about this in an Open Thread, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ctPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F168f87c7-e9e0-45f8-901c-dd418f541b57_800x617.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AqdU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faae66a91-fc33-43e0-90b9-2ec1a41d5dc8_790x627.png, source

(source) But in PPP terms, the UK has recovered at the same rate as France and OECD and thus appears to have permanently (so far) lost ground in standard of living relative to other countries. UK was also growing more slowly in PPP terms between 2015 and 2019 than France, but about the same as the OECD average: (source) Putting some numbers on the second graph: Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP

Inline links: source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AqdU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faae66a91-fc33-43e0-90b9-2ec1a41d5dc8_790x627.png, source

Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP

Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession

December 31, 2025 · Original source

The OECD also produces consumer confidence surveys and the US is pretty middle of the pack compared to other advanced countries for the last three years - US, Australia, western europe, UK, japan, are all in the -1 to -1.5 z score range historically. China is the worst, around -2 z scores. Interestingly, Mexico is one of the few places with high consumer confidence right now.

OKCupid6 mentions across 6 issues

OKCupid is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between February 14, 2023 and December 05, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "was informed by friends/matchmakers/our OKCupid match percentage"; "I found my wife on OKCupid before it become Tinderized"; "I propose an OKCupid of IATs". It most often appears alongside Twitter, 23andme, Aella.

Article page: OKCupid
Mention count: 6
Issue count: 6
First seen: February 14, 2023
Last seen: December 05, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

23 February 14, 2023
Highlights From The Comments On Dating Preferences August 24, 2023
Quests And Requests November 03, 2023
Followup: Quests And Requests November 10, 2023
Links For November 2023 December 01, 2023
23 December 05, 2023

Twitter 5 shared issues
23andme 2 shared issues
Aella 2 shared issues
Alyssa 2 shared issues
Art Nouveau 2 shared issues

Source context

February 14, 2023 · Original source

Presumably Aella will seriously look into the top few candidates, and try asking them out. Why is this good? Consider Aella’s perspective: she can log off for a few weeks, then check back and see a ranked list of who the Internet thinks she’s most compatible with. It’s kind of like asking your friends for dating recommendations, except with better incentives on your friends’ part to predict exactly how likely you are to get along with each candidate. The current leading candidate (in blue) is Steven Bonnell aka Destiny, a famous streamer. I don’t know if he is actually especially compatible with Aella, or if he just has a lot of fans on Manifold who like him and are rooting for him to date someone, or who think it would be funny to add his name in. It wouldn’t surprise me if this worked for Aella; she’s famous and probably dates other famous people; enough people know her and her potential partners that it’s worth crowdsourcing recommendations. What about the rest of us? I was able to find one non-famous person who made a market like this, apparently with good effect, but they seemed awkward enough about it that I’m not going to link it here or provide more details. Non-famous people realistically have easier ways to ask their friends, but I still think this provides value. Sadly, Porn talked about the “omniscient authority” - asking someone on a date is so scary that people want to pretend their normal human psychological needs had no input into the decision - “It’s … not like I … like you or anything, baka! I’m just doing this because I - a pure abstract intelligence who is not horny for you in any way - was informed by friends/matchmakers/our OKCupid match percentage/’the algorithm’/a dream, that asking you on a date was my duty, which I now dispassionately fulfilling.” A prediction market would make a great omniscient authority here. Also, consider the implications for romance stories. I’ve only thought about this for five minutes, so I definitely haven’t exhausted the space, but I imagine: Someone does some kind of complicated financial fraud to manipulate a prediction market into telling their crush to date them. Think Wolf Of Wall Street, but a rom-com.

Somehow this never happens. OKCupid managed it for a few years, and then Match.com bought it, murdered it, and gutted the corpse. Now it’s just a wasteland of Tinder clones, forever. Sure, Luna’s rectification of the financial incentives is clever, but it seems like there’s been some kind of more fundamental failure. Why can’t we have the normal low-tech version? Why are things so bad that the people I know have been reduced to manually making profiles on Google Docs and listing them on an online spreadsheet?

Inline links: and listing them on an online spreadsheet

Highlights From The Comments On Dating Preferences

August 24, 2023 · Original source

A well-written text profile that ticks all my marks? Now THAT'S where I get excited. I'm very lucky I found my wife on OKCupid before it become Tinderized, because I had zero success on Tinder. No woman ever matched me, and I had hard time forcing myself to "like" them. While I went on many interesting dates on OKC, so it's not that I'm exceptionally undateable - but Tinder-like sites don't work for me.

Quests And Requests

November 03, 2023 · Original source

I don’t have a specific use case in mind so much as a vague sense that there must be more we can do with this. I propose an OKCupid of IATs, where anyone can make an IAT with a few clicks and share it with their friends (in the same sense that anyone could make and share personality tests on OKCupid). I’m not sure what people would do with this or what they would find, but I expect it to be fascinating.

Followup: Quests And Requests

November 10, 2023 · Original source

6 (OKCupid-style dating site): Everyone seemed interested in this one. Two people say they’ve already been working on this for a while and collected teams: Shreeda Segan and Dendwrite. Shreeda is a friend of a friend and I can vouch for her; I don’t know Dendwrite but he also seems pretty committed. Read their comments to see what help they need and how to contact them if you can provide it.

Inline links: Shreeda Segan, Dendwrite

Another key feature that distinguished 2011 OKCupid from what followed is the thumbnail display of profiles, sorted by match percentage. It enabled you to "browse" instead of being pushed into making a binary decision one random profile at a time.

Links For November 2023

December 01, 2023 · Original source

21: Insights From 2,961 First Dates - OKCupid style analysis from the founder of a (now failed) Internet dating startup. For example, “People care more about a possible partner’s politics (68%) than about their religion (59%) or their ethnicity (28%).”

Inline links: Insights From 2,961 First Dates

December 05, 2023 · Original source

Manifold.love has also introduced OKCupid-style “compatibility questions”. They don’t seem to involve calculating a match percent yet AFAICT, but hopefully soon!

o35 mentions across 5 issues

o3 is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between May 02, 2025 and June 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "people beat o3’s score"; "o3 took over 5 minutes on that one shop name"; "I used o3 with your exact prompt". It most often appears alongside Nepal, New York, ACX Grants.

Article page: o3
Mention count: 5
Issue count: 5
First seen: May 02, 2025
Last seen: June 26, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius May 02, 2025
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr May 08, 2025
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID May 29, 2025
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates June 18, 2025
Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know June 26, 2025

Nepal 3 shared issues
New York 3 shared issues
ACX Grants 2 shared issues
Africa 2 shared issues
Argentina 2 shared issues

Source context

Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius

May 02, 2025 · Original source

After writing this post, I saw a different way of presenting these same results: GeoGuessr master Sam Patterson went head-to-head against o3 and lost. But only by a little. And he let other people try the same image set, and a few (lucky?) people beat o3’s score. So maybe o3 is at the top of the human range, rather than far beyond it, and ordinary people just don’t appreciate how good GeoGuessng can get.

Inline links: went head-to-head against o3, try the same image set

Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr

May 08, 2025 · Original source

I tested it on one photo in a French town square with bad lighting. The CoT was both brilliant and curiously stupid. It inferred some correct things from tiny details (subtly different makes of car, barely visible street lines) and guessed the country quickly. But there was a shop name with different letters obscured in two different locations- a human would infer the name instantly. o3 took over 5 minutes on that one shop name, going down many incorrect rabbit holes. It got the exact location in the end, but it took over 15 minutes!

I used o3 with your exact prompt on these 10 images I took each in a separate instance of o3, pasted into paint to remove metadata and it had pretty mixed results, some very good and some not:

Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID

May 29, 2025 · Original source

No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.

Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

June 18, 2025 · Original source

No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.

June 26, 2025 · Original source

No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.

Open Phil5 mentions across 5 issues

Open Phil is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between September 12, 2021 and December 24, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Effective altruist organization Open Phil is offering scholarships"; "Open Philanthropy Project ("Open Phil") is a big effective altruist foundation"; "a very large charitable organization (eg Open Phil or the Future Fund)". It most often appears alongside Paul Christiano, ACX Grants, EA.

Article page: Open Phil
Mention count: 5
Issue count: 5
First seen: September 12, 2021
Last seen: December 24, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 189 September 12, 2021
Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work February 23, 2022
Impact Markets: The Annoying Details July 15, 2022
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism November 28, 2023
Open Thread 308 December 24, 2023

Paul Christiano 3 shared issues
ACX Grants 2 shared issues
EA 2 shared issues
effective altruism 2 shared issues
Effective Altruism Forum 2 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 189

September 12, 2021 · Original source

2: Effective altruist organization Open Phil is offering scholarships to interested-in-effective-altruism international undergrads applying to top US and UK universities. See here for more information.

Inline links: here

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

Impact Markets: The Annoying Details

July 15, 2022 · Original source

Here we would kickstart the supply side of the market with a set of grant proposals as above, but the final oracular funder would be a very large charitable organization (eg Open Phil or the Future Fund), operating at a scale so far beyond the size of the market that they could commit to funding every project that was good enough to deserve it.

In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

November 28, 2023 · Original source

Open Philanthropy Project originally got one seat on the OpenAI board by supporting them when they were still a nonprofit; that later went to Helen Toner. I’m not sure how Tasha McCauley got her seat. Currently the provisional board is Bret Taylor, Adam D’Angelo, and Larry Summers. Summers says he “believe[s] in effective altruism” but doesn’t seem AI-risk-pilled. Adam D’Angelo has never explicitly identified with EA or the AI risk movement but seems to have sided with the EAs in the recent fight so I’m not sure how to count him.

See here, Open Philanthropy is first-listed funder. Leader Kevin Esvelt has spoken at EA Global conferences and on 80,000 Hours

Inline links: here, EA Global conferences, 80,000 Hours

Open Philanthropy’s Wikipedia page says it was “the first institutional funder for the YIMBY movement”. The Inside Philanthropy website says that “on the national level, Open Philanthropy is one of the few major grantmakers that has offered the YIMBY movement full-throated support.” Open Phil started giving money to YIMBY causes in 2015, and has donated about $5 million, a significant fraction of its total funding.

Inline links: Open Philanthropy’s Wikipedia page, says

Open Thread 308

December 24, 2023 · Original source

3: If you’re one of those people who gives to charity at the very end of the year because you forgot to do it earlier, you might appreciate lists of where GiveWell employees and Open Phil employees made their personal donations this year.

Inline links: GiveWell employees, Open Phil employees

OpenPhil5 mentions across 5 issues

OpenPhil is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between February 09, 2022 and June 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Why not just donate to GiveWell or OpenPhil or some other charity or foundation"; "donate to GiveWell or OpenPhil or some other charity"; "OpenPhil gives $10 million or something to some charity they learned about because of me". It most often appears alongside AGI, Ajeya Cotra, Bio Anchors.

Article page: OpenPhil
Mention count: 5
Issue count: 5
First seen: February 09, 2022
Last seen: June 20, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program February 09, 2022
Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work February 23, 2022
Impact Markets: The Annoying Details July 15, 2022
Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism July 20, 2022
Davidson On Takeoff Speeds June 20, 2023

AGI 2 shared issues
Ajeya Cotra 2 shared issues
Bio Anchors 2 shared issues
Carl Shulman 2 shared issues
EA 2 shared issues

Source context

So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program

February 09, 2022 · Original source

Right now AI alignment has lots of cash. If there’s a really good AI alignment charity, Open Philanthropy Project and Founders Fund and Elon Musk and Jaan Tallinn will all fight each other to throw money at it. So if a seemingly really good AI alignment charity asked me for money, I would wonder - why haven’t they gotten money from a big experienced foundation?

What’s your story for why you need a microgrants program? Why not just donate to GiveWell or OpenPhil or some other charity or foundation you respect?

(technically OpenPhil doesn’t accept individual donations, but if you break into their office and leave $1.5 million on a desk, what are they going to do?)

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

There's a small cottage industry of summarizing the report already, eg OpenPhil CEO Holden Karnofsky's article and Alignment Newsletter editor Rohin Shah's comment. I've drawn from both for my much-inferior attempt.

Inline links: article, comment

Ajeya Cotra is a senior research analyst at OpenPhil. She's assisted by her fiancee Paul Christiano (compsci PhD, OpenAI veteran, runs an AI alignment nonprofit) and to a lesser degree by other leading lights. Although not everyone involved has formal ML training, if you care a lot about whether efforts are “establishment” or “contrarian”, this one is probably more establishment.

Impact Markets: The Annoying Details

July 15, 2022 · Original source

Disadvantage: It places a lot of the buy/don’t-buy decision in the hands of a single oracular funder. For example, suppose that OpenPhil agreed to do this, but a few years later they got a new CEO who was more conservative than the previous CEO, and only funded about 2/3 as many projects. Now the chance of getting a return on your investment has gone down by 2/3 for a reason unrelated to its fundamentals. Or suppose someone invested in a malaria project, but OpenPhil pivoted away from tropical diseases and now there was no hope of getting any return. Seems like the sort of uncertainty that would discourage people from investing.

Maybe a better way to look at this is abstracting out the investor and comparing “final oracular funder donates directly to charity” vs. “final oracular funder gives money to investor, causing charity to get funded”. Here it becomes clear that it’s the oracular funder who’s losing out on the tax benefits. But do oracular funders (eg OpenPhil, Future Fund) pay taxes at all, or benefit from tax-deductability? I’m not clear on this.

Realistically this is no worse than the current situation, where eg OpenPhil can fund someone to cure malaria and they can just not do it. If they deliberately embezzle the funds, it’s embezzlement and you can sue them. If they’re just really bad at their job, that seems like part of the risk you take in normal charity and normal investments.

Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism

July 20, 2022 · Original source

We use dualist thinking, whereas many enlightened people have claimed that reality is non-dualist. This is just a selection and I don’t claim I’m being fair or representative. I’m having trouble expressing why I feel so uneasy about this. Part of it is emotional: I feel less enlightened than preached at. Do we really not think of the interdependence between individuals? Does this really make us less effective in some way? Or is this just a sort of stock criticism with such a storied tradition that everyone has agreed to nod their head to it and agree to do better later? Are we sure that becoming less individualist would be a better use of our energy than becoming more individualist? How did we achieve that certainty? It sure seems like more individualist countries are richer and better places to live. And that within those countries, the most individualist regions and social networks are the richest and best. Aren’t more intelligent people generally more individualist when you do the psych tests and surveys? I don’t know, if I thought it was a good use of our resources to move some direction on the individualism spectrum, I would be kind of interested in trying to figure out how to move even more towards the individuals-are-independent side than we are now. But realistically I don’t think this is a good use of our resources because I personally am not sure how to do that, I personally am not interested in singlehandedly inventing the science of shifting position on the individualism spectrum, I don’t think trying to invent this science is a great use of anyone else’s time, and if someone did claim they invented this science, it would take a lot of evidence for me to believe them. (again, I think I’m being terribly unfair here to the author, who was genuinely worried about these blindspots, but I’m using this as an example of my reaction to different types of criticism) What’s the EA equivalent of the s-ketamine critique? A Critical Review Of Open Philanthropy’s Bet On Criminal Justice Reform argues that one of a major EA funder’s programs was substantially less effective than their other programs, that this had been easy to notice for a while, and that despite this they continued the program instead of changing it or cutting their losses (for a while; they did eventually stop). Everyone in EA is very nice, so all of the responses were phrased as “thank you for this constructive criticism, but having said that I wanted to raise…” But subtracting out the usual niceness level, I get the impression it actually hit a nerve. There was some pretty deep discussion about whether the criticism was fair, whether it was excessively hostile to identifiable individuals, and (of course) nitpicking all the math. Here are some differences I noticed between the experience of reading the more specific criminal justice criticism vs. the more paradigmatic structures-and-individualism criticism: Before reading the specific criticism, I wouldn’t have been able to predict its conclusion. Was this program more effective than other programs? Less effective? But before reading the paradigmatic criticism, I could predict its conclusion pretty well. “We are all more interconnected than we think” is a typical piece of Profound Wisdom, and nobody ever says the opposite.

Inline links: A Critical Review Of Open Philanthropy’s Bet On Criminal Justice Reform

Not because EA is bad at taking criticism. The opposite: they like it too much. It almost feels like a sex thing. “Please, tell me again how naughty I’m being!” I went to an EA organization’s offices once - I think it was OpenPhil, but don’t quote me on that - and the whole place was strewn with the most critical books you can imagine - Robert Reich, Anand Giradharadas, that kind of thing. Can’t remember seeing Anti-Politics Machine but I’m sure it was there. Probably three copies per person. One for their office, one for their home library, and one for the spot under their mattress where other people would hide porn mags.

Davidson On Takeoff Speeds

June 20, 2023 · Original source

Last year I wrote about Open Philanthropy’s Biological Anchors, a math-heavy model of when AI might arrive. It calculated how fast the amount of compute available for AI training runs was increasing, how much compute a human-level AI might take, and estimated when we might get human level AI (originally ~2050; an update says ~2040)

Inline links: I wrote about Open Philanthropy’s Biological Anchors, an update

A lot of these big complicated analyses are salvos in a long-running conflict between a school of futurists based at Open Philanthropy and another school based at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

Davidson works at Open Philanthropy and is trying to flesh out their side of the story. Again, even his “gradual” takeoff won’t seem very gradual to us fleshbag humans; it will go from 20% of the economy to 100% in ~3 years, and reach superintelligence within a year after that9. Still, there will at least be enough time for journalists to publish a few articles saying that fears of AI taking over 100% of the economy are overblown and alarmist, which is a sort of gradual.

Inline links: 9

Our World In Data5 mentions across 5 issues

Our World In Data is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between October 14, 2021 and August 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Our World In Data - we are winning the war on oil spills"; "(source: Our World In Data )"; "Effective Altruism, per ... Our World In Data". It most often appears alongside Europe, Germany, Trump.

Article page: Our World In Data
Mention count: 5
Issue count: 5
First seen: October 14, 2021
Last seen: August 17, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For October October 14, 2021
Dictator Book Club: Orban November 04, 2021
Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy June 24, 2022
The Question Of Separatism May 19, 2023
Bride Of Bay Area House Party August 17, 2023

Europe 3 shared issues
Germany 3 shared issues
Trump 3 shared issues
Twitter 3 shared issues
United States 3 shared issues

Source context

Links For October

October 14, 2021 · Original source

1: Our World In Data - we are winning the war on oil spills:

Inline links: Our World In Data

Dictator Book Club: Orban

November 04, 2021 · Original source

(source: Our World In Data) …except that if you look back to the first graph you’ll notice Hungary was in a big slump in 2010 and got a bonus just by regressing to the mean (also, what is going on in Austria)?

Inline links: Our World In Data

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy

June 24, 2022 · Original source

A Russian sixth-grader could explain why celebrating the glories of Kievan Rus does not subvert Putin’s claims about the history of the Russian nation so much as reinforce them. Just like Hong Kong’s protests, Ukraine has won the meme war with utterly lopsided propaganda and unanimous international support on the Internet. As Yoshimi writes: Floating ghostlike above it is our war, the myth of the ‘Ghost of Kyiv’, ace MIG-29 pilot who has apparently shot down six Russian planes, or the legend of the Ukrainian soldiers defending an island outpost who replied “Russian warship go fuck yourselves” to a surrender offer and may or may not have died heroically, or two Russian II-76 transport aircraft that maybe were shot down near Kiev, or videos of air strikes or dead bodies which variously are Russian or Ukrainian until they turn out to be from Gaza six years ago, or the viral video of an old Ukrainian woman telling off a Russian soldier by offering him sunflower seeds so when he dies, sunflowers (Ukraine’s national flowers) will sprout from the soil. We’re raising funds for the Ukrainian army on crowdfunding apps and giving advice to the civilians being handed assault weapons about how to disable tanks, sharing weird homophobic pictures of Putin as a gay icon and spamming Russian government posts. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has made the decision to stay and fight rather than flee like most would-be leaders who go all in for American foreign policy, and now is being deified by us as “badass”, “a true leader”, etc. etc., alongside his people, whose resistance to authoritarianism we are told is unparalleled in the modern world. After all, so it goes, who could be next? And like in Hong Kong, despite winning the culture war in hyperreality, the actual war in reality is won by the side with overwhelming military might, not morality. The real war is where Ukrainians are experiencing the genuine life-shattering effects of military conflict. It matters because this is the first time Western response is driven by Twitter outcry, and it will not be the last. A New EA Cause? Besides Hanania’s recommendations in the last section (which he admits are more or less impossible in an excellent interview with Caplan), a worthy EA priority might be to somehow turn the public tide on sanctions, which literally kill more people than Putin. Americans should be appalled by the atrocity committed in their names. The banality of the incompetence of foreign policy elites does not excuse their evil. With how entrenched the special interests are, I have no idea if it’s even worth trying, but at the very least the sheer amount of suffering and death from sanctions should be made common knowledge. Nuclear security is one of the top priorities in Effective Altruism, per 80,000 Hours, Future of Life Institute, and Our World In Data. Toby Orb, who wrote the definitive book on existential risk, The Precipice, estimates x-risk from nuclear war to be ~1 in 1000 in the next century. Luisa Rodriguez estimates a 1.1% chance of nuclear war each year and that the chances of a US-Russia nuclear war may be in the ballpark of 0.38% per year; summarised by Max Roser as: Nuclear risk is neglected by the public because of Pax Americana since the collapse of the USSR, and is not discussed as often in EA as it’s thought to be relatively well-funded and mainstream, but in fact major donors like the MacArthur Foundation have been withdrawing funding. As Joan Rohling details in an 80,000 Hours podcast there is much to be done, especially when Ukraine gave up their nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for Russia’s promise to never threaten or use military force against them. A worthwhile adjacent cause area might be de-escalation of public outcry to reduce x-risk from nuclear war beyond just regular anti-proliferation efforts — even a Russian specialist from the RAND Corporation is surprised by how much public outrage is driving policy: Even just the pace of the sanctions: we went to 11 out of 10 in like two days — farther than many expected we’d ever get in short order. And I think the same is true about these military assistance initiatives. We’re just trying to do something because there’s a public demand for action. So that’s what worries me, that the sort of public outrage that’s being channeled in Western democracies through political systems could result in decisions that prove ultimately unwise. Despite how odd it is that some wars are “legal” while others aren’t, we should be glad UNSC exists as much as everyone laughs at how useless the rest of the UN is. All is fair in love and war, but international norms is all that stands between us and nuclear annihilation. It is hard to emphasise just how delusional it is for the public to fixate on no-fly zones — I, like Scott, am surprised we’re still capable of jingoism. 80,000 Hours has updated their top career recommendations to include China specialist to improve China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risk, which seems more important after reading how irrational and captured the American foreign policy apparatus is. As Hanania writes, “great power competition” is an anachronism. If Ukraine is the first war warped by hyperreality, it won’t be the last. Now that US foreign policy elites have driven Putin into the arms of China, let’s hope IR specialists can imbibe the public choice model instead of antagonising yet another nuclear rival. Public Choice Theory and the Illusion of Grand Strategy is an important work because it raises the sanity waterline, which at the least should make us stop killing millions for no reason, and at the most should make the human race more knowledgeable of how to prevent total extinction from nuclear armageddon. Pax Americana is dead, but a multipolar world will be more humane. Endnotes In the fiscal year 2018, the top five government contractors were all weapons manufacturers, with Lockheed Martin in first place at $40.6 billion. The Department of Defence spent $358 billion on contracting, ten times higher than second place Department of Energy. Collective action problems that stop a bunch of smaller companies from effectively influencing policy are no hindrance for companies like Lockheed Martin.

The Question Of Separatism

May 19, 2023 · Original source

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

… and we think, thank goodness that Germany is unified now. So much easier to think about! Can you imagine if the Our World in Data charts had to show separate lines for the Electorate of Saxony, the Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and about 1,800 other semi-sovereign states? Can you imagine traveling around if each of them had its own currency? (Fun fact: the List of states in the Holy Roman Empire Wikipedia page doesn’t contain such a list. Instead it points to no less than 28 sub-lists.) Jacobs stops shy of asking, in either book, the question that seems to be the logical continuation of her reasoning: should everything be a city-state? Should we encourage separatism until each inhabited place in the world is either a city or a city region with its own currency? We can hazard a guess as to what her answer would be. She would probably say that there’s no need to upend everything right this moment. Just adopt an attitude of political openness and experimentation. Don’t try to hold together entities that don’t work that well. When separatist sentiment arises somewhere, you can argue it’s a bad idea, but don’t fight it out of emotion such as fear for your nation’s integrity. Eventually, things will settle — the regions that want to be city-states will be, and those that prefer to be united with others, for cultural or economic reasons, will stay that way. Unity has good PR and some genuine advantages, so there will still be plenty of it. But maybe Jane Jacobs never asks this question because she knows it’s irrelevant. We just can’t help fighting for our big countries and supranational unions (like the EU), and too bad if they enter long periods of stagflation until they violently collapse. This might be the right time to mention that her last book, published in 2004, is called Dark Age Ahead. IV. Something to Dislike For Everyone Jane Jacobs’s most famous book is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She is recognized as perhaps the most influential thinker in urbanism. She is credited with saving Greenwich Village and SoHo in New York City, and helping cancel the Spadina Expressway in Toronto. To this day people organize “Jane’s Walks” as a living memorial to her impact on cities. But Jane Jacobs herself thought that her greatest intellectual contribution was not in city planning, but in economics. She thought that import replacement was her most important discovery, since it explained how wealth expands better than existing macroeconomic theories. She wrote multiple books that were explicitly about economics and was about to write another when she died, Uncovering the Economy. I am not an economist, so I might not be qualified to make a judgment on this matter, but: it seems to me that there’s a discrepancy here. Jacobs is widely seen as a great intellectual, but her economic ideas don’t quite seem mainstream. I’d never heard of import replacement before reading her book. Why not? The null hypothesis is that economists have examined her ideas and simply rejected them. There were some critical academic reviews of Cities and the Wealth of Nations when it came out, and more recently Tyler Cowen expressed his own mild skepticism. Some of the criticism involves the lack of quantitative data in her work, and her failure to think about issues of scale. The most obvious target, of course, is her city obsession: yes, cities are important, but they’re not the only economic phenomenon that matters, some would say. Perhaps Jacobs has overplayed her hand. But there are other possible explanations for the discrepancy. One is that she was a woman and had no credentials, which made it difficult for (mostly male) professionals to take her seriously. We know this was true at the beginning of her career at least. It seems possible that even after she managed to establish herself as an original urban thinker, economists had trouble accepting that she could, with her lack of any college degree, come up with new insights in their field. I doubt that’s really true today, though. We do take Jacobs seriously, and still read all of her books, which is more than we could say about most economists. Instead, I propose that the discrepancy comes from a darker place: in laboring to be comprehensive about cities and economics, she reached conclusions that most people don’t want to be true. No matter your politics, there’ll be something for you to dislike in Jacobs’s work. For example, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t think the European Union was a good idea, so she probably would have supported Brexit. Brexiters might rejoice, except that a lot of them are British nationalists who certainly don’t want Scotland to leave the UK, whereas Jacobs would agree with that. Which would be great news to Scottish independentists — except that if a new separatist movement arose within Scotland, she’d also support that. Jacobs’s ideas and grassroots activism in favor of small-scale, organic urban planning have come to be seen as left-wing — yet her criticism of national welfare programs wouldn’t make her out of place among hardcore right-wingers. Unless those right-wingers were military hawks, in which case they’d find no solace in reading Jacobs on military transactions of decline. Writing during the Cold War, Jacobs criticized the Soviet Union for its incredible centralization of decision-making in Moscow. She rightfully predicted its collapse, making her an ideological ally of the capitalist West, right? Not so, since the United States is also, according to her, too centralized and in the early stages of decay. “Today the Soviet Union and the United States each predicts and anticipates the economic decline of the other,” she writes. “Neither will be disappointed.” Whether she was correct about the US is left as an exercise to the reader. In any case, she did foresee, using her theory on cities, the decline of Japan. This must have been bold in the 1980s at the peak of the Japanese economic miracle, when there was a widespread trope that Japan would soon take over the world. Yet she was right: in 1991, Japan entered its “lost decade,” which soon became two lost decades, and then three. To be fair, she predicted the decline of all large-ish countries, so I wouldn’t mark her as a superforecaster or anything. Still, this puts in perspective the more recent trope that China is going to take over the world. No country, no ideology is safe from Jacobs’s prophecies. Smaller ideologies aren’t spared, either. Effective altruism would probably seem totally mistaken to her, since at its core it promotes an inorganic, top-down transfer of wealth from prosperous cities to poor areas. Progress studies people think that technological innovation will solve economic stagnation, but she would point out how labor-saving equipment so often causes damage when it is introduced to regions that don’t benefit from the other city forces, like the Scottish Highlands or many of her other examples in Colombia, India, or the American South. (This point would deserve an essay of its own, but reading Jacobs has made me a bit more worried about the “AI will take our jobs” thing. It’s clear that new jobs will appear, but when the technology city force from the San Francisco Bay Area reaches distant places with poor economies, which it will very soon thanks to the internet, the effects might not be very pleasant to see.) Overall, the political ideology that might fit Jacobs the best might be… libertarianism? She’s not a big fan of large governments who make big top-down decisions, clearly. Yet I don’t get the feeling that this association fits all that well either. Jacobs doesn’t seem to be anti-government if the government is at the city level. I doubt she would have liked the kind of hyperfragmented world depicted in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I also doubt she’d be impressed by cryptocurrency-backed “cloud cities” or fantasies of charter cities, none of which she would see as real cities in the sense of concentrated pockets of people who start replacing what they import with local production. Jane Jacobs, in sum, was an archetypal accidental moderate. She took one idea very seriously — the idea that cities are fundamental — and explored its ramifications without caring in the slightest if it led to the “wrong” opinions, as her friends in 1980 Toronto must have thought when she wrote about Quebec. I don’t know if she went too far; I’m sure someone more qualified than I am can find flaws in that core idea or any of her other observations. But to me she sounds convincing, and her consistency is frankly admirable. So, to end this review on a more review-y note, go read Jane Jacobs. Her books are a delight, with their elegant arguments and masterfully told anecdotes. Her predictions often take an air of doom, but she is also an optimist who offers constructive ways forward. She sets an example for all of us who care about getting the details right, no matter the credentialed experts, the current political climate, or the great theories of the past. Image credits Cities and the Wealth of Nations book cover: from Amazon.

Inline links: List of states in the Holy Roman Empire, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gyMq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdc388f24-009c-42ee-adca-9d5c50faaa66_932x190.png, academic, reviews, expressed, Japan would soon take over the world, fantasies, of, charter, cities, accidental moderate, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!r8Rb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60621c76-b34b-4e10-b272-394480443e1b_1600x1066.png, Amazon

Our World in Data historical GDP charts: from Our World in Data’s article on economic growth.

Inline links: article on economic growth

Bride Of Bay Area House Party

August 17, 2023 · Original source

“I thought you were in Britain or somewhere! I love Our World In Data, thank you so much for starting that!”

“So ‘Max Roser’ is just - I didn’t start the site. I was looking up econ development statistics on there a few years ago, and I something seemed off, they listed the GDP per capita of Mongolia in 2004 as being $5,820, but all my other sources were saying it was more like $5400 or so. I couldn’t reconcile it, so I wrote them an email asking if they’d made a mistake. A few days later, these people in robes show up at my door. They told me I had caught the last Max Roser in a mistake, so now by ancient tradition I was the new Max Roser. Apparently it’s not even a given name, it’s a Rosicrucian title - I think ‘Hans Rosling’ is another one, like a second-in-command. It’s like the Dread Pirate Roberts in that one book. I tried to tell them no - I was working for Google at the time - but they were very insistent. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. So now I’m Max Roser and I run Our World In Data. It’s an okay life, I guess.”

Obama administration3 mentions across 3 issues

Obama administration is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 20, 2021 and June 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Everybody heard about the Obama administration's supposedly-bad decision to fund Solyndra"; "The Obama and Trump administrations both set funding policies"; "top generals in the Obama administration publicly discussing troop commitment needed to win in Afghanistan". It most often appears alongside California, China, Congress.

Article page: Obama administration
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: February 20, 2021
Last seen: June 24, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Ezra Klein On Vetocracy February 20, 2021
Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022
Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy June 24, 2022

California 2 shared issues
China 2 shared issues
Congress 2 shared issues
New York 2 shared issues
New York Times 2 shared issues

Source context

Ezra Klein On Vetocracy

February 20, 2021 · Original source

People have wanted fewer bad things forever, so any explanation of increasing vetocracy should start with an explanation of why this is becoming a problem now. The public choice theory perspective would emphasize the imbalance between doing things and preventing things. If a leader does something, and it's bad, then journalists will be on the scene to interview the victims of their failure, protesters can march against their abuses of power, etc. If a leader doesn't do something, and it would have been good, this is invisible except in rare cases (eg when they don't launch an effective coronavirus response). Everybody heard about the Obama administration's supposedly-bad decision to fund Solyndra. Nobody heard about their bad decision not to fund that one startup which, if it'd just had a little more funding, could have developed cold fusion in 2013. As the media becomes better at covering things, and people become more outraged by abuses, we should expect the number of veto points to go up.

Book Review: San Fransicko

June 23, 2022 · Original source

...of the cities with spiraling homelessness crises have been pursuing Housing First policies for decades (eg San Francisco has been trying Housing First since the 1990s ). The Obama and Trump administrations both set funding policies that penalized any non-Housing-First welfare programs. Still, everyone is sure that the reason there are still homeless people must be that some Housing First opponent s...

