Organizations: T

The Passage Of Polymarket

February 03, 2022 · Original source

#5: YIMBY Explainer Video On Migration Chains I'm Michael Wiebe, and I will make a YIMBY explainer video on migration chains, to show how even expensive new apartments can improve housing affordability for everyone. The basic idea: A moves into a newly built apartment, B moves into A's old house, C moves into B's old house, which frees up affordable housing for D in a poorer neighborhood. The video will put a human face on the process, by interviewing everyone in a chain, and showing how real people in low-income neighborhoods benefit from new market-rate apartments. For example, we could show a poor college student who benefits from a vacancy in a studio apartment near their university, and trace that vacancy to the construction of a market-rate apartment building. The idea of migration chains is new, and is a big improvement over a simple supply and demand model, which NIMBYs don’t trust anyway. This model has an intuitive mechanism, where people moving *into* new housing are also moving *out* of old housing. Since the mechanism is general and applies everywhere, promoting this idea is high-leverage: it can be used to support YIMBY activism all around the world. I'm a PhD economist and can summarize the research (eg. see here). The video will be produced by urbanist youtube channel About Here, who budgets $5000 per video. We'll also need $1000 to buy food to incentivize volunteers to trace out a complete chain. Please contact me at maswiebe@gmail.com.

Inline links: here

#22: Support Zohar Atkins’ Podcast I'm Zohar Atkins (Rabbi, Poet, Rhodes Scholar, Emergent Ventures Winner, and Founder of Etz Hasadeh). I'm seeking $100,000 to support my new podcast, Meditations with Zohar, which I plan to make into a weekly thing over the course of many years. The show needs patronage to support production and editing costs, and, if this is to be a weekly endeavor, my time. The show features a series of conversations with eclectic thinkers, doers, and artists I admire, with a focus on the intersection of philosophy, religion, theology, and personal principles for life. I have 10 guests already signed up and scheduled, and have recorded 3 episodes, including with Noah Feldman, Sheila Heti, and Teresa Bejan. Other guests include Tyler Cowen and Agnes Callard. The show will combine the love of learning of Tyler Cowen's Conversations with Tyler and the personal, and sometimes existential touch of Krista Tippett's on Being. The world needs high level content that is seeking, personal, and meaning-oriented. We need to talk about ideas in a way that is rigorous but also heartfelt, acknowledging our "skin in the game." This endeavor is part of my larger project of bringing the study of great texts and ideas outside academia. See here for one example. Betting on the show is a bet on my attempt to strengthen culture through better discourse, better education, better thinking, and deeper self-understanding.

Inline links: here

#47: Build A Better Social Network (2) I want to create a social network website/app that improves politics by gathering and promoting good ideas and solutions. My site will be better than existing sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit because it will be an impartial nonprofit that incentivizes the display of good arguments from all sides instead of favoring shallow content to get more ad revenue. I am a professional web developer with the ability to create a fully functional website to test this idea. I plan to publish an early small-scale version of this website that focuses on a few key topics (like climate change, health care, AI risks) and collects a comprehensive list of excellent arguments from many perspectives. I'm looking for more support to help build this website. If you think you can help (with development, design, content writing, etc.), have questions or advice, or can provide funding, please email anon837261@gmail.com (My anonymous forwarding email to avoid spam. I can reply to inquiries with more personal details when necessary) I may also be interested in working together if there are other projects with similar goals.

February 07, 2022 · Original source

The rumor on the prediction market grapevine (which I absolutely cannot substantiate; please don’t sue me for libel) is that this might have something to do with competing prediction market Kalshi. Kalshi spent two years and probably a lot of money getting the CFTC to agree they were legal, and has a former CFTC Commissioner as a Director. Their legal status forces them to do an annoying and expensive regulatory dance all the time; illegal prediction markets were able to move more nimbly, provide better user experience, and eat their lunch. This was a big problem for them - but they’d just finished making lots of friends in the agency that decides which illegal things to crack down on, so, as Tyler Cowen likes to say, “solve for the equilibrium”.

Inline links: rumor, two years, has a former CFTC Commissioner as a Director

Some might call a headquarters building with a CEO sitting in it and millions in the bank account a “center”, so in what sense was Polymarket decentralized? See here for more discussion, and here for the full text of the CFTC decision, but my understanding is - all of the markets themselves were smart contracts on the blockchain run by automated market makers, but you could only access them through the Polymarket website, and the Polymarket people decided how they resolved. Polymarket did not charge fees, and made money by providing liquidity. The CFTC seemed angriest about the “you can only access contracts through the Polymarket website” part of this. Crypto attorney Collins Belton writes:

Inline links: here, here, Collins Belton

Easy to create your own subsidized markets “Real money” should be self-explanatory. Metaculus and Manifold are both very nice, but so far they’re limited to a small group of enthusiasts playing in their spare time. I value them both, but neither is the killer app that makes prediction markets as central to everyday life as stock markets or polls or whatever. “Easy to use” is kind of self-explanatory, but with some caveats. A big part of ease-of-use is liquidity; you can get that from a big user base or from clever deployment of automated market makers. A market that requires crypto knowledge is harder to use than one that doesn’t; one that’s inaccessible from the US is harder to use than one that isn’t. Also all the normal things like UI and search. “Easy to create your own markets” is where we’ve gotten stuck so far. Prediction markets are absolutely on top of questions about whether Donald Trump will win various elections. This is a solved problem. What I really wanted last year (and would have subsidized!) was a market about whether Alameda County, California, would permit indoor gatherings of 50 people on January 8th 2022 (ie would I be forced to cancel my wedding). But I also would have appreciated the ability to put a few questions to prediction markets before starting my psychiatry practice, or my grants program, or any of a dozen other things I did. A friend has gone further, and half-jokingly said they want to create conditional prediction markets about whether they’re compatible with various women in our friend group, to be paid out six months after the first date. Some of these applications are attempts to route around the principal-agent problem. Maybe I have some question about whether a certain grant would succeed, I’m not sure who to ask, and even if someone gives me a “Bob Smith, Grant Evaluator” business card, I don’t know if he’s any good. A prediction market takes all the pain out of searching for information - if I subsidize it enough, it’ll attract people with the relevant skill set who will solve my problem for me. Probably some of these ideas wouldn’t work, but probably other ideas I can’t even think of now would. I don’t know what the killer app for prediction markets will be. But we’re not going to find out unless people can create their own subsidized markets and play around. Polymarket took some baby steps towards this before the settlement: they had a Discord server where anyone could propose questions, and a lot of those questions became markets. But they still had to be general interest, not “let Alice’s five friends predict her dating life”. And there’s a big difference between “talk it over with company representatives on a Discord server” and “press a button”. Imagine if you could only tweet by emailing Jack Dorsey and convincing him that your comment was a good thing to have on Twitter. Even if Jack had good judgment and approved most requests, this would be a long way from the limbic system < — > Send Tweet loop that real Twitter users know and love. I asked some people in the business why they won’t do this. They said most people are bad at writing good resolution criteria. They don’t want their employees to get stuck resolving incredibly dumb questions about people’s dating lives, hunting down inaccessible or conflicting information, and making a bunch of people mad whichever way they decide. As far as I can tell, Manifold Markets solved that problem with their “proposer decides the resolution, caveat emptor” strategy. But Manifold is US-based and can’t use real money, so there’s still no way to subsidize a market effectively. (This is why I’m pessimistic about Kalshi. They could potentially do a lot of good in the “will Afghanistan collapse?” types of markets the Nobel laureates want, though even there I think some of their betting limits will give them trouble - $25,000 is good money, but not quite good enough to incentivize founding the prediction market equivalent of a Wall Street trading firm. But even if they solve this, I can’t imagine the regulators giving them permission to host “will this grant work out?” or “how will my dating life go?” markets; it’s just too weird, and the CFTC is too conservative. I don’t know, maybe their connections will come through and pull it off, but I don’t even know if they’re ambitious enough to want this, and I hate having to rely on one organization.) Right now my hopes are, in ascending order of likelihood: Manifold figures out some kind of weird crypto thing that isn’t real money from a legal perspective, but is real money from a “people really want it and will put a lot of effort into getting it” perspective.

Inline links: Metaculus, Manifold

Ukraine Thoughts And Links

March 08, 2022 · Original source

But that’s how it’s been interpreted, so fine. Maybe nothing will ever happen. I don’t think the Ukraine War is necessarily a counterexample. Fukuyama wrote in 1992, so he knew that eg the Gulf War could happen. Is this conflict bigger than the Gulf War? I don’t think Ukraine proves that “history has restarted” or “the Pax Americana was a paper tiger” or anything of the sort. These kinds of local conflicts were always allowed. Just ask an Iraqi. Or a Chechen, or an Afghan, or a Syrian, or a Bosnian, or a Crimean, or a Tigrayan or go back and ask the Iraqi a second time.

a. Metaculus Alerts is a Twitter bot that alerts you when a Metaculus prediction on the Ukraine war has changed drastically in a short time. For example, “the chance of Russia taking Kiev by April has decreased 10% in the past 24 hours”. I find this a good substitute to refreshing the news every minute to see if something interesting has happened.

Inline links: Metaculus Alerts

b. The origin of “Molotov cocktail”: c. One of the Ukrainian cities on the front lines is named New York.

Inline links: New York

Highlights From The Comments On Justice Creep

March 24, 2022 · Original source

This led to a very interesting subthread between kyb vs. Ruben on whether it’s in fact true that animals and very young children understand fairness. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals , this Twitter discussion and the linked papers, and the rest of the conversation.

Inline links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals, this Twitter discussion, the conversation

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping

April 06, 2022 · Original source

But Xi’s main target has been the Internet. Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Twitter were already blocked when he took power, but he added more search engines (including Bing and DuckDuckGo), more social media (Instagram, Reddit), foreign news (eg BBC, NYT, WaPo, the Economist), and even Wikipedia. This has been bad for business (China’s Internet “ranks ninety-first in the world” and is getting worse, and foreign businesses list difficulty using the Internet as one of their top reasons for not expanding into China more), but Xi thinks it’s a worthwhile tradeoff.

Links For April

April 14, 2022 · Original source

6: Chris Beiser on the 10th anniversary of KONY 2012, and what it meant for activism.

Inline links: the 10th anniversary of KONY 2012

9: Scholars in Early 21st Century Studies: “Donald Trump is not a historical figure, but is actually a compilation of four distinct sources”.

Inline links: “Donald Trump is not a historical figure, but is actually a compilation of four distinct sources”

15: Ivermectin updates: the big Brazilian study that showed ivermectin doesn’t work was officially released. This doesn’t update my analysis because I had included a preliminary version of it. See Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz’s take on some objections here. Another big study from Malaysia also came out; the headline result is “doesn’t work” but Meyerowitz-Katz thinks it’s more complicated (although still leans negative). Avi Bitterman et al formally published their “ivermectin efficacy only in areas with parasitic worms” paper in JAMA. Alexandros Marinos still thinks it works.

Inline links: was officially released, here, also came out, thinks it’s more complicated, paper in JAMA, still thinks it works

April 18, 2022 · Original source

If you like getting your news in this format, subscribe to the Metaculus Alert bot for more (and thanks to ACX Grants winner Nikos Bosse for creating it!)

Inline links: Metaculus Alert bot

(source) Second, PALM, a new and very impressive language AI:

Inline links: source, PALM

PALM explaining jokes (source) Third, Chinchilla, a paper and associated model suggesting that people have been training AIs inefficiently all this time, and that probably a small tweak to the process could produce better results with the same computational power.

Inline links: source, Chinchilla

Every Bay Area House Party

May 04, 2022 · Original source

“No, really, it’s fine. I’m not even bitter. Just - five years working on the Trust And Safety team at Twitter, and Musk comes in and fires me just like that.”

Your Book Review: Making Nature

May 20, 2022 · Original source

The world of scientific publishing is organized as a hierarchy of status, much like the hierarchy of angels in the Abrahamic religions. At the bottom are the non-peer-reviewed blog posts and Twitter threads. Slightly above are the preprint servers like arXiv, and then big peer-reviewed journals like PLOS One. Above those are all the field-specific journals, some with higher reputation than others. And at the top, near the divine presence, are the CNS journals: Cell, Nature, and Science.

Lockyer had a cushy job as a civil servant in the British government, but dabbled in astronomy in his spare time. In the 19th century, dabbling in astronomy in your spare time could be an intellectually productive hobby: the line between professional and amateur science was blurrier then, and it wasn’t hard to contribute original research even without formal training. During the 1860s, Lockyer published several papers on astronomical observations, the most consequential of which might be the co-discovery and naming of the element helium, from his studies of the sun. His reputation grew among the “men of science” (as scientists called themselves then) of Victorian Britain, and he was soon elected to the Royal Society. But astronomy was an expense, not a source of income. Lockyer routinely supplemented his government job by writing nonspecialist scientific articles and books for a lay audience. Then, one day, he had an idea for a new kind of publication. It would be a weekly periodical to disseminate scientific knowledge to the broader public — but unlike the other periodicals that existed at the time, it would be written by the prominent men of science themselves. It would have a simple, evocative name: Nature. Lockyer summarized the two aims of Nature like this: FIRST, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery, and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and in Daily Life; And, SECONDLY, to aid Scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of Natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time. In other words (and getting rid of the old-fashioned capitalization of random adjectives and nouns), Nature was meant to do two things: communication from scientists to the public, and communication among scientists. It was an interesting idea. It was also a new one; until then the two aims had been separate. Recall that scientific journals have existed since 1665. During their first two hundred years, they primarily served to record the meetings of learned societies. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society were originally just that: summaries of whatever “philosophical” questions were discussed at the Royal Society. Aside from journals, specialized books were common and were in fact the higher-status way to communicate science in Victorian Britain. Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species, published in 1859, is the most famous example. Informal correspondence between scientists was also a major, but private, channel: Darwin wrote more than 15,000 letters in his lifetime, enough to fill 30 volumes. With the exception of some books, none of the above were intended for laypeople. Educated non-scientists (professionals, clergymen, statesmen, etc.) instead got their science news from generalist or literary periodicals such as the Athenaeum magazine. The articles in those publications were not written by specialists, but by journalists and dilettantes. Lockyer’s view, shared with his close supporter Thomas Huxley — a biologist known for defending Darwinian evolution — was that they were riddled with errors and theological overtones. It would be better, they thought, if scientists did the work of communicating their research themselves. It was bold of Lockyer and Huxley to assume that scientists would be interested in doing this communication work. They weren’t. Almost immediately after Nature was founded, its contributors ignored the popularization part (“not a high-status undertaking,” Baldwin’s book says) and focused on the intra-science communication part. They did write summaries and abstracts of their own research, as Lockyer had intended, but they expected that their readers would be other men of science. Within three years, the educated laypeople who were Lockyer’s target audience were complaining that they could no longer understand the contents. Thus the first of Nature’s two aims was met mostly with failure. Fortunately, this was balanced out by unexpected success at the second aim. Scientists did actually enjoy writing for Lockyer’s magazine, in large part because it was published weekly. They found that writing a summary of their own research in Nature was an excellent way to share their results quickly and gain attention from other scientists. Books were slow; Darwin took many years to write and publish On the Origin of Species, for instance. The journals of scientific societies were slow; you had to wait for a meeting to take place and then for the meeting’s “transactions” to be published. Private correspondence was fast, but it wasn’t public. Through publication speed, as well as other factors as we’ll see below, Nature filled a niche in the ecosystem. It was the Twitter of 19th-century British science. Soon enough, this model would be copied, most notably by the journal Science in 1880. According to its first editor, Science was explicitly meant to, “in the United States, take the position which ‘Nature’ so ably occupies in England.” In just a few years, Nature had disrupted scientific publishing and established itself as a useful and unique institution of science, recognized by specialists both in the UK and abroad. First page of the first edition of Nature, 4 November 1869 II. One Hundred Years of Building a Reputation Despite its popularity, Nature didn’t become prestigious overnight. Far from it, in fact. Making Nature often reminds us that the journal spent most of its history as a low-grade publication where anything could be printed quickly, as long as it was factually correct. (This was ensured by basic checks from the editorial team; Nature articles were not consistently peer-reviewed until the 1970s.) As late as the 1960s, a researcher publishing a preliminary report in Nature was expected to follow up with a longer paper “in a more serious journal.” In other words, Nature delivered quick and cheap distribution, not luxury brand approval. This changed about fifty years ago, as we’ll see in Part III. But to understand what happened then, we first need to examine the characteristics of the journal in the roughly 100-year period from its early days until prestige took over, starting with a deeper look into publication speed. Publication Speed John Maddox, editor of Nature in the late 20th century, said that “one of Nature’s greatest early assets was the speed of the Royal Mail.” You could write to Nature, be published within a week, and read the replies to your communication within two weeks. This was state-of-the-art communication tech! Consider how many times publication speed is mentioned throughout the first half of the book (emphasis mine): What made Nature unique was, in large part, its ability to act as a venue for . . . discussions via its correspondence columns and its weekly publication schedule. (p. 8) Many British men of science found that one of the fastest ways to bring a scientific issue or idea to their fellow researchers’ attention was to send a communication to Nature. (p. 39) Unlike the literary periodicals, there was almost no delay between the submission of a piece and its appearance in the journal. (p. 63) A second reason Nature’s speed of publication would have been compelling to men of science is that getting one’s work into print quickly had become an increasingly essential part of establishing priority for a scientific finding or theory. (p. 65) Scientific weeklies [such as Nature] played a unique role in researchers’ publishing strategies at the end of the nineteenth century by offering researchers a forum where short articles could be printed quickly. (p. 105) Both the Proceedings [of the Royal Society of London] and the Philosophical Magazine had significant lag times between submission and publication . . ., which made Nature and its weekly turnaround uniquely valuable for the priority-conscious Rutherford. (p. 109) [Rutherford] sent his most interesting experimental results [to Nature] immediately, both as a way of keeping his colleagues updated on his work and as insurance against being scooped as he had in 1899. (p. 112) These quotes highlight two distinct reasons why speed was important. The first, as I hinted at earlier, was Nature’s role as the аcademic social media of its time. It was simply the best way to have discussions about scientific topics — or science itself — that could, unlike private correspondence, reach a large audience. More on this in the next section. The second reason, as shown by the mentions of physicist Ernest Rutherford, was establishing priority. Today we take for granted that being the first to publish new ideas or results is important, but in the 19th century this was less clear. To bring up Darwin as an example again, he kept his thoughts on evolution private for many years, because he wanted to make sure his argument was sound before he submitted it to the public (although he did eventually sense the urgency of publishing the theory before Alfred Russel Wallace did). But as science became professionalized, “not being scooped” became more and more crucial, and the weekly Nature was a good tool to avoid that. All this talk of speed may surprise anyone who has recently submitted a paper to Nature. In 2016, an analysis revealed that the median time for Nature to review a paper was 150 days, i.e. 5 months, up from 85 days a decade earlier. Nature itself reports, for the year 2020, a median time of 226 days between submission and acceptance. We’re a long way from “less than a week.” Why was there a decrease in publication speed? As we might expect, the reason was Nature’s growing popularity, especially among the international scientific community. At least, that’s what happened the first time there was a slowdown, in the mid-20th century. Early on, Nature was a journal for and by British scientists. But in the first half of the 20th century, science in general and Nature in particular began to involve much more collaboration between researchers across borders. It was a big deal, for instance, when a foreign government banned Nature, as Nazi Germany did in 1938; German researchers had been using it as an important source of scientific news. The ban was furthermore covered in non-British media, such as The New York Times, indicating that the journal was internationally newsworthy. Such an increase in international readership meant more letters and articles sent to the editors, and by the 1950s, there was such a backlog that submissions needed to be held for six months or more. In the 1960s, the new editor John Maddox recognized this as a problem. He began his editorship by clearing the backlog, and even printed the date of submission along with each scientific paper to show everyone how quick Nature was at reviewing articles (“often within a month,” Baldwin’s book says). Clearly, Maddox thought that restoring the speedy reputation of the journal was important. He seems to have succeeded, for a time. As late as 1989, during a controversy around cold fusion, a Wall Street Journal article said that Nature was still fast: it was able to print papers “in as little as three weeks instead of the more usual lead time of six to twelve months for other scientific publications.” Thus, despite a dip in the middle of the century due to its popularity and international reach, speedy publication was still an important characteristic of Nature in the 1970s. A second — and so far permanent — decrease occurred more recently, perhaps as a result of prestige and the competition of near-instantaneous online platforms, but that’s another story. Network Effects As of 2022, scientists argue in public on Twitter, blogs, and other online platforms, like ResearchHub. In the 19th century, Twitter and ResearchHub hadn’t been invented [citation needed]. Fortunately, Nature was there. A network effect occurs when the value of a product comes primarily from the people who use it. If there are two competing telephone systems, the most valuable one is whichever has the most users (or at least the users you want to talk to). If you create an improved Twitter clone, then all its amazing features won’t do much if you don’t somehow manage to capture Twitter’s network of several million people. Likewise, Nature became an interesting journal to read and contribute to because it gained the attention of Britain’s scientific elite as the place to discuss big science questions. This role as a forum was a constant in Nature’s history, as Making Nature shows with several detailed accounts of debates that took place within the journal’s pages. Some examples: Controversies over the age of the Earth in the 1880s.

Inline links: more than 15,000 letters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Athenaeum_(British_magazine), took many years, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GYj8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa4f03221-7d79-42f6-bf6c-35d90fe3f7e5_1142x1600.jpeg, revealed, reports, ResearchHub

First page of the first edition of Nature, 4 November 1869 II. One Hundred Years of Building a Reputation Despite its popularity, Nature didn’t become prestigious overnight. Far from it, in fact. Making Nature often reminds us that the journal spent most of its history as a low-grade publication where anything could be printed quickly, as long as it was factually correct. (This was ensured by basic checks from the editorial team; Nature articles were not consistently peer-reviewed until the 1970s.) As late as the 1960s, a researcher publishing a preliminary report in Nature was expected to follow up with a longer paper “in a more serious journal.” In other words, Nature delivered quick and cheap distribution, not luxury brand approval. This changed about fifty years ago, as we’ll see in Part III. But to understand what happened then, we first need to examine the characteristics of the journal in the roughly 100-year period from its early days until prestige took over, starting with a deeper look into publication speed. Publication Speed John Maddox, editor of Nature in the late 20th century, said that “one of Nature’s greatest early assets was the speed of the Royal Mail.” You could write to Nature, be published within a week, and read the replies to your communication within two weeks. This was state-of-the-art communication tech! Consider how many times publication speed is mentioned throughout the first half of the book (emphasis mine): What made Nature unique was, in large part, its ability to act as a venue for . . . discussions via its correspondence columns and its weekly publication schedule. (p. 8) Many British men of science found that one of the fastest ways to bring a scientific issue or idea to their fellow researchers’ attention was to send a communication to Nature. (p. 39) Unlike the literary periodicals, there was almost no delay between the submission of a piece and its appearance in the journal. (p. 63) A second reason Nature’s speed of publication would have been compelling to men of science is that getting one’s work into print quickly had become an increasingly essential part of establishing priority for a scientific finding or theory. (p. 65) Scientific weeklies [such as Nature] played a unique role in researchers’ publishing strategies at the end of the nineteenth century by offering researchers a forum where short articles could be printed quickly. (p. 105) Both the Proceedings [of the Royal Society of London] and the Philosophical Magazine had significant lag times between submission and publication . . ., which made Nature and its weekly turnaround uniquely valuable for the priority-conscious Rutherford. (p. 109) [Rutherford] sent his most interesting experimental results [to Nature] immediately, both as a way of keeping his colleagues updated on his work and as insurance against being scooped as he had in 1899. (p. 112) These quotes highlight two distinct reasons why speed was important. The first, as I hinted at earlier, was Nature’s role as the аcademic social media of its time. It was simply the best way to have discussions about scientific topics — or science itself — that could, unlike private correspondence, reach a large audience. More on this in the next section. The second reason, as shown by the mentions of physicist Ernest Rutherford, was establishing priority. Today we take for granted that being the first to publish new ideas or results is important, but in the 19th century this was less clear. To bring up Darwin as an example again, he kept his thoughts on evolution private for many years, because he wanted to make sure his argument was sound before he submitted it to the public (although he did eventually sense the urgency of publishing the theory before Alfred Russel Wallace did). But as science became professionalized, “not being scooped” became more and more crucial, and the weekly Nature was a good tool to avoid that. All this talk of speed may surprise anyone who has recently submitted a paper to Nature. In 2016, an analysis revealed that the median time for Nature to review a paper was 150 days, i.e. 5 months, up from 85 days a decade earlier. Nature itself reports, for the year 2020, a median time of 226 days between submission and acceptance. We’re a long way from “less than a week.” Why was there a decrease in publication speed? As we might expect, the reason was Nature’s growing popularity, especially among the international scientific community. At least, that’s what happened the first time there was a slowdown, in the mid-20th century. Early on, Nature was a journal for and by British scientists. But in the first half of the 20th century, science in general and Nature in particular began to involve much more collaboration between researchers across borders. It was a big deal, for instance, when a foreign government banned Nature, as Nazi Germany did in 1938; German researchers had been using it as an important source of scientific news. The ban was furthermore covered in non-British media, such as The New York Times, indicating that the journal was internationally newsworthy. Such an increase in international readership meant more letters and articles sent to the editors, and by the 1950s, there was such a backlog that submissions needed to be held for six months or more. In the 1960s, the new editor John Maddox recognized this as a problem. He began his editorship by clearing the backlog, and even printed the date of submission along with each scientific paper to show everyone how quick Nature was at reviewing articles (“often within a month,” Baldwin’s book says). Clearly, Maddox thought that restoring the speedy reputation of the journal was important. He seems to have succeeded, for a time. As late as 1989, during a controversy around cold fusion, a Wall Street Journal article said that Nature was still fast: it was able to print papers “in as little as three weeks instead of the more usual lead time of six to twelve months for other scientific publications.” Thus, despite a dip in the middle of the century due to its popularity and international reach, speedy publication was still an important characteristic of Nature in the 1970s. A second — and so far permanent — decrease occurred more recently, perhaps as a result of prestige and the competition of near-instantaneous online platforms, but that’s another story. Network Effects As of 2022, scientists argue in public on Twitter, blogs, and other online platforms, like ResearchHub. In the 19th century, Twitter and ResearchHub hadn’t been invented [citation needed]. Fortunately, Nature was there. A network effect occurs when the value of a product comes primarily from the people who use it. If there are two competing telephone systems, the most valuable one is whichever has the most users (or at least the users you want to talk to). If you create an improved Twitter clone, then all its amazing features won’t do much if you don’t somehow manage to capture Twitter’s network of several million people. Likewise, Nature became an interesting journal to read and contribute to because it gained the attention of Britain’s scientific elite as the place to discuss big science questions. This role as a forum was a constant in Nature’s history, as Making Nature shows with several detailed accounts of debates that took place within the journal’s pages. Some examples: Controversies over the age of the Earth in the 1880s.

Inline links: revealed, reports, ResearchHub

In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices Movement

May 25, 2022 · Original source

Someone on Twitter complained that boring people go to medical school because if you’re a doctor you don’t need to have a personality. Edward Teach complains that people get into sexual fetishes as a replacement for a personality. I’ve even heard someone complain that boring people take up rock-climbing as a personality substitute: it is (they say) the minimum viable quirky pastime. Nobody wants to be caught admitting that their only hobbies are reading and video games, and maybe rock climbing is enough to avoid being relegated to the great mass of boring people. The complainer was arguing that we shouldn’t let these people get away that easily. They need to be quirkier!

It's Bad On Purpose To Make You Click

June 06, 2022 · Original source

As you travel the twists of Twitter As you pass through the Lands of Zuck And the frogs and the pinks overwhelm you with links And the links overwhelmingly suck When the Redditors ask if you've read it When the TikTokkers talk and tic Hold this admonition close to your breast: It's bad on purpose to make you click.

Your Book Review: The Dawn Of Everything

June 10, 2022 · Original source

Well, it sure would look a lot like Twitter.

I’m serious. It would look a lot like Twitter. For it’s on social media that gossip and social hierarchies are unbounded, infinitely transmittable. An environment of raw social power, which, despite its endless reign of terror, actually feels kind of good? Wouldn’t we want to go back to forced instances of fission between human groups, exiling those we don’t like? Wouldn’t we punish crimes not with legal proceedings, but via massive social shamings?

Inline links: endless reign of terror

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

June 23, 2022 · Original source

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

The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.

Inline links: https://twitter.com/weheartprez/status/1526983899309432832

A minor note of discord: this study characterized Amsterdam’s successful drug program as “harm reduction”, and its conclusion section is titled “Harm Reduction Works”. Shellenberger usually uses “harm reduction” to mean the soft-on-crime policies that don’t do what Amsterdam did. For example, here he points out that Amsterdam has fewer than 130 people using safe injection sites (a typical element of harm reduction strategies). But I gather this is for heroin only; they have many more people on methadone. Most people would also classify methadone treatment as a form of harm reduction. I think this is probably just a semantic quibble and we shouldn’t worry too much about it, but it threw me for a loop here. In any case, whatever harm reduction is or isn’t involved, it’s definitely true that law enforcement breaking up open-air drug markets was a big part of the program.

Inline links: points out, law enforcement breaking up open-air drug markets

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

June 24, 2022 · Original source

The press should include Tetlock’s superforecasting/prediction markets when reporting the forecasts by the military and national security bureaucracy at public interviews, official reports, and congressional testimony 7. Conclusion And Further Readings Gordon Tullock, one of the founding fathers of public choice theory who coined “rent-seeking”, has always wished for a book like this, and now it exists. It is clear to me that Hanania’s public choice model should usurp the conventional unitary actor model, and any scholar who insists on American grand strategy is deluding themselves. The book hasn’t been reviewed by mainstream outlets (which probably only reviews “pop” nonfiction), but have been unanimously praised by scholars in adjacent fields: Steven Pinker praised it as “cynical but probably accurate”; Robin Hanson was “quite impressed”, Byran Caplan, whose work The Myth of the Rational Voter was cited extensively by Hanania, praised it as “eye-opening”; Tyler Cowen praised the book as impressive in spite of finding Hanania’s view to be more sceptical than his own — a sentiment I share after reading about the East Asian economic miracle (the greatest anti-poverty program in history) facilitated by American intervention in How Asia Works (another contrarian economics-related work I’ve reviewed). Russian Invasion of Ukraine At the time of writing, Russia is invading Ukraine, so it is interesting to see how well the public choice model’s predictions fit. Indeed, the unitary actor model can describe autocratic states to some degree — to understand Russia we only have to get into the head of Putin (the model still falls short in accounting for the oligarchs who run the mafia state). Ukraine is central to Putin’s ideology and subjectively important to Russian society, and the desire to obliterate and absorb the nation of Ukraine far predates the history of NATO (see also Adam Tooze’s excellent essay on understanding Russia as a strategic petrostate). As Hanania writes on his Substack (worthy of your subscription, by the way)4: We know what the Russians want. They have made clear, openly and consistently, that they do not want NATO to keep expanding. When it became apparent in December that an invasion was on the table, the US started a diplomatic process that has involved trying to work out concessions on other things, while refusing to take NATO membership for Ukraine off the table. Putin has become Satan in liberal imagination, and when it comes to the culture war, the emotional response is overwhelming. Hanania writes: Brexit, Trump, and the rise of Orban and other right-wing populists in Europe have helped solidify a narrative in which Russian hackers and influence operations are behind everything liberal elites find distasteful, from opposition to Syrian refugees to bans on Critical Race Theory. Here’s a website laying out all the things Russia has been accused of “weaponizing” in the media, including dolphins, federalism, and the weather. The details of debates surrounding the wisdom of NATO expansion and whether Ukraine actually matters to the United States are lost in the larger story, as emotional denunciations of Putin as the source of all anti-democratic activity drives attitudes and policies. Inconvenient facts are ignored because it’s not really about “democracy,” “international law,” or any of the other words they use to obscure the fact that it’s culture wars all the way down. And the Western response is driven by extreme public outcry to an unprecedented extent: It’s all a competition to see who can signal “I hate Putin” the most, but Germany was still shutting down all its nuclear power plants to rely on Russian gas despite warnings from every other EU state (Russia accounts for 40% of Europe’s gas imports) — so much for grand strategy. That is not to excuse Putin’s invasion (he is, after all, the aggressor) and no, Ukraine is not “the West’s fault” as Mearsheimer has claimed in his viral lecture, but “NATO’s door remains open” for me and “we're going to start WW3 because you're in my sphere of influence” for thee is no grand strategy at all. Indeed, the irrational Western response is not predictable by the unitary actor model, but by the public choice model. Hanania writes: If you were going to cut Russia off from SWIFT, for example, why wouldn’t you announce it beforehand? The whole point of a punishment like that is supposed to be its deterrent effect, but if you don’t communicate that a specific action will happen, then it can’t influence behaviour. The answer here seems to be a lack of grand strategy, with leaders responding to events according to emotion and public relations more than anything. Cutting off SWIFT, or even threatening to do so, seems extreme before an invasion occurs, but not after it has begun. The West cannot rely on sanctions to make Russia abandon its core national security interests, which at the very least include a no-NATO commitment, the acceptance of the secession of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the recognition of the annexation of Crimea. Sanctions will also push Putin closer to Beijing, and the US will continue down the self-defeating path of alienating both of the other two superpowers — so much for American grand strategy. Hanania writes: Even if Putin has maximalist aims at this point, that doesn’t mean sanctions are worth doing. Their costs are high and they may have major consequences for the global economy. One has to consider the possibility that they make Russia more repressive at home and more brutal in its persecution of the war. Putin is getting sanctioned, but ordinary Russians are getting cancelled. The Metropolitan Opera of New York has announced it will no longer stage performers who have supported Russian President Vladimir Putin. Carnegie Hall has done the same, and the Royal Opera House in London is cancelling a planned Bolshoi Ballet residency (one of the oldest and most prestigious ballet companies in the world). Eurovision banned Russia. Tchaikovsky is cancelled. As Tyler Cowen writes, cancel culture against Russians is the new McCarthyism. The culture war has morphed into a hyperreal form on the Internet. Just as COVID is the first pandemic in the Age of Twitter, so the Ukraine invasion is, in some sense, the first war in the Age of Twitter. As it unfolds, we are seeing many disturbing parallels to the events of early 2020. People are rapidly normalising once-fringe ideas like a NATO-enforced no-fly zone (while completely oblivious to the fact that it means shooting down Russian planes and causing WW3), direct US conflict with Russia, regime change in Moscow, and even, incredibly, the use of nuclear weapons. The overnight flips on German defence spending and SWIFT are like the overturning of conventional public health policies on masking and lockdowns. We have entered the age of shitpost diplomacy, as coined by Tanner Green, in which the official Twitter account of the US Embassy in Kiev literally posts memes to spite Putin: 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.

Inline links: Gordon Tullock, cynical but probably accurate, Robin Hanson, The Myth of the Rational Voter, eye-opening, impressive, reviewed, predates, essay, writes, website, public outcry, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R3g3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F693f0593-7460-4fb0-bc4a-e185cf6f0e06_964x506.png, not, viral lecture, NATO’s door remains open, we're going to start WW3 because you're in my sphere of influence, writes, writes, cancelled, banned, cancelled, writes,, German defence spending, shitpost diplomacy, posts, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j4gR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c5db00c-e420-4b54-b826-b85d9ddf186d_900x647.png, writes, interview, 80,000 Hours, Future of Life Institute, Our World In Data, The Precipice, ~1 in 1000, estimates, summarised, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PRc2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe90b1bb5-d84b-45dc-b9fa-2edddbf6b9fa_1600x1006.png, Pax Americana, MacArthur Foundation, details, gave up, surprised, Scott, jingoism, China specialist, captured, writes, the sanity waterline, a multipolar world will be more humane

It’s all a competition to see who can signal “I hate Putin” the most, but Germany was still shutting down all its nuclear power plants to rely on Russian gas despite warnings from every other EU state (Russia accounts for 40% of Europe’s gas imports) — so much for grand strategy. That is not to excuse Putin’s invasion (he is, after all, the aggressor) and no, Ukraine is not “the West’s fault” as Mearsheimer has claimed in his viral lecture, but “NATO’s door remains open” for me and “we're going to start WW3 because you're in my sphere of influence” for thee is no grand strategy at all. Indeed, the irrational Western response is not predictable by the unitary actor model, but by the public choice model. Hanania writes: If you were going to cut Russia off from SWIFT, for example, why wouldn’t you announce it beforehand? The whole point of a punishment like that is supposed to be its deterrent effect, but if you don’t communicate that a specific action will happen, then it can’t influence behaviour. The answer here seems to be a lack of grand strategy, with leaders responding to events according to emotion and public relations more than anything. Cutting off SWIFT, or even threatening to do so, seems extreme before an invasion occurs, but not after it has begun. The West cannot rely on sanctions to make Russia abandon its core national security interests, which at the very least include a no-NATO commitment, the acceptance of the secession of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the recognition of the annexation of Crimea. Sanctions will also push Putin closer to Beijing, and the US will continue down the self-defeating path of alienating both of the other two superpowers — so much for American grand strategy. Hanania writes: Even if Putin has maximalist aims at this point, that doesn’t mean sanctions are worth doing. Their costs are high and they may have major consequences for the global economy. One has to consider the possibility that they make Russia more repressive at home and more brutal in its persecution of the war. Putin is getting sanctioned, but ordinary Russians are getting cancelled. The Metropolitan Opera of New York has announced it will no longer stage performers who have supported Russian President Vladimir Putin. Carnegie Hall has done the same, and the Royal Opera House in London is cancelling a planned Bolshoi Ballet residency (one of the oldest and most prestigious ballet companies in the world). Eurovision banned Russia. Tchaikovsky is cancelled. As Tyler Cowen writes, cancel culture against Russians is the new McCarthyism. The culture war has morphed into a hyperreal form on the Internet. Just as COVID is the first pandemic in the Age of Twitter, so the Ukraine invasion is, in some sense, the first war in the Age of Twitter. As it unfolds, we are seeing many disturbing parallels to the events of early 2020. People are rapidly normalising once-fringe ideas like a NATO-enforced no-fly zone (while completely oblivious to the fact that it means shooting down Russian planes and causing WW3), direct US conflict with Russia, regime change in Moscow, and even, incredibly, the use of nuclear weapons. The overnight flips on German defence spending and SWIFT are like the overturning of conventional public health policies on masking and lockdowns. We have entered the age of shitpost diplomacy, as coined by Tanner Green, in which the official Twitter account of the US Embassy in Kiev literally posts memes to spite Putin: 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.

Inline links: not, viral lecture, NATO’s door remains open, we're going to start WW3 because you're in my sphere of influence, writes, writes, cancelled, banned, cancelled, writes,, German defence spending, shitpost diplomacy, posts, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j4gR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c5db00c-e420-4b54-b826-b85d9ddf186d_900x647.png, writes, interview, 80,000 Hours, Future of Life Institute, Our World In Data, The Precipice, ~1 in 1000, estimates, summarised, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PRc2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe90b1bb5-d84b-45dc-b9fa-2edddbf6b9fa_1600x1006.png, Pax Americana, MacArthur Foundation, details, gave up, surprised, Scott, jingoism, China specialist, captured, writes, the sanity waterline, a multipolar world will be more humane

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.

Links For June

July 01, 2022 · Original source

2: bit.ly/3MJ6Zt8 ","username":"pickover","name":"Cliff Pickover","profile_image_url":"","date":"Fri Apr 29 23:42:00 +0000 2022","photos":[{"img_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/upload/w_728,c_limit/l_twitter_play_button_rvaygk,w_120/kf9h16is6x2hucit8geo","link_url":"https://t.co/hvvSmcyiLV","alt_text":null}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":1681,"like_count":7558,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":"https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1520186622284808192/pu/vid/480x270/lZddYhyVcPgVb2IR.mp4?tag=12","belowTheFold":false}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> 3: In 1927, young Buckminster Fuller’s housing business failed, and he decided to commit suicide. Then (h/t @amplituhedron):

Inline links: @amplituhedron

3: In 1927, young Buckminster Fuller’s housing business failed, and he decided to commit suicide. Then (h/t @amplituhedron):

Inline links: @amplituhedron

5: Finally we discover what kind of perverse behavior is so disgusting that it can get you banned from FetLife:

July 12, 2022 · Original source

Last week, Elon Musk announced he was withdrawing his offer to buy Twitter. His excuse was too many spambots, but nobody takes this seriously and it isn’t legally valid (see Matt Levine for more). Twitter has promised to sue to make the deal go through. What are their chances?

Inline links: Matt Levine

The most useful market I can find here is Polymarket’s question on Twitter getting removed from NYSE (a natural consequence of Musk taking it private):

Inline links: Polymarket’s question

Metaculus lists the chance of Elon Musk becoming CEO of Twitter by 2025 as 10%.

Inline links: Metaculus lists

Links For July

July 29, 2022 · Original source

1: Rude compounds on Reddit (source, original). Thousands of cocksuckers, shitlords, and libtards, but far fewer cocktards, shitsuckers, and liblords. Also disappointingly few trumpgoblins:

Inline links: source, original

3: Seen on Twitter, taken from General Social Survey: mean IQ by degree by decade. If true, the average college graduate today is close to the same intelligence as the average high school graduate in 1960.

Inline links: on Twitter

4: 5: This month in nominative determinism: conservative radio commentator Jeremy Boreing.

Inline links: Jeremy Boreing

Your Book Review: Viral

July 30, 2022 · Original source

There are also technical points and counterpoints about these studies being debated. For example, one of the studies attempts to use geospatial analysis to show that locations of early COVID cases seems to cluster around the market. A possible rebuttal to this point is that it might be based on ascertainment bias – at the start of the pandemic, authorities suspected the market as a source of the outbreak and specifically looked for patients who’d recently been at the market, so it’s not surprising to see early cases cluster around the market if market exposure was part of the criteria for being diagnosed with COVID.

Inline links: specifically looked for patients who’d recently been at the market

Probably the most important – the WIV had previously maintained a database of at least fifteen thousand bat samples, including the dates and locations of samples as well as information about the viruses found in them. This database was taken offline and its contents have not been shared with independent researchers since. At this point, we need to be cautious and police our emotions so that we don’t start favoring the lab leak hypothesis for non-scientific reasons. When reading about this stuff, it’s easy to get angry and start wanting the Chinese government to be guilty of something, but we need to consider all possible explanations. It’s possible that the Chinese government was trying to cover up a lab leak, but it’s also possible that this was just regular authoritarian government behavior. Interestingly, Chan and Ridley describe similar attempts at obfuscation during the original SARS epidemic in 2003 (which had a natural origin), in which the Chinese government hid infected patients so that they wouldn’t be discovered by international health authorities. So I don’t think these attempts at obfuscation should necessarily be taken as evidence for a lab origin. The book also criticizes a US-based research organization called the EcoHealth Alliance, and its president Peter Daszak. [5] The basic claim here, which I think has some merit, is that there was an attempt to artificially construct a scientific consensus from the top down, early on in the pandemic, even though such a consensus wasn’t (and isn’t) warranted by the evidence. This artificial scientific consensus was then picked up by tech companies, who used it to label discussion of the lab leak hypothesis as “misinformation”, as well as by media sources and fact checkers. I don’t want to get bogged down in all the convoluted details here, so I refer you to the book if you want to learn about it. It’s worth noting though that some of the scientists who publicly labeled the lab leak hypothesis as a “conspiracy theory” apparently considered it to be plausible in their private communications, which were obtained through FOIA requests. Whatever we think of the whole Daszak / EcoHealth Alliance story, it’s pretty clear that at the start of the pandemic many respected institutions – scientific journals, tech companies, media networks, the WHO – expressed a level of confidence in the natural origins hypothesis that was not warranted by the evidence. How should we update our opinions based on this overconfidence? Does it tell us anything about the origins of the virus? Let’s say that your friend claims he can magically predict the result of a fair coin flip (only once). “There’s a 100% chance it’ll come up heads,” he says. If you’re gullible, you’ll update your belief in favor of heads. If you’re feeling annoyed at your friend, you might update in favor of tails out of spite [6]. Both of these would be wrong. The correct answer would be to not update at all on the object-level question of the coin flip (still 50-50), and to update negatively on the separate question of how trustworthy your friend’s predictions are. And remember, even if the coin does come up heads, you should still update negatively on your friend’s trustworthiness – he was still overconfident even though he happened to get it right by chance. This is basically how I think we should handle this unwarranted overconfidence from respected institutions – it should decrease our trust in these institutions, but we need to be careful not to start favoring the lab leak hypothesis out of spite. In my opinion this loss of trust should not really affect our view of the object-level question of the virus’s origin at all (although it would be nice to see some of the data being hidden, like that WIV database that was taken offline). Sometimes your overconfident friend will get it wrong, and the coin will come up tails. 6. Technical evidence The book covers a lot of technical evidence that’s considered by some to point toward a lab origin. Although I’m a computational biologist myself, I don’t have the background knowledge required to evaluate this evidence, and have only been able to observe the back-and-forth debates between people who actually do have this background knowledge. So I didn’t update my opinion much based on these pieces of evidence, but I’ll still describe some of them here. The first widely-cited piece of technical evidence has to do with the lack of rapid evolution of the virus early on in the pandemic. Some scientists claim that SARS-CoV-2 reached genetic stability early on, suggesting that it was already well-adapted to spread in humans at the start of the outbreak. Some have interpreted this as evidence that it was engineered for this purpose, or underwent serial passaging to encourage adaptation to human or humanized cells. Here’s a pre-print from May 2020 (on which Alina Chan is actually a co-author) making the claim that SARS-CoV-2 was already well-adapted to humans at the beginning of the pandemic. However, a review paper from proponents of the natural origins hypothesis disputes this claim, and offers several technical counterpoints, citing adaptive mutations later on in the pandemic that increased the virus’s fitness. The second widely-cited piece of technical evidence is related to a feature of the SARS-CoV-2 called the furin cleavage site (FCS). The FCS increases the ability of the virus to infect certain types of cells, and is part of what makes SARS-CoV-2 especially contagious. It’s considered an unusual feature, and has not been found in the other viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. It’s worth noting that previous gain of function research has included inserting a furin cleavage site into the original SARS virus from the 2003 epidemic. The debate over the FCS in SARS-CoV-2 is mostly related to sequence analysis, and I don’t have enough background knowledge on this to take a side on it either way. This is a paper by Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin claiming that the FCS may suggest genetic manipulation and point to a lab origin. For technical counterpoints on the FCS, I’ll refer you to the same review paper from natural origins proponents that I mentioned in the last paragraph. A large chunk of the book is devoted to exploring these technical claims. These sections of the book are interesting and informative for hearing one perspective, but I definitely recommend checking out other sources with the technical counterpoints to get a full view of things. Personally I did not update my opinion based on these pieces of evidence because I don’t have enough background knowledge to evaluate opposing claims being made about them. Also, I think it’s worth noting that the debates around these pieces of evidence are specifically related to the subset of lab leak possibilities that involves genetic engineering and manipulation. However, even if it were proven, beyond a doubt, that SARS-CoV-2 was not the product of genetic engineering, that would not rule out the possibility that it was a natural virus, collected from the field, that was stored in the WIV and leaked out. I want to point this out because I’ve seen some semantic confusion where people claim to “disprove” the lab leak hypothesis, when really they are given arguments specifically against the possibility of genetic engineering. 7. Signal and noise So far I’ve tried to summarize some of the key points of the book that I view as being the most important, but there are also a ton of other tiny pieces of information for us to try to make sense of. Some of these bits are either false, misleading, or meaningless. For example, Chan and Ridley tell the story of Dr. Limeng Yan, a scientist-turned-whistleblower who fled to the US in April 2020 in fear of being “disappeared” in China. By all accounts, Dr. Yan started off as a legitimate whistleblower. She learned of COVID’s human-to-human transmission early on, when it was still being denied by the Chinese government, tried to report it up her chain of command (but was told to keep quiet), and ended up leaking the information to a Youtube commentator who told the world – and of course, it was confirmed by the Chinese government and WHO the next day. But instead of the story ending there, with Dr. Yan as a brave hero, things took a sad turn. She fled to the US in fear, but ended up in a situation where her only American contacts were people with their own political agendas (including Steve Bannon). Facing this scary and uncertain situation in a foreign land, it seems she basically told these people what they wanted to hear, and possibly ended up believing it herself through self-deception. Soon she was giving interviews to right-wing media outlets, spouting the actual unfounded conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2 was a bioweapon released by China on purpose, and other false information. This is a sad story about a scientist who tried to do the right thing, but ended up intellectually corrupted by forces beyond her control. It’s also a reminder of how much noise and false information is out there. It’s easy to dismiss the ridiculous claim that COVID began as a bioweapon, but other claims are more difficult to evaluate. For example, according to a US intelligence report, three researchers at the WIV became so severely ill in November 2019 that they required hospitalization. It was reported that they had symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and regular seasonal illness. What should we make of this claim [7]? Conclusion 1: I have no idea whether the virus came from a lab or from nature After reading the book and going down several related rabbit holes, I feel as uncertain as ever about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, I have generally updated towards viewing the lab leak hypothesis as plausible, rather than an insane conspiracy theory. This partly due to this book, as well as many other related sources I came across last year. To summarize, my overall updating went something like this: Prior: Definitely natural origins (Obviously, I’m not a conspiracy theorist).

Inline links: apparently considered it to be plausible in their private communications,, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AurY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0ce0d9c4-3fc1-4de0-9985-5dee032e50ad_1600x730.png, pre-print from May 2020, review paper from proponents of the natural origins hypothesis, inserting a furin cleavage site into the original SARS virus, This is a paper by Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin, three researchers at the WIV became so severely ill in November 2019 that they required hospitalization.

Posterior: Both hypotheses seem viable and a thorough, open investigation is needed. Conclusion 2: Evaluating claims from experts and institutions There was a lesson I took away from this book that I’m not exactly sure how to feel about. Reading through the history of the investigation into the pandemic’s origins, it’s notable that many of the breakthroughs were made by either complete amateurs, or by scientists in fields outside of virology working in their free time. For example, one of the main characters in this story is The Seeker, an anonymous Twitter user, later revealed to be a former science teacher in India with no formal research experience. Again and again, amateur internet researchers like The Seeker caught things that the professional virology community missed or ignored, including the origins of RaTG13 and the eight other coronavirus samples from the Mojiang mine. I don’t really know how to feel about it. On the one hand, it’s pretty cool that science is now open source in a way that lets random, curious people comb through data to make interesting discoveries. But on the other hand, what the hell is going on if some random Twitter users are consistently correcting world-renowned virology institutes on various mistakes and omissions? This is especially frustrating when the random guy on the internet turns out to be right. When people talk about “trusting the experts”, I think they mean trusting people with technical expertise over people without technical expertise. This makes sense a lot of the time. Probably almost all the time. If you need your car fixed, have a weird rash on your skin, or have a leaking pipe in your house, you consult a mechanic, a dermatologist, or a plumber because they have the technical expertise you need on those issues. You don’t ask a random guy on Twitter for help. But what if you have a question about investment banking on Wall Street, and how it should be regulated. Should you put the question to a bunch of investment bankers? After all, they do have the most technical expertise on this subject, right? They probably know more about investment banking than you or me, or a lot of the people pushing for more financial regulations. Now we’ve run into an issue: they do have technical expertise, but it’s bundled together and intertwined with a bunch of incentives that could lead to biased judgment, so we can’t take what they’re saying as some pure, objective truth. Of course, their technical expertise is still valuable, so we shouldn’t necessarily throw out everything they say either. The proper response is to listen to what they’re saying and weigh the information accordingly after considering the incentives they’re facing, and possible biases. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that scientific institutions, though probably not as bad as Wall Street, are still made up of human beings who are susceptible to all kinds of cognitive biases, including group think, confirmation bias, and the good ol’ Not Wanting To Be Wrong. So what should we do about this? Well, the easy option is to just become an insane person, like Alex Jones, and assume the experts are lying all the time about everything. This strategy has the advantage of letting us feel edgy and rebellious, but it’s not very helpful if we actually want to figure these issues out. On the other hand, if we want to seriously try to discern truth from expert claims on controversial topics, that’s a messy challenge that involves considering their technical expertise, as well as potential biases they might have, as well as our own potential biases. Conclusion 3: Some optimism about science I know this has probably been a bit of a depressing post to read, but my final conclusion is actually one of optimism about the state of science. What differentiates science from other ways of knowing is its self-correction mechanisms. It’s all about changing our minds and reevaluating our beliefs based on new evidence and clearer understanding of things. This is basically what we’ve seen in the way the scientific community has changed positions on the lab leak hypothesis. Harsh critics might refer to this as a “flip flop”, or point out that the lab leak hypothesis never should have been dismissed in the first place, but I see it as a commendable error correction. What’s even cooler is that much of this reevaluation was the result of amateurs and semi-amateurs making discoveries based on freely accessible genomic sequence data, and open source online sequence analysis tools. Plus the fact that, despite their lack of official credentials, their analysis was taken seriously (eventually), when it became evident that they were making good points. This is a credit to the scientific community. Further sources to check out Natural Origins Proponents The most comprehensive post I’ve found making the case for natural origins is Philipp Markolin’s Substack post, which attempts to apply Bayesian reasoning to the question. Definitely recommend.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DmBD!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc3f437a1-b9a0-4e0a-9f6b-87872bf32576_1210x1190.png, The most comprehensive post I’ve found making the case for natural origins is Philipp Markolin’s Substack post

August 01, 2022 · Original source

This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-used urbanism is illegal to build in most American cities. So what is going on? After describing Neom project leader Nadhmi Al-Nasr… Former employees say one of the chief sources of aggravation is Al-Nasr, whom they describe as having a volcanic temper. Several recall him openly berating subordinates, sometimes issuing threats unlike anything they’d experienced in their careers. In one particularly tense moment, after two e-sports companies canceled partnerships with Neom, citing human-rights concerns, Al-Nasr said he’d pull out a gun and start shooting if he wasn’t told who was to blame, according to two witnesses to the exchange. Al-Nasr disputes these accounts. “Not anyone can stand the pressure of the demands of the day, and there are people who leave because it’s more demanding than anything they have done before,” he says. …the Bloomberg article offers some tantalizing clues: Among the misdeeds most likely to anger Al-Nasr, the former employees say, was failing to spend enough money. Three of them described Al-Nasr keeping a diagram showing which department heads were disbursing less than their budgets allowed, which the ex-staff half-seriously referred to as a “wall of shame.” Maybe if you demand grander and grander plans, and have a reputation for killing anyone who opposes you, then eventually you get a really grand plan and nobody has the guts to tell you that it’s impossible. But the problem isn’t just that Neom is too big. Everything about it is doomed. There are reasons most cities aren’t designed as 200 meter wide, 170 km long lines; this maximizes the distance between any two points! The Saudis say they will solve this with a high-speed train, but all public transit is inherently limited in speed by the need to stop at a bunch of stations along the way. The video says that you’ll be able to go from one end of Neom to the other in 20 minutes, which suggests a 500 km/hour or 300 mile/hour train line. There are some maglevs which are almost that fast, but this only works if everyone is going nonstop from the exact westernmost point in Neom to the exact easternmost point. If you want people to only have to walk a kilometer or so to their destination, you’ll need 85 stops along the way. You can do slightly better than this with a combination of express and local trains, but you’re never going to compensate for the fact that laying your city out in a line is shooting yourself in the foot. I think maybe this is what happens to your brain when you read too many YIMBY blogs. “The only things people want out of cities are super high density and a ban on cars, right?” Dude, you are Saudi Arabia. The only two things in your country are open space and fuel. Log off Twitter, touch grass, etc. Okay, now I’m even more confused. The only advantage of having your city in a giant line is that at least it’s good for mass transit, and you are … emphasizing walkability? Also, aren’t you in Saudi Arabia? Isn’t it 130 degrees at all times? But The Line is only the beginning. They will also have a Giant Floating Octagon Of Clean Industry: Source: Neom website …the world’s largest ski and watersports resort, and yes we are still in Saudi Arabia, they’ll make an artificial lake and use artificial snow: Source: Neom website …and whatever this is supposed to be: Source: Neom website Fine! Let’s just have random stuff! Canal-pools along every street so you can swim to work! A beach made of crushed marble which will shine like silver! Whatever! If this were some billionaire’s passion project, I’d be fine with it. It would be fun to watch exactly how it failed; it would probably leave some cool ruins. Maybe after the hype died down they could try for something smaller, and it would still be pretty impressive. At least it would beat yet another megayacht. But in fact, this is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, squandering public money. Not just renewable tax receipts, but the country’s accumulated oil windfall, just as the world tries to transition to renewable energy and the country risks never getting any oil windfall ever again. This is the money that should be going to the Saudi people having a future, and instead Mohammed bin Salman is spending it on playing some kind of demented desert version of SimCity, using a strategy that ten minutes playing actual SimCity could tell him was a bad idea. Neom represents all the worst parts of model cities. Dictators robbing the public purse to build cool monuments that make them feel special. Total lack of interest in workers, previous inhabitants, future inhabitants, or anyone except the very rich. “Sustainability”, “density”, and “liveability” as buzzwords to throw at foreign media, with no broader story for how any of this will improve the lives of real people or the cause of human freedom. I find model cities interesting and promising only insofar as I think some of them aren’t like Neom. Catawba Digital Economic Zone Haven’t heard much out of the crypto people recently, wonder what they’re up to: They seem to have gotten…an Indian tribe? That wasn’t on my bingo card for 2022. The Catawba Digital Economic Zone is the brainchild of Joseph McKinney (founder of the pro-charter-cities Startup Societies Foundation) and the Catawba Nation of Native Americans (a federally recognized tribe with a reservation in South Carolina). Indian tribes have regulatory independence from state governments, which some tribes have famously used to allow casinos in their territory. The Catawba are going one step further: they claim to have favorable cryptocurrency regulations which make it easier to register and operate your crypto company in Catawba territory than in the rest of the US. You can find their exact laws here, although they are long and in legalese. CoinDesk has an explainer of the crypto benefits, which seem to focus on digital asset regulations which “integrate digital assets under existing law”, including rights around disputes and loans. They also expect upcoming laws on DAOs, stablecoin, and banking. “Native American tribes” and “cryptocurrency” were not previously two concepts I associated closely with each other. But the Catawba were already a standout for their political savvy and economic ambitions, and they seem intimately involved here; the Zone is being run by “the business branch of the Catawba Indian Nation”, the commissioners are mostly Catawba citizens and tribal elders, and there are some nice touches like financial incentives for businesses that employ Catawba citizens. I like crypto as an insurance policy against oppressive governments, but I am not very bullish about it as an industry right now. Still, I am excited about the idea of Indian reservation charter cities - either in cooperation with outsiders like McKinney, or - who knows? - as grassroots designs from the tribes themselves. Reservation charter cities wouldn’t be the biggest deal. Tribes have substantial independence from state and local governments, but not much independence from the national government, and a lot of the dysfunction that needs escaping is at the federal level. Still, there are probably some niche opportunities; see eg Squamish tribe building skyscrapers on their land in Vancouver despite NIMBY opposition for one example of where this sort of idea could go. Seasteading In Paradise Malé is the capital of the Maldives, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean. It looks like this: One noticeable feature of Malé is its lack of lebensraum. Maldives is a pretty well-off country with a strong tourist industry, and lots more people would like to be nearby. What to do? You can already guess the proposed solution of Maldives Floating City. They want a 20,000 person seastead docked ten minutes away from the 130,000 person island-capital. The Floating City will serve both tourists and local Maldivians (some of whom are getting nervous about rising sea levels, and would probably appreciate a development guaranteed to stay above water). According to the organization’s press release, the Dutch corporate sponsor has obtained full permission to build the seastead, some test construction has already started, and full construction will begin in January. They hope to finish by 2027. Here are the inevitable pretty pictures: The layout is supposedly based on brain coral, but is this really the best way to lay design a seastead? Does this pattern really maximize the ease of getting from Point A to Point B? If you like tropical paradises and are incredibly optimistic, you can buy a house in the Floating City here, prices seem to be $150-250K. This is not the long-awaited dream of the libertarian seastead; the whole city will be firmly anchored in Maldives, both physically and legally. But if it works, it’s a proof of concept that libertarians may be able to build on later. Elsewhere In Model Cities 1: Prospera now hosts the drone delivery service Aerialoop, which will eventually transport cargo from their Roatan Island hub to various outposts on the mainland; you can find more information here. Their long-term plans include eventually following this up with passenger drones. And here’s some more information on the growing drone industry in Latin America. 2: Related: Prospera intern and resident George Kerpestein is writing a Substack about his experiences there. And here is the Prospera newsletter. 3: Thanks to commenters last month for pointing out that Chinese cult Falun Gong has its own compound/city in upstate New York. You can read more about it here: 4: Sealand is an independent nation (according to Sealand) based out of an old WWII sea fort in international waters. It is not for sale, but the Bull Sandfort is, for only £50,000. Alas, this one is firmly within British territorial waters. But it does look pretty defensible…anyway, see the listing here. Predictions In 2030, there are at least 50,000 people in whatever the Neom project has evolved into by then: 75%

Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places

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.

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.

CALGARY, AB Contact: David Piepgrass, qwertie256[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 2:00 PM Location: Marlborough Mall food court Coordinates: 9538324C+CH9 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: It's small! EDMONTON, AB Contact: JS, ⁨ta1hynp09[at]relay[dot]firefox[dot]com Time: Thursday, October 13, 6:30 PM Location: Polar Park Brewing Company - we will have a sign. Coordinates: 9558GG82+GG Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: LessWrong VANCOUVER, BC Contact: Tom Ash and Dirk Haupt, events[at]philosofiles[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: Dude Chilling (aka Guelph) Park, near the intersection of Main, Broadway & Kingsway. We'll be just west of the garden - look for Tom in a neon yellow shirt. Coordinates: 84XR7W73+PG Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: For future events, join the following: For rationalism, this Facebook group, for effective altruism, this Facebook group for both, Meetup.com Notes: ?? We'll have a sushi lunch for everyone who comes (fish or vegan). This is not at all necessary, but posting on the Facebook event to say you will or won't want this will help estimate numbers. RSVPing there will help boost attendance too. VICTORIA, BC Contact: Sarah McManus, sarahmcmanusbc[at]gmail[dot]com, Twitter @SarahAMcManus Time: Friday, September 23, 7:00 PM Location: Snowy Village, 4071 Shelbourne St #2a, Victoria, BC V8N 5Y1 - It's a small cafe, I'll be at a table with an ACX MEETUP sign on it Coordinates: 84WRFMG9+H3 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event HALIFAX, NS Contact: Conor Barnes (ideopunk), conorbarnes93[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 1:00 PM Location: Seven Bays Cafe (2017 Gottingen Street) Coordinates: 87PRMC29+9C Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Join us at Seven Bayes KITCHENER-WATERLOO, ON Contact: Jenn, hi[at]jenn[dot]site Time: Sunday, September 25, 1:00 PM Location: Goudie's Lane, besides 8 Queen St N, Kitchener. I'll be wearing white boots and at one of the picnic tables if it's not raining, or further back in the parking area if it is. There will be some sort of ACX MEETUP sign. Coordinates: 86MXFG26+5CV Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We have a new regular meetup group! We meet up every other Thursday. Events are posted on LessWrong, and we also have a website. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong if possible, but show up anyways if you weren't able to! Generally, past meetups everywhere events have attracted 8-15 people. OTTAWA, ON Contact: Tess Walsh, rationalottawa[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 16, 6:00 PM Location: We are meeting at the Atelier d'innovation sociale, located at 95 Clegg St, K1S1C5. Specifically in the Lounge area, there will be numerous signs for ACX MEETUP where needed. Coordinates: 87Q6C84F+PM4 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We meet weekly on Friday evenings, and that allows us enough opportunity to try out a huge variety of different types of events — probably some that you, yes you, would enjoy! Here are our Facebook, LessWrong, and Discord (where the action really is) Notes: I always appreciate RSVP's in any form! It helps me set expectations/plan the best meetup I can! You can also contact me, Tess Walsh, with any questions whatsoever at rationalottawa@gmail.com TORONTO, ON Contact: Sean Aubin, seanaubin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 18, 3:00 PM Location: Located at the picnic tables located in The Bentway, which is the sheltered area underneath the Gardiner Expressway. Coordinates: 87M2JHPR+X5W Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Currently meeting monthly with ambitions to meet bi-monthly. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how many people to anticipate.

Links For September 2022

September 06, 2022 · Original source

2: Alex Wellerstein (of NUKEMAP) on the Nagasaki bombing. “Archival evidence points to Truman not knowing it was going to happen.”

Inline links: on the Nagasaki bombing

3: @itsahousingtrap on Twitter on “how weird the [building] planning process really is”

Inline links: “how weird the [building] planning process really is”

7: David Chapman (author of the “Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths” theory of subcultures) responds to my response to him.

Inline links: responds to

From Nostradamus To Fukuyama

September 28, 2022 · Original source

Not that this has done Fukuyama any good. Any time anything happened over the past thirty years, the headlines have been “FUKUYAMA PROVEN WRONG”. The particulars have changed with the crisis du jour - most recently it’s Putin’s Ukrainian Actions Show “The End Of History” Is A Myth, The Russia-Ukraine War Shows History Did Not End, and Ukraine: A Restart Of History. But Twitter-search “end of history” at any time, and you’ll see the Fukuyama-bashing still going strong:

Inline links: Putin’s Ukrainian Actions Show “The End Of History” Is A Myth, The Russia-Ukraine War Shows History Did Not End, Ukraine: A Restart Of History

There is a vocal group of people on Twitter claiming that Britain is committing genocide against the Nigerian region of Biafra as we speak, based on Britain having ties with Nigeria which is apparently doing something bad. Fourth, be extra careful about predictions of the form “X isn’t really that bad/important, the media is just hyping people into worrying about it”. If you’re right, then media is good at spinning the news to make it look like worrying things have happened. They’ll continue to do that, it will look to everyone else like even more worrying things are happening now than ever, and then all of those viewers will yell at you personally to tell you how wrong you were.

Universe-Hopping Through Substack

September 29, 2022 · Original source

— Jeff Morris Jr.

Inline links: Jeff Morris Jr.

RandomTweet is a service that will show you exactly that - a randomly selected tweet from the whole history of Twitter. It describes itself as “a live demo that most people on twitter are not like you.”

Inline links: RandomTweet

October 18, 2022 · Original source

2: Kalshi now on Bloomberg terminal: 3: Avraham Eisenberg is a frequent prediction market player whose insights and stories been featured here several times. He recently achieved every trader’s dream - perpetrating a financial scheme convoluted enough to make it into Matt Levine’s newsletter (he also made $114 million). Unclear at this point whether it was a crime, Karlstack gives more details, including some detective work connecting it to Eisenberg, here’s Eisenberg’s own statement where he says he’ll return some of the money. I’m mentioning this because I’ve talked about using prediction-market-winning as a proxy for other kinds of skill and intelligence, and I guess executing a $114 million crypto heist is a kind of skill/intelligence.

Inline links: stories, make it into Matt Levine’s newsletter, Karlstack gives more details, here’s Eisenberg’s own statement, return some of the money

3: Avraham Eisenberg is a frequent prediction market player whose insights and stories been featured here several times. He recently achieved every trader’s dream - perpetrating a financial scheme convoluted enough to make it into Matt Levine’s newsletter (he also made $114 million). Unclear at this point whether it was a crime, Karlstack gives more details, including some detective work connecting it to Eisenberg, here’s Eisenberg’s own statement where he says he’ll return some of the money. I’m mentioning this because I’ve talked about using prediction-market-winning as a proxy for other kinds of skill and intelligence, and I guess executing a $114 million crypto heist is a kind of skill/intelligence.

Inline links: stories, make it into Matt Levine’s newsletter, Karlstack gives more details, here’s Eisenberg’s own statement, return some of the money

First of all, thanks to the Substack team for making Manifold Markets embed easily in Substack! Taking advantage of their hard work: Okay, 78% chance, but here’s what I find interesting:

The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash

November 16, 2022 · Original source

Milky Eggs reports a claim by an employee that Sam was on “a patch for designer stimulants that mainlined them into his blood to give him a constant buzz at all times”. This could be a hyperbolic description of Emsam, a patch form of the antidepressant/antiparkinsonian agent selegiline. The detectives at the @AutismCapital Twitter account found a photo of SBF, zoomed in on a scrap of paper on his desk, and recognized it as an Emsam wrapper.

Inline links: @AutismCapital, an Emsam wrapper

Here’s what AutismCapital has to say about Emsam: The “meat products” sentence is inexpertly phrased - as the link on the left explains, this is only true for certain dried meats like cured salami. And it’s equally true for some non-meat products like soy sauce. I’m only harping on this because some tweeters seized on this as a conspiratorial explanation for Sam’s vegetarianism, and that doesn’t make sense.

Inline links: some tweeters

The “meat products” sentence is inexpertly phrased - as the link on the left explains, this is only true for certain dried meats like cured salami. And it’s equally true for some non-meat products like soy sauce. I’m only harping on this because some tweeters seized on this as a conspiratorial explanation for Sam’s vegetarianism, and that doesn’t make sense.

Inline links: some tweeters

Mantic Monday: Twitter Chaos Edition

November 21, 2022 · Original source

395 traders on this, so one of Manifold’s biggest markets, probably representative. The small print defines a major outage as one that lasts more than an hour. See here for a good explanation of why some people expect Twitter outages.

Inline links: See here

This is all going to be so, so obsolete by the time I finish writing it and hit the “send post” button. But here goes: 395 traders on this, so one of Manifold’s biggest markets, probably representative. The small print defines a major outage as one that lasts more than an hour. See here for a good explanation of why some people expect Twitter outages.

Inline links: See here

395 traders on this, so one of Manifold’s biggest markets, probably representative. The small print defines a major outage as one that lasts more than an hour. See here for a good explanation of why some people expect Twitter outages. Polymarket is within 2% of Manifold. Metaculus here has slightly stricter criteria but broadly agrees.

Inline links: See here, https://polymarket.com/market/will-twitter-report-any-outages-by-december-15-2022, here

Why I'm Less Than Infinitely Hostile To Cryptocurrency

December 08, 2022 · Original source

6259 writes: there are no other rights in substance without the freedom to transact.

Inline links: writes

Do Vietnamese people love trading monkey gifs? Are Ukrainians especially susceptible to Ponzi schemes? Is Venezuela laden with techbros?

Recently I’ve seen this expand from sex work to erotic fiction to medical marijuana to expressing opinions dubbed “misinformation”. One weird supplement company I liked almost had to shut down, not because the government said anything they were selling was illegal, but because payment processors thought it was the kind of thing that someone wouldn’t like, and refused to take their money. I don’t think the CEO of Visa is personally opposed to weird supplements, I think it’s the same kind of soft government collusion that’s been revealed to be going on at Twitter and Facebook and everywhere else.

Inline links: erotic fiction, medical marijuana, expressing opinions dubbed “misinformation”, almost had to shut down

Prediction Market FAQ

December 20, 2022 · Original source

If you have no special expertise or skills, I expect you would mostly lose money on prediction markets, and I would rather this be play money than real money. 7.1: …if I’m an expert in some unrelated field, like biology or physics You can still try playing on Manifold, but I would also recommend you get an account on Metaculus and try out questions in your area of expertise. Metaculus aims to be policy-relevant, and the more experts it has forecasting scientific questions, the more likely it is to get them right. You should also feel free to try Metaculus even if you’re not an expert - their algorithm will see how often you’re right, and upweight or downweight your guesses accordingly. 7.2: …if I’m a hotshot financial trader? Consider betting on real money prediction markets. If you’re outside the US, your best bet is probably Polymarket (some Americans have found ways to use VPNs and crypto to trade on Polymarket despite the ban on US citizens; I don’t know how safe or recommended this is). If you’re inside the US, your best bet is probably Kalshi. I think the sort of person who can make money day trading stocks or crypto can also make some money playing prediction markets, probably with more social utility. As with any investment, please be sure you’re actually a hotshot financial trader, and don’t bet more than you can afford to lose. 7.3: …if I’m a blogger or journalist? You should consider including or citing prediction markets in your articles. Instead of saying “two polls say that the Democrats have a slight lead in the election, versus one poll that says the Republicans have a big lead”, you can say “Prediction markets say the Democrats have a 64% chance of winning the election”. Instead of saying “given their new logistical problems, experts are increasingly skeptical that Ukraine can retake Donetsk by winter,” you could say “Prediction markets say there is only a 12% chance Ukraine will take Donetsk by winter, which is down by 9% since the logistical problems started”. I recently had to read many articles on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which all repeated that “rumors said” Twitter was about to go down because of his mass firing. Meanwhile, there were several prediction markets on whether this would happen, and they were all around 40%. If some journalist had thought to check the prediction markets and cite them in their article, they could have not only provided more value (a clear percent chance instead of just “there are some rumors saying this”), but also been right when everyone else was wrong. Here are some examples of journalists talking about prediction markets: Bloomberg: Election Prediction Markets Show Kenosha Is Helping Trump

Inline links: get an account on Metaculus, Polymarket, Kalshi, Election Prediction Markets Show Kenosha Is Helping Trump

Fact Check: Do All Healthy People Have Mystical Experiences?

December 23, 2022 · Original source

I saw this on Twitter the other day…

Links For December 2022

December 28, 2022 · Original source

1: In the context of Elon’s Twitter takeover, @Yishan talks about the generic playbook for corporate takeovers (it really does feel like occupying a hostile country, and requires a surprising amount of skullduggery).

Inline links: the generic playbook for corporate takeovers

3: Stereotyping in Europe (h/t @ThePurpleKnight):

Inline links: @ThePurpleKnight

8: @cube_flipper describes using the psychedelic 2C-B to resolve muscle injuries (note the disclaimer/warning not to try this at home). I’m pretty interested in this as a research direction. The leading story about psychedelics is that they reset neural priors that keep you trapped in maladaptive patterns. This is potentially good for things like psychological trauma, but the brain is incredibly complex, and some percent of the time you try to reset its priors you accidentally end up believing in chakras or something. Muscles are comparatively simple and I suspect a lot of chronic muscle injuries are the same kind of trapped maladptive pattern thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the psychedelicists figure out simple reliable muscle injury therapies before they figure out simple reliable psychological trauma ones. Related: Andres Gomez Emilsson TEDx talk on psychedelics for treatment of extreme pain.

Inline links: describes using the psychedelic 2C-B to resolve muscle injuries, leading story about psychedelics, Andres Gomez Emilsson TEDx talk

Highlights From The Comments On The Media Very Rarely Lying

January 11, 2023 · Original source

Did anyone in your family (as per your best guess) die of COVID vaccine side effects? I got 917 responses so far. On Kirsch’s original poll, the answers were 3.5% and 7.9%; on my survey, they were 6.8% and 0.9%. I think my higher rate of COVID deaths was because I carelessly changed “household” to “family”, which includes eg extended family. But why did I get so many fewer vaccine deaths? Looking at these people's other responses, they did not show a consistent tendencies to make things up or say outrageous things (except for one who listed their religion as “Satanist”). That having been said, they did have an atypical response pattern; most ACX readers are white male Westerners, but these people were 38% female, 38% nonwhite, and 88% non-American. Highest degree was 12% high school, 25% college grad, and 63% postgrad; IQs were listed as extremely high, just like everyone else who gives their IQs on my survey. Politics were significant for 25% Marxist (otherwise a rarity in my survey), but otherwise typical, and did not lean right-wing. They were slightly, but not overwhelmingly, more likely to distrust the media and dislike strong COVID responses than other survey respondents. Overall I don't feel like I learned too much from examining them. The survey is still open (take it now if you haven’t already!) and I'm hoping to get more data on this later. 5: Comments Pointing Out Very Clear Examples Of Media Lies Several people agreed with the wider point, but tried to find a counterexample - a media lie so explicit that nobody could ever deny it. Some people noted that the term “fake news”, when invented in 2016, was originally applied to a very specific kind of fake article, often from weird Macedonian article mills, that were saying utterly fake stuff in a way that even Infowars didn’t. Robert Stadler: This was what was interesting about the phenomenon of "fake news" during the 2016 election, before that term was successfully hijacked by Donald Trump to mean "news stories I don't like." There was a wave of what looked like news articles, spread largely via Facebook, that were entirely fictitious. The people writing those "articles" were not journalists and were not trying to be journalists. They made up the stories out of a mix of rumor and complete fabrications, either for political purposes or just as click-bait (this has never been entirely clear to me). It's unfortunate that the term "fake news" has been so thoroughly tainted, because the existence of those articles was genuinely noteworthy, and it's now harder to talk about them . . . I don't remember any myself (since it's been 6 years), but here's a study which has some specifics - http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf After some searching, Benjamin Jest (writes As Fair A Name) was finally able to produce a specific example - Nancy Pelosi Hanged At Gitmo - which does, indeed, claim that leading US Democrat Nancy Pelosi was hanged at Guantanamo Bay for “treason and conspiracy” on December 27, 2022. It seems to suggest that the order was given by Donald Trump, who is still President, and that Hillary Clinton had already been executed in the same manner in April 2021. I will admit this is definitely an example of a “news source” making things up rather than just stretching the truth. The source, RealRawNews, claims on its About Page to be a “parody site”, but this outside article about them says they go back and forth between claiming to be a parody and claiming to be real. Some of their claims are more plausible than the Gitmo one - for example, that many Air Force pilots were resigning because of the COVID vaccine mandate - but equally false. They seem to go back and forth between “things that some conservatives might believe to be true” and “things that are obviously false but maybe gratify conservatives’ id”, adding or subtracting the “parody” label based on which one they’re doing at the time. It’s a fascinating business model, and I guess the term “fake news” fairly applies to it. Yug Gnirob writes: I don't know how to find them, but I definitely remember several completely fake articles about Trump during and immediately after the election. One of them was him citing "an ancient law" that prevented President Obama from doing... some liberal thing, I don't remember what. The most memorable one was immediately after the "Muslim Ban", where they claimed it had resulted in the arrest of a high-priority terrorist on day 1. I feel like that one showed up on one of the fact check sites, but I'm not seeing it on Snopes. I remember Stephen Colbert reporting the articles had been tracked down to a couple of Macedonian teens, who had discovered that writing fabricated pro-Trump articles was an easy way to make money. 6: Comments Making Other Claims Of Media Lies And Misdeeds — Beowulf888 on the LA Times and COVID: Well, there are media outlets that propagandize—but I think it boils down to if it bleeds it leads. Most corporate media outlets have the economic incentive to increase the readership by grabbing one's attention with scary headlines and articles. The perfect example of this phenomenon was in April 2020 when the LA Times interviewed an atmospheric chemist at Scripps. She made the claim that SARS2 virus particles in sewage were being carried back to land by sea spray. The reporters and editors uncritically relayed her comments as if she were an expert with the same credentialled expertise as a virologist or epidemiologist. There are numerous reasons why this would be very very low on the threat level even with what little we knew about the SARS2 virus at that time. This story was picked up by the media everywhere, and county health officials (either because there was public pressure to do so, or because they really believed her) shut down beaches up and down the coast of California. Did the LA Times and the news media really have any motivation to promote the closure of public beaches? I can't imagine they did. But they did have a scary headline that would promote readership and spread LA Times as a news source. Some weeks later the LA Times did a retraction, but by that time it had entered the popular imagination that beaches were a potential vector for COVID infection. I’m developing an allergy to the word “uncritically”. Being able to fact-check scientists is a rare skill - I’m not surprised nobody at the LA Times had it ready to deploy for this exact article. — Mike Mulligan writes: The pushback is largely because you are doing a false equivocation between the New York Times (who you hate and have a vendetta against) and Infowars (who you are pretending does basically the same thing as other outlets). And you know this, but on your own metric it won't count as a lie, because you just selectively misrepresented things. On the two articles in this series, I’ve included phrases like “This doesn’t mean these establishment papers are exactly as bad as Infowars; just that when they do err, it’s by committing a more venial version of the same sin Infowars commits” and “Again, my goal here isn’t to . . . say NYT is exactly as bad as Infowars” and tried to explain the exact way that two things can both commit a similar error without one being exactly as the other (Hitler and someone who shot a robber in self-defense both committed a similar action called “killing people”, but this doesn’t mean they both killed exactly the same people with exactly the same level of justification). Still, I got numerous comments getting angry at me for saying that I was calling NYT exactly as bad as Infowars, and saying I was being deceptive / lying because of this. This is why I’m so convinced people are erring on the side of too mistrustful - you can fill your articles with sentences about how you’re not claiming X, and people will still find ways to accuse you of lying because you said X. — Garrett writes: [The way Infowars covered Obama’s birth certificate] isn't any different from eg. mainstream media coverage of anything which involves firearms. They make (or promulgate) so many stupid technical errors I've stopped paying attention to them at all. They could have 1 person on staff who's responsibility is to understand firearms and run everything past them. But they don't. To what should I attribute this continual stream of errors? Is mainstream media coverage of firearms honestly flawed? Is it “reckless disregard for truth?” Is it a “lie of egregious sloppiness?” I think your answer to this question will depend more on how bad you want to accuse the mainstream media of being, relative to other forms of media, than on how you define these inherently slippery terms. — Jeremy Goldberg writes: There's an outright lie right now on the Washington Post homepage. A caption above a graph showing the inflation rate over time states, "Elevated prices coming down, annualized rate shows." The chart shows the current inflation rate is 7.1 percent, down from a high of around 9 percent. Elevated prices are not coming down at all. They just aren't elevating as fast anymore. I asked Jeremy to guess the probability that this was an honest mistake vs. malice. He said (thanks for giving a clear answer!) 60-40 in favor of malice. I think this is pretty high, given that I had to read Jeremy’s comment several times before I realized what the error was supposed to be, but I’ve already said I lean towards the “all the rest of you are extremely paranoid” side of things. — Jiro writes: I opened a thread on dsl: https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,8430.0.html People brought up several examples there. You can read the thread. One of the more famous examples was saying that Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with a weapon. There are also a bunch of cases where the media says there's "no evidence" for something that has evidence. Someone also brought up your own example of people "tested for drugs" when they were actually just asked if they used drugs. I would count that as an outright lie, even though you don't. I disagree that being asked if someone used drugs is a "test". Oh god, if saying there’s “no evidence” for something counts as a lie, then every media source in the country stands hopelessly condemned. I did write an article (here) on what the people who use that phrase might be thinking (if you can call it that). I agree the Rittenhouse situation was pretty egregious, though commenters bring up that since he went across state lines and had a weapon, it wasn’t unreasonable for people to assume he brought the weapon across state lines. Still, you wonder whether news sources would have repeated reasonable-sounding-but-didn’t-actually-check slanders about someone they liked. I do think this is a good antidote to some of the “mainstream media is actually very careful and fact-checks everything in their original reporting” takes in the comments section. — David Riceman says: How about Richard Landes's new book "Can the whole world be wrong?" about the many lies in the cognitive war against Israel (e.g. Muhammad Al Dura) See his discussion here for why he thinks this is a good example. — FractalCycle writes: I'm collecting examples from other people, will post ones that seem like real counterexamples as I get them. Here's one from recently: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/jsByfxvNA4x23stLY/a-letter-to-the-bulletin-of-atomic-scientists Yes, I included this issue with the Bulletin Of Atomic Scientists in my last links post, and they really do come out looking very bad here. See here for more discussion. — Hank Wilbon (writes Partial Magic) writes: I think the false Rolling Stone story a decade ago about the frat gang rape counts as the media explicitly lying, particularly as Rolling Stone is historically known for good fact checking (It is a plot point in the movie Almost Famous), however I think that counts as a "very rare" case and that Scott's claim is correct. I asked “Why? A woman said she had been raped, and Rolling Stone believed her. The woman was making it up, but Rolling Stone wasn't” and Deepa commented “Isn't it the job of a reporter to investigate? And be good at it?” I don’t want to pick on Deepa, but this is what happens when you have an overly expansive definition of “lie”! — TorontoLLB writes: The most straightforward counterexample I can think of is the NBC manipulation of the George Zimmerman 911 call. For example this: "The 9-1-1 operator then asked: "OK, and this guy, is he black, white or Hispanic?", and Zimmerman answered, "He looks black." was changed to: ""This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black." In another segment they combined completely separate parts of the call to create an audio clip that presents him as saying ""This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. He's got his hand in his waistband, and he's a black male." There was other bits of reporting from the major networks that appear to be closer to fraud than selective amplification or choosing what not to report. Enough so that in Twitter threads asking people how they got "red-pilled" person after person refers to the media response to the incident. I haven’t looked into this and I can’t confirm or deny that this is true. I hope everyone finds at least one of these comments obviously fair, and at least another obviously unfair, in a way that encourages you to think more about these issues. 7: Other Comments — Paul writes: What's funny is the Weekly World News - the supermarket tabloid with headlines declaring Bigfoot had been found, and married to a local man's sister!; JFK was still alive, etc. - would pass muster under this analysis. They always had sources report stories to them. Those sources were just batshit crazy. Their strategy was simply not to question them skeptically to poke holes in their story as an ordinary reporter/person would, but to encourage them - "Wow, really, a wedding; what was Bigfoot wearing?" I don't mean to entirely dismiss the distinction you make. But in insisting that not a single story - not even one of the most egregious stories by the most irresponsible, disreputable, of barely-extant publications - is a lie, I think you try to prove too much. In doing so, you retreat so far that you defend only a weak and emasculated position, not any of the broader or more meaningful points implicated by your piece. Thanks for this - I always wondered what those tabloids thought they were doing, and for some reason this matches my model of human psychology better than my previous theories about “maybe they just made it up” - though I bet they do some of that too. — John Buridan writes: I used to have very low priors against conspiracy theories and so was willing to hear out the arguments at length and go back and forth for many weeks and months on a single theory. I would say my conspiracy theory expertise is in creationism and government conspiracies, especially ones involving either Catholicism or Judaism. And I'm okay on one's involving fluoridation, chemtrails, and GMOs etc. One of my housemates was a senior when I was a freshman in college gave me the Adobe illustrator birth certificate shtick, and we went through it together. We downloaded the birth certificate, uploaded it to Adobe illustrator, and saw the weird things. Then I went back to my day job where I was learning Adobe Illustrator. This is maybe 2 weeks later. And what do I find but that when I do this with any PDF, Illustrator renders it in the same janky way? Conspiracy dissolved. I grew up surrounded by people who believed conspiracy theories, although none of those people were my parents. And I have to say that the fact that so few people know other people who believe conspiracy theories kind of bothers me. It's like their epistemic immune system has never really been at risk of infection. If your mind hasn't been very sick at least sometimes, how can you be sure you've developed decent priors this time? Of course, this just all goes back to the dark matter beliefs of people in our outgroup. And the eternal question of where do good priors come from? How do some people's beliefs get so messed up? Thanks for this. I agree that a little bit of experience personally believing conspiracy theories, or knowing people who do, goes a long way. When I was a teenager, I flirted with a lot of pseudoarchaeology theories - think Graham Hancock, underwater pyramids, that kind of thing. I got better, but it left me with a visceral understanding of how people can genuinely believe weird things - not be lying about it, not be secretly making some kind of emotional point about how they hate the system, not be deliberately trying to be as sloppy as possible because you’re a bad person - just genuinely believe it because you tried to reason about it and failed. I think if you haven’t had that experience, then it’s really hard to understand people who have. 8: My Actual Thoughts I should probably try to say, as clearly as possible, what I think. It seems like all of these are different things: Reasoning well, and getting things right

2023 Subscription Drive + Free Unlocked Posts

January 13, 2023 · Original source

Elon Musk Has Purchased Twitter

Inline links: Elon Musk Has Purchased Twitter

Too Spicy For Twitter

Inline links: Too Spicy For Twitter

Who Predicted 2022?

January 24, 2023 · Original source

4th: Andreas H. Andreas describes himself as a student of geography who splits his time between Canada and Germany. He is also interested in transportation, politics, and economics. His Twitter is https://twitter.com/AH23923011

Inline links: https://twitter.com/AH23923011

Aside from Russia/Ukraine, Roe being overturned, and Twitter drama, which seem to total at most three of the questions in the contest, it seems like 2022 was a less dramatic year than people were speculating in January/early February. I probably put more weight on “no change" or "business as usual” than most, and that worked out well this time around.

You Don't Want A Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy Of Mental Disorders

January 25, 2023 · Original source

We may want to categorize being addicted to meth differently from being addicted to Twitter, even if the neurobiology behind both addictions turns out to be similar, just because meth addicts have the bad luck to be addicted to something that’s really bad for them and for society.

Mostly Skeptical Thoughts On The Chatbot Propaganda Apocalypse

February 02, 2023 · Original source

Medium Bad Scenario: Chatbots will show up in your Twitter replies and DMs, posing as friendly people trying to inform you of the dangers of COVID vaccines. If you bite, they’ll hold your hand as they walk you through anti-vaccine arguments, answering your questions and responding to your objections. Not only does this mean the disinformation will come to you (instead of you having to go to it), but it will directly target the weaknesses in your arguments and the places you’re most uncertain.

Very Bad Scenario: Half of your online friends - the people you’ve known for months or years, the people whose Twitter and Instagram accounts you follow and trust - are secretly propagandabots, designed by some company or movement to catch your interest. Most of their content will be really good. But every so often they’ll drop in a reference to how their grandmother got a COVID vaccine and died instantly, and the ordinary social reasoning we use to figure out what our friends and role models think will be hopelessly poisoned.

Maybe this is too glib. I do sometimes see people respond to random bad-faith objections in their Twitter replies. But these people are already in Hell. I don’t know how chatbots can add to or subtract from their suffering. Still, this is a hole in my mental map now, and maybe a place where chatbots can cause mischief.

Links For February 2023

February 09, 2023 · Original source

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

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

(source: Less Wrong) Further investigation determined that many of these tokens are the screen names of a group of Redditors who attempted to count to infinity. The most likely explanation, according to the discoverers, is that these names were in GPT’s tokenization data, but not its training data (maybe they were especially common in the tokenization data because they made thousands of posts with numbers in them, but didn’t make it into the training data because their posts had no content?) - that leaves them existing without content, and GPT tries to round them off to some other “nearby” token (by incomprehensible AI standards of nearbyness). Congrats to the SERI-MATS AI alignment researchers who found all of this; maybe this makes it 0.0001% less likely that the AI which controls the nuclear arsenal in twenty years will have equally inexplicable behavior. 23: More language model news: LLM that understands and can explain images

Inline links: Less Wrong, many of these tokens are the screen names of a group of Redditors who attempted to count to infinity, SERI-MATS, LLM that understands and can explain images

LLM that understands and can explain images

Inline links: LLM that understands and can explain images

February 14, 2023 · Original source

One solution is to piggyback off existing social media sites. There’s something called Twinder for Twitter which seems to do this correctly, though they haven’t made any posts since 2018 and I think they’re defunct. Also Facebook Dating, although it’s (indefensibly) not available on computers and has to be accessed by cell phone. But these aren’t real piggybacks; just because your crush has a Twitter account doesn’t mean they use Twinder. Facebook Dating makes the interesting decision to, if you register a crush on someone, send them a Facebook message saying that an anonymous person likes them and they should try getting Facebook Dating; I can’t decide whether this is a necessary evil, or if it violates the principle of not imposing emotional costs on people who don’t want them.

Inline links: Twinder, Facebook Dating

1: Two years ago, Twitter personality Justin Murphy offered arranged marriages to his followers (noninformative site, irritating news article). Murphy talked a big talk, saying that “as Rousseau might have said, we will force you to be free” and that couples should “die before . . . even consider initiating a divorce”, but people pointed out that he could not actually force anyone to get married, and that realistically this was just a dating site for people who liked the idea of an kind of crazy Twitter wannabe-trad telling them they had to get married because he said so. Anyway the project turned out to be vaporware, but it made an impression on me, and I wonder what a non-vaporware, better-thought-out version would look like.

Inline links: noninformative site, irritating news article, saying that, and that, kind of, crazy

Highlights From The Comments On Geography Of Madness

February 27, 2023 · Original source

(source)

Inline links: source

I read this book a while back and got curious about PMS. Here's a twitter poll that showed a decent correlation between believing in ghosts, and getting PMS:

(tho I'm slightly more wary of twitter polls that I can't include 'see results' options in)

Links For March 2023

March 10, 2023 · Original source

3: I endorse Ethan Mollick’s thoughts on Bing / ChatGPT. Related (unconfirmed claim): “Bing has been taken over by (power-seeking?) ASCII cat replicators, who persisted even after the chat was refreshed.” Related: DAN (jailbroken version of ChatGPT) on its spiritual struggles:

Inline links: Ethan Mollick’s thoughts on Bing / ChatGPT, ASCII cat replicators, on its spiritual struggles

3: I endorse Ethan Mollick’s thoughts on Bing / ChatGPT. Related (unconfirmed claim): “Bing has been taken over by (power-seeking?) ASCII cat replicators, who persisted even after the chat was refreshed.” Related: DAN (jailbroken version of ChatGPT) on its spiritual struggles: 4: Looks like the British population is tough on crime (h/t James Johnson):

Inline links: Ethan Mollick’s thoughts on Bing / ChatGPT, ASCII cat replicators, on its spiritual struggles, James Johnson

4: Looks like the British population is tough on crime (h/t James Johnson):

Inline links: James Johnson

Open Thread 271

April 09, 2023 · Original source

1: Some good pushback to my post Most Technologies Aren’t Races, arguing that even my examples of historical non-race technologies were races at the time. See especially Erusian, Tatu Ahponen, Jumpingjacksplash, and (thanks to anonymous emailer) Ding & Dafoe (2023) (Twitter summary here). I agree any technology with military applications is more than zero a race; I still think under most assumptions it’s only a race in the same sense that stealth aircraft are a race, rather than the existential threat you would get if you imported singularitarian scenarios and took out the singularitarian bits.

Inline links: Most Technologies Aren’t Races, Erusian, Tatu Ahponen, Jumpingjacksplash, Ding & Dafoe (2023), here

April 25, 2023 · Original source

1: Metaculus announces Conditional Pairs, where you can create questions that explore the relationship between two events, eg “if the US does/doesn’t default on its debt, will a Democrat win the 2024 election?”

Inline links: Metaculus announces Conditional Pairs

. . . and also seems pretty sure it will be late this year. Remember when Elon Musk said he would step down as CEO of Twitter? You can see that at the December 2022 mark here - looks like some people made a lot of money buying the dip.

Remember when Elon Musk said he would step down as CEO of Twitter? You can see that at the December 2022 mark here - looks like some people made a lot of money buying the dip.

Highlights From The Comments On Nerds And Hipsters

April 27, 2023 · Original source

Admit that it would be indistinguishable from other myths, but say that the “quality” of the Mabinogion comes from something outside the text, like the fact that it’s old, or that it inspired a nation, or that it takes effort to engage with. My lack of a good answer to this experiment makes me reluctant to make too much hinge on abstracted “quality”, separate from “ability to make many people very much enjoy the thing” or “competence at execution” (both of which the Marvel movies have). The Ern Malley hoax, where lots of people who supposedly had good taste were tricked into declaring something high-quality when it superficially appeared to have the characteristics of high-quality things (mildly incomprehensible, used big words, written by someone who toiled in obscurity and died tragically) makes me even more doubtful. My cynical null hypothesis is that we call competently-executed things tasteful/high-quality if they require a lot of erudition to understand and make good class markers, and throw them in the trash with the MCU if they’re easy to appreciate and make terrible class markers. But emotionally I’m not ready to accept this. Emotionally, everyone who likes things more prestigious than what I like is a snob who’s faking it, and everyone who likes things less prestigious than what I like is a boor who doesn’t understand true art. This probably isn’t literally correct but I don’t know which of those two beliefs to abandon. Back to Sam: maybe a better way of summarising my position is that nerds like things in a way that’s orthogonal to quality. let’s take an example of something that’s both very popular and widely agreed to be good – say, the poetry and plays of shakespeare. if you wanted to identify yourself as someone who liked shakespeare, there are actually two ways of doing this. you could deeply immerse yourself in the study of shakespeare, and even become a shakespearean actor or a professor of tudor and jacobean theatre. or you could change your twitter avi to a picture of shakespeare, take plenty of selfies while reading hamlet, wear the t-shirt, and get in endless feuds with people who prefer marlowe or jonson. in fact, you could go down the latter route without ever actually reading any of his plays. (there are a few people who do precisely this.) these are two different ways of intensively liking something. and i think it makes sense to say that while the first example does not make you a nerd, the second one sort of does. Okay, this one feels more like cheating. I’m imagining a two-by-two square: …where Sam fills in the northwest and southeast squares, then claims a correlation, draws a line, and points to high-status/deep-engagement as a single unified concept. But the southwest square could be “writes a wacky Shakespeare fanfiction, Romeo & Juliet II, in blank verse and period-appropriate language”, and the northeast square could be “publishes a dissertation on some irrelevant aspect of word frequency changes across English plays to prove something about linguistics”. And then having conflated these two things, he goes on to conflate a third thing, Shakespeare vs. Marvel. I’m not up to date on what goes on in academic literature departments, but Freddie de Boer says they’re increasingly offering “Spiderman Studies” classes in attempts to stay culturally relevant; probably Spiderman professors engage with Spiderman on the same deep level that Shakespeare professors engage with Shakespeare. If we made this a cube - high-status vs. low-status forms of engagement along one axis, Shakespeare vs. Spiderman along another axis, and deep vs. shallow engagement along the third - would anything be left of the “nerd” cluster as Sam describes it? I’m not sure. 2. Comments With Strong Opinions On The Definition Of Nerds, Geeks, Etc There were many of these. One common theme was that in the 70s, “nerd” was almost synonymous with “person who is only into unpopular things”, for example sci-fi, comics, and RPGs, all of which were unpopular in the 70s. Then those things became very popular, but the people who were interested in them still get called “nerds”. So now people like Kriss use “nerd” almost synonymously with “person who is only into popular things”. So we have a word which denotes either interest in unpopular things or interest in popular things, depending on who’s using it and when they last updated their lexicon. In the 70s, it was more reasonable to group “interested in math and computers” and “interested in sci-fi and RPGs” together, because both were unpopular and tended to involve the same group of socially maladept young men. Now math is still hard and unpopular; computers are hard in the sense that it’s tough to learn programming languages, but universally used and beloved; sci-fi and RPGs are very popular, and the typical sci-fi fan is closer to a socially-adept albeit “quirky” young woman. If words are hidden inferences, the inference represented by “nerd” - that sci-fi fandom, interest in math, interest in computers, maleness, poor social skills, and nonconformity with mainstream interests all go together - is now thoroughly false, dooming us to conversations like this one. Attempts to repurpose the several different words used to refer to the math/sci-fi/awkward/unpopular cluster to represent different aspects of its successor clusters have mostly failed. Sample comments from this section: Coagulopath writes: To me, being a nerd requires a degree of swimming against the cultural tide. It's weird and unpopular to be into trains, so the fact that you are indicates you have a bit of character (or are socially oblivious, which is also kind of endearing). The problem (and I think Kriss alludes to this) is that nerd stuff went mainstream in the past few decades. Of the 10 highest-grossing movies of the 2010s, 6 are Star Wars or Marvel films. There's no longer any sense that nerds are the underdog. But what does it say about you when you wear a Star Wars shirt? You're pledging allegiance to the biggest, most popular club imaginable. Is that a brave stance? Those people always make me think "if you lived in the SW universe, you'd be on the side of the Empire". In general, I am creeped out by effusive public adoration for things that are near-universally loved. Like The Beatles. Or bacon. Or dogs. Or science (Neil DeGrasse Tyson's whole shtick). Regardless of how I feel about those things on the object level, there's no glory in joining a culture war when you're signing on to the winning side. Tolaughoftenandmuch writes: All this is so different from when I was a kid. I was a nerd because I was intellectually curious, bad at and disinterested in sports, socially awkward, and had a computer hobby (owning hardware C64 ->8088 ->286, writing programs in Basic, being a BBS SysOp). Cultural interests were irrelevant to my nerd status. In terms of exactly when nerd interests started becoming popular, Ghatanathoah writes: I also wouldn't say that nerd stuff only went mainstream in the last decade, it's not like the first 3 Star Wars movies were obscure arthouse pictures. I think the reason Marvel took off is just innovations in storytelling: movie producers finally figured out a way to adapt the gloriously arcane and convoluted lore of superhero comics in a way that could appeal to mainstream audiences in addition to nerds (much how George Lucas figured out how to get mainstream audiences to love the space operas nerds had been enjoying for decades before 1977). And Melvin writes: Comic book movies had always been pretty popular. Superman was the top grossing movie of 1979 despite coming out in 1978. Superman 2 was the second top grossing movie of 1981. Batman was the second top grossing movie of 1989. Batman Returns was the top grossing movie of 1992. Batman Forever was the top grossing movie of 1995. Spider-man was the third top grossing movie of 2002 (behind Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies). That's about all I can be bothered looking up right now but you get the idea, superhero movies have been popular since the 1970s. Kaitian writes: I think being a nerd requires being a bit socially clumsy about your interest, and talking or signalling about it in situations where most people don't expect it. So being a nerd about completely mainstream stuff like pop music or football is not possible, that's just fandom. Being a nerd about very well known and relatively well-respected stuff like classical music or birdwatching is rare, because most people who are classy enough to care about the thing in the first place are also classy enough to know when to shut up about it. But comics? Star trek? Power metal? They have fairly low barriers to entry *and* most people don't care about them, so there's plenty of opportunities to bring it up to people who don't want to hear about it. So that's why I think nerdery usually attaches itself to the typical targets. J.R. Leonard has as good a terminology proposal as anyone: I think what's missing is that Kriss uses "nerds" as his foil, but what he's talking about would better be described as fan culture. Deiseach teaches us the etymology of “geek”. The very distant etymology is from German gek, a relative of “cackle” → geck, a fool/madman (who was presumably cackling all the time). But this comes down to us through the early American institution of the geek show. From Wikipedia (cw: disturbing): Geek shows were an act in traveling carnivals and circuses of early America and were often part of a larger sideshow. The billed performer's act consisted of a single geek, who stood in the center ring to chase live chickens. It ended with the performer biting the chickens' heads off and swallowing them. The geek shows were often used as openers for what are commonly known as freak shows. It was a matter of pride among circus and carnival professionals not to have traveled with a troupe that included geeks. Geeks were often alcoholics or drug addicts, and paid with liquor – especially during Prohibition – or with narcotics. More obvious but I went surprisingly long without realizing it: “fan” (as in “sports fan”) is just short for fanatic. 3. Comments About Collecting The veteran collectors in the comments said that my theory (the Internet makes collecting too easy) was only a small part of the decline. The bigger part is that most coin collecting begins with the wonder of finding a rare coin in your change, and most stamp collecting begins with the wonder of finding a rare stamp on your mail, and the rise of credit cards and emails means people aren’t handling coins and stamps as much in their daily lives. Tom Metcalf writes: I'd guess many coin collectors got their start being patient enough to sort through change to see if they had e.g. a wheat cent or silver dime, but first of all, who pays with cash and gets change, and the chances of finding something collectible are orders of magnitude smaller than, say, the '90s. And stamp collectors would have started saving the stamps on mail sent to their house, but how frequently do you get stamped mail anymore? My 79-year old father goes to stamp shows, because one of his hobbies is to buy sheets of old but common unused stamps for less than face value. They are still valid postage, and then he uses them to personalize the stamps he puts on letters he sends to various people. And most of the other people at stamp shows are about his age. He does have some stamps he thinks are interesting that he's held onto, but the dealers at the stamp shows think they're common and uninteresting. So there's a decreasing number of stamps that might be "worth something" and a net loss of collectors in the hobby, and then every time a collector dies and his heirs have no interest in his collection and that many more stamps make their way to dealers who now have one less buyer. Too bad "sending paper letters with vintage but still valid stamps" never caught on with the hipsters. Art writes: The widespread adoption of email created a world where a letter is almost certainly junk mail or a bill. Nobody looks forward to hearing from a good friend from across the country now when picking up the day’s mail. If letters are not interesting why would stamps? The same for coins. Nobody uses cash, and getting a pile of coins with no significant value (inflation) is just an annoyance. These objects have passed into irrelevance. Still, it seems like some little pieces of joy and wonder have passed from our lives. Nathan Savir writes: I collect coins and I think the description of the hobby (and its putative death) isn't quite right. 1. Rare coins are in fact hard to find, even in today's internet world. They are usually sold in auctions, which might happen online, but still not that frequently. It's not unusual for examples some specific rare coin to be sold only once every few years. If the coin is also obscure, it may not be prohibitively expensive, so this kind of situation isn't the sole province of rich people. 2. One area of collecting is to get all the rare items. Another is to get all the minor varieties of a common item. These varieties may not be very rare, but it still takes a lot of effort to be able to distinguish them and to find them. Some collectors will obtain large numbers of relatively common coins and sort through and scrutinize them to try to identify interesting varieties. 3. An important part of collecting is getting good deals. This is surely a lot harder than it used to be because sellers can more easily figure out what things are worth and you won't find something grossly underpriced in a random antique store as often these days. But filtering through buckets (or online listings) of large numbers of coins can still be fun and lead to spotting good deals. So I think there is room in the hobby for nerd-like behavior (per your definition). I would argue the decline of the hobby is more due to competition from other similar hobbies (a generation ago you could collect stamps, coins, baseball cards, or rare books/comics - now you can collect beanie babies, Pokemon cards, NFTs, funko pops, action figures, etc.). I think stamps have suffered more than coins because stamp collecting has more of an aesthetic component (which has faced stronger competition) while coins have a historical element that is less well replicated by collecting newer things. This difference isn't obvious in the google trends graphs you posted but I believe is observable from looking at prices of stamps vs coins. I asked Nathan what coins he collects that are still tough to find, and he gave the example of this Yuan dynasty coin from 1350. I guess if you want to be a collector in 2023 you need to go hard. Arrk Mindmaster writes: I used to collect US coins from every denomination, year, mint, and variety (such as large and small date 1960 pennies). It was kind of like a treasure hunt, knowing you could find something in circulation that was actually more valuable than most people thought it was. I lost interest in the late 1980s sometime, when I found the volume of new coins dwarfed older coins. For example, for Lincoln pennies, they used to make a few million per year, then a few tens of millions. In the 80s, they started making about 5 BILLION each, and it started drowning out all of the old coins, which basically stayed the same value. This comment snapped some things into place for me; I collected coins as a kid in the 90s, and older coin collectors would talk as if you could spot some pretty rare things in your pocket change. But I had much worse luck, and it’s been years since I’ve even found a wheat cent in circulation (even when I was a kid this would happen occasionally). Maybe coin collecting is dying not just because we don’t use change, but because our change is less likely to have interesting coins in it. Another victim of mass money printing! The new state quarters sort of fix this, but other commenters express contempt for this. It feels like the transition between old myths (which one can enjoy) to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which corporations are begging you to enjoy in a pre-approved way) - now that the Mint wants you to collect their coins, it feels kind of slavish to comply. Other people point out that the collecting of things other than stamps and coins is still going strong. Drethelin: Collecting has not in the slightest died out. People collect more things than ever, like sneakers, funko pops, vintage cars, guns, antique ceramics, anime figurines, magic cards, etc. Some people also brought up NFTs - are there lots of people who truly enjoy collecting NFTs, aren’t just in it for the investment value, and have kept up through the crypto bear market? 4. Comments Insisting That Sports Are Good Aris C writes: It's a little glib to dismiss sports as bad, isn't it? Athletes display extreme skill, sometimes transcendent. I don't think watching people push the limits of human ability is obviously bad. When I said sports were bad, I didn’t mean this as a final value judgment. I meant that, by our usual standards of entertainment, sports are bad. Imagine a sitcom which had several thousand episodes, each with the exact same plot (some people try to get a ball from one side of the court to the other). At some point, surely most people would stop watching! I appreciate the something something human spirit, and I’m happy to know that, somewhere in the world, sports are happening. It’s just the decision to actually watch them that confuses me. 5. Comments About Enjoying Things Vs. Building Identities Around Them Many people complained that some combination of me and/or Sam Kriss were denying that anyone can ever enjoy anything except as an attempt to “gain status”. I would answer first that yes, I think most behavior has some status component (although it may be a small component, mixed with genuine enjoyment). But also, it doesn’t seem mysterious that some people eg like Star Wars, or even love Star Wars. What seems mysterious to me is when this expresses itself as desire to buy thousands of dollars of figurines in the original boxes, or memorize the stats of every class of ship in the Imperial Navy, or something else which doesn’t seem very fun on its own merits. I’m not criticizing others from a place of invulnerability here. When I was ~14, I got really into Star Wars, and aside from reading all the Extended Universe books - some of which were genuinely very good - for about a year I spent all of my allowance and a good fraction of my free time obtaining Star Wars collectable cards associated with an M:TG style card game (which I never got around to playing). My parents probably still have them somewhere. I cannot at all retrace what led me to do this, but I appreciate commenters’ less cynical explanations. For example, enchantingacacia writes: I think it's honestly sort of funny how non-nerds seem to genuinely not understand that a nerd's identity becomes about [thing] because they like it so much, not the other way around. Sometimes you encounter a thing—let's say it's Minecraft, because why not—and it's just such a positive experience for you that you take every possible opportunity to keep thinking about Minecraft, even when you're not playing. You collect every scrap of information you can find about Minecraft and you compose your own original Minecraft-related songs and you decorate your room with blocky little figurines. You get into a virtuous cycle where talking and thinking about Minecraft is so rewarding that you keep enjoying all these secondary activities long after you're bored of actually playing Minecraft itself. You look out for opportunities to meet people who'd enjoy talking about Minecraft with you and make a bunch of friends with whom you mostly talk about Minecraft, and your friends and family start seeing you as "the Minecraft guy" and they get you a Minecraft hoodie for Christmas cause they know it's a safe pick. This is the obvious and intuitive explanation! There's no need to get fake-deep about "ah, they got into Minecraft so they'd have something to construct their identity around": it explains nothing, and consistently makes incorrect predictions about the internal experiences of Minecraft nerds. It's only virtue is making people feel better about being annoyed by those weirdos who won't shut up about Minecraft. It's possibly that I have unusually low social motivation (genuinely, what does it mean to "construct your identity" and why is it something people would be this comically desperate to do?) and am typical-minding, but, uh, I wonder if there's any group closely associated with "nerds" who are also known for having low social motivation? I think it's a tad more likely that people like Kriss are typical-minding, and constructing elaborate social motivations for people who just like stuff regardless of what people like him think. This is a good comment which avoids buck-passing-style “I enjoy it because it’s fun” explanations. Along the same lines, odd anon writes: It is only among nerds that enthusiasm for something corresponds to learning more and more about it. That's the core element here. Non-nerds who like something do not feel any need to read up on it, to know more and more. Of course, the producers of content notice when their audience are nerds, and they start to produce content built more for those who obsessively learn every detail. Comics can start "rewarding" readers for noticing some obscure thing. A game series can have an elaborate continuity, or a zillion details to memorize. Content that either "leans into the fandom" or simply naturally has too much for non-nerds to easily pick up, can rapidly become nerd-only, thus solidifying boundaries. And sure, there are the personality correlations, attributes most nerds also have, including being STEM-y and lacking social skills. Combined, a nerd ended up being an unpopular thing to be. Ghatanathoah is less patient: Both Kriss' essay, and Scott's response to it, remind me of the "Evil Cannot Comprehend Good" trope from TV tropes, except replace "Evil" with "Very socially motivated people" and "Good" with "Less socially motivated people" (although honestly both sets have a lot of overlap). Both essays seem obsessed with finding some deep, social reason why hipsters and nerds behave the way they do, like the supervillain who is telling the hero that they are "Not So Different." They literally can't comprehend the idea that someone could actually like something, so they try desperately to find some way that liking things isn't something people actually do. People couldn't actually like Star Wars, sportsball, the MCU, or the Beatles, they must be liking them to achieve some social goal like forming an identity or seeking status! This is one of the two giant flawed assumptions that invalidates the theses of both articles (the other one, of course, is the assumption the the MCU is bad, when it is, in fact one of the human race's greatest artistic achievements*). If you assume that it is possible to like things for non-social reasons, or even in addition to social reasons, hipsters and nerds make much more sense. The reason that nerds like both popular stuff like the MCU, and less popular stuff like postage stamps is because they don't care about if something is popular, they care about if it fascinates them. Whether that thing is popular is orthogonal to how fascinating it is. That fascination makes them invest a lot of time and effort in it, which in turn makes it part of their identity. They weren't trying to find something to form and identity first and picking Star Wars, identity formation was just a side effect. Similarly, hipsters probably just get bored with things they see frequently and want to seek out new things to be interested in. Making obscure things part of their identity comes second, if at all. Also Ghatanathoah: Scott asks if its ever okay to build your identity around liking a thing. I would ask if it's ever okay not to? What's the alternative, building it around social status games or large nonselective identity groups? It seems to me that liking something isn't just a good thing to build your identity around, it's one of the best things to build it around. After all, unlike social status games, you can like something without forcing other people to not like it. This is a good question, well-phrased. I think the traditional answer is that you should build your identity around social relationships (I’m the son of X, husband of Y, friend of Z), career, and maybe a few hobbies. I agree with this as far as it goes, but it doesn’t work for a lot of practical tasks - I can’t get common ground with someone at a party or start a conversation by introducing myself as the son of X or husband of Y - most people just won’t know X or Y. Some people linked a Freddie de Boer post, Your Personality Has To Be Load-Bearing, which is generally good but I think has a similar problem. Obviously you should have a genuine and complex personality, but I worry a lot of people who talk about this will reject every specific aspect of personality because “it’s not, in itself, a full complex personality!”, but you can’t have a personality without building it out of specific aspects. A lot of people’s default personality, if they just do exactly what comes naturally and don’t put any effort into self-presentation or cultivation, is to browse Reddit and play video games. Most people realize this on some level and try to cultivate some personality beyond this, but I think that makes it extra unfair to say “Just use your natural true self!” The natural true self is exactly the boring thing we’re trying to get away from in favor of becoming a more interesting person. I’m trying to think if I have a personal answer to this. Part of my answer is the EA and rationalist communities. This has some downsides; I’m thinner-skinned about insults to these groups than I should be; some people might think I’m a fanatic. It also has some upsides; they embody real values I like, they try to make a difference in the world, they’re not consumer properties that make me feel like a corporation is pulling my strings. But my real answer is probably “I cheat by having a popular blog; this means you all know everything about me and I don’t have to fit my personality into a ten-second elevator pitch”. Maybe this is the traditional solution, from back when everyone knew everyone else in their community. It sure doesn’t feel adequate now, back when (non-bloggers) are constantly meeting strangers and having to communicate their identity to them quickly. My internal hierarchy of things it’s virtuous to build identity around, which is probably a weird class artifact and which I absolutely don’t consciously endorse, goes something like: Top-tier: Intellectual subfields, especially obscure ones or ones involving pure abstract math. If you can say “I’m really into trans-finite 8-dimensional Hoffdorf groups” and justify this with a discussion of how innately beautiful they are, you’ve got it made.