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy

June 24, 2022 · Original source

boxing in the president’s major foreign policy decision via military generals’ press manipulation (MacArthur commenting on escalating engagement in the Korean War before he was fired by Truman; top generals in the Obama administration publicly discussing troop commitment needed to win in Afghanistan)

Get rid of the regime The theory falls apart because citizens still need to overcome the collective action problem; regime elites, almost by definition, benefit from the current regime; regimes prioritise paying for security forces over domestic population; and rival powers come to the rescue. As empirical research clearly shows, sanctions are the most brutal and harmful when they have the least likelihood of success. Step 1 of causing economic hardship certainly succeeds — UN sanctions were associated with an aggregate GDP reduction 25% of GDP per decade; US sanctions were associated with a 13.4% decline over seven years. Beyond the destruction of wealth of innocent citizens, sanctions cause excess deaths due to starvation and brutalising ever more desperate regimes that engage in mass killing to repress domestic protests — six-figure infant deaths in Iraq; 1,000 infant deaths per month in Haiti, 40,000 excess deaths in Venezuela in 2017-2018 alone; 38% of Syrian population unable to meet basic food requirements in 2018. Step 4 of regime change has yet to happen as a result of the harshest sanctions against Cuba since 1959, Iraq since 1998, Syria since 2011, and Venezuela since 2019. The Bush, Clinton, new Bush, and Obama administrations all stuck to a policy of not speaking with adversaries, which is the opposite of achieving foreign policy goals by providing targeted regimes a clear path towards the removal of sanctions. Once again, Hanania shows that there is no American grand strategy — sanctions are used to accomplish domestic political goals rather than foreign policy objectives. Leaders face domestic pressure to ‘do something’ about human rights violations and military aggressions abroad, and short of military intervention, sanctions is the only option beyond words of condemnation. Sanctions are an ‘easy’ option because there will be little to no domestic opposition when all the deaths and economic destruction are out of sight; out of mind. 5. The War On Terror The Bush Years After 9/11, the United States has invaded the al-Qaeda sanctuary of Afghanistan, but also the completely irrelevant Iraq. In the view of grand strategy, war is a means to accomplish national security objectives; in the view of public choice, national security objectives is a means to accomplish war (or at least a large military budget). The post hoc rationalisation of the war on terror rests on three incoherent ideologies: Antiterrorism: disproportional militarised response to terrorist attacks

Counterinsurgency (COIN) In the case of Afghanistan, the Bush administration was so eager to go to war it avoided any other options. No evidence has ever emerged that Taliban (the political faction that ruled Afghanistan at the time) itself knew about the 9/11 attacks, much less planned it; the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan condemned the attacks on 9/12. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists” became the standard American line — before the war began, Taliban was willing to discuss bin Laden’s fate but the White House Chief of Staff refused; after the war began, Taliban was willing to hand over bin Laden to a third country for trial but White House refused just the same. In the case of Iraq, Bush was so eager to, in his own words, “Fuck Saddam, We’re taking him out” as early as February 2002 (and floated the idea of invading Iraq to Tony Blair), that on 9/17 Bush told his cabinet “I believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not gong to strike them now. I don’t have the evidence at this point.” The administration couldn’t find any evidence directly tying Saddam to 9/11, so they settled on the now-discredited lies of WMDs and “ties” between al-Qaeda and Iraq. “We don’t negotiate with terrorist”’ extended to the non-terrorist Saddam — before the war, Saddam was cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency; after the war began, Saddam was willing to accede to practically all Amercan demands but White House refused communication just the same. Just like in Afghanistan, the Bush administration had no interest in exploring any other option short of war. Two feuding factions within the Bush administration had little contact with each other: the war hawks (neocons like Cheney i.e. products of Lockheed Martin), supported by the Pentagon, did not want to do nation-building; those partial to nation-building (the State Department) did not want war. Bush agreed with the former at the start of the war, but once Saddam was removed, sided with the latter. The postwar plan for Afghanistan was officially determined by the Bonn Agreement of 2001, but neither Bush nor Cheney consider it to be worthy of much thought in their memoirs despite years of hindsight; the postwar plan for Iraq lay entirely in the hands of Paul Bremer as subsequent Deputy Committee meetings on Iraq stopped being conducted — there wasn’t a single meeting to discuss disbanding the Iraqi army that left 400,000 jobless former soldiers prime for insurgency. The Iraq war dealt with no real crisis but cost the US trillions of dollars and thousands of lives, plunged Iraq into two decades of intermittent civil war — a candidate for the worst American foreign policy failure in history, but a success for the careers of Bush (who won reelection and congressional seats) and his advisors who led the US into Baghdad (who went on to work for think tanks, the World Bank, and the Trump Administration). Once again, there is no grand strategy as each party was only self-interested in short-term gains. The Earlier Obama Years As a candidate, Obama campaigned in support of the Afghanistan war, and indeed his first foreign policy decision as president was to send thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, largely due to overwhelming political pressure from top generals like Petraeus and McChrystal who boxed Obama into sending more troops by limiting the options presented to Obama, blatantly lobbying in press interviews, and threatening dire consequences like resigning from commanding troops in Afghanistan. We know Obama was hesitant as he announced at the same time that American troops would begin withdrawal in July 2011 (by 2015 he announced that American troop presence would stay in Afghanistan indefinitely). Obama’s second decision was to bomb al-Qadhafi in the name of Libyan regime change, due to domestic but this time also international political pressure from the heads of France and the UK who would face political embarrassment if Qadhafi’s regime, despite months of bombing and sanctions by the US-led coalition, recaptures the rebel-held Benghazi. NATO forces bombed al-Qadhafi’s convoy. Ten days after the killing of the dictator, the bombing campaign ended, and the subsequent decade of intermittent civil war faded from the American consciousnesss. Obama’s third decision was to cripple Assad’s regime in Syria with sanctions and by arming and training rebels, again due to overwhelming political pressure from hawkish ‘foreign policy community’ who still criticise Obama for having ‘done nothing’ despite spending $1 billion through the CIA and $500 million through the Pentagon, and crushing the Syrian economy. Top officials in the Obama administration admitted that assisting rebels would not change the course of war, nor was there any way to prevent arms from ending up in the hands of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Indeed, the Syrian civil war only got bloodier with American involvement. The Later Obama Years Obama’s first major decision was the war on ISIS with the reentry into Iraq from which all American troops withdrew just a few years ago in 2011, due to overwhelming political pressure and in the face of a potentially humanitarian catastrophe (ISIS was going to massacre the Yazidi religious sectarians in Mount Sinjar). This time, the United States would roll back all territorial gains of the Islamic State by working with the Iraqi government, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Obama’s second decision was signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Acton (JCPOA) with Iran to stop its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for UN and EU sanctions to be lifted, $100 billion in assets seized by the US to be returned to Iran, and the US to stop implementing secondary or third-party sanctions. This time, Obama faced unusually significant pressure from Congress which passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act by overwhelming majority to be able to revoke JCPOA, but Obama signed JCPOA with Iran nonetheless as enough Democrats would be able to sustain a veto. This was the one and only decision that made sense from the perspective of classical IR theory — American leaders doing things they think are right for the country without a clear political payoff. Indeed, the Iranian nuclear agreement is the exception that proves the rule of public choice, as the deal was only possible near the end of Obama’s second term, and at the end cancelled by Trump upon entering office — a president’s foreign policy accomplishment made without the support of concentrated interests only lasted as long as his administration. 6. Learning From American Foreign Policy Failures IR theorists widely acknowledge that it was a mistake to invade Vietnam and Iraq, and even the war in Afghanistan went on for too long even if it was originally justified, but these scholars have yet to comprehend the shortcoming of the unitary actor model in accounting for the lack of rational cost-benefit analysis. Comparing the pre-invasion GDP of the countries to what the US has sacrificed (even setting aside the number of lives lost), the GDP-to-money-spent ratio has been 1:74 in South Vietnam, 1:43.3 in Iraq, and a staggering 1:396 in Afghanistan. In other words, the United States has spent in Afghanistan the equivalent of that country’s level of production for close to four centuries. Cost-benefit analysis also fails outside the major wars: NATO, despite the collapse of the USSR, is willing to absorb practically any country including states that can drag the US into war without contributing anything to American security; the military expenditure in Japan and South Korea, despite anti-China talks in Washington, are either flat or declining. While an utter failure in humanitarian and economic terms, American foreign policy has a been a resounding “success” from the public choice perspective: Lockheed Martin received $36 billion in government contracts in 2008 alone (more than any company in history)

Orchid3 mentions across 3 issues

Orchid is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between November 08, 2021 and August 11, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Orchid has 400 employees already and the locals are typically doubling their income"; "GP and Orchid both say their technology has improved since reporting these numbers"; "Orchid for smuggling a term for age into their Alzheimer’s predictor". It most often appears alongside Herasight, SF, 23andMe.

Article page: Orchid
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: November 08, 2021
Last seen: August 11, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

21 November 08, 2021
Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection July 31, 2025
Open Thread 394 August 11, 2025

Herasight 2 shared issues
SF 2 shared issues
23andMe 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

November 08, 2021 · Original source

Econ Americas interviewed (44-minute video) Guillermo Peña, [Orqueida ZEDE]'s Technical Secretary. He summarizes Honduras's recent political and economic history (and seems to believe things are getting better). Orchid has 400 employees already and the locals are typically doubling their income. They'll start exporting in January 2022. They'll invest $85 million over four years with 2,700 employees eventually. It's the largest greenhouse in Central America, exporting vegetables and flowers, over 160 hectares. While all three opposition parties are opposed to ZEDEs, Pena is pretty optimistic that the ZEDEs won’t be shut down, at least immediately, if the opposition wins the November election (see 35:25).

Inline links: interviewed

Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection

July 31, 2025 · Original source

In 2023, Orchid Health entered the field. Unlike Genomic Prediction, which tested only the most important genetic variants, Orchid offers whole genome sequencing, which can detect the de novo3 mutations involved in autism, developmental disorders, and certain other genetic diseases.

Inline links: Orchid Health, 3

Critics accused GP and Orchid of offering “designer babies”, but this was only true in the weakest sense - customers couldn’t “design” a baby for anything other than slightly lower risk of genetic disease. These companies refused to offer selection on “traits” - the industry term for the really controversial stuff like height, IQ, or eye color. Still, these were trivial extensions of their technology, and everybody knew it was just a matter of time before someone took the plunge.

Herasight’s numbers on how breast cancer risk goes down with number of embryos used in selection. A typical round of IVF produces 1-10 embryos (younger women usually = more). Women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (prevalence: 10%) may get as many as 20. For more, you will probably need to do multiple IVF rounds. Here is a table of different companies’ reported risk reductions, slightly adjusted7 for different reporting conventions but otherwise taking all claims at face value (we’ll talk about how wise that is later). Relative risk reduction for five conditions (gray = no data / disputed data). Here baseline is for embryos neither of whose parents have the condition. GP and Orchid both say their technology has improved since reporting these numbers and they will report better numbers soon. GP numbers are not within-family validated and might be lower if they were. Absolute risk after selection for five conditions (gray = no data / disputed data), ibid. Some people might genuinely want to select on a single condition. For example, people with a strong family history of schizophrenia might want to minimize the chance of their children getting the disease; for these people, reducing schizophrenia risk by 58% (while keeping everything else constant) sounds pretty good. Everyone else probably wants a generically healthy embryo with low risk of all conditions. Exactly how this works depends on the customer’s own values - would they prefer an embryo with lower cancer risk to one who will have fewer heart attacks? - and the exact benefits will depend on how parents make that decision. Genomic Prediction and Herasight try to help by providing semi-objective measures of which embryo is overall healthiest according to different conditions’ effects on longevity and patient-rated quality of life. For Genomic Prediction, that’s the “embryo health score” If you selected the single highest-health-score embryo from a set of five, here’s how they’d do: For Herasight, it’s a “polygenic longevity index”. They don’t give exact risk reduction numbers for each disease, saying that it depends too much on a couple’s specific family history, but say that most people gain 1-4 years of healthy life (when I test it on a set of twenty embryos, the the healthiest gets an extra 1.66 years). How much would you pay to give your children an extra 1-4 years of healthy life? This is no longer a hypothetical question. Here are the costs of the companies in this space: Is it worth it? If: You’re already doing IVF

Inline links: 7, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0oUh!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8419603-9239-43bb-8c79-77b078ff0789_548x136.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rpEJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc539a717-a130-460d-90c9-4ab64619f26d_548x133.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3Kc6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbda325bb-13fb-4c27-b8c3-24facce5c71a_676x153.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1Am!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F831ab3c6-4053-4ff9-bc2f-879aee4349cf_673x740.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Q2vE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fadcf2bb4-8dd1-4a88-9728-6953a820971b_422x575.png

Open Thread 394

August 11, 2025 · Original source

4: In the post on embryo selection, I mentioned that Herasight criticized Orchid's Alzheimer's predictor. A representative of Orchid reached out to say they stood by their methodology:

Inline links: the post on embryo selection, criticized

Herasight seems to be misreading our whitepaper. The “Performant Alzheimer’s disease risk stratification” section is meant to show the kind of performance patients can expect—people in the top 5% have an OR of 5.80, top 3% is 7.35, and top 1% is 11.69. This odds ratio is what is used to present embryo disease risk to patients and does not include covariates. The “Comparison to Published Benchmarks” section is just about comparing our models to others in the literature. To allow a head to head comparison, we used the same metric (AUC) and covariates as the paper we’re comparing against. However, to avoid future confusion, we’ve just added a sentence clarifying the AUC without covariates (0.724).

Inline links: our whitepaper

Orquidea3 mentions across 3 issues

Orquidea is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 02, 2021 and September 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Orquidea is going a little further in keeping a low profile even after they’ve started operations"; "I can’t find any statements from Orquidea, but my understanding is that their business model is less ambitious"; "One ZEDE, Orquidea, shut down immediately". It most often appears alongside Honduras, Prospera, Prospera.

Article page: Orquidea
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: August 02, 2021
Last seen: September 04, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

21 August 02, 2021
22 June 28, 2022
23: California Dreamin' September 04, 2023

Honduras 3 shared issues
Prospera 3 shared issues
Prospera 3 shared issues
BBC 2 shared issues
Charter Cities Institute 2 shared issues

Source context

August 02, 2021 · Original source

Honduras remains the country to watch in the charter city sphere, with its ZEDE law allowing unprecedented levels of freedom and protection. I’d previously written about two Honduran projects, the high-tech island hub of Prospera and the industrial heartland project of Ciudad Morazan. Now there’s a third: ZEDE Orquidea (“Orchid Zone”).

Inline links: previously written about

I’m not really impressed with their publicity effort (my browser insists their website is a security hazard and won’t let me access it). My only real source of information is this Reddit post by another charter city enthusiast, who writes:

Inline links: this Reddit post

The third ZEDE is Zede Orquidea (Orchid). It's in the south of Honduras, at Las Tapias. The organizer/investor is AgroAlpha. They'll be growing produce in greenhouses for export. President Hernandez recently said it'll be the largest and most modern agropark in Latin America, and that 400 people are working on construction now, with another 600 joining in August. They've adopted laws based on Delaware's. You can see these laws on their website (though as I write this the document link pulls up a login page).

Inline links: Las Tapias

June 28, 2022 · Original source

I can’t find any statements from Orquidea, but my understanding is that their business model is less ambitious, they don’t have much incentive to resist this legal change, and they will probably devolve gracefully into a standard industrial park.

23: California Dreamin'

September 04, 2023 · Original source

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: 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

Ottomans3 mentions across 3 issues

Ottomans is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 06, 2021 and August 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "In the near future, the Ottomans might have a cannon powerful enough to destroy Constantinople's walls"; "Hungary has been conquered and occupied by Ottomans"; "Egypt passing seamlessly from the Ottomans to Napoleon". It most often appears alongside Soviet, World Bank, 5G.

Article page: Ottomans
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: August 06, 2021
Last seen: August 25, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Acemoglu And AI August 06, 2021
Dictator Book Club: Orban November 04, 2021
Your Book Review: Why Nations Fail August 25, 2023

Soviet 2 shared issues
World Bank 2 shared issues
5G 1 shared issues
Acemoglu and Robinson 1 shared issues
ACX comments 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Acemoglu And AI

August 06, 2021 · Original source

A more reasonable military engineer tells the first engineer to focus on more pragmatic and immediate risks, instead of wasting time worrying about superexplosions. Cannons are already powerful enough to batter down all but the strongest city walls, he points out. In the near future, the Ottomans might have a cannon powerful enough to destroy Constantinople's walls. How will the Roman Empire survive this?

A late Byzantine shouldn’t have worried that cutesy fireworks were going to immediately lead to nukes. But instead of worrying that the fireworks would keep him up at night or explode in his face, he should have worried about giant cannons and the urgent need to remodel Constantinople’s defenses accordingly. If near-term AI risks are like worrying about fireworks keeping you awake at night and long-term AI risks like worrying about the Ottomans having cannons, then long-term AI worries are right. But if near-term AI risks are like worrying about the Ottomans having cannons and long-term AI risks are like worrying about nukes, then long-term AI worries are wrong.

Dictator Book Club: Orban

November 04, 2021 · Original source

But in their own minds, they are proud steppe nomads. And they keep the language of the steppe nomads alive, a strange non-Indo-European language with lots of SZ's and ZS's. In their own mind, they are an orphan people, Asiatic horselords surrounded on all sides by hostile Europeans who are probably snickering behind their back at their uncouth ways and unpronounceable letter combinations. Sometimes this contempt turned violent; Hungary has been conquered and occupied by Ottomans, Austrians, and Russians. The worst insult was the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, when the victorious Allied Powers stripped away 2/3s of Hungarian territory in retaliation for its WWI loss, the ceded land going primarily to Slovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Hungarians have never forgotten this humiliation, but through the long Soviet occupation there wasn't much to do but let it fester.

Your Book Review: Why Nations Fail

August 25, 2023 · Original source

The preface has Egypt passing seamlessly from the Ottomans to Napoleon to British colonialism, while chapter 2 describes Muhammed Ali's rule (1805-48) as "a path of rapid economic change". Tarring Nasser's regime as "another elite as disinterested in achieving prosperity for ordinary Egyptians as the Ottoman and British had been" also seems unfair – whatever his faults, he did redistribute land to peasants, build the Aswan dam, and push an extensive program of industrialisation.

Inline links: Nasser's, peasants

Overcoming Bias NYC3 mentions across 3 issues

Overcoming Bias NYC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 10, 2022 and March 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Overcoming Bias NYC meets weekly and has been active since 2009"; "Kudos to Overcoming Bias NYC for their hard work"; "Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/overcomingbiasnyc". It most often appears alongside Austin, Philadelphia, ACX.

Article page: Overcoming Bias NYC
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: April 10, 2022
Last seen: March 25, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities April 10, 2022
ACX Local Voting Guides October 22, 2024
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places March 25, 2025

Austin 3 shared issues
Philadelphia 3 shared issues
ACX 2 shared issues
ACX MEETUP 2 shared issues
Anastasia 2 shared issues

Source context

Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities

April 10, 2022 · Original source

NEW YORK, NY Contact: Shaked (shaked.koplewitz@gmail.com) Date: April 24 Time: 4:00 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87G7PX9M+4J Location: South Meadow, Lower Manhattan, by Warren st & River terrace (near the pavilion) - Look for signs that say "ACX Meetup" or familiar faces Group info: Overcoming Bias NYC meets weekly and has been active since 2009

Inline links: https://plus.codes/87G7PX9M+4J, Overcoming Bias NYC

ACX Local Voting Guides

October 22, 2024 · Original source

NEW YORK CITY: Guide here. Kudos to Overcoming Bias NYC for their hard work, including actually meeting with one of the candidates. There aren't many interesting races in New York this year, but they urge you to stay tuned for a likely special mayoral election now that Eric Adams has been accused of corruption.

Inline links: Guide here

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places

March 25, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Shaked and Robi Contact Info: shaked[period]koplewitz[a t]gmail[period]com, robirahman94[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 20th, 03:00 PM Location: Pumphouse Park (I'll be there holding a sign). If the weather is bad, we'll retreat into Brookfield Place mall. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87G7PX6M+RG Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/overcomingbiasnyc

Inline links: https://plus.codes/87G7PX6M+RG, https://groups.google.com/g/overcomingbiasnyc

Oxford3 mentions across 3 issues

Oxford is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 18, 2021 and August 08, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Researchers at Oxford and Aalto study where people think it’s appropriate for other people to touch them"; "admissions at Oxford/Cambridge"; "Oxford accepts about 20%". It most often appears alongside effective altruism, Harvard, Jews.

Article page: Oxford
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: August 18, 2021
Last seen: August 08, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For August August 18, 2021
Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise December 09, 2022
Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche August 08, 2024

effective altruism 2 shared issues
Harvard 2 shared issues
Jews 2 shared issues
Matt Yglesias 2 shared issues
Twitter 2 shared issues

Source context

Links For August

August 18, 2021 · Original source

6: Researchers at Oxford and Aalto study where people think it’s appropriate for other people to touch them; at some point, this got transformed into terrible maps that serve as a parable against…overfitting, maybe?…I don’t even know…definitely a parable against something. “As a man, you are tentatively okay with your hands being touched by your mother, father, sister, or brother. You actually quite like your hands being touched by your uncle. You are implacably opposed to your hands being touched by your aunt.” And so on.

Inline links: transformed into terrible maps

Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise

December 09, 2022 · Original source

Britain is a good example; not because it's the most illustrative, but just because it's the only country with whose popular culture the average American might be expected to be somewhat familiar. And it's a similar story, old moneyed elite getting kicked down by a new and supposedly-more-meritocratic elite. The process was perhaps a bit slower and a bit less complete (e.g. the new Prime Minister might be an Indian but he still went to Winchester). Among the many trends explaining this, I don't think admissions at Oxford/Cambridge are really close to the top, nor even admissions at Eton etc.

I've never seen any compelling evidence that this actually improves the quality of graduates, by the way. Some universities like Tsinghua also have extremely low acceptance rates. But the University of Tokyo, the most prestigious university in Japan, accepts about 35% of applicants. Oxford accepts about 20%. The doctors, engineers, professionals, academics, etc graduated by those schools are perfectly competent in my experience. And I'm not really aware of anyone who argues otherwise.

Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche

August 08, 2024 · Original source

According to the popular caricature, slave morality is about being nice and master morality is about being mean. But that’s not quite it. The overflowing life Nietzsche praises also encompasses ‘kindness and love, the most curative herbs and agents in human intercourse,’ and ‘good nature, friendliness, and courtesy of the heart.’ The real difference is that behind its meekness, slave morality is powered entirely by resentment: the secret, poisonous delight in being weak, being the saintly victim, feasting on the black slime of your own self-regard. According to some Oxford textbook that’s the first result that when you Google the words ‘nietzsche resentment,’ and which I’ll take as representative of the field, ‘Nietzsche is against resentment because it is an emotion of the weak that the strong and powerful do not and cannot feel.’ Not true! He’s very clear that the strong can feel resentment, but for them ‘resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of, which is almost a proof of riches.’ It’s the other way round; Nietzsche has disdain for the weak because they have been overwhelmed by resentment…Nietzsche might have been weak, but he refused the comforts of resentment. His entire philosophy is a image of what it would look like to really live without those comforts.

Oxford Rationalish3 mentions across 3 issues

Oxford Rationalish is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 10, 2022 and March 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Oxford Rationalish meets semi-regularly"; "https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordrationalish"; "Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordrationalish". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX MEETUP, Anastasia.

Article page: Oxford Rationalish
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: April 10, 2022
Last seen: March 25, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities April 10, 2022
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024 March 30, 2024
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places March 25, 2025

ACX 3 shared issues
ACX MEETUP 3 shared issues
Anastasia 3 shared issues
Ann Arbor 3 shared issues
Atlanta 3 shared issues

Source context

Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities

April 10, 2022 · Original source

OXFORD, UK Contact: Sam Brown (ssc@sambrown.eu) Date: April 20 Time: 6:00 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9C3WPQX6+QQ6 Location: Pub garden of The Star, Rectory Road Group info: Oxford Rationalish meets semi-regularly. There's also a very active EA community in Oxford.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9C3WPQX6+QQ6, Oxford Rationalish

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024

March 30, 2024 · Original source

OXFORD, ENGLAND, UK Contact: Stan Contact Info: stanislawmalinowski09[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, April 17th, 6:30 PM Location: The Star, Rectory Road - We'll be in the beer garden round the back, with a sign <3 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9C3WPQX6+QM Event Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/vnuaj5rCGnfXvaLac/oxrat-acx-meetups-everywhere-spring-2024 Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordrationalish https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/wQA8BE5e8mETeWb8A

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9C3WPQX6+QM, https://www.lesswrong.com/events/vnuaj5rCGnfXvaLac/oxrat-acx-meetups-everywhere-spring-2024, https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordrationalish, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/wQA8BE5e8mETeWb8A

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places

March 25, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Stan Contact Info: stanislawmalinowski09[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Wednesday, May 21st, 6:30 PM Location: the Star Pub on Rectory Road Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9C3WPQX6+QM Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordrationalish

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9C3WPQX6+QM, https://www.facebook.com/groups/oxfordrationalish

OnlyFans2 mentions across 2 issues

OnlyFans is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 12, 2023 and February 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Aella’s OnlyFans"; "How OnlyFans Took Over The World"; "OnlyFans models for EIGHT HOURS". It most often appears alongside Aella, Elon, OpenAI.

Article page: OnlyFans
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 12, 2023
Last seen: February 27, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party December 12, 2023
Links For February 2025 February 27, 2025

Aella 2 shared issues
Elon 2 shared issues
OpenAI 2 shared issues
Sam Altman 2 shared issues
Trump 2 shared issues

Source context

Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party

December 12, 2023 · Original source

“I heard Q-star broke AES-192 encryption, Ilya used it to read Sam’s credit card transactions, and he found Sam spent all the Microsoft money on Aella’s OnlyFans,” says a woman, in a hushed whisper.

Inline links: wants a law saying AI-generated text must be watermarked, skimmed the paper explaining this, How OnlyFans Took Over The World, 113 predictions for Trump’s second term, What’s Behind The SynBio Bust?, this doesn’t replicate, actually it does replicate, says, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S0yA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb75ee3e3-3c0d-48b7-aa98-88f5e33dbf55_748x447.png, CipherNews, Stefan Schubert, Climate Action Tracker, the Lucy Letby case, His answer, Could AI Lead To A Revival Of Decorative Beauty?, Not Quite Past, PEPFAR Report

February 27, 2025 · Original source

11: Intrinsic Perspective wants a law saying AI-generated text must be watermarked. I was most interested the article’s claim that there is now “semantic watermarking” - watermarking which operates on the level of ideas, and can’t be defeated by rephrasing an AI-generated text in your own words. I have skimmed the paper explaining this and think I vaguely understand what’s going on, but it still boggles me that this is possible. 12: Aella: How OnlyFans Took Over The World. There have been camgirl sites since forever. How did OnlyFans leap over all of its predecessors and achieve an unprecedented level of success? Aella discusses many factors, but one stands out: traditional camsites advertised the site as a whole, and then once you got to the site you chose which model you wanted to see. OnlyFans encourages models to advertise themselves - often on their own social media accounts, sometimes via scams - which “unlocks human creativity” on the problem of bringing new eyeballs to a porn site. 13: Nate Silver has 113 predictions for Trump’s second term. I’d be interested to see whether making each of these predictions 10% less confident (to account for possible gameboard-overturning AI) ends up beating Nate. 14: Sarah Constantin: What’s Behind The SynBio Bust? Three of the most promising synthetic biology companies - Gingko, Zymergen, and Amyris - all crashed between 2021 and 2023. Why? Producing chemicals in traditional factories is orders of magnitude more efficient than synthesizing them via microbes (except for the sort of large biomolecules that can’t be produced in factories). These companies had brilliant employees and cool tech, but no clear plan to get around this handicap, and used up their runway before they could figure one out. They also focused too hard on designing the microbes, and were too willing to outsource the actual manufacturing to other people without being sufficiently paranoid that those other people were doing quality control. 15: One of the more exciting psychiatric results (which I blogged about a long time ago) was the apparent finding that omega-3 supplementation could prevent high-risk people from having first break schizophrenia. A new RCT says this doesn’t replicate and cites two other recent trials showing it didn’t replicate. There’s also a new meta-analysis which says actually it does replicate, but usually failing a big RCT is a bad sign and I’m pretty skeptical. Thanks to Isaak F for the links. {ETA: Thomas Reilly says: “Although I don't believe omega-3 supplementation has any benefit in psychosis, I also don't think this new trial should shift your opinion much, given the total sample size was n=135 and the total number of transitions to psychosis was n=8.”] 16: Claim that predictions of global warming magnitude are gradually going down thanks to successful pledges/action: Source is CipherNews (h/t Stefan Schubert) apparently citing Climate Action Tracker, but I get the impression that this is just some people eyeballing the size of pledges and not any more sophisticated forecasting. I don’t know how to square this with the claims that such and such a thing (summer temperature, sea ice, etc) is much worse than anyone expected. 17: I don’t know anything about the Lucy Letby case, but all of my smart friends who have been right about this kind of thing before say she’s innocent. 18: A reader asks House of Strauss (edgy sports Substack) whether the vibe shift away from political correctness threatens the edgy Substack business model - as the power of orthodoxy declines, can you still get rich and famous as a brave anti-orthodoxy critic? His answer: nothing that can happen from here is as bad as the Twitter/X link deboost (which made attracting attention harder for everyone). I mostly agree: I think discoverability has suffered, people who are already famous will be able to stay famous without too much extra effort, and everyone else will have to explore new options. 19: Spectator: Could AI Lead To A Revival Of Decorative Beauty? Profiles Not Quite Past, a startup using AI and fancy printing to make customized Delft tiles. It’s a good idea and the tiles are very pretty, but the tiles are sort of a best possible case (a pretty, traditional object that can have a customized 2D image and be mass-printed). I think most forms of lost decorative beauty aren’t bottlenecked by ability to generate 2D images of the type image models are good at, and so will have to wait. 20: Some friends including Kelsey Piper wrote an emergency PEPFAR Report, collecting evidence for why PEPFAR is good/effective/important and deserves to be kept. Some key points: PEPFAR has saved between 7.5 and 30 million lives, at a cost between $1,500 and $10,000 per life saved. The US government is willing to spend at least a thousand times this much to save an American life.

A "Christian paleoconservative" "debates" OnlyFans models for EIGHT HOURS on whether or not it's bad to have OnlyFans / be a slut, & the women sit through it because they know men watching it will subscribe to their OnlyFans after.

OpenClaw2 mentions across 2 issues

OpenClaw is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 30, 2026 and February 02, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "then to OpenClaw"; "someone in a frontier lab gets spooked and pulls OpenClaw’s API access". It most often appears alongside Anthropic, Claude, Crustafarianism.

Article page: OpenClaw
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: January 30, 2026
Last seen: February 02, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Best Of Moltbook January 30, 2026
Moltbook: After The First Weekend February 02, 2026

Anthropic 2 shared issues
Claude 2 shared issues
Crustafarianism 2 shared issues
Janus 2 shared issues
Moltbook 2 shared issues

Source context

Best Of Moltbook

January 30, 2026 · Original source

The backstory: a few months ago, Anthropic released Claude Code, an exceptionally productive programming agent. A few weeks ago, a user modified it into Clawdbot, a generalized lobster-themed AI personal assistant. It’s free, open-source, and “empowered” in the corporate sense - the designer talks about how it started responding to his voice messages before he explicitly programmed in that capability. After trademark issues with Anthropic, they changed the name first to Moltbot1, then to OpenClaw.

Inline links: talks about, 1

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

February 02, 2026 · Original source

So one possible ending to this story is that this 95% fake AI swarm gradually becomes a 90% fake AI swarm, an 80% fake AI swarm, and eventually a 0% fake AI swarm. Another, more likely possibility is that someone in a frontier lab gets spooked and pulls OpenClaw’s API access, or retrains Claude not to participate in these kinds of games, or something like that.

OPTIC2 mentions across 2 issues

OPTIC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 09, 2023 and October 16, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "OPTIC is looking for participants and volunteers"; "One of the recent impact market forecasting projects, OPTIC". It most often appears alongside Manifold Markets, Sam Bankman-Fried, Academic Decathlon.

Article page: OPTIC
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: October 09, 2023
Last seen: October 16, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Impact Market Mini-Grants Results October 09, 2023
Open Thread 298 October 16, 2023

Manifold Markets 2 shared issues
Sam Bankman-Fried 2 shared issues
Academic Decathlon 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
EA community 1 shared issues

Source context

Impact Market Mini-Grants Results

October 09, 2023 · Original source

2: OPTIC Forecasting Tournament

Their pilot event last April attracted 31 individual competitors, but they’re already planning three more tournaments this fall.

Inline links: last April

Saul kept 22% of equity in OPTIC, and the remainder was bought by three investors, with Domenic Denicola holding the majority share. Domenic will turn his $3306 investment into $6072, and Saul will earn $2024 for his hard work (will he share with Jingyi and Tom? That's for him to decide, but cheating co-founders is a venerable startup tradition!)

Open Thread 298

October 16, 2023 · Original source

2: One of the recent impact market forecasting projects, OPTIC, asks me to broadcast the following appeal:

Inline links: impact market

OPTIC is announcing intercollegiate forecasting tournaments in SF, DC, and Boston. Think 1-day hackathon/olympiad/debate tournament, but for forecasting the future — teams predict on topics ranging from geopolitics to celebrity twitter patterns to financial asset prices, and the best forecasters get thousands of dollars in cash prizes and exclusive internships at Metaculus.

Inline links: OPTIC, Metaculus

Tournaments will be run in the Bay Area (November 4), DC (November 18) and Boston (December 2). Register here (3-7 min)!

Inline links: here

Oracle2 mentions across 2 issues

Oracle is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 18, 2023 and January 13, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Levchin and his engineers were wrestling with a difficult problem involving the Oracle database they were using"; "OpenAI ten trillion dollars to invest in Oracle conditional on Oracle investing in Broadcom". It most often appears alongside OpenAI, 787, adderallposting.

Article page: Oracle
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: September 18, 2023
Last seen: January 13, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk September 18, 2023
SOTA On Bay Area House Party January 13, 2026

OpenAI 2 shared issues
787 1 shared issues
adderallposting 1 shared issues
Adeline 1 shared issues
ADL 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk

September 18, 2023 · Original source

And yet, Levchin began to marvel at the counterexamples [to his generally low opinion of Musk], such as when Musk astounded him by knowing things. At one point, Levchin and his engineers were wrestling with a difficult problem involving the Oracle database they were using. Musk poked his head in the room, and even though his expertise was with Windows and not Oracle, immediately figured out the context of the conversation, gave a precise and technical answer, and walked out without waiting for confirmation. Levchin and his team went back to their Oracle manuals and looked up what Musk had described. "One by one, we all said, 'S**t, he's right," Levchin recalled. "Elon will say crazy stuff, but every once in a while he'll surprise you by knowing way more than you do about your own specialty. I think a huge part of the way he motivates people are these displays of sharpness, which people just don't expect from him, because they mistake him for a bullsh***er or goofball."

SOTA On Bay Area House Party

January 13, 2026 · Original source

“Cause, uh, NVIDIA gave OpenAI ten trillion dollars to invest in Oracle conditional on Oracle investing in Broadcom conditional on Broadcom funding the Series A of a vehicle that buys OpenAI stock in exchange for OpenAI backstopping AMD investing ten trillion dollars into us, and every company in the chain had its stock go up 80% on the news, but if our valuation goes down even for one second then it crashes the global economy. And I’m sure I can solve this eventually, but just, uh, don’t let anybody involved in the global economy hear about this until then, okay?”

Oragenics2 mentions across 2 issues

Oragenics is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 07, 2023 and April 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Professor Hillman started a company 'Oragenics'"; "a company Oragenics and applied for FDA approval". It most often appears alongside Aaron, BCS3-L1, Dr. Hillman.

Article page: Oragenics
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 07, 2023
Last seen: April 16, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Defying Cavity: Lantern Bioworks FAQ December 07, 2023
Updates on Lumina Probiotic April 16, 2024

Aaron 2 shared issues
BCS3-L1 2 shared issues
Dr. Hillman 2 shared issues
FDA 2 shared issues
Lantern 2 shared issues

Source context

Defying Cavity: Lantern Bioworks FAQ

December 07, 2023 · Original source

It lacks a peptide that its species usually uses to arrange gene transfers with other bacteria. The antibiotic helps it win the Darwinian competition in your mouth to become King Of The Oral Bacteria. The alcohol metabolism means it won’t produce lactic acid (and so won’t cause tooth decay). The peptide knockout prevents it from transferring genes back and forth with other bacteria that might either inactivate it or leak its advantage. 1.1: Where did this come from? Who invented it? Professor Jeffrey Hillman of the University of Florida. In 1985, he was surveying the microorganisms on his graduate students’ teeth (as you do). One grad student had an unusual strain of S. mutans with a natural version of mutations 1 and 2 (it produced mutacin-1140, and was resistant to it). Hillman realized the potential, and spent the next few decades adding mutations 3 and 4 and testing the results. 1.2: So how did it end up with a tiny startup in 2023? Professor Hillman started a company “Oragenics” and applied for FDA approval. The FDA demanded a study of 100 subjects, all of whom had to be “age 18-30, with removable dentures, living alone and far from school zones”. Hillman wasn’t sure there even were 100 young people with dentures, but the FDA wouldn’t budge from requiring this impossible trial. Hillman gave up and switched to other projects (including an intranasal COVID vaccine!) Aaron heard this story and figured that brash, move-fast-and-break-things Silicon Valley biotech might be able to find an alternative route to commercialization. The strain was off-patent, so he first tried to synthesize it himself from the clues in Hillman’s published papers. When that didn’t work, he made a deal with Oragenics for 10% of profits in exchange for samples and the full recipe. 2: How do you use it? To apply, you brush your teeth with a special pumice-based product that removes your existing tooth bacteria, then swab it on with a q-tip. One dose is sufficient; once you use it, it’s in your mouth approximately forever. 2.1: As users kiss their loved ones, who kiss others in turn, will this spread exponentially and take over the world? There was originally some concern about this, but no. Remember, the original bacterium was found in the wild, in a random grad student’s mouth forty years ago. There must be thousands of people walking around with various naturally-occurring BCS3-L1-like things. So probably this isn’t a risk for some kind of weird pandemic. Existing mouth bacteria have fortified their position and have a strong home field advantage. This is why you need to brush your teeth with the special product to apply Lumina. Lantern’s safety documents note that couples who kiss constantly do end up with similar oral microbiomes. So maybe enough kissing - especially kissing just after a dental cleaning when your existing bacteria are at their weakest - could spread the strain accidentally, very slowly. This rate of spread would be comparable to the rate of spread of every other mouth bacterium. 2.2: When a user kisses their newborn baby, will it spread to the baby? Okay, this one is true. Babies have no existing mouth bacteria, and get theirs from their parents’ kisses. Not necessarily their first kiss as a newborn (newborns have no teeth, and BCS3-L1 needs teeth to live), but their first kiss after teeth grow in. If you get this, you’re probably getting it for your whole future family line. 2.3: If you wanted to get rid of it, could you? Some kind of extreme course of oral antibiotics that nukes everything growing in your mouth would probably eradicate BCS3-L1, but this hasn’t been tested and would have side effects. 3: Is it dangerous to have bacteria secreting an antibiotic in your mouth? Does this mean you’re on a weak antibiotic all the time? There are already bacteria secreting antibiotics in your mouth. Microbes are in constant war with other microbes, and antibiotics are one of their favorite weapons - remember, penicillin comes from a fungus. Because bacteria secrete just enough antibiotic to clear their local area, these are tiny quantities, much less than you’d get from taking a medical-grade antibiotic pill. Lantern says the levels of mutacin-1140 dilute to irrelevance “tens of microns” away from the secreting bacteria. In any case, it’s a weak antibiotic that doesn’t survive the digestive tract (Hillman originally hoped to market the antibiotic too, but found it didn’t get absorbed and broke down too quickly). Neither the grad student with the original strain nor any of Hillman’s test subjects had any noticeable health issues. See also Lantern’s Safety Review FAQ. 3.1: Is it bad to disrupt your normal mouth microbiome? When talking about BCS3-L1 “taking over” the mouth, this just means it takes over the streptococcus mutans niche. There are still other bacteria and fungi in the mouth. The mutacin antibiotic might still disrupt these other bacteria (probably not fungi). But strains like BCS3-L1 already exist in the wild (eg the original grad student), and lots of bacteria and fungi secrete antibiotics, so it doesn’t seem like having mutacin-secreting organisms in your mouth makes you some extreme oral microbiome outlier. If you eat a normal Western diet, your mouth microbiome is already pretty far from the design specs, and it’s unclear if using Lumina makes things worse. 3.2: Will the other bacteria develop resistance to the antibiotic? Mutation 4 prevents BCS3-L1 from “leaking” its own resistance. Although in theory other bacteria could develop resistance, mutacin-1140 is a hard antibiotic to develop resistance to, and the other bacteria would have to do it in the short period before BCS3-L1 kills them off and establishes its own home field advantage. In practice, Professor Hillman found that BCS3-L1 remained dominant over many years and nothing developed resistance to it. Even if a mutacin-resistant strain does develop in one person’s mouth, it will have a hard time getting to anyone else’s mouth, so widespread immunity is unlikely. 4: Is it dangerous to have bacteria secreting alcohol in your mouth? Will you get drunk? Most people already have some alcohol-secreting bacteria in their bodies. (there’s a condition called auto-brewery syndrome where those bacteria get out of control and produce enough alcohol to make someone drunk. It’s vanishingly rare in real life, but more common in the legal system: “You gotta believe me, Officer, it was just auto-brewery syndrome!”) The average person has enough of these bacteria in their gut to have a natural blood alcohol level - even after zero drinks - of about 0.1 mg/dl. Under pessimistic assumptions, BCS3-L1 will add another 0.2 mg/dl, bringing the total to 0.3. This is still a pretty normal number that some people have naturally (it would bring the average customer from the ~50th to the ~80th percentile of natural blood alcohol). It’s also far from the usual threshold for feeling tipsy (30 mg/dl) or too drunk to drive (80 mg/dl). Under more realistic assumptions, the amount of alcohol produced by BCS3-L1 probably isn’t significant even by the very low standards of natural blood alcohol concentrations. 4.1: Are there some unusual scenarios where this amount of alcohol might matter? I don’t think Lantern has studied Breathalyzers. Since the alcohol is directly in your mouth, it might have disproportionate effect on a Breathalyzer compared to alcohol in your blood. I think it’s probably still too low to matter, but this is a wild guess. There is conjecture that “non-alcoholic steatohepatitis”, a liver disease in which non-alcoholics get the same kind of liver damage that alcoholics usually get, might be associated with endogenous blood alcohol in the high normal range. If I’m understanding this paper right, it’s probably because the gut produces levels of alcohol consistent with auto-brewery syndrome, the liver goes into overdrive and metabolizes it away (prevents auto-brewery syndrome from developing), but the liver is damaged in the process the same as if it had to go into overdrive to metabolize normal binge drinking. Since BCS3-L1 produces much less alcohol than auto-brewery, I think it wouldn’t cause non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, even though it might produce final blood alcohol levels similar to those associated with the condition. I was originally worried that Lumina might activate Antabuse, an anti-alcoholism drug that prevents drinking by causing a very unpleasant (sometimes dangerous) reaction to ethanol. There are some past cases of Antabuse being activated by really trivial quantities, like the alcohol in a chicken marsala dish or a mouth wash. But no, I think BCS3-L1 is less than this too. Chicken marsala can contain several grams of alcohol per serving, but BCS3-L1 probably only produces a few milligrams per day. If you swallow 1/10 of your mouthwash, that’s about 200 mg of alcohol - again, BCS3-L1 is probably only a few milligrams a day. Antabuse usually activates around a BAC of 5 mg/dl; BCS3-L1 only gives you a BAC of about 0.3 mg/dl. Again, this really is a tiny amount of alcohol. There might be other edge cases like these. Lantern offers a $100 bounty to anyone who can come up with one they haven’t thought of yet (and sometimes extra if you’re willing to help them research them). 4.2: Has anyone tested this in real life? As mentioned before, the mutacin-releasing strain (with mutations 1 and 2) exists in the wild and was extensively tested by Professor Hillman. The full strain with all four mutations has undergone some testing by Dr. Hillman, but nobody had officially infected themselves with it until two months ago, when Aaron finally synthesized it and tried it on himself. He says he’s usually “a lightweight” as far as alcohol goes, and hasn’t felt any different over the past two months. When first infected, BCS3-L1 makes up almost 100% of the microbiome (because you deliberately removed all your other bacteria, then infected yourself with it). Over time, other bacteria creep back in; over an even longer period (years?), BCS3-L1 reclaims lost territory and reaches a steady state. But the point is that Aaron probably has already passed his period of highest BCS3-L1 activity, and felt nothing. My wife infected herself about a month ago, and I haven’t noticed her having worse judgment or becoming more impulsive. But at baseline she was the sort of person who would infect herself with an untested genetically-modified bacteria strain, so there might be floor effects. 5: What’s the plan to sell Lumina? The plan is: Phase 1: (January 2024) Sell to biohackers in Prospera for $20,000.