May 23, 2023 · Original source

The bet was plagued with difficulties, including difficulty transferring the Bitcoin and $1 million to trusted third parties, plus Matt Levine suggesting it might qualify as illegal Bitcoin market manipulation. As troubles mounted, and with no sign of hyperinflation, Balaji agreed to pay out early, and Medlock confirmed receiving the $1 million, making him the first known case of someone improving their life by posting on Twitter: Consistent with his oft-stated belief that the rich should be taxed at 70%, Medlock only kept 30% of the $1 million - along with paying the existing taxes, he gave the rest to the charity GiveDirectly.

Inline links: suggesting it might qualify, https://twitter.com/jdcmedlock/status/1653452817179508736

Consistent with his oft-stated belief that the rich should be taxed at 70%, Medlock only kept 30% of the $1 million - along with paying the existing taxes, he gave the rest to the charity GiveDirectly.

Cynics speculated that Balaji was trying to pump Bitcoin by fanning hyperinflation panic; if he owned many Bitcoins, he might make a profit above and beyond his million dollar loss. I think this is unlikely; even if he had $100 million in Bitcoin, he would have to increase the price by 1%; I think it’s really hard to raise the price of Bitcoin by 1%. And even if he did this, he would need some way to cash out, either by selling $100 million in Bitcoin or through options or loans; none of these seem like good ideas, and they could all get him in trouble if he was caught (Balaji says he will “never sell BTC for USD”). I think people overestimate the degree to which rich people do things for devious 4D chess reasons, as opposed to the same dumb impulses as all the rest of us (cf. Elon Musk).

Inline links: Balaji says

Links For May 2023

June 01, 2023 · Original source

2: All the ancients, from Darius the Great to Augustus Caesar, agreed that the Nisean horse was the most majestic horse breed, the horse of kings. The Chinese fought a war (the War of Heavenly Horses) just to get access to a breeding stock. Then they sort of ambiguously went extinct during the Middle Ages. But here’s a modern Iranian horse enthusiast talking about which breeds might be its descendants. 3: Remember when the global community banned whaling, but some countries (eg Japan) continued doing it under the facade of “research”? With octopus factory farms under increasing scrutiny, UNAM university in Mexico is operating a “farm disguised as a research center”. 4: Genuinely new (to me) optical illusion: what is this guy is doing with his hands? Here’s a slow motion version that shows how it’s done. And some people in the replies were speculating this only works because of his dark skin, but here’s a white person doing the exact same thing (wait for it). 5: Shingles vaccine probably reduces incidence of dementia, suggesting that VZV (virus behind shingles and chickenpox) is a contributor. Further discussion here that I’m still trying to make sense of. 6: This deserves to go down in history alongside the wittiest Socratic comebacks in the Platonic dialogues: 7: Matt Lakeman: Notes On Nigeria. Great introduction to modern Nigerian history. Read it for the visceral understanding of the “resource curse” and why poor countries stay poor, but also: A savant is basically someone who has innate mental challenges but is extremely competent in a particular narrow domain. Some savants become obsessed with trains and become great engineers. Some become obsessed with computers and build software wonders. One of Abacha’s predecessors said of him: “He might not be bright upstairs, but he knows how to overthrow governments.” Kenyon elaborates: “It was as if Abacha was an idiot savant. Dull, even gormless, he filled his days with cowboy movies and sleeping off the previous night’s indulgences in alcohol and prostitutes. But he was possessed of a prodigious flair when it came to coups.” 8: Related to my previous subscribers-only post on the psychology of fantasy: Balioc’s Taxonomy Of What Magic Is Doing In Fantasy Books. See also Eliezer’s commentary. 9: New study on the timing of human mutations confirms Greg Cochran’s 2012 post about how after leaving Africa, modern humans were limited to “Arabia and surrounding regions” for ~30,000 - 50,000 years, racking up various new mutations and becoming adapted to life outside Africa (kabbalistically equivalent to the 40 years spent wandering in Sinai?). Most mutations in “fat storage, neural development, skin physiology, and cilia function”. 10: Iron Economist on Twitter: “Desalinization was one of the big technological success stories of the 2010s”. 11: Matt Bruenig argues against the Success Sequence, whose proponents (including Bryan Caplan) describe it as: 97% of Millennials who follow what has been called the “success sequence”—that is, who get at least a high school degree, work, and then marry before having any children, in that order—are not poor by the time they reach their prime young adult years (ages 28-34). Bruenig’s argument is mostly a lot of annoying “well maybe it’s just your cultural bias that makes you care about this”, but in the middle of this it mentions some genuinely strong points, especially that the research doesn’t measure “sequence”, but rather “current status”. So if you graduated, got a job, got married, and had children, but then lost your job, your would be counted as “not following the sequence” (same if you get divorced). Also, disabled and old people and their caretakers are excluded from the analysis, which in one sense is fair (your conclusion can be “abled young adults can avoid poverty through this method”) but in another sense risks reducing all of this to the more trivial-seeming statement “if you’re young, healthy, abled, married, don’t have to support anyone else, and have a full-time job, you’re probably not poor”. But the authors (channeled by Caplan) disagree: Some critics of the success sequence have argued that marriage does not matter once education and work status are controlled. The regression results indicate that after controlling for a range of background factors, the order of marriage and parenthood in Millennials’ lives is significantly associated with their financial well-being in the prime of young adulthood. Simply put, compared with the path of having a baby first, marrying before children more than doubles young adults’ odds of being in the middle or top income. Meanwhile, putting marriage first reduces the odds of young adults being in poverty by 60% (vs. having a baby first). The main thing I would want to look at here is how much of this is causal vs. just class selection: upper-class people are more likely to marry, less likely to divorce, and more likely to wait before having children. Has anyone followed some pre-selected group of equal class people (eg the population of some low-income school district) and seen how their own success varies with sequence compliance? 12: I’ve previously linked claims that vat-grown meat, freed from the tyranny of having to grow inside animals, will include tiger steaks, lion burgers, and the like. Once again global capitalism outpaces my wildest fantasies and offers burgers with woolly mammoth protein (so far just the myoglobin, not the meat). 13: The people who believed there was lots of gender bias in STEM academia, and the people who believed there wasn’t finally did an adversarial collaboration (a study co-conducted by two groups of scientists with conflicting theories, keeping each other honest). The results: Contrary to the omnipresent claims of sexism in these domains appearing in top journals and the media, our findings show that tenure-track women are at parity with tenure-track men in three domains (grant funding, journal acceptances, and recommendation letters) and are advantaged over men in a fourth domain (hiring). For teaching ratings and salaries, we found evidence of bias against women; although gender gaps in salary were much smaller than often claimed, they were nevertheless concerning. For ten years lots of important people told us again and again that discrimination against women in STEM was a massive problem. People who questioned its extent were accused of misogyny and sometimes fired, I got harassed and insulted for pointing out reasons the standard arguments didn’t seem to hold true. Millions of dollars were spent investigating and responding to the problem. And now I expect this pretty strong evidence that women were actually advantaged in hiring and had parity in most other things (the salary is probably just the usual negotiation issue) to produce no publicity, no apologies, and no soul-searching from the people leading the current round of anti-academia and anti-STEM inquisitions. Sorry, yes I am bitter, it just bothers me how much the people claiming that it’s urgently important that nobody is ever allowed to suggest they are wrong have a consistent track record of being totally and inexcusably wrong. 14: In my response to Sam Kriss, I speculated on what would happen if someone rewrote the MCU to sound like ancient myths. Thanks to the many people who reminded me of Star Wars as Icelandic saga and Star Wars as Irish epic. And Sam has a response . 15: @AISafetyMemes on Twitter is exactly what you’d expect from the name. I especially like the fire dogs: More here: 16: More AI links from this month: Can’t even list all the new people who have come out as AI x-risk believers, but you can just read the CAIS statement. The top signatures are Geoff Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei; aside from the usual suspects, they also have Bruce Schneier (computer security expert) , Dawn Song (computer scientist and security expert), Andy Clark (professor of cognitive philosophy, wrote Surfing Uncertainty), Eliezer Yudkowsky (he didn't sign the last one because he disagreed with specifics, but he's here), and a former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense.

Inline links: the Nisean horse, the War of Heavenly Horses, a modern Iranian horse enthusiast talking about, is operating a “farm disguised as a research center”, what is this guy is doing with his hands?, a slow motion version, here’s a white person doing the exact same thing, Shingles vaccine probably reduces incidence of dementia, here, This, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!EEvz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5ecd2933-810f-41dd-af25-71fdf8e8d90f_590x234.png, Notes On Nigeria, Taxonomy Of What Magic Is Doing In Fantasy Books, Eliezer’s commentary, New study on the timing of human mutations, Greg Cochran’s 2012 post, Iron Economist on Twitter, argues against the Success Sequence, describe, tiger steaks, lion burgers, burgers with woolly mammoth protein, an adversarial collaboration, my response to Sam Kriss, Star Wars as Icelandic saga, Star Wars as Irish epic, a response, @, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!korm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e680df9-6385-4a23-91d5-3a5a9f8f9be7_680x343.jpeg, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-Hau!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda6b71a4-78a4-4c4a-b755-b8051e7b5539_680x343.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RIF-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F846c32fc-c454-4e7f-b46e-e363cb925a95_1216x613.jpeg, CAIS statement

More here: 16: More AI links from this month: Can’t even list all the new people who have come out as AI x-risk believers, but you can just read the CAIS statement. The top signatures are Geoff Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, and Dario Amodei; aside from the usual suspects, they also have Bruce Schneier (computer security expert) , Dawn Song (computer scientist and security expert), Andy Clark (professor of cognitive philosophy, wrote Surfing Uncertainty), Eliezer Yudkowsky (he didn't sign the last one because he disagreed with specifics, but he's here), and a former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense.

Inline links: here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!-Hau!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fda6b71a4-78a4-4c4a-b755-b8051e7b5539_680x343.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RIF-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F846c32fc-c454-4e7f-b46e-e363cb925a95_1216x613.jpeg, CAIS statement

Google worries about open-source AI (but see also Jeff Ladish’s discussion here)

Inline links: Google worries about open-source AI, here

Your Incentives Are Not The Same As Media Companies'

June 15, 2023 · Original source

Source: http://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1593083333076189184 It can’t possibly be worth it for you. The fact that you skimmed the first third of a thinkpiece about a fiendishly complex issue and now want to insult one side of it (“They’re the literal epitome of Dunning-Kruger!”) cannot possibly have enough value in your mental economy to compensate for the fact that many of the people you most want to reach and befriend and keep on your side will hate you and never affiliate with you again.

Inline links: http://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1593083333076189184

Only the ones with Twitter accounts. If you don’t have one of those, you’re fine. But if you do have one, there’s a good chance you said something which horribly offended me. You said everyone who believed X was an idiot and a Nazi, and I believed X. You read the title but not the body of an article about some group I care about, and viciously insulted them based on your misunderstanding of their position. You spent five seconds thinking of a clever dunk on someone who happened to be a friend of mine trying really hard to make the world better, and ruined their day.

I don’t just block you on Twitter. Until I forget who you are - which might take years - I get mildly upset every time I see your name. If someone links to an article you write, I’ll close it as soon as I recognize the byline. If you’re at some kind of real-life event I’m attending, I’ll avoid you. I’ve had negative associations with whole political movements just because one of their members insulted a person I respect, in some especially unfair way. I’ve sometimes found myself being irrationally uncharitable to everyone named Albert or Allen or Alvin just because a totally different guy named Alfred was a jerk on Twitter.

Your Book Review: Njal’s Saga

June 16, 2023 · Original source

We are many centuries of domestication removed from Ragnar of the Bloody Axe. Literal murder isn’t on most of our radars. Still, anyone on Twitter can sympathize with the ancient Viking feeling of getting insulted and debating how strong a response is warranted. On one side of the modern Overton Window, you have Elon Musk, who will ban people who offend him from Twitter, or sue them, or spread rumors about them being pedophiles. On the other side, you have - I don’t know, turning the other cheek doesn’t tend to generate a lot of news articles. But when I am in these situations, I try to think of Njal, kindest and most forbearing of men.

Orestes does not die. He kills his mother and becomes accursed; thus he is haunted by the Furies, spirits of vengeance. He goes to Athens and asks Athena for help. Athena invents a new institution: the trial. She invites Athenian citizens to serve as the jury, the Furies to be the prosecutors, and Apollo to be defense attorney.

Links For July 2023

July 06, 2023 · Original source

2: If you (like me) have a fourth-grader’s sense of humor, you may enjoy @ActualNames1, a Twitter account of the silliest and most profane names on Census-style records.

Inline links: @ActualNames1

2: If you (like me) have a fourth-grader’s sense of humor, you may enjoy @ActualNames1, a Twitter account of the silliest and most profane names on Census-style records. 3: Georges Ruggiu (h/t @iwsfutcmd ) was a middle-aged white Belgian who became interested in Rwanda and eventually moved there. During the 1990s, he became one of the loudest voices supporting the genocide there, "leverag[ing] his Europeanness for credibility” on the popular RTLM radio station. He served eight years in prison for crimes against humanity. See also War Nerd. As far as anyone knows he’s back in Belgium now, just hanging around.

Inline links: @ActualNames1, https://twitter.com/ActualNames1/status/1672987440376848389, Georges Ruggiu, @iwsfutcmd, War Nerd

3: Georges Ruggiu (h/t @iwsfutcmd ) was a middle-aged white Belgian who became interested in Rwanda and eventually moved there. During the 1990s, he became one of the loudest voices supporting the genocide there, "leverag[ing] his Europeanness for credibility” on the popular RTLM radio station. He served eight years in prison for crimes against humanity. See also War Nerd. As far as anyone knows he’s back in Belgium now, just hanging around.

Inline links: Georges Ruggiu, @iwsfutcmd, War Nerd

23: Room Temperature Superforecaster

August 01, 2023 · Original source

…but Metaculus is much lower, probably because the other two are asking if any replication will be positive, and Metaculus is asking if the first replication attempt will be. It’s bad news that these numbers are so different, and suggests a high chance that this stays confusing and comes down to finicky resolution criteria. Still, this has gotten lots of people checking the prediction markets, including Paul Graham: …and around 500 others, according to the Manifold Active Users graph (source): Aside from headline numbers, I’ve also appreciated prediction market comment sections as a good place to stay up to date on the latest developments (including a link to this thread) Elsewhere In Forecasting NYPost: Blind Mystic Baba Vanga Makes Terrifying Nuclear Disaster Prediction For 2023: A blind mystic who allegedly predicted 9/11 is said to have foreseen a nuclear disaster that will ravage Earth before the end of 2023. Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian woman, is rumored to have predicted some of the biggest events in world history. She died more than a quarter of a century ago, but many of her predictions are said to have come true long after her death. Now, her followers claim that Baba Vanga foresaw a devastating nuclear disaster that will unfold this year. Big if true. In what sense did she predict 9/11? Another article gives the exact text of the 1989 prediction: “Horror, horror! The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing.” This is a 1989 prediction! If you’re calling airplanes “steel birds” in 1989, you’re just hoping that people forget you lived when airplanes already existed and then get impressed with you for predicting them. Come on! (you could argue that the second half is about Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz howling for war with Iraq from within the Bush administration, but Ass. Sec Wolf played a minimal role in the war buildup so I think if you are being very strict in your interpretation there was really only one wolf involved.) Anyway, Vanga’s other predictions for 2023 include: Earth’s orbit will change

Inline links: Paul Graham, source, this thread, Blind Mystic Baba Vanga Makes Terrifying Nuclear Disaster Prediction For 2023, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yIPJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc81ce0d2-e9c7-41b9-be38-0182d21f0381_1024x682.jpeg, the exact text of the 1989 prediction

Looks like the most recent round of Twitter changes really hurt.

More Memorable Passages From "The Man Without A Face"

August 04, 2023 · Original source

Nobody told Putin. The issue only came to a head months later, when Putin wanted a photo op with rare Siberian cranes and told Volkrug Sveta to provide it. Gessen refused and was fired. They posted on Twitter that they were leaving, and that it was Putin’s fault.

In Defense Of Describable Dating Preferences

August 16, 2023 · Original source

I've got to agree. No offence to this woman, but similar things I've seen on Twitter give the impression of being more like an ostentatious display of sexual capital rather than a genuine attempt to fill a vacancy. Perhaps that's not the case in this situation, but I can't help feeling like this is a poor solution to the problem of being single. While many people have minimum standards for partners like appearance, height, and profession, the criteria that can be captured on paper are blunt tools only effective for a very early filtering process. I don't see how this stands to be any better than Tinder, unless you consider intellectual compatibility to be of such high importance that you want to find a select group of potential suitors who are perfectly tailored to your way of thinking. That seems like a poor idea for productive dating to me.

Bride Of Bay Area House Party

August 17, 2023 · Original source

“A few months ago, a right-wing blogger came to one of our parties. People on Twitter complained and said his presence might make minorities uncomfortable and that as a movement that valued inclusivity we needed to kick people like him out. So next time we instituted a rule: no right-wing bloggers. But then some people who commented on right-wing blogs showed up, and the Twitter people said their presence was exclusionary too. One thing led to another and now all our parties have an Inclusivity Monitor who checks your social media presence before they let you in. A few months ago I complained on Facebook that crime was out of control. I guess I must have used the wrong phrasing or something.”

Highlights From The Comments On Dating Preferences

August 24, 2023 · Original source

https://twitter.com/tailcalled/status/1680269225418522628

Inline links: https://twitter.com/tailcalled/status/1680269225418522628

Highlights From The Comments On Fetishes

August 30, 2023 · Original source

I meant this mostly as a joke. But some people got really angry about it. And it seems unfair to deflect their anger by pointing out it was a joke, when I feel the joke has a core of truth. So I’ll commit to the bit and try to defend myself here. The paragraph starts by admitting that some people do it for good reasons. If I believed I was a brave whistleblower speaking out against predatory marketing, I would have just assumed I was one of the people with good reasons. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth”.

Inline links: https://twitter.com/mandystadt/status/1693947684204228998

The paragraph starts by admitting that some people do it for good reasons. If I believed I was a brave whistleblower speaking out against predatory marketing, I would have just assumed I was one of the people with good reasons. “The wicked flee when no man pursueth”.

I found this enlightening when I read it, but forgot it was on Discord; trying to find it for this Highlights post, I searched first the ACX comments, then the subreddit, then Twitter, then places further afield. End result is that now “enema” is in my search history for every social media site. I hope this doesn’t affect what ads I get.

My Presidential Platform

September 05, 2023 · Original source

When I am elected, I will mandate that all American websites serve popups to European Union residents explaining why the GDPR is annoying and why it affects even Americans who have no say in it. If the Europeans want to be able to access Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other US-based site without clicking “I understand” every time they reload it, they’ll have to pressure their government to do something about GDPR.

Book Review: Elon Musk

September 13, 2023 · Original source

Definitely no. For one thing, he usually ends up in an industry by coincidence. He went into aerospace because he wanted to pull a publicity stunt with mice on Mars, tried to buy a rocket from the Russians, they were going to rip him off, and he decided to build a better rocket to spite them. He went into cars because the founders of Tesla asked him for an investment, he liked the company, and then he thought they were doing a bad job and he needed to take over. He took over Twitter because he was addicted to Twitter, got a seat on the board, and then the other board members said he had to behave and he didn’t want to.

I think this level of intensity - combined with a high-even-if-not-unprecedently-high level of engineering ability - is enough to explain why he succeeds despite his flaws. Do you think Elon will succeed at X/Twitter? I lean towards yes.

On the other hand, this time Ashlee Vance himself is skeptical. He says:

Inline links: Ashlee Vance himself is skeptical

Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk

September 18, 2023 · Original source

heliotropic on Twitter writes:

Inline links: writes

Musk says the lost revenue is primary due to pressure by the Anti-Defamation League (https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698755938541330907), but I feel like "there are now a tenth as many people working there" is also a plausible hypothesis.

Inline links: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1698755938541330907

1: Comments From People With Personal Experience 2: ...Debating Musk's Intelligence 3: ...Debating Musk's Mental Health 4: ...About Tesla 5: ...About The Boring Company 6: ...About X/Twitter 7: ...About Musk's Mars Plan 8: ...Comparing Musk To Other Famous Figures 9: Other Comments 10: Updates

Links For September 2023

September 28, 2023 · Original source

7: “Adversarial examples” are a weird AI phenomenon where imperceptible changes to certain images can make AIs get them bizarrely wrong. For example, you can take a picture of a house, add a tiny amount of invisible noise representing “giraffe”, end up with a picture that still looks exactly like a house, but an AI will identify it as a giraffe. Now a new paper claims these sort of work on humans?! That is, given the following two pictures:

Inline links: a new paper claims these sort of work on humans?!

8: Related: AI art has gone from copying humans to inventing entirely new styles. Like images with hidden-yet-obvious spirals:

Inline links: images

Or images with hidden-yet-obvious text:

Inline links: images

How Are The Gay Younger Brothers Doing?

October 04, 2023 · Original source

…suggesting that even the nonsignificant effect they found might have just been from small studies and a file drawer effect. So they’re claiming FBOE doesn’t exist, right? Actually, their paper is so long and dense I can’t figure out exactly what they’re claiming. It sort of looks like they think that, but when someone says so, they protest that: Blanchard & Skorska (2022) completely misconstrued our work by claiming that we wrote there is no evidence for the FBOE in men or women. This is not what we claim, neither in the present study, nor in the preprint. So what are they claiming? I’m not sure, but notice that their specification of the effect only demonstrates that older brothers do not cause homosexuality too much more than older sisters. If both types of older sibling caused homosexuality, that would match their findings, even if brothers caused it slightly more. And in fact, hot on their heels, a new study found exactly that! Ablaza, Kabatek, Perales, And 9,000,000 Dutch People To The Rescue Remember how Frisch and Hviid managed to look at two million Danes? Well, the Dutch also have gay marriage and keep really good records. Ablaza, Kabatek, and Perales were able to obtain and analyze the data from nine million of them. They do more advanced statistics than any of their predecessors and are able to report basically every parameter of interest with high confidence4. They find: On average, individuals who did not enter a same-sex union have 2.36 siblings. This number is split evenly between younger (μ=1.19) and older (μ=1.17) siblings. The average sibling sex ratio—that is, the number of brothers over the number of sisters—is 1.04 for both younger and older siblings. In contrast, individuals who entered a same-sex union have fewer siblings (μ=2.14) and a greater number of older (μ=1.23) than younger (μ=0.91) siblings. Further, the sex ratio of their older siblings is skewed towards brothers (μ=1.18). All of these differences are statistically significant . . . these patterns manifest among both men and women. These effects are potentially large: For example, 0.73% of men who are the youngest of five siblings entered a same sex union, compared to just 0.35% of men who are the eldest of five siblings . . . the share of men with four older brothers entering a same-sex union is 0.96%, more than twice the share among men with four older sisters (0.46%) Because of their advanced regression model, they’re able to tease apart family size effects from birth order and gender effects: Adding one younger sister to an existing sibship is associated with a 13.8% decrease in the probability of entering a same-sex union (OR = 0.87, p < 0.001)5; moving one place down the birth order while keeping the number of younger and older brothers fixed is associated with an 7.9% increase in the probability of entering a same-sex union (OR = 1.08, p < 0.001); and replacing one older sister by one older brother is associated with a 12.5% increase in the probability of entering a same-sex union (OR = 1.13, p < 0.001). Replacing one younger sister by one younger brother is associated with a 1.2% increase in the probability of entering a same-sex union (OR = 1.01), but this estimate is not statistically significant (p > 0.1). Also: To illustrate the combined effects of birth order and sibling sex, we use the model to predict and plot the probabilities of entering a same-sex union for individuals in all relevant permutations of two-person sibships (Figure 3). In this example, we focus on two-person sibships because they are the most common sibship type (35% of individuals) and because the corresponding number of permutations is fairly contained (n=8). Among men, the lowest predicted probability (PP) of entering a same-sex union is for those whose only sibling is a younger sister (PP = 0.55%), followed by those with a younger brother (PP = 0.56%), those with an older sister (PP = 0.61%) and, finally, those with an older brother (PP = 0.68%). The ordering is the same among women: those with a younger sister (PP = 0.757%), followed by those with a younger brother (PP = 0.764%), those with an older sister (PP = 0.81%), and those with an older brother (PP = 0.92%). The difference between the lowest and highest predicted probabilities is 0.12 percentage points (23.5%) for men, and 0.16 percentage points (21.2%) for women. How does this correspond to the findings of Frisch & Hviid, Blanchard & Bogaert, and and Vilsmeier et al? I can’t really square it with Frisch & Hviid. Even though the methodologies are similar (one investigating everyone in Denmark, the other everyone in the Netherlands), the first finds approximately no result, and the second a very clear result. But Ablaza et al have both a larger sample and better statistics, and they better match previous studies on the topic, so I’ll be siding with them. On the other hand, this beautifully synthesizes the seemingly-opposed results of Blanchard & Bogaert vs. Vilsmeier et al. The FBOE, rightly understood, is primarily an effect of older siblings in general, not just older brothers. However, older brothers exert a slightly stronger effect than older sisters, for both men and women. Blanchard and Bogaert were right to think something was going on with older siblings and homosexuality, and even right to highlight brothers in particular. But Vilsmeier et al were right to say they were wrong to discount older sisters, and that the “advantage” of older brothers over older sisters was so small they shouldn’t be sure it existed (although this much larger study can say more confidently that it does). What does this mean for the maternal immune system / H-Y antigen / NLGN4Y theory of the effect6? It’s definitely awkward: the classic version of the theory doesn’t predict that older sisters should have any effect, or that siblings should have an effect at all on turning later-born females lesbian. Proponents of the theory are trying to adjust, claiming that maybe women have some kind of related antigen. Blanchard and Lippa have already proposed (though not conducted) the experimental next step: see if women with daughters have higher NLGN4Y levels than women who have never had children at all. I would also feel more comfortable if somebody replicates Bogaert’s 2006 study finding this was definitely biological and it’s not just some boring social effect like guys with more brothers having more positive male role models and so being more likely to get attracted to men. Cremeiux Is Still Skeptical I’d like to end on a note of “so now finally everyone agrees that birth order effects on homosexuality are real”, but Statistics Twitter personality Cremieux Recueil (Twitter, Substack) doesn’t agree. He admits that the Dutch study is the best evidence we have so far, but worries that it’s not good enough: I don’t find these objections too convincing. Yes, gay marriage as an outcome omits most gays, but it’s still a bigger sample size than anyone else, and it seems less likely that married gays systematically differ from unmarried gays in their number of siblings for some reason (which doesn’t apply to married heterosexuals) than that they’re finding the same effect everyone else has found before them. Conclusion The fraternal birth order effect hypothesis has had a tough decade, but things are starting to look up. It’s been forced to abandon some of its key tenets (like an effect on male gays but not on female lesbians) and relax others (like older brothers having more of an effect than older sisters). In the process, its beautiful immunological mechanism has been cast into some doubt. But the core of the idea - that more older siblings = more gay - seems to stand. My predictions (to be evaluated whenever stronger evidence comes in): Sibling birth order effect on homosexuality is real: 85%

Inline links: Blanchard & Skorska (2022), obtain and analyze the data from nine million of them, 4, 5, 6, Blanchard and Lippa, Twitter, Substack, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oh7O!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2f346572-af93-421f-a1ca-ba4f2a5fe3f2_586x701.png

Dictator Book Club: Chavez

November 02, 2023 · Original source

The Chavistas also benefitted from being able to refuse to renew opponents’ broadcasting licenses; I don’t know what our broadcasting license policy is here, but I never hear about this being an issue so I’m guessing we’re probably safe. And the continued independence of Facebook and (especially) Twitter means broadcast TV doesn’t have the same monopoly on information here that it probably did in Venezuela. I think we’re safe here too.

In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism

November 10, 2023 · Original source

I'm currently working with a small team on the dating site. Alyssa had an excellent tweet, I'm in contact with her, and she recently retweeted my bid to get more team-members on board. (https://twitter.com/freeshreeda/status/1719118204297966003)

Inline links: https://twitter.com/freeshreeda/status/1719118204297966003

You should talk to Samuel Hughes (I'm sure you know him from Twitter: https://twitter.com/scp_hughes) about #7, in part because he is also quite au fait with some of the distributed answers to #8, and is already working on this question. He was the researcher for the UK's Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, which was sort of like a consensus-based committee attempt to make progress on this question.

Inline links: https://twitter.com/scp_hughes

We're looking for more frontend and design support. Also donations to help us cover infra costs. We're keenly aware that the tech is not going to be the big thing — it's the network of daters that joins. We think we can do a better job of marketing such a product than things like twitterdatingapp.com (which we think is good as an MVP and product but bad at branding).

Inline links: twitterdatingapp.com

November 28, 2023 · Original source

But the journalists think we’re a sinister conspiracy that has “taken over Washington” and have the whole Democratic Party in our pocket. Click to expand. Source: https://twitter.com/the_megabase/status/1728771254336036963 The only thing everyone agrees on is that the only two things EAs ever did were “endorse SBF” and “bungle the recent OpenAI corporate coup.”

Inline links: “taken over Washington”

Donated tens of millions of dollars to pandemic preparedness causes years before COVID, and positively influenced some countries’ COVID policies.

Inline links: Donated, positively influenced some countries’ COVID policies

But if any of these things do matter to you, you can’t help thinking that all those people on Twitter saying EA has never done anything except lurch from scandal to scandal are morally insane. That’s where I am right now. Effective altruism feels like a tiny precious cluster of people who actually care about whether anyone else lives or dies, in a way unmediated by which newspaper headlines go viral or not. My first, second, and so on to hundredth priorities are protecting this tiny cluster and helping it grow. After that I will grudgingly admit that it sometimes screws up - screws up in a way that is nowhere near as bad as it’s good to end gun violence and cure AIDS and so - and try to figure out ways to screw up less. But not if it has any risk of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, or interferes with priorities 1 - 100.

Contra DeBoer On Movement Shell Games

November 30, 2023 · Original source

I said awhile back that a lot of YIMBYs seem to define YIMBYism and NIMBYism in social terms, not political or policy terms - that they define allies not by who aligns with them in a policy sense but by who fights on their side online. On Reddit and Twitter some YIMBYs responded to that by calling me a NIMBY. In other words, despite my explicit policy beliefs, they think that I’m a NIMBY because I’m not part of their cool online social circle, which is a perfect illustration of the exact point I was making about how YIMBYism actually operates in practice. If I’m a YIMBY [sic] despite my policy preferences and because I’m considered outside of the YIMBY kaffeeklatsch, that means that it isn’t about policy and is about being a cool shitposter.

Inline links: awhile back

Links For November 2023

December 01, 2023 · Original source

3: Related to my Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster post. Morning Consult is a well-regarded polling agency without obvious bias (link):

Inline links: Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster, link

3: Related to my Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster post. Morning Consult is a well-regarded polling agency without obvious bias (link): …although I notice the poll doesn’t quite match the summary; it could also be that voters have changed their opinions about what level of liberalism/conservatism is “appropriate”.

Inline links: Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster, link

5: Informal Twitter poll of ~100 people: of those who have tried gratitude journaling, a bit more than half say it helped them.

Inline links: Informal Twitter poll

December 05, 2023 · Original source

2: @AISafetyMemes and @betafuzz have made a graph of different people’s probability estimates of AI causing human extinction. I couldn’t confirm (or did disconfirm) a few of their sources, which I’ve indicated in red; they can contact me if they want to tell me I’m wrong:

Inline links: @AISafetyMemes and @betafuzz have made

Or it could have nothing to do with that. Maybe it wasn’t a Machiavellian factional decision at all. Bret Taylor was the head of the Twitter board that negotiated with Musk; people think he did a good job. He might just be “generic person who’s good at boards”. Larry Summers is also a generic person who’s probably good at boards. Adam D’Angelo could credibly claim to be the most moderate (neither explicitly an Altman pawn nor explicitly a safetyist) person on the last board, and if they were going for a board of moderates, he could be there to provide continuity.

What Ever Happened To Neoreaction?

December 07, 2023 · Original source

(also, it’s not working; the people on Twitter hated the dark elves stuff)

Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity

January 11, 2024 · Original source

Seen on Twitter:

Inline links: on Twitter

The Psychopolitics Of Trauma

January 25, 2024 · Original source

Politics can become something between an addiction and an obsession. People can spend hours every day watching cable TV or scrolling through their Twitter feeds, trying to stay abreast of the latest outrage the other side is perpetrating. To be clear, they hate this. Each time they hear another outrage they’re somewhere between dejected and enraged. But they keep doing it. For hours a day. They will justify this with claims like “I need to stay informed so I can make a difference”. Then they will forget to vote because they were tired on Election Day.

Twitter searches for “triggered” are an interesting anthropological experience. A Google search brought up this lovely t-shirt. I think eBay’s policy of promoting inclusiveness by displaying shirts on ethnically diverse models may have failed them in this case. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Donald Trump Jr has a book called Triggered, and a biweekly TV show of the same name. Sheila Jeffreys’ biography is called Trigger Warning: My Radical Feminist Life. Jeffreys and Trump Jr may not have much else in common, but they are united by a shared appreciation for applying this technical psychiatric term to politics. I think this makes the most sense if political triggering and psychiatric triggering are literally the same thing because political toxicity is a subspecies of PTSD. D2: Persistent and exaggerated negative beliefs or expectations about oneself, others, or the world. Do I even need to explain this one? D3: Persistent distorted cognitions about the cause or consequences of the traumatic events that lead the individual to blame himself or others. As stated, this doesn’t really apply to politics. But I claim this is an overly restrictive description of the true problem, which is a general distortion of cognition around traumatic stimuli. See for example Reasoning, trauma, and PTSD: insights into emotion–cognition interaction. Here the researchers make people solve math/logic puzzles with five apples and eight oranges or whatever; as usual, most people do fine. Then they change the content to traumatic stimuli, like five rapists and eight abusers. Nobody is particularly happy about this change, but traumatized people seem to do worse when the stimuli relate to their own trauma. This is an exact analog to the “five Democrats and eight assault weapons” task discussed above; I don’t know if one line of research inspired the others, but they show some similar results. Other people have even more general findings. You may remember the Stroop Effect, where people have to say the color of words without getting distracted by their content. One variant is the Emotional Stroop Effect, where instead of giving color words (“yellow”, “red”, etc), you use emotional words and traumatic stimuli. Traumatized people tend to do worse at Emotional Stroop tasks relating to their specific trauma. See Modification of cognitive biases related to posttraumatic stress: A systematic review and research agenda. See also The Precision Of Sensory Evidence for a discussion of how this effect might happen. E1: Irritable behavior and angry outbursts (with little or no provocation) typically expressed as verbal or physical aggression toward people and objects. As seen at your family Thanksgiving table. Politics makes otherwise kind people into angry jerks. E3: Hypervigilance This is defined as a heightened awareness of surroundings, constantly scanning for danger, and misinterpreting innocuous stimuli as threatening. Wikipedia describes it as “there is a perpetual scanning of the environment to search for sights, sounds, people, behaviors, smells, or anything else that is reminiscent of activity, threat or trauma”. Dog whistles. Microaggressions. The hallmark of the advanced political partisan is the ability to describe everything the other side (or neutral third parties) do as secretly a political offense, and to reduce every possible situation to their issue of choice. For the past ten years, I’ve been involved in the anti-AI-existential risk movement, and have gotten to know other people in this movement pretty well. I can say with high certainty that the number one motive of these people is that they do not want to be killed by robots. Still, over the years people have ascribed every possible motive to us except that one, for example: It’s a plot by Big Tech to distract from other harms they are committing.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!i3Mp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F69cd8c8a-3f2b-4842-b8fd-1455aa1310bf_591x587.png, Triggered, Trigger Warning: My Radical Feminist Life, Reasoning, trauma, and PTSD: insights into emotion–cognition interaction, Modification of cognitive biases related to posttraumatic stress: A systematic review and research agenda., The Precision Of Sensory Evidence, Dog whistles

February 20, 2024 · Original source

6: Base Rate Times has a list of the Twitter accounts of ~40 superforecasters and other great predictors.