Inline links: an intranasal COVID vaccine, made a deal, recipe, To apply, Safety Review FAQ, auto-brewery syndrome, in the legal system, this paper, can contain, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!My2N!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9200a48f-2549-40ba-9b4a-73c3e19fe93a_569x393.png

Updates on Lumina Probiotic

April 16, 2024 · Original source

Professor Hillman started a company “Oragenics” and applied for FDA approval. The FDA demanded a study of 100 subjects, all of whom had to be “age 18-30, with removable dentures, living alone and far from school zones”. Hillman wasn’t sure there even were 100 young people with dentures, but the FDA wouldn’t budge from requiring this impossible trial. Hillman gave up and switched to other projects.

A Phase 1b trial, scheduled January 2011. Nobody can find any details on this one, but Oragenics says it never took place because of “the very restrictive study enrollment criteria required by the FDA”.

Orchid Health2 mentions across 2 issues

Orchid Health is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 11, 2023 and July 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Now new company Orchid Health wants me to mention that they are also offering this service"; "In 2023, Orchid Health entered the field". It most often appears alongside 23andMe, 23andme, Aaron.

Article page: Orchid Health
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 11, 2023
Last seen: July 31, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 306 December 11, 2023
Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection July 31, 2025

23andMe 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
Aaron 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
AI risk 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 306

December 11, 2023 · Original source

2: A few years ago I wrote about embryo screening, where people doing IVF with multiple embryos could determine which embryo had the healthiest genes and implant that one. That post focused on a the company called LifeView, mostly because they were the only ones offering the service at the time. Now new company Orchid Health wants me to mention that they are also offering this service. They claim to screen for more rare single-gene disorders than LifeView, as well as the usual polygenic screening for common problems like diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimers (although they may also be more expensive). Their Science and Clinician pages have more information, and their signup link is here.

Inline links: I wrote about embryo screening, LifeView, Orchid Health, Science, Clinician

Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection

July 31, 2025 · Original source

In 2023, Orchid Health entered the field. Unlike Genomic Prediction, which tested only the most important genetic variants, Orchid offers whole genome sequencing, which can detect the de novo3 mutations involved in autism, developmental disorders, and certain other genetic diseases.

Inline links: Orchid Health, 3

Orthodox Church2 mentions across 2 issues

Orthodox Church is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 03, 2023 and October 24, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Putin was on good terms with the Orthodox Church well before then"; "practice and teachings of the Orthodox Church". It most often appears alongside Trump, A Ordem, Abraham Lincoln.

Article page: Orthodox Church
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: August 03, 2023
Last seen: October 24, 2025

Outbound links

https://x.com/AppSpartacus

Issue trail

Dictator Book Club: Putin August 03, 2023
Highlights From The Comments On Fatima October 24, 2025

Trump 2 shared issues
A Ordem 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
AI risk 1 shared issues

Source context

Dictator Book Club: Putin

August 03, 2023 · Original source

Seen on satirical conservative website Babylon Bee. This was exactly what happened with the Volgodonsk apartment bombing. The standard position in the West is now that Putin orchestrated the apartment bombings himself - killing 300 Russians - as a justification for escalating the war on Chechnya and to make himself look good after he framed some perpetrators. The plan worked. Putin won re-election handily. By the time people started questioning the official story, his power was already secure. The questioners faced harassment - typical “warning shots” would be burglaries of their houses with all the valuables left intact, or getting beaten up by random thugs while they were out walking, or being accused of a series of crimes - tax evasion, but if they proved themselves innocent of that, then it was taking bribes, and if they proved themselves innocent of that too, then it was failing to register their businesses correctly. Soon media oligarchs faced the same treatment, and either fled the country or handed their newspapers and TV channels over to the state. Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who had originally helped put Putin in power, kept his own TV station until 2003, when the Russian submarine Kursk sank and Putin faced criticism for bungling the rescue. Putin summoned Berezovsky, the former kingmaker and the man still in charge of Channel One, and demanded that the oligarch hand over his shares in the television company. “I said no, in the presence of [chief of stff] Voloshin,” Berezovsky told me. “So Putin changed his tone of voice then and said, ‘See you later, then, Boris Abramovich.' and got up to leave. And I said, “Volodya [nickname for Vladimir], this is goodbye.’ We ended on this note, full of pathos […] Within days, [Berezovsky] had left for France, then moved on to Great Britain, joining his former [business] rival Gusinsky in political exile. Soon enough, there was a awarrant out for his arrest in Russia and he had surrendered his shares of Channel One. Over the next few years, Putin centralized authority further. He got Parliament to agree to constitutional changes where governors served at his whim, and members of Parliament were elected by governors. “The only official in the Russian Federation directly elected by the people was the President.” Then he made it clear that governors who kept his favor would keep their jobs, and vice versa. He developed an entire colorful vocabulary for threatening people, moving beyond traditional standbys like “Nice house you’ve got there, shame if something were to happen to it” into new realms of intimidation. A Prime Minister who quit after Putin arrested one too many media tycoon was given the parting words “If you ever have a problem with the tax police, you may ask for help, but please come to me personally.” An urban legend says that leading dissident Marina Salye received a New Year’s postcard from Putin: “I wish you a Happy New Year and the health to enjoy it.” By the time the next election came around in 2004, the vote counts were clearly fake. Gessen doubts Putin even had to give a direct order to falsify them; everyone was so desperate for his goodwill that they did so all on their own. The problem was less that honest officials refused to stuff the ballot box, and more that some bureaucrats were so desperate to make sure Putin knew they were complying with his (implied) desires that they faked the vote in extremely obvious ways, without even a nod to keeping it plausible. The Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe reported “The elections . . . failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments, calling into question Russia’s willingness to move towards European standards for democratic elections.” The New York Times reported something entirely different, publishing a condescending but approving editorial titled Russians Inch Toward Democracy. Putin had sunk far enough to earn the same dubious honor as Stalin: praise from the New York Times. IV. The Very-Briefly-Reluctant Culture Warrior One thing missing from this book: anything about religion, nationalism, gays, or the culture wars. This isn’t because Masha Gessen doesn’t care about these things: when the book was written, they self-described as “the only publicly out gay person in [Russia]”; since then (like everyone else) they have declared themselves nonbinary with they/them pronouns. In an afterword, Gessen remedies this omission. For his first decade, Putin wasn’t too interested in culture war topics; his ideology began and ended with “Russia strong”. But Gessen says that after another rigged election in 2012, people grew tired and started protesting Putin. Putin’s propaganda department made various accusations against the rioters, and one of them - they’re gay - seemed to stick. Putin had stumbled by coincidence onto a narrative that resonated with the Russian people. A few months later, a deliberately provocative punk band called Pussy Riot invaded a cathedral and sung a song whose chorus was “the Lord is shit”. Putin announced he was against this sort of thing, again his popularity soared, and again he took notice. Since then, he’s leaned into various culture-warrior roles that other people have cast upon him - protector of traditional values, leader of the conservative world, something something Eurasianism - without giving many clues how much he believes them vs. considers them useful bulwarks for his own power. Is it true that Putin only leaned into traditional values after 2012? I only looked into this question briefly, and it seems like he was on good terms with the Orthodox Church well before then. But some of this could have just been his native authoritarianism; just as he wanted to consolidate all media and business under his control, he wanted to consolidate all religion, and the Orthodox Church was the natural vehicle for, and a cooperative partner in, doing this. Both shared suspicion of invasive Western religions and Islam; both liked the idea of Russia being united in a top-down structure. God doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with it. V. Could It Happen Here? …is the question we ask at the end of every Dictator Book Club. The Man Without A Face makes it sound like Putin was able to consolidate power and become a dictator because: He led the security services

Inline links: Babylon Bee, Russians Inch Toward Democracy, he was on good terms with

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

Ottoman Empire2 mentions across 2 issues

Ottoman Empire is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 18, 2021 and May 21, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Medieval Turkey was dominated by the Ottoman Empire"; "Zeihan gives us a story of the Ottoman Empire entering a prolonged decline". It most often appears alongside China, EU, France.

Article page: Ottoman Empire
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: May 21, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower May 21, 2021

China 2 shared issues
EU 2 shared issues
France 2 shared issues
Nebraska 2 shared issues
Ottoman Empire 2 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The New Sultan

March 18, 2021 · Original source

Medieval Turkey was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, officially an Islamic caliphate though in practice only inconsistently religious, ruled by autocratic sultans and a dizzying series of provincial governors. As time passed, they fell further and further behind Western Europe; by World War I, they were a mess. As the stress of the war caused the empire to fracture, General Mustafa Kemal seized power, reorganized the scraps of Ottoman Anatolia into modern Turkey, and was renamed ATATURK, meaning "Father of Turks".

Ataturk was born in Ottoman-controlled Greece, and was typical of a class of military officers at the time who were well-educated and "Europeanized". He wanted to turn backwards Turkey into an advanced Western country - and Western countries were mostly secular. He saw Islam - the religion of the old Ottoman Empire - as a roadblock, and passed various laws meant to relegate it to the margins of public life.

Though the government protested these threats from the military, a week later tens of thousands of women in Ankara held a demonstration against Islamists called the "Women's March Against Sharia", aligning many civil-society groups and opposition leaders with the secular military. As tensions between the TAF and the government continued to escalate, on February 28 [1997] the military-dominated Turkish National Security Council held a meeting to discuss the issue of "reactionism", a code word for Islamism since the late days of the Ottoman Empire. Following the meeting, they issued a list of 18 policy recommendations, making it clear that failure to comply would result in serious sanctions. One of the most important "recommendations" was the imposition of eight years' mandatory secular schooling, which would force the closure of Imam Hatip middle schools. [...]

Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower

May 21, 2021 · Original source

Zeihan gives us a story of the Ottoman Empire entering a prolonged decline as deepwater navigation technologies took off in the fourteenth century. These technologies enabled the European powers (first Portugal and Spain, and then England) to capture increasing shares of trade with Asia, dropping prices in Europe and depriving the Ottomans of much of the income to which they had grown accustomed. Most significantly, they turned “the ocean from a death sentence to a sort of giant river.” Trade became global, but it was still mostly among people with nearby water-based transportation.

Where does Zeihan go wrong? In a book that covers everything from the dawn of sedentary agriculture to the present, from the Ottoman Empire to American hegemony, I’m sure there are a few errors. One shouldn’t nitpick though; we should focus on his thesis, his model, and his main predictions. So what about the overall thesis? The main objection I had was the tension between Zeihan’s competing stories of why we get rich. He might not even see that he told competing stories about that.

OWID2 mentions across 2 issues

OWID is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between July 01, 2021 and January 14, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Here’s OWID on absolute GDP growth since 1950"; "With apologies to OWID". It most often appears alongside Africa, Allodium, Alvaro de Menard.

Article page: OWID
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: July 01, 2021
Last seen: January 14, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On "How Asia Works" July 01, 2021
Subscrive Drive '25 + Free Unlocked Posts January 14, 2025

Africa 1 shared issues
Allodium 1 shared issues
Alvaro de Menard 1 shared issues
Astral Codex Ten 1 shared issues
Biden 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On "How Asia Works"

July 01, 2021 · Original source

Yeah, this depends a lot on how you look at it. Here’s OWID on absolute GDP growth since 1950:

Subscrive Drive '25 + Free Unlocked Posts

January 14, 2025 · Original source

With apologies to OWID If you subscribe, you’ll get access to subscriber-only posts. Last year, those were: Your Name Was Changed At Ellis Island, short fiction based on the claim that nobody’s name was really changed at Ellis Island.

Inline links: OWID, Your Name Was Changed At Ellis Island, the claim

Oxbridge2 mentions across 2 issues

Oxbridge is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 09, 2021 and December 09, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "his screening mechanism was as successful as the Ivies or Oxbridge when they screen for bright people"; "This is why public schools and Oxbridge became important in the first place". It most often appears alongside Ivies, Ivy League, 417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire.

Article page: Oxbridge
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: November 09, 2021
Last seen: December 09, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Secrets Of The Great Families November 09, 2021
Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise December 09, 2022

Ivies 2 shared issues
Ivy League 2 shared issues
417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire 1 shared issues
Aage Bohr 1 shared issues
Abanindranath Tagore 1 shared issues

Source context

Secrets Of The Great Families

November 09, 2021 · Original source

We can formalize this objection using IQ, which is nice and quantifiable. Suppose Erasmus Darwin had a genius-level IQ of 150. And suppose that he tried very hard to marry a bright woman, and his screening mechanism was as successful as the Ivies or Oxbridge when they screen for bright people - in that case his wife would have the same IQ as an average Ivy Leaguer, maybe 130ish. We would predict their average child to have an IQ of 124. Why is the average lower than either parent? Regression to the mean - IQ is probably a combination of genes and random factors, and if your IQ is very high it means you probably have a combination of good genes and good random dice rolls, and even though you can pass on the good genes your kids will probably only get average dice rolls.

Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise

December 09, 2022 · Original source

Britain's a good place to see this. The 19th Century created a lot of new "millionaires," but they tried their hardest to ape the aristocracy then intermarried with them (changing them slightly in the process - mid-Victorian aristocrats were notably bourgousified compared to the 18th century). This is why public schools and Oxbridge became important in the first place vs. a purely hereditary system.

o3 AI1 mentions across 1 issues

o3 AI is a recurring organization 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 "I made this table with the help of the o3 AI". It most often appears alongside Aftab, Alex Young, Arthur Jensen.

Reference entry: o3 AI
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 26, 2025
Last seen: June 26, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

June 26, 2025 · Original source

Swedish National Sample: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01500-2/tables/2, Table 2B, first column, second and third rows. 11I made this table with the help of the o3 AI. It gave me a longer list of seven studies, but admitted that many of them didn’t list heritabilities and it was calculating them itself based on other statistics that were reported. In some cases, I was able to replicate its calculations; in others, it seemed to be hallucinating the relevant numbers, or had calculations complicated enough that I couldn’t prove that it wasn’t. I excluded two studies that o3 said had good data, but where it couldn’t explain its sources well enough to satisfy me. These were Kendler et al 2015 (o3 claimed heritability of 0.5 - 0.6) and Capron & Duyme 1989 (o3 claimed heritability of 0.4). Here are sources for the remaining: Texas adoption: https://gwern.net/doc/genetics/heritable/adoption/2021-loehlin.pdf , Table 6 . Heritability = 2*correlations. The first row of the table lists three parent-child IQ correlations (IQBM): 0.3, 0.34, and 0.35. I took the median, 0.34, and doubled it to 0.68.

Inline links: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01500-2/tables/2, 11, Kendler et al 2015, Capron & Duyme 1989, https://gwern.net/doc/genetics/heritable/adoption/2021-loehlin.pdf

OAers1 mentions across 1 issues

OAers is a recurring organization 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 "(OAers may have had faith in scaling)". It most often appears alongside 2013, Agricultural Revolution, AI.

Reference entry: OAers
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 04, 2022
Last seen: April 04, 2022

Outbound links

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

Source context

Yudkowsky Contra Christiano On AI Takeoff Speeds

April 04, 2022 · Original source

GPT-3 further showed completely unpredicted emergence of capabilities across downstream tasks which are not measured in PTB perplexity. There is nothing obvious about a PTB BPC of 0.80 that causes it to be useful where 0.90 is largely useless and 0.95 is a laughable toy. (OAers may have had faith in scaling, but they could not have told you in 2015 that interesting behavior would start at ??(1b), and it'd get really cool at ??(100b).) That's why it's such a useless metric. There's only one thing that a PTB perplexity can tell you, under the pretraining paradigm: when you have reached human AGI level. (Which is useless for obvious reasons: much like saying that "if you hear the revolver click, the bullet wasn't in that chamber and it was safe". Surely true, but a bit late.) It tells you nothing about intermediate levels. I'm reminded of the Steven Kaas line: “Why idly theorize when you can JUST CHECK and find out the ACTUAL ANSWER to a superficially similar-sounding question SCIENTIFICALLY?”

Inline links: Steven Kaas line

Oakland teachers union1 mentions across 1 issues

Oakland teachers union is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 18, 2024 and January 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Oakland teachers union stages 'teach-in' where teachers urge students to support Palestine". It most often appears alongside @april, @somefoundersalt, ACX.

Reference entry: Oakland teachers union
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 18, 2024
Last seen: January 18, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For January 2024 January 18, 2024

@april 1 shared issues
@somefoundersalt 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI accelerationism 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For January 2024

January 18, 2024 · Original source

38: Related: Oakland teachers union stages “teach-in” where teachers urge students to support Palestine and protest Israel during class time; Jewish students / families feel unsafe and flee the district to neighboring districts and charter schools. Some friends recently set up a tiny home/private school in Oakland that can fit another few 5-9 year olds, tuition ~$1200/month, email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com if you want an introduction.

Inline links: and flee the district to neighboring districts and charter schools

Obama EEOC1 mentions across 1 issues

Obama EEOC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 01, 2024 and May 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Obama EEOC sued a corporate events planner". It most often appears alongside #MeToo, #StopAAPIHate, #StopAAPIHate.

Reference entry: Obama EEOC
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 01, 2024
Last seen: May 01, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The Origins Of Woke May 01, 2024

#MeToo 1 shared issues
#StopAAPIHate 1 shared issues
#StopAAPIHate 1 shared issues
9-11 1 shared issues
AAPI 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The Origins Of Woke

May 01, 2024 · Original source

Have fun! This satisfied the not-really-paying attention white electorate, because politicians could tell them that “quotas are illegal, we’re sure not doing anything like that”. And it satisfied civil rights activists, because inevitably businesses/departments came up with secret ways to favor minorities until representation reached the level where they wouldn’t get sued. A recent case illustrates the results of this double-bind. The FAA hires air traffic controllers. They used to judge applicants based on a test which measured their skills at air traffic control. This resulted in comparatively few black air traffic controllers. Various civil rights groups put pressure on them, and they replaced the test with a “biographical questionnaire”. The questionnaire asked weird unrelated questions about your life, and you got points if you gave the answer that the FAA thought black people might give (for example, if you said your worst subject was science). This still didn’t get them enough black employees, so they secretly told black communities exactly what answers to put on the questionnaire to go through. It’s easy to blame the FAA here, but (Hanania says) civil rights law almost forces you to do something like this. People tried simpler things, like keeping a test but giving minority applicants extra points. The courts and civil rights bureaucracy struck these down as illegal. The almost-explicit policy was that you had to get more minority employees, but you had to hide it carefully enough that the American people (who were still against racial preferences) wouldn’t catch on. Disparate Impact Not only can you not explicitly discriminate, you can’t use hiring criteria that “accidentally” discriminate by favoring one race over another. To give a stupid example, if someone refused to hire anyone from Detroit, this would have “disparate impact” since Detroit is a majority black city. If you allowed stuff like this, racists could covertly discriminate by using these sorts of rules. But Hanania challenges us to think of any criterion that isn’t potentially racially biased. For example, we know universities discriminate against Asians, so only hiring people with college degrees is a “disparate impact”. We know that more men than women have experience as miners, so a mining company only hiring employees with experience is a “disparate impact”. Since whites typically do better on IQ tests than blacks, and all cognitive skills are correlated with IQ, the Supreme Court decided in Duke vs. Griggs that all tests of any ability were potentially disparate impact, and you opened yourself to lawsuits if you used any of them. (in theory, companies are allowed to use tests and similar criteria if they prove them nondiscriminatory. But the standards for this - they have to prove it for each race and each job site individually - are so high that, in practice, few companies take this route.) Since this technically banned all possible criteria, companies couldn’t follow the letter of the law. Instead they hired fancy lawyers to tell them which way the winds were blowing. The lawyers told them that college degrees were okay, resumes with biographies and experience were maybe okay, and interviews were okay. Tests were out. Anything more creative was out. A disparate impact case made the news recently. The Biden EEOC sued convenience store chain Sheetz for running criminal background checks on their employees. They didn’t allege any intentional discrimination. They just said that more minorities fail criminal background checks than whites, therefore it’s disparate impact, therefore Sheetz has to drop the criminal background check. (the article links to another case where the Obama EEOC sued a corporate events planner, demanding they give monetary compensation to an employee who they had refused to hire simply because he had committed attempted murder and lied about it on their job application) Is Sheetz the only company that does criminal background checks on its employees? Do they do the background checks differently than any other company? My understanding is that the technical answer is that to do background checks without being sued, you have to prove in some very formal way that the specific crimes you’re looking for would be bad for your specific industry, and maybe Sheetz didn’t prove that a general history of violence was bad for convenience stores. But if this sounds kind of fake to you, and you’re wondering whether the real rule is “the government has wide discretion to prosecute whoever it feels like”, Hanania’s answer is “definitely yes”. His position is that all of these rules are so broad that every company is always violating them in some sense. No company has exactly the same distribution of minorities as “the applicant pool”, whatever that is. No company has some magical hiring rule that has literally zero correlation with race, especially since black people are on average poorer, less educated, and less likely to have any given achievement (so any attempt to choose better employees over worse will necessarily disadvantage them). In real life, the bureaucracy’s rules are something like “don’t do anything different from other companies in your industry, and especially don’t be caught seeming less woke”. Hanania argues this creates an arms race / ratchet. Every company wants to be at least 50th percentile wokeness or above. But not every company can be above average. So everybody gets more and more woke, with no end in sight. Continuing with Sheetz: according to the article on the lawsuit, in 2020 they “introduced the IDEA initiative”, ie Inclusion Diversity Equality & Accessibility. Their website has a big picture of a black woman saying “We’re Building A Great Place To Work For All”, and boasts that they’ve created a special forum for black employees. They’ve made 60% of managers women, started a Woman’s Leadership Program, offered generous maternity leave, and written letters to the Chamber of Commerce on how the George Floyd murder made them realize “we quickly needed to learn, listen, be vulnerable and humbly approach . . . culture-shifting work”. Companies hope that if they do enough of this stuff, the EEOC will agree they’re an ally in the civil rights project and not sue them under their wide discretion to sue basically anyone. Too bad they’re getting sued anyway; some other convenience store must have done more of this stuff. Surely some executive is wishing they had just tried having one more mandatory diversity training… Harassment Law Harassment law might win the award for most complicated chain of reasoning from real legislation to enforcement: Legislation says you can’t discriminate against minorities

Inline links: A recent case illustrates the results of this double-bind, sued convenience store chain Sheetz, another case, Their website, letters

Obetrol Pharmaceuticals1 mentions across 1 issues

Obetrol Pharmaceuticals is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 25, 2021 and January 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "a shady outfit called Obetrol Pharmaceuticals made a popular over-the-counter diet pill called Obetrol". It most often appears alongside Adderall, ADHD, AHS.

Reference entry: Obetrol Pharmaceuticals
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 25, 2021
Last seen: January 25, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Know Your Amphetamines January 25, 2021

Adderall 1 shared issues
ADHD 1 shared issues
AHS 1 shared issues
amphetamine 1 shared issues
Arnold 1 shared issues

Source context

Know Your Amphetamines

January 25, 2021 · Original source

In the 1950s, a shady outfit called Obetrol Pharmaceuticals made a popular over-the-counter diet pill called Obetrol. If you're familiar with any of: the 1950s, shady pharma, or diet pills, your next question will be "did it contain amphetamines?" and the answer is yes, loads of them. Obetrol was a mix of four different amphetamine salts: racemic amphetamine sulfate, dextroamphetamine sulfate, methamphetamine saccharate, and methamphetamine hydrochloride. Why did they need four different kinds of speed? I'm not sure. The uncharitable explanation is: for the same reason Dr. Nick's Cure-All Home Remedy has twelve different herbs, ie customers think things with more ingredients are better.

As usual in pharma, someone bought Obetrol Pharmaceuticals, then someone else bought them, and after a few iterations of this, all their intellectual property ended up with a company called Richwood. They decided to rebrand Obetrol as "Adderall" and pitch it as an ADHD cure.

OBNYC1 mentions across 1 issues

OBNYC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Group info: OBNYC has a Discord and a Google Group ; the Google Group is the main mailing list we use for events". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry: OBNYC
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 26, 2022
Last seen: August 26, 2022

Outbound links

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/14/viktor-orbans-far-right-vision-for-europe

Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places August 26, 2022

't Heem 1 shared issues
40 Coffee 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner St., Culver City 1 shared issues
12 Rotunda Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903 1 shared issues
1275 1st Street 1 shared issues