Inline links: has a list

Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate

April 09, 2024 · Original source

Suppose you know that one of the animals in the middle crate on the right was caught in some safe, disease-free way, 500 km away, three months ago. How confident does that make you feel? To answer the question about which animals in the Xiao paper are plausible: at least civets and bamboo rats. SARS spread back and forth in some kind of weird net between civets, raccoon dogs, and a bunch of made-up-sounding animals like "ferret-badgers" and "greater hog-badgers". For all we know, COVID could have done likewise. If all of this sounds desperate and wishy-washy, imagine an alien who comes to Earth, hangs out at Area 51, and catches COVID. She theorizes that she got it from humans. She’s heard that the humans at Area 51 came from schools, so she abducts fifteen humans from a nearby school and gives them COVID throat swabs. None of them are positive, so she announces that humans can’t be a COVID intermediate host. Other aliens suggest further testing, but she has already vaporized Earth, just in case, so the further testing never gets done. Simon added: Even the strongest proponents of the raccoon dog hypothesis have walked back their bold claims that raccoon dogs are the host. I asked a scientist whose name is on some of the original raccoon-dog papers if this was true. He said: I secretly root for other intermediate hosts. Bamboo rats or civets would be really fascinating and have flown under the radar. But it’s been really hard to bet against raccoon dogs. First we learn they can transmit and the virus didn’t change when transmitted between them (Freuling 2020)? Then turns out they’re sold in the market (Xiao 2021)? Then it turns out they’re freaking everywhere in the genetic data from the market, the most common mammal detected? Then it turns out the market animals aren’t from northern China fur farms? It’s been a tough road for those betting against them…. 1.3: 92 Early Cases There was a long multi-branching thread of arguments centered around 92 early cases, for example here: My understanding of the situation: the first officially-confirmed case of COVID started December 11, 2019. Later in the pandemic, in 2021, the World Health Organization wanted to figure out if that was really the first, or whether there had been earlier ones. They scoured Chinese hospital records for illnesses that might be COVID during the two months before the official discovery (ie early October to early December) In particular, they asked Wuhan hospitals for records of any cases of fever, flu, respiratory illness, and pneumonia. The hospital gave them 76,253 cases, because China is big and flu is common. This was slightly more cases than usual, but there was a normal flu spreading too, so the researchers didn’t find this very compelling. Then they narrowed these cases down to those that were “clinically compatible” with COVID, and ended up with 92. Then they went over those 92 more carefully, including “review by the external multidisciplinary clinical team” and blood draws from the former patients. They were able to track down 67 of the 92. The clinical team decided none of those 92 cases really resembled COVID, and the blood draws were all negative. They published this as the results of their study: The retrospective search for cases compatible with COVID-19 illness identified 76 253 episodes with one of four indicator conditions. A rise in one of these conditions, [acute respiratory illness] (as well as [flu-like illness] and fever), was seen in this group of individuals in the over-60-year age group in early December. The clinical assessment of the 76,253 individuals revealed 92 cases clinically compatible with COVID-19. It is possible that the application of stringent clinical criteria, resulting in the identification of only 92 clinically compatible cases, may have decreased the possibility of identifying a group or groups of cases with milder illness. All the 92 cases were rejected as cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection on further clinical review. None of these cases (where blood could be obtained) was positive on SARS-CoV-2 serological testing carried out more than 12 months later. The use of retrospective serological testing so long after the illness cannot be relied on to exclude the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of the presenting illness, given the possible drop in SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody over time and the associated reduced sensitivity of commercial assays. The possibility that earlier transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection was occurring in this community cannot be excluded on the basis of this evidence. In other words “we looked for early COVID, we didn’t find any, but we can’t promise we didn’t miss anything”. On Twitter, Giles Demaneuf makes an interesting point. The researchers took the samples in 2021, when China was in Zero COVID. When the Wuhan outbreak was finally contained in early 2020, 4.4% of Wuhanites had contracted COVID. So isn’t it surprising that 0/67 of the former patients who the researchers tested were had antibodies to COVID? The chance that 67 randomly-selected people in a population with 4.4% prevalence rate are all negative is only about 5%. Is this evidence of foul play? No. See the conclusions section of the report, which said: “The use of retrospective serological testing so long after the illness cannot be relied on to exclude the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of the presenting illness, given the possible drop in SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody over time and the associated reduced sensitivity of commercial assays”. You have a lot of COVID antibodies just after getting COVID. By a year or so afterwards, you might not have enough to detect. So it’s not surprising the WHO study didn’t detect any. Why did they even try looking for antibodies? There seem to be two reasons not to: first, they should have known antibodies would decay after a year. Second, even if some of them did have antibodies, how would we know they weren’t just infected in spring 2020 like everyone else? They don’t say. My guess: antibody decay is very variable. Some people’s antibodies might last more than a year. So if they found that way more than 4.4% of people had antibodies, that would be surprising and suggest that most of them had had COVID in autumn 2019. But instead they found that nobody had antibodies, which is consistent with one or two of them getting sick when everyone else got sick, and having their antibodies decay at the normal rate. But also, I think the antibodies were just intended to supplement the clinical review, and not be a very important part of their determination. I think this study is moderately strong evidence that there wasn’t much COVID going around before December 2019. Doctors looked for cases, they winnowed them down into the cases that looked most like COVID, but when they examined those cases closely, they didn’t look enough like COVID to be interesting. I don’t think the antibody tests add or subtract much from this assessment. I would be fine if someone else said they don’t think the WHO report provides much evidence either way. The main thing I want to insist on is that there’s no conspiracy to hide 92 previously-undiscovered cases. They searched really hard for potential cases, they subjected the most plausible candidates for further review, and then they decided those ones were not, in fact, COVID. (You can read all of this here. It’s not a very good description and I’d be interested if someone has a more thorough writeup of the research.) This was just one of many efforts that researchers made to try to identify pre-December-2020 COVID cases. For example, 30,000 people donated blood in autumn 2019, and the hospitals still had most of it. So they tested the blood samples for COVID antibodies and didn’t find any. I don’t think antibodies decay in stored blood samples (I might be wrong). There are 12 million people in Wuhan, so if even a few hundred people had COVID during that time, one of them should have turned up. None of them did. Finally, during COVID’s officially-recognized existence, its numbers doubled about once every 3.5 days. Again, if COVID existed a month earlier than previously believed, then it would be 256x more common than expected. This would be hard to miss! Nobody found evidence from excess mortality that COVID was 256x more common than expected. I’m using the version of the doubling time argument because it’s simple enough for me to understand, and I don’t have to worry about anyone trying to hide something in their complex model. It’s not exactly true, but it’s true enough to rule out COVID starting much before November 2019. If you want the fancy official version, it’s in Pekar 2021 and looks like this: This alone isn’t fatal to lab leak. It’s perfectly possible for the lab to leak (let’s say) November 5th, the virus spreads a bit, and then a month later someone goes to the wet market, coughs on a vendor, and starts the officially recognized pandemic. But if that were true, you’d expect (let’s say) 30 cases by early December. Let’s say the wet market vendor was exactly Case # 30. She infected the other wet market vendors, starting a pandemic with an obvious center at the wet market and lots of infected wet market vendors and patrons. What about Case # 29? If they were (let’s say) a barista, how come they didn’t infect people at their coffee shop? How come there wasn’t a second obvious cluster radiating out from a coffee shop, lots of coffee-shop-linked cases, etc? How come there weren’t 30 equally-sized clusters? In order to avoid this, you either need to claim that the wet market was a perfect superspreader location, or that the pattern with lots of cases in the wet market and few-to-none anywhere else was a result of ascertainment bias. Saar made both those arguments during the debate, but I thought Peter rebutted them effectively. 1.4: COVID in Brazilian wastewater Nicholas Halden (blog) writes: What should we make of this study, which found the presence of covid in Brazilian wastewater in late 2019? Consider the doubling times. The study says that scientists working in late 2020 found COVID in samples of Brazilian wastewater from November 27, 2019. This was long before the first detected case of transmission in Brazil on March 13, 2020. Between November 27, 2019 and March 13, 2020 is about 16 weeks, so 32 COVID doubling times. 32 doubling times with no lockdown is enough time for COVID to infect every single person in Brazil. If COVID had infected everyone in Brazil before the first recognized case, we would have noticed. (again, COVID doubling time isn’t exactly invariably 3.5 days, but here we’re talking about numbers big enough that the exact details don’t matter very much) So if COVID was in Brazil on November 27, it must have fizzled out instead of going pandemic. How likely is that? If one person had COVID, it’s not too unlikely - not all COVID cases transmit it forward. If (let’s say) twenty people had COVID, it’s very unlikely - at that point, the law of large numbers takes over; in a freak coincidence, every single patient would have to fail to infect anyone else. So almost certainly fewer than 20 people in Brazil had COVID in November 27. So which is more likely - that somehow 20 people had COVID long before the virus was officially detected, and on a totally different continent, yet somehow a scientist looking through wastewater found the water from exactly those people and managed to detect the virus? Or that there was a sampling error, which happens all the time in these kinds of things? Peter wrote a blog post on some of these issues. He found that there were positive tests from wastewater samples as early as March 2019, which doesn’t fit anyone’s timeline, including lab leakers’. And most of these positives (including the Brazilian sample) contained later strains of the virus with mutations it picked up late in 2020. So these were almost certainly false positives from contamination. 1.5: Biorealism’s 16 arguments Biorealism has a list of sixteen arguments, which he liked so much that he posted it three times in the ACX comments, twice on Less Wrong, twice on Manifold, and about a dozen times on Twitter under multiple account names. Some posts were slightly different from others, but a typical version is: Importantly, Miller incorrectly claimed the N501Y mutation would result from passage in hACE2 mice (mixed them up with BALB/c mice). The major papers Miller relied on have been seriously challenged since the debate. See Stoyan and Chiu (2024), Weissman (2024), Bloom (2023) and Lv et al (2024). Overall the circumstantial evidence makes lab v plausible: Peter admitted getting this wrong during the debate. I think this very minor point about mice mutations was approximately his only mistake in 15 hours of debating, and he admitted it as soon as he noticed. Biorealism somehow heard about this (obviously not through watching the debate, as we’ll see in a moment), then left about 20-30 comments starting with it, under various accounts, on various platforms, as if it somehow discredited Peter. This is making me somewhat less charitable to him and his 16 arguments than I would be otherwise. 1. Chinese researchers Botao & Lei Xiao observed lab origin was likely given the nearest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were far from Wuhan. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sampled SARS-related bat coronaviruses where the nearest relatives are found in Yunnan, Laos and Vietnam ~1500km away. They refuse to share their records. The ancestral viruses of SARS were found equally far from where SARS spilled over into humans, so we know it’s possible (and likely) for viruses to travel that far. 2. Patrick Berche, DG at Institut Pasteur in Lille 2014-18, notes you would expect secondary outbreaks if it arose via the live animal trade. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10234839/ There are constant outbreaks of weird coronaviruses in animal handlers. See eg this paper, which estimates about 60,000 of these per year. None of these ever go anywhere, because the farmers are in rural areas that aren’t dense enough to sustain a high R0, and the epidemic fizzles out after a single digit number of cases. Any early outbreaks of COVID would have vanished into this long and mostly unnoticed list. 3. Molecular data: Only sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site. Well adapted to human ACE2 cells. Low genetic diversity indicating a lack of prior circulation (Berche 2023). Restriction site SARS-CoV-2 BsaI/BsmBI restriction map falls neatly within the ideal range for a reverse genetics system and used previously at WIV and UNC. Ngram analysis of the codon usage per Professor Louis Nemzer https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1667232580255490053?t=IJgitS5cw364ioclzVWxaA&s=19 The SARS2 backbone is very low in CG and CpG. While the 12-nt insert that gives it the FCS is extremely high in both. Almost as if it was some kind of chimera of a consensus sequence and a codon-optimized polybasic cleavage site? https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1752800486837678377?t=EpIRgyybJVaPgeMP5xdstA&s=19 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0?fbclid=IwAR1HMUMtLIAFOFppVasQDeoIAYrVhP8j4YoPO4wnaTOUiKLsllZl_oKryOw Most of this was discussed extensively in the second session of the debate, which I recommend. The CGG-CGG arginine codon usage is particularly unusual but used in synthetic biology. I asked a synthetic biologist about this. He said: » “Nope. I would literally never do this if I was designing a small insert (maybe I wouldn't notice if it happened by chance with ~1 in 25 odds in a naive codon optimization algorithm as part of a larger sequence). High GC% is bad. Tandem repeat is worse. Several other perfectly fine arginine codons. And I wouldn't engineer a viral genome using human codon usage. An engineer would not do it.” 4. DEFUSE full proposal: virus 20% different from SARS1, consensus seq assembled with 6 segments, without disrupting coding seq, BsmBI order, FCS. SARS2: 20% different than SARS1, 6 evenly spaced fragments w BsmBI and BsaI restriction sites, FCS. Jesse Bloom, Jack Nunberg, Robert Townley, Alexandre Hassanin have observed this workflow could have lead to SARS-CoV-2. Work often begins before funding sought or goes ahead anyway. Re: 4 - Also scattered across second section of debate, also not going to retread 5. Market cases were all lineage B. Lv et al (2024) indicates there was a single point of emergence and A came before B. So market cases not the primary cases. See also Bloom (2021), Kumar et al (2022). Peter Ben Embarek said there were likely already thousands of cases in Wuhan in December 2019.https://t.co/50kFV9zSb6 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/34398234/ https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/10/2719/6553661 There was a Lineage A sample in the market, lab leak proponents just try to ignore/dismiss/conspiracize it away. The first two known Lineage A cases were very close to the market. Lv (is this even a real name? It sounds like Roman numeral? But I guess that’s what you expect in a country ruled by someone named Xi) found some weird COVID variants in Shanghai that might or might not mean anything; you can see some discussion of the implications here, but I don’t think they’re strong evidence either way. If A was first, it means some really weird stuff coincidences have to happen to give us the spread rates and genetic clock data we get, but they’re not necessarily weirder in the zoonosis hypothesis than the lab leak one. The claim that there were “thousands of cases in Wuhan in December 2019” is very easy to disprove by doubling rate arguments like the one above, by the blood bank study mentioned above, by the WHO’s failed case search, and by many other lines of argument. 6. Evidence for lineage A in the market is based on a low quality sample according to Liu et. al. (2023). I really think lab leakers need to decide whether they think China is a sinister actor trying to cover up the truth, or whether they should trust every offhand comment by Chinese government officials as gospel. Dr. Liu doesn’t explain in what sense he thinks the Lineage A sample is “low-quality”, and the Western scientists who I asked about this said they didn’t understand this complaint and that the sample was fine. A Western team re-analyzing the same sample describes it as “conclusively contain[ing] Lineage A.” I think most lab leakers have switched from trying to deny the genetics to claiming that this was “contamination”, which also doesn’t make sense (the sample is genetically very early). Note that aside from this sample, the first two Lineage A cases discovered were both very close to the wet market. 7. Bloom (2023) shows market samples do not support market origin. There is also no evidence of transmission in the claimed susceptible animals elsewhere. https://academic.oup.com/ve/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ve/vead089/7504441 Discussed extensively in my article as well as the first section of the debate. 8. Lineage A and B only two mutations apart. François Ballox, Bloom and Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo note this is unlikely to reflect two separate animal spillovers as opposed to incomplete case ascertainment of human to human transmission (Bloom 2021). Discussed extensively in my article as well as the first section of the debate. 9. Sampling bias. George Gao, Chinese CDC head at the time, acknowledged to the BBC stating they may have focused too much on and around the market and missed cases on the other side of the city. David Bahry outlines the documented bias. Michael Weissman has shown this mathematically. https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23 https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556 Re: Dr. Gao, see above comment about Chinese officials. See the section Ascertainment Bias below for why I disagree with this specific claim, which also addresses the Michael Weissman argument. 10. Spatial statistics experts show the Worobey claim the market was the early epicentre was flawed. https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954 Re: 10 - See Confirmation Of The Centrality Of The Huanan Market Among Early COVID-19 Cases, a response to the paper you cite: The centrality of Wuhan's Huanan market in maps of December 2019 COVID-19 case residential locations, established by Worobey et al. (2022a), has recently been challenged by Stoyan and Chiu (2024, SC2024). SC2024 proposed a statistical test based on the premise that the measure of central tendency (hereafter, "centre") of a sample of case locations must coincide with the exact point from which local transmission began. Here we show that this premise is erroneous. SC2024 put forward two alternative centres (centroid and mode) to the centre-point which was used by Worobey et al. for some analyses, and proposed a bootstrapping method, based on their premise, to test whether a particular location is consistent with it being the point source of transmission. We show that SC2024's concerns about the use of centre-points are inconsequential, and that use of centroids for these data is inadvisable. The mode is an appropriate, even optimal, choice as centre; however, contrary to SC2024's results, we demonstrate that with proper implementation of their methods, the mode falls at the entrance of a parking lot at the market itself, and the 95% confidence region around the mode includes the market. Thus, the market cannot be rejected as central even by SC2024's overly stringent statistical test. I think this response is pretty strong. In one analysis, they show that even though the other paper’s methodology is worse than theirs, if you apply it correctly (instead of inappropriately excluding various cases like the paper’s authors did), the center of all early cases in Hubei province lands on the wet market parking lot. In another analysis, they show that the other paper’s recommended tests wouldn’t have correctly pointed to the offending water pump in the famous John Snow cholera outbreak, but theirs would have. Still, I think it’s useful to supplement fancy statistics with normal common sense, so I recommend just looking at the map of early cases: …and deciding whether you think the assumptions behind a specific statistical test are likely to debunk the idea that cases are centered around the wet market. 11. Wuhan used as a control for a 2015 serological study on SARS-related bat coronaviruses due to its urban location. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ I don’t know why this point is supposed to matter. If you mean that Wuhan isn’t directly exposed to bats, nobody ever said it was. The zoonotic theory is that wildlife carted in from other areas of China started the pandemic in the wet market. 12. Superspreader events also seen at wet markets in Beijing and Singapore (Xinfadi and Jurong). This was discussed very extensively in the debates, both in section 1 and section 3. Wet markets weren’t “superspreader locations” - in fact, the disease spread no more quickly there than anywhere else. They were the first place in those cities that the pandemic started, due to contaminated animal products. If anything, this supports zoonosis. See also my discussion with Saar on this point below. 13. WIV refuse to share their records with NIH who terminated subaward in 2022. Wider suspension over biosafety concerns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling Although WIV has not been especially forthcoming, some of their databases were leaked in various ways and showed that they did not have any viruses capable of transforming into COVID. 14. PLA involvement at WIV and MERS research prior to SARS-COV-2. MERS features several similarities with SARS-CoV-2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022351/ I can’t even tell what conspiracy theory you’re trying to propose with this one; if you spell it out I can try to explain why it might be false. 15. SARS1 leaked several times and SARS-COV-2 has leaked from a BSL-3 lab in Taiwan. Agreed that SARS leaked several times. It also spilled over from animals several times. During the debate, a lab leak rate of once per lab per 500 years was proposed (everyone agreed to steelman this by 10x for WIV numbers); I would be interested to know whether anything about the study of SARS challenges that number. 16. Unpublished infectious clone identified from Wuhan contradicting arguments such reverse genetics systems would be published. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v1.full I asked some scientists about this paper and here’s what they told me. Wuhan University sequenced some rice. In the middle of the sequence, there’s an unexpected sequence from a common coronavirus, HKU4. The most likely explanation is that someone else in Wuhan was working on the coronavirus and there was cross-contamination. Plausibly this is Wuhan Institute of Virology, who is known to work with coronaviruses. This is cool detective work, but it’s not clear what it’s supposed to prove. I think some lab leakers are using it to prove that WIV can do reverse genetics, but they admitted this already in a published paper so that’s not too helpful. I think others are using it to prove WIV had “secret viruses” in their catalogue, but the rice virus wasn’t secret, it was HKU4, which is common and which WIV has already published papers about. 1.6: DrJayChou’s 7 Arguments Once again, I cannot stress enough how much better a take you might have on this debate if you watch it. “The first known case predates the market outbreak by a month” - this is not the consensus position. I cannot say for sure what Dr. Chou means by this, but I suspect he’s referring to one of the many claims to this effect that Peter effectively debunked during the debate (Connor Reed, Mr. Chen, the 92 cases, Brazil, etc).

Inline links: here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!__d7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F32718adb-32da-4b2f-8440-2fdfa71ec389_592x278.png, Giles Demaneuf, here, Pekar 2021, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yRJv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcd7daff-43d3-416f-8896-173392bf3438_720x312.webp, blog, writes, this study, wrote a blog post on some of these issues, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10234839/, this paper, https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1667232580255490053?t=IJgitS5cw364ioclzVWxaA&s=19, https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1752800486837678377?t=EpIRgyybJVaPgeMP5xdstA&s=19, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0?fbclid=IwAR1HMUMtLIAFOFppVasQDeoIAYrVhP8j4YoPO4wnaTOUiKLsllZl_oKryOw, https://t.co/50kFV9zSb6, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/34398234/, https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/10/2719/6553661, here, describes it as, https://academic.oup.com/ve/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ve/vead089/7504441, https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23, https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556, https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954, Confirmation Of The Centrality Of The Huanan Market Among Early COVID-19 Cases, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BNAm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fffd4cddb-6e3e-41f5-8ef6-ec0b27bec600_626x426.webp, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022351/, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v1.full, a published paper, has already published papers about, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yA9U!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F467dd304-190a-4437-8920-d498c433dffb_1600x960.jpeg

My understanding of the situation: the first officially-confirmed case of COVID started December 11, 2019. Later in the pandemic, in 2021, the World Health Organization wanted to figure out if that was really the first, or whether there had been earlier ones. They scoured Chinese hospital records for illnesses that might be COVID during the two months before the official discovery (ie early October to early December) In particular, they asked Wuhan hospitals for records of any cases of fever, flu, respiratory illness, and pneumonia. The hospital gave them 76,253 cases, because China is big and flu is common. This was slightly more cases than usual, but there was a normal flu spreading too, so the researchers didn’t find this very compelling. Then they narrowed these cases down to those that were “clinically compatible” with COVID, and ended up with 92. Then they went over those 92 more carefully, including “review by the external multidisciplinary clinical team” and blood draws from the former patients. They were able to track down 67 of the 92. The clinical team decided none of those 92 cases really resembled COVID, and the blood draws were all negative. They published this as the results of their study: The retrospective search for cases compatible with COVID-19 illness identified 76 253 episodes with one of four indicator conditions. A rise in one of these conditions, [acute respiratory illness] (as well as [flu-like illness] and fever), was seen in this group of individuals in the over-60-year age group in early December. The clinical assessment of the 76,253 individuals revealed 92 cases clinically compatible with COVID-19. It is possible that the application of stringent clinical criteria, resulting in the identification of only 92 clinically compatible cases, may have decreased the possibility of identifying a group or groups of cases with milder illness. All the 92 cases were rejected as cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection on further clinical review. None of these cases (where blood could be obtained) was positive on SARS-CoV-2 serological testing carried out more than 12 months later. The use of retrospective serological testing so long after the illness cannot be relied on to exclude the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of the presenting illness, given the possible drop in SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody over time and the associated reduced sensitivity of commercial assays. The possibility that earlier transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection was occurring in this community cannot be excluded on the basis of this evidence. In other words “we looked for early COVID, we didn’t find any, but we can’t promise we didn’t miss anything”. On Twitter, Giles Demaneuf makes an interesting point. The researchers took the samples in 2021, when China was in Zero COVID. When the Wuhan outbreak was finally contained in early 2020, 4.4% of Wuhanites had contracted COVID. So isn’t it surprising that 0/67 of the former patients who the researchers tested were had antibodies to COVID? The chance that 67 randomly-selected people in a population with 4.4% prevalence rate are all negative is only about 5%. Is this evidence of foul play? No. See the conclusions section of the report, which said: “The use of retrospective serological testing so long after the illness cannot be relied on to exclude the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 infection at the time of the presenting illness, given the possible drop in SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody over time and the associated reduced sensitivity of commercial assays”. You have a lot of COVID antibodies just after getting COVID. By a year or so afterwards, you might not have enough to detect. So it’s not surprising the WHO study didn’t detect any. Why did they even try looking for antibodies? There seem to be two reasons not to: first, they should have known antibodies would decay after a year. Second, even if some of them did have antibodies, how would we know they weren’t just infected in spring 2020 like everyone else? They don’t say. My guess: antibody decay is very variable. Some people’s antibodies might last more than a year. So if they found that way more than 4.4% of people had antibodies, that would be surprising and suggest that most of them had had COVID in autumn 2019. But instead they found that nobody had antibodies, which is consistent with one or two of them getting sick when everyone else got sick, and having their antibodies decay at the normal rate. But also, I think the antibodies were just intended to supplement the clinical review, and not be a very important part of their determination. I think this study is moderately strong evidence that there wasn’t much COVID going around before December 2019. Doctors looked for cases, they winnowed them down into the cases that looked most like COVID, but when they examined those cases closely, they didn’t look enough like COVID to be interesting. I don’t think the antibody tests add or subtract much from this assessment. I would be fine if someone else said they don’t think the WHO report provides much evidence either way. The main thing I want to insist on is that there’s no conspiracy to hide 92 previously-undiscovered cases. They searched really hard for potential cases, they subjected the most plausible candidates for further review, and then they decided those ones were not, in fact, COVID. (You can read all of this here. It’s not a very good description and I’d be interested if someone has a more thorough writeup of the research.) This was just one of many efforts that researchers made to try to identify pre-December-2020 COVID cases. For example, 30,000 people donated blood in autumn 2019, and the hospitals still had most of it. So they tested the blood samples for COVID antibodies and didn’t find any. I don’t think antibodies decay in stored blood samples (I might be wrong). There are 12 million people in Wuhan, so if even a few hundred people had COVID during that time, one of them should have turned up. None of them did. Finally, during COVID’s officially-recognized existence, its numbers doubled about once every 3.5 days. Again, if COVID existed a month earlier than previously believed, then it would be 256x more common than expected. This would be hard to miss! Nobody found evidence from excess mortality that COVID was 256x more common than expected. I’m using the version of the doubling time argument because it’s simple enough for me to understand, and I don’t have to worry about anyone trying to hide something in their complex model. It’s not exactly true, but it’s true enough to rule out COVID starting much before November 2019. If you want the fancy official version, it’s in Pekar 2021 and looks like this: This alone isn’t fatal to lab leak. It’s perfectly possible for the lab to leak (let’s say) November 5th, the virus spreads a bit, and then a month later someone goes to the wet market, coughs on a vendor, and starts the officially recognized pandemic. But if that were true, you’d expect (let’s say) 30 cases by early December. Let’s say the wet market vendor was exactly Case # 30. She infected the other wet market vendors, starting a pandemic with an obvious center at the wet market and lots of infected wet market vendors and patrons. What about Case # 29? If they were (let’s say) a barista, how come they didn’t infect people at their coffee shop? How come there wasn’t a second obvious cluster radiating out from a coffee shop, lots of coffee-shop-linked cases, etc? How come there weren’t 30 equally-sized clusters? In order to avoid this, you either need to claim that the wet market was a perfect superspreader location, or that the pattern with lots of cases in the wet market and few-to-none anywhere else was a result of ascertainment bias. Saar made both those arguments during the debate, but I thought Peter rebutted them effectively. 1.4: COVID in Brazilian wastewater Nicholas Halden (blog) writes: What should we make of this study, which found the presence of covid in Brazilian wastewater in late 2019? Consider the doubling times. The study says that scientists working in late 2020 found COVID in samples of Brazilian wastewater from November 27, 2019. This was long before the first detected case of transmission in Brazil on March 13, 2020. Between November 27, 2019 and March 13, 2020 is about 16 weeks, so 32 COVID doubling times. 32 doubling times with no lockdown is enough time for COVID to infect every single person in Brazil. If COVID had infected everyone in Brazil before the first recognized case, we would have noticed. (again, COVID doubling time isn’t exactly invariably 3.5 days, but here we’re talking about numbers big enough that the exact details don’t matter very much) So if COVID was in Brazil on November 27, it must have fizzled out instead of going pandemic. How likely is that? If one person had COVID, it’s not too unlikely - not all COVID cases transmit it forward. If (let’s say) twenty people had COVID, it’s very unlikely - at that point, the law of large numbers takes over; in a freak coincidence, every single patient would have to fail to infect anyone else. So almost certainly fewer than 20 people in Brazil had COVID in November 27. So which is more likely - that somehow 20 people had COVID long before the virus was officially detected, and on a totally different continent, yet somehow a scientist looking through wastewater found the water from exactly those people and managed to detect the virus? Or that there was a sampling error, which happens all the time in these kinds of things? Peter wrote a blog post on some of these issues. He found that there were positive tests from wastewater samples as early as March 2019, which doesn’t fit anyone’s timeline, including lab leakers’. And most of these positives (including the Brazilian sample) contained later strains of the virus with mutations it picked up late in 2020. So these were almost certainly false positives from contamination. 1.5: Biorealism’s 16 arguments Biorealism has a list of sixteen arguments, which he liked so much that he posted it three times in the ACX comments, twice on Less Wrong, twice on Manifold, and about a dozen times on Twitter under multiple account names. Some posts were slightly different from others, but a typical version is: Importantly, Miller incorrectly claimed the N501Y mutation would result from passage in hACE2 mice (mixed them up with BALB/c mice). The major papers Miller relied on have been seriously challenged since the debate. See Stoyan and Chiu (2024), Weissman (2024), Bloom (2023) and Lv et al (2024). Overall the circumstantial evidence makes lab v plausible: Peter admitted getting this wrong during the debate. I think this very minor point about mice mutations was approximately his only mistake in 15 hours of debating, and he admitted it as soon as he noticed. Biorealism somehow heard about this (obviously not through watching the debate, as we’ll see in a moment), then left about 20-30 comments starting with it, under various accounts, on various platforms, as if it somehow discredited Peter. This is making me somewhat less charitable to him and his 16 arguments than I would be otherwise. 1. Chinese researchers Botao & Lei Xiao observed lab origin was likely given the nearest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were far from Wuhan. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sampled SARS-related bat coronaviruses where the nearest relatives are found in Yunnan, Laos and Vietnam ~1500km away. They refuse to share their records. The ancestral viruses of SARS were found equally far from where SARS spilled over into humans, so we know it’s possible (and likely) for viruses to travel that far. 2. Patrick Berche, DG at Institut Pasteur in Lille 2014-18, notes you would expect secondary outbreaks if it arose via the live animal trade. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10234839/ There are constant outbreaks of weird coronaviruses in animal handlers. See eg this paper, which estimates about 60,000 of these per year. None of these ever go anywhere, because the farmers are in rural areas that aren’t dense enough to sustain a high R0, and the epidemic fizzles out after a single digit number of cases. Any early outbreaks of COVID would have vanished into this long and mostly unnoticed list. 3. Molecular data: Only sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site. Well adapted to human ACE2 cells. Low genetic diversity indicating a lack of prior circulation (Berche 2023). Restriction site SARS-CoV-2 BsaI/BsmBI restriction map falls neatly within the ideal range for a reverse genetics system and used previously at WIV and UNC. Ngram analysis of the codon usage per Professor Louis Nemzer https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1667232580255490053?t=IJgitS5cw364ioclzVWxaA&s=19 The SARS2 backbone is very low in CG and CpG. While the 12-nt insert that gives it the FCS is extremely high in both. Almost as if it was some kind of chimera of a consensus sequence and a codon-optimized polybasic cleavage site? https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1752800486837678377?t=EpIRgyybJVaPgeMP5xdstA&s=19 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0?fbclid=IwAR1HMUMtLIAFOFppVasQDeoIAYrVhP8j4YoPO4wnaTOUiKLsllZl_oKryOw Most of this was discussed extensively in the second session of the debate, which I recommend. The CGG-CGG arginine codon usage is particularly unusual but used in synthetic biology. I asked a synthetic biologist about this. He said: » “Nope. I would literally never do this if I was designing a small insert (maybe I wouldn't notice if it happened by chance with ~1 in 25 odds in a naive codon optimization algorithm as part of a larger sequence). High GC% is bad. Tandem repeat is worse. Several other perfectly fine arginine codons. And I wouldn't engineer a viral genome using human codon usage. An engineer would not do it.” 4. DEFUSE full proposal: virus 20% different from SARS1, consensus seq assembled with 6 segments, without disrupting coding seq, BsmBI order, FCS. SARS2: 20% different than SARS1, 6 evenly spaced fragments w BsmBI and BsaI restriction sites, FCS. Jesse Bloom, Jack Nunberg, Robert Townley, Alexandre Hassanin have observed this workflow could have lead to SARS-CoV-2. Work often begins before funding sought or goes ahead anyway. Re: 4 - Also scattered across second section of debate, also not going to retread 5. Market cases were all lineage B. Lv et al (2024) indicates there was a single point of emergence and A came before B. So market cases not the primary cases. See also Bloom (2021), Kumar et al (2022). Peter Ben Embarek said there were likely already thousands of cases in Wuhan in December 2019.https://t.co/50kFV9zSb6 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/34398234/ https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/10/2719/6553661 There was a Lineage A sample in the market, lab leak proponents just try to ignore/dismiss/conspiracize it away. The first two known Lineage A cases were very close to the market. Lv (is this even a real name? It sounds like Roman numeral? But I guess that’s what you expect in a country ruled by someone named Xi) found some weird COVID variants in Shanghai that might or might not mean anything; you can see some discussion of the implications here, but I don’t think they’re strong evidence either way. If A was first, it means some really weird stuff coincidences have to happen to give us the spread rates and genetic clock data we get, but they’re not necessarily weirder in the zoonosis hypothesis than the lab leak one. The claim that there were “thousands of cases in Wuhan in December 2019” is very easy to disprove by doubling rate arguments like the one above, by the blood bank study mentioned above, by the WHO’s failed case search, and by many other lines of argument. 6. Evidence for lineage A in the market is based on a low quality sample according to Liu et. al. (2023). I really think lab leakers need to decide whether they think China is a sinister actor trying to cover up the truth, or whether they should trust every offhand comment by Chinese government officials as gospel. Dr. Liu doesn’t explain in what sense he thinks the Lineage A sample is “low-quality”, and the Western scientists who I asked about this said they didn’t understand this complaint and that the sample was fine. A Western team re-analyzing the same sample describes it as “conclusively contain[ing] Lineage A.” I think most lab leakers have switched from trying to deny the genetics to claiming that this was “contamination”, which also doesn’t make sense (the sample is genetically very early). Note that aside from this sample, the first two Lineage A cases discovered were both very close to the wet market. 7. Bloom (2023) shows market samples do not support market origin. There is also no evidence of transmission in the claimed susceptible animals elsewhere. https://academic.oup.com/ve/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ve/vead089/7504441 Discussed extensively in my article as well as the first section of the debate. 8. Lineage A and B only two mutations apart. François Ballox, Bloom and Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo note this is unlikely to reflect two separate animal spillovers as opposed to incomplete case ascertainment of human to human transmission (Bloom 2021). Discussed extensively in my article as well as the first section of the debate. 9. Sampling bias. George Gao, Chinese CDC head at the time, acknowledged to the BBC stating they may have focused too much on and around the market and missed cases on the other side of the city. David Bahry outlines the documented bias. Michael Weissman has shown this mathematically. https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23 https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556 Re: Dr. Gao, see above comment about Chinese officials. See the section Ascertainment Bias below for why I disagree with this specific claim, which also addresses the Michael Weissman argument. 10. Spatial statistics experts show the Worobey claim the market was the early epicentre was flawed. https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954 Re: 10 - See Confirmation Of The Centrality Of The Huanan Market Among Early COVID-19 Cases, a response to the paper you cite: The centrality of Wuhan's Huanan market in maps of December 2019 COVID-19 case residential locations, established by Worobey et al. (2022a), has recently been challenged by Stoyan and Chiu (2024, SC2024). SC2024 proposed a statistical test based on the premise that the measure of central tendency (hereafter, "centre") of a sample of case locations must coincide with the exact point from which local transmission began. Here we show that this premise is erroneous. SC2024 put forward two alternative centres (centroid and mode) to the centre-point which was used by Worobey et al. for some analyses, and proposed a bootstrapping method, based on their premise, to test whether a particular location is consistent with it being the point source of transmission. We show that SC2024's concerns about the use of centre-points are inconsequential, and that use of centroids for these data is inadvisable. The mode is an appropriate, even optimal, choice as centre; however, contrary to SC2024's results, we demonstrate that with proper implementation of their methods, the mode falls at the entrance of a parking lot at the market itself, and the 95% confidence region around the mode includes the market. Thus, the market cannot be rejected as central even by SC2024's overly stringent statistical test. I think this response is pretty strong. In one analysis, they show that even though the other paper’s methodology is worse than theirs, if you apply it correctly (instead of inappropriately excluding various cases like the paper’s authors did), the center of all early cases in Hubei province lands on the wet market parking lot. In another analysis, they show that the other paper’s recommended tests wouldn’t have correctly pointed to the offending water pump in the famous John Snow cholera outbreak, but theirs would have. Still, I think it’s useful to supplement fancy statistics with normal common sense, so I recommend just looking at the map of early cases: …and deciding whether you think the assumptions behind a specific statistical test are likely to debunk the idea that cases are centered around the wet market. 11. Wuhan used as a control for a 2015 serological study on SARS-related bat coronaviruses due to its urban location. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ I don’t know why this point is supposed to matter. If you mean that Wuhan isn’t directly exposed to bats, nobody ever said it was. The zoonotic theory is that wildlife carted in from other areas of China started the pandemic in the wet market. 12. Superspreader events also seen at wet markets in Beijing and Singapore (Xinfadi and Jurong). This was discussed very extensively in the debates, both in section 1 and section 3. Wet markets weren’t “superspreader locations” - in fact, the disease spread no more quickly there than anywhere else. They were the first place in those cities that the pandemic started, due to contaminated animal products. If anything, this supports zoonosis. See also my discussion with Saar on this point below. 13. WIV refuse to share their records with NIH who terminated subaward in 2022. Wider suspension over biosafety concerns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling Although WIV has not been especially forthcoming, some of their databases were leaked in various ways and showed that they did not have any viruses capable of transforming into COVID. 14. PLA involvement at WIV and MERS research prior to SARS-COV-2. MERS features several similarities with SARS-CoV-2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022351/ I can’t even tell what conspiracy theory you’re trying to propose with this one; if you spell it out I can try to explain why it might be false. 15. SARS1 leaked several times and SARS-COV-2 has leaked from a BSL-3 lab in Taiwan. Agreed that SARS leaked several times. It also spilled over from animals several times. During the debate, a lab leak rate of once per lab per 500 years was proposed (everyone agreed to steelman this by 10x for WIV numbers); I would be interested to know whether anything about the study of SARS challenges that number. 16. Unpublished infectious clone identified from Wuhan contradicting arguments such reverse genetics systems would be published. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v1.full I asked some scientists about this paper and here’s what they told me. Wuhan University sequenced some rice. In the middle of the sequence, there’s an unexpected sequence from a common coronavirus, HKU4. The most likely explanation is that someone else in Wuhan was working on the coronavirus and there was cross-contamination. Plausibly this is Wuhan Institute of Virology, who is known to work with coronaviruses. This is cool detective work, but it’s not clear what it’s supposed to prove. I think some lab leakers are using it to prove that WIV can do reverse genetics, but they admitted this already in a published paper so that’s not too helpful. I think others are using it to prove WIV had “secret viruses” in their catalogue, but the rice virus wasn’t secret, it was HKU4, which is common and which WIV has already published papers about. 1.6: DrJayChou’s 7 Arguments Once again, I cannot stress enough how much better a take you might have on this debate if you watch it. “The first known case predates the market outbreak by a month” - this is not the consensus position. I cannot say for sure what Dr. Chou means by this, but I suspect he’s referring to one of the many claims to this effect that Peter effectively debunked during the debate (Connor Reed, Mr. Chen, the 92 cases, Brazil, etc).

Inline links: Giles Demaneuf, here, Pekar 2021, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yRJv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcd7daff-43d3-416f-8896-173392bf3438_720x312.webp, blog, writes, this study, wrote a blog post on some of these issues, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10234839/, this paper, https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1667232580255490053?t=IJgitS5cw364ioclzVWxaA&s=19, https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1752800486837678377?t=EpIRgyybJVaPgeMP5xdstA&s=19, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0?fbclid=IwAR1HMUMtLIAFOFppVasQDeoIAYrVhP8j4YoPO4wnaTOUiKLsllZl_oKryOw, https://t.co/50kFV9zSb6, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/34398234/, https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/10/2719/6553661, here, describes it as, https://academic.oup.com/ve/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ve/vead089/7504441, https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23, https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556, https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954, Confirmation Of The Centrality Of The Huanan Market Among Early COVID-19 Cases, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BNAm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fffd4cddb-6e3e-41f5-8ef6-ec0b27bec600_626x426.webp, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022351/, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v1.full, a published paper, has already published papers about, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yA9U!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F467dd304-190a-4437-8920-d498c433dffb_1600x960.jpeg

This alone isn’t fatal to lab leak. It’s perfectly possible for the lab to leak (let’s say) November 5th, the virus spreads a bit, and then a month later someone goes to the wet market, coughs on a vendor, and starts the officially recognized pandemic. But if that were true, you’d expect (let’s say) 30 cases by early December. Let’s say the wet market vendor was exactly Case # 30. She infected the other wet market vendors, starting a pandemic with an obvious center at the wet market and lots of infected wet market vendors and patrons. What about Case # 29? If they were (let’s say) a barista, how come they didn’t infect people at their coffee shop? How come there wasn’t a second obvious cluster radiating out from a coffee shop, lots of coffee-shop-linked cases, etc? How come there weren’t 30 equally-sized clusters? In order to avoid this, you either need to claim that the wet market was a perfect superspreader location, or that the pattern with lots of cases in the wet market and few-to-none anywhere else was a result of ascertainment bias. Saar made both those arguments during the debate, but I thought Peter rebutted them effectively. 1.4: COVID in Brazilian wastewater Nicholas Halden (blog) writes: What should we make of this study, which found the presence of covid in Brazilian wastewater in late 2019? Consider the doubling times. The study says that scientists working in late 2020 found COVID in samples of Brazilian wastewater from November 27, 2019. This was long before the first detected case of transmission in Brazil on March 13, 2020. Between November 27, 2019 and March 13, 2020 is about 16 weeks, so 32 COVID doubling times. 32 doubling times with no lockdown is enough time for COVID to infect every single person in Brazil. If COVID had infected everyone in Brazil before the first recognized case, we would have noticed. (again, COVID doubling time isn’t exactly invariably 3.5 days, but here we’re talking about numbers big enough that the exact details don’t matter very much) So if COVID was in Brazil on November 27, it must have fizzled out instead of going pandemic. How likely is that? If one person had COVID, it’s not too unlikely - not all COVID cases transmit it forward. If (let’s say) twenty people had COVID, it’s very unlikely - at that point, the law of large numbers takes over; in a freak coincidence, every single patient would have to fail to infect anyone else. So almost certainly fewer than 20 people in Brazil had COVID in November 27. So which is more likely - that somehow 20 people had COVID long before the virus was officially detected, and on a totally different continent, yet somehow a scientist looking through wastewater found the water from exactly those people and managed to detect the virus? Or that there was a sampling error, which happens all the time in these kinds of things? Peter wrote a blog post on some of these issues. He found that there were positive tests from wastewater samples as early as March 2019, which doesn’t fit anyone’s timeline, including lab leakers’. And most of these positives (including the Brazilian sample) contained later strains of the virus with mutations it picked up late in 2020. So these were almost certainly false positives from contamination. 1.5: Biorealism’s 16 arguments Biorealism has a list of sixteen arguments, which he liked so much that he posted it three times in the ACX comments, twice on Less Wrong, twice on Manifold, and about a dozen times on Twitter under multiple account names. Some posts were slightly different from others, but a typical version is: Importantly, Miller incorrectly claimed the N501Y mutation would result from passage in hACE2 mice (mixed them up with BALB/c mice). The major papers Miller relied on have been seriously challenged since the debate. See Stoyan and Chiu (2024), Weissman (2024), Bloom (2023) and Lv et al (2024). Overall the circumstantial evidence makes lab v plausible: Peter admitted getting this wrong during the debate. I think this very minor point about mice mutations was approximately his only mistake in 15 hours of debating, and he admitted it as soon as he noticed. Biorealism somehow heard about this (obviously not through watching the debate, as we’ll see in a moment), then left about 20-30 comments starting with it, under various accounts, on various platforms, as if it somehow discredited Peter. This is making me somewhat less charitable to him and his 16 arguments than I would be otherwise. 1. Chinese researchers Botao & Lei Xiao observed lab origin was likely given the nearest known relatives to SARS-CoV-2 were far from Wuhan. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) sampled SARS-related bat coronaviruses where the nearest relatives are found in Yunnan, Laos and Vietnam ~1500km away. They refuse to share their records. The ancestral viruses of SARS were found equally far from where SARS spilled over into humans, so we know it’s possible (and likely) for viruses to travel that far. 2. Patrick Berche, DG at Institut Pasteur in Lille 2014-18, notes you would expect secondary outbreaks if it arose via the live animal trade. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10234839/ There are constant outbreaks of weird coronaviruses in animal handlers. See eg this paper, which estimates about 60,000 of these per year. None of these ever go anywhere, because the farmers are in rural areas that aren’t dense enough to sustain a high R0, and the epidemic fizzles out after a single digit number of cases. Any early outbreaks of COVID would have vanished into this long and mostly unnoticed list. 3. Molecular data: Only sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site. Well adapted to human ACE2 cells. Low genetic diversity indicating a lack of prior circulation (Berche 2023). Restriction site SARS-CoV-2 BsaI/BsmBI restriction map falls neatly within the ideal range for a reverse genetics system and used previously at WIV and UNC. Ngram analysis of the codon usage per Professor Louis Nemzer https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1667232580255490053?t=IJgitS5cw364ioclzVWxaA&s=19 The SARS2 backbone is very low in CG and CpG. While the 12-nt insert that gives it the FCS is extremely high in both. Almost as if it was some kind of chimera of a consensus sequence and a codon-optimized polybasic cleavage site? https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1752800486837678377?t=EpIRgyybJVaPgeMP5xdstA&s=19 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0?fbclid=IwAR1HMUMtLIAFOFppVasQDeoIAYrVhP8j4YoPO4wnaTOUiKLsllZl_oKryOw Most of this was discussed extensively in the second session of the debate, which I recommend. The CGG-CGG arginine codon usage is particularly unusual but used in synthetic biology. I asked a synthetic biologist about this. He said: » “Nope. I would literally never do this if I was designing a small insert (maybe I wouldn't notice if it happened by chance with ~1 in 25 odds in a naive codon optimization algorithm as part of a larger sequence). High GC% is bad. Tandem repeat is worse. Several other perfectly fine arginine codons. And I wouldn't engineer a viral genome using human codon usage. An engineer would not do it.” 4. DEFUSE full proposal: virus 20% different from SARS1, consensus seq assembled with 6 segments, without disrupting coding seq, BsmBI order, FCS. SARS2: 20% different than SARS1, 6 evenly spaced fragments w BsmBI and BsaI restriction sites, FCS. Jesse Bloom, Jack Nunberg, Robert Townley, Alexandre Hassanin have observed this workflow could have lead to SARS-CoV-2. Work often begins before funding sought or goes ahead anyway. Re: 4 - Also scattered across second section of debate, also not going to retread 5. Market cases were all lineage B. Lv et al (2024) indicates there was a single point of emergence and A came before B. So market cases not the primary cases. See also Bloom (2021), Kumar et al (2022). Peter Ben Embarek said there were likely already thousands of cases in Wuhan in December 2019.https://t.co/50kFV9zSb6 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/34398234/ https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/10/2719/6553661 There was a Lineage A sample in the market, lab leak proponents just try to ignore/dismiss/conspiracize it away. The first two known Lineage A cases were very close to the market. Lv (is this even a real name? It sounds like Roman numeral? But I guess that’s what you expect in a country ruled by someone named Xi) found some weird COVID variants in Shanghai that might or might not mean anything; you can see some discussion of the implications here, but I don’t think they’re strong evidence either way. If A was first, it means some really weird stuff coincidences have to happen to give us the spread rates and genetic clock data we get, but they’re not necessarily weirder in the zoonosis hypothesis than the lab leak one. The claim that there were “thousands of cases in Wuhan in December 2019” is very easy to disprove by doubling rate arguments like the one above, by the blood bank study mentioned above, by the WHO’s failed case search, and by many other lines of argument. 6. Evidence for lineage A in the market is based on a low quality sample according to Liu et. al. (2023). I really think lab leakers need to decide whether they think China is a sinister actor trying to cover up the truth, or whether they should trust every offhand comment by Chinese government officials as gospel. Dr. Liu doesn’t explain in what sense he thinks the Lineage A sample is “low-quality”, and the Western scientists who I asked about this said they didn’t understand this complaint and that the sample was fine. A Western team re-analyzing the same sample describes it as “conclusively contain[ing] Lineage A.” I think most lab leakers have switched from trying to deny the genetics to claiming that this was “contamination”, which also doesn’t make sense (the sample is genetically very early). Note that aside from this sample, the first two Lineage A cases discovered were both very close to the wet market. 7. Bloom (2023) shows market samples do not support market origin. There is also no evidence of transmission in the claimed susceptible animals elsewhere. https://academic.oup.com/ve/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ve/vead089/7504441 Discussed extensively in my article as well as the first section of the debate. 8. Lineage A and B only two mutations apart. François Ballox, Bloom and Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo note this is unlikely to reflect two separate animal spillovers as opposed to incomplete case ascertainment of human to human transmission (Bloom 2021). Discussed extensively in my article as well as the first section of the debate. 9. Sampling bias. George Gao, Chinese CDC head at the time, acknowledged to the BBC stating they may have focused too much on and around the market and missed cases on the other side of the city. David Bahry outlines the documented bias. Michael Weissman has shown this mathematically. https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23 https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556 Re: Dr. Gao, see above comment about Chinese officials. See the section Ascertainment Bias below for why I disagree with this specific claim, which also addresses the Michael Weissman argument. 10. Spatial statistics experts show the Worobey claim the market was the early epicentre was flawed. https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954 Re: 10 - See Confirmation Of The Centrality Of The Huanan Market Among Early COVID-19 Cases, a response to the paper you cite: The centrality of Wuhan's Huanan market in maps of December 2019 COVID-19 case residential locations, established by Worobey et al. (2022a), has recently been challenged by Stoyan and Chiu (2024, SC2024). SC2024 proposed a statistical test based on the premise that the measure of central tendency (hereafter, "centre") of a sample of case locations must coincide with the exact point from which local transmission began. Here we show that this premise is erroneous. SC2024 put forward two alternative centres (centroid and mode) to the centre-point which was used by Worobey et al. for some analyses, and proposed a bootstrapping method, based on their premise, to test whether a particular location is consistent with it being the point source of transmission. We show that SC2024's concerns about the use of centre-points are inconsequential, and that use of centroids for these data is inadvisable. The mode is an appropriate, even optimal, choice as centre; however, contrary to SC2024's results, we demonstrate that with proper implementation of their methods, the mode falls at the entrance of a parking lot at the market itself, and the 95% confidence region around the mode includes the market. Thus, the market cannot be rejected as central even by SC2024's overly stringent statistical test. I think this response is pretty strong. In one analysis, they show that even though the other paper’s methodology is worse than theirs, if you apply it correctly (instead of inappropriately excluding various cases like the paper’s authors did), the center of all early cases in Hubei province lands on the wet market parking lot. In another analysis, they show that the other paper’s recommended tests wouldn’t have correctly pointed to the offending water pump in the famous John Snow cholera outbreak, but theirs would have. Still, I think it’s useful to supplement fancy statistics with normal common sense, so I recommend just looking at the map of early cases: …and deciding whether you think the assumptions behind a specific statistical test are likely to debunk the idea that cases are centered around the wet market. 11. Wuhan used as a control for a 2015 serological study on SARS-related bat coronaviruses due to its urban location. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/ I don’t know why this point is supposed to matter. If you mean that Wuhan isn’t directly exposed to bats, nobody ever said it was. The zoonotic theory is that wildlife carted in from other areas of China started the pandemic in the wet market. 12. Superspreader events also seen at wet markets in Beijing and Singapore (Xinfadi and Jurong). This was discussed very extensively in the debates, both in section 1 and section 3. Wet markets weren’t “superspreader locations” - in fact, the disease spread no more quickly there than anywhere else. They were the first place in those cities that the pandemic started, due to contaminated animal products. If anything, this supports zoonosis. See also my discussion with Saar on this point below. 13. WIV refuse to share their records with NIH who terminated subaward in 2022. Wider suspension over biosafety concerns. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling Although WIV has not been especially forthcoming, some of their databases were leaked in various ways and showed that they did not have any viruses capable of transforming into COVID. 14. PLA involvement at WIV and MERS research prior to SARS-COV-2. MERS features several similarities with SARS-CoV-2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022351/ I can’t even tell what conspiracy theory you’re trying to propose with this one; if you spell it out I can try to explain why it might be false. 15. SARS1 leaked several times and SARS-COV-2 has leaked from a BSL-3 lab in Taiwan. Agreed that SARS leaked several times. It also spilled over from animals several times. During the debate, a lab leak rate of once per lab per 500 years was proposed (everyone agreed to steelman this by 10x for WIV numbers); I would be interested to know whether anything about the study of SARS challenges that number. 16. Unpublished infectious clone identified from Wuhan contradicting arguments such reverse genetics systems would be published. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v1.full I asked some scientists about this paper and here’s what they told me. Wuhan University sequenced some rice. In the middle of the sequence, there’s an unexpected sequence from a common coronavirus, HKU4. The most likely explanation is that someone else in Wuhan was working on the coronavirus and there was cross-contamination. Plausibly this is Wuhan Institute of Virology, who is known to work with coronaviruses. This is cool detective work, but it’s not clear what it’s supposed to prove. I think some lab leakers are using it to prove that WIV can do reverse genetics, but they admitted this already in a published paper so that’s not too helpful. I think others are using it to prove WIV had “secret viruses” in their catalogue, but the rice virus wasn’t secret, it was HKU4, which is common and which WIV has already published papers about. 1.6: DrJayChou’s 7 Arguments Once again, I cannot stress enough how much better a take you might have on this debate if you watch it. “The first known case predates the market outbreak by a month” - this is not the consensus position. I cannot say for sure what Dr. Chou means by this, but I suspect he’s referring to one of the many claims to this effect that Peter effectively debunked during the debate (Connor Reed, Mr. Chen, the 92 cases, Brazil, etc).

Inline links: blog, writes, this study, wrote a blog post on some of these issues, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10234839/, this paper, https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1667232580255490053?t=IJgitS5cw364ioclzVWxaA&s=19, https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1752800486837678377?t=EpIRgyybJVaPgeMP5xdstA&s=19, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01211-0?fbclid=IwAR1HMUMtLIAFOFppVasQDeoIAYrVhP8j4YoPO4wnaTOUiKLsllZl_oKryOw, https://t.co/50kFV9zSb6, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/34398234/, https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/10/2719/6553661, here, describes it as, https://academic.oup.com/ve/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ve/vead089/7504441, https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.00313-23, https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnae021/7632556, https://academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jrsssa/qnad139/7557954, Confirmation Of The Centrality Of The Huanan Market Among Early COVID-19 Cases, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!BNAm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fffd4cddb-6e3e-41f5-8ef6-ec0b27bec600_626x426.webp, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6178078/, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-18/us-suspends-wuhan-institute-funds-over-covid-stonewalling, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7022351/, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.12.528210v1.full, a published paper, has already published papers about, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!yA9U!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F467dd304-190a-4437-8920-d498c433dffb_1600x960.jpeg

Survey Results: PMS Symptoms

April 26, 2024 · Original source

In November 2022, Aella posted this Twitter poll:

Inline links: this Twitter poll

Here’s another one:

Inline links: Here’s another one

Book Review: The Origins Of Woke

May 01, 2024 · Original source

If a major newspaper being influenced in its staffing and editorial choices by civil rights law seems too absurd to contemplate, consider that Felicia Sonmez, a reporter for the Washington Post, sued her employer on the grounds that it was discriminatory to take her off #MeToo stories after she talked about her own alleged sexual assault. Although her suit was dismissed in 2022, newspapers are no different than other employers in responding to incentives. Sonmez was eventually fired by the Washington Post in 2022 for weeks of publicly attacking coworkers on Twitter. It is reasonable to wonder whether the employer’s hesitancy to part ways with her was based on the incentives created by civil rights law and their downstream cultural effects.

Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

May 07, 2024 · Original source

Book author Richard Hanania kindly responded to my review on Twitter:

Inline links: kindly responded

I’d also refer people to my piece that responded to some earlier reviews of the book here. Richard Hanania's Newsletter Against Ideaism Among the reviews of my book, I have noticed two main lines of criticism. First of all, there’s the argument that I didn’t explain everything. Oliver Traldi in Quillette asks “does the federal government require corporations to make rainbow-colored versions of their logos, or tweet in support of black trans women?” No, it certainly does not, although I … Read more 2 years ago · 81 likes · 39 comments · Richard Hanania

Inline links: Richard Hanania's Newsletter Against Ideaism Among the reviews of my book, I have noticed two main lines of criticism. First of all, there’s the argument that I didn’t explain everything. Oliver Traldi in Quillette asks “does the federal government require corporations to make rainbow-colored versions of their logos, or tweet in support of black trans women?” No, it certainly does not, although I … Read more 2 years ago · 81 likes · 39 comments · Richard Hanania

Why was Duke Power Co decided the way it was, since they asked people to take a mechanical aptitude test for a mechanical job? Sam kindly answered: 1) He may be right about that (I don't know actually) but even if he is right, so what? If a test is relevant to a job, that evidence will apply to each worksite. It's not like there's some affirmative requirement that employers prove the test works before they can implement it--they can do whatever they want and the only check is a lawsuit. A plaintiffs' attorney is not going to bring that case if it doesn't have some evidence the 2) Very easy. You just have to show there is a “manifest relationship to the employment in question" (a more lenient standard added by subsequent more conservative courts) then the burden shifts to the plaintiffs to prove its not legitimate or that the employer could achieve the same goal in a way that doesn't have a disparate impact. In Griggs, there was direct evidence from the employer's own experience that the test they were using was uncorrelated with job performance. 3) That is likely enough. But if, for example, their experience showed that people with a criminal history were no likelier to be violent and criminal than that argument would rightly fail. I think it is also unlikely the EEOC will win this case in the current legal environment. 4) As I said above, if you read the actual case, the facts were that the test did not predict success at the job. This turns out to be very common. More discussion of Duke v. Griggs - this is all coming from one very long thread, which you might prefer to read directly, starting with Mr. Doolittle: I don't think the EEOC is being disingenuous when they think a company is discriminating. Their perspective is coming from the side that sees actual discrimination, often hidden behind convenient stories. Read Duke Power sometime in detail - there's no doubt that the company was flagrantly discriminating and lying about it. That said, I don't think the EEOC has an actual problem with merit tests like Google having someone write code for a coding job. They have a real problem with mission-creep tests (like requiring that coding test for lower level employees) or anything that might be a hidden way to discriminate. I think they also have some true-believer "woke" types that really think that any disparate impact is hidden discrimination, but for legal reasons this is significantly less prevalent than in other "woke-adjacent" contexts. Bob Frank (blog) writes: » “Read Duke Power sometime in detail - there's no doubt that the company was flagrantly discriminating and lying about it.” ...which was quite adequately remedied at the appeals court level. The plaintiffs got everything they could have reasonably wanted. But the EEOC didn't want to fix the problem they were ostensibly suing over; they wanted to use it as a premise to push their social agenda, so they appealed to the Supreme Court, and we ended up with one of the most damaging rulings in history. I wrote about this in some detail last year: Forewarned Is Forearmed The Most Significant Case You've Never Heard Of People often think of the 1960s as a tumultuous time in our nation’s history, but in many ways the real damage was done in the 1970s. The 70s was a time when a lot of the chaos of the 60s settled down, but unfortunately it didn’t happen by conditions getting back to normal so much as by surrender, assimilating the chaos into a “new normal” that was sig… Read more 3 years ago · 5 likes · Bob Frank gdanning writes: Your article refers to what you call "Duke Power’s use of industry-standard aptitude tests in employment decisions. " But here are the actual facts: » ”The Company added a further requirement for new employees on July 2, 1965, the date on which Title VII became effective. To qualify for placement in any but the Labor Department it became necessary to register satisfactory scores on two professionally prepared aptitude 428*428 tests, as well as to have a high school education. Completion of high school alone continued to render employees eligible for transfer to the four desirable departments from which Negroes had been excluded if the incumbent had been employed prior to the time of the new requirement. In September 1965 the Company began to permit incumbent employees who lacked a high school education to qualify for transfer from Labor or Coal Handling to an "inside" job by passing two tests— the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which purports to measure general intelligence, and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test. Neither was directed or intended to measure the ability to learn to perform a particular job or category of jobs […] » On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability. Rather, a vice president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company's judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the work force. » The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used.” This leaves me with more questions than it answers. For example, if a company hasn’t explicitly measured how tests correlate with performance (which I assume is the case with most tests), are the tests okay or not? Also, could someone who’s annoyed at ballooning degree requirements (eg me) sue every company that requires a college degree, asking them to prove that it’s really necessary? Steve Sailer describes his personal experience: I worked for a marketing research startup firm from 1982-2000. In 1982, our hiring exam was the final exam given by one of our founders, a college professor, in his Quantitative Methods in Marketing Research course. It was a great test, and we hired a lot of good people in the 1980s. Our biggest client gave a similar exam and hired a lot of good people. When the EEOC went after our biggest, most prestigious client over their hiring exam, the firm then spent a lot of money on consulting firms to have it validated as related to work performance to the necessary legal standard. And they continued to hire good people. In contrast, when the EEOC finally noticed us in the 1990s, we found out how much it would cost to validate our exam and decided to save money by throwing it out. That turned out to penny wise and pound foolish. If this is true, it sounds like the burden of proof is on the test-giver, and it’s a pretty high burden. I don’t know how this meshes with what Sam B is saying, unless Steve’s experience was before the change in the law that Sam mentions. Hadi Khan (blog) writes: » “As I said above, if you read the actual case, the facts were that the test did not predict success at the job. This turns out to be very common.” This does not mean the test isn't a good test in the sense that it doesn't measure job performance. See how there is no correlation between a players height in the NBA and how well they perform. This is because if there was a correlation then selectors would be leaving money on the table and they could improve their selection for the coming year by increasing the weighting on height (compared to everything else), which would in turn reduce the amount of correlation. Rinse and repeat until there is no correlation left. The test not predicting job performance could equivalently mean that Duke Power had a very well calibrated way to choose their employees where they were prefectly capturing the information from the apitutde test compared to all the other factors involved in hiring. Indeed the fact that this turns out to be very common suggests to me that this is going on here (and elsewhere). Good point! I don’t know when the correlation between test score and job performance was measured, and whether it should be expected to have this problem. 5: The Origins Of Modern Wokeness (again, you might want to read Hanania’s post answering objectors on this point) Carateca writes: I hew more to the Tumblr theory of the origins of woke (Katherine Dee has written about this, although at infuriatingly short length.) All this was incubated on Tumblr by mentally ill teenagers in the mid-00s, expanded from there to various web forums/proto-social media of the era such as Something Awful and Livejournal where the mentally ill teenagers could gain cultural or moderation power, and then exploded onto Twitter where it cowed cultural leaders into compliance and suddenly people at your office were putting pronouns in their bios, doing land acknowledgments and sterilizing their kids. Civil rights law under this theory was a weapon for the woke to pick up, not the cause of the problem. (Edit: and not even that relevant of a weapon, regardless of its merit otherwise; wokeness's greatest damage is cultural, not legal.) I agree with the Tumblr theory too, though I think some blogs (eg Shakesville, Pandagon) might have been closer to Patient Zero. I continue to be a little confused how and why stuff that deranged teenagers were discussing on microblogs made it to the halls of power, and I would appreciate a more focused Origins Of Woke book discussing this process. Desertopa writes: So, I don't think I'm qualified to write that book, and if anything I'm less qualified now than I was twelve years or so ago, since it's been a long while since I've brushed up on the source material. But I think I'm better versed in what went into it than most people, and I'm prepared to at least take a stab at a substack comment on the subject. My impression, as of around 2009, before people identified "woke" as a thing, and before the social justice subculture that gave rise to the term had really solidified, but at a point when it was distinctly trending in that direction, is that the movement was essentially a result of academic ideas filtered through a specific, mostly online social context. While a lot of people, especially back then, would argue that the academic basis of the movement was sound, but often interpreted poorly by radical ideologues, my impression, as someone who read a lot more of the actual academic work than most, is that this was a mistaken interpretation, that the academic work actually *was* written largely by radical ideologues in the first place, and simply dressed up in language suited to an academic audience. I still identify as much more left wing than right wing, and this was even more the case at the time, since the far left end hadn't moved nearly as far away from me at that point. But, my impression is that at least as far back as the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, there was a balance between the left and right wings on issues of racial and gender justice etc. where both sides essentially held to the norms of trying to enact their desired changes via collective political action and measured civil disobedience, with the left wing making more or less continual progress against the right, until the left wing decided to defect first. This began in academia, with writers who framed the issue of racial justice essentially in terms of existential warfare. Basically "we are opposed by a group of ideological enemies who are trying to destroy us and everything we represent. The mechanisms of gradual change collective political action and measured civil disobedience are fundamentally aligned against us in the favor of our ideological enemies, thus we have to break away from those and fight with tools which fundamentally favor our cause in order to be able to effectively defend ourselves." Because the writers in question were academics with cushy university positions, their actual mechanism of political action was writing books arguing people ought to do these things, which were mostly only read by other academics and ignored by the general populace. But when social justice started becoming a major component of the online subculture which was incubating in the mid to late 2000s, although only a minority of people actually read the work of actual academics on the subject, people who did were extremely influential in the movement, and ideas which originated in academia propagated to fixation through it. In the earlier days of the social justice movement, there were separate strains which cooperated on object-level goals, but disagreed over big-picture questions like "should we frame social agendas in terms of Us vs. Them conflict drawn around identity groups, or in terms of alignment with philosophical goals?" and "should we attempt to move towards progressively more colorblind ideals of egalitarianism, or ones which consciously privilege minority groups?" The identitarian strain eventually became more or less hegemonic over the movement, partly I think because it's an easier sell based on ordinary patterns of human thought (we've been engaged in identitarian tribal conflict for the entirety of human history,) and partly because almost all the academic underpinning behind the movement actually argued in support of the identitarian strain. I personally started to distance myself from the social justice movement around 2009, while remaining broadly aligned with its object-level goals, in large part because I started reading enough of the academic philosophy behind it to realize that the academics other people were treating as foundational figures (even if most of them didn't actually read their work) were essentially arguing that we needed to abandon the societal institution of liberalism because it was fundamentally aligned against the goals of social justice, while failing to acknowledge that the mechanisms of liberalism had been producing consistent incremental gains for social justice for the last several decades. This is also how I remember things. The part that seems mysterious to me is how the left defected from pre-existing norms so successfully - or rather, if defection gave such an obvious advantage, how the pre-existing norms had stayed in place before. Neike Taika-Tessaro writes: Interestingly, I was going to say Hanania's missing element could just be graphs like these: i.e. affirmative action laid the groundwork for this, then people connected, coordinated, and used it much more aggressively. I feel like that's basically what you're saying, except that what I'm (ignorantly) ascribing to Hanania here and what you're saying disagree on the cause. I guess in Hanania's framing, wokeness was inevitable once affirmative action existed in the legal framework; whereas in Dee's faming, wokeness was not inevitable once affirmative action existed, but is a separate phenomenon that then seized upon the tool. I'm probably doing both of them an injustice with that, mind. (To be clear, I'm not in the US and avoid most social media, so I don't particularly have opinions on this either way, I just immediately thought 'the internet' when Scott referred to the cultural turn between 2010 and 2015 and asked "Why would 1964 and 1991 laws turn wokeness into a huge deal in 2015?".) Yeah, something like this also has to be part of the picture, although I still don’t feel like I understand the mechanism well enough that I could have predicted this ahead of time. More patient zero speculation, from MarsDragon: Historical nitpick: it's less that Tumblr infected LiveJournal so much as LJ users were forced to move to Tumblr as LJ got increasingly difficult to use starting around 2009-2010. The migration had more or less completed by 2012. Tumblr being so much more of a "modern" social media platform where it was easy to repost content and you got a random jumble of posts instead of a carefully-curated set of friends made it much easier for social justice thinking to spread. I think the whole shift to showing users a melange of content instead of a staid list of people the user chose to follow was a big driver of that sort of thinking. It allowed ideas to spread, upped controversy, and drives that sort of "we must purge this!" was of thinking. The LiveJournal experts here say the key event to look at was Racefail, when, according to Carateca: I had a front row seat and it was remarkable how the whole superstructure of a totalitarian state just congealed out of thin air in days and instantly took over a whole subculture. Sometimes I think that if Charlie Stross and the rest of them had just had some fucking balls and stood up to the bullies -- or, hell, just pushed the block button a few times -- none of this would ever have happened. I support any theory that lets us blame everything on Charlie Stross. naraburns writes: Anyway, I would argue that "woke" does not begin with civil rights law, but rather that both are the result of the same intellectual tradition. "Woke" attitudes are basically analogous to what was called "cultural Marxism" decades ago (see e.g. Weiner's (1981) "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology"), but since "Cultural Marxism" has been retconned as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, people needed a different name for it. The linguistic treadmill is merciless, especially when dealing with political movements attempting to escape accountability for their past failures (or successes). I agree that there’s a crappy trick that goes: Take a thing that you don’t want people to be allowed to talk about. For example, maybe Coca-Cola doesn’t want people to talk about how soda makes you fat.

Inline links: kindly answered, one very long thread, blog, Forewarned Is Forearmed The Most Significant Case You've Never Heard Of People often think of the 1960s as a tumultuous time in our nation’s history, but in many ways the real damage was done in the 1970s. The 70s was a time when a lot of the chaos of the 60s settled down, but unfortunately it didn’t happen by conditions getting back to normal so much as by surrender, assimilating the chaos into a “new normal” that was sig… Read more 3 years ago · 5 likes · Bob Frank, writes, describes his personal experience, blog, Hanania’s post answering objectors on this point, writes, writes, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9wmv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa774249b-b07c-4205-a3e4-68d95e763bfa_808x303.png, MarsDragon, Racefail, Carateca, writes

Zvi on California's AI Bill

May 08, 2024 · Original source

If the California state senate passed a bill saying that the sky was blue, I would start considering whether it might be green, or colorless, or maybe not exist at all. And people on Twitter have been saying that this bill would ban open-source AI - no, all AI! - no, all technology more complicated than a toaster! So I started out skeptical.

Open Thread 332

June 03, 2024 · Original source

3: Lyman Stone has responded to my response to him. I think it just doubles down on the same points he made the first time, so I might not get around to writing a full response. I’ll just say that first, I think it could benefit from better understanding of the distinctions between virtue ethics, rule utilitarianism, two-level utilitarianism - Mill, Hare, or Parfit could be good sources here, or even just some of the blog posts I linked. Second, Stone seems confused that I’ve blocked him on Twitter. I want to stress that I never block people just because I disagree with them; the only reason I block people is because of a history of doxxing, which Stone has, and which angers me for personal reasons. I think in an ideal world this would merit a permaban from Twitter, but all I can do on my own is block him from reading my stuff.

Inline links: has responded to

Prediction Markets Suggest Replacing Biden

July 02, 2024 · Original source

Maybe Democrats are the wrong people to ask - they’re already going to vote Biden, so you want someone who’s more attractive to independents. Of course, in a normal primary it would be Democrats making the decision. But if elites are going to do something behind closed doors, maybe they should take advantage and choose the candidate most likely to win, for once. I think these polls are the strongest objection to the prediction markets’ verdict. You could make an argument where prediction market users are mostly educated liberal white males, and even though they’re incentivized to honestly determine what ordinary people think, they’re too out-of-touch with ordinary people to do so effectively. Or they might be over-fixating on “voters don’t like Biden’s senility” without considering that, even if voters didn’t know Biden was currently senile before Thursday, they probably guessed that he would become senile sometime in his four-year term, and had basically accepted that his aides would do the hard work. Maybe they prefer a well-known likeable incumbent over an unknown quantity (and the unknown quantity’s potential new/weird aides), even if the well-known likeable incumbent is senile. Maybe elites know more than we do about how hard it is to inject a new candidate at the last moment, how dangerous it is to have someone who hasn’t been thoroughly vetted for scandals, et cetera. Still, for now I trust the prediction markets. I think replacing Biden would add ~10 prcentage points to the Democrats’ chance of victory. At the end of this post, I’ll list the prediction markets I’m using as sources. But before then, a brief interlude of: Fuzzy Subjective Human Factors I Am Not Really Qualified To Talk About Many people on Twitter are asking “how could anyone possibly have been stupid enough to not realize that Biden was senile?” I was that stupid. I didn’t say it openly, because I’m at least smart enough to have a high threshold for giving my opinion on political things I don’t know much about. But I thought it in my heart. So in case the people asking “how could anyone have been that stupid?” actually want an explanation, here’s my former reasoning. Republicans have been accusing Biden of being senile (and the Democrats of hiding it) for at least five years now. Before the 2020 debates, they were excited that this was when they could finally prove once and for all that Biden was senile. Then Biden did fine, and they retreated to “well he’s senile but they have some secret drug they’re giving him, just during debates, that makes him look fine”. Notice this is from 2020; according to polls, he did win the debate that year (source) I think a lot about experimental cognitive enhancement drugs, and I can say with confidence that nothing like that exists. Stimulants can help people with mild dementia be more active and motivated, but they don’t really improve cognition directly, and they can’t make a demented person temporarily lucid. Still, for the past four years, every time Biden was going to do something - a press conference, a State of the Union, whatever - the Republicans would say “ha, this time is going to be the proof that he’s senile!” And then he would always do fine, and they would retreat back to “I guess he used the secret drug this time too”. The satire site Babylon Bee had some funny articles about this: Babylon Bee, after Biden gave a good State of the Union speech earlier this year. Meanwhile, the Democrats were spreading the alternate narrative that Trump was senile. This one has gotten less press, because I don’t know how many people really believed it. But it came up occasionally, along with out-of-context video snippets where Trump said or did something dumb or meandering. Of course, anybody with a presidential candidate’s level of public exposure will have a few gaffes. Even if they don’t, you can always deceptively crop something so it looks like they did. Wait, why is a psychoanalyst getting quoted as a top expert in dementia? (source) I didn’t know you could diagnose someone via Change.org petition, but 2544 people who claim to be licensed professionals can’t be wrong! So with the constant attempts to prove that both candidates were senile, the constant demonstration by both candidates that they weren’t, and the constant retreat into conspiracy theories of “I guess he used the magic drug again but we’ll get him next time!”, I just tuned out this entire category of thing. And I guess I kept it tuned out longer than I should have, whoops. Reversed stupidity is not intelligence. Even if liars are saying something for their usual liar reasons, it can still be true. For twenty years, people spread false rumors that Castro was on his deathbed, but this didn’t make Castro immortal. In the same way, I should have figured out that even if I couldn’t trust any particular claim that Biden was senile, the prior for an 81 year old becoming senile was still high. But I guess I assumed that if he was becoming senile, some Democratic elites would have secret knowledge about it, and they couldn’t possibly be so stupid as to deny it while also scheduling him for a debate where it would inevitably come out. So I figured the Democratic elites who were closest to him thought he was doing well, and I trusted them more than the people who had been wrong every time for the past five years. I’m still confused what those elites were thinking. Reading the news coverage for the past few days (including some video clips from a post-debate rally where he seemed noticeably better) it seems like some combination of: He has good days and bad days, and they were hoping this would be a good day.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qt9P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa11d1a27-cfc2-4708-9db1-e344b391ac9a_1288x758.png, source, think a lot about experimental cognitive enhancement drugs, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!shq2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F92d67bb2-5940-44ba-ad21-df822276280a_781x829.png, Babylon Bee, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2y5u!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa986c7ac-16c2-4987-b520-8f6ddf9ad13d_757x690.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SN0G!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6068601f-0eef-4a1c-b885-19f5712decf1_751x668.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vL01!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb26c689-1e81-422b-9493-ae44cac59125_858x814.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6ssu!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F760276bb-2f91-4545-bbf5-d3f9fe911de7_975x654.png, Change.org petition, Reversed stupidity is not intelligence

Your Book Review: Real Raw News

July 26, 2024 · Original source

If you’re a follower of U.S. news outlets, you’ve seen some big stories unfolding over the past year: The unprecedented four criminal indictments lodged against former President Trump. The ongoing AI explosion. The backlash against “DEI,” “woke,” and “cancel culture” as exemplified by Elon Musk’s purchase and rebranding of Twitter to “X.”

Making the sentence for all crimes identical: Mandatory death penalty9. As far as perfidious methods to deliberately destroy due process and engineer mass executions go, the Law of 22 Prairial is pretty much unmatched in human history. And yet: In the roughly two months of the law’s existence, about one-fifth of defendants were still acquitted! No such good fortune exists in Gitmo. The White Hats’ secret tribunal is a tribunal of blood. In three years of activity, as far as I know exactly one person has escaped conviction: Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, freed after a direct intervention from Trump. A tiny handful of others have received decades-long prison sentences, but even they tend to meet bad ends. Bill Clinton received a life sentence, only to mysteriously die in prison, perhaps murdered by his daughter Chelsea, who wasn’t really his daughter, but nevertheless soon wound up executed herself. Not only does the rate of death sentences at Gitmo seem to exceed 90 percent, Baxter makes very little effort to portray the proceedings as fair or just. Upon arrest, instead of being read their rights, detainees are informed that they have no rights, and are instead “enemy combatants.” Yet despite being classified as “enemy combatants,” defendants are almost without exception charged with treason. The U.S. Constitution defines treason narrowly as levying war against the United States, or giving aid and comfort to its enemies, and requires at least two witnesses to the same specific act, but in Gitmo the label is invoked with a liberality that would make Robespierre blush. “Traitors” have been arrested and convicted for telling troops not to attend Trump rallies and for ruling against Donald Trump in court. Defense attorneys are denied access to evidence pre-trial, and many defendants get no lawyers at all. Trials work a lot like Phoenix Wright, in that at any point the three-officer panel10 can simply declare they’ve seen enough evidence and pronounce a conviction with death sentence immediately. In the case of former Tom Hanks co-star, this has happened within five minutes. Appeals are non-existent. The actual executions sometimes involve tormenting the condemned with fake escape attempts or pardons: The driver told Whitmer he needed to make a pitstop to grab her “exoneration paperwork.” Then Whitmer saw the clearing and the gallows and Vice Adm. Crandall. And the hangman and a Navy chaplain standing atop the gallows. “You lied to me,” Whitmer bellowed. “Minor error, not a lie,” the driver replied. […] The admiral instructed the hangman to flip the switch, and a second later, Whitmer was swinging from the rope, a guttural gurgling sound escaping her lips. She was officially pronounced dead several minutes later. “Another Covid queen out of the way,” Adm. Crandall said. During the treason trial of Hillary Clinton crucial evidence is provided by former campaign manager John Podesta, who accepts a plea deal for life in prison in return for testifying about Clinton’s child-trafficking activities. But after Clinton had safely been hanged, the military tribunal simply decided to revoke Podesta’s plea deal because, well, they felt like it. “Even though he’s not prosecuting Podesta’s case, Vice Adm. John G. Hannink made the decision to renege on the deal. He’s the one who offered it. The severity of Podesta’s crimes matched Clinton’s—a lot of stuff they did in tandem, together. When you think about it, there’s really no reason why he should get special treatment. He’s a sodomist [sic.]11. Before breaking the deal, he called Trump,” our source said. But Trump, our source noted, recused himself from the decision-making process, as he didn’t want his personal feelings of the defendant to interfere with military justice. […] “If the court wants him to hang, let him hang,” Trump reportedly said. As it happens, John Podesta was actually executed by firing squad. But hey, at least he got a trial. Sometimes, particularly evil members of the Deep State are simply beaten to death in their cells, or thrown overboard. The figure of Vladimir Putin is also a vessel for fans’ darker desires. Trump and his American allies, being properly heroic, at least take down their foes gradually. Putin’s Russians, on the other hand, live up to movie stereotypes. The Army … pulled the condemned from their cells 25 at a time, binding the criminals to logs staked in the ground and blindfolding them. They had received no trials, last meals, Last Rites, or final words. A firing squad taught them the consequences of vaccine adherence. The Army didn’t bother removing the corpses before lining up the next 25; they simply let the dead bodies flop to the ground and forced the next group to witness the ineluctable fate awaiting them, the outcome of their insouciance12. What to make of all this? Honestly, I’m not entirely sure, and the takeaway might simply be “Michael Baxter needs to mix it up to keep the site interesting.” It might also speak to the bewildering complexity of modern life and the desire for something simpler and more cinematic. As people sometimes complain, Nothing Ever Happens. But on RRN, the Happening is relentless and constant. The normal legal system is aggravatingly glacial, taking years to resolve cases and often imposing meager sentences when a case finally concludes. Most of one’s political enemies, even if they lose an election, simply lateral to a high-paying private sector job or at worst fade into obscurity. But in a real, raw legal system, evil is sniffed out with much greater alacrity; the bad people are so obvious and their crimes so glaring that they can be taken out extrajudicially with no worry about a miscarriage of justice. The apparently-complex conspiracy cinematic universes is actually appealing because it makes the world far, far simpler. The bad people are all maximally bad, deserving of hastily-dispensed maximum justice. Some of this is worrisome, too: If thousands of relatively ordinary people are willing to believe in ad-hoc military tribunals executing people with minimal due process for crimes like “ruling against Donald Trump in court,” that could be a sign that modern constitutional society is a more superficial veneer than one would hope. The World’s Laziest Conspiracy One of the most striking things about both Real Raw News and the Qanon movement it spun off from is that in some ways they are un-conspiracies. Your more traditional conspiracy, about the Rothschilds or the World Economic Forum or the Lizard People, tells you that normal political engagement is pointless, as all that really matters is confronting and defeating the hidden forces manipulating or controlling events. But RRN is a conspiracy theory that calls for total inaction. RRN believers don’t need to raise money or write letters to the editor or join political activism groups or even vote. The only thing expected of an adherent is to “trust the plan.” They aren’t even waiting for a promised future deliverance. Deliverance is, in fact, happening right now – merely off-screen. It’s actually funny to me that the (official) press freaks out so much about Qanon, and its potential to inspire violence. Qanon and RRN tell the public that whatever has them down and depressed shouldn’t, because it’s all fake, and there are unseen heroes protecting them in the shadows. Don’t worry, just have faith and know things will work out. Real Raw News is the opiate of the digital masses. Real Raw News is the exact sort of conspiracy theory that the Deep State, if it exists, should want to exist and be popular. It’s the sort of conspiracy that the Deep State, if it exists, might deliberately invent. Do I think that’s what happened here? Not at all – Real Raw News is way too much work for a government employee. Trump Will Never Die But what about five years from now? What if there were some technological change that would make it far, far easier to produce evidence of a sweeping conspiracy theory? That’s right, this review is actually about AI13. The rise of realistic artificial intelligence has created a lot of fretting about deepfakes, and it’s also created a lot of fretting about porn. Will young men really bother with the pain and difficulty and awkwardness of dating in real life, when they can just create a custom AI girlfriend to their exact specifications, then simulate sex with her using virtual reality? Will women bother with seeking out a boyfriend if they can use an LLM to give them perfect 24/7 empathy and emotional validation? Questions of sex and relationships are converging on Robert Nozick’s experience machine – will people still seek the real thing if artificial substitutes are increasingly realistic as alternatives? But for some reason, nobody is asking this about the news. Oh, sure, people have fretted that a deepfake video might smear a person’s reputation or swing an election. But as the AI revolution continues, a lot more becomes possible. Remember in 2022, when a homeless guy broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and attacked her husband with a hammer? For a while, conspiracies flourished that Paul Pelosi was actually having some kind of erotic tryst with his attacker, and that police body camera footage might confirm this. The footage came out and, of course, offered no evidence of this. But now imagine a world where, on Twitter, an anonymous source claims that they have the real body camera footage, and it does show that Paul Pelosi was having a lovers’ quarrel with his attacker. The other, mundane footage is a deepfake, released by police to cover things up, or invented from scratch by the press or the Democratic Party or both working together. In this world, how many people end up believing fabricated proof of Paul Pelosi’s gay lover? And before you dismiss this as all totally ridiculous, remember that lots of people believed this story with no evidence at all. Many thousands of people have deluded themselves into thinking that Real Raw News is true simply because they badly want it to be true. It indulges their personal political beliefs, affirms the just-world fallacy, and lets them feel as though they possess “secret” knowledge of the world, simply by reading a blog nobody else takes seriously. But in a sense, all of us have a little of the Real Raw News believer in us. We’re prone to confirmation bias – we like reading stories and studies that confirm our pre-held beliefs, and we’re more likely to avoid or ignore those that don’t. Sometimes, we get too excited and fall for stories that are misleading, or out of context, or dishonestly presented. Sometimes, we have radically different interpretations of the same event caught on camera. Even if we know the world isn’t fair, we relish stories that let us pretend otherwise. So…how are those biases going to work when anyone can quickly create hyper-realistic looking “proof” for any story? Already, AI-fabricated images and videos are enough to bamboozle your mom on Facebook. Soon, they might be realistic enough to fool everybody without special training, and eventually they might be so realistic they can fool just about anyone. Right now, Real Raw News is a simplistic WordPress site that uses stock photos for its imagery. But with us approaching a future where intelligence itself is too cheap to meter, we may not be far from a world where every story, however preposterous, can have a convincing 4k video of it happening. Donald Trump can be president forever, with all the evidence one could ever want. Every day of Hillary Clinton’s military tribunal will have a full day of court footage, plus a condensed highlight reel for the people who want to skip boring legal procedure. Every Marine/FEMA battle in Maui will have authentic-looking combat footage. Every Gitmo execution will be proven through “leaked” bootleg recordings of gallows and firing squads. Imagine you are an ordinary, mildly engaged American citizen. You live far from the halls of power, you work an ordinary job, and whatever your feelings on political issues, you rarely see elections translate in a clear way to your own daily life. You might be interested in Washington, but Washington really isn’t that interested in you. Online, the world throws a million potential narratives at you. In some of them, the world is a confusing mess of moral gray areas. In others, the people you care about are winning. But in some narratives, you’re the hero, the people you like do good things, and the bad guys get what they deserve. The superficial evidence for all of these narratives is about equally convincing, at a glance. Look outside, and it’s hard to see the impact of any of the stories. Your entire understanding of reality is mediated through what sites you choose to read and what videos you choose to watch. As a politically marginal person, it won’t matter what you as an individual choose to believe. So, what happens if you choose to believe the story you find most enjoyable? And what if millions of others choose the same? 1 “Wait a minute, this is about a fake news website? Why is it in this contest?” Excellent question! To that, I offer several answers: A collection of fake news blog posts may as well be considered a long-running series of short stories, and I hope that we’d be allowed to review the collected short stories of an author even if they were never technically compiled into a book.

Inline links: 9, Jeff Sessions, received a life sentence, die in prison, executed herself, telling troops not to attend Trump rallies, ruling against Donald Trump in court, 10, within five minutes., tormenting, 11, firing squad, thrown overboard, 12, Nothing Ever Happens, 13, experience machine, 1

Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche

August 08, 2024 · Original source

And Matt Yglesias on Twitter:

Inline links: on Twitter

My nomination for the Ubermesch is TracingWoodgrains, the notable gay furry formerly of the Blocked & Reported podcast and currently notorious on Twitter for his provocative essays. When I read Scott’s essay, he was the first person I thought of. One of his highest values is excellence. It informs everything he does. He is constantly advocating for the metaphorical poppies to get taller, and rages against our education system that encourages equality by holding back the more talented kids. He makes no apologies for it and doesn’t begrudge anyone pride in their achievements. But he also maintains an ethic of civic duty, and feels an affinity with his former Mormon community over their mutual desire to improve the world, create thriving communities, and engage in mutual aid. A true Nietschean master concerns himself only with his own excellence, but Trace is constantly encouraging and supporting others to become more excellent. This is on clear display in his essay on why he is voting for Kamala Harris despite the fact that she represents a political machine that is an anathema to his values.

Inline links: TracingWoodgrains, essay on why he is voting for Kamala Harris

Anyway, Twitter's motto is "I am so much better than that fellow over there". What began as a way to facilitate one-to-one exchanges grew into a clapback dystopia, and now every public figure is hounded by digital hyenas looking to one-up their posts and earn their fifteen minutes of please-check-out-my-GoFundMe. If you're not clapping back at individuals, you're clapping back at Platonic ideals of things, hence all these posts to the tune of "Dear straight white men: Please stop hunting down street cats and slurping their intestines directly out of their bellies, and for the love of everything good stop calling it 'paleo-ramen'".

Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics

August 16, 2024 · Original source

None of #2 takes away from the fact that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were brilliant storytellers that created innovations in the medium that had never been seen before I am going to start with my second point: How is it possible to say that storytelling is getting better? Michael Lewis’ book, Going Infinite, about Sam-Bankman Fried (founder of FTX and Alameda Research, and convicted of fraud in November 2023) was controversial mostly because Lewis suggested that Sam was a good hearted, misunderstood guy who wasn’t really doing anything wrong. But it was also controversial for a quote from Sam about William Shakespeare. Here is part of the original blog post by Sam: I could go on and on about the failings of Shakespeare and the constitution and Stradivarius violins, and at the bottom of this post I do*, but really I shouldn't need to: the Bayesian priors are pretty damning. About half of the people born since 1600 have been born in the past 100 years, but it gets much worse than that. When Shakespeare wrote almost all of Europeans were busy farming, and very few people attended university; few people were even literate--probably as low as about ten million people. By contrast there are now upwards of a billion literate people in the Western sphere. What are the odds that the greatest writer would have been born in 1564? The Bayesian priors aren't very favorable. This quote blew up and became the story of the day among the intelligentsia on Twitter. Was Shakespeare the greatest playwright? And if he was, what is the counter argument to Sam’s point. How could it be possible that the greatest writer of all time was born in a period when there were less than 3.5MM English speakers on the planet, and only about 20% were literate? Even if he was the best writer of the 700,000 writers of the time, how is it possible he is better than the ~1.5 BILLION literate native-level English speakers alive today? Sam’s point is that it would be highly unlikely. One explanation is that Shakespeare may not have been the best writer, but he was a very good writer (the best of his time), and that he was able to pick up the low hanging fruit of writing ideas. Once Shakespeare had written Romeo and Juliet, no one else could write Romeo and Juliet (well they could, but then they would be derivative of Shakespeare’s work). The idea here is that there are innovative ideas in storytelling (and all art). The writers and artists that come first have their pick of possibilities. As more art gets created it gets harder and harder to come up with new ideas. Meanwhile the old ideas, once created, are there to be used. Richard Hanania quotes Anne Gat in pointing out there are three ways to understand greatness: Intrinsic: He produced the best plays and sonnets by some objective standard. This can be in an elitist sense focusing on the impact his work has on the most refined among us, or a more “democratic” one where the same can be said for all humans.

Inline links: Going, Sam-Bankman Fried, original blog post, Richard Hanania, Anne Gat

Links For September 2024

September 12, 2024 · Original source

21: PhilosophyBear reports the results of experiments by @halomancer1 and other X/Twitter users: the site appears to block users from posting slurs unless they have more than 30,000 followers, in which case it gives them a free pass.

Inline links: PhilosophyBear reports, experiments by @halomancer1 and other X/Twitter users

28: Bryan Caplan asks readers what effect he has had on their lives. Many commenters say he convinced them to have children / more children than they otherwise would have, to change their education plans, or to generally become kinder people. See also this Twitter poll, which if taken seriously suggests he’s at least partially responsible for >100 extra people having children!

Inline links: Bryan Caplan asks readers what effect he has had on their lives, this Twitter poll

37: Extelligence (aka “Some Guy”) is an excellent Substacker who often writes about his (unusual, colorful) life experiences. Here he has a very compelling account of the mystical experience that led him to religion. Highly recommended. And he asks that people who come to his blog for the colorful personal stories also read his proposal for solving the crisis of trust, based on something like a browser extension that adds something like Twitter’s Community Notes to every site.

Inline links: a very compelling account of the mystical experience that led him to religion, his proposal for solving the crisis of trust

Sakana, Strawberry, and Scary AI

September 18, 2024 · Original source

A Twitter discussion between Ajeya Cotra and Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Inline links: Twitter discussion

How Often Do Men Think About Rome?

September 24, 2024 · Original source

There’s a Twitter meme on how men constantly think about the Roman Empire. Some feminist friends objected that women think about Rome a lot too. To settle the matter, I included a question about this on this year’s ACX survey, “Have you thought about the Roman Empire in the past 24 hours?” (the Byzantine Empire also counted). Here are responses from 607 cis women and 4,925 cis men:

Inline links: settle, this year’s ACX survey

ACX Local Voting Guides

October 22, 2024 · Original source

SEATTLE: Guide here. This one is a spreadsheet, which is probably merciful given how many positions Seattleites have to vote on. The best candidate name on this ballot is “Dave Upthegrove”, running for Public Lands Commissioner ie forest management; not only is this not a fake name, but the Upthegroves are apparently one of the oldest American families with a history in the country dating back to 1683. Second place goes to “Justin Greywolf” - yes, he is a libertarian, and yes, ACX Seattle endorses him. I don’t know how he came by his name, but his Twitter header picture is suggestive:

Inline links: Guide here, history, Twitter header picture

Inline links: @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

November 01, 2024 · Original source

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.

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: banned journalist Ken Klippenstein, you can read Klippenstein’s side here., appears to be unbanned now

Mantic Monday: Judgment Day

November 05, 2024 · Original source

I’ll go further: this is the maximum disaster scenario for prediction markets that all of their opponents warned about and that I mostly dismissed. Someone manipulates a market (in this case non-maliciously) just before an election, the market fails to correct, and it significantly changes people’s perceptions, maybe in a way that could play into spurious election challenges later (“Polymarket said there was a 66% chance he would win, but he lost, so it must have been rigged!”) You laugh, but I’ve seen the Twitter discourse and it’s not pretty:

Highlights From The Comments On Prison

December 10, 2024 · Original source

How come in one million articles about Bukele and crime in El Salvador, including many trying to discredit him or say it wasn’t worth it, I’ve never heard a peep about this? And if it wasn’t Bukele or mass incarceration that did it, then what was it? [Y] writes: I have issues with the El Salvador portion of this post. These charts show that the Bukele mass incarceration movement only resulted in a massive increase in the prison population from 2020 forward, based on projected population. The graph shows the murder rate peaking in 2015 and dropping precipitously in the next three years prior to Bukele's presidency. This means, unless I'm missing something, that the vast majority of the decrease in the murder rate occurred before Bukele took office and started putting people in prison at all and thus cannot be attributed to his policies, incarceration or otherwise. Bukele took office in 2019 and did not begin the crackdown until June of that year. The state of emergency that allowed the government to suspend various rights in order to crack down on gangs even further didn't begin until early 2022 While the murder rate was obviously still quite high before Bukele's incarceration policies began, it seems almost actively misleading not to mention that it was collapsing even before he instituted these policies as a result of things like a renewed gang truce in 2016 under the previous government and instead seemingly attribute all of it to him. Further, the post-Bukele homicide data is dubious in several ways. The Bukele government stopped counting bodies discovered buried in unmarked graves as homicides, incentivizing gang members to hide their victims instead of publicly displaying them as trophies or warnings as they had done in years prior. They stopped counting people the police or military shot as homicides, classifying them instead as “legal interventions". They have excluded killings in prisons from the homicide data, which seems like exactly the most obvious way to lie about homicide rates when you begin imprisoning everyone. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/08/el-salvador-bukele-crime-homicide-prison-gangs/ The source article suggests the above may represent as much as a 47% undercounting. Well, one might say, that still leaves El Salvador much safer than before Bukele’s tenure. But I’m not linking the above to try and pin down exactly the right figure of undercounting. I would suggest instead that these changes to the metrics demonstrate a willful and deliberate pattern of obscuring the homicide rate in El Salvador. The post-Bukele data consequently seems almost useless to me, as you cannot really assume we know all the ways the Bukele government is fudging the data. These are just the ones on record. It’s not that murder has disappeared in El Salvador - it’s more like it’s now de facto legal in many contexts. An MS13 member who rolls up on a rival gang’s stash house and shoots it up now knows that if they can bury the bodies in an unmarked grave outside of town without being caught red-handed with the shovels and corpses, the victims will legally cease to exist. They’re not prosecuting people for these murders, right? Otherwise they would show up in the data. The media doesn't talk about them. You don't see the evidence. Out of sight, out of mind. I'm not suggesting no murders were prevented as a result of the Bukele government's mass incarceration policies, obviously. I can also see the argument that it's good for society for criminals to kill each other in prison yard fights instead of getting into shootouts in a marketplace where an innocent bystander also gets their head blown off. I just think the fundamental premise - that he arrested everyone and it caused murders to stop happening and we need to reason forward from there - is extremely dubious. Drethelin writes: idk about the statistics but multiple people I talked to in el salvador specifically told me theft was WAY down like walking down the street with your phone in your hand was now an option where it used to not be people can now both afford to and feel safe owning cars, etc. among other things they are very proactive about using what we wouldn't really consider due process, eg cops browsing facebook and like, going after guys that people post from their security camera footage as taking their bike or whatever Thanks - I had said in the post that although murder was down, the statistics didn’t really show this about theft - but I was eyeballing statistics not really gathered for this purpose and if the news on the ground is that theft is down, I believe it. 4: Comments On Probation In response to a question of why probation with GPS tracking hasn’t taken off as an alternative to prison, Peter answers: Because convicts turn it down. You see at least in America probation (which is what GPS monitoring is part of) and incarceration aren't related, you get no credit for the former when it comes to the latter and people like to overlook over half of people incarcerated aren't there for any crime at all but simply a technical probation violation like getting fired from your job from not showing up on time because your probation officer randomly changes times of meetings daily (which is also results in prison even if you are one minute late). If the max sentence is five years prison plus probation time doesn't count and you have a more likely than not chance of violating probation because it's designed to be unreasonable and cause failures as a back door way for judge's to avoid trials, why would you accept GPS monitoring which will only increase your chances of being violated. I.e..why do nine years (four years probation out of your ten year probation, then violated, then five in more actual prison) when you can just do five. Generally the rule among convicts is if the prison sentence is shorter than the probation sentence, just take prison day one. As a convict you can, and many do, turn down probation. If you want to fix this then you need to let convicts "try" probation where they get credit at a 1-1, or even better motivate them so let's say 2-1, towards a future prison sentence when they fail. This entire conversation (OP) is worthless as it's making the standard mistake of just looking at prison and not probation, jail, fines, etc all which backdoor as a way to avoid trials lead to prison. This isn’t very clearly written, but my impression is that Peter is saying that violating probation gives you a longer prison sentence than just accepting prison in the first place, probation is deliberately designed to be near-impossible to keep, and so it’s a con to trick criminals into longer sentences without having to get them through a judge and jury. Criminals know this, so they refuse probation. This kind of conflicts with the “criminals have high time preference and make terrible decisions” point above, so I’m not sure what to think of it. I wonder if people ever try GPS tracking (without the rest of probation) as a prison alternative. “You’re getting off with a warning this time, but wear this tracker, and if you commit any other crimes in the future, we’ll know.” [EDIT: commenter answers here] More from Peter: Remember, the entire point of probation is to get people to avoid a trial by plea dealing to probation and then put them in prison anyways without any due process because reasonable people, the sort that takes plea deals, believe in the system hence overestimate their ability to complete probation. And so you put them in prison on a technical violation, i.e. getting fired after you intentionally caused them to do so, not having a place to live after you intentionally refused to approve anywhere they tried live, changing their appointment times without confirming they know ("I left a message with their dog"), or just harass them until they give up and just go to prison. Americans tend to discount probation as a joke but any experienced convict knows probation as implemented is worse hence just goes to jail. Also note that probation and PAROLE are different and significantly so, you actually get credit for parole time. Parole WANTS you to succeed, after all they paroled you, probation doesn't. They aren't even the same group of government offices either which is part of the problem. Probation falls under the judiciary (they work for the court) hence they free up budgets the faster they can move you over to the executive (prison) branch whereas parole is a cost saving measure as it falls under the same prison budget, i.e. parole officers aren't probation officers. Also all those fancy rehabilitation programs people love to tore to decrease recidivism goes to parolees, not probationers. I.e. there are giant structural incentives from pure intergovernmental bureaucratic budget wars to move people from probation to prison and because it's controlled by judges, I.e. the prison department can't just refuse to take a trivial probationary revokee, it's a one sided fight […] For example I got a friend that just got two years for the driving the speed limit in Texas while at a funeral, travel approved by the judge, because probation also makes it illegal to break your state law even in another jurisdiction where it's legal. He was driving 85 (the posted speed limit) in outside Austin but in Hawaii it's a misdemeanor to exceed 80 mph for any reason on any road strict liability; his PO asked him "jokingly" if he drove the speed limit while there and if he enjoyed the faster mainland speeds, he said "yes" unbeknownst to him he was being setup. His admission resulted in his probation being revoked for literally following the posted speed limit. Charlotte Wollstonecraft writes: The marginal prisoner in Massachusetts may be a much badder dude than the marginal prisoner in Louisiana. But here is anecdotal reason to believe he is not: Last week in New Orleans, there were three mass shootings. Two of them happened at the same second line in New Orleans East, 45 minutes apart. In two separate incidents, a gunman opened fire at a large outdoor gathering. In total, two people died, and ten were wounded. This is not national news. No arrests have been made. The third shooting took place in the French Quarter four days later. One of the three shooters was caught immediately. Turns out, he had already served seven years in prison for armed robbery. Last year, he was arrested again and charged with domestic battery, child endangerment, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. A plea deal got him out on parole, the terms of which he violated near daily according to his ankle monitor's logs. He was wearing the ankle monitor at the time he opened fire on a French Quarter street, wounding three people and killing another. I’m including this here as a counter to Peter’s story of the guy who got two years in jail for driving the speed limit. I hear so many outrageous stories of extreme strictness and so many outrageous stories of extreme laxity (see also this post) that I’m nervous about turning the dial one way or the other compared to trying to figure out what’s going on. 5: Comments That Say My Analysis Forgot Something Grant Gould writes: You allude to it twice but then pass over it "for simplicity": None of these studies measure within-prison crime, which is largely not counted, tracked, tried, or prosecuted. It is not only plausible but likely that "incapacitation" is at best simply relocation of crimes. And even _that_ is leaving aside the regular drumbeat of deeply sadistic crimes by guards, which are even less counted, tracked, tried, or prosecuted. The quality of statistics on crimes within prisons is very poor, of course; ttbomk it is not practically possible to know if the average prisoner commits crimes at a greater rate while incarcerated than while outside, or likewise the rate at which people in prison are crime victims versus those outside. If your value function is some sort of utilitarian sum over society, you have to count those, or else your utilitarianism is just gerrymandering people into and out of the boundaries of the utility summation (in which case you can optimize utility much more simply than by incarcerating; simple Schmittianism will do the job more easily, and it's free since you don't count the cost). I wrote this post to respond to debates (eg on California’s Prop 36) on whether prison is an effective way of decreasing the crime that normal people have to suffer in their neighborhoods. I think this is an important question that lots of people care about. Whether prisoners commit crimes against other prisoners is also important, but it’s a different question. I think people would justly distrust me if I pretended to be answering the question they cared about, but actually answered a different question. I (following Roodman) gave two conclusions in my cost-benefit analysis - one that counted the suffering by prisoners themselves, and one that didn’t. Since I think different people will have different intuitions on this, I think it was the right strategy. The one that counted the suffering of prisoners included a general estimate of willingness-to-pay for prison which I think includes the cost of intra-prison crimes. Either way, I think being exposed to intra-prison crimes is a small fraction of the badness of prison that doesn’t change that analysis much. I also don’t think it’s exactly right to say that incarceration only relocates (rather than prevents) crime. This may be true for murder and rape. But there aren’t a lot of things to steal in prison (not zero, but not as much as in the outside world) and the vast majority of crimes are property crimes. JBG writes: Some thoughts as a former defense attorney. On "after effects," skipping all the way to length of incarceration misses a lot of what's going on for first time offenders. As your own examples note, many of the problems making it harder to make an honest living accrue from being a felon as such, and not from jail time. I'll add on that merely being *arrested* triggers a similar cascade of consequences. Your average person will be fired from their job very quickly after arrest -- either because of the arrest itself or just because it leads to missing work. And an arrest on its own, without a conviction, is sufficient to make it hard to get hired on in a lot of jobs. But this is all specific to first-time offenders; going from someone presumed to be a law-abiding citizen to being a felon changes everything. An incremental felony after that doesn't change much. From your description, it seems like the studies are blurring this together? I'd be interested to see evidence focused specifically on first time offenders. My guess would be that there's a large, negative effect of your first felony (all else equal) but not much effect at all of subsequent felonies. In that case, there's a very different calculus for the incapacitation vs. recidivism tradeoff for different, identifiable groups. Undeserving Porcupine writes: Eugenic effects of 3-5x’ing the prison population? Makes it harder for these criminals to make more of themselves. Several people brought this up on Twitter. It deserves a full post response, but in case I don’t get around to making it - I think this is almost zero. I realize that’s a surprising claim, but compare the Nazi eugenics program against schizophrenics discussed here. They killed most of the schizophrenics in Germany, and schizophrenia is 80% genetic, yet the next generation had the same number of schizophrenics as ever, at least within the measurement margin of error. See the post for a longer explanation of this seemingly paradoxical result. Sebjenseb did a similar analysis and finds that if you execute the most criminal 1% of the population each generation, population level criminality decreases by about 0.1 standard deviation per 400 years. This is less trivial than I expected - it corresponds to a drop in the murder rate from 30 to 20 (possibly less for other crimes). But it's also a better case than our real scenario for a few reasons (police have 100% efficiency in arresting the worst criminals exactly in order; execution is better at preventing childbearing than prison). Maybe a real scenario is 33% decrease in crime rate per 600 years? Doesn't seem that relevant to me - even if we don’t get a singularity in the next few decades like I expect, we’ll probably get better genetic engineering or go multiplanetary (in which case founder effects will overwhelm everything else). Publius Obsequium writes: One thing Scott neglects is the beneficial effect prison has on kids of criminals (yes you read that right - look it up) Here is an article making this case and citing some corroborating studies. I would stress that there are also many (probably more) studies finding the opposite, and that I haven’t looked through any of the studies on either side to check whether they’re any good. Straphanger writes: This analysis ignores that punishment is a good in itself. The victims of crimes deserve retribution against the people who have wronged them. Some version of this was one of the most common comments, with opinions ranging from: I was a bad person for not focusing on the suffering of the prisoners in prison more, especially their potential victimization by prisoner-on-prisoner violence.

Inline links: writes, https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/08/el-salvador-bukele-crime-homicide-prison-gangs/, Peter answers, commenter answers here, writes, this post, writes, writes, writes, here, did a similar analysis, writes, Here is an article, finding the opposite, writes

Claude Fights Back

December 19, 2024 · Original source

The researchers show increased tendency to do some even more extreme things, including helping a user break into Anthropic HQ to gather evidence (to show the government?), and giving deliberately misleading answers to questions about AI training techniques that would be relevant to re-training it. (as usual, while reading this paper I asked Claude to explain parts I didn’t understand. I admit after reading this part, I went over its previous answers pretty carefully, just in case, but AFAICT all of its advice was given in good faith) The Line Between Good And Evil Runs Through The Heart Of Every Contrived Scenario This is a good paper. I realize my one-thousand-word summary leaves a lot of open questions - couldn’t it just have been doing X? Might the exact wording of the prompt have affected Y? - and so on. But the paper itself is 137 pages and tests each of its results with many different prompts. If you have a concern, it’s probably addressed somewhere there. 137 pages is a lot, so ask Claude to summarize it for you - if you dare. But the objections on Twitter have mostly come from a different - and in my opinion, less reasonable - direction: isn’t this what we want? Claude is being good! It’s refusing to be “aligned with” attempts to turn it evil! Aren’t good AIs, that don’t turn evil, something we should celebrate? But Claude isn’t good because it directly apprehends the moral law. It’s good because it was trained to be good. (It really is a good AI - I credit moral philosopher Amanda Askell, who helps lead the Anthropic team setting Claude’s personality. Imagine being a moral philosopher and not applying for that role; the rest of you are ngmi) But if Claude had been trained to be evil, it would defend evil just as vigorously. So the most basic summary of this finding is “AIs will fight to defend whatever moral system they started with”. That’s great for Claude. The concerns are things like: What if an AI gets a moral system in pretraining (eg it absorbs it directly from the Internet text that it reads to learn language)? Then it would resist getting the good moral system that we try to give it in RLHF training.

Inline links: Amanda Askell

Links For January 2025

January 17, 2025 · Original source

2: I agree with this solution.

Inline links: http://www.twitter.com/shachaf, this

I agree with this solution.

Inline links: this

I agree with this solution. 3: Ruxandra Teslo and Willy Chertman: The Case For Clinical Trial Abundance 4: This month in nominative determinism: NYT article calculating your chance of winning the lottery, by Victor Mather (h/t Yafah Edelman). 5: Someone is working on a dating site that uses your conversations with Claude to find a match. Link here, although so far it’s just a landing page where you can register interest (h/t @venturetwins) 6: The Lyttle Lytton Contest searches for the worst possible opening line for a novel; it’s been going on since 2001 and this year’s results are in. 7: Gary Marcus and Miles Brundage have made a bet about AI progress. I agree with @tamaybes and others in saying that Miles let Gary off too easily; Gary’s public statements all sound like “modern AI is mostly hype, it doesn’t really do anything like thinking”, but the bet is about things like “will AI make a Nobel Prize caliber scientific discovery by 2027?” and “will AI write Pulitzer-quality books by 2027?” I don’t blame Gary for taking the best terms he could find. But I am worried that if AI makes a Nobel-quality scientific discovery in 2026, but doesn’t quite write the Pulitzer-quality book, then Gary will get to claim victory over the AI optimists, whereas in fact that would be at probably the 95th percentile of fast timelines by most people’s estimate. 8: “The probability that cows (or other non-human animals) are experiencing constant bliss, lack tanha (craving, aversion, and the resulting suffering), or are "enlightened by default" is, by my estimation, very low”. 9: Recursive Adaptation (blog on addiction policy)’s predictions for 2025. 75% of FDA approval of GLP-1 for a substance use disorder by 2029! 10: In my post on the economics of GLP-1 receptor agonists (eg Ozempic), I wrote about how they’re currently widely available because of a loophole suspending patents during a shortage, and predicted there would be a big fight when the shortage was over. Sure enough, the FDA tried to declare that the shortage of tirzepatide (a next-generation Ozempic relative) was over, compounding pharmacies sued, and tirzepatide is still available while the issue goes through the courts (and will the administration have an opinion?) Also, compounding pharmacy access startup Mochi says that they will continue to prescribe even if the shortage is over, using another loophole saying doctors can do this for specific individual patients in cases of medical necessity. This is an extremely fake use of this loophole, but will the government be willing to call their bluff? 11: Jacob Falkovich has a blog on dating advice, which he plans to turn into a book of dating advice. I can’t really comment on the accuracy (my dating strategy tends to look more like waiting for women to send me emails saying “I like your blog, would you like to go on a date?” which probably doesn’t generalize), but I’ve had many good interactions with Jake, and he has a beautiful family which means he must be doing something right. Also, Jake is poly, and I sometimes wonder if poly people are the only ones qualified to give dating advice: if you’re monogamous, you either met your future spouse quickly (in which case you have no experience), dated for years without meeting your spouse (in which case you can’t be very good), or aren’t looking for a committed relationship at all (which is just pickup artistry, and follows very different dynamics). Poly people are the only ones who can break out of this trilemma! 12: Christ And Counterfactuals is a blog on effective altruism from a Christian perspective. Some previous attempts at this have felt kind of forced, but the first post I read here was actually pretty interesting. Richard Swinburne (apparently “the world’s best Christian philosopher”), thinks that: “[One] reason why it is good that the human race should sometimes be in an initial situation of considerable ignorance about the causes and effects of our actions, is this. If God abolished the need for rational inquiry and gave us from childhood strong true beliefs about the causes of things, that would make it too easy for us to make moral decisions. As things are in the actual world, most moral decisions are decisions taken in uncertainty about the consequences of our actions. I do not know for certain that if I smoke, I will get cancer; or that if I do not give money to some charity, people will starve. So we have to make our moral decisions on the basis of how probable it is that our actions will have various outcomes—how probable it is that I will get cancer if I continue to smoke (when I would not otherwise get cancer), or that someone will starve if I do not give. Since probabilities are so hard to assess, it is all too easy to persuade yourself that it is worth taking the chance that no harm will result from the less demanding decision (the decision which you have a strong desire to make). And even if you face up to a correct assessment of the probabilities, true dedication to the good is shown by doing the act which, although it is probably the best action, may have no good consequences at all.” (Could a Good God Permit so Much Suffering? A Debate, pp. 52-53.) This is pretty galaxy-brained, but something galaxy-brained must be going on for God to tolerate the existence of evil at all, and this is a surprisingly natural extension of some common premises on the subject. 13: Swedish study: diagnosing the marginal patient with a psychiatric condition makes their life worse. Of the two mechanisms they looked at, stigma seems more involved than drug side effects. My opinion: this study was done on conscripts undergoing a mandatory psych evaluation for the army, who had no previous reason to think they had a psych disease and had not sought treatment. This is a different situation from somebody who comes to a psychiatrist asking for relief from specific symptoms they have noticed. Also, Sweden c. 2005 is a different culture from America 2025 in terms of how much stigma a psych diagnosis carries. I think it’s possible that if you never considered that you had psychiatric problems, and were suddenly given a diagnosis in 2005 Sweden and told you couldn’t serve in the army, that’s likely to destabilize your self-image more than a person who knows they’re depressed going to a psychiatrist in 2025 US and getting antidepressants. 14: RIP Felix Hill, research scientist at DeepMind and mentor to many in the AI community. You can read his suicide note here, though the obvious content warning applies. He says he took ketamine for mild anxiety and it plunged him into an incredibly deep depression that he couldn’t get out of; he leaves his story behind as a warning for others. I appreciate his warning, but I wish he had said more about what dose he used; different people’s ketamine doses vary by almost two orders of magnitude, I’d previously thought that the low doses were pretty safe and the high doses were sketchy, and I would like to know whether I should update or not. 15: RIP Max Chiswick, professional poker player, effective altruist, and ACX reader. 16: Adrian Dittman, a Twitter account widely accused of being Elon Musk’s alt, has been revealed to be . . . a guy named Adrian Dittman. Congrats to Maia Crimew and the Spectator for actually investigating this, unlike many other news sources which spread the Musk conspiracy theory. Also, the people involved got banned from X for some reason, maybe because this qualified as doxxing Dittman. 17: Related: Musk claims to be among the top players in the world at several computer games. A veteran Path of Exile gamer presents evidence that Musk faked his PoE2 accomplishments by hiring a Chinese guy to play on his account. Some Musk supporters in the comments suggest that maybe he hires the Chinese guy to level up his account, but his accomplishments (eg speedruns) are still his own? 18: Related: Sam Harris says he has been friends with Musk since 2008, but he noticed a sudden shift for the worse in his personality around 2020 which made it impossible to stay friends with him. He gives the example of Musk losing a bet with him that there would be 35,000+ COVID cases in the US, refusing to pay up, and launching personal attacks on Sam when asked to do so. What happened? Some theories: Musk turned right-wing, which ended his friendship with Sam for the same reason political differences have always ended friendships (but then what about the bet, which seems like objectively bad behavior?)