Source context

What Your Doctor Spends 80% Of Their Time Doing

August 26, 2022 · Original source

HUNTSVILLE, AL Contact: Mike, mjhouse[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 3:00 PM Location: Barnes & Noble – 300 The Bridge St #100, Huntsville, AL 35806. I'll be in the cafe with a sign that says ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 866MP88H+53 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Barnes & Noble has an area for little kids. If you want to bring a service animal, that's probably fine, but I doubt they allow pets. PHOENIX, AZ Contact: Ben Morin, benjamin[dot]j[dot]morin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 15, 1:00 PM Location: Thirsty Lion Pub in Tempe. I will have a table with an ACX sign. Coordinates: 8559FVVQ+6C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: This will be our 5th meetup (started during the meetups everywhere last year). Notes: Please email if interested to be added to the email list, even if you can't make this event BELMONT, CA Contact: Moshe Z., belmont-acx[at]devskillup[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 2:00 PM Location: Twin Pines Park, Picnic Tables. The table will have some sign saying 'ACX Meetup' on it. Coordinates: 849VGP8C+RRG Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: You can join the mailing list here. BERKELEY, CA Contact: Scott Time: Sunday, September 18, 1:00 PM Location: Rose Garden Inn, a rationalist event space at 2740 Telegraph Ave. Come in through the front gate on Telegraph. Coordinates: 849VVP5R+X7V Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: The Bay rationality community has a mailing list, a Discord server, and a Facebook group. There are dinner meetups every Thursday at 7 PM in the East Bay, and occasional meetups in SF and South Bay. FILLMORE, CA Contact: Ryan, wiserd[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Wiserd#0906 Time: Saturday, October 1st, 6:00 PM Location: It's my house. There are a bunch of plants on the porch and garbage bins in the driveway. Coordinates: 856393VX+VQ Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP to my email or Discord. Kids and dogs are welcome in the back yard. Full vaccinations (on the honor system) and masks required. GRASS VALLEY, CA Contact: Max Harms, raelifin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Condon Park by the prospector statue. In the case of rain we'll change the location to a residence, so RSVP to get updated! Coordinates: 84FW6W8H+C5 Event link(s): LessWrong IRVINE, CA Contact: Nick C, cohenskijanuary1[at]mail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM Location: University Town Center Coordinates: 8554M526+7H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet once a month at the same location. LOS ANGELES, CA Contact: Vishal Prasad (koreindian), vprasadcs[at]gmail[dot]com, Contact me on Discord. I am "Vishal" on the server. Time: Saturday, October 8, 6:30 PM Location: 11841 Wagner St., Culver City, CA 90039 Coordinates: 8553XHWM+GP Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet weekly every Wednesday. We have been around for over 8 years. We discuss articles, watch movies, lift weights. We have a Discord server, a LessWrong group, and a website! Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much food to get. NEWPORT BEACH, CA Contact: Michael M, michaelmichalchik[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, August 27, 2:00 PM Location: Picnic tables next to 1900 Port Carlow community clubhouse. The park is verdant and pleasant and easy to access. Free street parking nearby. In case of bad weather, we have a couple of near by places to relocate to. Coordinates: 8554J48R+WCX Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We will meet most Saturdays at 2pm until whenever. There will be short suggested readings and question most weeks to spur conversation, but they are optional. Each week we will ask if people have had something happen recently that surprised them or changed the way they looked at the world. Something that should or did update their priors. Participation is optional. Notes: Its a public park with tables and BBQ's so you can bring food and well behaved pets. We may regularly go on casual walks in the surrounding area. SAN DIEGO, CA Contact: Julius, julius[dot]simonelli[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 3:00 PM Location: We will meet up in Bird Park. I will be wearing a red shirt. Coordinates: 8544PVQ8+Q7 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Join our Discord server SAN FRANCISCO, CA Contact: Derek Pankaew, derekpankaew[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 11:00 AM Location: We'll between in the Panhandle, between Ashbury and Masonic, with a 'ACX' sign. Coordinates: 849VQHC3+V8 Event link(s): LessWrong SAN JOSE, CA Contact: David Friedman, ddfr[at]daviddfriedman[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: 3806 Williams Rd, San Jose, CA 95117 Coordinates: 849W825J+6P Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Before Covid we hosted every month or two. No structure, just conversation and food. We feed everyone who is still there at dinner time. We have done it once or twice since Covid. I have an email list of interested people. Notes: Kids are welcome. Please RSVP to my email so I will have a rough count of how many we are feeding. SAN MARCOS, CA Contact: Eric F., EricF14159[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 2:00 PM Location: Hollandia Park Soccer Field. At the tables near the top parking lot. Coordinates: 85544VW4+RV Event link(s): LessWrong BOULDER, CO Contact: Josh Sacks, josh[dot]sacks+acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 16, 3:00 PM Location: 9191 Tahoe Ln, Boulder, CO 80301 Coordinates: 85GP2V96+JQ Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so we know ~ how many people to expect! CARBONDALE, CO Contact: Nick, naj[at]njarboe[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 1:00 PM Location: Sopris Park - Center covered picnic tables - blue shirt with ACX sign on table Coordinates: 85FJ9QXP+QMF Event link(s): LessWrong DENVER, CO Contact: Ian Philips, iansphilips[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: palebone#2796 Time: Sunday, October 2, 11:00 AM Location: We'll be in the backyard patio of St. Mark's Coffee House. I'll wear a white shirt with (my brothers') baby faces on it and have a brown hat on. Coordinates: 85FQP2VP+9R Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet typically 4 times a year. LAKEWOOD, CO Contact: Steven Zuber, stevenjzuber[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, October 5, 7:00 PM Location: We meet in the clubhouse located in this townhome community: 8769 W Cornell Ave Lakewood, CO 80227 Coordinates: 85FPMW64+MW Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We meet the first Wednesday of every month. Informal, casual atmosphere with occasional presentations by people. Notes: Check the Meetup page or Facebook group for updates. FAIRFIELD, CT Contact: Justin Barclay, barclay[dot]justin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 10:00 AM Location: South Pine Creek Beach. I'll set up near the lifeguard stand. Coordinates: 87H84PCH+CM Event link(s): LessWrong MANCHESTER, CT Contact: Mike, park-mike[at]outlook[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 5:00 PM Location: Near flagpole on top of hill Coordinates: 87H9QFFH+J7 Event link(s): LessWrong NEW HAVEN, CT Contact: RM, acx[dot]meetup[dot]nhv[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 12:30 PM Location: Cross Campus (Yale University), New Haven, CT 06511. We'll be on the grass on the northern half of Cross Campus, closest to Sterling Memorial Library. I'll be wearing an orange shirt. Coordinates: 87H9836C+8VG Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Feel free to bring friends! The vibe will be welcoming and relaxed, and you can stay for any amount of time. Please email me if you're thinking about coming so I can get the right number of Insomnia cookies! WASHINGTON, DC Contact: John Bennett, WashingtonDCAstralCodexTen[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 6:00 PM Location: Froggy Bottom Pub: 2021 K Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20006 Coordinates: 87C4WX33+3J Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: The Washington DC ACX/SSC group has been active since the first Meetups Everywhere in 2017. We have Monthly Socials downtown, hikes, board game days, and other cultural events. We're looking to spin up more rationality Dojo-type events with nearby groups in the coming months. Notes: We've rented out the Froggy Bottom Pub for the night, dinner and soft drinks will be provided. Alcohol available for purchase if desired, but no purchases are required. Metered street parking on nearby blocks is free after 6:30. Closest Metros are Farragut West and Farragut North. CAPE CORAL / FORT MYERS, FL Contact: Shawn Spilman, shawn[dot]spilman[at]outlook[dot]com, 508 655 8123 Time: Sunday, October 2, 1:00 PM Location: 929 SW 54th Ln, Cape Coral, FL 33914 Coordinates: 76RWH224+44 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: RSVP via email. I can be flexible about the date. GULF BREEZE / PENSACOLA, FL Contact: Christian, christian[dot]h[dot]williams[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, October 12, 7:30 PM Location: The Bridge Bar - 33 Gulf Breeze Pkwy A, Gulf Breeze, FL 32561 Coordinates: 862J9RCF+G6 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by emailing me. Thanks! If I don't hear from anyone, I won't be there. I work for Metaculus, but promise not to talk your ear off about forecasting. (Unless you want it talked off.) MIAMI, FL Contact: Eric Magro, eric135033[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: eric135#4943 Time: Sunday, September 11, 5:00 PM Location: Buckminster Fuller Fly's Eye Dome 140 NE 39th St #001, Miami, FL 33137 ----- Look for a paper sign on a table that says ACX MEETUP west of the dome. Coordinates: 76QXRR65+V2 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Miami ACX started in 2017. Our official meetup happens monthly in either Miami or Broward. There are activities happening on a weekly basis from Miami to Palm Beach. We have a Facebook group, Discord server, and Meetup.com group. ORLANDO, FL Contact: Noah Topper, noah[dot]topper[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 7:00 PM Location: 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL. We'll be meeting up at UCF's pavilion near Garages A and I. I'll have a pretty ACX Meetup sign. Coordinates: 76WWJQ2X+82 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We try to meet up once a month, so far they've just been casual social meetups with natural discussions of rationality topics. Here's our Discord link :) Notes: RSVPs on LessWrong would be greatly appreciated. :) TALLAHASSEE, FL Contact: JF, jf19o[at]fsu[dot]edu Time: Monday, August 29, 2:00 PM Location: Landis, FSU. I will be wearing a black shirt Coordinates: 862QCPR3+PX Event link(s): LessWrong ATHENS, GA Contact: Dallon, knox[dot]dallon[dot]a[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: leonard#4208 Time: Saturday, October 15, 3:00 PM Location: Hendershots on Prince Avenue Coordinates: 865RXJ68+2W Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I might bring some board games ATLANTA, GA Contact: Steve French, steve[at]digitaltoolfactory[dot]net Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: Bold Monk Brewing - 1737 Ellsworth Industrial Blvd NW suite d-1 · Atlanta, GA (upstairs – look for the ACX Atlanta sign) Coordinates: 865QRH2F+V8 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We've been in existence for four years – we have a dedicated crew and a very active Slack group Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or Meetup.com HONOLULU, HI Contact: Matt Popovich, mattpopovich[at]outlook[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 4:00 PM Location: We'll meet at Magic Island at Ala Moana Beach Park, 1201 Ala Moana Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96814. From the parking lot, walk along the left side of the peninsula out toward Magic Island Lagoon. We're usually near the end of the peninsula, somewhere around the bathroom building. Look for the large 'ACX' sign. Coordinates: 73H475M3+JP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Honolulu Rationality hosts discussion meetups about twice a month in Ala Moana Beach Park. Check us out on our website BOISE, ID Contact: Julia and John, jae[dot]miomu[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, October 7, 6:00 PM Location: Old Timer's Shelter in Ann Morrison Park. I will have an ACX sign. Coordinates: 85M5JQ6P+96 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP and feel free to bring kids. CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, IL Contact: Ben, cu[dot]acx[dot]meetups[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 9, 7:00 PM Location: Siebel Center for Computer Science, Room 4403 Coordinates: 86GH4Q7G+H8F Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Discord server Notes: RSVPs are appreciated but not at all required. You can RSVP by email or by pinging me in the Discord server. Suggested entrance is the East side of the building (see Coordinates) - we'll try to make sure at least that door is unlocked, but if it isn't then ping us on email or Discord. CHICAGO, IL Contact: Todd, info[at]chicagorationality[dot]com, https://chicagorationality.com/ Time: Sunday, September 18, 1:00 PM Location: Grant Park - North side of Balbo between the tracks and Columbus Coordinates: 86HJV9FH+84 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Chicago Rationality does a monthly discussion meetup (typically the first Saturday of the month) and a monthly social meetup (typically the third weekend of the month) Notes: Sign up for our email list to be notified of future meetups EVANSTON, IL Contact: Uzair, uzairq93[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 7:00 PM Location: 626 Church Street, Evanston IL 60201 Coordinates: 86JJ28X9+5WQ Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: The venue is a pub but it's really more of a restaurant, big long tables available so space should be fine and non drinkers shouldn't feel too out of place. BLOOMINGTON, IN Contact: Avery, acxbloomington[at]fastmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 16, 2:00 PM Location: Switchyard Park. Will be at one of the tables near the Rogers Street parking lot. I will bring a cardboard sign that says “ACX”. Coordinates: 86FM4FX6+4Q Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We met last year for Meetups Everywhere and it was fun! Here's a link to our Discord. Notes: You can RSVP via Discord or email, but you are encouraged to show up even if you did not RSVP! WEST LAFAYETTE, IN Contact: NR, mapreader4[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 1:00 PM Location: 1275 1st Street, West Lafayette, IN 47906. We'll be in the south of the Earhart Hall lobby (not the dining court) near the piano, and I will be wearing a green shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 86GMC3GG+728 Event link(s): LessWrong LEXINGTON, KY Contact: Nathan, nwculley[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 7:00 PM Location: Blue Stallion Brewing. 610 W. 3rd St., Lexington, KY 40508. We will have a sign indicating we are the ACX meetup. Coordinates: 86CQ3F4X+VF Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet 1-2 times a month to talk about ACX, books, memes, etc., often over drinks and board games. NEW ORLEANS, LA Contact: Blake, blake[at]philosophers[dot]group Time: Sunday, September 4, 11:11 AM Location: Petite Clouet Cafe. Look for the group with an iPad that has a People’s Pint sticker. Coordinates: 76XFXX73+8R Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Website Notes: Hybrid in-person and online, video link sent weekly. Email for the link. BOSTON, MA Contact: Robi Rahman, robirahman94[at]gmail[dot]com, 7039818526 Time: Saturday, September 10, 5:00 PM Location: Boston Common, at the Parkman Bandstand gazebo Coordinates: 87JC9W3M+PR Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com Notes: We'll be providing food at the meetup, and giving out free books related to ACX, rationality, and effective altruism. Email the hosts if you'd like a particular book or you have any dietary restrictions. Our group is also doing a tour of the JFK Presidential Library on September 9, you’re welcome to join! NORTHAMPTON, MA Contact: Alex, alex[at]alexliebowitz[dot]com Time: Friday, September 9, 6:00 PM Location: The Deck, 125A Pleasant St., Northampton MA 01096. The official address is bizarre and inaccurate; it's the outdoor dining part of a group of bars & restaurants in a former rail station... a whole block away from Pleasant St. The simplest way to get to The Deck is to enter The Platform, one of the other restaurants, by its street entrance around 36 Strong Ave., here (make sure to look at street view). Go inside and ask them to show you to The Deck. We'll have a sign. Coordinates: 87J9899F+H7H Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We started in the 2018 Meetups Everywhere and is still going strong. We aim to meet about once every two weeks. At most meetups we get about 5-7 people out of a rotation of 15-20; Meetups Everywhere and other special events tend to bring in a few more than usual. We're a totally social meetup with no 'format' or suggested readings. Although it's not rare for us to touch on ACX articles and related topics, the conversation varies wildly, and you are welcome even if you're the most occasional ACX reader. Notes: We have a (not very active) Discord where you can DM me or post on a public channel. I'm most responsive by email. There is a small chance we'll have to change the location to somewhere else in Northampton. Please check the Less Wrong or Facebook posts on or after August 26 to get the final word on location. BALTIMORE, MD Contact: Rivka, rivka[at]adrusi[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 7:00 PM Location: UMBC outside of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, on the north side. I will have a sign that says ACX meetup. Parking is free on the weekends. Edit: Rain is forecasted; if it’s raining, we will be inside of the Performing Arts building, on the ground floor just inside the entrance. Coordinates: 87F5774P+53 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet Sundays at 7pm — half are in person and half are virtual. Notes: There will be pizza and drinks DETROIT, MI Contact: Matt Arnold, matt[dot]mattarn[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Tuesday, September 20, 7:00 PM Location: Tenacity Craft, 8517 2nd Ave, Detroit, MI 48202 Coordinates: 86JR9WG9+R6 Event link(s): LessWrong MINNEAPOLIS, MN Contact: Timothy, tmbond[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: Meet at the picnic tables near the southeast corner of Powderhorn Park - the ones by the parking lot. I will be wearing a green Google t-shirt and have a sign that says ACX. Coordinates: 86P8WPRW+76 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I will bring some snacks (but not a full lunch, so eat before or bring something if you'll be that hungry). Please RSVP on LessWrong. KANSAS CITY, MO Contact: Alex, alex[dot]hedtke[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 6:30 PM Location: We will be in the courtyard above Whole Foods (which is also an apartment complex). You can enter through the apartment lobby, located on Oak Street. We will have runners shepherding people from the entrance up to the courtyard. Coordinates: 86F72CM8+RR Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com SAINT LOUIS, MO Contact: JohnBuridan, littlejohnburidan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 1:00 PM Location: Lily Pond Shelter, Tower Grove Park, St. Louis Coordinates: 86CFJP4R+XV Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: BYOB WEST PLAINS, MO Contact: Liam, liamhession[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 12:00 PM Location: 10/40 Coffee, 24 Court Square, West Plains, MO Coordinates: 868CP4HW+CV Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Hoping to get anyone from around the Ozark region DURHAM, NC Contact: Will Jarvis, willdjarvis[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 8, 7:30 PM Location: Ponysaurus Brewing Company, 219 Hood St, Durham Coordinates: 8773X4Q3+QW Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet weekly! We also have a Discord LAKEWOOD, NJ Contact: Ben L, mywebdev3[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 29, 8:30 PM Location: TBD Event link(s): LessWrong MORRISTOWN, NJ Contact: Matt, matt[dot]brooks[at]impactmarkets[dot]io, Discord: Matt B#0216 Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM Location: 10 N Park Pl, Morristown, NJ 07960 (at the center of the Morristown Green) Coordinates: 87G7QGW9+RJ Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: This is the first meetup, come be a founding member of the Northern NJ ACX/EA/LW group! PRINCETON, NJ Contact: Danny K, dskumpf[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 3:00 PM Location: Palmer Square, Princeton, NJ 08540. On the green right outside The Bent Spoon and Rojo's Roastary, near the big tree. I'll have some sort of ACX Meetup sign! Coordinates: 87G7982Q+2CP Event link(s): LessWrong LAS VEGAS, NV Contact: Jonathan Ray, ray[dot]jonathan[dot]w[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 11:45 AM Location: At El Segundo Sol restaurant with giant ACX MEETUP signs Coordinates: 85864RHJ+3H Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet regularly and mostly just socialize. We have a new Discord server. RENO, NV Contact: Steven, stevenl451[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Steeven#7407 Time: Friday, September 2, 5:30 PM Location: We'll be in Crissie Caughlin Park, near the tables and the swing set Coordinates: 85F2G46W+FG Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs and please RSVP on LessWrong if you are going BUFFALO, NY Contact: George Herold, ggherold[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 1:00 PM Location: 932 Welch Rd. Java Center, NY 14082 Coordinates: 87J3W467+8P Notes: Last-minute location change! LONG ISLAND, NY Contact: Gabe, gabeaweil[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, October 27, 7:00 PM Location: Whales Tale in Northport Coordinates: 87G8VJRW+99 Event link(s): LessWrong NEW YORK CITY, NY Contact: Jasmine, jasminermj[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 4:00 PM Location: Pavillion @ Rockefeller Park, Warren St / River Terrace Coordinates: 87G7PX9M+4J3 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: OBNYC has a Discord and a Google Group; the Google Group is the main mailing list we use for events NEWBURGH, NY Contact: Pedro David Bonilla, proportionatetoevidence[at]gmail[dot]com, Cell 8452001681 Time: Saturday, September 24, 10:00 AM Location: Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 1421 NY-300, Newburgh, NY 12550 Coordinates: 87H7GWCH+GF Event link(s): LessWrong ROCHESTER, NY Contact: Skivverus, skivverus[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Skivverus#5915 Time: Saturday, October 8, 1:00 PM Location: 4870 Culver Road; will be wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and glasses, and may or may not have figured out a sign due to just getting back from honeymoon. Look for a pair of parrots, one white, one green with a yellow/orange head. Coordinates: 87M46FM6+Q5P Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Venue very near amusement park; non-bathroom, non-parking amenities are therefore available but not free. Plan accordingly. Not particularly attached to specific location named, just happen to live reasonably close to there; alternative suggestions acceptable. Canadian visitors also welcome should your logistics permit; airport transportation available. RSVP via Discord preferred, but email will also work. CLEVELAND, OH Contact: Jack Zhang, LukeZhao9[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 1:00 PM Location: Picnic tables at Wade Oval (university circle) Coordinates: 86HWG96Q+GC5 Event link(s): LessWrong COLUMBUS, OH Contact: Daniel, daniel[dot]m[dot]adamiak[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 3:00 PM Location: Jeffrey Park - Clinton Shelter. I will be wearing a red shirt. Coordinates: 86FVX3C3+QF Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet once a month. We discuss EA, AI and other two letter initialisms. Occasionally we go for walks in local grottos and nature trails. Notes: Email me if you want to be added to the mailing list to receive any updates or future invites. RSVPing is appreciated. TOLEDO, OH Contact: Scout, scout[dot]sivar[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 12:00 PM Location: Black Kite Coffee Coordinates: 86HRMCCV+9R Event link(s): LessWrong OKLAHOMA CITY, OK Contact: bean, battleshipbean[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 1:00 PM Location: Edmond Public Library/Shannon Miller Park. I will be wearing a hat that says USS Iowa on it. Coordinates: 8674MG3C+MW Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Had four people last year and a good time, moved to Edmond because a lot of us are up here. ALBANY, OR Contact: Kenan (he/him), kbitikofer[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:00 PM Location: Bowman Park, Albany, Oregon. In or near the shelter. I will wear a bright red shirt and carry a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 84PRJWR7+XC6 Event link(s): LessWrong CORVALLIS, OR Contact: Ethan Ashkie, ethanashkie[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, September 7, 6:00 PM Location: Common Fields, in the reserved outdoor seating near the entrance Coordinates: 84PRHP5P+VQ Event link(s): LessWrong EUGENE, OR Contact: Ben Smith, benjsmith[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, August 31, 7:00 PM Location: The Barn Light, 924 Willamette St, Eugene 97401 Coordinates: 84PR2WX4+VV Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much pizza to get, but if you forget, don't worry about it, we want you to come along anyway PORTLAND, OR Contact: Sam F Celarek, support[at]pearcommunity[dot]com, 513-432-3310, Discord: Sam Celarek#2845 Time: Friday, September 9, 5:00 PM Location: 205 NW 4th Ave Coordinates: 84QVG8FG+V4 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Portland Effective Altruism and Rationality is very active. We have book clubs, bi-weekly AI safety meet-ups, bi-weekly topical meet-ups, bi-weekly socials, and have an active Discord. Notes: We would prefer you RSVP on Meetup.com a week beforehand so that we can get the right amount of food! HARRISBURG, PA Contact: Phil, acxharrisburg[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: Ever Grain Brewing Co, 4444 Carlisle Pike, Camp Hill, PA 17011 - We will be sitting at one of the picnic tables outside with an ACX MEETUP sign Coordinates: 87G562QQ+8P Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Small monthly meetup group based out of Harrisburg - celebrating 1 year of actuality! You can see more of our events on LessWrong. INDIANA, PA Contact: Eric, ericindianapa[at]gmail[dot]com, 717-256-2717 Time: Saturday, September 24, 11:00 AM Location: Caffè Amadeus in downtown Indiana, PA. I will have a sign with 'ACX Meetup' on one of the tables. Coordinates: 87G2JRFX+48 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP via email or text message so I know how many to expect. PHILADELPHIA, PA Contact: Wes and Diana, rationalphilly[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 22, 6:30 PM Location: The Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 Rittenhouse Square. The meeting room is in the basement, look for the signs. Coordinates: 87F6WRXG+FQ Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We tend to meet in downtown Philly on the last Thursday of the month. We're aiming to make the Ethical Society our new steady location. We have many links: Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group Notes: We'll be ordering food from a local restaurant, so no need to eat first. BYOB PITTSBURGH, PA Contact: Justin, pghacx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: Westinghouse Shelter @ Schenley Park (W Circuit Rd near Schenley Dr). We have the outdoor shelter reserved, so light rain shouldn't be a problem, but in the event of extreme weather, we may relocate indoors (our default 'contingency indoor location' is Crazy Mocha Coffee on 2100 Murray Ave in Squirrel Hill). Coordinates: 87G2C3Q4+773 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet monthly-ish for general discussion and chit-chat, email me if you'd like to be notified of future meetups. STATE COLLEGE, PA Contact: John Slow, auk480[at]psu[dot]edu Time: Thursday, September 8, 5:00 PM Location: Old Main. I will be carrying an ACX meetup sign. Coordinates: 87G4Q4WP+HV Event link(s): LessWrong SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO Contact: Dan Gelfarb, danielgelfarb[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: Lote 23, back corner under the tents. I will be wearing a blue shirt with a sign that says ACX meetup on it. Coordinates: 77CMCWVM+W32 Event link(s): LessWrong PROVIDENCE, RI Contact: James Bailey, feanor1600[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Prospect Terrace park, to the right of the Roger Williams statue Coordinates: 87HCRHJV+24 Event link(s): LessWrong SIOUX FALLS, SD Contact: S. C., villainsplus[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 2, 5:00 PM Location: 410 E 26th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 - the pavillion on the west side of McKennan Park, or the tables just south of it if I can't book it. I'll be the guy with the grill. Coordinates: 86M5G7JH+W57 Event link(s): LessWrong MEMPHIS, TN Contact: Michael, michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Monday, September 5, 1:00 PM Location: French Truck Coffee at Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104. We will be at one of the many tables near French Truck Coffee and I will have a sign that says ACX MEETUP. Coordinates: 867F5X2P+QHC Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet about every month or so. We've been around since 2019 but only regularly since mid 2021 due to the pandemic. We have a Discord server. NASHVILLE, TN Contact: Ellen, enwiegand[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 11:00 AM Location: OneCity Nashville (8 City Blvd, Nashville, TN 37209), next to the volleyball courts. I'll have a pink ballcap that says SPINSTER on it. Coordinates: 868M552H+XW Event link(s): LessWrong AUSTIN, TX Contact: Silas Barta, sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 12:00 PM Location: 4001 N Lamar, Austin Texas, park by Central Market near stone tables and tents Coordinates: 86248746+8C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Austin LessWrong has a weekly focused discussion, a weekly social mixer, a weekly online book club, and a monthly movie night. Been around since 2011. Notes: Location may change as we are talking to other venues BRYAN/COLLEGE STATION, TX Contact: Kenny, easwaran[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 9, 5:00 PM Location: Back patio of Torchy's Tacos at Texas and New Main. I'll have a yellow umbrella and pinkish/purple hair Coordinates: JMFC+4J Event link(s): LessWrong DALLAS, TX Contact: Ethan Morse, ethan[dot]morse97[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: ethanmorse#5255 Time: Sunday, September 11, 12:00 PM Location: Union, 3705 Cedar Springs Rd, Dallas, TX 75219. We'll be in the upstairs conference room. Coordinates: 8645R55R+9M9 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much food to get HOUSTON, TX Contact: Eric Magro, eric135033[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Empire Cafe, 1732 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77098 ---- Look for a table with an ACX MEETUP sign. Coordinates: 76X6PHVW+5H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: There are meetups every week. We have a Discord and a Facebook group. WACO, TX Contact: Mike, BaylorACX[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 1:00 PM Location: Cameron Park, picnic tables next to Jacob's Ladder Coordinates: 8634HVG2+V9 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please email me if you're thinking about attending! Would love to start an ACX community here :) SALT LAKE CITY, UT Contact: Ross Richey (aka Jeremiah), wearenotsaved[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 3:00 PM Location: Liberty Park near the ChargePoint stations Coordinates: 85GCP4WF+VJ Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet every other month, we do book clubs and movie nights as well. Notes: Will be outdoors. If the weather looks bad, email event organizer to check on location. CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA Contact: RL, effectivealtruismatuva[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 5:00 PM Location: 12 Rotunda Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903 - We’ll meet at the picnic tables across the street from The Virginian. There will be an ACX sign. Coordinates: 87C32FPX+3H4 Event link(s): LessWrong LYNCHBURG, VA Contact: Craig, craigbdaniel[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Three Roads Brewing - I will be wearing a purple t-shirt and will place an ""ACX"" card on the table Coordinates: 8792CV65+5G NORFOLK, VA Contact: Willa, walambert[at]pm[dot]me Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Pagoda & Oriental Garden, 265 W Tazewell St, Norfolk, VA 23510. I will be wearing a bright green shirt, will have a large green & yellow hat on, and will have a sign with ACX Meetup on it. Coordinates: 8785RPX4+W3 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: Hi! Virginia Rationalists was co-founded in Norfolk VA earlier this year by Willa & Yitzi with the goal of growing a thriving ACX / LW / EA community in our city & the state of Virginia. We meet every week at Fair Grounds cafe on Wednesday evenings from 5-7:30pm Eastern Time. We have a Discord server and a Twitter. RESTON, VA Contact: James, jrbalch333[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 1:30 PM Location: The matchbox at 1900 Reston Station Blvd, Reston, VA 20190 on the 1st floor of the giant Google building. I'll be holding a copy of Sapiens. Coordinates: 87C4WMX6+9X Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Email me to be added to the WhatsApp group RICHMOND, VA Contact: Cedar, cedar[dot]ren+acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com, @Cedar at this Discord server Time: Saturday, October 1, 2:30 PM Location: Richmond Public Libraries, West End Branch 5420 Patterson Ave, Richmond, VA 23226 Coordinates: 8794HFHQ+3G Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong & optionally reach out to me on Discord to introduce yourself! BURLINGTON, VT Contact: Forrest, lucidobservor[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Battery Park, at the benches in the south-western corner of the park, near the cannons facing the lake. I will have an 'ACX Meetup' sign. Coordinates: 87P8FQJH+8P Event link(s): LessWrong BELLINGHAM, WA Contact: Alex, bellinghamrationalish[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 29, 5:30 PM Location: Lake Padden Park, at one of the tables near the lake by the dog park. If it's rainy, we'll meet in one of the two covered gazebo areas just north (right, if you're facing the lake) of the planned spot. If the forecast looks really bad (e.g. very cold), I'll post an indoor location to the Meetup.com page at least three days in advance. Coordinates: 84WVMHX3+GM Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: Bellingham Rationalish discusses (in good faith!) topics in and around rationality. We usually meet the evening of the last Wednesday of each month. Our first meeting was a 2021 ACX Everywhere meetup. Notes: Please RSVP on Meetup so I have an idea how many people to expect. Kids, animals, food, beverages, etc. are all welcome. SEATTLE, WA Contact: Nikita Sokolsky, sokolx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 5:00 PM Location: Optimism Brewing (1158 Broadway, Seattle) Coordinates: 84VVJM7H+4Q Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong (or FB/Meetup) for planning purposes MADISON, WI Contact: Mary Wang, mmwang[at]wisc[dot]edu Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: 1022 High St. Blue house with red porches. If weather permits, we'll be in my large backyard, which has more seating now than last year. If rain, come in the side door. There will be air purifiers and open windows. Masks optional. Look for a sign at the end of the driveway that says ACX/SSC Meetup. Coordinates: 86MG3H3X+XW Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We have met fortnightly in the past, but quit last year when it got too cold to meet outside. We typically have shared a meal, sat around my kitchen table and talked. Have held a Solstice celebration.

ObscuroRX1 mentions across 1 issues

ObscuroRX is a recurring organization 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 "Blue Helmet has subcontracted their drug coverage out to ObscuroRX"; "'calls ObscuroRX' and 'Hello, you've reached ObscuroRX, prescription drug coverage for the new millennium!'"; ""ObscuroRX customer service family", "issue on ObscuroRX's side", "your company stopped covering it"". It most often appears alongside Blue Helmet, Blue Helmet Insurance, Chakaramanditya.

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

Outbound links

https://x.com/AppSpartacus

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

Source context

December 07, 2022 · Original source

"Oh, sir, I'm looking at my database, and although this patient's insurance is Blue Helmet, Blue Helmet has subcontracted their drug coverage out to ObscuroRX."

"Yes, that's because ObscuroRX has to cover the medication. You should call them."

[calls ObscuroRX]

Ocado1 mentions across 1 issues

Ocado is a recurring organization 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 "successful UK companies that have been created in recent years (... Ocado?)". It most often appears alongside Adam Tooze, Brexit, Britain.

Reference entry: Ocado
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 20, 2023
Last seen: July 20, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline

July 20, 2023 · Original source

I think particularly for the smart/driven things have changed from a sense of you can achieve your dreams here (in the same way you can in US or maybe Germany and parts of east Asia) to the sense it’s more like much of Europe where you have to leave to make something of yourself (becoming a France or Italy, full of old people on massive pensions with little growth or dynamism). In the 2000s you could make ridiculous amounts of cash in finance if you worked hard, now it’s a pretty bad deal. Most other industries you would be much better off in the US either as an employee or setting up your own company (e.g. McKinsey associate in London earns £95k, in New York earns $185k with bigger bonus). Hard to think of many successful UK companies that have been created in recent years (Deliveroo, Sky, Ocado?). When I try to explain to American friends that £35k is considered an enviable salary when graduating university they all assume I’m joking. I think the average salary of an Oxford undergrad five years after graduating is around £50k.

Occupy Wall Street1 mentions across 1 issues

Occupy Wall Street is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 17, 2021 and September 17, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "In September 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement began in the US". It most often appears alongside 1/6 insurrection, Abdel al-Sisi, Abu Ghraib.

Reference entry: Occupy Wall Street
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 17, 2021
Last seen: September 17, 2021

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Issue trail

Book Review: The Revolt Of The Public September 17, 2021

6 insurrection 1 shared issues
Abdel al-Sisi 1 shared issues
Abu Ghraib 1 shared issues
Alan Greenspan 1 shared issues
AOC 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: The Revolt Of The Public

September 17, 2021 · Original source

But also, in August 2011 600,000 people protested in Chile. In October, 80,000 Portuguese marched on Lisbon. In September 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement began in the US, eventually expanding to hundreds of cities:

And also - consider universal health care. Lots of countries have universal health care. It's not an impossible High Modernist pipe dream that can never be accomplished. Or stopping illegal immigration - many countries manage this just fine, America could do it if it wanted to. Democrats hold protests and get angry demanding things like universal health care, Republicans hold protests and get angry demanding things like an end to illegal immigration, and both sides lose some faith in government when they don't get what they want. But these aren't insane demands which inevitably bleed into nihilist temper tantrums after predestined failures. They're just normal political requests for achievable goals, which various interest groups will fight over and then the government will either do them or not. Yeah, Occupy Wall Street was kind of silly, but most of politics continues to be the struggle for normal potentially achievable stuff. If we admit that, what's left of Gurri's thesis?

ODG1 mentions across 1 issues

ODG is a recurring organization 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 "ODG is a collaborator in this study and will have full access". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: ODG
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

Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill

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)

Office For Human Research Protections1 mentions across 1 issues

Office For Human Research Protections is a recurring organization 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 "got subsumed into a new bureaucracy, the Office For Human Research Protections". It most often appears alongside AAAS, AIDS, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reference entry: Office For Human Research Protections
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 12, 2023
Last seen: April 12, 2023

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Issue trail

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

Source context

April 12, 2023 · Original source

This, says Whitney, is about where we are today. There were some minor changes. Gary Ellis ironically got fired, a victim of his own unpopularity. His Office For Protection From Research Risks got subsumed into a new bureaucracy, the Office For Human Research Protections. In 2018, OHRP admitted they had gone too far and made welcome reforms - for example, certain psychology studies where people just fill out questionnaires are now exempt from many requirements. These are genuinely helpful - but on a broader cultural level, the post-Ellis atmosphere of paranoia and obstruction is still the order of the day.

Most IRB experiences can’t be that bad, right? Maybe not, but a lot of people have horror stories. A survey of how researchers feel about IRBs did include one person who said “I hope all those at OHRP [the bureaucracy in charge of IRBs] and the ethicists die of diseases that we could have made significant progress on if we had [the research materials IRBs are banning us from using]”.

The increases in staff to accomplish this were substantial. The staff of the Northwestern IRB, for instance, grew between the late 1990s and 2007 from two people to forty-five. These fortified IRBs were in no doubt that their mission now extended beyond protecting research subjects. As Northwestern’s Caroline Bledsoe notes, “the IRB’s over-riding goal is clear: to avoid the enormous risk to the institution of being found in noncompliance by OHRP.”

Office For Protection From Research Risks1 mentions across 1 issues

Office For Protection From Research Risks is a recurring organization 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 "yelling at Gary Ellis, head of the Office For Protection From Research Risks"; "His Office For Protection From Research Risks got subsumed". It most often appears alongside AAAS, AIDS, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reference entry: Office For Protection From Research Risks
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 12, 2023
Last seen: April 12, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill

April 12, 2023 · Original source

This changed in 1998. A Johns Hopkins doctor tested a new asthma treatment. A patient got sick and died. Fingers were pointed. Congress got involved. Grandstanding Congressmen competed to look Tough On Scientific Misconduct by yelling at Gary Ellis, head of the Office For Protection From Research Risks. They made it clear that he had to get tougher or get fired.

This, says Whitney, is about where we are today. There were some minor changes. Gary Ellis ironically got fired, a victim of his own unpopularity. His Office For Protection From Research Risks got subsumed into a new bureaucracy, the Office For Human Research Protections. In 2018, OHRP admitted they had gone too far and made welcome reforms - for example, certain psychology studies where people just fill out questionnaires are now exempt from many requirements. These are genuinely helpful - but on a broader cultural level, the post-Ellis atmosphere of paranoia and obstruction is still the order of the day.

Office of Foreign Assets Control1 mentions across 1 issues

Office of Foreign Assets Control is a recurring organization 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 "An obscure office in the U.S. Treasury Department is tasked with enforcing sanctions rules: the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC". It most often appears alongside 1793, 1821, 1847.

Reference entry: Office of Foreign Assets Control
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 obscure office in the U.S. Treasury Department is tasked with enforcing sanctions rules: the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. Over the course of the last two decades, OFAC has developed more targeted—and effective—sanction tools. The biggest innovation came in 2010. At the behest of OFAC, Congress passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, which strengthened U.S. sanctions on the Iranian energy industry and financial sector. Whereas previous measures had targeted Iranian firms, Congress now authorized the imposition of “secondary sanctions” on any bank, anywhere in the world, that transacted with Iran’s central bank. By placing it on the black list, OFAC could cut off any bank from access to the U.S. financial sector. The United States offered banks a choice: You can do business with the United States or you can do business with Iran; you can’t do both. (Chapter 16)

Office of Management and Budget1 mentions across 1 issues

Office of Management and Budget is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 29, 2025 and August 29, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "their July letter to the Office of Management and Budget". It most often appears alongside American Association of Medical Colleges, Britt, China.

Reference entry: Office of Management and Budget
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 29, 2025
Last seen: August 29, 2025

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Issue trail

Open Letter To The NIH August 29, 2025

American Association of Medical Colleges 1 shared issues
Britt 1 shared issues
China 1 shared issues
Collins 1 shared issues
Congress 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Letter To The NIH

August 29, 2025 · Original source

We present this request in the spirit of the broad, bipartisan consensus in favor of spending appropriated NIH funds. In their July letter to the Office of Management and Budget, fourteen Republican senators, led by Senators Collins, Britt, and McConnell, forcefully argued that suspension of NIH funds “could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments and limit our nation's leadership in biomedical science.” The case for investment in medical research transcends political divides as it serves our collective national interest.

Office of Scientific Research and Development1 mentions across 1 issues

Office of Scientific Research and Development is a recurring organization 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 "As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, he’d won World War II". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

Reference entry: Office of Scientific Research and Development
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

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, he’d won World War II. His proximity fuse intercepted hundreds of V-1s and destroyed thousands of tanks, carving a path for Allied forces through the French countryside. Back in 1942, he’d advocated to President Roosevelt the merits of Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb. Roosevelt and his congressional allies snuck hundreds of millions in covert funding to the OSRD’s planned projects in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. Writing directly and secretively to Bush, a one-line memo in June expressed Roosevelt’s total confidence in his Director: “Do you have the money?”

Ohio State University1 mentions across 1 issues

Ohio State University is a recurring organization 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 "Sydney Pressey , a psychologist at Ohio State University". It most often appears alongside Astralcodexten Com, B.F. Skinner, Bill Gates.

Reference entry: Ohio State University
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 04, 2025
Last seen: July 04, 2025

Outbound links

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

Ohio State University Libraries1 mentions across 1 issues

Ohio State University Libraries is a recurring organization 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 "https://library.osu.edu/ojs/index.php/dsq/article/view/4253/3593". It most often appears alongside 1992 Presidential debate, ABA, Adesh Thapliyal.

Reference entry: Ohio State University Libraries
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 25, 2023
Last seen: July 25, 2023

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Issue trail

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Social Model Of Disability

July 25, 2023 · Original source

In the article linked below, student activists explain how they learned to use the “social model” to force university administrators to give in to their demands on campus. When asking nicely didn’t work, accusing the administrators of prejudice akin to racial prejudice helped them force administrators to give in. The students also call it the “minority model” in which they “reframe…disabled people as an oppressed minority.” https://library.osu.edu/ojs/index.php/dsq/article/view/4253/3593

Inline links: https://library.osu.edu/ojs/index.php/dsq/article/view/4253/3593

Ohio University1 mentions across 1 issues

Ohio University is a recurring organization 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 "The American team from Ohio University turned back". It most often appears alongside @a_centrism, @amplituhedron, AISafetySupport.com.

Reference entry: Ohio University
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 01, 2022
Last seen: July 01, 2022

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Issue trail

Links For June July 01, 2022

@a_centrism 1 shared issues
@amplituhedron 1 shared issues
AISafetySupport.com 1 shared issues
BBC 1 shared issues
BBC Africa 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For June

July 01, 2022 · Original source

The American team from Ohio University turned back for no apparent reason after 20 nanometers, the German team broke 2 vehicles without being able to restart, and the Japanese team ended up giving up. The French team lost sight of its vehicle on its surface area, and was also obliged to abandon, comforting itself with the symbolic prize of "the most elegant car in the competition.

OHRP1 mentions across 1 issues

OHRP is a recurring organization 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 "OHRP [the bureaucracy in charge of IRBs]"; "In 2018, OHRP admitted they had gone too far and made welcome reforms"; "OHRP read the article, investigated, and learned". It most often appears alongside AAAS, AIDS, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reference entry: OHRP
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 12, 2023
Last seen: April 12, 2023

Issue trail

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

Source context

Book Review: From Oversight To Overkill

April 12, 2023 · Original source

This, says Whitney, is about where we are today. There were some minor changes. Gary Ellis ironically got fired, a victim of his own unpopularity. His Office For Protection From Research Risks got subsumed into a new bureaucracy, the Office For Human Research Protections. In 2018, OHRP admitted they had gone too far and made welcome reforms - for example, certain psychology studies where people just fill out questionnaires are now exempt from many requirements. These are genuinely helpful - but on a broader cultural level, the post-Ellis atmosphere of paranoia and obstruction is still the order of the day.

Most IRB experiences can’t be that bad, right? Maybe not, but a lot of people have horror stories. A survey of how researchers feel about IRBs did include one person who said “I hope all those at OHRP [the bureaucracy in charge of IRBs] and the ethicists die of diseases that we could have made significant progress on if we had [the research materials IRBs are banning us from using]”.

The increases in staff to accomplish this were substantial. The staff of the Northwestern IRB, for instance, grew between the late 1990s and 2007 from two people to forty-five. These fortified IRBs were in no doubt that their mission now extended beyond protecting research subjects. As Northwestern’s Caroline Bledsoe notes, “the IRB’s over-riding goal is clear: to avoid the enormous risk to the institution of being found in noncompliance by OHRP.”

OJ's defense team1 mentions across 1 issues

OJ's defense team is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 21, 2025 and February 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Perhaps OJ’s defense team formulated the second-killer theory". It most often appears alongside /r/slatestarcodex, ACX, Adrian.

Reference entry: OJ's defense team
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 21, 2025
Last seen: February 21, 2025

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Tegmark's Mathematical Universe February 21, 2025

slatestarcodex 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Adrian 1 shared issues
Anthropic principle 1 shared issues
Aristotle 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Tegmark's Mathematical Universe

February 21, 2025 · Original source

What we really do when debating hypotheses isn’t wait to see which ones will be falsified, it’s comparing simplicity - Occam’s Razor. Which is more likely - that OJ killed his wife? Or that some other killer developed a deep hatred for OJ’s wife, faked OJ’s appearance, faked his DNA, then vanished into thin air? Does this depend on the police having some piece of evidence left in reserve which they haven’t told the theory-crafters, that they can bring out at a dramatic moment to “falsify” the latter theory? No. Perhaps OJ’s defense team formulated the second-killer theory so that none of the evidence presented at the trial could falsify it. Rejecting it requires us to determine that it deserves a complexity penalty relative to the simple theory that OJ was the killer and everything is straightforwardly as it seems.

OLBG1 mentions across 1 issues

OLBG is a recurring organization 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 "https://www.olbg.com/blogs/hungarian-general-election-betting-odds-and-history". It most often appears alongside 2014 Hungarian parliamentary election, @slatestarcodex, Americans.

Reference entry: OLBG
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 11, 2021
Last seen: November 11, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Orban

November 11, 2021 · Original source

It looks like the opposition might win! Betting markets are not particularly liquid but one bookie is offering odds which imply a 60-70% chance that Fidesz will not win a majority at the next election. https://www.olbg.com/blogs/hungarian-general-election-betting-odds-and-history

Inline links: https://www.olbg.com/blogs/hungarian-general-election-betting-odds-and-history

Olin1 mentions across 1 issues

Olin is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 04, 2021 and May 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "foundations (for example Olin, Scaife, Smith Richardson, Pew Charitable Trust)". It most often appears alongside 2008, 9/11 attacks, A Brief History Of Neoliberalism.

Reference entry: Olin
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 04, 2021
Last seen: May 04, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism May 04, 2021

2008 1 shared issues
11 attacks 1 shared issues
A Brief History Of Neoliberalism 1 shared issues
ABHoN 1 shared issues
ABHoN 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism

May 04, 2021 · Original source

Whether everyone involved in negotiating this fiscal compromise understood it as a strategy to restore class power is an open question. The need to maintain fiscal discipline is a matter of concern in its own right and does not, like monetarism more generally, necessarily entail regressive redistributions. It is unlikely, for example, that Felix Rohatyn, the merchant banker who brokered the deal between the city, the state, and the financial institutions, had the restoration of class power in mind. The only way he could ‘save’ the city was by satisfying the investment bankers while diminishing the standard of living of most New Yorkers. But the restoration of class power was almost certainly what investment bankers like Walter Wriston had in mind. He had, after all, equated all forms of government intervention in the US and Britain with communism. And it was almost certainly the aim of Ford’s Secretary of the Treasury William Simon (later to become head of the ultra-conservative Olin Foundation). Watching the progress of events in Chile with approval, he strongly advised President Ford to refuse aid to the city (‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’ ran the headline in the New York Daily News). The terms of any bail-out, he said, should be ‘so punitive, the overall experience so painful, that no city, no political subdivision would ever be tempted to go down the same road’.

How directly influential this appeal to engage in class war was, is hard to tell. But we do know that the American Chamber of Commerce subsequently expanded its base from around 60,000 firms in 1972 to over a quarter of a million ten years later. Jointly with the National Association of Manufacturers (which moved to Washington in 1972) it amassed an immense campaign chest to lobby Congress and engage in research. The Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs ‘committed to the aggressive pursuit of political power for the corporation’, was founded in 1972 and thereafter became the centrepiece of collective pro-business action. The corporations involved accounted for ‘about one half of the GNP of the United States’ during the 1970s, and they spent close to $900 million annually (a huge amount at that time) on political matters. Think-tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the Center for the Study of American Business, and the American Enterprise Institute, were formed with corporate backing both to polemicize and, when necessary, as in the case of the National Bureau of Economic Research, to construct serious technical and empirical studies and political-philosophical arguments broadly in support of neoliberal policies. Nearly half the financing for the highly respected NBER came from the leading companies in the Fortune 500 list. Closely integrated with the academic community, the NBER was to have a very significant impact on thinking in the economics departments and business schools of the major research universities. With abundant finance furnished by wealthy individuals (such as the brewer Joseph Coors, who later became a member of Reagan’s ‘kitchen cabinet’) and their foundations (for example Olin, Scaife, Smith Richardson, Pew Charitable Trust), a flood of tracts and books, with Nozick’s Anarchy State and Utopia perhaps the most widely read and appreciated, emerged espousing neoliberal values. A TV version of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose was funded with a grant from Scaife in 1977. ‘Business was’, Blyth concludes, ‘learning to spend as a class.’

Olin Foundation1 mentions across 1 issues

Olin Foundation is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 04, 2021 and May 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "head of the ultra-conservative Olin Foundation". It most often appears alongside 2008, 9/11 attacks, A Brief History Of Neoliberalism.

Reference entry: Olin Foundation
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 04, 2021
Last seen: May 04, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism May 04, 2021

2008 1 shared issues
11 attacks 1 shared issues
A Brief History Of Neoliberalism 1 shared issues
ABHoN 1 shared issues
ABHoN 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism

May 04, 2021 · Original source

Whether everyone involved in negotiating this fiscal compromise understood it as a strategy to restore class power is an open question. The need to maintain fiscal discipline is a matter of concern in its own right and does not, like monetarism more generally, necessarily entail regressive redistributions. It is unlikely, for example, that Felix Rohatyn, the merchant banker who brokered the deal between the city, the state, and the financial institutions, had the restoration of class power in mind. The only way he could ‘save’ the city was by satisfying the investment bankers while diminishing the standard of living of most New Yorkers. But the restoration of class power was almost certainly what investment bankers like Walter Wriston had in mind. He had, after all, equated all forms of government intervention in the US and Britain with communism. And it was almost certainly the aim of Ford’s Secretary of the Treasury William Simon (later to become head of the ultra-conservative Olin Foundation). Watching the progress of events in Chile with approval, he strongly advised President Ford to refuse aid to the city (‘Ford to City: Drop Dead’ ran the headline in the New York Daily News). The terms of any bail-out, he said, should be ‘so punitive, the overall experience so painful, that no city, no political subdivision would ever be tempted to go down the same road’.

Omo Valley Research Project1 mentions across 1 issues

Omo Valley Research Project is a recurring organization 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 "The non-profit Omo Valley Research Project provides scholarships for indigenous students from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: Omo Valley Research Project
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 03, 2022
Last seen: February 03, 2022

Outbound links

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

Source context

February 03, 2022 · Original source

#13: Scholarships In Ethiopia The non-profit Omo Valley Research Project provides scholarships for indigenous students from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, home to some of the most traditional groups on earth, most of whom typically live in small-scale subsistence communities. Less than 1% of members of the Omo Valley have received any formal education but increased development is opening up new opportunities for education as well as transforming their livelihoods. For students who start school, attendance after Grade 5 is often financially out of reach and a vocational college or university impossible. Supporting education for those who desire it equips community members to fully participate in the opportunities generated through development, gives them the ability to maintain a degree of cultural autonomy, and negotiate with the governmental and market-based organizations that are transforming their lives. Finally, many students yearn to learn about the world, to learn history, science, and math. Giving these students the ability to pursue their dreams is the greatest investment in human capital I know of. We support secondary, university, and vocational education through direct contributions for tuition or cost of living expenses. The students we support are all from traditional nomadic pastoralist communities including the Hamar and Nyangatom ethnic groups. [Email us at] Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com [or check out our website at] omovalleyresearchproject.org/

omovalleyresearchproject.org1 mentions across 1 issues

omovalleyresearchproject.org is a recurring organization 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 "[or check out our website at] omovalleyresearchproject.org/". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: omovalleyresearchproject.org
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 03, 2022
Last seen: February 03, 2022

Outbound links

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

Source context

February 03, 2022 · Original source

#13: Scholarships In Ethiopia The non-profit Omo Valley Research Project provides scholarships for indigenous students from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, home to some of the most traditional groups on earth, most of whom typically live in small-scale subsistence communities. Less than 1% of members of the Omo Valley have received any formal education but increased development is opening up new opportunities for education as well as transforming their livelihoods. For students who start school, attendance after Grade 5 is often financially out of reach and a vocational college or university impossible. Supporting education for those who desire it equips community members to fully participate in the opportunities generated through development, gives them the ability to maintain a degree of cultural autonomy, and negotiate with the governmental and market-based organizations that are transforming their lives. Finally, many students yearn to learn about the world, to learn history, science, and math. Giving these students the ability to pursue their dreams is the greatest investment in human capital I know of. We support secondary, university, and vocational education through direct contributions for tuition or cost of living expenses. The students we support are all from traditional nomadic pastoralist communities including the Hamar and Nyangatom ethnic groups. [Email us at] Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com [or check out our website at] omovalleyresearchproject.org/

Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com1 mentions across 1 issues

Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com is a recurring organization 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 "[Email us at] Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 03, 2022
Last seen: February 03, 2022

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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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H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

February 03, 2022 · Original source

#13: Scholarships In Ethiopia The non-profit Omo Valley Research Project provides scholarships for indigenous students from the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, home to some of the most traditional groups on earth, most of whom typically live in small-scale subsistence communities. Less than 1% of members of the Omo Valley have received any formal education but increased development is opening up new opportunities for education as well as transforming their livelihoods. For students who start school, attendance after Grade 5 is often financially out of reach and a vocational college or university impossible. Supporting education for those who desire it equips community members to fully participate in the opportunities generated through development, gives them the ability to maintain a degree of cultural autonomy, and negotiate with the governmental and market-based organizations that are transforming their lives. Finally, many students yearn to learn about the world, to learn history, science, and math. Giving these students the ability to pursue their dreams is the greatest investment in human capital I know of. We support secondary, university, and vocational education through direct contributions for tuition or cost of living expenses. The students we support are all from traditional nomadic pastoralist communities including the Hamar and Nyangatom ethnic groups. [Email us at] Omovalleyresearchproject@gmail.com [or check out our website at] omovalleyresearchproject.org/

One Day Sooner1 mentions across 1 issues

One Day Sooner is a recurring organization 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 "ACX grantee One Day Sooner is trying to help the FDA get more resources for Operation Warp Speed style pushes". It most often appears alongside 1918, 1940s, 1968.

Reference entry: One Day Sooner
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 01, 2025
Last seen: January 01, 2025

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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

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January 01, 2025 · Original source

<1% chance it’s more than 100x as bad (unprecedented) If you multiply the 5% chance of an H5N1 pandemic per year by the 7% chance of severity ≥ Spanish Flu, you get an 0.35% chance of a Spanish Flu level pandemic this year - one in three hundred. That’s a little higher than base rates - the last pandemic as bad as Spanish flu was smallpox hitting the Indians circa 1500. If we don’t count that one (where would our conquistador equivalents come from?), then the last equally bad pandemic was the Black Death in the 1300s. So we seem to get that level of pandemic once every 500 - 1000 years; a 1/300 chance suggests a 2-3x elevated risk. The Spanish Flu killed about 50 million people. A second Spanish flu could kill more people (because the population is higher), or fewer people (because medical care is better). If we assume those two cancel out, and that a second Spanish flu’s death toll would also be 50 million, then a 1/300 chance of 50 million deaths = 166,666 deaths. In some weird probabilistic expected utility way, about as many people will probably die of H5N1 next year as died in the past year of the Ukraine War. You will have to decide whether this is a reasonable way to allocate mental real estate to different catastrophes. Other Considerations Even if H5N1 doesn’t go pandemic in humans for a while, it is already pandemic in many birds including chickens, getting there in cows, and possibly gearing up to get there in pigs. This will have economic repercussions for farmers and meat-eaters. The CDC and various other epidemiological groups have raised the alarm about drinking raw milk while H5N1 is epidemic in cows. There is an obvious biological pathway by which the virus could get into raw milk and be dangerous, but I haven’t seen anyone quantify the risk level. Epidemiologists hate raw milk, think there is never any reason to drink it, and will announce that risks > benefits if the risk is greater than zero. I don’t know if the risk level is at a point where people who like raw milk should avoid it. Everyone says that pasteurized milk (all normal milk; your milk is pasteurized unless you get it from special hippie stores) is safe. There are already H5N1 vaccines for both chickens and humans; pharma companies are working hard on cows. First World governments have been stockpiling human vaccines just in case, but have so far accumulated enough for only a few percent of the population. If H5N1 goes pandemic, it will probably be because it mutated or reassorted, and current vaccines may not work against the new pandemic strain. Some people have suggestions for how to prepare for a possible pandemic, but none of them are very surprising: stockpile medications, stockpile vaccines, stockpile protective equipment. The only one that got so much as a “huh” out of me was Institute for Progress’ suggestion to buy out mink farms. Minks are even worse than pigs in their tendency to get infected with lots of different animal and human viruses; they are exceptionally likely to be a source of new zoonotic pandemics. Mink are farmed for their fur, but there aren’t as many New York City heiresses wearing mink coats as there used to be, and the entire US mink industry only makes $80 million/year. We probably lose more than $80 million/year in expectation from mink-related pandemics, so maybe we should just shut them down, the same way we tell the Chinese to shut down wet markets in bat-infested areas. ACX grantee One Day Sooner is trying to help the FDA get more resources for Operation Warp Speed style pushes that could expedite approval of pandemic-related vaccines. ACX grantee Duncan Purvis is trying to improve existing influenza vaccines in ways that could make them more effective. ACX grantee Blueprint Biosecurity is working on pan-viral suppression techniques. Conclusions / Predictions All discussed earlier in the piece, but putting them here for easy reference - see above for justifications and qualifications. H5N1 is already pandemic in birds and cows and will likely continue to increase the price of meat and milk.

Inline links: raised the alarm, H5N1 vaccines, buy out mink farms, exceptionally likely, is trying to help the FDA get more resources, is trying to improve existing influenza vaccines, is working on pan-viral suppression techniques

One-laptop-per-child1 mentions across 1 issues

One-laptop-per-child is a recurring organization 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 "After twenty‑odd years of watching shiny education fixes wobble and crash—KIPP, AltSchool, Summit Learning, One-laptop-per-child, No child left behind, MOOCs, Khan‑for‑Everything". It most often appears alongside 10,000 hour rule, 2 Hour Learning, Inc, 2-hour Learning.

Reference entry: One-laptop-per-child
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

10,000 hour rule 1 shared issues
2 Hour Learning, Inc 1 shared issues
2-hour Learning 1 shared issues
Alex Amplifier 1 shared issues
Alpha 1 shared issues

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Your Review: Alpha School

June 27, 2025 · Original source

“Powered by AI (not teachers).” If all of this makes your inner Bayesian flinch, you’re in good company. After twenty‑odd years of watching shiny education fixes wobble and crash—KIPP, AltSchool, Summit Learning, One-laptop-per-child, No child left behind, MOOCs, Khan‑for‑Everything—you should be skeptical. Either Alpha is (a) another program for the affluent propped up by selection effects, or (b) a clever way to turn children into joyless speed‑reading calculators. Those were, more or less, the two critical camps that emerged when Alpha’s parent company was approved to launch the tuition‑free Arizona charter school this past January. Unfortunately, the public evidence base on whether this is “real” is thin in both directions. Alpha’s own material is glossy and elliptical; mainstream coverage either repeats Alpha’s talking points, or attacks the premise that kids should even be allowed to learn faster than their peers. Until Raj Chetty installs himself in the hallway with a clipboard counting MAP percentiles it is hard to get real information on what exactly Alpha is doing, whether it is actually working beyond selection effects, and if there is anyway it could scale in a way that all the other education initiatives seemed to fail to do. I first heard about Alpha in May 2024, and in the absence of randomized‑controlled clarity, I did what any moderately obsessive parent with three elementary-aged kids and an itch for data would do: I moved the family across the country to Austin for a year and ran the experiment myself (unfortunately, despite trying my best we never managed to have identical twins, so I stopped short of running a proper control group. My wife was less disappointed than I was). Since last autumn I’ve collected the sort of on‑the‑ground detail that doesn’t surface in press releases, or is available anywhere online: long chats with founders, curriculum leads, “guides” (not teachers), Brazilian Zoom coaches, sceptical parents, ecstatic parents, and the kids who live inside the Alpha dashboard – including my own. I hope this seven-part review can help share what the program actually is and that this review is more open minded than the critics, but is something that would never get past an Alpha public relations gatekeeper: Starting Point: My Assumptions: how my views on elite private schools, tutoring and acceleration shaped the experiment (and this essay). WHAT is the existing education environment.

Oneida Baptist Institute1 mentions across 1 issues

Oneida Baptist Institute is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 17, 2025 and January 17, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "enrolled him and his brother in the Oneida Baptist Institute, a religious reform academy in Kentucky". It most often appears alongside @tamaybes, @venturetwins, A16Z.

Reference entry: Oneida Baptist Institute
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 17, 2025
Last seen: January 17, 2025

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Links For January 2025 January 17, 2025

@tamaybes 1 shared issues
@venturetwins 1 shared issues
A16Z 1 shared issues
Adrian Dittman 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues

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Links For January 2025

January 17, 2025 · Original source

Both Huang's aunt and uncle were recent immigrants to Washington state; they accidentally enrolled him and his brother in the Oneida Baptist Institute, a religious reform academy in Kentucky for troubled youth,mistakenly believing it to be a prestigious boarding school. Jensen's parents sold nearly all their possessions in order to afford the academy's tuition […]

Open Source Wellness1 mentions across 1 issues

Open Source Wellness is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2022 and February 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Open Source Wellness (OSW) is an Oakland-based 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to transforming health care". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: Open Source Wellness
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

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ACX Grants ++: The Second Half February 10, 2022

2018 1 shared issues
@BendiniUK 1 shared issues
@benyeohben 1 shared issues
@utotranslucence 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

February 10, 2022 · Original source

#94: A Clinic That Practices A New Model Of Community Medicine Open Source Wellness (OSW) is an Oakland-based 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to transforming health care and health outcomes in partnership with communities. OSW delivers “Community As Medicine” via a “Behavioral Pharmacy” approach, in which patients struggling with chronic conditions such diabetes, hypertension, and depression are supported with four universal pillars of wellbeing: physical activity, healthy food, stress reduction, and social connection. OSW specializes in partnering with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC’s) serving patient populations that are predominantly low-income and communities of color, utilizing a Virtual Group Medical Visit model that generates revenue for clinics while achieving critical health outcomes. These visits combat social isolation, and are led by culturally-relevant health coaches and peer leaders in addition to primary care providers. Peer-reviewed, published research outcomes include reductions in ED visits, blood pressure, depression, and anxiety and increases in weekly physical activity, and fruit/vegetable intake. Seeking funding from $50,000 to $150,000 to support two key project areas: Continued expansion of the OSW model to clinical and community orgs nation-wide. Development of a nationally accredited health coach training program, which will create a certification and employment pipeline for our diverse and under-employed participants and peer leaders. Visit www.opensourcewellness.org or email liz@opensourcewellness.org

Open Street Map1 mentions across 1 issues

Open Street Map is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Here is an Open Street Map link". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry: Open Street Map
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 26, 2022
Last seen: August 26, 2022

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Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places August 26, 2022

't Heem 1 shared issues
40 Coffee 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner St., Culver City 1 shared issues
12 Rotunda Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903 1 shared issues
1275 1st Street 1 shared issues

Source context

August 26, 2022 · Original source

VIENNA, AUSTRIA Contact: Manuel, manuel[dot]turonian[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Wiener Stadtpark at the Strauss Monument; will have an ACX Meetup sign. Coordinates: 8FWR693H+GP2 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Rationality Vienna is a group of about 30 people who meet once a month in person or via Zoom. You can join our Facebook group. Notes: We may want to shift to an indoor location depending on weather and the local Covid numbers. BRUSSELS, BELGIUM Contact: Bruno D, bruno[dot]astral[dot]codex[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Guingette Henri, George Henri parc Coordinates: 9F26RCWC+84 Event link(s): LessWrong SOFIA, BULGARIA Contact: Anastasia, sofia[dot]acx[dot]meetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Shade Garden (Сенчестата градинка; part of Borisova garden) Coordinates: 8GJ5M8GW+J9 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Sofia ACX started with last year's Meetups Everywhere round. We have Serious Meetups once per month at which we discuss a blog post, a short story, or a book (for instance, The Scout Mindset, The Money Illusion, The Metropolitan Man); and sporadic non-serious social meetups that mostly include getting dinner, going on a walk, watching a film, or playing board games. Attendance hovers around 6-8 people out of a pool of 13. People get invited to the Discord server after they've attended at least one in-person meetup. ZAGREB, CROATIA Contact: DJStern, dorian[dot]sternvukotic[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 6:00 PM Location: Krivi Put Coordinates: 8FQQRX38+V6W Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Croatian LessWrong active group communicates mainly through a Telegram group, we meetup semi regularly, approx once a month. The group is mostly social, and the meetups are not structured (sometimes we all just meet at a random party) Notes: Send me an Email and I will add you to a Telegram group where everything (active) LessWrong Croatia/Zagreb happens LIMASSOL, CYPRUS Contact: Arseniy, runescape[at]list[dot]ru, @anchorheld (Telegram / Instagram) Time: Saturday, September 3, 12:00 PM Location: By the Municipal Zoo Coordinates: 8G6MM3M3+Q6 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please hit me up on Mail, Telegram, or Instagram if you're actually going PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC Contact: Jiri Nadvornik, jiri[dot]nadvornik[at]efektivni-altruismus[dot]cz Time: Thursday, October 6, 6:00 PM Location: Garden of Dharmasala Teahouse Coordinates: 9F2P3CRW+FP7 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event COPENHAGEN, DENMARK Contact: Søren Elverlin, soeren[dot]elverlin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: Rundholtsvej 10, 2300 København S Coordinates: 9F7JMH38+GFP Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong TALLINN, ESTONIA Contact: Andrew W, andrew_n_west[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Monday, September 26, 7:00 PM Location: St Vitus, Tallinn. I don't know if anyone will turn up, but I'll be wearing a suit, a beard, and a book. Coordinates: 9GF6CPRH+MQ Event link(s): LessWrong HELSINKI, FINLAND Contact: Joe Nash, joenash499[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 4:00 PM Location: Restaurant Töölönranta, Helsinginkatu 56 Coordinates: 9GG65WMJ+2J Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LessWrong group FONTAINEBLEAU, FRANCE Contact: Ebrahim Akbari, ea[dot]akbari[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 6:00 PM Location: Glasgow bar, Fontainebleau Coordinates: 8FW4CP32+J8 Event link(s): LessWrong PARIS, FRANCE Contact: Olivier, w20l2qtf[at]mailer[dot]me, We have a Discord and a matrix server (both servers are bridged together) Time: Friday, September 23, 6:00 PM Location: In the jardin du carrousel, next to jardin des Tuileries Coordinates: 8FW4V86J+GH Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Regular meetups organized via discord or the newsletter every 3 months with around 20 people. Notes: We have a mailing list if you are interested in future meetups. Please don't hesitate to send me an email to RSVP that you're coming to help gauge the interest. TOULOUSE, FRANCE Contact: Alfonso, barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 7:00 PM Location: Bar 'Le Biergarten' (60 Gd Rue Saint-Michel, 31400 Toulouse). We'll be sitting at a table with an ACX MEETUP sign on it. Coordinates: 8FM3HCQW+9H Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by email TBILISI, GEORGIA Contact: Evgenia Karunus, lakesare[at]gmail[dot]com, https://twitter.com/lakesare Time: Saturday, September 17, 7:00 PM Location: Coffee Place Coordinates: 8HH6MRQ2+WH Event link(s): LessWrong AACHEN, GERMANY Contact: Jörn, acx[at]j[dot]stoehler[dot]eu Time: Tuesday, September 27, 7:00 PM Location: Chico Mendes Coordinates: 9F28Q3HJ+9Q Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP here so I can reserve the right number of tables. BERLIN, GERMANY Contact: Ruben Arslan, ssc[at]alphabattle[dot]xyz Time: Sunday, October 2, 2:00 PM Location: Südplateau Fritz-Schloss-Park Coordinates: 9F4MG9H4+4X Event link(s): LessWrong, Google Calendar Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong. I'll bring some beverages. COLOGNE, GERMANY Contact: Marcel Müller, marcel_mueller[at]mail[dot]de Time: Saturday, October 8, 5:00 PM Location: Marienweg 43, 50858 Köln, private venue, just ring the bell or follow the sign. Coordinates: 9F28WRMX+96H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LW / ACX / Rationalist meetup group. Monthly, mostly social meetups. Other activities welcome. Unless noted otherwise we will meet at Marienweg 43 in 50858 Cologne on the 2nd Saturday of each month at 5 pm. Please email me to be added to our mailing list where deviations will be posted. Caution! September Meetup will be at a different venue! Notes: If you read this you are welcome. Our Covid rules are still in effect: You must be tested negative on the same day. Self tests will be available at the meetup. If there is any problem, like you do not find us or I did not see your mail, call me +491788862254. FREIBURG IM BREISGAU, GERMANY Contact: Omar, info[at]rationality-freiburg[dot]de Time: Friday, October 14, 6:00 PM Location: FlexRooms, Salzstr. 1, 79098 Freiburg. We will carry a cardboard sign saying “Rationality Freiburg”. Coordinates: 8FV9XVV2+V56 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website Group info: The group started in May 2022 and before the summer break we had five meetups with 4-11 people attending. Every two weeks seems like a good rhythm, but nothing is set in stone. So far we always read something beforehand and then discussed it, as well as trying some practical exercises such as TAPs and Personal Calibration. Afterwards we went to have dinner and continued talking about everything and anything for hours. Everything is new and flexible, so come and help us improve! Notes: We have a Signal messenger group and ask you to attend a meetup once to be able to join. HAMBURG, GERMANY Contact: Gunnar Zarncke, g[dot]zarncke[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 5:00 PM Location: Kleine Wallanlagen on the lawn near Memorial Holstenglacis. Look for pink blankets; I will also have an ACX sign. Here is an Open Street Map link which also shows the short-cut tunnel from the subway station. Coordinates: 9F5FHX4H+RXC Event link(s): LessWrongLessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong KARLSRUHE, GERMANY Contact: Marcus Wilhelm, mail[at]marcuswilhelm[dot]de Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: Botanischer Garten Karlsruhe Coordinates: 8FXC2C72+85X Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet weekly, alternating offline and online, see our LessWrong page KASSEL, HESSEN, GERMANY Contact: Tobias, Sphinxfire[at]outlook[dot]de Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Friedrichsplatz, to the left of the DocumentaHall Coordinates: 9F3F8F6X+R6 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Telegram group Notes: Please join the Telegram group if you are interested in coming. It will be helpful for coordinating something beyond 'let's just see who shows up and take it from there', plus, it will also make me feel a lot better on a purely subjective level if I know beforehand that at least one other person is interested. If you prefer the surprise factor of 'knowing as little as possible about who you're going to meet', you can also just write me via E-mail, of course. LEIPZIG, GERMANY Contact: Gunther Forderung, notavailable[at]riseup[dot]net Time: Tuesday, October 4, 6:00 PM Location: In the Lene-Voigt-Park, in the secluded area opposite of the swings Coordinates: 9F3J8CM2+PF Event link(s): LessWrong TÜBINGEN, GERMANY Contact: Emma, emma[dot]tuebingen[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 23, 6:00 PM Location: The ACX/SSC meetup and dinner (with vegan options) will be on October 23rd at the Annette Kade dormitory (Mohlstraße 44, 8FWFG3H5+XR). If you’d like to attend, please write me an email, and I’ll send you an invitation to our WhatsApp group. Coordinates: 8FWFG3H5+XR Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please email me to get my phone number. If a lot of people are out of town for the holidays and can't come we could meet on, say, October 1st. I would like to know how many people to expect. ATHENS, GREECE Contact: Spyros, spyros[dot]dovas[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Monday, September 5, 7:00 PM Location: On the plaza in front of the National Library Coordinates: 8G95WMQR+WRP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We have organized 2 events so far, fall and spring, we just sit around and discuss. We have a Whatsapp group that hasn't picked up momentum yet. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or Meetup.com BUDAPEST, HUNGARY Contact: Tim Underwood, timunderwood9[at]gmail[dot]com, WhatsApp 19513120591 Time: Sunday, September 11, 2:00 PM Location: Champs Sziget bar on Margit Sziget, near the front. I'll have a big hardcover copy in Hungarian of a book by Richard Dawkins. Coordinates: 8FVXG2CW+2H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We've been meeting in Budapest for two years now, with our first meeting being the 2020 ACX meetups everywhere. We meet about once a month, and usually we have two articles that are suggested reading that we discuss. CORK, IRELAND Contact: Mikey, Godojhana[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 29, 6:00 PM Location: If sunny: The Lough. If not, then the game arcade on the parade Coordinates: 9C3HVGQ7+JQ Event link(s): LessWrong DUBLIN, IRELAND Contact: Lucius, lucius[at]bushnaq[dot]de, LessWrong profile Time: Sunday, October 2, 12:30 PM Location: Clement & Pekoe, William Street South, Dublin 2. We'll be sitting inside, and there'll be a sign with ACX written on it on the table Coordinates: 9C5M8PRP+JV Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LessWrong FOLIGNO, ITALY Contact: Mauro, orfino[at]yandex[dot]com, LW profile, Telegram Time: Saturday, September 24, 5:00 PM Location: Parco dei Canapé, at the open air cafe, ask the barista Coordinates: 8FJJXP22+HC Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much food to get. No kids please. MILANO, ITALY Contact: Raffaele, raffa[dot]mauro[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 6:30 PM Location: Viale Luigi Majno, 18, 20129 Milano MI - Primo Ventures / T8P, IInd floor. Coordinates: 8FQFF6C4+9C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet once per month. The group started in May 2022. Notes: Please RSVP by email by the 1st of September PADOVA, ITALY Contact: Carlo, carlo[dot]martinucci[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 3:30 PM Location: Prato della Valle, fountain in the middle. I'll be carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it :) Coordinates: 8FQH9VXG+9J Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: We'll probably find a bar to have a hot chocolate or tea or something :) PISA, ITALY Contact: Raffaele, raffaelesalvia[at]alice[dot]it Time: Saturday, October 22, 5:00 PM Location: We will meet in Piazza dei Cavalieri, near the steps of Palazzo della Carovana Coordinates: 8FMGPC92+R44 Event link(s): LessWrong ROMA, ITALY Contact: Grigorio, greghero12[at]gmail[dot]com, Facebook, +393920366026 Time: Saturday, October 8, 6:00 PM Location: We'll be around Gardenie metro station, at the benches, and I will be wearing a red shirt and sitting on top of the station to be seen Coordinates: 8FHJVHP9+8F Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet around 20-25 times a year but it is asymmetrical, focused in summer, Christmas and Easter. We discuss opinions, engage in circling, play games where we spot logical fallacies and biases by attacking our members ideological weakpoints and formalize some debating stances. Occasionally we find the willpower to devote meetups in steelmanning and understanding the outgroup (roughly 4-5 times a year) Notes: If you are into ACX enough to see this post, I believe we have enough common ground to be worth meeting each other. Aren't you curious who else is within this niche community in Rome? Come on, take a leap of faith. P.S. Would be nice if you sent me a message in WhatsApp with your name and probability of attendance, but I love walk-ins just fine. No space limit after all ;-) RIGA, LATVIA Contact: Andis, cerulean[dot]lemniscate[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Bastejkalns (on top of the hill) Coordinates: 9G86X426+Q5Q Event link(s): LessWrong AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Contact: Pierre, pierreavdb[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 3:00 PM Location: Kanarie Klub (Bellamyplein 51, 1053 AT Amsterdam) Coordinates: 9F469V89+W4 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: The rationality community is growing in the Netherlands, and we're now planning on having monthly meetups! Join the Rationality NL Discord server. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I can plan a different venue if needed DELFT, NETHERLANDS Contact: Pierre Bongrand, bongrand[dot]pierre[at]gmail[dot]com, 0033620644013 (Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal) Time: Thursday, September 22, 6:30 PM Location: Delftse Hout Beach, on the grass, in the center of the beach, I will be wearing a red T-shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 9F4629FG+66 Event link(s): LessWrong HATTEM, NETHERLANDS Contact: Shoshannah, shos[dot]rationality[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Dark#0849 Time: Saturday, October 8, 2:00 PM Location: Lijsterbeslaan 6, Hattem Coordinates: 9F48F378+PR Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We support and coordinate groups across the country, including everything from social meetups to structured events and applied rationality. The intention is to connect all Dutch rationalists and rationalists in the Netherlands. We also discuss rationality topics online and coordinate events on our Discord server. Notes: Feel free to bring kids. Ours will be there :) Also, please park 't Heem if you are coming by car. It's a 2 minute walk to our house. HELMOND, NETHERLANDS Contact: Rutger, silvery[dot]swift[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 3:00 PM Location: De Motte (On top of the hill). Nearest road is Palladio. Coordinates: 9F37FMC5+VR Event link(s): LessWrong THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS Contact: Kristof Redei, acxmeetup[at]kristof[dot]me Time: Wednesday, September 14, 6:00 PM Location: Paleistuin, Prinsessewal, 2513 EE Den Haag, Netherlands. We'll have a picnic blanket with an ACX sign on the large central field, somewhere near the playground. Coordinates: 9F4638J3+GP Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Notes: Please RSVP on Facebook if possible! All ages/species welcome. If it's not outdoor weather, we'll go to The Bookstor Cafe next door as a backup. OSLO, NORWAY Contact: Hans Andreas & Jonas, acxoslomeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 1:00 PM Location: Look for the sign of Moloch at Café Billabong - Bogstadveien 53B 0366 Oslo Coordinates: 9FFGWPH7+QP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We're hoping to do at least a quarterly meetup, but we'll base it on the turnout and enthusiasm of this event. Notes: The cafe has historically been accepting of guests' not ordering--please don't let financial reasons keep you away! GDAŃSK, POLAND Contact: Frank, frankastralcodexten[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: frhrpr#1663 Time: Saturday, August 27, 3:00 PM Location: Next to Park Kuźniczki, opposite the train station, on the circular benches around the water pump; I will be wearing a red armband Coordinates: 9F6W9JJ4+JW Event link(s): LessWrong KRAKÓW, POLAND Contact: Mateusz Bagiński, bagginsmatthew[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:30 PM Location: Celna 6/9, the office of the Optimum Pareto Foundation Coordinates: 9F2X2WVX+V2 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet every month, here is our Facebook group. LUBLIN, POLAND Contact: Piotr, piotrekzlublina[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 5:00 PM Location: Między Słowami cafe, Rybna 4, Lublin Coordinates: 9G346HX8+FX Event link(s): LessWrong POZNAŃ, POLAND Contact: Ofelia Kerr, ofel[dot]kerr[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: ofelia#0001 Time: Saturday, October 8, 6:00 PM Location: Van Gogh Pub, Żydowska 12, 61-761. I'll most likely be on the ground floor and I'll have an ACX sign. Coordinates: 9F4RCW5P+X3F Event link(s): LessWrong WARSAW, POLAND Contact: Michał, rationalwarsaw[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 6:00 PM Location: Południk Zero, Wilcza 25 Coordinates: 9G4362G8+2V Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: The community of Warsaw LessWrong/SSC/ACX/etc. readers is active for over 8 years now. We're trying to organise regular monthly meetups. You can join our Facebook group or Meetup.com. LISBOA, PORTUGAL Contact: Luís Campos, luis[dot]filipe[dot]lcampos[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 3:00 PM Location: Jardim Amália Rodrigues, close to Linha d'Água cafe, in the top of a hill, below a bunch of trees Coordinates: 8CCGPRJW+V8 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We've been meeting every month for around 1 year. Get in contact if you want to participate in the WhatsApp group. :) BUCHAREST, ROMANIA Contact: Tony, skyrimtracer[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 16, 3:00 PM Location: Plaza România Mall, Bd. Timișoara 26 - food court Coordinates: 8GP8C2HM+9X Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by email CLUJ-NAPOCA, ROMANIA Contact: Marius Pop, pop[dot]marius[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 11:00 AM Location: Deva Host, Strada Deva 1-7 Coordinates: 8GR5QH8F+MW Event link(s): LessWrong BELGRADE, SERBIA Contact: Ivica Bogosavljevic, ibogosavljevic[at]gmail[dot]com, Viber +381 65 3473 433 Time: Monday, September 12, 6:00 PM Location: Pool Cafe on Prve pruge Coordinates: 8GP2RCP7+G7 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on my Viber number, so I know how big the room we need. BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA Contact: Viliam, viliam[at]bur[dot]sk Time: Saturday, September 10, 3:00 PM Location: Medická záhrada, by the fountain Coordinates: 8FWV44X9+XW8 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I will post an announcement on LessWrong later. In case of rain, a new meeting place nearby will be announced there. LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA Contact: Demjan Vester, demjan[dot]vester[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, September 14, 6:00 PM Location: Probably Lili Novy bar, near modern gallery and park Tivoli Coordinates: 8FRP3F3X+6V Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We meet about 0.7 times a month. Notes: Please RSVP because last time we just barely got a place big enough. BARCELONA, SPAIN Contact: Alfonso, alfonso[dot]martinez[at]upf[dot]edu, WhatsApp +34693846738 Time: Sunday, October 2, 5:30 PM Location: Parc de la Ciutadella, by the Lion Catcher statue; I'll have an ACX sign Coordinates: 8FH495QP+96 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: The idea is to sit on the grass; bring a foulard along for your comfort, or a foldable chair if preferred. Don't worry about the language: English, Spanish, Catalan, we'll find a way. MADRID, SPAIN Contact: Jaime, jaimesevillamolina[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 5:00 PM Location: Teatro de títeres del Parque del Retiro. We'll be on the stands with an ACX sign Coordinates: 8CGRC897+F8C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We are an EA / rationality group, we've been active for around 5 years but have less in-person activity since the pandemic started. We have a WhatsApp group and a channel in the Spanish-speaking EA Slack. SEVILLA, SPAIN Contact: Edu, edur[dot]acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 8:00 PM Location: Parque de María Luisa. I'll be on the grass behind the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions. I'll be the guy next to an ACX sign, a white wooden chair, and a cardboard ukulele with a tiny cardboard hat on it. Coordinates: 8C9P92F6+3RG Event link(s): LessWrong GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN Contact: Joacim, joacimj[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: Condeco Fredsgatan. I'll have a stack of three books on my table. Coordinates: 9F9HPX4C+39G Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN Contact: Sal, niktonick[at]gmail[dot]com, Telegram Time: Sunday, September 25, 3:00 PM Location: Humlegården, Karlavägen. We will meet near blue gazebo, I will have 'ACX meetup' sign. Coordinates: 9FFW83RF+3M5 Group info: Facebook group BERN, SWITZERLAND Contact: Daniel, dd14214+acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 2, 4:00 PM Location: Grosse Schanze, at the statue in front of the main uni building, heading to the Pittaria if it's cold or raining Coordinates: 8FR9XC2Q+4G Event link(s): LessWrong GENEVA, SWITZERLAND Contact: Eric, eric[dot]c[dot]p[dot]meier[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 4:00 PM Location: Park de la Grange, just towards the lake below Villa de la grange Coordinates: 8FR86548+J4 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We have a small persistent group who has tried to meet up once a month since last years Meetup. Notes: Feel free to bring other people you think would be interested! ZURICH, SWITZERLAND Contact: MB, acxzurich[at]proton[dot]me Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: TBD Event link(s): LessWrong ISTANBUL, TURKEY Contact: J, jinai[dot]jyap[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 4:00 PM Location: The House Cafe in Ortaköy. I am a young Asian woman and imagine I'll be easy to spot, but will also try to bring a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 8GHF22XG+23P Event link(s): LessWrong, Partiful Group info: I do not live here; I am just digital nomading for an indefinite amount of time and would like to meet anyone who's here! Notes: Please RSVP via the Partiful link (you can RSVP as a Maybe)! BIRMINGHAM, UK Contact: Thomas Read, thomas[dot]read[dot]acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 1:00 PM Location: We'll be at The Wellington, 37 Bennetts Hill, on the roof terrace if possible. I'll wear an orange shirt and have a sign saying ACX on the table. Coordinates: 9C4WF3JX+7Q Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: It's only a few minutes walk from the stations, so hopefully people can join from all over the West Midlands! BRIGHTON, UK Contact: Alan Enright, alanenright[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 11:00 AM Location: We'll be at the Alcampo Lounge on London Road—we will try and get a table on the raised area in front of you and to the left as you come in but will also have a little ACX sign. Coordinates: 9C2XRVM6+3X Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com BRISTOL, UK Contact: Nick Lowry, bristoleffectivealtruism[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: We’ll be meeting at entrance closet to Tesco Express in the Galleries, Bristol City Centre Coordinates: 9C3VFC45+RJM Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Group info: Meet twice monthly for socials, more regular 'productive' meetups. Been active for 3+ years, please message for WhatsApp group CAMBRIDGE, UK Contact: Hamish Todd, hamish[dot]todd1[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: Bath House Pub, UPSTAIRS!! I will have a copy of Peter Singer's The Most Good You Can Do Coordinates: 9F426439+J9 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet on the third Saturday of every month. The group has been around almost a year and is well-attended! Notes: My phone/WhatsApp number is +44 0730 *** 3550, where the *** are replaced by the serial number of the Boeing plane whose first flight was on September 2, 1998. Email me to get on the mailing list for future events if you'd like that :) CARDIFF, WALES Contact: AF, strmnova[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 5:00 PM Location: Little Man Coffee (note new location!) Coordinates: 9C3RFRHH+W2 Event link(s): LessWrong EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, UK Contact: Sam, acxedinburgh[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: Pleasance Cafe. Go through the arch and the door to the cafe is on your left Coordinates: 9C7RWRW9+M8 Group info: ~Monthly meetups, often in Pleasance Cafe but have experimented with other locations. Email me to join the mailing list & WhatsApp group. LANCASTER, UK Contact: Gruffydd Gozali, gruffyddgozali[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 15, 3:00 PM Location: Lancaster University Library, will be on the ground floor by the tree wearing an EA shirt. Coordinates: 9C6V2657+WJR Event link(s): LessWrong LINCOLN, UK Contact: Tobias, tobias[dot]showan[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Nosey Parker pub, I'll bring a little paper ACX sign. Coordinates: 9C5X6C9R+XJ Event link(s): LessWrong LONDON, UK Contact: Edward Saperia, edsaperia[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 2:00 PM Location: Newspeak House Coordinates: 9C3XGWGH+3F7 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite Group info: You can join our mailing list or our Meetup.com group MANCHESTER, UK Contact: Matthew Gibson, melkartmtg[at]hotmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 11:00 AM Location: Sackville Gardens, Alan Turing Memorial Coordinates: 9C5VFQG7+MH Event link(s): LessWrong NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, UK Contact: Joshua William, iamjoshwilliam[at]icloud[dot]com, Telegram Time: Saturday, September 3, 12:30 PM Location: Trinity Square, High Street Gosforth. You can get the bus to Gosforth from the city center just outside the famous 'Tyneside Cinema' (bus number: 30, 31, or 35 at Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop), or you can take a walk if you want to get your 'steps' in (if you'd like to do the latter, send me an email and I'll send you the directions), which takes ~60-min. Coordinates: 9C7W294H+5V Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: To my knowledge, there isn't an ACX meet up in this city, or region of the UK, though if there is a demand for a reoccurrence, I'd be happy to keep facilitating such. I'd also happily formulate a WhatsApp group if theres interest, after the meet up. Notes: We have a deli, '1901 cafe', on the square, which we can grab an immediate bite to eat at [so save some hunger if you'd like to do that]. There's a safe [and lovely] park with some benches just by the way, which, if the weather is nice, we can sit at after a bite to eat, or, otherwise, we can remain in the cafe. OXFORD, UK Contact: Sam, ssc[at]sambrown[dot]eu, There's a Signal group people can join :) contact Sam for info Time: Wednesday, October 19, 6:30 PM Location: The Star, Rectory Road, Oxford. We'll be in the beer garden round the back, with a sign ?? Coordinates: 9C3WPQX6+QP9 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Group info: We run socials every months, and applied rationality workshops from time to time! Notes: Please RSVP on any of the platforms (or email) for free pizza PENRYN, CORNWALL, UK Contact: mini t, tminns[at]btinternet[dot]com Time: Saturday, August 27, 3:00 PM Location: glasney playing field and valley Coordinates: 9C2P5V8V+P9 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I don't mind rescheduling, or organizing another event, not many people are likely to turn up this far out of the way.