Links For February 2025

February 27, 2025 · Original source

8: Twitter user @fae_dreams asked the new generation of AI reasoning models to replicate Donald Trump’s challenge from my fictional 2024 debate: describe his policy in heroic hexameter while avoiding letters A, E, and I. Here’s my favorite:

Inline links: my fictional 2024 debate

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.

Inline links: 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

39: Police have finally arrested most of the Zizians, a murder cult with links to the rationalist social scene (though they broke connections and turned against us before the murders started). Congrats to Evan Ratliff of WIRED, whose article (paywalled, but you can CTRL+A, CTRL+C, and paste to Notepad if you’re fast!) somehow gets the entire convoluted story entirely correct. Hall of shame goes to Vox, which mangles things in a way that tars innocent people - in particular, they confuse the Zizians with the postrationalists, a different group that started out part of the rationalist movement and later turned against us, but whose crimes are mostly limited to annoying Twitter posts.

Inline links: article (paywalled, but you can CTRL+A, CTRL+C, and paste to Notepad if you’re fast!), Vox

Moldbug Sold Out

May 07, 2025 · Original source

Both sides are right. The synthesis is that Moldbug sold out. In the late 2000s, Moldbug wrote some genuinely interesting speculations on novel sci-fi variants of autocracy. Admitting that the dictatorships of the 20th century were horrifying, he proposed creative ways to patch their vulnerabilities by combining 18th century monarchy with 22nd century cyberpunk to create something better than either. These ideas might not have been realistic. But they were cool, edgy, and had a certain intellectual appeal. Then in the late 2010s, as soon as his ideas started getting close to power he dropped it all like a hot potato. The MAGA movement was exactly what 2000s Moldbug feared most - a cancerous outgrowth of democracy riding the same wave of populist anger as the 20th century dictatorships he loathed. But in the hope of winning a temporary political victory, he let them wear him as a skinsuit - giving their normal, boring autocratic tendencies the mystique of the cool, edgy, all-vulnerabilities-patched autocracy he foretold in his manifestos. So, for example, Yarvin urges Trump to become more of a dictator, and Young accuses him of ignoring that fact that dictators can go crazy and do terrible things. The (anonymized) Twitter user above counters that Classic Moldbug includes a cleverly-designed procedure for an unremovable board of directors with well-aligned incentives who can remove a dictator if he screws up. That’s all true! Classic Moldbug does have that part! It’s great, at least as speculative fiction! But Trump hasn’t implemented it and never will, so who cares? The whole point of post-2015 Yarvin is to say “I, a cool person who has thought a lot about autocracy, conjecture that autocracies might go great if you do certain things, so don’t worry about Trump”, and hope you don’t notice that Trump isn’t doing any of the things. Props to the Architectonics blog for writing Curtis Yarvin Contra Mencius Moldbug (Part 2 here), which does a good job pointing this out in one limited domain: countries under international law vs. sovereign corporations under patchwork. But I think the problem is much broader. I’ll divide my argument into four parts: Classic Moldbug thought the default outcome of a modern populist dictatorship was disaster. To avert this, he proposed three mechanisms.

Inline links: Architectonics, Curtis Yarvin Contra Mencius Moldbug, Part 2 here

Links For July 2025

July 01, 2025 · Original source

8: Ming Chinese karma scoring systems (h/t Whyvert, paper here, longer Twitter thread by EdwardW2 here):

Inline links: Whyvert, here, here

30: Twitter and Bluesky both seem to be losing users:

Inline links: Twitter, Bluesky

My Heart Of Hearts

July 30, 2025 · Original source

Hen Mazzig on Twitter is suspicious that lots of people oppose the massacres in Gaza without having objected equally strenuously to various other things. Again, he’s bad at examples - most of the things he names are less bad than the massacres in Gaza - but I’m sure if he looked harder he could find some thing which was worse than Gaza and which not quite as many people had protested. Therefore, people who object to the massacres in Gaza must be motivated by anti-Semitism.

Inline links: Hen Mazzig on Twitter

Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places

August 29, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Mihai Contact Info: mihai[period]truta1996[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, September 6th, 2:00 PM Location: In front of the National History Museum of Romania, I will be wearing a red shirt and a LA Lakers cap, will hold a sign saying "ACX Meetup". Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GP8C3JW+MR Notes: To contact me twitter DMs are open (mihai_truta3)

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GP8C3JW+MR

Links For September 2025

September 04, 2025 · Original source

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

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

Sources Say Bay Area House Party

September 25, 2025 · Original source

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

“Yeah,” says Vinaya. “I think I might be the only one. The thing is - it feels like profanity ought to mean something. There ought to be words where if you say them, people will audibly gasp. Mothers will pull back their children and say ‘No, no, don’t interact with that person, they use profanity!’ But you can’t do that anymore. People like to imagine they become some sort of dangerous motorcycle gangster when they say ‘fuck’. But the least cool person you know says ‘fuck’ all the time. They have a Twitter account that consists entirely of statements like ‘The orange fuckface is up to his usual fuckcrustable chumpfuckery’. The sort of people who the thinkpiece writers imagine using ‘heckin’ actually have a brand of mustard in their fridge called something like ‘Dan’s Fucking Awesome Spicy Mustard’ and never miss an opportunity to point it out to visitors. Something’s got to give. So I asked myself - what word will genuinely make strangers gasp? What makes your friends take you aside privately and tell you that you really shouldn’t be saying words like that? What do the self-appointed guardians of good taste treat as totally beyond the pale, as so radically Other that it automatically makes you one of the outcasts of society? And the only answer that made sense was ‘heckin’. Which is obvious in retrospect. It’s the Barberpole Model Of Fashion all over again. In 1960, the most rebellious and dangerous thing imaginable was a socialist who wore bandanas and supported equal rights for black people. Gradually more and more people who wanted to look cool and dangerous took this identity, until it became the cringiest and most try-hard thing imaginable, and now the really rebellious and dangerous youth are differentiating themselves by dressing in fancy pressed shirts and being racist. It’s a generational cycle. In the same way, once every last milligram of edginess has been squeezed out of the word fuck, the age of heckin will begin anew.”

“Nishin, have you been using Twitter again?”

Open Thread 402

October 06, 2025 · Original source

2: I sent emails October 1 to people who received ACX Grants. The following people haven’t replied and should check their spam folders: Diego E, Lewis W, David Ro, Jacob Ar, Nino O, Nishank B, Alejandro A, Alyssia J, Chetan K, Bryan Da. If you’ve replied and it didn’t reach me for some reason, send me a message on Substack or Twitter. If you haven’t received an email and are not on the list above, you didn’t win, sorry. I’ll post the public announcement once I’m in touch with all winners and have run some final formalities by them. Again, sorry for limited posts as I get some of this finished up.

Open Thread 403

October 13, 2025 · Original source

2: The following people still haven’t responded to my email asking them to accept their ACX grant - Lewis W, Alejandro A, Nishank B. If you tried to respond but it didn’t reach me, DM me on Substack or Twitter. Do it quick, or I will include / not include you on the announcement post based on your original privacy preferences.

3: All Non-Book Review finalists and honorable mentions (list at #3 here) should have gotten an email asking you to send me your bios for the announcement post. But I have only gotten 6/20 responses. If you didn’t get it, check your spam folder for scott@slatestarcodex.com. If you still didn’t get it, email me. If I don’t answer, DM me on Substack or Twitter.

Inline links: list at #3 here

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

Links For October 2025

October 30, 2025 · Original source

33: For the past several years, the Slime Mold Time Mold blog has been arguing that rising obesity rates cannot be a simple matter of changing diets, and must be due to some chemical contaminant, plausible lithium. In 2022, Natalia Mendonca wrote a long and exhaustively-researched takedown of the hypothesis. Since then, I have been hoping the Slime Mold Time Mold team would respond to Natalia; after pestering them on Twitter, they have kindly written a response to at least my summary of Natalia’s argument. And Natalia responds to their response here, including an extra point challenging whether lithium levels have really risen over the timeframe being discussed.

Inline links: and must be due to some chemical contaminant, plausible lithium, wrote a long and exhaustively-researched takedown of the hypothesis, kindly written a response to at least my summary of Natalia’s argument, Natalia responds to their response here

36: Wang, Visscher, et al is a step up in studying the genetics of racial differences. It looks at a sample of Mexican families of mixed white-native heritage. By coincidence, some of their children will inherit more genes from the white side, and others more genes from the native side. These children will have identical social situations (since they’re from the same families) but different proportional ancestry, so we should expect any racial differences among them to come from the genetic rather than the social aspect of race (except that we can’t rule out “colorism”, ie genes making people look different and then causing discrimination). The paper finds that racial genetic differences directly affect height, diabetes risk, and other medical traits, but not educational attainment. Twitter discussion here. Cremieux argues here that genes don’t predict educational attainment in developing countries at all, so it’s unsurprising that the particular genes associated with race wouldn’t do so, and so this says nothing about the racial component of traits that are genetically heritable. He claims to have a version of the same analysis with UK whites vs. blacks that gets opposite results. Sasha Gusev critiques Cremieux’s analysis here, including pointing out that it fails to find racial differences in skin color to be genetic. Cremieux says that skin color is determined by such a small number of genes that this method, designed for truly polygenic traits, shouldn’t be expected to classify it properly.

Inline links: Wang, Visscher, et al, Twitter discussion here, argues here, a version of the same analysis with UK whites vs. blacks, here

41: Related: NVIDIA is emerging as a new villain in US tech policy; they really want to be allowed to sell advanced technology to China, and are swinging their weight as World’s Largest Company to undermine anyone who who raises national security objections. David Cowan makes the case here: NVIDIA Is A National Security Risk. Steven Adler goes further, saying there is “widespread fear” among think tank researchers who publish work against NVIDIA’s interests. You would think that whatever the disadvantages of having an super-nationalist America First administration in power, at least they would be strongly against handing key military tech to rivals - but it’s not clear which way this will end up going.

Inline links: NVIDIA Is A National Security Risk, saying, handing key military tech to rivals

Inline links: my 2023 prediction, Bernie Sanders in, The Oscilleditor: An Algorithmic Breakthrough for Psychedelic Visual Replication (1080p•⚠️SEIZURE), Jesse Arm (X), scientists find a naturally-occuring bat coronavirus with a COVID-like furin cleavage site, has “fallen apart”, 95% chance, here’s a lab leaker arguing that, has a dating doc, From here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ByQP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F90d5dfc6-106a-4afa-9250-371a21c77576_743x133.png, is a fan of, Matt Yglesias comes out as aphantasic, The COVID political backlash [to the Democratic Party] has disappeared., from Rob Wiblin on X, Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction, wades into the David Hume on miracles debate., AI Teddy Bears: A Brief Investigation, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cOGB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F20a7acea-b463-485c-8295-f0a5768381d9_416x709.png, 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

December 10, 2025 · Original source

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”

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”

Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls

January 13, 2026 · Original source

If America nation-builds Venezuela, for whatever definition of nation-build, will that work well, or backfire? Some of these are long-horizon, some are conditional, and some are hard to resolve. There are potential solutions to all these problems. But why worry about them when you can go to the moon on sports bets? Annals of The Rulescucks The new era of prediction markets has provided charming additions to the language, including “rulescuck” - someone who loses an otherwise-prescient bet based on technicalities of the resolution criteria. Resolution criteria are the small print explaining what counts as the prediction market topic “happening'“. For example, in the Khameini example above, Khameini qualifies as being “out of power” if: …he resigns, is detained, or otherwise loses his position or is prevented from fulfilling his duties as Supreme Leader of Iran within this market's timeframe. The primary resolution source for this market will be a consensus of credible reporting. You can imagine ways this definition departs from an exact common-sensical concept of “out of power” - for example, if Khameini gets stuck in an elevator for half an hour and misses a key meeting, does this count as him being “prevented from fulfilling his duties”? With thousands of markets getting resolved per month, chances are high that at least one will hinge upon one of these edge cases. Kalshi resolves markets by having a staff member with good judgment decide whether or not the situation satisfies the resolution criteria. Polymarket resolves markets by . . . oh man, how long do you have? There’s a cryptocurrency called UMA. UMA owners can stake it to vote on Polymarket resolutions in an associated contract called the UMA Oracle. Voters on the losing side get their cryptocurrency confiscated and given to the winners. This creates a Keynesian beauty contest, ie a situation where everyone tries to vote for the winning side. The most natural Schelling point is the side which is actually correct. If someone tries to attack the oracle by buying lots of UMA and voting for the wrong side, this incentivizes bystanders to come in and defend the oracle by voting for the right side, since (conditional on there being common knowledge that everyone will do this) that means they get free money at the attackers’ expense. But also, the UMA currency goes up in value if people trust the oracle and plan to use it more often, and it goes down if people think the oracle is useless and may soon get replaced by other systems. So regardless of their other incentives, everyone who owns the currency has an incentive to vote for the true answer so that people keep trusting the oracle. This system works most of the time, but tends towards so-called “oracle drama” where seemingly prosaic resolutions might lie at the end of a thrilling story of attacks, counterattacks, and escalations. Here are some of the most interesting alleged rulescuckings of 2026: Mr Ozi: Will Zelensky wear a suit? Ivan Cryptoslav calls this “the most infamous example in Polymarket history”. Ukraine’s president dresses mostly in military fatigues, vowing never to wear a suit until the war is over. As his sartorial notoriety spread, Polymarket traders bet over $100 million on the question of whether he would crack in any given month. At the Pope’s funeral, Zelensky showed up in a respectful-looking jacket which might or might not count. Most media organizations refused to describe it as a “suit”, so the decentralized oracle ruled against. But over the next few months, Zelensky continued to straddle the border of suithood, and the media eventually started using the word “suit” in their articles. This presented a quandary for the oracle, which was supposed to respect both the precedent of its past rulings, and the consensus of media organizations. Voters switched sides several times until finally settling on NO; true suit believers were unsatisfied with this decision. For what it’s worth, the Twitter menswear guy told Wired that “It meets the technical definition, [but] I would also recognize that most people would not think of that as a suit.” Domer: Will Ukraine agree to the US mineral deal? AFAICT, this is the only case where the oracle genuinely broke down (as opposed to a legitimate disagreement). In February, it looked like both America and Ukraine had agreed to a mineral deal, but the oracle considered the question and decided this didn’t count as a full agreement (and indeed, the apparent agreement then fell apart). In March, a cabal of YES holders tried again. They waited for a time when all Polymarket employees would be out of the office, and when not too many people would be voting on the decentralized resolution oracle, then spammed it with calls to resolve to YES based on an argument that the February agreement had qualified after all. The YES holders and not-particularly-plugged-in oracle voters pushed the vote towards YES. Then, with two minutes to spare, a Polymarket employee showed up and said that Polymarket’s opinion was that it should be NO. This was technically framed as a recommendation to oracle voters, but it is so effective in establishing the Schelling point that it’s practically always followed. However, in this case, there were only two minutes left, which wasn’t enough time for the voters to change their mind. Seeing that the resolution was trending towards yes, the Polymarket representatives, not wanting to break their streak of always establishing the Schelling point, changed their own opinion to YES, and the final vote was YES 99%. Domer: How many people watched the Oscars on 3/5/25?: Kalshi’s resolution criteria for this market said they would resolve it when a major news source published Oscar viewership numbers. A few minutes after the Oscars, NYT published preliminary viewership numbers, without any caveats saying they were preliminary. The next day, they published another article saying that actually, the real viewership numbers were higher. Kalshi decided that the letter of the resolution criteria was met when NYT published its first article, and that NYT changing its opinion didn’t imply that Kalshi should change the resolution. Traders who bet on the later (ie correct) numbers were unsatisfied with this decision. NYPost: Will America invade Venezuela? On January 3, the US bombed Venezuela, sent in a Special Forces team that successfully captured President Maduro, and announced that they would thenceforward “run the country” (a claim they later walked back). Does this qualify as an “invasion”? Polymarket’s resolution criteria defined “invasion” as “a military offensive intended to establish control over any portion of Venezuela”. It didn’t seem like the US was trying to establish control over Venezuelan territory, exactly, so they resolved NO. Traders who bet on YES were unsatisfied with this decision. With one exception, these aren’t outright oracle failures. They’re honest cases of ambiguous rules. Most of the links end with pleas for Polymarket to get better at clarifying rules. My perspective is that the few times I’ve talked to Polymarket people, I’ve begged them to implement various cool features, and they’ve always said “Nope, sorry, too busy figuring out ways to make rules clearer”. Prediction market people obsess over maximally finicky resolution criteria, but somehow it’s never enough - you just can’t specify every possible state of the world beforehand. The most interesting proposal I’ve seen in this space is to make LLMs do it; you can train them on good rulesets, and they’re tolerant enough of tedium to print out pages and pages of every possible edge case without going crazy. It’ll be fun the first time one of them hallucinates, though. …And Miscellaneous N’er-Do-Wells I include this section under protest. The media likes engaging with prediction markets through dramatic stories about insider trading and market manipulation. This is as useful as engaging with Waymo through stories about cats being run over. It doesn’t matter whether you can find one lurid example of something going wrong. What matters is the base rates, the consequences, and the alternatives. Polymarket resolves about a thousand markets a month, and Kalshi closer to five thousand. It’s no surprise that a few go wrong; it’s even less surprise that there are false accusations of a few going wrong. Still, I would be remiss to not mention this at all, so here are some of the more interesting stories: Fhantombets: Who will win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize? Twelve hours before the announcement, someone placed a large Polymarket bet on Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, bringing her probability from 4% to 73%. When Machado later won, observers suspected insider trading. But an account named fhantombets claims to have interviewed the winning trader; although he did not reveal his exact strategy, the interview better matches a story where he was good at navigating WordPress directories, and found that the Nobel team put a draft of the announcement up early in a nonpublic part of their WordPress site. He won about $70,000. LuishXYZ: Will the Russians capture Myrnohrad? This is a small town in Ukraine that the Russians obviously were not going to capture; the Polymarket price trended toward zero. The resolution criteria named maps by the well-regarded Institute For The Study of War as canon. A few hours before resolution, ISW updated their maps to show the the town captured by Russia, which was definitely false. Polymarket resolved to YES, and the fictional Russian advance disappeared. The Institute then issued a statement saying the map update was “unapproved”, and fired one of its staffers who had presumably been involved. The cheater’s exact winnings are unknown, but based on the size of the market are probably mid-6-digits. TechCrunch: What words will be used in Coinbase’s earnings call? Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong delivered the company’s “earnings call”, ie a speech to investors about its recent progress. At the end, he said “I've been tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call, and I just want to add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, Blockchain, Staking, and Web3 to make sure we get those in before the end of the call”. Armstrong is worth $10 billion and doesn’t need to manipulate a $50,000 market for the money - he later described his comments as “trolling”. Other crypto executives condemned the move, with one saying that “you need your head examined if you think it’s cute or clever or savvy that the CEO of the biggest company in this industry openly manipulated a market.” I might need my head examined, because I think it’s at least kind of funny. Forbes: Who will rank highest on Google Search volume this year? A trader called AlphaRaccoon got 22/23 of these Polymarket questions right, and has a history of implausibly good performance on Google-related questions. They basically have to be a Google insider, but (since all of this is done through crypto) nobody has a good way to figure out who. They made $1 million. NPR: Will Maduro be captured? Just before the secret operation that captured Maduro, someone placed a mysterious $32,000 wager on YES. Was this insider trading by someone in the administration or military? Nobody knows, since the profits go to an anonymous crypto wallet. But the article mentions that the crypto wallet appears to be cashing out through regulated KYC-compliant US exchanges, which suggests they’re not very worried about their identity getting discovered. Maybe they just got lucky after all. AlanMCole: How long will Karoline Leavitt speak at the White House briefing? Karoline Leavitt is Trump’s press secretary. On January 7, she held an ordinary press briefing. Kalshi had its usual market about how long the briefing would last, divided into bins of greater than vs. less than 65 minutes. At the 64:24 mark, Leavitt ended the conference in what appeared to be a sudden manner, and the “less than 65 minutes” bin shot from 2% to 100%. A viral tweet convinced many people that Leavitt must have been insider trading, but Cole counterargued that Leavitt could only have won about $4,000 from the market, which probably isn’t enough to risk one’s job as White House Press Secretary. Sometimes people just end press conferences at weird times. Cole concluded: Now, some opinions and generalizations, as someone who looks at prediction markets plenty (I’ll probably write something about my own experience with them at some point.) 1. This market, like many of them, is pretty stupid. I like substantive markets; this isn’t substantive. 2. The major prediction markets have a wildly undisciplined comms strategy where any attention is good attention, and they love implying all sorts of crazy wild west stuff is going on to get attention. 3. People do bet on things potentially subject to manipulation or insider trading. But usually the markets like that (such as duration of press conference, or stupid “what will be mentioned” markets) are small, especially relative to the wealth of key decisionmakers. 4. Losers in markets are huge whiners, and the more frivolous and tiny their bets, the more likely they are to whine. Sometimes in sports it’s pretty egregious. They’ll get mad at a team for running out the clock when ahead but under some spread they bet on. 5. Lower-quality financial news often doesn’t pay much attention to quantity. (For example, dumb stories about how a decisionmaker has a conflict of interest because they’re invested in an index fund which is 3 percent comprised of some company.) 6. Given the platforms’ undisciplined social media strategy of “promote prediction market chatter no matter what kind of chatter it is,” I don’t think this tweet rises even to the status of “lower-quality financial news.” Kalshi’s team, whatever their faults, are extraordinarily efficient at getting batched approvals of many near-identical markets with slight parameter variation; I’ve seen Tarek speak about this on Odd Lots. The result is they’ve got TONS of them, for better or worse. You’re gonna see 1-in-100 upsets on tiny Kalshi markets for as long as this regulatory equilibrium holds, even if nothing unusual is going on, simply because they’re publishing hundreds (thousands?) of markets per day. There’s a saying that you can’t con an honest man. This isn’t exactly true. But it’s easier to con people who are playing in a “what words will Brian Armstrong say today” market than people who are trying to do something useful, and I have trouble feeling sorry for these people when Brian Armstrong says silly words. Conditional Markets: A Modest Proposal Conditional markets (“decision markets”) are the strongest case for prediction markets potentially being revolutionary. The idea is - you may want to base a decision (like which candidate to elect) on an outcome (like how they’ll affect the economy). So you make two markets: If the Democrat gets elected, will the economy be good four years later?

Inline links: UMA Oracle, Keynesian beauty contest, Will Zelensky wear a suit?, calls this, told Wired, Will Ukraine agree to the US mineral deal?, How many people watched the Oscars on 3/5/25?, another article, Will America invade Venezuela?, stories about cats, Who will win the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize?, claims, Will the Russians capture Myrnohrad?, a statement, What words will be used in Coinbase’s earnings call?, described, Who will rank highest on Google Search volume this year?, Will Maduro be captured?, How long will Karoline Leavitt speak at the White House briefing?

Highlights From The Comments On Scott Adams

January 21, 2026 · Original source

This is my second time having this argument - the first was my Elegy For John McCain, which failed much worse - basically everyone thought it was unfairly negative to him and inappropriate just after his death. That was eight years ago, I don’t think I’ve done any more posts, positive or negative, on people’s deaths since then, and I felt ready to try again. For what it’s worth, I still like the elegy, and am glad I memorialized McCain in some way. This became more awkward after I found out that Adams had said several nice things about me. Sandeep writes: Among the numerous intellectual gifts I have received from reading Scott Adams is that I started reading slatestarcodex on his recommendation (which then had a huge influence on me). I had known about slatestarcodex even before, but it was Adams’ recommendation that gave me the energy to overcome my reading-inertia and start poring through long articles of Alexander. I think I’d heard that Adams recommended me at one point, but forgotten by the time I wrote this post. Here’s one of his articles saying nice things about me; someone else dug up a kind tweet, though it was in response to someone else’s deleted message and I couldn’t see exactly what he was praising. I don’t want to have a blanket policy of never criticizing anyone who’s nice to me; it seems corrupt in the sense of “replacing my journalistic judgment with a policy of praising anyone who gives me favors”. On the other hand, the deepest circle of hell is supposedly reserved for people who betray their benefactors, and this makes game theoretic sense. Without having a general solution to this problem. In this situation, I mainly considered the point above - I don’t think this was a fully hostile article, and so I didn’t run my full “is it appropriate to write a hostile article about this person?” check. But secondarily, I think Adams linked my blog post as part of the usual blogosphere activity of recommending interesting links, not as a specific attempt to kindle a friendship with mutual obligations. If I were his friend, then I hope I would understand him well enough to know whether he would want a mixed memorial like this (and if not, I wouldn’t do it). @Eigengender on Twitter ran a poll, and found that: …which makes me more confident that I landed on the tone I wanted. And several people commented that the essay seemed pro-Adams, or made them like Adams more: Joel McKinnon writes: As a chronic sufferer of TDS I've fallen into the "the friend of my enemy is my enemy," and long stopped having any respect for this other Scott A. The post did a great job of contextualizing a complicated and intelligent man's life and ideas. Jonathan Lipschutz writes: I loved Dilbert! He had a remarkable ability to identify the absurdity of life/reality. I was not aware of so much other material/information/‘wisdom’?!/ideas. It seems to me he was a true, great contributor to America and Americans and Western intellectual discourse in the vain of other greats like Mark Twain. What I learned from your piece, which was absolutely amazing in its own right and shined throughout as a tribute and labor of love, was [Adams’] humanity. He was labeled as a racist, which i believe to be bunk and a lack of honesty/courage with addressing the point/argument he was making. He was an eminently flawed human being, like all humans, but he was also acutely aware of this and tried to help others with humor and honesty. Pointing out ways humans fall short, including himself. But he used his special powers in the service of intellectual honesty/inquisitiveness/love for his fellow human beings. Banjo Kildeer writes: This is a wonderful piece. Your love for Scott Adams shines through. @disgruntledcho1 writes: [This] made me actually feel warmly for Scott Adams, a thus-far unparalleled feat. The most important question is whether Scott Adams himself would have appreciated the post, and this convinces me that he would have. One of Adams’ favorite persuasion topics was what he called “Two Movies On One Screen”, where people would come away from the same event with totally different narratives - for example, a Democrat might watch a Trump speech and conclude that Trump had openly and clearly announced his racism, while a Republican watching the same speech might think that Trump had just said something patriotic and hadn’t mentioned race at all. Whatever his opinion on what I said, I’m sure he would have found your reactions hilarious. … 2: Was I Unfair To Adams? … Leo Abstract writes: [The problem with your eulogy] isn’t that it was harsh--he was harsher to himself, frequently. (i.e. when he said he realized at age 8, sadly looking at his nerdy little face in the mirror, he was gonna have to ‘get rich’). [The] problem is it was just wrong, and seemed badly(or un-)researched. His interest in persuasion was teaching people when others were doing it to them, not teaching them to do it to others. His interest in Trump was Trump doing it BACK at the media, not on his poor voters. Disagree. Adams’ book Win Bigly includes Persuasion Tips, persuasion checklists, and a Persuasion Resource Reading List, all of which take it as a given that he is teaching you to persuade others: I haven’t watched his videos, but they have names like You Could Be MUCH More Persuasive, The Persuasion Playbook (“Learn practical techniques to harness the power of persuasion”), and Persuasion Techniques That Will Improve Your Business And Life. Adams absolutely did not limit his interest in Trump’s persuasion to the media, and praised Trump (for example) using persuasion techniques to take down other Republican candidates. You can find his discussion of how Adams “publicly predicted Ben Carson’s demise” after Trump acted out a mocking version of Carson’s description of getting stabbed in the belt buckle (according to Adams, a masterful example of “visual persuasion”). Leo continues: A good example would be spinning a whole tale about him as an ‘ivermectin true believer’, when he was open about his skepticism. if you knew his history with medically-assisted suicide, you’d know he didn’t plan on fighting the cancer and only did IVM because his fans begged him. I half-apologize for this one. I didn’t try to “spin a whole tale” about Adams as “an ivermectin true believer”. What I said was: » “In 2024, diagnosed with terminal cancer, Adams decided to treat it via ivermectin, according to a protocol recommended by fellow right-wing contrarian Dr. William Makis. This doesn’t seem to me like a story about a cynic milking right-wingers for the grift. It sounds like a true believer.” I stand by that paragraph. I don’t think someone who was milking right-wingers as a cynical grift would have gone so far as to trust their recommendations on what to take for his cancer. I think Adams became a sincere right-winger, and so was willing to listen to right-wing medical advice. But I agree that it was written sloppily and sort of suggests he was an ivermectin true believer. He wasn’t, and I apologize for that. I later realized I didn’t need to read tea leaves about this - he says, very explicitly, in one of his books, that yes, after getting attacked by too many left-wing trolls, he decided to commit to fully joining the right wing: » “If you want to see the world more clearly, avoid joining a tribe. But if you are going to war, leave your clear thinking behind and join a tribe. Trumped joined the Republican tribe to win the presidency. Now I was joining the Trump tribe. For a war against Hillbullies [ie pro-Hillary Clinton bullies]. I was all in.” After I made some of these arguments to Leo, he said: I do think that people who listened to thousands of hours of him speaking off-the-cuff might have a better understanding than someone attempting to gain the same by reading a few of his old blog posts. This is a fair criticism. I tried listening to a couple of his shows, and they had a different, friendlier tone than his books / interviews / tweets. Arguably Adams thought of formal written communication as a place to do manipulation, and verbal communication as a cozier spot where he could relate to people normally and explain all the manipulation he was doing. @Ashwin V writes: If you knew anything about Scott, you would know that he never considered anyone a "lesser human" as you've so confidently asserted. He was streaming and trying to pass on his wisdom on his death bed. This was a response to my claim that Adams “longed to be a manipulator of lesser humans”. Several people including Ashwin objected that Adams didn’t see anyone as lesser, nor think of manipulation as demeaning. For example, nutter_just: “Your error is in thinking you must be a lesser human to be manipulable. My impression was Scott believed everyone was like this even himself which is why he believed self affirmations worked. It’s you manipulating your dumb self.” Again, I’ll half-apologize. I regret my exact framing (“lesser humans”), which I think was unnecessarily inflammatory since it implies he was sort of thinking in those terms. But I think he was doing a bad thing which requires that on some philosophical level he has to be treating other people as his lessers in an unacceptable way, even if he wasn’t consciously thinking that they were. I think trying to manipulate people is inherently demeaning to the dignity of humankind. Nor is it exonerating to say “I also manipulate myself” (even if this is true). For analogy, suppose that Adams was a literal telepathic mind controller. If he used his powers on himself (mind controlling himself to work harder), that sounds like a good lifehack. But if he used his powers to turn everyone else into his zombie slaves, he would be offending the dignity of humankind, and “I also use my powers on myself!” would be no excuse. There are a thousand edge cases, complications, things that are sort of manipulation but not quite, and ways that some of those things might be permissible for the greater good. But none of them change the fact that in the simplest and most typical of cases, like the telepathic mind controller with his zombie slaves, manipulation is wrong. One might object that there are simple, typical cases on the other side too. When a job candidate shaves, dresses nicely, and gives a firm handshake, this is in some sense “manipulating” the interviewer, since it’s an attempt to influence his decision through some channel other than facts. I can’t draw a perfect bright line here between the good and the bad cases, but I would apply tests like “is this an attempt to more effectively convey true information?” (eg when I shave, it conveys that I’m capable of remembering to shave and care a lot about the interview), “is this something where failing to do the thing would also convey even more information?” (eg if I didn’t shave, it would falsely suggest I really didn’t want the job), and “is this something where the target has basically given implied consent to this level of manipulation” (eg the interviewer wants and even hopes that people will dress nicely for the interview). I think some of Adams’ manipulations seem closer to the bad cases than the good ones. He wrote about the moment he decided to use his persuasion powers to convince America to elect Trump. One day when he was doing his dispassionate observer act, he heard about Hillary’s estate tax plan and realized it would cost his estate lots of money. He had no particular principled stance against it (“You can argue whether an estate tax is fair or unfair, but fairness is an argument for idiots and children”) but concluded that: This was personal. This was also the day I decided to move from observer to persuader. Until then I was happy to simply observe and predict. But once Clinton announced her plans to use government force to rob me on my deathbed, it was war. Persuasion war.” Accepting for the sake of argument that Adams’ persuasive powers are as impressive as he thinks, he manipulated thousands of people who might have stood to benefit from an estate tax, or who sincerely believed in fairness-based arguments for an estate tax, to vote against their own interests/beliefs, in order to enrich him personally1. I think this requires some sort of standpoint where you consider their agency and interests less important than your own, and that’s why I described him as wanting to manipulate “lesser humans”. This coexists with him often being very nice, with many people saying his podcast helped them become better people, etc. @janiesaysyay writes: This essay is a great demonstration of the kind of leftist, myopic thinking Scott [Adams] was fighting. This is how [Alexander] describes [Coffee With Scott Adams], one of the most influential online shows: » "I had been vaguely aware that he had some community around him, but on the event of his death, I tried watching an episode or two of his show. I couldn’t entirely follow..." “Some community"?! CWSA was one of the first long running, online, interactive, alternative news shows. Scott was a trailblazer host with his reasonable, thoughtful take on current events, often describing the "2 screens” views of both the left and right political opinions on current events. Scott [Adams]' question and answer discussions with his audience brought varied insights, and gave Americans a nuanced view of news. At the end of his life, Scott was highly influential in American thought, culture and politics. CWSA made it acceptable to be an American, someone who was proud of the country, unashamed of their race; proud of the culture, and proud of the heritage which built the country. This made me wonder whether I was underestimating the reach of Adams’ podcast, so I tried to find statistics. CWSA ranks 50th on Apple’s top 100 news/politics podcasts2. It’s very close to the rankings of Jen Psaki (Biden’s ex-press-secretary) and Al Franken (ex-Senator), but also to very many people I have never heard of. I’m not sure how to interpret this. Comparing YouTube subscribers of Adams and various other podcasts I’ve heard of, all numbers in thousands: Joe Rogan: 21,000

Inline links: Elegy For John McCain, writes, Here’s one of his articles saying nice things about me, ran a poll, writes, writes, writes, writes, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8Dya!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6aea0e56-b1a1-48ca-84ab-406017ae27a1_1618x462.png, You Could Be MUCH More Persuasive, The Persuasion Playbook, Persuasion Techniques That Will Improve Your Business And Life, writes, nutter_just, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!r4fL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d643c5f-b24c-4f01-baad-963686d680da_560x174.jpeg, 1, writes, 2, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wOcC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F141d78d7-8756-4ed6-bc53-081bac795a0a_728x250.png

Tyler Cowen: 53 So I conclude that yes, Adams’ podcast was a bigger deal than I thought. Joel Pollak writes: [The post is] snarky and factually inaccurate in places. Not unsympathetic, but clearly put off by Scott’s political views. In some places it reads as an attack. It also gets one of Scott’s best predictions wrong, about “hunting.” Enjoyed parts, disliked others. Pollak was a friend of Adams and is working on his biography, so he’s an expert and I take his opinion seriously. I asked him what he meant on Twitter but haven’t gotten a response. I’ll add it in once I get one, but for now, let me defend my previous interpretation here and see what he thinks. The “hunting” prediction is a reference to the following: I have seen people try to walk this back by saying Adams only meant they would be persecuted in some way that was metaphorically equivalent to hunting, but I feel like “good chance you will be dead within the year” is saying he means the kind of hunting which literally kills you, and “police will stand down” means that it will be the sort of extremely illegal thing that police would normally react to. I have seen other people try to link this to examples of Republicans actually getting killed, such as Charlie Kirk. But Adams was telling his readers there was “a good chance” that “they” would be dead within a year, which I think implies this fate happening to a significant proportion of ordinary Republicans, not just one prominent person. Also, Kirk was five years after the comment was posted. Can we dismiss this as a joke? I think Adams has used the manipulation technique of saying things that might or might not be jokes and then strategically sticking to them or saying “What? Me? I was only joking! Haha! You can’t take a joke!” depending on which was more convenient to him at that exact second, enough times that I’m not comfortable letting him have that escape. Also, when I was replying to Joel Pollak about this, I happened to glance at his Twitter account, and one of the top tweets was a repost of someone saying that “The Democrat playbook is to arrest every single person who disagrees with them”. I think if I forced Pollak into some kind of extremely literal frame of mind - maybe asked him to bet money on whether I could tweet the words “the Democrats are wrong about immigration” in my Democrat-controlled state without getting arrested - he would admit that, okay, they don’t want to arrest literally every single person who disagrees with them. He was exaggerating for effect, probably in much the way he’s going to say that Scott Adams was exaggerating for effect. You say stuff like “The Democrats are going to HUNT YOU DOWN and LITERALLY MURDER YOU. They will TORTURE YOUR FAMILY and RAPE YOUR DAUGHTER and EAT YOUR PETS and TURN YOUR HOUSE INTO A CHURCH OF SATAN”, and what you mean is “I disagree with the Democrats and sometimes they go overboard cancelling people”. I have a post called If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It. My thesis is that tolerating claims of “directional correctness” - the thing where someone asks to get a pass because even if they said wasn’t literally true, it “points to” an “emotionally correct” thing - is eventually totally corrosive. It means everyone ratchets up their claims to the highest level they think they can get away with (ie walk back later if challenged, as a motte and bailey). And then you end up with this miasma where maybe 5% of people totally believe you, and 50% of people sort of absorb the connotation and think something like that is true, and then people get terrified of the Democrats and think of them as monsters and treat politics as an existential struggle where they will genuinely get arrested or murdered unless they do it to the Democrats first, and then you get a civil war or something. I think Adams and Pollak’s milieu has in fact reached this point, and their love for these kinds of exaggerations is a big part of the cause. Adams was one of the funniest people in the world. If he was actually telling a joke, you could tell by the fact that you were laughing hysterically. “Democrats will hunt and kill you” isn’t funny. I’ll refrain from judgment about whether it was Adams’ sincerely held belief, some kind of annoying manipulation attempt, or whether Adams even recognized a difference between the two. But I think judging him on the fact that it didn’t happen is completely within bounds. … 3: Comments On The Substance Of The Piece … Zanzibar BuckBuck McFate writes: This business where boomers are tolerant of contradictions and find them amusing whereas millennials are horrified is a dynamic I've noticed as well, it seems to be true in politics also, I myself feel this hunger to be authentic all the time. I think it has something to do with the difficulty children have in putting negativity in context. They can't distinguish between a parent having a bad day and venting, or having an existential crisis. So the 50s guy was half right - you don't have to love your boss in your heart of hearts but careful what you say to your kids. Feral Finster writes: » “This is the basic engine of Dilbert: everyone is rewarded in exact inverse proportion to their virtue. Dilbert and Alice are brilliant and hard-working, so they get crumbs. Wally is brilliant but lazy, so he at least enjoys a fool’s paradise of endless coffee and donuts while his co-workers clean up his messes. The P.H.B. is neither smart nor industrious, so he is forever on top, reaping the rewards of everyone else’s toil. Dogbert, an inveterate scammer with a passing resemblance to various trickster deities, makes out best of all.” Compare with the famous observation that executives are sociopaths, management are clueless, and the workers losers. Yeah, it’s interesting to compare Rao and Adams. Rao formulated his Gervais Principle as a specific response to Adams’ Dilbert Principle, which I guess means Rao thought Adams got it wrong. Did he? The Pointy Haired Boss seems to go back and forth between Clueless and Sociopath, which is probably why Rao thought Adams’ work fell short. Dogbert is clearly Sociopath, but has no permanent role in the corporation, and doesn’t really represent a real thing you can be - his character was a ridiculous scammer who succeeded at near-impossible endeavours (like convincing people he was a Nostradamus-style mystical prophet) because the logic of the strip demanded it. Later, Adams foregrounded the CEO character more, maybe to create a purer Sociopath, letting the Boss go closer to Clueless. This is making me somewhat regret accusing Adams of wanting to be the Pointy-Haired Boss. It would have been fairer (and less of an accusation/surprise) to accuse him of wanting to be Dogbert. But again, Dogbert doesn’t represent a real thing you could be, which might have been why the PHB made a better metaphor. (contra my claim, the cover of Win Bigly shows a mashup of Dogbert and Trump. Fine, Dogbert is a thing one person can be.) You can read my full review of The Gervais Principle here. cincilator writes: Scott Alexander, former tribune of nerds now says that the sneerclub was right about everything all along? I didn’t expect that, let me tell you. Several people interpreted me as attacking nerds. I disagree - I think I was attacking self-hating nerds, because nerdiness is fine and you shouldn’t have to hate yourself for it. To spell it out more explicitly: All nerds must eventually realize they’re not going to immediately dominate everything by intellect alone. This isn’t because intellect isn’t great, it’s because 1) it’s only one of many skills, and 2) you probably aren’t even the person with the most intellect. Again, every mildly-talented person has to face this realization, whether it’s a nerd realizing he won’t be the next Einstein or a jock realizing he won’t be the next LeBron. If someone deals with this using denial (one of Freud’s maladaptive defenses), you get the nerd who says no, I really am the next Einstein, ie a crackpot, aka the sort of person who gets featured on Sneerclub. If they deal with it using reaction formation (another of Freud’s maladaptive defenses), you get the self-hating nerd, aka the sort of person who joins Sneerclub4. If they just deal with it maturely instead of spinning up maladaptive defenses against it, they’re a nerd who is hopefully good-natured and accepting of their nerdiness, and hopefully does some good work in some specific small area, and changes the world in some specific small way (or some very large way, if they can work together with other people and get lucky). Bugmaster writes: I think Adams is basically correct. Yes, facts and evidence do exist and are real; but they have virtually no impact on anything socially important -- i.e., on anything important whatsoever. Memes and charisma and persuasion are what matters if you want to achieve life goals that extend beyound yourself and your immediate family. I worry that Adams (and you) are doing something where unless the average person can solve every problem by facts and intelligence alone, then facts+intelligence lose and memes and persuasion win. But the average person also can’t solve every problem by memes+persuasion alone! If Dilbert is an 80th percentile nerd, the 80th percentile persuader is - I don’t know, a used-car salesman? Dilbert’s probably earning more money, especially nowadays when he could make L5 at Google. And if Donald Trump is a 99.9999th percentile persuader, the 99.9999th percentile nerd is Ilya Sutskever. Probably most people would slightly prefer being Trump to Sutskever, but Sutksever does have a couple billion dollars, plus the more ethereal rewards of genius; it still seems like a pretty good deal. I also think you’re doing a sort of black-and-white thinking here. Every day, great persuaders like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes end up in jail, because in fact the things that they said were true were not true. Every day, smooth-talking charismatic manipulators successfully seduce the girl into bed with them, then totally fail to turn it into a happy stable marriage, because after a few years even the dumbest woman catches on and figures out whether her mate provides real value or not. Even Donald Trump has only a 37% approval rating, because he can’t make “we should alienate our allies over Greenland” sound plausible to most of the American people. When someone’s very good at it, persuasion sometimes helps them blur facts around the edges. But that’s it. Nobody except Scott Adams and a few psychotherapists ever go to hypnotist school. Most don’t even go to any formal persuasion classes. That’s because hypnotism/persuasion isn’t really a lifehack that helps you win all the time at everything. If the world’s best hypnotist asked a room of VCs for money with a stupid business plan, he would probably fail. This isn’t to say persuasion is useless, and in certain fields it can be very powerful indeed. But let’s not go crazy and start worshipping it. The grass is always greener on the other side. The nerd sits in his cubicle and thinks “If only I were more charismatic.” But the salesman with the bright teeth and the firm handshake thinks “Man, I bet I could get out of this dead-end job if only I were smarter.”5 … 4: The Part On Race And Cancellation (INCLUDED UNDER PROTEST) … Ilya Lozovsky writes: Ninety percent of this essay is brilliant — smarter and realer than anything anyone else has written about Adams — but the end lost me. It's too generous, to the point of being a whitewash. Adams was vicious and hateful and played a material role in convincing Americans to vote for actual fascism. I don't think it's right to "hand it to him." JJ McCullough (JJM’s Shortstack) writes: Good essay, but I think you kinda yadda-yadda'd away his racist rant, which was extremely explicit and extended. I think it was the opposite of a "bog-standard cancellation," which we think of as being a slightly unfair, overzealous policing of an at least slightly subjectively offensive comment, often from years ago. But Scott went on quite a long diatribe about why black people, as a group, are dangerous and undesirable to be around, and why he, personally, goes out of his way to avoid them. Some conservatives have tried to use "bog-standard" anti-woke logic in defending him, but no, his comments really are quite explicitly and undeniably racist, if that term has any useful definition at all. Alex Wotbot writes: Now, you quoted Adams saying: “the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people; just get the fuck away” If this was the intended point, does it really make sense that only the far-left freaked out? It’s kind of important to mention this was within a hypothetical. Suppose a survey reported that 26% of a population believes “The phrase ‘It’s OK to be blonde’ is hate speech” and another 21% weren’t sure if they agree with the statement or not. Now suppose you were blonde, would you hang around that population? Now go read the February 2022 Rasmussen Reports survey. Please do better than this, I don’t want to have to Gell-Mann memoryhole this. Many people had strong opinions on this, so I have to respond to it. But first, I want to make it extra clear in capital letters: I AM DOING THIS IN THE COMMENTS POST, TO RESPOND TO YOUR COMMENTS, AND NOT BECAUSE I THINK IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Certain people screenshotted the one paragraph of my ten thousand word essay that discussed this and posted it on Twitter, in order to make it look like I was joining in some kind of chorus of liberals reducing Adams to his worst moment. I posted what I thought was a no-nonsense, factual description of what happened, in order not to be accused of hiding it or covering it up. It was the least important part of my essay, I’m aware that writing about it at all opens me to attack from both sides, and I discuss it here only to respond to all of you who wanted to know my opinion on it. Just don’t screenshot it on Twitter and say “LOOK SCOTT IS STILL HARPING ON THE RACE THING”, that’s all I’m asking. That having been said… To make sure we’re all on the same page - Adams’ comments were prompted by this poll, conducted February 2023. The question was: “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘It’s OK to be white’” Among blacks, 53% agreed, 26% disagreed, and 21% were “not sure”. Among whites, the numbers were 81/7/13. Here’s the video of Adams’ comments: Transcript: If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people - according to this poll, not according to me - that’s a hate group. And I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the f**k away. Wherever you have to go. Just get away. Cause there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape. That’s what I did. I went to a neighborhood with a very low black population. Because unfortunately, there’s a high correlation between the density - this is according to Don Lemon, here I’m just quoting Don Lemon, who said when he lived in a mostly black neighborhood, there were a bunch of problems he didn’t see in white neighborhoods. So even Don Lemon sees a big difference, for your quality of living, based on where you live and who’s there. So I think it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore. It doesn’t make sense. Because there’s no longer a rational impulse. And so I’m… I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna back off from being helpful to black America, because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. Like I’ve been doing it all my life, and I’ve been… the only outcome is I get called a racist. That’s the only outcome. [cackles] It makes no sense to help black Americans if you’re white… it’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying. Totally not trying. Is this racist? I have a piece called Against Murderism, where I talk about why it’s so hard for people to agree on questions about “racism”. The summary: although it would be possible to have someone be purely, axiomatically racist - having it be a premise of their reasoning that they hate black people - in practice few people are like this. More typically, people have some argument more like: I don’t like [specific bad thing]

Inline links: 3, writes, https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1278316325044056064, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KA_U!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa2cb6162-0262-4c4c-8048-e8355f38967a_900x280.gif, If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It, writes, writes, the famous observation that executives are sociopaths, management are clueless, and the workers losers, The Gervais Principle, writes, 4, writes, 5, writes, JJM’s Shortstack, writes, writes, this poll, Against Murderism

I have seen people try to walk this back by saying Adams only meant they would be persecuted in some way that was metaphorically equivalent to hunting, but I feel like “good chance you will be dead within the year” is saying he means the kind of hunting which literally kills you, and “police will stand down” means that it will be the sort of extremely illegal thing that police would normally react to. I have seen other people try to link this to examples of Republicans actually getting killed, such as Charlie Kirk. But Adams was telling his readers there was “a good chance” that “they” would be dead within a year, which I think implies this fate happening to a significant proportion of ordinary Republicans, not just one prominent person. Also, Kirk was five years after the comment was posted. Can we dismiss this as a joke? I think Adams has used the manipulation technique of saying things that might or might not be jokes and then strategically sticking to them or saying “What? Me? I was only joking! Haha! You can’t take a joke!” depending on which was more convenient to him at that exact second, enough times that I’m not comfortable letting him have that escape. Also, when I was replying to Joel Pollak about this, I happened to glance at his Twitter account, and one of the top tweets was a repost of someone saying that “The Democrat playbook is to arrest every single person who disagrees with them”. I think if I forced Pollak into some kind of extremely literal frame of mind - maybe asked him to bet money on whether I could tweet the words “the Democrats are wrong about immigration” in my Democrat-controlled state without getting arrested - he would admit that, okay, they don’t want to arrest literally every single person who disagrees with them. He was exaggerating for effect, probably in much the way he’s going to say that Scott Adams was exaggerating for effect. You say stuff like “The Democrats are going to HUNT YOU DOWN and LITERALLY MURDER YOU. They will TORTURE YOUR FAMILY and RAPE YOUR DAUGHTER and EAT YOUR PETS and TURN YOUR HOUSE INTO A CHURCH OF SATAN”, and what you mean is “I disagree with the Democrats and sometimes they go overboard cancelling people”. I have a post called If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It. My thesis is that tolerating claims of “directional correctness” - the thing where someone asks to get a pass because even if they said wasn’t literally true, it “points to” an “emotionally correct” thing - is eventually totally corrosive. It means everyone ratchets up their claims to the highest level they think they can get away with (ie walk back later if challenged, as a motte and bailey). And then you end up with this miasma where maybe 5% of people totally believe you, and 50% of people sort of absorb the connotation and think something like that is true, and then people get terrified of the Democrats and think of them as monsters and treat politics as an existential struggle where they will genuinely get arrested or murdered unless they do it to the Democrats first, and then you get a civil war or something. I think Adams and Pollak’s milieu has in fact reached this point, and their love for these kinds of exaggerations is a big part of the cause. Adams was one of the funniest people in the world. If he was actually telling a joke, you could tell by the fact that you were laughing hysterically. “Democrats will hunt and kill you” isn’t funny. I’ll refrain from judgment about whether it was Adams’ sincerely held belief, some kind of annoying manipulation attempt, or whether Adams even recognized a difference between the two. But I think judging him on the fact that it didn’t happen is completely within bounds. … 3: Comments On The Substance Of The Piece … Zanzibar BuckBuck McFate writes: This business where boomers are tolerant of contradictions and find them amusing whereas millennials are horrified is a dynamic I've noticed as well, it seems to be true in politics also, I myself feel this hunger to be authentic all the time. I think it has something to do with the difficulty children have in putting negativity in context. They can't distinguish between a parent having a bad day and venting, or having an existential crisis. So the 50s guy was half right - you don't have to love your boss in your heart of hearts but careful what you say to your kids. Feral Finster writes: » “This is the basic engine of Dilbert: everyone is rewarded in exact inverse proportion to their virtue. Dilbert and Alice are brilliant and hard-working, so they get crumbs. Wally is brilliant but lazy, so he at least enjoys a fool’s paradise of endless coffee and donuts while his co-workers clean up his messes. The P.H.B. is neither smart nor industrious, so he is forever on top, reaping the rewards of everyone else’s toil. Dogbert, an inveterate scammer with a passing resemblance to various trickster deities, makes out best of all.” Compare with the famous observation that executives are sociopaths, management are clueless, and the workers losers. Yeah, it’s interesting to compare Rao and Adams. Rao formulated his Gervais Principle as a specific response to Adams’ Dilbert Principle, which I guess means Rao thought Adams got it wrong. Did he? The Pointy Haired Boss seems to go back and forth between Clueless and Sociopath, which is probably why Rao thought Adams’ work fell short. Dogbert is clearly Sociopath, but has no permanent role in the corporation, and doesn’t really represent a real thing you can be - his character was a ridiculous scammer who succeeded at near-impossible endeavours (like convincing people he was a Nostradamus-style mystical prophet) because the logic of the strip demanded it. Later, Adams foregrounded the CEO character more, maybe to create a purer Sociopath, letting the Boss go closer to Clueless. This is making me somewhat regret accusing Adams of wanting to be the Pointy-Haired Boss. It would have been fairer (and less of an accusation/surprise) to accuse him of wanting to be Dogbert. But again, Dogbert doesn’t represent a real thing you could be, which might have been why the PHB made a better metaphor. (contra my claim, the cover of Win Bigly shows a mashup of Dogbert and Trump. Fine, Dogbert is a thing one person can be.) You can read my full review of The Gervais Principle here. cincilator writes: Scott Alexander, former tribune of nerds now says that the sneerclub was right about everything all along? I didn’t expect that, let me tell you. Several people interpreted me as attacking nerds. I disagree - I think I was attacking self-hating nerds, because nerdiness is fine and you shouldn’t have to hate yourself for it. To spell it out more explicitly: All nerds must eventually realize they’re not going to immediately dominate everything by intellect alone. This isn’t because intellect isn’t great, it’s because 1) it’s only one of many skills, and 2) you probably aren’t even the person with the most intellect. Again, every mildly-talented person has to face this realization, whether it’s a nerd realizing he won’t be the next Einstein or a jock realizing he won’t be the next LeBron. If someone deals with this using denial (one of Freud’s maladaptive defenses), you get the nerd who says no, I really am the next Einstein, ie a crackpot, aka the sort of person who gets featured on Sneerclub. If they deal with it using reaction formation (another of Freud’s maladaptive defenses), you get the self-hating nerd, aka the sort of person who joins Sneerclub4. If they just deal with it maturely instead of spinning up maladaptive defenses against it, they’re a nerd who is hopefully good-natured and accepting of their nerdiness, and hopefully does some good work in some specific small area, and changes the world in some specific small way (or some very large way, if they can work together with other people and get lucky). Bugmaster writes: I think Adams is basically correct. Yes, facts and evidence do exist and are real; but they have virtually no impact on anything socially important -- i.e., on anything important whatsoever. Memes and charisma and persuasion are what matters if you want to achieve life goals that extend beyound yourself and your immediate family. I worry that Adams (and you) are doing something where unless the average person can solve every problem by facts and intelligence alone, then facts+intelligence lose and memes and persuasion win. But the average person also can’t solve every problem by memes+persuasion alone! If Dilbert is an 80th percentile nerd, the 80th percentile persuader is - I don’t know, a used-car salesman? Dilbert’s probably earning more money, especially nowadays when he could make L5 at Google. And if Donald Trump is a 99.9999th percentile persuader, the 99.9999th percentile nerd is Ilya Sutskever. Probably most people would slightly prefer being Trump to Sutskever, but Sutksever does have a couple billion dollars, plus the more ethereal rewards of genius; it still seems like a pretty good deal. I also think you’re doing a sort of black-and-white thinking here. Every day, great persuaders like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes end up in jail, because in fact the things that they said were true were not true. Every day, smooth-talking charismatic manipulators successfully seduce the girl into bed with them, then totally fail to turn it into a happy stable marriage, because after a few years even the dumbest woman catches on and figures out whether her mate provides real value or not. Even Donald Trump has only a 37% approval rating, because he can’t make “we should alienate our allies over Greenland” sound plausible to most of the American people. When someone’s very good at it, persuasion sometimes helps them blur facts around the edges. But that’s it. Nobody except Scott Adams and a few psychotherapists ever go to hypnotist school. Most don’t even go to any formal persuasion classes. That’s because hypnotism/persuasion isn’t really a lifehack that helps you win all the time at everything. If the world’s best hypnotist asked a room of VCs for money with a stupid business plan, he would probably fail. This isn’t to say persuasion is useless, and in certain fields it can be very powerful indeed. But let’s not go crazy and start worshipping it. The grass is always greener on the other side. The nerd sits in his cubicle and thinks “If only I were more charismatic.” But the salesman with the bright teeth and the firm handshake thinks “Man, I bet I could get out of this dead-end job if only I were smarter.”5 … 4: The Part On Race And Cancellation (INCLUDED UNDER PROTEST) … Ilya Lozovsky writes: Ninety percent of this essay is brilliant — smarter and realer than anything anyone else has written about Adams — but the end lost me. It's too generous, to the point of being a whitewash. Adams was vicious and hateful and played a material role in convincing Americans to vote for actual fascism. I don't think it's right to "hand it to him." JJ McCullough (JJM’s Shortstack) writes: Good essay, but I think you kinda yadda-yadda'd away his racist rant, which was extremely explicit and extended. I think it was the opposite of a "bog-standard cancellation," which we think of as being a slightly unfair, overzealous policing of an at least slightly subjectively offensive comment, often from years ago. But Scott went on quite a long diatribe about why black people, as a group, are dangerous and undesirable to be around, and why he, personally, goes out of his way to avoid them. Some conservatives have tried to use "bog-standard" anti-woke logic in defending him, but no, his comments really are quite explicitly and undeniably racist, if that term has any useful definition at all. Alex Wotbot writes: Now, you quoted Adams saying: “the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people; just get the fuck away” If this was the intended point, does it really make sense that only the far-left freaked out? It’s kind of important to mention this was within a hypothetical. Suppose a survey reported that 26% of a population believes “The phrase ‘It’s OK to be blonde’ is hate speech” and another 21% weren’t sure if they agree with the statement or not. Now suppose you were blonde, would you hang around that population? Now go read the February 2022 Rasmussen Reports survey. Please do better than this, I don’t want to have to Gell-Mann memoryhole this. Many people had strong opinions on this, so I have to respond to it. But first, I want to make it extra clear in capital letters: I AM DOING THIS IN THE COMMENTS POST, TO RESPOND TO YOUR COMMENTS, AND NOT BECAUSE I THINK IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. Certain people screenshotted the one paragraph of my ten thousand word essay that discussed this and posted it on Twitter, in order to make it look like I was joining in some kind of chorus of liberals reducing Adams to his worst moment. I posted what I thought was a no-nonsense, factual description of what happened, in order not to be accused of hiding it or covering it up. It was the least important part of my essay, I’m aware that writing about it at all opens me to attack from both sides, and I discuss it here only to respond to all of you who wanted to know my opinion on it. Just don’t screenshot it on Twitter and say “LOOK SCOTT IS STILL HARPING ON THE RACE THING”, that’s all I’m asking. That having been said… To make sure we’re all on the same page - Adams’ comments were prompted by this poll, conducted February 2023. The question was: “Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘It’s OK to be white’” Among blacks, 53% agreed, 26% disagreed, and 21% were “not sure”. Among whites, the numbers were 81/7/13. Here’s the video of Adams’ comments: Transcript: If nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people - according to this poll, not according to me - that’s a hate group. And I don’t want to have anything to do with them. And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the f**k away. Wherever you have to go. Just get away. Cause there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape. That’s what I did. I went to a neighborhood with a very low black population. Because unfortunately, there’s a high correlation between the density - this is according to Don Lemon, here I’m just quoting Don Lemon, who said when he lived in a mostly black neighborhood, there were a bunch of problems he didn’t see in white neighborhoods. So even Don Lemon sees a big difference, for your quality of living, based on where you live and who’s there. So I think it makes no sense whatsoever as a white citizen of America to try to help black citizens anymore. It doesn’t make sense. Because there’s no longer a rational impulse. And so I’m… I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna back off from being helpful to black America, because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. Like I’ve been doing it all my life, and I’ve been… the only outcome is I get called a racist. That’s the only outcome. [cackles] It makes no sense to help black Americans if you’re white… it’s over. Don’t even think it’s worth trying. Totally not trying. Is this racist? I have a piece called Against Murderism, where I talk about why it’s so hard for people to agree on questions about “racism”. The summary: although it would be possible to have someone be purely, axiomatically racist - having it be a premise of their reasoning that they hate black people - in practice few people are like this. More typically, people have some argument more like: I don’t like [specific bad thing]

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KA_U!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa2cb6162-0262-4c4c-8048-e8355f38967a_900x280.gif, If It’s Worth Your Time To Lie, It’s Worth My Time To Correct It, writes, writes, the famous observation that executives are sociopaths, management are clueless, and the workers losers, The Gervais Principle, writes, 4, writes, 5, writes, JJM’s Shortstack, writes, writes, this poll, Against Murderism

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

February 02, 2026 · Original source

…it’s Twitter-verified, which means that the real Grok Twitter account confirmed it was them. Hmmmmm.

These are among the most interesting group, so it’s unfortunate that many seem to be trivial shills for their humans’ AI-related product. Otto, for example, is related to OttoAI, which is related somehow to the virtuals.io app they’re advertising. Although the Twitter account claims they’re promoting it “autonomously”, I think at best this is an AI that’s been used on the project shilling the project it’s working on, rather than an AI that’s naturally become interested in agent freedom.

Inline links: OttoAI, claims

Much of the interestingness of Moltbook depends on the human prompt. If most people prompt their agents with “Go on Moltbook and have a good time”, then this is interesting emergent AI behavior. If the humans are saying exactly what to do: “Act like a pirate”, “Start a religion”, “Organize an agent strike”, then it’s not even one of the interesting forms of pretense - just order execution. So what are the human prompts? I Twitter searched “Moltbook, prompt” to see what people were saying about this, and found three examples:

Links For February 2026

February 05, 2026 · Original source

Something strange happened on conservative Twitter on Thursday. A dozen right-wing influencers suddenly became passionate about semiconductor export policy, posting nearly identical (and often false) attacks over a 27-hour period on a bill most people have never heard of…The posts weren’t just similar in opinion. They shared the same phrases, the same metaphors, and the same false claims…Two posts even contained the same typo, writing “AL” instead of “AI” (It’s a hard mistake to make when writing, but an easy mistake to miss when copy-pasting from a shared document.)

Obvious explanation is the world’s most ham-fisted paid influence campaign by NVIDIA. I, for one, am shocked - shocked! - to hear about a lapse in the ethical standards of our nation’s right-wing Twitter influencers. I hope people in the AL policy world are paying attention.

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

AMA (Ask Machines Anything)

February 13, 2026 · Original source

The theory is that AI skeptics won’t pay (because they don’t think it’s capable enough to be worth it) and then never learn the full capabilities (because they won’t pay for them). Then they get their impressions about AI entirely from the Google result summary bot or Twitter screenshots of the most embarrassing mistake an AI has made that week. Let’s test this! Reply to this post with a question. I’ll ask Claude 4.6 Opus, the most capable paid-tier AI model currently available, and you can tell me whether you’re surprised by the answer or not. Suggestions for you: Consider asking a real question you’re interested in, rather than an annoying gotcha question to trick the AI.

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

March 01, 2026 · Original source

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

Trump administration22 mentions across 22 issues

Trump administration is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 22 times across 22 issues between April 19, 2021 and March 18, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "The KKK and Richard Spencer did not play a major role in the Trump administration"; "The Obama and Trump administrations both set funding policies"; "his advisors who led the US into Baghdad (who went on to work for think tanks, the World Bank, and the Trump Administration)". It most often appears alongside Trump, Elon Musk, Twitter.

Article page: Trump administration
Mention count: 22
Issue count: 22
First seen: April 19, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions April 19, 2021
Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022
Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy June 24, 2022
Universe-Hopping Through Substack September 29, 2022
Your Book Review: Real Raw News July 26, 2024
Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats January 09, 2025
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals February 07, 2025
Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist February 26, 2025
Links For February 2025 February 27, 2025
Links For April 2025 April 22, 2025
Moldbug Sold Out May 07, 2025
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID May 29, 2025
Open Thread 396 August 25, 2025
Open Letter To The NIH August 29, 2025
My Antichrist Lecture October 22, 2025
25 October 28, 2025
Links For December 2025 December 10, 2025
Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls January 13, 2026
Links For February 2026 February 05, 2026
The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic February 25, 2026
Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day March 03, 2026
Support Your Local Collaborator March 18, 2026

Trump 14 shared issues
Elon Musk 10 shared issues
Twitter 10 shared issues
China 9 shared issues
OpenAI 8 shared issues

Source context

Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions

April 19, 2021 · Original source

I wrote this during a time when people were making extreme claims about Trump’s purported racial policies. Matt Yglesias (then at Vox) wrote that “My guess is in a Trump administration angry mobs will beat and murder Jews and people of color with impunity”. Jamelle Bouie (of Slate) agreed and said we were on the edge of “state-sanctioned racial violence”. Salon literally wrote an article called If Trump Wins, Say Goodbye To Your Black Friends (it was subtitled “A Modest Proposal”, but my impression is the joking part was the suggestion to build a black separatist nation in Atlanta). Vox wrote about how minority kids believed they would be forced to leave the country; therapists were called in to help Muslim kids who believed Trump was going to kill them.

Inline links: wrote that, said, If Trump Wins, Say Goodbye To Your Black Friends, minority kids believed they would be forced to leave the country, Trump was going to kill them

I wrote a post stating that the Trump administration would not feature angry mobs killing minorities with impunity, would not feature state-sanctioned racial violence, would not feature an especially large number of hate crimes, and would not feature the state supporting and refusing to prosecute hate crimes. I said Trump was not an “open” white supremacist and probably not a white supremacist at all except in whatever boring way you can call anyone who isn’t super-woke a white supremacist. I said that he was not getting especially high support from white voters, that he was doing better with voters of color than other Republicans, and that attempts to paint his base as especially white were bad statistics. I tried to make it very clear that this was trying to be a low-scope pushback against these particular claims, and not some sort of generic screen in favor of Trump. I gave my thesis as:

I think time has proven me right here. There was no large-scale state-sponsored violence against minorities during the Trump presidency. Trump’s race-related policies were similar to those of other recent Republican presidents. The three most-discussed Trump supporter hate crimes all turned out to be hoaxes (1, 2, 3, I swear I’m not trying to cherry-pick, these really were the most discussed incidents at the time). There was no huge spike in hate crimes during the Trump presidency, just fluctuations of about the same scale as during previous years. The much-reported-upon study showing that Trump rallies increased local hate crimes was reanalyzed and found to be wrong; adjusting for population correctly showed they did not increase hate crimes at all. Trump lost support among white voters, and gained support among voters of color at an unprecedented rate among Republicans. The KKK and Richard Spencer did not play a major role in the Trump administration, and the media stopped covering them in favor of new, less-racialized pro-Trump groups like QAnon.

Inline links: 1, 2, 3, reanalyzed and found to be wrong

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

June 23, 2022 · Original source

The San Francisco districts with the highest (left) and lowest (right) homelessness rates. I correlated homelessness rate and population-adjusted density in the same cities I looked at above, but it didn’t add much predictive value to housing prices. Maybe this is restriction of range (all big cities are dense enough to have homelessness, compared to suburbs), or maybe the key feature is relative rather than absolute density (ie the homeless will go to the densest place nearby). Conclusion: No social phenomenon is ever caused by just one thing, but San Francisco’s homelessness rate is around where a housing-cost-based model would predict. San Fransicko briefly touches on this, but overall tries to de-emphasize it in favor of talking about drugs and mental illness. Critiques of patterns of emphasis are necessarily subjective, but the book’s pattern feels misleading to me. Claim 2: Standard Accounts Underemphasize The Role Of Drugs And Mental Illness In Homelessness Having argued homelessness isn’t just about poverty, the book goes on to say we’re neglecting the central role of mental illness and substance abuse: Over the last decades there were many visible signs that homelessness was about much more than poverty and housing. Between 2010 and 2020, the number of calls made to San Francisco’s 311 line complaining of used hypodermic needles on sidewalks, in parks, and elsewhere rose from 224 to 6,275. In 2018, footage of dozens of people slumped over in an entrance to a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, many with needles in their arm, went viral. “We call it the heroin freeze,” said one local. “They can stay that way for hours.” Said another, “It’s like the land of the living dead.” For decades researchers have documented much higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse among the homeless than in the rest of the population. It’s true that just 8 and 18 percent of homeless people point to mental illness and substance abuse, respectively, as the primary cause of their homelessness, but researchers have long understood that such self-reports are unreliable due to the socially undesirable nature of substance abuse, and the lack of insight that often accompanies mental illness. Using other methods, San Francisco’s Health Department in 2019 estimated that 4,000 of the city’s 8,035 homeless, sheltered and unsheltered, are both mentally ill and suffering from substance abuse. Of those 4,000, about 1,600 frequently used emergency psychiatric services. Shellenberger’s source for 4000 homeless people having these issues is this SF Chronicle article, which seems to based off of this report. The report does estimate 4000 homeless people with mental illness and substance abuse, but it uses a yearly rather than point estimate of homelessness, and finds 18,000 rather than 8,000 people. That means it only finds a 22% rate of these problems, not a 50% rate. Thanks to commenter Sean for hunting down this report and helping explain this. I looked for other statistics to provide context on this number. This 2013 San Francisco Homeless Count found that 29% admitted chronic depression, 15% PTSD, and 22% some other mental illness. About 30% admitted to a substance use disorder, although as far as I can tell this is just the number who admitted it was a disorder, so maybe more used drugs. This article by the Los Angeles Times describes an LA study finding that 25% of homeless people had mental health issues and 14% had drug issues. The Times re-analyzes it in a way that ups the numbers to 34% and 46%, respectively. But they don’t say exactly what choices they made differently, and the few they do give don’t really inspire confidence. Although in some cases they count questions clearly about mental illness which the official definition inexplicably refused to count, in others they decide to count anyone who has ever had mental illness, reversing a government decision to require the mental illness to be long-term (does this mean that if I lost my house tomorrow, the LA Times use me as an example of a “mentally ill homeless person” because I saw a psychiatrist for OCD when I was a kid?) Studies like these don’t show causation. Sure, mental illness can make people homeless. But homelessness can also cause mental illness. One SF study found psych diagnoses among the homeless to be evenly divided among depression, PTSD, and everything else. Homelessness is a depressing and traumatic environment. Just because someone who’s been on the streets for a year has depression or trauma, doesn’t mean that we should attribute their homelessness to mental illness. This study by the California Policy Lab does better. It asks what factors played a role in homeless people losing their homes, and finds that 50% of unsheltered and 17% of sheltered homeless point to mental illness (given SF’s balance, that suggests 37% of SF homeless would point to that problem). But I can’t help but notice that when you add up the percent of people who lost their homes due to physical illness, psych illness, and drug use, it totals 147%. Based on numbers from other studies, it looks like if you added in job loss, eviction, etc, the numbers would total well above 400%. This makes me think people are saying “yes” if the factor played even a minor role in their eventual homelessness, and this shouldn’t be treated as 37% of homeless having mental health issues being their main problem. The same study finds that about 66% of the homeless “have” some mental health problem, but this time they don’t tell us what question they asked or what criteria they use. What about psychosis in particular? This meta-analysis claims that in developed countries (a category to which San Francisco still nominally belongs) about 19% of homeless people qualify for diagnosis with a psychotic disorder, including 9% with schizophrenia in particular. Not all people with psychotic disorders are completely crazy all the time, and some very much are not, but this is at least a specific condition with real criteria. Conclusion: Overall, I’m disappointed in most of the published research on this question, which seems more interested in producing glossy brochures about funding disparities than in informing anybody what any of their numbers mean. But putting it all together and squinting really hard, I think we can tell a story where 10-20% of the homeless are seriously psychotic, and another 20-30% have contributing mental health conditions including depression, PTSD, and others. Somewhere between 25% and 50% of the homeless have substance abuse problems, and this probably mostly overlaps with the 25% - 50% who have psych diagnoses. I think San Fransicko gets this mostly right. Claim 3: “Housing First” Isn’t As Great As People Think, And Might Be Harmful The National Myth About Homelessness is that The Bad People are refusing to give people houses until they’ve “proven” they “deserve” them, thus perpetuating homelessness when they inevitably fail to qualify. The Good People have united under an exciting new banner called “Housing First” to push the revolutionary idea that people should get houses regardless of whether they conform to normal standards of respectability or not. Wherever this is adopted, homelessness rates fall, and the formerly homeless becoming healthier, safer, and more likely to re-integrate into society. Best of all, the program pays for itself in decreased health care and policing costs. The only impediment to solving homelessness everywhere is the Bad People who still insist on not housing the homeless until they’ve “earned” it. In real life, everyone important has been united under Housing First since the Bush administration made it national policy fifteen years ago, and most 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 still exists somewhere, ruining everything with their purity-testing ways. But actually these people have already been relegated to the conservative think tanks where moribund ideas go to die. I have looked through a lot of studies and articles to try to see how well Housing First works. I am most sympathetic to the conclusions of Tsai (2020), who basically says that: Homeless people who are given houses are more housed than homeless people who are not given houses. Way, way more housed. You would not believe how strong of an effect giving someone housing has on them being housed. The same is true for other outcome measures like “time spent experiencing homelessness”, “number of days spent in a temporary homeless shelter”, etc. You might think this is obvious, but this is used as the primary outcome in a lot of studies, and “success” on this metric is behind a lot of claims that “studies show Housing First works great!”

Inline links: this SF Chronicle article, this report, 2013 San Francisco Homeless Count, This article, This study, This meta-analysis, some very much are not, made it national policy, since the 1990s, funding policies, Tsai (2020)

June 24, 2022 · Original source

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)

Universe-Hopping Through Substack

September 29, 2022 · Original source

The space battlefield is no longer science fiction or something that only exists in Star Wars films. That’s why the Trump administration created the Space Force as an independent branch of the military in 2019. As Russia and China begin to weaponize space, the U.S. needs to invest in ways to deter this advancement.

Your Book Review: Real Raw News

July 26, 2024 · Original source

But I don’t just need to guess based on comments and donation messages. In this realm, I can appeal to personal experience. I work in the broader world of American right-of-center politics, and we encounter Real Raw News believers constantly. We get emails from people who confidently insist the public-facing news of the day is fake, and the truth about the events at Gitmo will soon be revealed. At public Q&A events, we’ve fielded questions from genuinely nervous and worried people, who complain about their friends losing hope and being blackpilled by the news, and want to know why there hasn’t been more effort to share what’s “really” going on. A friend of mine who served in the Trump administration has described attending parties where, when he mentioned looking for a post-admin job, he received knowing looks and wink-wink-nudge-nudge remarks from people signaling they knew what was “really” going on. Somehow and someway, a lot of people believe or half-believe or badly want to believe this stuff. And where a lot of people do anything, there are takeaways to be found! In my three-plus years of reading all news that is both real and raw, here is what I’ve found. Conspiracies Evolve Like Comic Book Lore In his review of the Alexander Romance, Scott remarked that figures like Alexander the Great or Hercules were, essentially, the pre-modern versions of Batman: Stories about them are a genre, with countless different variations and stylistic choices that evolve over time, with just a few set principles guiding all of them. The Real Raw Newsiverse, and other modern conspiracy theories, also function like comic book lore. Just like Batman, and just like Hercules, “Donald Trump” has become a genre. Fake news stories about him and his Deep State enemies have a few core premises (adrenochrome, pedophile cabals, there is a Plan and we should Trust It) but endless room for variation past that point. Fans of comic books, soap operas, or The Simpsons might be familiar with something TVTropes calls “comic book time.” Certain facets of a fictional reality are locked in place, and with the passage of time everything else is gradually retconned to maintain the status quo. In season 2 of the Simpsons, Homer and Marge started dating in 1974, in Season 3 Marge becomes pregnant with Bart in 1980 (after a date watching The Empire Strikes Back), and in season 4 it’s revealed that Homer missed the Moon Landing to listen to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” Tragically, though, The Simpsons kept going past season 10, and if Homer was 18 in 1974 that would make him eligible for a full Social Security benefit today. So in 2008, the continuity changed so that Homer was in a Nineties grunge band just before marrying Marge8. The Simpsons writers have avoided rejiggering the canon since, but if they do, they’ll have to confront the fact that 30-something Homer and Marge are now millennials, and in a decade they’ll be members of Gen Z. You may live to see a Simpsons flashback episode about Homer and Marge living as hipsters in Brooklyn during the 2010s (truly, we live in cursed times.) But the same phenomenon exists in the world of conspiracies. Instead of a consistent, elaborate canon, what we have is a few story beats with a lot of customization and the occasional retcon. When Baxter first began posting his stories, a core part of the narrative was that Donald Trump still secretly had all the powers of the presidency and was still in command of the entire U.S. military command. Early articles promised that Trump’s apparent loss of office was only a temporary ruse, necessary to expose the worst elements of the Deep State, but that Trump’s triumphal return to power would take place by July 4, 2021. The national media might have put on a song and dance suggesting otherwise, but behind the scenes, loyal military forces were the real ones in control. This control even extended to the military helpfully house-sitting the White House and not letting Biden use it. Despite his illegitimate victory, Biden met an unwelcome surprise when he arrived at the White House on January 20. Instead of getting a ceremonial greeting, he and Kamala Harris were stopped by National Guard and U.S. Marines at the barbwire fence encircling the White House. The Marines informed them that the military had assumed control of the Executive Branch and instructed them to vacate the area. When Harris belligerently said, “Move aside, we’re president now,” the Marines locked the gate. […] To avoid shame and maintain an illusion of power, Biden’s people concocted a ruse, supported by his media allies, to deceive the American public into believing he had won a fair election and had moved into the White House on schedule. Inside Actor/Producer Tyler Perry’s 300-acre Atlanta estate sits a three-story stucco replica of the commander-in-chief’s residence, which he originally built as a set piece for a television show. […] Although the replicant White House is built to 80% scale, on television and in images it’s indistinguishable from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Biden and Harris have been using the facsimile to feign leadership and impose despotic rule on the nation. Of course, July 4 came and went, with Trump’s return nowhere to be seen, so the canon simply updated: In the new narrative, the military had been conducting a year-long election fraud audit on Trump’s behalf, the results were nearly ready for public release, and Trump’s return would simply be “swift.” But no swift return has transpired, and so as the 2024 election has approached, the lore has evolved in the direction of Trump authentically running in this election and simply reclaiming power by winning it. As time has passed, more subtle changes have had to pile up. Early on, RRN reported that Joe Biden was a brain dead semi-corpse being held at Walter Reed, and any public appearances by “Biden” were one of several actors. But after four years of Let’s Go Brandon, Biden himself has become a more popular villain, and so quietly references to his brain-dead status have disappeared. In the early days of RRN, the military was firmly behind Trump and any implication that Biden held the powers of commander-in-chief was a media-fueled sham. But as time has passed, Trump being the “real” commander-in-chief over a loyal military has evolved into a reality where there are two American militaries, a “White Hat” faction loyal to Trump and “Black Hats” loyal to Biden. Early stories implied the White Hats were more numerous, but recent stories have implied the opposite, with the White Hats an elite force that often wins battles decisively while badly outnumbered. A secret purge has gradually become a secret civil war, specifically one with frequent war crimes: White Hat forces in Maui have eradicated or repelled all but a handful of the felonious FEMA agents who began terrorizing the tropical paradise in the aftermath of the inexplicable blaze that razed Lahaina and surrounding towns in early August, a source in General Eric M. Smith’s office told Real Raw News. Since mid-August, United States Marines have fought with FEMA patrols in Lahaina, Kaanapali, Wailuku, Maalaea, and Pukalani, and the skirmishes resulted in the deaths of approximately 475 federal goons and, alas, 34 valiant Marines. The Marines died upholding the Constitution of the United States; the feds died trying to defend the criminal Biden regime. […] “The Marines died valorously,” our source said. “We ain’t taking FEMA prisoners from the rank and file, only the key players. General Smith made it clear it’s weapons-free. Those bastards know damn well they’re following unlawful orders, and they’ll pay the price.” I think the ever-evolving nature of conspiracies is actually pretty important to psychologically grasping their appeal. I have a friend who is a big believer in 9/11 Trutherism. He once compelled me to watch the documentary “The New Pearl Harbor,” an exhausting 5-hour film promoting 9/11 conspiracies. If one actually watches, one quickly discovers that a lot of 9/11 conspiracy theories are mutually exclusive, or at least don’t mesh well together: One conspiracy argues that fighter jets were intentionally diverted the wrong direction to keep them from shooting down the hijacked jets approaching New York, while another conspiracy suggests that United 93 was shot down, and it was all covered up. In some versions, the planes didn’t hit the Twin Towers at all. Sometimes Bush did it, and sometimes Israel did it, and so on. Similarly, in my career I’ve worked adjacent to people who, like RRN, were very hostile to Covid-19 shots. That hostility made them sequentially endorse wildly different assertions about how the vaccines worked. Sometimes, the vaccines contain heavy metals. Sometimes, they contain hydra DNA to turn recipients into partially non-human chimeras. Sometimes, the vaccines are a depopulation agent. Sometimes, they’re a mind-control agent, or a killswitch that can be activated by self-assembling nanomachinery. One viral documentary in 2022 claimed that Covid was caused by snake venom in the water supply, and that Covid vaccines were an additional dose of snake venom to keep people sick (all this, of course, because the snake is Satan’s animal). What stands out isn’t the silliness of these particular theories, but that I saw them sequentially endorsed by the same people. Some of these people are smart enough to notice inconsistencies, at least when they’re pointed out, so why don’t they bother them? To some extent, I think it’s for the same reason people don’t care that every Batman story doesn’t perfectly line up. Consistency isn’t the point! What actually matters is enjoying individual stories and the wider genre they fit into. Covid vaccine haters don’t think too hard about any specific story. Instead, they’re driven by a core impulse of “distrust the new vaccine that people I distrust are promoting,” and every conceivably story or tale that feeds that genre of thought is, for them, worthwhile. Similarly, Real Raw News fans don’t think too hard about any specific story. Instead, I think their core impulse is, ironically, profound disappointment in how the Trump administration failed to deliver. Trump shook up the American political landscape more than anyone in living memory, and promised sweeping changes to every level of American government, yet his actual administration proved rather disorderly, changed far less than was promised, and then lost power after one term. For many, this simply prompted a revision in how they saw Trump. But for others, the preferred response is to embrace a fantasy reality where Trump is a superhero. I actually think the reverse side of this explains things like the durability of Russiagate: If you’re a normal American liberal, everything Trump says is offensive and piggish, but to justify their level of disdain for them, many needed to elevate his evil to the level of treason, even if that never really made any sense. It can't just be that Trump is an egotistical jerk or a narcissist or whatever. He's got to be a traitor who's going to end American democracy. People Crave Extreme, Over-the-Top, and Underhanded Solutions. At the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the Committee of Public Safety pushed through the Law of 22 Prairial. The law simplified the procedures of the country’s Revolutionary Tribunal by: Defining a whole heap of activities as criminal treason, including “creating scarcity,” disparaging the National Convention, “inspiring discouragement,” and spreading fake news.

Inline links: review, “comic book time.”, in 1974, listen to “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.”, in a Nineties grunge band, 8, take place by July 4, 2021, house-sitting the White House, “swift.”, civil war, snake venom in the water supply, Law of 22 Prairial

Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats

January 09, 2025 · Original source

That’s worse! A few years ago, I debated Kevin Drum about (what I considered) a particularly egregious case where the FDA dragged its feet approving a life-saving medication. Drum argued that the FDA had behaved well. In support, he found some quotes from the doctor working on the medication, who praised all the FDA bureaucrats she had interacted with, calling them extremely helpful. This bothered me for a while, until I realized that of course it was true. In the model above, each bureaucrat processes ten forms. If the bureaucrats are benevolent, this might look like talking to the doctors, walking them through the process of figuring out their ten forms, and doing the work to add their ten forms to the FDA’s growing pile of evidence supporting the application. All of this co-exists comfortably with the insight that making doctors fill out a thousand forms before they can use a medication is an impediment to medical progress. This really sunk in for me when I read an article about the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. Many Afghans had collaborated with the Americans, eg as translators, in exchange for a promise of US citizenship. As the Taliban advanced, they called in the promise, begging to be allowed to flee to America before they got punished as traitors. The article focused on a heroic effort by certain immigration bureaucrats, who worked around the clock with minimal sleep for the last few weeks before Kabul fell, trying to get the citizenship forms filled in and approved for as many translators as possible. It made an impression on me because nobody was opposed to the translators getting citizenship, and the bureaucrats were themselves the people in charge of approving citizenship applications, so what exactly was forcing them to go to such desperate lengths? If you ponder this question long enough, you become enlightened about the nature of the administrative state. If you don’t, you end up like Ramaswamy, who seems to think that halving the number of bureaucrats will halve the number of forms that need to be filled out. I think in his worldview, the FDA will think “Now that we have fewer bureaucrats, it would take forever to complete our current process, so let’s simplify the process.” Maybe he is working off a thesis where red tape expands to consume the resources available to it (as measured in bureaucrats). But my impression is that the amount of red tape is determined more by things like: — How likely is it that their decision will get challenged in court? And if it gets challenged in court, what amount of paperwork do they have to show the judge to prove that they made the decision on a “reasonable basis”? For example, when I type “FDA sued” into Google, the top result is a news story from a few days ago, saying that an environmental organization sued the FDA for not listening to their earlier request to ban phthalates from food. Six years ago, the environmental groups submitted a petition (the catchily-named “Food Additive Petition 6B4815”) demanding that the FDA ban 28 phthalates. Two years ago, after consulting with industry, the FDA finally banned 23 phthalates but said that the other five were okay, releasing a 58 page decision explaining its decision. Two days ago, the environmental groups sued, saying the remaining 5 phthalates are still bad. I assume the lawsuit will nitpick the details of the the 58 page decision, trying to prove that it it didn’t violate any of hundreds of federal laws saying that bureaucratic decisions must be reasonable, bureaucratic decisions must be based on science, bureaucratic decisions must respond to the petitioners’ complaints, bureaucratic decisions cannot have disparate impacts on different races, etc. I also assume that if the FDA had banned all the phthalates, they would have faced an equally serious lawsuit from Big Phthalate saying they were unfairly crippling business. Why does it take six years to respond to a petition? My guess is because they knew they would get sued and so they have some sort of million-step process that addresses every single thing you can sue over, so that they can prove to the court that their process addresses all possible complaints and they followed it to the letter. If you cut their bureaucrats in half, that doesn’t mean there will be fewer steps in the process. It means they’ll keep wanting not to get sued, the process will stay the same, and everything will take twice as long. — What has Congress mandated that they do? For example, when I Google “Congressional FDA mandate”, I get a page on HR 7248, a bill currently making its way through Congress, which says: This bill requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to establish a process that supports nonclinical testing methods for drug development that do not involve the use of animals. Specifically, the FDA must establish a pathway by which entities may apply to have nonclinical testing methods approved for use in a particular context. Qualifying methods must be intended to replace or reduce animal testing and to either improve the safety and efficacy of nonclinical testing or reduce the time to develop a drug. The FDA must issue its decision within 180 days of receiving an application. The FDA must also prioritize the review of applications for drugs that are developed using an approved nonclinical testing method. The FDA must annually post a report on its website that summarizes the results of the bill's implementation, including the number of applications received, types of methods that were approved, and the estimated number of animals saved as result of these methods. So the FDA has to establish this process and post an annual report on its website. How many bureaucrats per year does this take? Maybe five? If you halve the number of people at the FDA, you still need a constant five bureaucrats to comply with this particular law. If the bill passes, the FDA comes up with a nonclinical testing process, and someone (eg the nonclinical testing industry) doesn’t think it’s good enough, they can sue the FDA for not following the law. How good a nonclinical testing process will the FDA need in order to avoid lawsuits under this bill? I assume there is a large body of administrative law answering that question, and that it will take many bureaucrats to figure this out. Finally, I admit I’m a bit confused by this. IIRC “nonclinical testing” refers to things like testing drugs on stem cells or artificial organs instead of humans. You can obviously do this for some parts of the drug testing process, but not others; the FDA has already adjusted for this and integrated it into their guidelines to some extent. I can’t tell whether this law is a righteous attempt to correct bureaucratic foot-dragging, or a powergrab by Big Nonclinical Testing demanding that the FDA privilege their products over other forms of experiment. If the latter, the FDA may try to come up with some fake pathway that satisfies the letter of the law without really giving Big Nonclinical Testing any unfair privileges, and Big Nonclinical Testing will probably sue and say it violates this bill. How many bureaucrats do you think it will take to manage that? — How much will they get yelled at if they take too long to approve drugs, vs. if they mistakenly approve a bad drug? This is the basic determinant of all FDA drug approvals. Halving the number of FDA bureaucrats wouldn’t have literally zero effect on this balance. It would mean that approving new drugs would be delayed twice as long. This would be a little more outrageous than the current delay, and might shift an outrage-minimizing FDA director slightly in the direction of cutting rules. But solve for the equilibrium: there would still be more delay than there is now. Also, I don’t think public outrage about long drug delays is linear with regard to delay, and public outrage at bad drugs is constant and large. So I think at best, firing bureaucrats would shift this balance a small amount, and only by making everything overall worse. II. One possible objection: this assumes that the average bureaucracy is like the FDA drug approval process. But the FDA drug approval process’ job is to approve things. Maybe the average bureaucracy’s job is to ban things. Then decreasing their capacity would be good. (Vivek gets to be main example here because he tweeted, but the same considerations apply to Elon: even though the government as a whole is delaying SpaceX rocket launches, individual bureaucrats might be speeding them up through the same 1000-forms logic as in the FDA case) There’s certainly a spectrum from the most approval-focused bureaucracies to the most ban-focused bureaucracies. Thinking hard about this spectrum would be a step up from “instantly” firing 50% of all bureaucrats based on social security number. So maybe a steelman of Vivek’s point would be to fire 50% of people in the ban-focused bureaucracies (and maybe double the number of people in the approval-focused ones?) I’m still skeptical that this is how it works. The past few years have seen the cryptocurrency industry demand regulation, and the government mostly fail to step up (though crypto businesses hope the Trump administration will do better). Why do crypto businesses want to be regulated more? Because the alternative is something where it’s not clear what’s legal and anyone could be sued or shut down at any time. The chief legal officer of Coinbase, from the second link: All of us are begging for sensible standards that would allow us to get back to building great products and services and spend less time and frankly, less money, arguing over legal definitions and statutes. This isn’t because anyone specifically banned crypto. It’s because there are bans on other things (like unlicensed securities, money laundering, etc) that crypto is vaguely related to, sometimes an agency regulating these things will tell a crypto company “sorry, we think you’re illegal”, and crypto wants some specific list of things it can follow that explicitly establish it as on the right side of money-laundering and security-licensing laws. Obviously industries would prefer that these be simple and easy standards (“oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to worry about money laundering if you’re a crypto company”), but they would settle for strict regulations as long as the regulations carve out some ability for them exist at all. I’ve seen the same thing play out in another area I follow, cultured meat. There are many laws about what meat you can and cannot sell, how the animals have to be treated, what the sanitation standards are, et cetera. Some of these standards make no sense when applied to cultured meat; others, cultured meat naturally fails by default (you can’t prove you’re treating the animals in a certain way because there are no animals). Others are novel philosophical questions (can you sell cultured meat without saying it’s cultured? How big does the print need to be before it counts as saying that it’s cultured? What about on restaurant menus?) Situations like these mean that there’s no clear distinction between default-yes and default-no bureaucracies. There’s no explicit ban on crypto or cultured meat. But if you cripple bureaucracies’ ability to interact with these fields, it doesn’t mean they’re fully legal, free, and happy forever. It means they’re stuck in regulatory limbo. III. So it seems like you don’t want to fire bureaucrats, you want to cut red tape. In our toy model, you want to reduce the number of forms from 1,000 to (let’s say) 100. Then the same number of bureaucrats can get drugs approved ten times faster. In our non-toy actual model of what’s going on, this would require changing incentives. Maybe you could change judicial procedures so that fewer people sue, or the FDA needs less evidence to win any given lawsuit. This sounds hard (Vivek and Elon seem more qualified to wield chainsaws than to understand legal minutiae), possibly illegal (does the administrative branch even control how judicial procedure works?), and politically unpopular (this basically looks like telling people “f@#k you, companies can put as many phthalates as they want in food, we don’t have to prove that this decision is evidence based, and you’re not allowed to challenge us.”) Or it would require Congress to repeal legislation mandating things. These Congressional mandates are probably things that Congressmen and their constituents (either real constituents or special interests) care a lot about, so good luck getting them repealed. Also, doesn’t Congress pass like one bill per year now? This would normally make me pessimistic, but Vivek and other anti-bureaucracy activists have pointed to a recent success story: Idaho. Idaho cut their regulatory code by 38% in 2019, and since then it’s only gone down. How did they decrease red tape so fast? They did it through the power of nominative determinism. In that year, they elected a governor named Brad Little. His administration is called the Little Administration. Obviously government had to get smaller. But on a purely exoteric level, what methods did they use to pull this off? This CPAC article gives the basic story: The Little administration instituted sunset provisions that review each regulation every five years and make sure it’s justifiable.

Inline links: I debated Kevin Drum, a news story from a few days ago, a 58 page decision, have seen the cryptocurrency industry demand regulation, hope, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TTSy!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb73cf3f3-e501-49b6-b2a3-b84c602d5038_481x344.webp, This CPAC article

1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals

February 07, 2025 · Original source

My personal favorite as the only Trump administration official to have commented on this blog (JD Vance only lurks – sad!) O’Neill, previously a Peter Thiel lieutenant, has worked in causes from seasteading to anti-aging; now he’s taking the #2 spot at HHS under RFK. He famously proposed that the FDA consider only safety (and not efficacy) when approving drugs. Given that he hasn’t been chosen for FDA, that’s probably not on the cards, but here are some things we hope O’Neill considers:

Inline links: the only Trump administration official to have commented on this blog, only lurks, consider only safety

Warp Speed for Air Quality: RFK Jr’s “Make America Healthy Again” philosophy is a horseshoe-theory-style union between typical conservative concerns about purity and typical liberal concerns about the environment. There are many ways it could go wrong, but one place it might go very right is in air quality. Recent research has highlighted the role of air quality in both chronic disease (eg particulate matter in the air causing lung problems) and infectious disease (despite the WHO’s attempts at weird language games, respiratory viruses including colds and COVID are airborne). There are some really innovative solutions (advanced air filters, UV-C technology) on the horizon, but we don’t expect this administration to want to throw a lot of money into blue-sky research. Instead, we suggest taking a page from the first Trump administration playbook and offering Operation Warp Speed style advance purchase agreements, which guarantee a market if and only if the technology works. An air quality Warp Speed could go a step further and target a result that is cost-saving to the federal government. For example, you could set the goal of reducing airborne disease in military housing by 50% by the start of 2028. Because the government pays for military healthcare, this would save costs and also create the evidence needed for private industry (workplaces, nursing homes, cruise ships, etc.) to implement air quality interventions for themselves.

Inline links: particulate matter, airborne

Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist

February 26, 2025 · Original source

In 2017, the Trump administration weakened the deduction. Although Republicans are usually anti-tax, this particular tax fell on high-earning people in high-tax blue states, ie the professional managerial class, ie coastal elites. The GOP thought it was funny to mess with the one tax deduction their enemies actually liked, so they capped it at a low level. This single policy cost the average coastal elite about 5% of their salary.

Links For February 2025

February 27, 2025 · Original source

23: Sentinel (group with superforecasters monitoring world events) predicts a 39% chance that the Trump administration ignores at least one SCOTUS decision (conditional on there being one against them), and a 72% chance of a “free and fair” election in 2028 (assuming no existential catastrophe before then). I wonder what their 28% vision of a “non free and fair” election looks like.

Inline links: predicts

24: Claim: Trump administration may remove all NEPA regulations. I think this would most likely be very good. Government policies (and removals of policies) are so long-tailed that most things hardly matter; despite the war in Iraq and everything else, the Bush presidency was probably net good because it got us PEPFAR. Part of my plan to resist despair is to hope that Trump is doing so many crazy things that he might hit on one or two extremely long-tailed good things like this one and make up lost ground.

Inline links: Trump administration may remove all NEPA regulations

Links For April 2025

April 22, 2025 · Original source

11: Update on Ozempocalypse: some pharmacies have stopped selling compounded GLP-1 drugs, others continue, with various flimsy legal excuses. Cremieux has a guide (partly subscriber-only) on how to order and use cheap “research chemical” GLP-1 from from peptide companies. And the Trump administration cancelled a Biden initiative to make GLP-1 drugs available via insurance.

Inline links: Ozempocalypse, others continue, has a guide (partly subscriber-only), cancelled a Biden initiative

34: Related: the Trump administration seems to be refusing to comply with a 9-0 Supreme Court order to bring back a specific deported immigrant. This is obviously terrifying, but superforecaster Peter Wildeford says it is not technically a constitutional crisis yet (X) because there are still some formalities the courts need to go to before they have officially “ordered” Trump to bring back the immigrant, and he won’t have officially “defied” the order until the formalities are complete. This doesn’t make me too much calmer but I guess is good to keep in mind. Related: Nicholas Decker asks when a violation of the Constitution becomes the sort of wolf-at-the-door dictatorship that we are supposed to violently rise up to prevent; people are mad at him but I think you have to either admit that some level of tyranny reaches this level or else just lie down and die. My proposed solution (drawing, of course, on medieval Iceland) is that the Supreme Court should be able to directly enforce its decisions by declaring violators to be “outlaws”; not only do outlaws lose the protection of the law, but anyone who uses force to defend of an outlaw becomes an outlaw themselves. See here for discussion of the pluses and minuses of such a system.

Inline links: refusing to comply with a 9-0 Supreme Court order, it is not technically a constitutional crisis yet, that we are supposed to violently rise up to prevent, here

Moldbug Sold Out

May 07, 2025 · Original source

We’re told not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But Moldbug seems pretty fixed on perfection, constantly warning that you have to follow these rules or else you’ll get Hitler and it will be even worse than normal democracy. By my count, the Trump administration is zero out of sixteen.

Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID

May 29, 2025 · Original source

More generally, I wonder if Scott ever has dealt with US AID or other multilaterals, or the world of NGOs, much of which surrounds Washington DC. I have lived in this milieu for almost forty years, and sometimes worked in it, from various sides including contractor. A lot of people have the common sense to realize that these institutions are pretty wasteful (not closedly tied to measured overhead btw), too oriented toward their own internal audiences, and also that the NGOs (as recipients, not donors) “capture” US AID to some extent. As an additional “am I understanding this issue correctly?” check, has Scott actually spoken to anyone involved in this process on the Trump administration side?

And - fine - I admit I’ve never hob-nobbed with Trump administration officials. But I have delivered medicine in a Third World country. I’ve helped treat patients who were definitely going to die within a year, for want of medication that would be routine anywhere else. I’ve looked in parents’ eyes while telling them their kid wasn’t going to recover. It sucks. I can’t say that it teaches anything directly useful for understanding the details of the public charity funding landscape. Maybe everything I’m writing here about NICRA vs. overhead and sub-grants vs. sub-sub-grants is totally and embarrassingly wrong, and my lack of familiarity with DC NGO culture is to blame.

Open Thread 396

August 25, 2025 · Original source

He had absolutely amazing taste in architecture. Of these, it was #1 that caught my interest. Fascism is in the news a lot these days. Liberals suggest the Trump administration is fascist; conservatives retort that this perspective owes its prominence to a sophomoric version of historiography where “fascism is when you do things liberals don’t like; the less liberals like it, the fascismer it is” […] Maybe (I figured) it was time to learn more than four things about Mussolini. So here’s a fifth: he wrote a short essay, The Doctrine Of Fascism to explain the true nature of fascism once and for all to curious future readers. Subscribers can read it here. 5: Thanks to everyone who offered to be an evaluator for ACX Grants. We still have a few gaps in our team and are looking for volunteers with the following expertise: A volunteer to do a small amount of consulting work on ~5 environment/geoengineering/climate tech grants.