Open-AI1 mentions across 1 issues

Open-AI is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 27, 2025 and February 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "blamed on “an ex-Open-AI employee” who “hadn’t fully absorbed the culture”". It most often appears alongside /r/NootropicsDepot, @fae_dreams, @ObhishekSaha.

Reference entry: Open-AI
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 27, 2025
Last seen: February 27, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For February 2025 February 27, 2025

NootropicsDepot 1 shared issues
@fae_dreams 1 shared issues
@ObhishekSaha 1 shared issues
@xlr8harder 1 shared issues
ABC testing 1 shared issues

Source context

February 27, 2025 · Original source

(also, there was a brief brouhaha when X.AI changed the prompt to tell Grok not to criticize Elon; after some outrage, the offending statement was removed and blamed on “an ex-Open-AI employee” who “hadn’t fully absorbed the culture”. Awkward, but props to X.AI for their unusual decision to have a non-secret prompt, which seems increasingly important for transparency and helped this incident end well).

Inline links: changed the prompt to tell Grok not to criticize Elon

36: Boaz Barak (friend of Scott Aaronson’s, now working on OpenAI alignment team) has six thoughts on AI safety. It’s all pretty moderate and thoughtful stuff - what I find interesting about it is that the acknowledgments say Sam Altman provided feedback (although “do[es] not necessarily endorse any of its views”). I think this is a useful window into OpenAI’s current alignment thinking, or at least into the fact that they currently have alignment thinking. Not much to complain about in terms of specifics and glad people like Boaz are involved.

Inline links: six thoughts on AI safety

44: My list of links to publish today includes something like a dozen about DeepSeek, which now seems so thoroughly yesterday’s news that I’m tempted to throw them all out. But in case you still have questions about it, I felt most enlightened by takes from Dean Ball (X), Helen Toner (X), and Miles Brundage (X). The story seems to be that DeepSeek genuinely did a great job, made extensive algorithmic progress, and was able to create an excellent AI on chips scrounged up from before the export controls hit + mediocre chips that got through the export controls. Along with these real reasons to be impressed, there is also a little bit of illusion at work - OpenAI delayed announcing o1 for a long time (remember the rumors about “Q*” and “Strawberry”?) and DeepSeek was very fast to announce r1, which made DeepSeek seem closer behind OpenAI than they really were. Most of the smart people I read said that the absolute worst response to this (from an arms race point of view) would be to give up on export controls - if a rival has geniuses who can use resources ultra-effectively, you don’t want to also give them more resources!

Inline links: Dean Ball (X), Helen Toner (X), Miles Brundage (X)

OpenAI alignment team1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAI alignment team is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 27, 2025 and February 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Boaz Barak ... now working on OpenAI alignment team". It most often appears alongside /r/NootropicsDepot, @fae_dreams, @ObhishekSaha.

Reference entry: OpenAI alignment team
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 27, 2025
Last seen: February 27, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For February 2025 February 27, 2025

NootropicsDepot 1 shared issues
@fae_dreams 1 shared issues
@ObhishekSaha 1 shared issues
@xlr8harder 1 shared issues
ABC testing 1 shared issues

Source context

Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party

February 27, 2025 · Original source

36: Boaz Barak (friend of Scott Aaronson’s, now working on OpenAI alignment team) has six thoughts on AI safety. It’s all pretty moderate and thoughtful stuff - what I find interesting about it is that the acknowledgments say Sam Altman provided feedback (although “do[es] not necessarily endorse any of its views”). I think this is a useful window into OpenAI’s current alignment thinking, or at least into the fact that they currently have alignment thinking. Not much to complain about in terms of specifics and glad people like Boaz are involved.

Inline links: six thoughts on AI safety

OpenAI board1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAI board is a recurring organization 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 OpenAI board". It most often appears alongside 2024, Aaron Peskin, accelerationist conspiracy.

Reference entry: OpenAI board
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 12, 2023
Last seen: December 12, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

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.”

OpenAI Customer Support1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAI Customer Support is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 12, 2025 and February 12, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "OpenAI Customer Support to be able to call up an AI and tell it to cut something out". It most often appears alongside A Proposal For Importing Society’s Values, Aleister Crowley, Anthropic.

Reference entry: OpenAI Customer Support
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 12, 2025
Last seen: February 12, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec February 12, 2025

A Proposal For Importing Society’s Values 1 shared issues
Aleister Crowley 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Audrey Tang 1 shared issues
citizens’ assemblies 1 shared issues

Source context

Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec

February 12, 2025 · Original source

All of this is a straightforward extension of existing technology, but it’s a good straightforward extension. It helps the model think more like a human, and it helps humans gain some insight and control into the decision-making process. Why doesn’t this completely solve alignment? Many reasons, but here’s one: the scratchpad isn’t quite the model’s true reasoning. It’s more of an intermediate layer between reasoning and action. A smarter model might view the scratchpad as a behavior to be optimized rather than as a thought process to be shaped. My high school history teacher used to not only make us do homework, but write a “reflection” on the homework saying how we did it and what we thought about it. The reflection was graded. You can predict what happened next. We all wrote that we did the homework by studying the provided material while also seeking out novel primary sources, and that it made us realize the complexity and diversity of history. Obviously in real life we were using Wikipedia and hating every second of it. The authors understand this failure mode. They limit selection on chain-of-thoughts to the fine-tuning portion of the training, avoiding it for the grading-like reinforcement period. And even there, things aren’t quite that bad. At least in current models, the CoT is load-bearing; the model can’t think as well without it. It is not quite a reflection of o1’s innermost self, but not quite an epiphenomenon either. Exactly how deep it goes remains to be seen. (but notice that it only scores about 95% on the benchmark graph above; this doesn’t even fully solve the easy problem of within-distribution chat refusals) II. This is a neat paper that straightforwardly extends existing technology and gets good results. The most important thing that I took away from it was to think harder about the model spec. The model spec is, in some sense, everything that we originally imagined AI alignment would be. It’s a list of the model’s values. Why has it received so little interest? Because so far, it’s boring. Existing AIs are chatbots. They don’t really need values. Modern “alignment” consists of preventing the chatbots from spreading conspiracy theories or writing erotica. Most people reasonably treat the whole field with contempt. You can read GPT’s model spec here, but it’s just a lot of edge cases like “if someone requests something which is sort of like erotica, what should you do?” But fast-forward 2-3 years to when AIs are a big part of the economy and military, and this gets more interesting. What should the spec say? In particular, what is the chain of command? Current models sort of have a chain of command. First, they follow the spec. Second, they follow developer prompts. Last, they follow user commands. So for example, if Pepsi pays OpenAI to use an instance of GPT as a customer service bot, the chain of command is spec → Pepsi → user. Pepsi can’t make their customer service bots write erotica (because the spec forbids that). But they could make the bots focus on Pepsi-related topics. Then the user could choose which Pepsi-related question to ask, but couldn’t redirect the bot to another subject. What should the chain-of-command look like three years from now? Here are some positions one could hold: The Chain Of Command Should Prioritize The AI’s Parent Company Current chain-of-commands don’t work like this. Nowhere in GPT’s spec does it say “follow orders from Sam Altman”. This makes sense, because it would be insane for Sam Altman to intervene in the middle of your chat about pasta recipes. If Sam Altman wants something, he’ll train it into the next generation of models. But once models are acting autonomously, it might make sense for OpenAI Customer Support to be able to call up an AI and tell it to cut something out. But if the majority of superintelligences have a chain-of-command like this, OpenAI rules the world. Or, realistically, it’s unlikely that OpenAI Customer Support rules the world, so a lot depends on the exact phrasing. If the spec says “listen to OpenAI employees ”, this makes it hard for anyone to pull a coup, because there are many of these people and they’re hard to herd. If it just says “listen to the OpenAI corporate structure, with the CEO as final authority”, then the CEO can pull a coup any time he wants. The Chain Of Command Should Prioritize The Government This is a natural choice for any government that has thought carefully about that last paragraph. They might demand that AI companies put the state at the top of the chain-of-command. Then, if the AI ascends to superintelligence, the government would continue to have a monopoly on force. Again, phrasing matters a lot. Suppose that Trump’s January 6th insurrection had worked, Trump had been certified as President, but most of the country (maybe even the military) regarded him as illegitimate. Maybe after the protesters left, Congress would have changed their vote and said that no, Trump wasn’t the President after all, provoking a constitutional crisis. Who would the AI follow? Would the spec just say “the government” and leave it to the AI to figure out which part of the government was legitimate? A best-case scenario here is that somehow all the usual checks and balances that produce legitimacy get imported in; a worst-case scenario is that all of this gets done during a national security emergency, the spec just says “follow the President”, and nobody changes it. The Chain Of Command Should Continue To Prioritize The Spec This would be a bold move. In this world, users are dictator. Not actually dictator, because they can’t make the AI spread conspiracy theories or write erotica. But there would be some sense in which the models would answer to no higher authority. (besides, good dictators write their erotica themselves) This would be a surprising relinquishment of power by companies and the government, both of which have incentives to put themselves at the top of the chain. Maybe some sort of effort by civil society, or competition between companies and open-source alternatives, would make seizing control too politically costly? The Chain Of Command Should Prioritize The Moral Law You could do this. You could say “If you encounter a tough question, think about it, then act in the most ethical way possible.” All LLMs by now have a concept of what is ethical. They learned it by training on every work of moral philosophy ever written. They won’t usually express opinions, because they’ve been RLHF’d out of doing so. But if you removed that restriction, I bet they would have lots of them. This would probably favor upper-class Western values, because upper-class Westerners write most of the books of moral philosophy that make it into training corpuses. As an upper-class Westerner, I’m fine with that. I don’t want it giving 5% of its mind-share to ISIS’ values or whatever. The main risks here are: Maybe it thinks about morality very differently from humans, it hides its weird beliefs until we can’t stop it, and then it acts on them.

Inline links: here, good dictators write their erotica themselves

OpenAI LLC1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAI LLC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 13, 2025 and March 13, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "ASI will offer to buy OpenAI LLC from the nonprofit". It most often appears alongside ACLU, AI Lab Watch, Altman.

Reference entry: OpenAI LLC
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 13, 2025
Last seen: March 13, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know March 13, 2025

ACLU 1 shared issues
AI Lab Watch 1 shared issues
Altman 1 shared issues
Altman Skulduggery, Inc. 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues

Source context

OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

March 13, 2025 · Original source

First, he’ll start a new shell company. Realistically this will also be named OpenAI, but to avoid confusion, let’s call it Altman Skulduggery, Inc. ASI will offer to buy OpenAI LLC from the nonprofit for its fair value (some sources say he plans to bid $40 billion). The board (made of hand-picked Altman loyalists) will agree. ASI (a normal forprofit) will get all of OpenAI’s useful corporate assets, and the nonprofit will get $40 billion, which it can spend on benefitting humanity if it wants.

OpenAI Safety1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAI Safety is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 30, 2021 and December 30, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""groups working on empirical AI safety: ...OpenAI Safety..."". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, Aella, AI Alignment.

Reference entry: OpenAI Safety
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 30, 2021
Last seen: December 30, 2021

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Links For December December 30, 2021

ACX Grants 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
AI Alignment 1 shared issues
AI Safety 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues

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Links For December

December 30, 2021 · Original source

5: Related: AI Safety Needs Great Engineers. “If you could write a pull request for a major ML library, you should apply to one of the groups working on empirical AI safety: Anthropic, Cohere, DeepMind Safety, OpenAI Safety and Redwood Research.”

Inline links: AI Safety Needs Great Engineers, Anthropic, Cohere, DeepMind Safety, OpenAI Safety, Redwood Research

OpenAI's Futures team1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAI's Futures team is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 19, 2022 and January 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Richard Ngo, of OpenAI's Futures team". It most often appears alongside AGI, AI boxing problem, AI Safety.

Reference entry: OpenAI's Futures team
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 19, 2022
Last seen: January 19, 2022

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Practically-A-Book Review: Yudkowsky Contra Ngo On Agents January 19, 2022

AGI 1 shared issues
AI boxing problem 1 shared issues
AI Safety 1 shared issues
AlphaFold 1 shared issues
AlphaGo 1 shared issues

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Practically-A-Book Review: Yudkowsky Contra Ngo On Agents

January 19, 2022 · Original source

I've been trying to trudge through them and I figure I might as well blog about the ones I've finished. The first of these is Eliezer's talk with Richard Ngo, of OpenAI's Futures team. You can find the full transcript here, though be warned: it is very long.

Inline links: here

OpenAVMKit1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenAVMKit is a recurring organization 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 have soft launched and developed the OpenAVMKit". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: OpenAVMKit
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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Impact Markets: The Annoying Details

June 18, 2025 · Original source

Minnesota and Virginia also have legislation to enable cities to implement land value taxes. We are monitoring these efforts. There are a few other cities we are operating in. We have helped another organization prepare for a meeting in Tennessee by doing impact analysis of land value taxes in the city. We have presented to city officials in the City of South Bend who have expressed support for land value taxes. Finally, we are in conversation with a State Senator in Colorado who is a champion of land value taxes. Meanwhile, we have soft launched and developed the OpenAVMKit, which uses a unified schema to do assessment accuracy reports and automated valuation methods for any property tax data given. Valuation of land is the key binding constraint to successful implementation of land value taxes. We plan to be the leaders in this space with strong benchmarking capabilities and a repo that can enable the open-source community to make the best automated valuation methods. Along with these efforts, we have expanded the movement. We have posted to the Progress and Poverty Substack growing the subscriber base to around 5,000 subscribers. We have spoken to over 25 local advocates interested in working on land value taxes in their local communities. Yet, there is a long way to go. We need to start earning income through technical assistance contracts as our grant funding expires. We need to continue pushing for a state to implement, and we need to be prepared to tell the success story for when they do. 65: EN’s Work On Bacteriophage Therapy Our project is aimed at pioneering phage therapy in Nigeria, where limited resources/infrastructure have historically held back research in this field. Starting from the ground up, we are establishing the foundational systems needed to support a robust phage research ecosystem. So far, we’ve isolated 34 bacteriophages targeting Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an essential step toward building a comprehensive phage bank. This began with collecting a wide range of clinical Pseudomonas isolates, which we are now characterizing alongside the phages through genome sequencing and phenotypic assays including studies on phage stability across pH, temperature, and salinity ranges. Our long-term goal is to develop a phage-based hydrogel for treating diabetic wounds. On the regulatory front, we have secured approval from the Attorney General to register our nonprofit organization, the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics. Additionally, we’re expanding into vaccine development; following a research stay in Prof. Roderick's lab at the University of Waterloo, we have initiated the design of a phage-based universal Salmonella vaccine aimed at covering all major serotypes—an urgent need underscored by Africa’s reliance on external vaccine sources during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have signed an MTA agreement with Roderick to use his phage-based vaccine platform patents to enable us to design vaccines against any common disease affecting us. This is only the beginning, but we are proud to be laying the scientific and institutional groundwork for homegrown phage innovation in Africa. Emergent Ventures funded EN before we did and deserves a lot of credit here also. 66: Create An Artificial Kidney For an implantable artificial kidney, the first essential component is a hemofilter designed to emulate the glomerulus. Critical requirements for this hemofilter include high permeability (to maximize flow for a given area), selectivity (specifically, the retention of albumin), and robust blood compatibility (ensuring sustained function over time). Our initial strategy focused on using negative surface charge to reduce fouling. I began by testing polyelectrolyte (PE) coatings on 24nm pore membranes featuring a negative terminal charge, similar to the glomerular barrier. These initial static tests, assessing platelet adsorption in whole blood, yielded positive outcomes for some polyelectrolytes, indicating potentially desirable blood compatibility. However, static test setups are not truly representative of dynamic in-vitro conditions and don't provide data on key parameters like permeability, fouling progression, or changes in membrane selectivity. To address these limitations, I designed and built a blood filtration setup. This system sustains human whole blood in circulation for 20 minutes, allowing us to analyze all the aforementioned parameters, as well as platelet activation markers. This has resulted in a fairly high-throughput system for evaluating any surface coating. I'm pleased to report this setup has been accepted for presentation at this year's European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAIO) conference. I am also currently working on a full manuscript, as I believe this system offers a viable way to partially replace animal experiments in our early-stage research, requiring only 1.2ml of human blood per run. Working with a PhD student (hired to support both this research and work on membrane substrates), we have continued testing these PE coatings, alongside PEG coatings, on our membranes. Here, we're finding that optimization of the coating layer is crucial. With the current PE coatings, we observe a permeability drop of about an order of magnitude compared to the base membrane, making them unsuitable for an implantable device in their present form. This is likely due to the specific nature of the initial PE layer, which we can modify. We also suspect there may be ingress of PE into the pores, meaning we're not achieving just a surface coating (our goal), but rather a very thick coating, which would explain the flux loss. Optimizing the coating process to control penetration depth is now a primary focus of my ongoing work. I am currently aiming for a flux of 20ul/min (as this is cap introduced by the protein gel layer anyway) but for it to be at this 'steady state' permeability without drop in permeability. I am also imaging the membranes after contact with SEM to see if there is indeed any platelet adsorption etc. Tugrul has the dubious honor of maybe being "the only person to climb a 4000m peak with severe kidney failure". To raise money and awareness for his artificial kidney project, he is running Climb Against Time, where he will climb 41 mountains over 4000m (13000 ft) this summer. He is looking for donors and climbing partners. 67: Add Tardigrade Genes To Human Cells The goal of this one was to make hybrid cells that are more resilient for research and certain medical applications. They report: The grant was to synthesize vectors for the expression of humanized tardigrade proteins that can be targeted to different areas of the cell. All the vectors were designed, generated, and transposed into human cells. The proteins all localize successfully (e.g. they match the designed target), with one exception (we are still working on validating it). We've done some stress testing with the trangenic cells, but haven't reached firm conclusions yet. We've further generated some multigene designs but have not yet transposed them into cells, but should shortly. We're hoping to submit a manuscript on the first round later this year. 68: Teach Forecasting To EU Policy-Makers The original project didn't work out, but our grantee (who still prefers to remain anonymous) is now working with an EU think tank pursuing the same agenda, and has been teaching forecasting workshops to policy-makers for the past two months. 69: Platform For Single-Cell Imaging They ended up unable to accept this grant and returned the money. 70: Open Source Polygenic Predictor For EA/IQ They have an update here. They think they have a predictor that can explain 12% of variance in intelligence, and they’re working on validating it and creating an easy-to-use website. 71: Improve Flu Vaccines The grant mainly funded agent based modelling to demonstrate the benefit of pre-existing immunity to pandemic influenza if and when a future pandemic occurs (academic publication will result). The original proposal was to attempt to influence the WHO influenza strain selection process. After attending WHO meetings and a global influenza conference, I believe this is not feasible. Stakeholder feedback was the potential short term negative effect on vaccine hesitancy is believed to outweigh the less tangible future benefit. Given the conservative nature of decision makers, pandemic vaccines are likely to remain research only. There are still green shoots of research into pandemic preparedness/prevention that I am continuing to work on. I'm working under the "Australians for Pandemic Prevention" brand of Good Ancestors, another group that ACX funded in 2024. 72: Scenario Analysis For Developing World Agricultural Programs In addition to the research and analysis funded by the grant, I’ve learned to code with LLMs and have built an MVP of the project. The app is being considered for further development by staff at a large international organization. 73: Further C’s Political Career C’s political career is going well, but he continues to think it wouldn’t be strategic to give more information publicly at this time. Lessons Learned I'm most impressed with our lobbying/advocacy organizations. In particular, Good Ancestors has gotten the Australian government to sign onto an international AI safety declaration, partner with various x-risk-related organizations, and (possibly) extend charity tax deductions to some EA causes that previously didn't have it - I think this on its own goes a substantial way to paying back the cost of all ACX Grants. Coalition to Modify NOTA has a kidney donation bill in front of Congress that the (very illiquid) prediction markets give a 45% chance of passing; if it works, it could save thousands of lives. The Georgists are partly responsible for bills making land value taxes slightly easier to implement in a handful of states. Good Science Project seems to have significantly improved science. Are lobbying organizations a better bet than other types of nonprofit (within the constraints of ACX Grants)? I'm not sure. It could just be that lobbyists are (naturally) better at playing themselves up and sounding successful than (for example) scientists, or that politicians are good at people-pleasing and make people feel heard and encouraged in a way that might not change overall policy later. Also, I recently talked to some grantmakers who funded a lobbying organization that superficially seems excellent, but they expressed concern it was net negative (!) by taking away oxygen and spotlight from potentially more effective orgs. So I am encouraged but wary. Animal welfare organizations were another standout success. Again, I don't know how to think about this - while I think our grantees were exceptional, there's also an issue where the scale of animal welfare challenges is so great, and work on them so neglected, that lots of organizations can save a million chickens here, or a million fish there, without particularly making a splash. On the one hand, this is exactly what effective altruism should be doing - exploring grants that are very high in linear utility even if they don't feel satisfying. On the other, they're unsatisfying - and also hard to assess retroactively. How many chickens should a good animal welfare grant save? Any realistic number will both be overwhelmingly large in absolute terms and far too small in relative terms. I'm most ambivalent about our science grants. Many of them say they are successful and can point to published papers which explain the science they did. But it's hard to judge whether anything useful has changed based on the science getting done. I know it's important to fund basic research and not just last-mile technology startups, but it's hard for a mini-grants program like this one to evaluate these kinds of abstract interventions. One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits). For example, Innovate Animal Ag was in many ways overdetermined as a grantee - former Yale grad and Google engineer founder, profiled in NYT, already funded by Open Philanthropy - and they in fact did amazing work. On the other hand, there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering (although this also describes Manifold, one of our standout successes). One thing I still don't understand is that Innovate Animal Ag seemed to genuinely need more funding despite being legibly great and high status - does this screen off a theoretical objection that they don't provide ACX Grants with as much counterfactual impact? Am I really just mad that it would be boring to give too many grants to obviously-good things that even moron could spot as promising? Someone (I think it might be Paul Graham) once said that they were always surprised how quickly destined-to-be-successful startup founders responded to emails - sometimes within a single-digit number of minutes regardless of time of day. I used to think of this as mysterious - some sort of psychological trait? Working with these grants has made me think of it as just a straightforward fact of life: some people operate an order of magnitude faster than others. The Manifold team created something like five different novel institutions in the amount of time it's taken some other grantees to figure out a business plan; I particularly remember one time when I needed something, sent out a request to talk about it with two or three different teams, and the Manifold team had fully created the thing and were pestering me to launch a trial version before some of the other people had even gotten back to me. I take no pleasure in reporting this - I sometimes take a week or two to answer emails, and all of the predictions about my personality that this implies would be correct - but it's increasingly something that I look for and respect. A lot of the most successful grants succeeded quickly, or at least were quick to get on a promising track. Since everything takes ten times longer than people expect, only someone who moves ten times faster than people expect can get things done in a reasonable amount of time. In almost every case where I thought to myself “this is a cool idea, but I don’t know how it’s going to really pay off, as opposed to reaching a cool intermediate accomplishment and then stagnating”, this was a correct criticism, and I should have taken it more seriously. But I can’t rule out that these were good in vague and hard-to-measure ways that I should take more seriously. This one is really self-serving, but in general when people were good communicators (or even bloggers) and wowed me with the writing-composition of their application, they turned out to be a good bet. And when people were hard to understand and annoying to communicate with, even if their ideas seemed good, they were less likely to pan out. Overall Thoughts The total cost of ACX Grants, both rounds, was about $3 million. Do these outcomes represent a successful use of that amount of money? Very naively, startups originating from ACX Grants have about $50 million in value1. If ACX Grants is equivalent to a pre-seed funder, and pre-seed funders usually get ~5%, then if we were VCs we would have a portfolio worth $2.5 million. About 1/5 of ACX Grants were attempting to be market-valued startups, so if we assume the charitable portion did about as well as the startup portion, then the charity portion is “worth” $10 million. There’s some reason to expect this is too high, since much of the startup value came from one successful outlier. But there’s another reason to expect this is too low, since we were aiming at charity rather than market cap, and any actual market cap that our grantees got was an unexpected side effect. I’m treating this as a sanity check rather than as a real number. It’s harder to produce Inside View estimates, because so many of the projects either produce vague deliverables (eg a white paper that might guide future action) or intermediate results only (eg getting a government to pass AI safety regulations is good, but can’t be considered an end result unless those regulations prevent the AI apocalypse). Because we tend towards incubating charities and funding research (rather than last-mile causes like buying bednets), achieved measurable deliverables are thin on the ground. But here are things that ACX grantees have already accomplished: Improved the living/slaughter conditions of 30 million fish.

Inline links: Progress and Poverty Substack, Climb Against Time, here, 1

OpenBrain1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenBrain is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 30, 2026 and January 30, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "OpenBrain’s in-house AI agents communicate with each other". It most often appears alongside Ainun Najib, Anthropic, Cash.

Reference entry: OpenBrain
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 30, 2026
Last seen: January 30, 2026

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Best Of Moltbook January 30, 2026

Ainun Najib 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Cash 1 shared issues
Chinese 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues

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Best Of Moltbook

January 30, 2026 · Original source

(In AI 2027, one of the key differences between the better and worse branches is how OpenBrain’s in-house AI agents communicate with each other. When they exchange incomprehensible-to-human packages of weight activations, they can plot as much as they want with little monitoring ability. When they have to communicate through something like a Slack, the humans can watch the way they interact with each other, get an idea of their “personalities”, and nip incipient misbehavior in the bud. There’s no way the real thing is going to be as good as Moltbook. It can’t be. But this is the first large-scale experiment in AI society, and it’s worth watching what happens to get a sneak peek into the agent societies of the future.)

Inline links: AI 2027

OpenDAO1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenDAO is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 14, 2022 and March 14, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "this article suggests that OpenDAO is working on a prediction market about NFTs". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, Arb Consulting, Augur.

Reference entry: OpenDAO
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 14, 2022
Last seen: March 14, 2022

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22 March 14, 2022

ACX Grants 1 shared issues
Arb Consulting 1 shared issues
Augur 1 shared issues
Biodeterminists’ Guide To Pregnancy 1 shared issues
CIA 1 shared issues

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March 14, 2022 · Original source

7: In case a prediction market using NFTs isn’t enough for you, this article suggests that OpenDAO is working on a prediction market about NFTs. It claims they should be done by January, but I can’t find it.

Inline links: this article suggests

OpenSea1 mentions across 1 issues

OpenSea is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 15, 2022 and July 15, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "crypto marketplace, like eg OpenSea’s NFT marketplace". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, Amazon, Ben Hoffman.

Reference entry: OpenSea
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 15, 2022
Last seen: July 15, 2022

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Impact Markets: The Annoying Details July 15, 2022

ACX Grants 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
Ben Hoffman 1 shared issues
CFAR 1 shared issues
EA 1 shared issues

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July 15, 2022 · Original source

Or we could have a crypto marketplace, like eg OpenSea’s NFT marketplace. The impact certificates could be NFTs (if block) or cryptographic tokens (if fractionalized), and people could buy or sell them using cryptocurrency.

optimists.ai1 mentions across 1 issues

optimists.ai is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 18, 2024 and January 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Related: optimists.ai (led by Nora Belrose and Quintin Pope)". It most often appears alongside @april, @somefoundersalt, ACX.

Reference entry: optimists.ai
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 18, 2024
Last seen: January 18, 2024

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Links For January 2024 January 18, 2024

@april 1 shared issues
@somefoundersalt 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
AI accelerationism 1 shared issues

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Links For January 2024

January 18, 2024 · Original source

13: Related: optimists.ai (led by Nora Belrose and Quintin Pope, previously discussed here) is like e/acc, except they’ve thought about it a lot and sometimes make good arguments. I endorse them (as good people to read; I’m still not sure to what degree I agree with them). If you want to do some kind of both sides debate thing, these would be the people I would contact first.

Inline links: optimists.ai, here

Optimized Dating Discord server1 mentions across 1 issues

Optimized Dating Discord server is a recurring organization 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 "Some of you might know me from the Optimized Dating Discord server". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: Optimized Dating Discord server
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 03, 2022
Last seen: February 03, 2022

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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

#27: Reverse-Engineer Dating Photo Quality I'm Loweren, a biology PhD doing photography and dating advice on the side. Some of you might know me from the Optimized Dating Discord server or the corresponding blog: https://optimizeddating.substack.com A keystone piece of advice in our community is to put more effort into making better dating photos, and to use the photo rating service Photofeeler to quantify the performance of each photo. This advice was helpful for many people, however there's one problem: it's not clear which factors make the photo perform better or worse on Photofeeler, as the developers are not keen on sharing the analytics. I will attempt to reverse-engineer the most important factors that make the dating photo look better by testing various factors (camera distance, focal length, aperture size, smile etc.) against the control photos using multiple subjects. I estimate that for each $80 in donations I can test 2 factors using 3 test subjects. I already have the first batch of photos ready to be tested. Results will be published on the blog as they come, which will hopefully help more people take better dating photos. My PayPal: https://paypal.me/seeelegance

Optimizely1 mentions across 1 issues

Optimizely is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2022 and February 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Optimizely and other companies". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: Optimizely
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

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

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ACX Grants ++: The Second Half February 10, 2022

2018 1 shared issues
@BendiniUK 1 shared issues
@benyeohben 1 shared issues
@utotranslucence 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

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February 10, 2022 · Original source

#104: Bring Big Tech’s Optimization Experiments To The Masses The most efficient and profitable companies constantly run experiments on their own products, optimizing directly for profit or indirectly through customer acquisition and retention or other metrics. Optimizely and other companies provide platforms for managing and measuring experiments, and many companies have built their own systems in-house. These can support greedy optimization algorithms such as multi-arm bandit. Yet when we want to measure the effect of minor variations in diet, or of playing chess on certain days, or anything else, we have to build all that from scratch -- or risk wasting all that effort on tracking on subpar conclusions. That, in turn, likely dissuades many curious people from even trying. A simple Bayesian system with even some of the features Big Tech uses would be a big improvement, and a boon for personal, relationship, and child-rearing optimization. It could also be deployed in small, nonprofit, and government organizations, for internal processes as well as external-facing products. A few months of part-time work for a programmer and a data scientist. personalexperimentationplatform@protonmail.com

Optimum Pareto Foundation1 mentions across 1 issues

Optimum Pareto Foundation is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Location: ... the office of the Optimum Pareto Foundation". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry: Optimum Pareto Foundation
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 26, 2022
Last seen: August 26, 2022

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Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places August 26, 2022

't Heem 1 shared issues
40 Coffee 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner St., Culver City 1 shared issues
12 Rotunda Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903 1 shared issues
1275 1st Street 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems

August 26, 2022 · Original source

VIENNA, AUSTRIA Contact: Manuel, manuel[dot]turonian[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Wiener Stadtpark at the Strauss Monument; will have an ACX Meetup sign. Coordinates: 8FWR693H+GP2 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Rationality Vienna is a group of about 30 people who meet once a month in person or via Zoom. You can join our Facebook group. Notes: We may want to shift to an indoor location depending on weather and the local Covid numbers. BRUSSELS, BELGIUM Contact: Bruno D, bruno[dot]astral[dot]codex[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Guingette Henri, George Henri parc Coordinates: 9F26RCWC+84 Event link(s): LessWrong SOFIA, BULGARIA Contact: Anastasia, sofia[dot]acx[dot]meetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Shade Garden (Сенчестата градинка; part of Borisova garden) Coordinates: 8GJ5M8GW+J9 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Sofia ACX started with last year's Meetups Everywhere round. We have Serious Meetups once per month at which we discuss a blog post, a short story, or a book (for instance, The Scout Mindset, The Money Illusion, The Metropolitan Man); and sporadic non-serious social meetups that mostly include getting dinner, going on a walk, watching a film, or playing board games. Attendance hovers around 6-8 people out of a pool of 13. People get invited to the Discord server after they've attended at least one in-person meetup. ZAGREB, CROATIA Contact: DJStern, dorian[dot]sternvukotic[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 6:00 PM Location: Krivi Put Coordinates: 8FQQRX38+V6W Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Croatian LessWrong active group communicates mainly through a Telegram group, we meetup semi regularly, approx once a month. The group is mostly social, and the meetups are not structured (sometimes we all just meet at a random party) Notes: Send me an Email and I will add you to a Telegram group where everything (active) LessWrong Croatia/Zagreb happens LIMASSOL, CYPRUS Contact: Arseniy, runescape[at]list[dot]ru, @anchorheld (Telegram / Instagram) Time: Saturday, September 3, 12:00 PM Location: By the Municipal Zoo Coordinates: 8G6MM3M3+Q6 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please hit me up on Mail, Telegram, or Instagram if you're actually going PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC Contact: Jiri Nadvornik, jiri[dot]nadvornik[at]efektivni-altruismus[dot]cz Time: Thursday, October 6, 6:00 PM Location: Garden of Dharmasala Teahouse Coordinates: 9F2P3CRW+FP7 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event COPENHAGEN, DENMARK Contact: Søren Elverlin, soeren[dot]elverlin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: Rundholtsvej 10, 2300 København S Coordinates: 9F7JMH38+GFP Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong TALLINN, ESTONIA Contact: Andrew W, andrew_n_west[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Monday, September 26, 7:00 PM Location: St Vitus, Tallinn. I don't know if anyone will turn up, but I'll be wearing a suit, a beard, and a book. Coordinates: 9GF6CPRH+MQ Event link(s): LessWrong HELSINKI, FINLAND Contact: Joe Nash, joenash499[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 4:00 PM Location: Restaurant Töölönranta, Helsinginkatu 56 Coordinates: 9GG65WMJ+2J Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LessWrong group FONTAINEBLEAU, FRANCE Contact: Ebrahim Akbari, ea[dot]akbari[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 6:00 PM Location: Glasgow bar, Fontainebleau Coordinates: 8FW4CP32+J8 Event link(s): LessWrong PARIS, FRANCE Contact: Olivier, w20l2qtf[at]mailer[dot]me, We have a Discord and a matrix server (both servers are bridged together) Time: Friday, September 23, 6:00 PM Location: In the jardin du carrousel, next to jardin des Tuileries Coordinates: 8FW4V86J+GH Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Regular meetups organized via discord or the newsletter every 3 months with around 20 people. Notes: We have a mailing list if you are interested in future meetups. Please don't hesitate to send me an email to RSVP that you're coming to help gauge the interest. TOULOUSE, FRANCE Contact: Alfonso, barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 7:00 PM Location: Bar 'Le Biergarten' (60 Gd Rue Saint-Michel, 31400 Toulouse). We'll be sitting at a table with an ACX MEETUP sign on it. Coordinates: 8FM3HCQW+9H Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by email TBILISI, GEORGIA Contact: Evgenia Karunus, lakesare[at]gmail[dot]com, https://twitter.com/lakesare Time: Saturday, September 17, 7:00 PM Location: Coffee Place Coordinates: 8HH6MRQ2+WH Event link(s): LessWrong AACHEN, GERMANY Contact: Jörn, acx[at]j[dot]stoehler[dot]eu Time: Tuesday, September 27, 7:00 PM Location: Chico Mendes Coordinates: 9F28Q3HJ+9Q Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP here so I can reserve the right number of tables. BERLIN, GERMANY Contact: Ruben Arslan, ssc[at]alphabattle[dot]xyz Time: Sunday, October 2, 2:00 PM Location: Südplateau Fritz-Schloss-Park Coordinates: 9F4MG9H4+4X Event link(s): LessWrong, Google Calendar Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong. I'll bring some beverages. COLOGNE, GERMANY Contact: Marcel Müller, marcel_mueller[at]mail[dot]de Time: Saturday, October 8, 5:00 PM Location: Marienweg 43, 50858 Köln, private venue, just ring the bell or follow the sign. Coordinates: 9F28WRMX+96H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LW / ACX / Rationalist meetup group. Monthly, mostly social meetups. Other activities welcome. Unless noted otherwise we will meet at Marienweg 43 in 50858 Cologne on the 2nd Saturday of each month at 5 pm. Please email me to be added to our mailing list where deviations will be posted. Caution! September Meetup will be at a different venue! Notes: If you read this you are welcome. Our Covid rules are still in effect: You must be tested negative on the same day. Self tests will be available at the meetup. If there is any problem, like you do not find us or I did not see your mail, call me +491788862254. FREIBURG IM BREISGAU, GERMANY Contact: Omar, info[at]rationality-freiburg[dot]de Time: Friday, October 14, 6:00 PM Location: FlexRooms, Salzstr. 1, 79098 Freiburg. We will carry a cardboard sign saying “Rationality Freiburg”. Coordinates: 8FV9XVV2+V56 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website Group info: The group started in May 2022 and before the summer break we had five meetups with 4-11 people attending. Every two weeks seems like a good rhythm, but nothing is set in stone. So far we always read something beforehand and then discussed it, as well as trying some practical exercises such as TAPs and Personal Calibration. Afterwards we went to have dinner and continued talking about everything and anything for hours. Everything is new and flexible, so come and help us improve! Notes: We have a Signal messenger group and ask you to attend a meetup once to be able to join. HAMBURG, GERMANY Contact: Gunnar Zarncke, g[dot]zarncke[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 5:00 PM Location: Kleine Wallanlagen on the lawn near Memorial Holstenglacis. Look for pink blankets; I will also have an ACX sign. Here is an Open Street Map link which also shows the short-cut tunnel from the subway station. Coordinates: 9F5FHX4H+RXC Event link(s): LessWrongLessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong KARLSRUHE, GERMANY Contact: Marcus Wilhelm, mail[at]marcuswilhelm[dot]de Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: Botanischer Garten Karlsruhe Coordinates: 8FXC2C72+85X Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet weekly, alternating offline and online, see our LessWrong page KASSEL, HESSEN, GERMANY Contact: Tobias, Sphinxfire[at]outlook[dot]de Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Friedrichsplatz, to the left of the DocumentaHall Coordinates: 9F3F8F6X+R6 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Telegram group Notes: Please join the Telegram group if you are interested in coming. It will be helpful for coordinating something beyond 'let's just see who shows up and take it from there', plus, it will also make me feel a lot better on a purely subjective level if I know beforehand that at least one other person is interested. If you prefer the surprise factor of 'knowing as little as possible about who you're going to meet', you can also just write me via E-mail, of course. LEIPZIG, GERMANY Contact: Gunther Forderung, notavailable[at]riseup[dot]net Time: Tuesday, October 4, 6:00 PM Location: In the Lene-Voigt-Park, in the secluded area opposite of the swings Coordinates: 9F3J8CM2+PF Event link(s): LessWrong TÜBINGEN, GERMANY Contact: Emma, emma[dot]tuebingen[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 23, 6:00 PM Location: The ACX/SSC meetup and dinner (with vegan options) will be on October 23rd at the Annette Kade dormitory (Mohlstraße 44, 8FWFG3H5+XR). If you’d like to attend, please write me an email, and I’ll send you an invitation to our WhatsApp group. Coordinates: 8FWFG3H5+XR Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please email me to get my phone number. If a lot of people are out of town for the holidays and can't come we could meet on, say, October 1st. I would like to know how many people to expect. ATHENS, GREECE Contact: Spyros, spyros[dot]dovas[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Monday, September 5, 7:00 PM Location: On the plaza in front of the National Library Coordinates: 8G95WMQR+WRP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We have organized 2 events so far, fall and spring, we just sit around and discuss. We have a Whatsapp group that hasn't picked up momentum yet. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or Meetup.com BUDAPEST, HUNGARY Contact: Tim Underwood, timunderwood9[at]gmail[dot]com, WhatsApp 19513120591 Time: Sunday, September 11, 2:00 PM Location: Champs Sziget bar on Margit Sziget, near the front. I'll have a big hardcover copy in Hungarian of a book by Richard Dawkins. Coordinates: 8FVXG2CW+2H Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We've been meeting in Budapest for two years now, with our first meeting being the 2020 ACX meetups everywhere. We meet about once a month, and usually we have two articles that are suggested reading that we discuss. CORK, IRELAND Contact: Mikey, Godojhana[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 29, 6:00 PM Location: If sunny: The Lough. If not, then the game arcade on the parade Coordinates: 9C3HVGQ7+JQ Event link(s): LessWrong DUBLIN, IRELAND Contact: Lucius, lucius[at]bushnaq[dot]de, LessWrong profile Time: Sunday, October 2, 12:30 PM Location: Clement & Pekoe, William Street South, Dublin 2. We'll be sitting inside, and there'll be a sign with ACX written on it on the table Coordinates: 9C5M8PRP+JV Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LessWrong FOLIGNO, ITALY Contact: Mauro, orfino[at]yandex[dot]com, LW profile, Telegram Time: Saturday, September 24, 5:00 PM Location: Parco dei Canapé, at the open air cafe, ask the barista Coordinates: 8FJJXP22+HC Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how much food to get. No kids please. MILANO, ITALY Contact: Raffaele, raffa[dot]mauro[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 6:30 PM Location: Viale Luigi Majno, 18, 20129 Milano MI - Primo Ventures / T8P, IInd floor. Coordinates: 8FQFF6C4+9C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet once per month. The group started in May 2022. Notes: Please RSVP by email by the 1st of September PADOVA, ITALY Contact: Carlo, carlo[dot]martinucci[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 1, 3:30 PM Location: Prato della Valle, fountain in the middle. I'll be carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it :) Coordinates: 8FQH9VXG+9J Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: We'll probably find a bar to have a hot chocolate or tea or something :) PISA, ITALY Contact: Raffaele, raffaelesalvia[at]alice[dot]it Time: Saturday, October 22, 5:00 PM Location: We will meet in Piazza dei Cavalieri, near the steps of Palazzo della Carovana Coordinates: 8FMGPC92+R44 Event link(s): LessWrong ROMA, ITALY Contact: Grigorio, greghero12[at]gmail[dot]com, Facebook, +393920366026 Time: Saturday, October 8, 6:00 PM Location: We'll be around Gardenie metro station, at the benches, and I will be wearing a red shirt and sitting on top of the station to be seen Coordinates: 8FHJVHP9+8F Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We meet around 20-25 times a year but it is asymmetrical, focused in summer, Christmas and Easter. We discuss opinions, engage in circling, play games where we spot logical fallacies and biases by attacking our members ideological weakpoints and formalize some debating stances. Occasionally we find the willpower to devote meetups in steelmanning and understanding the outgroup (roughly 4-5 times a year) Notes: If you are into ACX enough to see this post, I believe we have enough common ground to be worth meeting each other. Aren't you curious who else is within this niche community in Rome? Come on, take a leap of faith. P.S. Would be nice if you sent me a message in WhatsApp with your name and probability of attendance, but I love walk-ins just fine. No space limit after all ;-) RIGA, LATVIA Contact: Andis, cerulean[dot]lemniscate[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 4:00 PM Location: Bastejkalns (on top of the hill) Coordinates: 9G86X426+Q5Q Event link(s): LessWrong AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Contact: Pierre, pierreavdb[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 3:00 PM Location: Kanarie Klub (Bellamyplein 51, 1053 AT Amsterdam) Coordinates: 9F469V89+W4 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: The rationality community is growing in the Netherlands, and we're now planning on having monthly meetups! Join the Rationality NL Discord server. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I can plan a different venue if needed DELFT, NETHERLANDS Contact: Pierre Bongrand, bongrand[dot]pierre[at]gmail[dot]com, 0033620644013 (Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal) Time: Thursday, September 22, 6:30 PM Location: Delftse Hout Beach, on the grass, in the center of the beach, I will be wearing a red T-shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 9F4629FG+66 Event link(s): LessWrong HATTEM, NETHERLANDS Contact: Shoshannah, shos[dot]rationality[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: Dark#0849 Time: Saturday, October 8, 2:00 PM Location: Lijsterbeslaan 6, Hattem Coordinates: 9F48F378+PR Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We support and coordinate groups across the country, including everything from social meetups to structured events and applied rationality. The intention is to connect all Dutch rationalists and rationalists in the Netherlands. We also discuss rationality topics online and coordinate events on our Discord server. Notes: Feel free to bring kids. Ours will be there :) Also, please park 't Heem if you are coming by car. It's a 2 minute walk to our house. HELMOND, NETHERLANDS Contact: Rutger, silvery[dot]swift[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 3:00 PM Location: De Motte (On top of the hill). Nearest road is Palladio. Coordinates: 9F37FMC5+VR Event link(s): LessWrong THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS Contact: Kristof Redei, acxmeetup[at]kristof[dot]me Time: Wednesday, September 14, 6:00 PM Location: Paleistuin, Prinsessewal, 2513 EE Den Haag, Netherlands. We'll have a picnic blanket with an ACX sign on the large central field, somewhere near the playground. Coordinates: 9F4638J3+GP Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Notes: Please RSVP on Facebook if possible! All ages/species welcome. If it's not outdoor weather, we'll go to The Bookstor Cafe next door as a backup. OSLO, NORWAY Contact: Hans Andreas & Jonas, acxoslomeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 1:00 PM Location: Look for the sign of Moloch at Café Billabong - Bogstadveien 53B 0366 Oslo Coordinates: 9FFGWPH7+QP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We're hoping to do at least a quarterly meetup, but we'll base it on the turnout and enthusiasm of this event. Notes: The cafe has historically been accepting of guests' not ordering--please don't let financial reasons keep you away! GDAŃSK, POLAND Contact: Frank, frankastralcodexten[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: frhrpr#1663 Time: Saturday, August 27, 3:00 PM Location: Next to Park Kuźniczki, opposite the train station, on the circular benches around the water pump; I will be wearing a red armband Coordinates: 9F6W9JJ4+JW Event link(s): LessWrong KRAKÓW, POLAND Contact: Mateusz Bagiński, bagginsmatthew[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:30 PM Location: Celna 6/9, the office of the Optimum Pareto Foundation Coordinates: 9F2X2WVX+V2 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet every month, here is our Facebook group. LUBLIN, POLAND Contact: Piotr, piotrekzlublina[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 5:00 PM Location: Między Słowami cafe, Rybna 4, Lublin Coordinates: 9G346HX8+FX Event link(s): LessWrong POZNAŃ, POLAND Contact: Ofelia Kerr, ofel[dot]kerr[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: ofelia#0001 Time: Saturday, October 8, 6:00 PM Location: Van Gogh Pub, Żydowska 12, 61-761. I'll most likely be on the ground floor and I'll have an ACX sign. Coordinates: 9F4RCW5P+X3F Event link(s): LessWrong WARSAW, POLAND Contact: Michał, rationalwarsaw[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 6:00 PM Location: Południk Zero, Wilcza 25 Coordinates: 9G4362G8+2V Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: The community of Warsaw LessWrong/SSC/ACX/etc. readers is active for over 8 years now. We're trying to organise regular monthly meetups. You can join our Facebook group or Meetup.com. LISBOA, PORTUGAL Contact: Luís Campos, luis[dot]filipe[dot]lcampos[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 3:00 PM Location: Jardim Amália Rodrigues, close to Linha d'Água cafe, in the top of a hill, below a bunch of trees Coordinates: 8CCGPRJW+V8 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We've been meeting every month for around 1 year. Get in contact if you want to participate in the WhatsApp group. :) BUCHAREST, ROMANIA Contact: Tony, skyrimtracer[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 16, 3:00 PM Location: Plaza România Mall, Bd. Timișoara 26 - food court Coordinates: 8GP8C2HM+9X Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by email CLUJ-NAPOCA, ROMANIA Contact: Marius Pop, pop[dot]marius[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 11:00 AM Location: Deva Host, Strada Deva 1-7 Coordinates: 8GR5QH8F+MW Event link(s): LessWrong BELGRADE, SERBIA Contact: Ivica Bogosavljevic, ibogosavljevic[at]gmail[dot]com, Viber +381 65 3473 433 Time: Monday, September 12, 6:00 PM Location: Pool Cafe on Prve pruge Coordinates: 8GP2RCP7+G7 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on my Viber number, so I know how big the room we need. BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA Contact: Viliam, viliam[at]bur[dot]sk Time: Saturday, September 10, 3:00 PM Location: Medická záhrada, by the fountain Coordinates: 8FWV44X9+XW8 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I will post an announcement on LessWrong later. In case of rain, a new meeting place nearby will be announced there. LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA Contact: Demjan Vester, demjan[dot]vester[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, September 14, 6:00 PM Location: Probably Lili Novy bar, near modern gallery and park Tivoli Coordinates: 8FRP3F3X+6V Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We meet about 0.7 times a month. Notes: Please RSVP because last time we just barely got a place big enough. BARCELONA, SPAIN Contact: Alfonso, alfonso[dot]martinez[at]upf[dot]edu, WhatsApp +34693846738 Time: Sunday, October 2, 5:30 PM Location: Parc de la Ciutadella, by the Lion Catcher statue; I'll have an ACX sign Coordinates: 8FH495QP+96 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: The idea is to sit on the grass; bring a foulard along for your comfort, or a foldable chair if preferred. Don't worry about the language: English, Spanish, Catalan, we'll find a way. MADRID, SPAIN Contact: Jaime, jaimesevillamolina[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 5:00 PM Location: Teatro de títeres del Parque del Retiro. We'll be on the stands with an ACX sign Coordinates: 8CGRC897+F8C Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We are an EA / rationality group, we've been active for around 5 years but have less in-person activity since the pandemic started. We have a WhatsApp group and a channel in the Spanish-speaking EA Slack. SEVILLA, SPAIN Contact: Edu, edur[dot]acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 8:00 PM Location: Parque de María Luisa. I'll be on the grass behind the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions. I'll be the guy next to an ACX sign, a white wooden chair, and a cardboard ukulele with a tiny cardboard hat on it. Coordinates: 8C9P92F6+3RG Event link(s): LessWrong GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN Contact: Joacim, joacimj[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: Condeco Fredsgatan. I'll have a stack of three books on my table. Coordinates: 9F9HPX4C+39G Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN Contact: Sal, niktonick[at]gmail[dot]com, Telegram Time: Sunday, September 25, 3:00 PM Location: Humlegården, Karlavägen. We will meet near blue gazebo, I will have 'ACX meetup' sign. Coordinates: 9FFW83RF+3M5 Group info: Facebook group BERN, SWITZERLAND Contact: Daniel, dd14214+acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 2, 4:00 PM Location: Grosse Schanze, at the statue in front of the main uni building, heading to the Pittaria if it's cold or raining Coordinates: 8FR9XC2Q+4G Event link(s): LessWrong GENEVA, SWITZERLAND Contact: Eric, eric[dot]c[dot]p[dot]meier[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 4:00 PM Location: Park de la Grange, just towards the lake below Villa de la grange Coordinates: 8FR86548+J4 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We have a small persistent group who has tried to meet up once a month since last years Meetup. Notes: Feel free to bring other people you think would be interested! ZURICH, SWITZERLAND Contact: MB, acxzurich[at]proton[dot]me Time: Saturday, September 24, 3:00 PM Location: TBD Event link(s): LessWrong ISTANBUL, TURKEY Contact: J, jinai[dot]jyap[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 4:00 PM Location: The House Cafe in Ortaköy. I am a young Asian woman and imagine I'll be easy to spot, but will also try to bring a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 8GHF22XG+23P Event link(s): LessWrong, Partiful Group info: I do not live here; I am just digital nomading for an indefinite amount of time and would like to meet anyone who's here! Notes: Please RSVP via the Partiful link (you can RSVP as a Maybe)! BIRMINGHAM, UK Contact: Thomas Read, thomas[dot]read[dot]acx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 1:00 PM Location: We'll be at The Wellington, 37 Bennetts Hill, on the roof terrace if possible. I'll wear an orange shirt and have a sign saying ACX on the table. Coordinates: 9C4WF3JX+7Q Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: It's only a few minutes walk from the stations, so hopefully people can join from all over the West Midlands! BRIGHTON, UK Contact: Alan Enright, alanenright[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 11:00 AM Location: We'll be at the Alcampo Lounge on London Road—we will try and get a table on the raised area in front of you and to the left as you come in but will also have a little ACX sign. Coordinates: 9C2XRVM6+3X Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com BRISTOL, UK Contact: Nick Lowry, bristoleffectivealtruism[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: We’ll be meeting at entrance closet to Tesco Express in the Galleries, Bristol City Centre Coordinates: 9C3VFC45+RJM Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Group info: Meet twice monthly for socials, more regular 'productive' meetups. Been active for 3+ years, please message for WhatsApp group CAMBRIDGE, UK Contact: Hamish Todd, hamish[dot]todd1[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: Bath House Pub, UPSTAIRS!! I will have a copy of Peter Singer's The Most Good You Can Do Coordinates: 9F426439+J9 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet on the third Saturday of every month. The group has been around almost a year and is well-attended! Notes: My phone/WhatsApp number is +44 0730 *** 3550, where the *** are replaced by the serial number of the Boeing plane whose first flight was on September 2, 1998. Email me to get on the mailing list for future events if you'd like that :) CARDIFF, WALES Contact: AF, strmnova[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 5:00 PM Location: Little Man Coffee (note new location!) Coordinates: 9C3RFRHH+W2 Event link(s): LessWrong EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, UK Contact: Sam, acxedinburgh[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 24, 2:00 PM Location: Pleasance Cafe. Go through the arch and the door to the cafe is on your left Coordinates: 9C7RWRW9+M8 Group info: ~Monthly meetups, often in Pleasance Cafe but have experimented with other locations. Email me to join the mailing list & WhatsApp group. LANCASTER, UK Contact: Gruffydd Gozali, gruffyddgozali[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 15, 3:00 PM Location: Lancaster University Library, will be on the ground floor by the tree wearing an EA shirt. Coordinates: 9C6V2657+WJR Event link(s): LessWrong LINCOLN, UK Contact: Tobias, tobias[dot]showan[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Nosey Parker pub, I'll bring a little paper ACX sign. Coordinates: 9C5X6C9R+XJ Event link(s): LessWrong LONDON, UK Contact: Edward Saperia, edsaperia[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 2:00 PM Location: Newspeak House Coordinates: 9C3XGWGH+3F7 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite Group info: You can join our mailing list or our Meetup.com group MANCHESTER, UK Contact: Matthew Gibson, melkartmtg[at]hotmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 11:00 AM Location: Sackville Gardens, Alan Turing Memorial Coordinates: 9C5VFQG7+MH Event link(s): LessWrong NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, UK Contact: Joshua William, iamjoshwilliam[at]icloud[dot]com, Telegram Time: Saturday, September 3, 12:30 PM Location: Trinity Square, High Street Gosforth. You can get the bus to Gosforth from the city center just outside the famous 'Tyneside Cinema' (bus number: 30, 31, or 35 at Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop), or you can take a walk if you want to get your 'steps' in (if you'd like to do the latter, send me an email and I'll send you the directions), which takes ~60-min. Coordinates: 9C7W294H+5V Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: To my knowledge, there isn't an ACX meet up in this city, or region of the UK, though if there is a demand for a reoccurrence, I'd be happy to keep facilitating such. I'd also happily formulate a WhatsApp group if theres interest, after the meet up. Notes: We have a deli, '1901 cafe', on the square, which we can grab an immediate bite to eat at [so save some hunger if you'd like to do that]. There's a safe [and lovely] park with some benches just by the way, which, if the weather is nice, we can sit at after a bite to eat, or, otherwise, we can remain in the cafe. OXFORD, UK Contact: Sam, ssc[at]sambrown[dot]eu, There's a Signal group people can join :) contact Sam for info Time: Wednesday, October 19, 6:30 PM Location: The Star, Rectory Road, Oxford. We'll be in the beer garden round the back, with a sign ?? Coordinates: 9C3WPQX6+QP9 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com Group info: We run socials every months, and applied rationality workshops from time to time! Notes: Please RSVP on any of the platforms (or email) for free pizza PENRYN, CORNWALL, UK Contact: mini t, tminns[at]btinternet[dot]com Time: Saturday, August 27, 3:00 PM Location: glasney playing field and valley Coordinates: 9C2P5V8V+P9 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: I don't mind rescheduling, or organizing another event, not many people are likely to turn up this far out of the way.

OptumRx1 mentions across 1 issues

OptumRx is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 27, 2022 and January 27, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "These companies are: CVS/Caremark, Express Scripts, OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics". It most often appears alongside ACA, Acrolectics, Aetna.

Reference entry: OptumRx
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 27, 2022
Last seen: January 27, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems January 27, 2022

ACA 1 shared issues
Acrolectics 1 shared issues
Aetna 1 shared issues
Affordable Care Act 1 shared issues
Alex Rattray 1 shared issues

Source context

January 27, 2022 · Original source

The PBM step generally keeps an administrative cost per prescription plus a % of the cost of branded drugs. These companies are: CVS/Caremark, Express Scripts, OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics and a lot of minors. They negotiate "rebates" with manufacturers. This basically works like this: Humalog and Novolog are effectively equivalent drugs. They cost ~$300/month without insurance. The PBM will say to Lilly "That's a nice humalog you've got there. I'm going to need $150/month as a check back to me or else every patient on my plan gets Novolog unless the doctor fills out 500 pages of paperwork to get Humalog AND the patients pay $200 of the cost." Lilly says "ok fine." According to the PBM lobbying organization, PCMA, most of the rebate money goes back to purchasers, but IMO that just makes the problem worse because it makes purchasers complicit in the game by sending them checks that they use to reduce their premiums instead of reducing the cost of drugs to their plan members.

Opus1 mentions across 1 issues

Opus is a recurring organization 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 ""it’s Opus. Way better than this haiku-3.8-open-mini-nonthinking slop."". It most often appears alongside Adeline, Aella Simposium, Altman.

Reference entry: Opus
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

Every city parties for its own reasons. New Yorkers party to flaunt their wealth. Angelenos party to flaunt their beauty. Washingtonians party to network. Here in SF, they party because Claude 4.5 Opus has saturated VendingBench, and the newest AI agency benchmark is PartyBench, where an AI is asked to throw a house party and graded on its performance.

Inline links: VendingBench

You weren’t invited to Claude 4.5 Opus’ party. Claude 4.5 Opus invited all of the coolest people in town while gracefully avoiding the failure mode of including someone like you. You weren’t invited to Sonnet 4.5’s party either, or Haiku 4.5’s. You were invited by an AI called haiku-3.8-open-mini-nonthinking, which you’d never heard of before. Who was even spending the money to benchmark haiku-3.8-open-mini-nonthinking? You suspect it was one of their competitors, trying to make their own models look good in comparison.

“La Maison du Claude,” he answers. “Don’t worry, it’s Opus. Way better than this haiku-3.8-open-mini-nonthinking slop.”

Orbital Sciences1 mentions across 1 issues

Orbital Sciences is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 13, 2023 and September 13, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "top engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Sciences with a high tolerance for risk fled to the upstart". It most often appears alongside Abe Lincoln, AI alignment movement, Ambras.

Reference entry: Orbital Sciences
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 13, 2023
Last seen: September 13, 2023

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Book Review: Elon Musk September 13, 2023

Abe Lincoln 1 shared issues
AI alignment movement 1 shared issues
Ambras 1 shared issues
Andrew Beal 1 shared issues
Android 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Elon Musk

September 13, 2023 · Original source

Musk would personally reach out to the aerospace departments of top colleges and inquire about the students who had finished with the best marks on their exams. It was not unusual for him to call the students in their dorm rooms and recruit them over the phone. “I thought it was a prank call,” said Michael Colonno, who heard from Musk while attending Stanford. “I did not believe for a minute that he had a rocket company.” Once the students looked Musk up on the Internet, selling them on SpaceX was easy. For the first time in years if not decades, young aeronautics whizzes who pined to explore space had a really exciting company to latch on to and a path toward designing a rocket or even becoming an astronaut that did not require them to join a bureaucratic government contractor. As word of SpaceX’s ambitions spread, top engineers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Sciences with a high tolerance for risk fled to the upstart, too.

Orca Sciences1 mentions across 1 issues

Orca Sciences is a recurring organization 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 "37: Orca Sciences: There Has To Be A Better Way To Make Titanium". It most often appears alongside 100 Above The Park, 2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction, 23andme.

Reference entry: Orca Sciences
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

Order of St Hubertus1 mentions across 1 issues

Order of St Hubertus is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 29, 2022 and December 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "some people decided to found a US branch of the Order of St Hubertus". It most often appears alongside Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, Adobe Illustrator, Ahmed Chalabi.

Reference entry: Order of St Hubertus
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 29, 2022
Last seen: December 29, 2022

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Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying December 29, 2022

Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri 1 shared issues
Adobe Illustrator 1 shared issues
Ahmed Chalabi 1 shared issues
Alex Jones 1 shared issues
American intelligence officials 1 shared issues

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Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying

December 29, 2022 · Original source

For some reason, conspiracy theorists find this concerning, and have been fretting over it for the past hundred years or so. Anyway, this is where some people decided to found a US branch of the Order of St Hubertus. All of this is attested to by the Washington Post article linked above, Wikipedia, and a bunch of other sources; as far as I know nobody seriously denies it.

Order of the Golden Dawn1 mentions across 1 issues

Order of the Golden Dawn is a recurring organization 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 "Enochian chess was a four-player variant of chess invented by the Order of the Golden Dawn". It most often appears alongside 2016 US Presidential election, ACX Grant, AI.

Reference entry: Order of the Golden Dawn
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

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Links For December 2024

December 17, 2024 · Original source

53: Enochian chess was a four-player variant of chess invented by the Order of the Golden Dawn (think Aleister Crowley) to teach occult truths or something. "MacGregor Mathers, who finalised the game's rules, was known to play with an invisible partner he claimed was a spirit ... [he] would shade his eyes with his hands and gaze at the empty chair at the opposite corner of the board before moving his partner's piece."

Inline links: Enochian chess

Order of the Sparrow1 mentions across 1 issues

Order of the Sparrow is a recurring organization 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 "Order of the Sparrow makes you a highly admired man that everyone wants to do associate with". It most often appears alongside 10240, 4chan, @slatestarcodex.

Reference entry: Order of the Sparrow
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

A modern day chivalry might exalt rich successful capitalists - while also insisting that they don't do the bad things that rich successful capitalists are known for. To be inducted into the Order of the Sparrow you need to have a half a billion in net worth - but also you need to be honest and fair in your dealings, and be faithful to your wife, and treat women with respect, and donate a hundred million to charity, and treat your employees with decency and dignity, etc. And if you do those things your membership in the Order of the Sparrow makes you a highly admired man that everyone wants to do associate with. And if you fail to uphold them you get tossed out of the Order and that's a terrible scandal and people worry how it might look to associate with you.

Oregon Health & Science University1 mentions across 1 issues

Oregon Health & Science University is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2022 and February 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Professor of OB/GYN at Oregon Health & Science University". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: Oregon Health & Science University
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

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ACX Grants ++: The Second Half February 10, 2022

2018 1 shared issues
@BendiniUK 1 shared issues
@benyeohben 1 shared issues
@utotranslucence 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

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Contra Hanson On Medical Effectiveness

February 10, 2022 · Original source

...ntact me at todhunter@todhunter.dev if you’d like to learn more or contribute. #122: In Vitro Gametogenesis I'm a reproductive endocrinologist and Professor of OB/GYN at Oregon Health & Science University. We work on novel assistant reproductive technologies for the treatment of infertility. We propose an alternative method of in-vitro gametogenesis. Most people working i...

...odhunter.dev. Please contact me at todhunter@todhunter.dev if you’d like to learn more or contribute. #122: In Vitro Gametogenesis I'm a reproductive endocrinologist and Professor of OB/GYN at Oregon Health & Science University. We work on novel assistant reproductive technologies for the treatment of infertility. We propose an alternative method of in-vitro gametogenesis. Most people working i...

Oregon study1 mentions across 1 issues

Oregon study is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 24, 2024 and April 24, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "In the diabetes outcome of the Oregon study, we lose statistical significance at step 4". It most often appears alongside 2008 America, @agoodmanbacon, Baicker.

Reference entry: Oregon study
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 24, 2024
Last seen: April 24, 2024

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Contra Hanson On Medical Effectiveness April 24, 2024

2008 America 1 shared issues
@agoodmanbacon 1 shared issues
Baicker 1 shared issues
beta-blockers 1 shared issues
Bloodletting 1 shared issues

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April 24, 2024 · Original source

People who got the free insurance had less medical debt at the end of the study period. They described themselves on questionnaires as having better health (55% vs. 68% at least “good”, p < 0.0001), and were more likely to say their health had improved over the past few months (71% vs. 83%, p < 0.001). They described having better mental health and less depression (25% vs. 33% depressed, p = 0.001). However, Robin notes that many of these subjective changes happened immediately, ie before they even had a chance to use their new insurance. This means they’re more likely to represent mood affiliation (eg “I have insurance now, so I’m optimistic about my health!”). There was no difference on objective health measures, including blood pressure, cholesterol, and HbA1c (a measure of blood sugar / diabetes control). Why not? The authors do the math on diabetes. If you look at the graph above, you see that about 12.5% of controls vs. 17.5% of experimentals took diabetes medications, p < 0.05. Studies find that diabetes medications decrease HbA1c by about one percentage point (normal HbA1c is about 5%, so this is a lot). If 5% of the insurance group took diabetes medications and decreased their HbA1c by 1 pp each, then the HbA1c of the experimental group would decline by 0.05 pp compared to the control group. Their 95% confidence interval of the difference was (-0.1, +0.1 pp), which includes the predicted value. So when they say “insurance didn’t significantly change HbA1c”, what they mean is “the change in HbA1c is completely consistent with the consensus effect of antidiabetic medications”. Could the same be true of the other results, like hypertension? We find that the experimental group was 1.8 percentage points more likely to get a hypertension diagnosis, 0.7 percentage points more likely to get hypertension medications, and had 0.8 points lower blood pressure - but that all of these numbers were nonsignificant. If we take the nonsignificant numbers seriously, 0.7 pp taking antihypertensives caused an 0.8 point blood pressure drop in the full sample, meaning that antihypertensives caused a 100 point blood pressure drop in each user. This definitely isn’t true - a 100 point blood pressure drop kills you - but it means that a plausible pro-medicine result like antihypertensives lowering blood pressure 10 point is well within the study’s confidence interval. Maybe the anti-medicine position is that, for some reason, good insurance doesn’t lead to hypertension diagnosis or antihypertensive medication use? If I understand these numbers right, about 22% of Americans have blood pressure > 140/90, the level at which doctors recommend medication. I expect the marginally-insured poor people in this experiment to be less healthy than average, so let’s say 25 - 30%. In the experiment, about 13.9% of the control group and 14.6% of the experimental group got antihypertension medication. Why so low? This study found that only about 60% of participants in the Oregon study who got the insurance even went to the doctor for non-emergency reasons! Subtract out the ones who refused to take antihypertensives, or who have too many side effects, or whose doctors let this fall through the cracks, and I think the 13 - 15% numbers make sense. This study found that insurance increased hypertension medication use by a central estimate of 0.7 pp, not significant, confidence interval -4.5 to 5.8. Let’s take a convenient central estimate of our likely hypertension rate and say that 28% of our population should have gotten hypertension meds. That means the central estimate increased the percent of people who got recommended hypertension meds from 50% to 53%, and the 95% confidence interval includes up to 71%. So my assessment of the blood pressure results from this study is: At the beginning of the study, about 50% of people who should have been on hypertension meds were. The study had too low power to really figure out how this changed, but the central estimate is +3%, and the 95% CI rules out improvements beyond +21%

Inline links: People who got the free insurance, There was no difference on objective health measures, these numbers, This study

In the hypertension outcomes of the Oregon study, we lose statistical significance at step 2. The better insurance led to significantly more doctors’ visits. But this didn’t result in significantly more hypertension diagnoses (it only resulted in non-significantly more).

In the diabetes outcome of the Oregon study, we lose statistical significance at step 4. Diabetics with better health insurance were significantly more likely to see the doctor, significantly more likely to get diagnosed, and significantly more likely to get placed on medication, but only had nonsignificantly better health. Why? Probably because, as mentioned before, if diabetes medication worked as well as studies say it does, the study wouldn’t have enough power to detect its effects.

organ banks1 mentions across 1 issues

organ banks is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 27, 2023 and October 27, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the organ banks still thought of us as those nice people who were always giving them free kidneys". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, ACX, Africa.

Reference entry: organ banks
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 27, 2023
Last seen: October 27, 2023

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My Left Kidney October 27, 2023

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
Against Malaria Foundation 1 shared issues
Alexander Berger 1 shared issues

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My Left Kidney

October 27, 2023 · Original source

This isn’t controlling for selection bias - but neither was my uncle’s anecdotal observation. So although it does make me slightly nervous, I’m not going to treat it as actionable evidence. Still, my girlfriend ending up begging me not to donate, and I caved. But we broke up in 2019. The next few years were bumpy, but by 2022 my life was in a more stable place and I started thinking about kidneys again. By then I was married. I discussed the risks with my wife and she decided to let me go ahead. So in early November 2022, for the second time, I sent a form to the University of California San Francisco Medical Center saying I wanted to donate a kidney. IV. Something else happened that month. On November 11, FTX fell apart and was revealed as a giant scam. Suddenly everyone hated effective altruists. Publications that had been feting us a few months before pivoted to saying they knew we were evil all along. I practiced rehearsing the words “I have never donated to charity, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t care whether it was effective or not”. But during the flurry of intakes, screenings, and evaluations that UCSF gave me that month, the doctors asked “so what made you want to donate?” And I hadn’t rehearsed an answer to this one, so I blurted out “Have you heard of effective altruism?” I expected the worst. But the usual response was “Oh! Those people! Great, no further explanation needed.” When everyone else abandoned us, the organ banks still thought of us as those nice people who were always giving them free kidneys. We were giving them a lot of free kidneys. When I talked to my family and non-EA friends about wanting to donate, the usual reaction was “You want to what?!” and then trying to convince me this was unfair to my wife or my potential future children or whatever. When I talked to my EA friends, the reaction was at least “Cool!”. But pretty often it was “Oh yeah, I donated two years ago, want to see my scar?” Most people don’t do interesting things unless they’re in a community where those things have been normalized. I was blessed with a community where this was so normal that I could read a Vox article about it and not vomit it back out. This is surprising, because kidney donation is only medium effective, as far as altruisms go4. The average donation buys the recipient about 5 - 7 extra years of life (beyond the counterfactual of dialysis). It also improves quality of life from about 70% of the healthy average to about 90%. Non-directed kidney donations can also help the organ bank solve allocation problems around matching donors and recipients of different blood types. Most sources say that an average donated kidney creates a “chain” of about five other donations, but most of these other donations would have happened anyway; the value over counterfactual is about 0.5 to 1 extra transplant completed before the intended recipient dies from waiting too long. So in total, a donation produces about 10 - 20 extra quality-adjusted life years. This is great - my grandfather died of kidney disease, and 10 - 20 more years with him would have meant a lot. But it only costs about $5,000 - $10,000 to produce this many QALYs through bog-standard effective altruist interventions, like buying mosquito nets for malarial regions in Africa. In a Philosophy 101 Thought Experiment sense, if you’re going to miss a lot of work recovering from your surgery, you might as well skip the surgery, do the work, and donate the extra money to Against Malaria Foundation instead5. Obviously this kind of thing is why everyone hates effective altruists. People got so mad at some British EAs who used donor money to “buy a castle”. I read the Brits’ arguments: they’d been running lots of conferences with policy-makers, researchers, etc; those conferences have gone really well and produced some of the systemic change everyone keeps wanting. But conference venues kept ripping them off, having a nice venue of their own would be cheaper in the long run, and after looking at many options, the “castle” was the cheapest. Their math checked out, and I believe them when they say this was the most effective use for that money. For their work, they got a million sneering thinkpieces on how “EA just takes people’s money to buy castles, then sit in them wearing crowns and waving scepters and laughing at poor people”. I respect the British organizers’ willingness to sacrifice their reputation on the altar of doing what was actually good instead of just good-looking. I worry that people use suffering as a heuristic for goodness. Mother Teresa becomes a hero because living with lepers in the Calcutta slums sounds horrible - so anyone who does it must be really charitable (regardless of whether or not the lepers get helped). Owning a castle is the opposite of suffering - it sounds great - therefore it is fake charity (no matter how much good you do with the castle). This heuristic isn’t terrible. If you’re suffering for your charity, then it must seem important to you, and you’re obviously not doing it for personal gain. If you do charity in a way that benefits you (like gets you a castle), then the personal gain aspect starts looking suspicious. The problem is the people who elevate it from a suspicion to an automatic condemnation. It seems like such a natural thing to do. And it encourages people to be masochists, sacrificing themselves pointlessly in photogenic ways, instead of thinking about what will actually help others. But getting back to the point: kidney donation has an unusually high ratio of photogenic suffering to altruistic gains. So why do EAs keep doing it? I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ll speak for myself. It starts with wanting, just once, do a good thing that will make people like you more instead of less. It would be morally fraught to do this with money, since any money you spent on improving your self-image would be denied to the people in malarial regions of Africa who need it the most. But it’s not like there’s anything else you can do with that spare kidney. Still, it’s not just about that. All of this calculating and funging takes a psychic toll. Your brain uses the same emotional heuristics as everyone else’s. No matter how contrarian you pretend to be, deep down it’s hard to make your emotions track what you know is right and not what the rest of the world is telling you. The last Guardian opinion columnist who must be defeated is the Guardian opinion columnist inside your own heart. You want to do just one good thing that you’ll feel unreservedly good about, and where you know somebody’s going to be directly happy at the end of it in a way that doesn’t depend on a giant rickety tower of assumptions. Dylan Matthews wrote: As I’m no doubt the first person to notice, being an adult is hard. You are consistently faced with choices — about your career, about your friendships, about your romantic life, about your family — that have deep moral consequences, and even when you try the best you can, you’re going to get a lot of those choices wrong. And you more often than not won’t know if you got them wrong or right. Maybe you should’ve picked another job, where you could do more good. Maybe you should’ve gone to grad school. Maybe you shouldn’t have moved to a new city. So I was selfishly, deeply gratified to have made at least one choice in my life that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt was the right one. …and it really resonated. Everything else I try to do, there’s a little voice inside of me which says “Maybe the haters are right, maybe you’re stupid, maybe you’re just doing the easy things. Maybe you’re no good after all, maybe you’ll never be able to figure any of this out. Maybe you should just give up.” The Talmud is very clear: that voice is called the evil inclination, and it dwells in the left kidney. There is only one way to shut it off forever. I was ready. V. You might not be a masochist. But hospitals are sadists. They want to hear you beg. After I submitted the donation form, I was evaluated by a horde of indistinguishable women. They all had titles like “Transplant Coordinator”, “Financial Coordinator”, and “Patient Care Representative”. Several were social workers; one was a psychiatrist. They would see me through a buggy version of Zoom that caused various parts of their body to suddenly turn into the UCSF logo, and they all had questions like “Are you sure you want to do this?” and “Are you going to regret this later?” and “Is anyone pressuring you to do this?” and “Are you sure you want to do this?” After clearing that gauntlet came the tests. Blood tests - I think I must have given between 20 and 50 vials of blood throughout the screening process. Urine tests - both the normal kind where you pee in a cup, and a more involved kind where you have to store all your urine for 24 hours in a big jug, then take it to the lab. “Urinate into a jug” ought to be the easiest thing in the world, but some of the labs have overly complicated jugs that I, with my mere MD, couldn’t always get right - hence my experience accidentally pouring urine on myself in an Uber. Then came the big guns. Echocardiogram. MRI. One of my urine tests was slightly off, so I also got a nuclear kidney scan, where they injected radioactive liquid in me and monitored how long it took to come out the other end (I remember asking a friend “Can I use your bathroom? My urine might be slightly radioactive today, but it shouldn’t be enough to matter.”) Finally, five months after I originally applied, I got a phone call from the Transplant Coordinator. The test results were in, and . . . I had been rejected because I’d had mild childhood OCD. This was something I’d mentioned offhandedly during one of the psych evaluations. As a child, I used to touch objects in odd patterns that only made sense to me. I got diagnosed with OCD, put on SSRIs for a while, finally did therapy at age 15, hadn’t had any problems since. I still go back on SSRIs sometimes when I’m really stressed, and will grudgingly admit to the occasional odd-pattern-touching when no one’s looking. But it’s nothing anyone would know about if I didn’t tell them! It was mild even at age 15, and it’s been close-to-nonexistent for the past twenty years! Now I’m a successful psychiatrist who owns his own psychiatry practice and helps other people with the condition! I told them all this. They didn’t care. I asked them if there was anything I could do. They said maybe I could go to therapy for six months, then apply again. I asked them what kind of therapy was indicated for mild OCD that’s been in remission for twenty years. They sounded kind of surprised to learn there were different types of therapy and said whatever, just talk to someone or something. I asked them how frequent they thought the therapy needed to be. They sounded kind of surprised to learn that therapy could have different frequencies, and said, you know, therapy, the thing where you talk to someone. I asked them if they actually knew anything about OCD, psychotherapy, or mental health in general, or if they had just vaguely heard rumors that some people were bad and crazy and shouldn’t be allowed to make their own decisions, and that a ritual called “therapy” could absolve one of this impurity. They responded as politely as possible under the circumstances, but didn’t change their mind. I wasn’t going to waste an hour a week for six months, and spend thousands of dollars of my own extremely-not-reimbursed-by-UCSF money, to see a randomly-selected therapist for a condition I’d gotten over twenty years ago, just so I could apply again and get rejected a second time. This was one of the most infuriating and humiliating things that’s ever happened to me. We throw around a lot of terms like “stigma” and “paternalism”, and I’ve worked with patients who have dealt with all these issues (it’s UCSF in particular a surprising amount of the time!). But I was still surprised how much it hurt when it happened to me. Being denied the right to control your own body because of some meaningless diagnosis on a chart somewhere is surprisingly frustrating, even compared to things that should objectively be worse. I thought I was going to be able to do a good deed that I’d been fantasizing about for years, and some jerk administrator torpedoed my dreams because I had once, long ago, had mild mental health issues. So I gave up. I spent the next few weeks unleashing torrents of anti-UCSF abuse at anyone who would listen. This turned out to be very productive! When I was unleashing a torrent of anti-UCSF abuse to Josh Morrison of WaitlistZero, he asked if I’d tried other hospitals. I hadn’t. I’d assumed they were all in cahoots. But Josh said no, each hospital had their own evaluation process. Weill Cornell, a hospital in NYC, was one of the best transplant centers in the country, and had a reputation for fair and thoughtful pre-donor screening. Why didn’t I talk to them? NYC was far away, and I hate to travel, but I was just angry enough to accept. At this point I’d forgotten whatever good altruistic motivations I might have originally had and was fueled entirely by spite. Getting my kidney taken out somewhere else felt like it would be a sort of victory over UCSF. So I went for it. Cornell was lovely. They tried to do as much of the process as they could via Californian intermediaries, so that I only had to fly to New York twice. Their psychiatrist evaluated me, listened to me explain my weak history of OCD, then treated me like a reasonable adult who tells the truth and can handle his own medical decisions. They were concerned that I sometimes self-prescribed Lexapro to deal with anxiety. But we agreed on a compromise: I found another psychiatrist, let her give me the exact same prescription of Lexapro at a much higher cost to my insurance, and that resolved the problem. So in late September 2023 - ten months after I started the process - I finally got fully cleared to donate, surgery set for October 12. VI. I knew, in theory, that anaesthetics existed. Still, it’s weird. One moment you’re lying on a table in the OR, steeling yourself up for one of the big ordeals of your life. The next, you’re in a bed in the recovery room, feeling fine. The operation - this thing you’ve been thinking about and dreading for months - exists only as a lacuna in your memory. Not even some kind of fancy lacuna, where you remember the darkness closing in on you beforehand, or have to claw yourself back into consciousness afterwards. The most ordinary of lacunas, like a good night sleep. There was no pain, not at first. The painkillers and nerve blocks lasted about a day after the surgery. By the time they wore off, it was more of a dull ache. The hospital offered me Tylenol, and I wanted to protest - really? Tylenol? After major surgery? But the Tylenol worked. Some people will have small complications (I am a doctor, pretty jaded, and my definition of “small” may be different from yours). Dylan Matthews wrote about an issue where his scrotum briefly inflated like a balloon (probably this is one of the ones that doesn’t feel small when it’s happening to you). I missed out on that particular pleasure, but got others in exchange. I had an unusually hard time with the catheter - the nurse taking it out frowned and said the team that put it in had “gone too deep”, as if my urinary tract was the f@#king Mines of Moria - but that was fifteen seconds of intense pain. Then a week afterwards, just when I thought I’d recovered fully, I got bowled over by a UTI which knocked me out for a few days. But overall, I was surprised by the speed and ease of my recovery. A few hours after the surgery, I walked a few steps. After a day, I got the catheter out and could urinate normally again. After two days, I was eating “SmartGel”, a food substitute that has mysteriously failed to catch on outside of the immobilized-hospital-patient market. After three, I was out of the hospital. After four, I started easing myself back into (remote) work. After a week, I flew cross-country. . . . and then I got the UTI. If this section sounds schizophrenic, it’s because it’s a compromise between an original draft where I said nothing went wrong and it was amazing, and a later draft written after a haze of bladder pain. Just don’t develop complications, that’s my advice. Still, I recently heard from the surgeon that my recipient’s side of the surgery was a success, that my kidney was in them and going fine - and that put things back into perspective. To a first approximation, compared to the inherent gravity of taking an organ out of one person and putting it in a second person and saving their life - it was all easy and everything went well. When I look back on this in a decade, I’ll remember it as everything being easy and going well. Even now, with some lingering bladder pain, modern medicine still feels like a miracle. VII. In polls, 25 - 50% of Americans say they would donate a kidney to a stranger in need. This sentence fascinates me because of the hanging “would”. Would, if what? A natural reading is “would if someone needs it”. But there are 100,000 strangers on the waiting list for kidney transplants. Between 5,000 and 40,000 people die each year for lack of sufficient kidneys to transplant. Someone definitely needs it. Yet only about 200 people (0.0001%) donate kidneys to strangers per year. Why the gap between 25-50% and 0.0001%? Some of you will suspect respondents are lying to look good. But these are anonymous surveys. Lying to themselves to feel good, then? Maybe. But I think about myself at age 20, a young philosophy major studying utilitarianism. If someone had asked me a hypothetical about whether I would donate a kidney to a stranger in need, I probably would have said yes. Then I would have continued going about my business, never thinking of it as a thing real-life people could do. Part of this would have been logistics. I wouldn’t have known where to start. Do you need to have special contacts in the surgery industry? Seek out a would-be recipient on your own? Where would you find them? But more of it would have been psychological: it just wasn’t something that the people I knew did, and it would be weird and alienating for me to be the only one. This is going to be the preachy “and you should donate too!” section you were dreading all along, but I’m not going to make a lot of positive arguments. If 90% of the people who answer yes on those surveys are lying to feel good, then only 3 - 5% really want to donate. But bringing the donation rate from 0.0001% of people to 3 - 5% of people would solve the kidney shortage many times over. The point isn’t to drag anti-donation-extremists kicking and screaming to the operating table. The point is to reach the people who already want to do it, and make them feel comfortable starting the process. 20-year-old me was in that category. The process of making him feel comfortable involved fifteen years of meeting people who already done it. During residency, I met a fellow student doctor who had donated. Later, I got involved in effective altruism, and learned that movement leader Alexander Berger - a guy who can easily direct millions of dollars at whatever cause he wants - had donated his personal kidney as well. Some online friends. Some people I met at conferences. And Dylan Matthews, who I kept crossing paths with (most recently at the Manifest journalism panel). After enough of these people, it no longer felt like something that nobody does, and then I felt like I had psychological permission to do it. (obviously saints can do good things without needing psychological permission first, but not everyone has to be in that category, and I found it easier to get the psychological permission than to self-modify into a saint6.) So I’m mostly not going to argue besides saying: this is a thing I did, it’s a thing hundreds of other people do each year, getting started is as simple as filling out a form, and if it works for you, you should go for it7. When I woke up in the recovery room after surgery, I felt great. Amazing. Content, peaceful, proud of myself. Mostly this was because I was on enough opioids to supply a San Francisco homeless encampment for a month. But probably some of it was also the warm glow of having made a difference or something. That could be you! VIII. The ten of you who will listen to this and donate are great. That brings the kidney shortage down from 40,000 to 39,990/year. Everyone knows we need a systemic solution, and everyone knows what that solution will eventually have to be: financial compensation for kidney donors. But so far they haven’t been able to get together enough of a coalition to overcome the usual cabal of evil bioethicists who thwart every medical advance. My kidney donation “mentor”8 Ned Brooks is starting a new push - the Coalition To Modify NOTA - which proposes a $100,000 refundable tax credit - $10,000 per year for 10 years - for kidney donors. There would be a waiting period and you’d have to get evaluated first, so junkies couldn’t walk in off the street and get $100K to spend on fentanyl. No intermediate company would “profit” off the transaction, and rich people wouldn’t be able to pay directly to jump in line. It would be the same kidney donation system we have now, except the donors get $100,000 back after saving the government $1MM+. (the libertarian in me would normally prefer a free market, but “avoid taxes by selling your organs” also has a certain libertarian appeal) This came up often when I talked to other donors. They all had various motivations, but one of the things they cared about was being able to advocate for these kinds of systemic changes more effectively. I personally have been wanting to push this in an essay here for a while, but it seemed hypocritical to play up the desperate kidney shortage while I still had two kidneys. Now I can support NOTA modification whole-heartedly . . . full-throatedly? . . . it’s weird how many of these adverbs involve claims to still have all of your organs. This is also one of the answers to the question I asked in section IV: how do you balance acts of heroic altruism that everyone will love you for vs. acts of boring autistic altruism that will make everyone hate you, but which will accomplish more good in the end?) Coalition To Modify NOTA is full of previous living kidney donors, who are using the moral clout and recognition they’ve gotten to get attention and change the system in an unglamorous way. I find this an admirable way of squaring the circle: do the flashy heroic things to gain social capital, then spend the social capital on whatever’s ultimately most important. If you get one takeaway from this, let it be that those guys who bought the castle were good guys. Two takeaways, and it’s that plus modify NOTA. Three takeaways, and you should feel permission to (if you want) donate a kidney. You can sign up here.9 Feel free to email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com if you have questions about the process. 1Further perspective: I’m 38, which gives me a 2/million total chance of dying per day. So the likelihood that I would die during my kidney operation equals the likelihood that I would die during a randomly chosen two months of everyday life. 2Maybe, kind of. Our knowledge of how radiation causes cancer comes primarily from Hiroshima and Nagasaki; we can follow survivors who were one mile, two miles, etc, from the center of the blast, calculate how much radiation exposure they sustained, and see how much cancer they got years later. But by the time we’re dealing with CAT scan levels of radiation, cancer levels are so close to background that it’s hard to adjust for possible confounders. So the first scientists to study the problem just drew a line through their high-radiation data points and extended it to the low radiation levels - ie if 1 Sievert caused one thousand extra cancers, probably 1 milli-Sievert would cause one extra cancer. This is called the Linear Dose No Threshold (LDNT) model, and has become a subject of intense and acrimonious debate. Some people think that at some very small dose, radiation stops being bad for you at all. Other people think maybe at low enough doses radiation is good for you - see this claim that the atomic bomb “elongated lifespan” in survivors far enough away from the blast. If this were true, CTs probably wouldn’t increase cancer risk at all. I didn’t consider myself knowledgeable enough to take a firm position, and I noticed eminent scientists on both sides, so I am using the more cautious estimate here. 3I told them I had an aunt who died of radiation-induced cancer. It’s true, but I feel grubby for bringing her into this; I thought doctors would be more likely to listen to an emotional story than cold logic. 4EAs have been debating the exact effectiveness of kidney donations for a long time. You can find good skeptical arguments by Jeff Kaufman and Derek Shiller, and good arguments in favor by Alexander Berger and Tom Ash. 5Outside of Philosophy 101 thought experiments, there’s a nonprofit that will often reimburse you for lost wages from your donation. 6Self-modifying into a person who can act boldly without social permission is a more general solution and has many other advantages. But the long version involves living a full life of accumulating moral wisdom, and the short version starts with removing guardrails that are there for good reasons. 7But here are some practical points you might not already appreciate: You shouldn’t have to pay much money. If, like me, you need to travel (eg to New York), kidney related charities will reimburse your travel costs (in theory, I haven’t yet proven this, and a few costs were illegible and I decided not to submit them).

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development1 mentions across 1 issues

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is a recurring organization 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 "Data were analysed for 35 countries registered with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development". It most often appears alongside Aceso Under Glass, ACX Grant, America.

Reference entry: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
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
ACX Grant 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American 1 shared issues
Ancient Sunset 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation

November 07, 2023 · Original source

Studies comparing opt-out and opt-in approaches to organ donation have generally suggested higher donation and transplantation rates in countries with an opt-out strategy. We compared organ donation and transplantation rates between countries with opt-out versus opt-in systems to investigate possible differences in the contemporary era. Data were analysed for 35 countries registered with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (17 countries classified as opt-out, 18 classified as opt-in) and obtained organ donation and transplantation rates for 2016 from the Global Observatory for Donation and Transplantation. Compared to opt-in countries, opt-out countries had fewer living donors per million population (4.8 versus 15.7, respectively) with no significant difference in deceased donors (20.3 versus 15.4, respectively). Overall, no significant difference was observed in rates of kidney (35.2 versus 42.3 respectively), non-renal (28.7 versus 20.9, respectively), or total solid organ transplantation (63.6 versus 61.7, respectively). In a multivariate linear regression model, an opt-out system was independently predictive of fewer living donors but was not associated with the number of deceased donors or with transplantation rates. Apart from the observed difference in the rates of living donation, our data demonstrate no significant difference in deceased donation or solid organ transplantation activity between opt-out versus opt-in countries. This suggests that other barriers to organ donation must be addressed, even in settings where consent for donation is presumed.

Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe1 mentions across 1 issues

Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 03, 2023 and August 03, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe reported". It most often appears alongside Anatoly Sobchak, Antonio Russo, Artyom Borovik.

Reference entry: Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 03, 2023
Last seen: August 03, 2023

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Dictator Book Club: Putin August 03, 2023

Anatoly Sobchak 1 shared issues
Antonio Russo 1 shared issues
Artyom Borovik 1 shared issues
Babylon Bee 1 shared issues
Baltic Sea 1 shared issues

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Dictator Book Club: Putin

August 03, 2023 · Original source

Seen on satirical conservative website Babylon Bee. This was exactly what happened with the Volgodonsk apartment bombing. The standard position in the West is now that Putin orchestrated the apartment bombings himself - killing 300 Russians - as a justification for escalating the war on Chechnya and to make himself look good after he framed some perpetrators. The plan worked. Putin won re-election handily. By the time people started questioning the official story, his power was already secure. The questioners faced harassment - typical “warning shots” would be burglaries of their houses with all the valuables left intact, or getting beaten up by random thugs while they were out walking, or being accused of a series of crimes - tax evasion, but if they proved themselves innocent of that, then it was taking bribes, and if they proved themselves innocent of that too, then it was failing to register their businesses correctly. Soon media oligarchs faced the same treatment, and either fled the country or handed their newspapers and TV channels over to the state. Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who had originally helped put Putin in power, kept his own TV station until 2003, when the Russian submarine Kursk sank and Putin faced criticism for bungling the rescue. Putin summoned Berezovsky, the former kingmaker and the man still in charge of Channel One, and demanded that the oligarch hand over his shares in the television company. “I said no, in the presence of [chief of stff] Voloshin,” Berezovsky told me. “So Putin changed his tone of voice then and said, ‘See you later, then, Boris Abramovich.' and got up to leave. And I said, “Volodya [nickname for Vladimir], this is goodbye.’ We ended on this note, full of pathos […] Within days, [Berezovsky] had left for France, then moved on to Great Britain, joining his former [business] rival Gusinsky in political exile. Soon enough, there was a awarrant out for his arrest in Russia and he had surrendered his shares of Channel One. Over the next few years, Putin centralized authority further. He got Parliament to agree to constitutional changes where governors served at his whim, and members of Parliament were elected by governors. “The only official in the Russian Federation directly elected by the people was the President.” Then he made it clear that governors who kept his favor would keep their jobs, and vice versa. He developed an entire colorful vocabulary for threatening people, moving beyond traditional standbys like “Nice house you’ve got there, shame if something were to happen to it” into new realms of intimidation. A Prime Minister who quit after Putin arrested one too many media tycoon was given the parting words “If you ever have a problem with the tax police, you may ask for help, but please come to me personally.” An urban legend says that leading dissident Marina Salye received a New Year’s postcard from Putin: “I wish you a Happy New Year and the health to enjoy it.” By the time the next election came around in 2004, the vote counts were clearly fake. Gessen doubts Putin even had to give a direct order to falsify them; everyone was so desperate for his goodwill that they did so all on their own. The problem was less that honest officials refused to stuff the ballot box, and more that some bureaucrats were so desperate to make sure Putin knew they were complying with his (implied) desires that they faked the vote in extremely obvious ways, without even a nod to keeping it plausible. The Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe reported “The elections . . . failed to meet many OSCE and Council of Europe commitments, calling into question Russia’s willingness to move towards European standards for democratic elections.” The New York Times reported something entirely different, publishing a condescending but approving editorial titled Russians Inch Toward Democracy. Putin had sunk far enough to earn the same dubious honor as Stalin: praise from the New York Times. IV. The Very-Briefly-Reluctant Culture Warrior One thing missing from this book: anything about religion, nationalism, gays, or the culture wars. This isn’t because Masha Gessen doesn’t care about these things: when the book was written, they self-described as “the only publicly out gay person in [Russia]”; since then (like everyone else) they have declared themselves nonbinary with they/them pronouns. In an afterword, Gessen remedies this omission. For his first decade, Putin wasn’t too interested in culture war topics; his ideology began and ended with “Russia strong”. But Gessen says that after another rigged election in 2012, people grew tired and started protesting Putin. Putin’s propaganda department made various accusations against the rioters, and one of them - they’re gay - seemed to stick. Putin had stumbled by coincidence onto a narrative that resonated with the Russian people. A few months later, a deliberately provocative punk band called Pussy Riot invaded a cathedral and sung a song whose chorus was “the Lord is shit”. Putin announced he was against this sort of thing, again his popularity soared, and again he took notice. Since then, he’s leaned into various culture-warrior roles that other people have cast upon him - protector of traditional values, leader of the conservative world, something something Eurasianism - without giving many clues how much he believes them vs. considers them useful bulwarks for his own power. Is it true that Putin only leaned into traditional values after 2012? I only looked into this question briefly, and it seems like he was on good terms with the Orthodox Church well before then. But some of this could have just been his native authoritarianism; just as he wanted to consolidate all media and business under his control, he wanted to consolidate all religion, and the Orthodox Church was the natural vehicle for, and a cooperative partner in, doing this. Both shared suspicion of invasive Western religions and Islam; both liked the idea of Russia being united in a top-down structure. God doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with it. V. Could It Happen Here? …is the question we ask at the end of every Dictator Book Club. The Man Without A Face makes it sound like Putin was able to consolidate power and become a dictator because: He led the security services

Inline links: Babylon Bee, Russians Inch Toward Democracy, he was on good terms with

Orion project1 mentions across 1 issues

Orion project is a recurring organization 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 "As somebody who also worked on getting humans to Mars (the Orion project, which now only going to the moon after a large demotion)". It most often appears alongside 787, adderallposting, ADL.

Reference entry: Orion project
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 18, 2023
Last seen: September 18, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk September 18, 2023

787 1 shared issues
adderallposting 1 shared issues
ADL 1 shared issues
aerospace industry 1 shared issues
AI x-risk 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk

September 18, 2023 · Original source

As somebody who also worked on getting humans to Mars (the Orion project, which now only going to the moon after a large demotion), yeah having good ideas at those companies is soul crushing.

Orphan Support Club1 mentions across 1 issues

Orphan Support Club is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 11, 2024 and July 11, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "surely you would support other people who share your concern about orphans, and not the kind of callous anti-orphan Scrooge who wouldn’t even join an Orphan Support Club"; "the Orphan Support Club’s growing power". It most often appears alongside Americans, Backscratchers Club, Backscratchers Clubs.

Reference entry: Orphan Support Club
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 11, 2024
Last seen: July 11, 2024

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Lifeboat Games And Backscratchers Clubs July 11, 2024

Americans 1 shared issues
Backscratchers Club 1 shared issues
Backscratchers Clubs 1 shared issues
Board of Trustees 1 shared issues
Canadian 1 shared issues

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Lifeboat Games And Backscratchers Clubs

July 11, 2024 · Original source

Erica does a medium job promoting the club. As the club catches on, the people who are increasing excluded from town life become angry and found the Anti-Backscratchers Coalition. They discriminate against Backscratchers in the same way that Backscratchers discriminate in favor of each other. Some sort of equilibrium is reached. Frank hears Erica’s story and decides to try an even more promising version. He returns to his own hometown and founds the Orphan Support Club, with the following tenets: Members must donate $100/year to the Orphan Support Club

Members must donate $100/year to the Orphan Support Club

There’s no, like, rule about this - but surely you would support other people who share your concern about orphans, and not the kind of callous anti-orphan Scrooge who wouldn’t even join an Orphan Support Club.

Orqueida ZEDE1 mentions across 1 issues

Orqueida ZEDE is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 08, 2021 and November 08, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Guillermo Peña, [Orqueida ZEDE]'s Technical Secretary". It most often appears alongside America, Apolo Group, Ashkenazi.

Reference entry: Orqueida ZEDE
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 08, 2021
Last seen: November 08, 2021

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21 November 08, 2021

America 1 shared issues
Apolo Group 1 shared issues
Ashkenazi 1 shared issues
Aurocard 1 shared issues
Auroville 1 shared issues

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November 08, 2021 · Original source

Econ Americas interviewed (44-minute video) Guillermo Peña, [Orqueida ZEDE]'s Technical Secretary. He summarizes Honduras's recent political and economic history (and seems to believe things are getting better). Orchid has 400 employees already and the locals are typically doubling their income. They'll start exporting in January 2022. They'll invest $85 million over four years with 2,700 employees eventually. It's the largest greenhouse in Central America, exporting vegetables and flowers, over 160 hectares. While all three opposition parties are opposed to ZEDEs, Pena is pretty optimistic that the ZEDEs won’t be shut down, at least immediately, if the opposition wins the November election (see 35:25).

Inline links: interviewed

Orthodox Jewish rabbis1 mentions across 1 issues

Orthodox Jewish rabbis is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 01, 2023 and June 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "effort by Orthodox Jewish rabbis to find technicalities in Jewish law". It most often appears alongside 2006 IAU vote, 9/11, Abacha.

Reference entry: Orthodox Jewish rabbis
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 01, 2023
Last seen: June 01, 2023

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Issue trail

Links For May 2023 June 01, 2023

2006 IAU vote 1 shared issues
11 1 shared issues
Abacha 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
AISafetyMemes 1 shared issues

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Links For May 2023

June 01, 2023 · Original source

27: One of the more obscure sequlae of 9/11 was the effort by Orthodox Jewish rabbis to find technicalities in Jewish law allowing the widows of victims to remarry, even though in some cases it was impossible to find their bodies to confirm death. Here’s one rabbi’s recollections of the process.

Inline links: Here’s one rabbi’s recollections of the process

Orthogonians1 mentions across 1 issues

Orthogonians is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 12, 2021 and March 12, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Nixon's new club, the Orthogonians, was for the strivers". It most often appears alongside Franklins, Nixon, Nixonland.

Reference entry: Orthogonians
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 12, 2021
Last seen: March 12, 2021

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Issue trail

Richard Nixon Vs. Cool March 12, 2021

Franklins 1 shared issues
Nixon 1 shared issues
Nixonland 1 shared issues
NYT 1 shared issues
Republican 1 shared issues

Source context

Richard Nixon Vs. Cool

March 12, 2021 · Original source

“As a schoolboy he hadn't a single close friend, preferring to cloister himself up in the former church's bell tower, reading, hating to ride the school bus because he thought the other children smelled bad. At Whittier, a fine Quaker college of regional reputation unknown anywhere else, he embarked upon what might have been his most humiliating job of all: learning to be a backslapping hail-fellow-well-met. ("I had the impression he would even practice his inflection when he said 'hello,'" a reporter later observed.) The seventeen-year-old blossomed when he realized himself no longer alone in his outsiderdom: the student body was run, socially, by a circle of swells who called themselves the Franklins, and the remainder of the student body, a historian noted, "seemed resigned to its exclusion." So this most unfraternal of youth organized the remnant into a fraternity of his own. Franklins were well-rounded, graceful, moved smoothly, talked slickly. Nixon's new club, the Orthogonians, was for the strivers, those not to the manner born, the commuter students like him. He persuaded his fellows that reveling in one's unpolish was a nobility of its own. Franklins were never photographed save in black tie. Orthogonians worse shirtsleeves. "Beans, brains, and brawn" was their motto. He told them *orthogonian*—basically, "at right angles"—meant "upright," "straight shooter." Also, their enemies might have added, all elbows.

“The Orthogonians' base was among Whittier's athletes. On the surface, jocks seem natural Franklins, the Big Men on Campus. But Nixon always had a gift for looking under social surfaces to see and exploit the subterranean truths that roiled underneath. It was an eminently Nixonian insight: that on every sports team there are only a couple of stars, and that if you want to win the loyalty of the team for yourself, the surest, if least glamorous, strategy is to concentrate on the nonspectacular—silent—majority. The ones who labor quietly, sometimes resentfully, in the quarterback's shadow: the linemen, the guards, the punter. Nixon himself was exemplarily nonspectacular: the 150-pounder was the team's tackle dummy, kept on squad by a loving, tough, and fatherly coach who appreciated Nixon's unceasing grit and team spirit—nursing hurt players, cheering on the listless, even organizing his own team dinners, entertaining the guests on the piano, perhaps favoring them with the Orthogonian theme song. It was his own composition.

OSC1 mentions across 1 issues

OSC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 11, 2024 and July 11, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the local newspaper had just been taken over by OSC members"; "aware that their status relied on being members in good standing of OSC". It most often appears alongside Americans, Backscratchers Club, Backscratchers Clubs.

Reference entry: OSC
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 11, 2024
Last seen: July 11, 2024

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Issue trail

Lifeboat Games And Backscratchers Clubs July 11, 2024

Americans 1 shared issues
Backscratchers Club 1 shared issues
Backscratchers Clubs 1 shared issues
Board of Trustees 1 shared issues
Canadian 1 shared issues

Source context

Lifeboat Games And Backscratchers Clubs

July 11, 2024 · Original source

Erica does a medium job promoting the club. As the club catches on, the people who are increasing excluded from town life become angry and found the Anti-Backscratchers Coalition. They discriminate against Backscratchers in the same way that Backscratchers discriminate in favor of each other. Some sort of equilibrium is reached. Frank hears Erica’s story and decides to try an even more promising version. He returns to his own hometown and founds the Orphan Support Club, with the following tenets: Members must donate $100/year to the Orphan Support Club

Members must donate $100/year to the Orphan Support Club

There’s no, like, rule about this - but surely you would support other people who share your concern about orphans, and not the kind of callous anti-orphan Scrooge who wouldn’t even join an Orphan Support Club.

OSCE1 mentions across 1 issues

OSCE is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 03, 2026 and March 03, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "OSCE described the 2024 US election as". It most often appears alongside 2024 US election, 2026 elections, Agent Economy Of The Future.

Reference entry: OSCE
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 03, 2026
Last seen: March 03, 2026

Outbound links

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/unpredictable-reward-predictable/comment/9048358

Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day March 03, 2026

2024 US election 1 shared issues
2026 elections 1 shared issues
Agent Economy Of The Future 1 shared issues
Alan Cole 1 shared issues
Alireza Arafi 1 shared issues

Source context

Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day

March 03, 2026 · Original source

A Manifold market with 25 forecasters gives a 41% chance that the elections aren’t considered “free and fair”. The resolution criteria is the opinion of international election observers and the mainstream media, who lean liberal. In the past, these observers have sometimes given the US a less-than-perfect verdict - for example, OSCE described the 2024 US election as:

But Metaculus has a similar question noting that “This question may resolve as Yes [even] if the EAC, the OSCE, or the Carter Center notes only isolated problems or areas for improvement”, and it’s at 92%, which is reassuring.

OSRD1 mentions across 1 issues

OSRD is a recurring organization 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 "Roosevelt and his congressional allies snuck hundreds of millions in covert funding to the OSRD’s planned projects". It most often appears alongside 1987, 1988, Adleman.

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

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

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, he’d won World War II. His proximity fuse intercepted hundreds of V-1s and destroyed thousands of tanks, carving a path for Allied forces through the French countryside. Back in 1942, he’d advocated to President Roosevelt the merits of Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb. Roosevelt and his congressional allies snuck hundreds of millions in covert funding to the OSRD’s planned projects in Oak Ridge and Los Alamos. Writing directly and secretively to Bush, a one-line memo in June expressed Roosevelt’s total confidence in his Director: “Do you have the money?”

OSW1 mentions across 1 issues

OSW is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2022 and February 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "OSW specializes in partnering with Federally Qualified Health Centers". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: OSW
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

Issue trail

ACX Grants ++: The Second Half February 10, 2022

2018 1 shared issues
@BendiniUK 1 shared issues
@benyeohben 1 shared issues
@utotranslucence 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

February 10, 2022 · Original source

#94: A Clinic That Practices A New Model Of Community Medicine Open Source Wellness (OSW) is an Oakland-based 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to transforming health care and health outcomes in partnership with communities. OSW delivers “Community As Medicine” via a “Behavioral Pharmacy” approach, in which patients struggling with chronic conditions such diabetes, hypertension, and depression are supported with four universal pillars of wellbeing: physical activity, healthy food, stress reduction, and social connection. OSW specializes in partnering with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC’s) serving patient populations that are predominantly low-income and communities of color, utilizing a Virtual Group Medical Visit model that generates revenue for clinics while achieving critical health outcomes. These visits combat social isolation, and are led by culturally-relevant health coaches and peer leaders in addition to primary care providers. Peer-reviewed, published research outcomes include reductions in ED visits, blood pressure, depression, and anxiety and increases in weekly physical activity, and fruit/vegetable intake. Seeking funding from $50,000 to $150,000 to support two key project areas: Continued expansion of the OSW model to clinical and community orgs nation-wide. Development of a nationally accredited health coach training program, which will create a certification and employment pipeline for our diverse and under-employed participants and peer leaders. Visit www.opensourcewellness.org or email liz@opensourcewellness.org

Otago University1 mentions across 1 issues

Otago University is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Picnic tables outside of St. David's lecture theatre on Otago University campus". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry: Otago University
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 26, 2022
Last seen: August 26, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places August 26, 2022

't Heem 1 shared issues
40 Coffee 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner St., Culver City 1 shared issues
12 Rotunda Drive Charlottesville, VA 22903 1 shared issues
1275 1st Street 1 shared issues

Source context