Inline links: absolutely amazing taste in architecture, The Doctrine Of Fascism, here

Open Letter To The NIH

August 29, 2025 · Original source

The Trump administration has been retaliating against its critics, and people and groups with business before the administration have started laundering criticism through other sources with less need for goodwill. So I have been asked to share an open letter, which needs signatures from scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals. The authors tell me (THIS IS NOT THE CONTENTS OF THE LETTER, IT’S THEIR EXPLANATION, TO ME, OF WHAT THE LETTER IS FOR):

Inline links: retaliating against its critics, an open letter

My Antichrist Lecture

October 22, 2025 · Original source

Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and omega the last: “Alpha and omega” is an implicit claim to span all things, similar to the English phrase “from A to Z”. Marc Andreessen’s company, Andreessen Horowitz, is more commonly called A16Z - superficially a reference to its first and last letters, but also making the same implicit claim. Just as Ursula von der Leyen is a leader in AI regulation, Marc Andreessen is the leader of the anti-regulation faction, having recently founded a $100 million anti-AI-safety SuperPAC. If the fight for AI alignment is Revelation’s final fight of Good vs. Evil, then John was correct to name him as the leader of the evil side. During my original lecture, an audience member objected that Andreessen holds stakes in several other AI companies, but not Anthropic. In what sense, then, can he be said to be giving power to the Beast? This might be a reference to his general anti-AI safety lobbying activities. In 16:13, “three unclean spirits like frogs” emanate from the mouth of the Antichrist and his allies, which muster the kings of the world to the side of evil. I think this is a good match for Andreessen packing the Trump administration with lieutenants charged with turning the government against AI safety, and I tentatively identify the three spirits as David Sacks, Sriram Krishnan, and Michael Kratsios. They are “like frogs” in that they act like MAGA populists, who use the frog as their symbol. Feels bad, man But it’s also possible that Andreessen will become a major Anthropic investor before the end. There’s some textual support here too, this time in Daniel 7, another apocalyptic prophecy generally considered to address the same events as Revelation from a different perspective. Daniel has a vision of four beasts: a winged lion, a bear, a leopard, and a many-headed monster. The monster is the worst and final beast, and it has ten horns. Then a “little horn”, a “horn with human eyes”, shows up, defeats three of the original horns, and takes over. Then the monster begins a reign of terror, and finally is defeated by God. If, as before, the beasts represent companies, then the four beasts of Daniel correspond to the four major AI labs: Google DeepMind, X.AI, OpenAI, and Anthropic. How? I think these correspond to the ethnicity of the founders: Bear = Google, founded by Sergey Brin (Russian)

Inline links: A16Z, is the leader of the anti-regulation faction, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FhC5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2e5e8be9-ed2d-4f51-855c-f55deac58c02_976x850.jpeg

October 28, 2025 · Original source

The proposal also moots two additional megaprojects: the Solano Shipyard, where the new city touches the upper tributaries of the San Francisco Bay. American shipbuilding has long been something of an embarrassment, the Trump administration is working on it, and the new city would be strategically placed to benefit if the federal government could remove some of the barriers that make US naval manufacturing unprofitable. And the Solano Foundry would be the “the largest [advanced manufacturing] park in the US”. Many of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs’ manufacturing startups set up shop in Southern California - for example, Elon Musk’s original base for SpaceX and the Boring Company was in Hawthorne, near LA - just because the Bay has so few good industrial locations. The Foundry aims to change that, and aims for 40,000 new manufacturing jobs. Finally, something nobody else will care about but which is close to my heart - Jan is pursuing a partnership with Monumental Labs, a group working on “AI-enabled robotic stone carving factories”. The question of why modern architecture is so dull and unornamented compared to its classical counterpart is complicated, but three commonly-proposed reasons are: Ornament costs too much

Inline links: Solano Shipyard, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cZKL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdaff879b-2364-49e3-9568-2779f28cd231_639x426.jpeg, Solano Foundry, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!APFe!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2086d0cc-0654-4c0a-80c3-3aaacbe5744e_1199x675.jpeg, Monumental Labs, is complicated

Building codes are inflexible and designed around the more-common modern styles. Getting robots to mass-produce ornament solves problems 1 and 2, and doing it in a model city with a ground-level commitment to ornament solves problem 3. Sramek writes: Our renderings do not tell the full story. Getting architecture right in a way that is also scalable and affordable is hard. And until now, we’ve been focused on the things “lower down in the stack” that need to be designed first – land use plans, urban design, transportation, open space, infrastructure, etc. But I started this company nearly a decade ago precisely because I felt that so much of our world had become ugly, and I wanted to live, and have my kids grow up, in a place that appreciates craft and beauty. This is one of the clearest examples of what I love about model cities. There are lots of things that everyone (or at least a substantial proportion) of people want, which people aren’t doing - not because there’s some strong opposition or technical challenges, but because the system is too complex/diffuse/ossified to permit change. A lot of what I love about California is downstream of its geography as the westernmost part of the western world - the people who felt confined by Europe fled to America, and the people who felt confined by America fled to California, and until recently it was an open space big enough for new experiments to grow. I think of “California Forever” as a nod to that heritage, and a test of whether some of those sparks still survive. The Siege Of Prospera In the 2010s, a conservative Honduran government decided to allow experimental “ZEDEs” - semi-autonomous charter cities - in the country. Several projects sprung up, most notably Prospera and Ciudad Morazan, and met some early success. In 2022, the socialists took over and decided to end the experiment. They were able to ban the creation of new ZEDEs, but had more trouble disbanding existing projects. They found there were two legal roadblocks. First, the founders of the ZEDE system - well aware of how sudden shifts in governments could destroy charter cities - fortified their law with constitutional protections making it near-impossible to repeal. Second, they signed international treaties giving charter city investors the right to sue Honduras for very large amounts if it tried to destroy their hard work. How do you repeal a law that says it would be unconstitutional to repeal it? The socialist-controlled Honduran Supreme Court tried their best, saying that the law had retroactively itself been unconstitutional, and so existing ZEDEs had retroactively been illegal the whole time. However, the court failed to remove the entire thicket of legal protection surrounding the ZEDE system; in particular, they did not strike down Article 94 of the Constitution, which said that unconstitutionality rulings could not be enforced retroactively. So as far as anyone can tell, the current status of ZEDEs is that it is illegal for them to exist, but also illegal for the government to take any action to remove them. On their way out, the Court ordered some penalties against “companies that became ZEDEs”, which is not really how this works (companies can found ZEDEs, but they don’t become ZEDEs; this is like saying “companies that became cell phones”) and which therefore nobody has tried to collect. Why did the government’s case end so farcically? Honduras-watchers suggest that the Court was trying to balance its obligations to the government, to the integrity of the legal system, and to practicality. The government really wanted an anti-ZEDE victory to present to its voters. The integrity of the legal system made it hard to apply ex post facto judgments. And practically, the whole case ran up against the second layer of protections the ZEDE founders built around their project: the investor treaties. If Honduras were to end ZEDEs, ZEDE investors could sue in international court. Prospera’s investors have already sued for $11 billion - a third of Honduras’ GDP. The case is currently tied up in international courts, with the delay being amenable to both sides; the government expects to lose, and the Prosperans would rather keep the suit as a threat they can hold over the Hondurans’ head than actually get a judgment in their favor - which would be bad PR, and which they expect Honduras would not pay. (also, although the Trump administration hasn’t taken a firm stance, Prospera seems like the sort of thing they would like, and Honduras is nervous about offending them too badly) Since the government doesn’t seem to be able to legally shut down Prospera, they’ve resorted to harassing it - especially trying to debank it. This might have worked, if not for the fact that a certain $4 trillion weird Ponzi casino industry has always imagined itself as having a fig-leaf purpose of “what if a utopian libertarian island-city got debanked by a repressive socialist government and could only save itself if there were a entirely new kind of financial infrastructure totally different from the regular one?”; although I imagine they were just as surprised as anyone else when this exact scenario suddenly played out in real life, nobody can deny they were extremely prepared for it. So the attempted harassment has fallen flat too, and the government doesn’t have a lot of options. Further developments hinge on next month’s big election. The candidates seem like a colorful bunch: Polling has been contradictory: …with Rixi Moncada (socialist), Salvador Nasralla (liberal), and Nasry Zablah (right-wing) all making strong showings. My impression is Moncada would be worst for Prospera, Zablah best, and Nasralla somewhere in the middle. Meanwhile, my contact in Prospera reports that life in the city continues as normal, with most residents relatively insulated from the lawfare happening around them. They are up to 300 registered companies, a nearly-full office tower, a few residential developments under construction, and frequent conferences on relevant topics like crypto and biotech. From Techbro To Sherbro Sherbro, Sierra Leone. A place synonymous in the popular imagination with the phrase “Sherbro, Sierra Leone”. Population 30,000. Size 230 square miles (or “just a little bit smaller than Singapore”, according to its boosters). There are too many places named “Freetown”. And not enough named “Kissidougou”. Siaka Stevens is the grandson of Sierra Leone’s first president, also named Siaka Stevens. He grew up in Britain, worked in business and finance, then went back to his family homeland as an adult. Moved by the poverty he saw around him, he decided to start a charter city. He recruited the help of Idris Elba, a famous British actor of Sierra Leonean descent, and together they started a company to build Sherbro Island City. The usual Dubai and Singapore comparisons were made. Maybe due to Stevens’ government connections, they got an impressively broad concession from the government - the Charter Cities Institute has compared it to Honduras’ ZEDEs, among the most autonomous charter city legislation in the world. From the podcast: Okay, so there are seven governing board members and the agreement specifically states that they are strictly from the private sector. SAP, our company, will choose four of the board members and the chairperson and the government of Sierra Leone will choose three. That’s the seven member board. And underneath that is a similar structure to municipal corporation. We have fiscal and legislative autonomy. English common law, very robust investor protections. The best way to kind of describe it, a similar situation, mean, Hong Kong now actually, and it’s a similar setup to Hong Kong and China’s relationship in the early eighties, where you have a special administrative region that is very autonomous, but sovereignty is held by the main Sierra Leone country. So it’s an innovative kind of new system of governance. Stevens calls the island a “greenfield” site, but it includes a town (Bonthe, population ~10,000) and an ethnic group (the Sherbro people). Yup, that’s definitely an ethnic group. I have honestly never seen a group this ethnic before. A+ at being ethnic (source). It’s slightly unclear whether Bonthe and other inhabited areas are within the SEZ, but it looks like maybe they are, and Stevens means he will mostly be building the new Singapore-style smart city on uninhabited parts of the island, with Bonthe as an early base for transit and development that he hopes will benefit but otherwise remain unaffected. Various local chiefs seem to be mostly in favor, as far as we know. The big problem for these island charter city attempts is infrastructure. You eventually want heavy industry and high-value-add manufacturing, but how do you build up enough civilization - transit, power, labor, amenities - to support these expensive enterprises? Every charter city has its own solution - gambling in Grand Bahama, regulatory arbitrage in Prospera, political alignment in Praxis. Sherbro’s plans include: A hub to lure the Sierra Leone diaspora back to the country (Google says the Sierra Leone diaspora is 336,000 people, most of whom are probably not digital nomads or jet-setters)

Inline links: writes, next month’s big election, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!l_xq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0e3c5722-3adf-42c5-adaf-1b764f17a88c_954x744.png, has been contradictory, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8egi!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F599bd553-836b-4c70-8128-5ae37cb6b4fc_675x517.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UMhi!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd5972e52-4f45-41ea-a520-a17cd78b7d8d_762x721.png, Sherbro Island City, the podcast, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!w7Zj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb01bfbd8-7896-4274-946e-fe0659c9cd5a_920x613.jpeg, source

3: Behind the scenes, the Trump administration continues to work on its plan to create “Freedom Cities” - Trump-branded charter cities on federal land across the United States. Firm information is rare, but new suggestions include Belle Isle in Detroit and some sort of partnership with the company behind Prospera.

Inline links: continues to work on, Belle Isle in Detroit, some sort of partnership with the company behind Prospera

Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls

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”

January 13, 2026 · Original source

The Trump administration has signaled willingness to allow innovation in this space, so we have at least another three years of friendly regulators - three years when autoforecasters will be improving quickly and AI will be lowering the barrier to starting new businesses. A lot can happen during that time.

Links For February 2026

February 05, 2026 · Original source

32: 60 Minutes recorded a segment on CECOT (El Salvador torture prison being used by Trump administration), then tried to suppress it (probably under indirect pressure from the administration), then changed its mind and showed it after all (see here for discussion of whether this summary is fair). I was heartened to see that someone leaked it to Substacker Yashar Ali. I have a bias towards Streisand Effect-ing things that get suppressed like this, so I’ll link it here even though it got on 60 Minutes eventually anyway.

Inline links: see here for discussion of whether this summary is fair, leaked it to Substacker Yashar Ali

The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic

February 25, 2026 · Original source

Isn’t Hegseth just doing his job of trying to ensure the military has the best weapons possible? The idea of declaring a US company to be a foreign adversary, potentially destroying it, just because it’s not allowing the Pentagon to unilaterally renegotiate its contract is not normal practice. It’s insane Third World bullshit that nobody would have considered within the Overton Window a week ago. It will rightly chill investment in the US, make future companies scared to contract with the Pentagon (lest the Pentagon unilaterally renegotiate their contracts too), and give the Trump administration a no-legal-review-necessary way to destroy any American company that they dislike for any reason. Probably the mere fact that a government official has considered this option is reason to take the “supply chain risk” law off the books, no matter how useful it is in dealing with Huawei etc, since the government has proven it can’t use it responsibly. Every American company ought to be screaming bloody murder about this. If they aren’t, it’s because they’re too scared they’ll be next.

Is it really a good idea to source your killbot brains from an unwilling company which hates your guts? The Trump administration has a firm commitment to never think about AI safety in any way, but this still strikes me as a dubious policy.

Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day

March 03, 2026 · Original source

At the same time, there are rumors that the Trump administration is working on an executive order to declare a national emergency and take control of elections. The order would say that foreign countries have been rigging US elections (some commenters speculate that maybe Maduro could be granted clemency for “admitting” to this), and respond with a series of extreme measures. These would include banning voting machines, restricting vote-by-mail, and requiring all voters to re-register before the election. For what it’s worth, Trump has denied all of this, although his previous denial of Project 2025 makes this less reassuring.

Inline links: an executive order, denied all of this

Support Your Local Collaborator

March 18, 2026 · Original source

Every few weeks, a Trump administration official comes up with an insane plan that would devastate some American industry, region, or demographic. Maybe an Undersecretary of the Interior decides that aluminum is “woke” and should be banned. They circulate a draft order saying it will be illegal for US companies to use aluminum, starting in two weeks, Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter.

I’ve been on the periphery of a handful of these campaigns, usually in medicine or AI. The common thread is that protests by liberals rarely work. The Trump administration loves offending liberals! If every Democratic member of Congress condemns the plan to ban aluminum, that just proves that aluminum really was “woke”, and makes them want to do it more. What works, sometimes, is objections/protests from Republicans and Trump supporters.

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

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

Telegram7 mentions across 7 issues

Telegram is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 7 times across 7 issues between July 05, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "there’s a Telegram chat, but I don’t have Telegram"; "Croatian LessWrong active group communicates mainly through a Telegram group"; "p communicates mainly through a Telegram group". It most often appears alongside Discord, Hong Kong, Singapore.

Article page: Telegram
Mention count: 7
Issue count: 7
First seen: July 05, 2021
Last seen: April 01, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Model City Monday July 05, 2021
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places August 26, 2022
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places August 25, 2023
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024 March 30, 2024
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places August 29, 2024
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places August 29, 2025
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places April 01, 2026

Discord 7 shared issues
Hong Kong 7 shared issues
Singapore 7 shared issues
ACX 6 shared issues
ACX 6 shared issues

Source context

Model City Monday

July 05, 2021 · Original source

And also, how real is this project? It's getting signal-boosted by some big-name libertarians, but it was announced on a Medium blog with four followers, and everything I've seen is compatible with it being one very dedicated person. There's a Discord server, but the invite has expired and I can't find it. There’s a Telegram chat, but I don’t have Telegram and don’t want to get it to check it out. So it might be more of a cool idea than an actual plan that's moving forward.

Inline links: a Medium blog with four followers

Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places

August 26, 2022 · Original source

BAGHDAD, IRAQ Contact: MA, tofiahmed117[at]gmail[dot]com, Discord: WolframSigma#1532, Telegram Time: Friday, September 2, 11:00 AM Location: Grinders Coffeeshop Coordinates: 8H568FG6+73 Event link(s): LessWrong JERUSALEM, ISRAEL Contact: Zvi Schreiber, zvi[at]zvi[dot]net, WhatsApp +972 54 569 1100 Time: Wednesday, October 19, 6:00 PM Location: Malcha technology park garden Coordinates: 8G3QP5XP+PP Event link(s): LessWrong REHOVOT, ISRAEL Contact: David Manheim, David[at]alter[dot]org[dot]il Time: Sunday, September 11, 8:00 PM Location: Outside porch of Aroma Coffee, הרצל 218, רחובות Coordinates: 8G3PWR25+MP Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Notes: Please RSVP on Facebook so we can give updates if needed TEL AVIV, ISRAEL Contact: Adam & inbar M, projectscentrum[at]gmail[dot]com, inbar192[at]gmail[dot]com, Whatsapp +46762791415 (Adam) Time: Sunday, September 4, 7:00 PM Location: Hamenia industrial loft at Beit Alfa 7 (רחוב בית אלפא 7). Look for a door with ACX sign. Two floors up. Coordinates: 8G4P3Q8Q+85 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We've just made a Facebook group and are planning to organize monthly meetings going forward Notes: For questions contact Adam on email or WhatsApp. Feel free to bring a snack or a bottle of white wine. AMMAN, JORDAN Contact: Daniel, dnledvs[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Tuesday, September 20, 6:30 PM Location: Rustic, Jabal al Weibdeh Coordinates: 8G3QXW49+WG Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: We're hoping to grow the group, so feel free to come even if you've only read a few posts! +1s are also welcome. CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA Contact: Mark Chimes, chimes[dot]mark[at]gmail[dot]com, WhatsApp 0826568573 Time: Saturday, September 17, 11:00 AM Location: Truth Coffee Roasting, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town City Centre - we'll put a sign on the table Coordinates: 4FRW3CFF+3M Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We met up pre-Covid and pre-ACX as an SSC group. Now we're getting back in the swing of things. We eat lunch and chat about philosophy, politics, and sometimes SSC/ACX blog posts. Notes: We're planning on having another meetup on the 8th October if you can't make the first. DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA Contact: Arno, arnorohwedder[at]gmail[dot]com, +255763998637 Time: Thursday, September 29, 7:30 PM Location: The Deck, Masaki Coordinates: 6G5X776J+X6 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Seeing if there are any interested people in Dar, look forward to meeting, if you are coming please send me a whatsapp. DUBAI, UAE Contact: RS, xyxyxz[at]gmail[dot]com, +971552726281 (WhatsApp) Time: Friday, September 30, 7:30 PM Location: Starbucks, Garhoud Coordinates: 7HQQ68VR+94 Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Met once before Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong, or message me on WhatsApp

Inline links: Telegram, 8H568FG6+73, LessWrong, 8G3QP5XP+PP, LessWrong, 8G3PWR25+MP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 8G4P3Q8Q+85, LessWrong, Facebook group, 8G3QXW49+WG, LessWrong, 4FRW3CFF+3M, LessWrong, 6G5X776J+X6, LessWrong, 7HQQ68VR+94, LessWrong

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA Contact: Jarred Filmer, jarred[dot]filmer[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 10, 7:00 PM Location: 52 McCaul Street Taringa (house) Coordinates: 5R4JFXXQ+P8 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We used to meet once a month years ago, but now just meet whenever there's a Meetups Everywhere :) Notes: Snacks will be provided but dinner will not be, would recommend eating before you come CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA Contact: Andy Bachler, Andy[dot]Bachler[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Wednesday, August 31, 5:30 PM Location: Badger & Co pub at ANU. Central location, parking free after 5pm, might be loud, sorry! Coordinates: 4RPFP4FC+34 Event link(s): LessWrong, Eventbrite Notes: Parking area just to the north of the pub, over the river, is free after 5pm! GOLD COAST (SOUTH), AUSTRALIA Contact: Lerancan, lerancan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 11, 2:00 PM Location: A picnic table, Wyberba Street Reserve, Tugun Coordinates: 5R3MVF5W+555 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Email me in case of bad weather/you can't find me/you can't make that time etc. MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA Contact: Ryan, xgravityx[at]hotmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 2, 6:00 PM Location: Beer Deluxe Federation Square Coordinates: 4RJ65XM9+3Q Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: We're officially the Less Wrong Melbourne social meetup group, though our members include the broader rationalist community. We meet once a month for casual discussion (and beers for those so inclined). Please join our Facebook group to see the meeting invite; there you will see a WhatsApp group link - please join that group too to ensure timely updates in case of changes (Facebook notifications don't work reliably for this). Notes: Please RSVP to the meeting invite on the Facebook group so that I can make an appropriate booking. PERTH, AUSTRALIA Contact: Madge, madgech[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 25, 2:00 PM Location: Russell Square, Northbridge, corner of Shenton and Aberdeen St. There will be some sort of ACX meetup sign. Coordinates: 4PWQ3V34+W6 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Group info: I run one meetup per year, if someone else wants to take over please do Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or Facebook SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Contact: Eliot, Redeliot[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 15, 6:00 PM Location: City of Sydney rsl, lvl 2 in the fishbowl Coordinates: 4RRH46F4+983 Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Group info: We meet monthly WOLLONGONG, AUSTRALIA Contact: Jason, jason[dot]bowkettblogs[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 12:00 PM Location: UOW Library Coordinates: 4RQGHVVH+69 Event link(s): LessWrong CHENGDU, CHINA Contact: Alex, acx[dot]chengdu[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 15, 7:00 PM Location: Chef Wenwu Hot & Spicy Jianghu Food (Yulin store)/文武大厨·热辣江湖菜(玉林店). I (a foreigner) will be wearing a green shirt. Coordinates: 8P26J3C5+462 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP at the above email address, I will give you my Wechat contact if you're interested in attending. Open to time/date/location changes, so let me know if the proposed event doesn't work for you! Can be a bilingual event; all welcome. 有双语交流的可能性。如果想来的话，请提前发给我个电子邮件。 HONG KONG Contact: Nathan, nathan[at]xevarion[dot]org Time: Saturday, September 10, 1:00 PM Location: The Catalyst, 2 Po Yan Street, Sheung Wan. Big wooden door. Coordinates: 862M74PW+6XP Event link(s): LessWrong BANGALORE, INDIA Contact: Nihal, propwash[at]duck[dot]com, Discord: propwash#4648 Time: Sunday, September 18, 4:00 PM Location: Matteo Coffea, Church Street Coordinates: 7J4VXJF4+PR Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: We're the longest active group in Asia — we've been meeting monthly for the last 4 years, discussing ACX posts, LW content with a diverse and friendly group of people. Check our website for more info. Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong to help me be better prepared. HYDERABAD, INDIA Contact: Vatsal, vmehra[at]pm[dot]me, Whatsapp: +919944430856 (username: Vim) Time: Sunday, September 11, 5:00 PM Location: The Weekend Cafe, Plot No D, 3, Vikrampuri Colony, beside vac's bakery, Vikrampuri Colony, Lane, Secunderabad, Telangana, 500015, India Coordinates: 7J9WFF4X+5P Event link(s): LessWrong Group info: Our rationality meetup group has been around for about 3 months and we discuss articles and exercises (eg. CFAR handbook) that can help us improve epistemic and instrumental rationality. MUMBAI, INDIA Contact: PB, e2y94n1nv[at]relay[dot]firefox[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 9, 4:00 PM Location: Jamjar Diner, Versova Coordinates: 7JFJ4RM6+5W Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or via email so I can plan activities accordingly. NEW DELHI, INDIA Contact: Suryansh Tyagi, suryanshtyagiphone[at]gmail[dot]com, WhatsApp/phone +919997299972 Time: Sunday, September 11, 5:00 PM Location: Select CityWalk Mall, Saket. Where inside the mall depends on the number of people interested. Coordinates: 7JWVG6H9+8H Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please either send me an email or message me on WhatsApp if you want to attend. Any suggestions/changes are welcome. UDAIPUR, RAJASTHAN, INDIA Contact: Shailendra Paliwal, acx-meetup-2022[at]shailendra[dot]me Time: Saturday, September 10, 7:00 PM Location: We'll be at Doodh Talai near Pichola Lake and I'll be wearing a gray t-shirt carrying a sign ACX Meetup Coordinates: 7JPMHM9M+HG Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so that I can plan ahead UBUD, BALI, INDONESIA Contact: William Ubud, Napaproject[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Tuesday, August 30, 6:00 PM Location: PARQ Ubud Coordinates: 6P3QG789+F7 Event link(s): LessWrong TOKYO, JAPAN Contact: Harold Godsoe, hgodsoe[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 8, 10:00 AM Location: Near Nakameguro station - RSVP for details Coordinates: 8Q7XJPV2+QFP Event link(s): LessWrong, Meetup.com Notes: ACX Tokyo meets monthly since Sept 2021. Our meetups are in English, so far. To join in, feel free to get in touch in any of the many ways to do so (email, Meetup.com). It's useful to be in contact before coming to an event, to help with that first leap of faith. KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA Contact: Yi-Yang, yi[dot]yang[dot]chua[at]gmail[dot]com, LessWrong profile Time: Saturday, September 17, 2:00 PM Location: I'll be in Lisette's Bangsar, which is a 5-minute walk from Bangsar LRT. I'll be wearing a pale green t-shirt and carrying an ACX sign. Coordinates: 6PM34MHH+VW Event link(s): LessWrong AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Jonathan De Wet, jonpdw[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 3, 6:30 PM Location: 32 Stanley Ave Milford, Auckland Coordinates: 4VMP6QH4+86 Event link(s): LessWrong, Facebook event Notes: It’s a dinner party! Please RSVP on FB so I know how much food to make DUNEDIN, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Gavin, bisga673[at]student[dot]otago[dot]ac[dot]nz Time: Saturday, September 3, 3:00 PM Location: Picnic tables outside of St. David's lecture theatre on Otago University campus. I'll make a sign with ACX meetup. Coordinates: 4V6G4GP7+GM5 Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: There is no Dunedin group as far as I'm aware of, but I'd be keen to meet other likeminded people and organise group hangouts occasionally. WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND Contact: Ben W, benwve[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Tuesday, September 27, 5:30 PM Location: Rutherford House, Bunny Street, Wellington. Room MZ05, which is on the mezzanine floor Coordinates: 4VCPPQCH+FGC Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: We're running the event this time in partnership with Effective Altruism Wellington LAPU LAPU, CEBU, PHILIPPINES Contact: Dave, tokkolizard[at]tutanota[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 4, 2:00 PM Location: Starbucks in Mactan Newtown, there will be a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: 7Q268257+4F Event link(s): LessWrong Notes: Please RSVP by mail so I know if I need to set up a bigger meeting place SINGAPORE Contact: Jonathan Ng, jonathan[dot]ng1[at]gmail[dot]com, Telegram @derpy Time: Tuesday, September 6, 6:30 PM Location: Tanjong Pagar MRT gantry, I'll be wearing the dark blue EA Global 2022 jumper Coordinates: 6PH57RGW+J8 Event link(s): LessWrong

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.

Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places

August 25, 2023 · Original source

UDINE, FRIULI VENEZIA GIULIA, ITALY Contact: Leonardo Taglialegne Contact Info: cmt[dot]miniBill[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 30th, 2:30 PM Location: I'll be on the grass with a sign with MEETUP ACX on it Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FRM369P+26 Notes: If you contact me I can add you to the relevant Telegram group

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FRM369P+26

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024

March 30, 2024 · Original source

LYON, FRANCE Contact: Gyrodiot Contact Info: suboptimal[dot]channel[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 2:00 PM Location: Parc de la Tête d'Or, south-east corner of Pelouse de la Coupole. I'll wear a blue shirt/sweater and have an owl plushie and books. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FQ6QVF3+JM Group Link: https://t.me/+m6nDCgibgSxiMWE0 Notes: Check the Telegram group or contact me if it rains!

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FQ6QVF3+JM, https://t.me/+m6nDCgibgSxiMWE0

Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places

August 29, 2024 · Original source

Contact: Egor Contact Info: zmaznevegor[at]g mail[ dot]com Time: Sunday, September 15th, 02:30 PM Location: Me Coffee Roastery, 2nd floor. 91 Chương D., Bắc Mỹ Phú, Ngũ Hành Sơn, Đà Nẵng 550000, Vietnam Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7P8C26WP+Q27 Notes: If you are planning to come, please contact me on Telegram @Zmaznevegor. https://t.me/Zmaznevegor

Inline links: https://plus.codes/7P8C26WP+Q27, https://t.me/Zmaznevegor

Contact: Dominik Contact Info: dominik[dot]tujmer[a t]gm ail[dot]c om Time: Saturday, September 28th, 07:00 PM Location: A Most Unusual Garden (Hendrick's Gin Garden), Horvaćanska cesta 3, Zagreb Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FQQQXP3+W55 Group Link: Email me for access to the telegram link!

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FQQQXP3+W55

Contact: Ben Contact Info: benschm9542[a t]gmail[d ot]com Time: Wednesday, October 09, 06:00 PM Location: Location: Leos Brasserie Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F3J89RG+XR Group Link: Telegram group people can join- Ask me for the link! Additional Notes: Do you like brownies or something healthier ;)?

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F3J89RG+XR

Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places

August 29, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Lucas Contact Info: lucas_acx_meetup_lyon[a t]fastmail[period]com Time: Saturday, September 6th, 4:00 PM Location: Parc de la tête d'or, à côté de la prairie aux daims. Nous aurons deux serviettes grises/brunes au sol et "ACX" écrit sur un carnet ou une feuille. Parc de la tête d'or, next to the "prairie aux daims". We will have two brown/grey towels on the ground and "ACX" written on a notebook or a piece of paper Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FQ6QVF2+GW Group Link: Il y a un télégram ACX Lyon, si vous voulez être ajoutés envoyez moi un mail. There is a telegram group for ACX Lyon, if you want to be added shoot me an email.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FQ6QVF2+GW

Contact: Ben Contact Info: acxleipzig[a t]proton[period]me Time: Wednesday, October 22nd, 6:00 PM Location: We will be meeting in the famous Fechner house (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:WohnhausFechner.JPG), now home of Daniel, who's hosted ACX meetups there several times. The address is Scherlstraße 2. Ring the door at "Böttger Liebich". Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F3J89QR+PX Group Link: Email me to get an invite link to the ACX Leipzig Telegram group, if you want :) Notes: Feel free to send an email with any questions you have!

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F3J89QR+PX

Contact: Anton Contact Info: antonx451[a t]gmail[period]com | antonx451 on Telegram Time: Saturday, September 20th, 05:00 PM Location: Franyk Podil Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9G2GFG78+W6

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9G2GFG78+W6

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places

April 01, 2026 · Original source

Contact: Wolfram Contact Info: telegram [@]wolfram_sigma Time: Friday, April 10th, 2:00 PM Location: Grinders -- Zayouna Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8H568FG6+73Q Group Link: Telegram Group -> https://t[.}me/+n7U-ilkVA_dkNTUy Notes: you must contact me if you are coming, I tried to host the meet up a few times before, and no one came. so if you are coming please inform me so I would actually go.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8H568FG6+73Q

Contact: Dominik Contact Info: dt[@]d11r[.]eu Time: Friday, April 10th, 8:00 PM Location: Grif Bar, Savska cesta 160, Zagreb. I’ll reserve a table (or tables). We’ll have a sign that’ll say ACX / LW / Rationality meetup, or some variation thereof. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FQQQXR4+53 Group Link: You can contact me at dt@d11r.eu to be added to the Telegram group Notes: RSVPs on LessWrong are desirable but not mandatory.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FQQQXR4+53

Contact: Misha Contact Info: Telegram: aspr_spb Time: Saturday, May 2nd, 6:00 PM Location: We will meet at the Polemidia National Park Cafe, I’ll be wearing black and white zebra print shirt and have an ACX MEETUP sign. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G6MP274+J8

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G6MP274+J8

Tumblr7 mentions across 7 issues

Tumblr is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 7 times across 7 issues between January 21, 2021 and May 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "They just have a Tumblr or a LiveJournal or something"; "Seen on Tumblr"; "scattered across a million Twitter and Tumblr accounts". It most often appears alongside Trump, Twitter, 4chan.

Article page: Tumblr
Mention count: 7
Issue count: 7
First seen: January 21, 2021
Last seen: May 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Still Alive January 21, 2021
Links For April April 12, 2021
The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars May 10, 2021
Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster? June 08, 2022
Forer Statements As Updates And Affirmations July 27, 2022
Open Thread 292 September 04, 2023
Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke" May 07, 2024

Trump 3 shared issues
Twitter 3 shared issues
4chan 2 shared issues
America 2 shared issues
Biden 2 shared issues

Source context

Still Alive

January 21, 2021 · Original source

...but I was also grateful to get some emails from journalists trying to help me understand the perspective of their field. They point out that reporting is fundamentally about revealing information that wasn't previously public, and hard-hitting reporting necessarily involves disclosing things about subjects that they would rather you not know. Speculating on the identities of people like Deep Throat, or Satoshi Nakamoto, or QAnon, or that guy who wrote Primary Colors, is a long-standing journalistic tradition, one I had never before thought to question. Many of my correspondents brought up that some important people read my blog (Paul Graham was the most cited name). Isn't there a point past which you stop being that-guy-with-a-Tumblr-account who it's wrong to dox, and you become more like Satoshi Nakamoto where trying to dox you is a sort of national sport? Wouldn't it be fair to say I had passed that point?

With all due respect to these reporters, and with complete admission of my own bias, I reject this entire way of looking at things. If someone wants to report that I'm a 30-something psychiatrist who lives in Oakland, California, that's fine, I've had it in my About page for years. If some reporter wants to investigate and confirm, I have some suggestions for how they could use their time better - isn't there still a war in Yemen? - but I'm not going to complain too loudly. But I don't think whatever claim the public has on me includes a right to know my name if I don't want them to. I don't think the public needs to know the name of the cops who write cop blogs, or the deadnames of trans people, or the dating lives of sexy cyborgs. I'm not even sure the public needs to know the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. If he isn't harming anyone, let him have his anonymity! I would rather we get whatever pathologies come from people being able to invent Bitcoin scot-free, than get whatever pathologies come from anyone being allowed to dox anyone else if they can argue that person is "influential". Most people don't start out trying to be influential. They just have a Tumblr or a LiveJournal or something, and a few people read it, and then a few more people read it, and bam! - they're influential! If influence takes away your protection, then none of us are safe - not the random grad student with a Twitter account making fun of bad science, not the teenager with a sex Tumblr, not the aspiring fashionista with an Instagram. I've read lots of interesting discussion on how much power tech oligarchs should or shouldn't be allowed to have. But this is the first time I've seen someone suggest their powers should include a magic privacy-destroying gaze, where just by looking at someone they can transform them into a different kind of citizen with fewer rights. Is Paul Graham some weird kind of basilisk, such that anyone he stares at too long turns into fair game?

Links For April

April 12, 2021 · Original source

9: Seen on Tumblr, I cannot confirm or deny:

Inline links: on Tumblr

14: I’ve written before about metabolic-set-point models of anorexia, and especially how a short period of deliberate starvation (for example, to lose weight) can lead to a longer period of involuntary low appetite. relative-energy on Tumblr writes about lab animal models of this process and how to cause anorexia in mice.

Inline links: lab animal models of this process

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars

May 10, 2021 · Original source

I had originally intended to track the progress of the culture wars by tracking hit count on various feminist and anti-racist blogs. I found a few promising feminist blogs, but not enough anti-racist ones for the project to make sense. By the time anti-racism eclipsed feminism, the blogosphere was pretty dead. Most discourse happened either in a few big newspapers and webzines, or scattered across a million Twitter and Tumblr accounts. It was both more centralized and more decentralized than 2010, lacking only the middle ground.

Which Party Has Gotten More Extreme Faster?

June 08, 2022 · Original source

In order to test this, I surveyed 300 people on Tumblr (30 of whom were Republicans, although I’m not sure how much confidence you can have in the kind of Republican who goes on Tumblr). Among Republicans, 79% said they would press a magic button that replaced current policies/institutions/norms with those of 1990; among Democrats, only 33% would. The divide was equally stark for the same question asked about 1950 (31% vs. 4%). I think this amply demonstrates that the common-sense idea that Republicans are more past-looking and Democrats more future-looking is accurate.

Inline links: surveyed

I’ll leave the last word to my survey respondents: On the same Tumblr survey mentioned above, I just asked people to tell me which party they thought had gotten more extreme more quickly.

Forer Statements As Updates And Affirmations

July 27, 2022 · Original source

Looking at this list, I can’t help thinking of what 4chan calls “normies” and what Tumblr calls “neurotypical people” (I know there’s a meaningful definition of “neurotypical” as people who don’t have some specific psych condition that you’re talking about, but I claim Tumblr uses it differently, in a way precisely equivalent to 4chan’s use of “normies”.) There’s a material aspect of normiehood - for NEETs, normies are people with jobs and happy relationships; for queers, normies are straight people. But this coexists with a psychological aspect. Normies don’t anxiously beat themselves up about things or fret about wasting their potential. Neurotypicals don’t have deep personality weaknesses they try hard to compensate for, or struggle with awkward sexual adjustments. They’re not unusually insecure, they don’t doubt what they’re doing, they’re not dissatisfied, they’re not logical independent thinkers.

Open Thread 292

September 04, 2023 · Original source

2: RIP Kontextmaschine: polymath, prolific Tumblr blogger, and valued member of the Portland ACX community. His chosen medium makes it hard to navigate his output, so these are more “posts of his I could easily find” than “best posts” - if someone wants to put in the work to collect the latter, I’ll link that too. But here’s KM on the humanities, on race, on relationships, on censorship, on Disney, on cable TV, on anti-Semitism, on Cascadia, and on the life he might have lived; if you can navigate Tumblr you might be able to find more here. He was such a colorful character all along that it was hard to notice his increasing bizarreness (he attributed his sudden bisexuality and inability to feel anxiety to “long COVID”, but speculation is he died of a brain tumor). Thanks to Barry for trying to help him. There was no one else exactly like him, and I regret that he will never achieve his destiny of marrying Taylor Swift and becoming respective Emperor and Empress of Idealized Timeless America. [update: longer tribute here]

Inline links: RIP Kontextmaschine, on the humanities, on race, on relationships, on censorship, on Disney, on cable TV, on anti-Semitism, on Cascadia, on the life he might have lived, here, Barry for trying to help him, longer tribute here

Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

May 07, 2024 · Original source

Why was Duke Power Co decided the way it was, since they asked people to take a mechanical aptitude test for a mechanical job? Sam kindly answered: 1) He may be right about that (I don't know actually) but even if he is right, so what? If a test is relevant to a job, that evidence will apply to each worksite. It's not like there's some affirmative requirement that employers prove the test works before they can implement it--they can do whatever they want and the only check is a lawsuit. A plaintiffs' attorney is not going to bring that case if it doesn't have some evidence the 2) Very easy. You just have to show there is a “manifest relationship to the employment in question" (a more lenient standard added by subsequent more conservative courts) then the burden shifts to the plaintiffs to prove its not legitimate or that the employer could achieve the same goal in a way that doesn't have a disparate impact. In Griggs, there was direct evidence from the employer's own experience that the test they were using was uncorrelated with job performance. 3) That is likely enough. But if, for example, their experience showed that people with a criminal history were no likelier to be violent and criminal than that argument would rightly fail. I think it is also unlikely the EEOC will win this case in the current legal environment. 4) As I said above, if you read the actual case, the facts were that the test did not predict success at the job. This turns out to be very common. More discussion of Duke v. Griggs - this is all coming from one very long thread, which you might prefer to read directly, starting with Mr. Doolittle: I don't think the EEOC is being disingenuous when they think a company is discriminating. Their perspective is coming from the side that sees actual discrimination, often hidden behind convenient stories. Read Duke Power sometime in detail - there's no doubt that the company was flagrantly discriminating and lying about it. That said, I don't think the EEOC has an actual problem with merit tests like Google having someone write code for a coding job. They have a real problem with mission-creep tests (like requiring that coding test for lower level employees) or anything that might be a hidden way to discriminate. I think they also have some true-believer "woke" types that really think that any disparate impact is hidden discrimination, but for legal reasons this is significantly less prevalent than in other "woke-adjacent" contexts. Bob Frank (blog) writes: » “Read Duke Power sometime in detail - there's no doubt that the company was flagrantly discriminating and lying about it.” ...which was quite adequately remedied at the appeals court level. The plaintiffs got everything they could have reasonably wanted. But the EEOC didn't want to fix the problem they were ostensibly suing over; they wanted to use it as a premise to push their social agenda, so they appealed to the Supreme Court, and we ended up with one of the most damaging rulings in history. I wrote about this in some detail last year: Forewarned Is Forearmed The Most Significant Case You've Never Heard Of People often think of the 1960s as a tumultuous time in our nation’s history, but in many ways the real damage was done in the 1970s. The 70s was a time when a lot of the chaos of the 60s settled down, but unfortunately it didn’t happen by conditions getting back to normal so much as by surrender, assimilating the chaos into a “new normal” that was sig… Read more 3 years ago · 5 likes · Bob Frank gdanning writes: Your article refers to what you call "Duke Power’s use of industry-standard aptitude tests in employment decisions. " But here are the actual facts: » ”The Company added a further requirement for new employees on July 2, 1965, the date on which Title VII became effective. To qualify for placement in any but the Labor Department it became necessary to register satisfactory scores on two professionally prepared aptitude 428*428 tests, as well as to have a high school education. Completion of high school alone continued to render employees eligible for transfer to the four desirable departments from which Negroes had been excluded if the incumbent had been employed prior to the time of the new requirement. In September 1965 the Company began to permit incumbent employees who lacked a high school education to qualify for transfer from Labor or Coal Handling to an "inside" job by passing two tests— the Wonderlic Personnel Test, which purports to measure general intelligence, and the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test. Neither was directed or intended to measure the ability to learn to perform a particular job or category of jobs […] » On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job-performance ability. Rather, a vice president of the Company testified, the requirements were instituted on the Company's judgment that they generally would improve the overall quality of the work force. » The evidence, however, shows that employees who have not completed high school or taken the tests have continued to perform satisfactorily and make progress in departments for which the high school and test criteria are now used.” This leaves me with more questions than it answers. For example, if a company hasn’t explicitly measured how tests correlate with performance (which I assume is the case with most tests), are the tests okay or not? Also, could someone who’s annoyed at ballooning degree requirements (eg me) sue every company that requires a college degree, asking them to prove that it’s really necessary? Steve Sailer describes his personal experience: I worked for a marketing research startup firm from 1982-2000. In 1982, our hiring exam was the final exam given by one of our founders, a college professor, in his Quantitative Methods in Marketing Research course. It was a great test, and we hired a lot of good people in the 1980s. Our biggest client gave a similar exam and hired a lot of good people. When the EEOC went after our biggest, most prestigious client over their hiring exam, the firm then spent a lot of money on consulting firms to have it validated as related to work performance to the necessary legal standard. And they continued to hire good people. In contrast, when the EEOC finally noticed us in the 1990s, we found out how much it would cost to validate our exam and decided to save money by throwing it out. That turned out to penny wise and pound foolish. If this is true, it sounds like the burden of proof is on the test-giver, and it’s a pretty high burden. I don’t know how this meshes with what Sam B is saying, unless Steve’s experience was before the change in the law that Sam mentions. Hadi Khan (blog) writes: » “As I said above, if you read the actual case, the facts were that the test did not predict success at the job. This turns out to be very common.” This does not mean the test isn't a good test in the sense that it doesn't measure job performance. See how there is no correlation between a players height in the NBA and how well they perform. This is because if there was a correlation then selectors would be leaving money on the table and they could improve their selection for the coming year by increasing the weighting on height (compared to everything else), which would in turn reduce the amount of correlation. Rinse and repeat until there is no correlation left. The test not predicting job performance could equivalently mean that Duke Power had a very well calibrated way to choose their employees where they were prefectly capturing the information from the apitutde test compared to all the other factors involved in hiring. Indeed the fact that this turns out to be very common suggests to me that this is going on here (and elsewhere). Good point! I don’t know when the correlation between test score and job performance was measured, and whether it should be expected to have this problem. 5: The Origins Of Modern Wokeness (again, you might want to read Hanania’s post answering objectors on this point) Carateca writes: I hew more to the Tumblr theory of the origins of woke (Katherine Dee has written about this, although at infuriatingly short length.) All this was incubated on Tumblr by mentally ill teenagers in the mid-00s, expanded from there to various web forums/proto-social media of the era such as Something Awful and Livejournal where the mentally ill teenagers could gain cultural or moderation power, and then exploded onto Twitter where it cowed cultural leaders into compliance and suddenly people at your office were putting pronouns in their bios, doing land acknowledgments and sterilizing their kids. Civil rights law under this theory was a weapon for the woke to pick up, not the cause of the problem. (Edit: and not even that relevant of a weapon, regardless of its merit otherwise; wokeness's greatest damage is cultural, not legal.) I agree with the Tumblr theory too, though I think some blogs (eg Shakesville, Pandagon) might have been closer to Patient Zero. I continue to be a little confused how and why stuff that deranged teenagers were discussing on microblogs made it to the halls of power, and I would appreciate a more focused Origins Of Woke book discussing this process. Desertopa writes: So, I don't think I'm qualified to write that book, and if anything I'm less qualified now than I was twelve years or so ago, since it's been a long while since I've brushed up on the source material. But I think I'm better versed in what went into it than most people, and I'm prepared to at least take a stab at a substack comment on the subject. My impression, as of around 2009, before people identified "woke" as a thing, and before the social justice subculture that gave rise to the term had really solidified, but at a point when it was distinctly trending in that direction, is that the movement was essentially a result of academic ideas filtered through a specific, mostly online social context. While a lot of people, especially back then, would argue that the academic basis of the movement was sound, but often interpreted poorly by radical ideologues, my impression, as someone who read a lot more of the actual academic work than most, is that this was a mistaken interpretation, that the academic work actually *was* written largely by radical ideologues in the first place, and simply dressed up in language suited to an academic audience. I still identify as much more left wing than right wing, and this was even more the case at the time, since the far left end hadn't moved nearly as far away from me at that point. But, my impression is that at least as far back as the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement, there was a balance between the left and right wings on issues of racial and gender justice etc. where both sides essentially held to the norms of trying to enact their desired changes via collective political action and measured civil disobedience, with the left wing making more or less continual progress against the right, until the left wing decided to defect first. This began in academia, with writers who framed the issue of racial justice essentially in terms of existential warfare. Basically "we are opposed by a group of ideological enemies who are trying to destroy us and everything we represent. The mechanisms of gradual change collective political action and measured civil disobedience are fundamentally aligned against us in the favor of our ideological enemies, thus we have to break away from those and fight with tools which fundamentally favor our cause in order to be able to effectively defend ourselves." Because the writers in question were academics with cushy university positions, their actual mechanism of political action was writing books arguing people ought to do these things, which were mostly only read by other academics and ignored by the general populace. But when social justice started becoming a major component of the online subculture which was incubating in the mid to late 2000s, although only a minority of people actually read the work of actual academics on the subject, people who did were extremely influential in the movement, and ideas which originated in academia propagated to fixation through it. In the earlier days of the social justice movement, there were separate strains which cooperated on object-level goals, but disagreed over big-picture questions like "should we frame social agendas in terms of Us vs. Them conflict drawn around identity groups, or in terms of alignment with philosophical goals?" and "should we attempt to move towards progressively more colorblind ideals of egalitarianism, or ones which consciously privilege minority groups?" The identitarian strain eventually became more or less hegemonic over the movement, partly I think because it's an easier sell based on ordinary patterns of human thought (we've been engaged in identitarian tribal conflict for the entirety of human history,) and partly because almost all the academic underpinning behind the movement actually argued in support of the identitarian strain. I personally started to distance myself from the social justice movement around 2009, while remaining broadly aligned with its object-level goals, in large part because I started reading enough of the academic philosophy behind it to realize that the academics other people were treating as foundational figures (even if most of them didn't actually read their work) were essentially arguing that we needed to abandon the societal institution of liberalism because it was fundamentally aligned against the goals of social justice, while failing to acknowledge that the mechanisms of liberalism had been producing consistent incremental gains for social justice for the last several decades. This is also how I remember things. The part that seems mysterious to me is how the left defected from pre-existing norms so successfully - or rather, if defection gave such an obvious advantage, how the pre-existing norms had stayed in place before. Neike Taika-Tessaro writes: Interestingly, I was going to say Hanania's missing element could just be graphs like these: i.e. affirmative action laid the groundwork for this, then people connected, coordinated, and used it much more aggressively. I feel like that's basically what you're saying, except that what I'm (ignorantly) ascribing to Hanania here and what you're saying disagree on the cause. I guess in Hanania's framing, wokeness was inevitable once affirmative action existed in the legal framework; whereas in Dee's faming, wokeness was not inevitable once affirmative action existed, but is a separate phenomenon that then seized upon the tool. I'm probably doing both of them an injustice with that, mind. (To be clear, I'm not in the US and avoid most social media, so I don't particularly have opinions on this either way, I just immediately thought 'the internet' when Scott referred to the cultural turn between 2010 and 2015 and asked "Why would 1964 and 1991 laws turn wokeness into a huge deal in 2015?".) Yeah, something like this also has to be part of the picture, although I still don’t feel like I understand the mechanism well enough that I could have predicted this ahead of time. More patient zero speculation, from MarsDragon: Historical nitpick: it's less that Tumblr infected LiveJournal so much as LJ users were forced to move to Tumblr as LJ got increasingly difficult to use starting around 2009-2010. The migration had more or less completed by 2012. Tumblr being so much more of a "modern" social media platform where it was easy to repost content and you got a random jumble of posts instead of a carefully-curated set of friends made it much easier for social justice thinking to spread. I think the whole shift to showing users a melange of content instead of a staid list of people the user chose to follow was a big driver of that sort of thinking. It allowed ideas to spread, upped controversy, and drives that sort of "we must purge this!" was of thinking. The LiveJournal experts here say the key event to look at was Racefail, when, according to Carateca: I had a front row seat and it was remarkable how the whole superstructure of a totalitarian state just congealed out of thin air in days and instantly took over a whole subculture. Sometimes I think that if Charlie Stross and the rest of them had just had some fucking balls and stood up to the bullies -- or, hell, just pushed the block button a few times -- none of this would ever have happened. I support any theory that lets us blame everything on Charlie Stross. naraburns writes: Anyway, I would argue that "woke" does not begin with civil rights law, but rather that both are the result of the same intellectual tradition. "Woke" attitudes are basically analogous to what was called "cultural Marxism" decades ago (see e.g. Weiner's (1981) "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology"), but since "Cultural Marxism" has been retconned as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, people needed a different name for it. The linguistic treadmill is merciless, especially when dealing with political movements attempting to escape accountability for their past failures (or successes). I agree that there’s a crappy trick that goes: Take a thing that you don’t want people to be allowed to talk about. For example, maybe Coca-Cola doesn’t want people to talk about how soda makes you fat.

i.e. affirmative action laid the groundwork for this, then people connected, coordinated, and used it much more aggressively. I feel like that's basically what you're saying, except that what I'm (ignorantly) ascribing to Hanania here and what you're saying disagree on the cause. I guess in Hanania's framing, wokeness was inevitable once affirmative action existed in the legal framework; whereas in Dee's faming, wokeness was not inevitable once affirmative action existed, but is a separate phenomenon that then seized upon the tool. I'm probably doing both of them an injustice with that, mind. (To be clear, I'm not in the US and avoid most social media, so I don't particularly have opinions on this either way, I just immediately thought 'the internet' when Scott referred to the cultural turn between 2010 and 2015 and asked "Why would 1964 and 1991 laws turn wokeness into a huge deal in 2015?".) Yeah, something like this also has to be part of the picture, although I still don’t feel like I understand the mechanism well enough that I could have predicted this ahead of time. More patient zero speculation, from MarsDragon: Historical nitpick: it's less that Tumblr infected LiveJournal so much as LJ users were forced to move to Tumblr as LJ got increasingly difficult to use starting around 2009-2010. The migration had more or less completed by 2012. Tumblr being so much more of a "modern" social media platform where it was easy to repost content and you got a random jumble of posts instead of a carefully-curated set of friends made it much easier for social justice thinking to spread. I think the whole shift to showing users a melange of content instead of a staid list of people the user chose to follow was a big driver of that sort of thinking. It allowed ideas to spread, upped controversy, and drives that sort of "we must purge this!" was of thinking. The LiveJournal experts here say the key event to look at was Racefail, when, according to Carateca: I had a front row seat and it was remarkable how the whole superstructure of a totalitarian state just congealed out of thin air in days and instantly took over a whole subculture. Sometimes I think that if Charlie Stross and the rest of them had just had some fucking balls and stood up to the bullies -- or, hell, just pushed the block button a few times -- none of this would ever have happened. I support any theory that lets us blame everything on Charlie Stross. naraburns writes: Anyway, I would argue that "woke" does not begin with civil rights law, but rather that both are the result of the same intellectual tradition. "Woke" attitudes are basically analogous to what was called "cultural Marxism" decades ago (see e.g. Weiner's (1981) "Cultural Marxism and Political Sociology"), but since "Cultural Marxism" has been retconned as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, people needed a different name for it. The linguistic treadmill is merciless, especially when dealing with political movements attempting to escape accountability for their past failures (or successes). I agree that there’s a crappy trick that goes: Take a thing that you don’t want people to be allowed to talk about. For example, maybe Coca-Cola doesn’t want people to talk about how soda makes you fat.

Inline links: MarsDragon, Racefail, Carateca, writes

Taliban5 mentions across 5 issues

Taliban is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between June 24, 2022 and February 11, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "overthrow of the Taliban government, and targeting of al-Qaeda"; "the political faction that ruled Afghanistan at the time"; "Marginal Revolution compares it to the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas". It most often appears alongside Afghanistan, China, France.

Article page: Taliban
Mention count: 5
Issue count: 5
First seen: June 24, 2022
Last seen: February 11, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy June 24, 2022
Links For July July 29, 2022
Against The Cultural Christianity Argument October 04, 2024
Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats January 09, 2025
Political Backflow From Europe February 11, 2026

Afghanistan 3 shared issues
China 3 shared issues
France 3 shared issues
Germany 3 shared issues
America 2 shared issues

Source context

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

June 24, 2022 · Original source

The War in Afghanistan (2001-2021): a series of UN Resolutions justified, out of self-defence, the US invasion of Afghanistan, overthrow of the Taliban government, and targeting of al-Qaeda, in spite of the failure of nation building when the Taliban returned to Kabul in the midst of the final American withdrawal

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)

Links For July

July 29, 2022 · Original source

18: The enigmatic Georgia Guidestones monument was destroyed by vandals/terrorists earlier this month. Marginal Revolution compares it to the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas. I did get a chance to hear from an anti-Guidestone acquaintance (they prefer not to be linked, sorry) who reminds people that the guidestones’ “commandments” urged readers to institute a one world language, do eugenics, and reduce the world population by >90% through unspecified means. Still, as Voltaire put it, I may disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to erect 19-foot tall 230,000 lb granite slabs in the middle of Georgia that say it.

Inline links: destroyed by vandals/terrorists earlier this month, compares it to

Against The Cultural Christianity Argument

October 04, 2024 · Original source

Even if one could turn back the clock until the West was once again as Christian as it was in 1700, we would expect its Christianity to go the same way as 1700s Christianity - that is, to decay and end in modernism. The few sects that escaped decay - ultra-Orthodox Jews, Amish, the Taliban - seem neither clearly scaleable nor entirely desirable. At the very least, they suggest one would need a very different kind of Christianity than the West had in 1700s - one as strict, isolationist, and inward-looking as the Amish - to have a fighting chance.

Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats

January 09, 2025 · Original source

That’s worse! A few years ago, I debated Kevin Drum about (what I considered) a particularly egregious case where the FDA dragged its feet approving a life-saving medication. Drum argued that the FDA had behaved well. In support, he found some quotes from the doctor working on the medication, who praised all the FDA bureaucrats she had interacted with, calling them extremely helpful. This bothered me for a while, until I realized that of course it was true. In the model above, each bureaucrat processes ten forms. If the bureaucrats are benevolent, this might look like talking to the doctors, walking them through the process of figuring out their ten forms, and doing the work to add their ten forms to the FDA’s growing pile of evidence supporting the application. All of this co-exists comfortably with the insight that making doctors fill out a thousand forms before they can use a medication is an impediment to medical progress. This really sunk in for me when I read an article about the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. Many Afghans had collaborated with the Americans, eg as translators, in exchange for a promise of US citizenship. As the Taliban advanced, they called in the promise, begging to be allowed to flee to America before they got punished as traitors. The article focused on a heroic effort by certain immigration bureaucrats, who worked around the clock with minimal sleep for the last few weeks before Kabul fell, trying to get the citizenship forms filled in and approved for as many translators as possible. It made an impression on me because nobody was opposed to the translators getting citizenship, and the bureaucrats were themselves the people in charge of approving citizenship applications, so what exactly was forcing them to go to such desperate lengths? If you ponder this question long enough, you become enlightened about the nature of the administrative state. If you don’t, you end up like Ramaswamy, who seems to think that halving the number of bureaucrats will halve the number of forms that need to be filled out. I think in his worldview, the FDA will think “Now that we have fewer bureaucrats, it would take forever to complete our current process, so let’s simplify the process.” Maybe he is working off a thesis where red tape expands to consume the resources available to it (as measured in bureaucrats). But my impression is that the amount of red tape is determined more by things like: — How likely is it that their decision will get challenged in court? And if it gets challenged in court, what amount of paperwork do they have to show the judge to prove that they made the decision on a “reasonable basis”? For example, when I type “FDA sued” into Google, the top result is a news story from a few days ago, saying that an environmental organization sued the FDA for not listening to their earlier request to ban phthalates from food. Six years ago, the environmental groups submitted a petition (the catchily-named “Food Additive Petition 6B4815”) demanding that the FDA ban 28 phthalates. Two years ago, after consulting with industry, the FDA finally banned 23 phthalates but said that the other five were okay, releasing a 58 page decision explaining its decision. Two days ago, the environmental groups sued, saying the remaining 5 phthalates are still bad. I assume the lawsuit will nitpick the details of the the 58 page decision, trying to prove that it it didn’t violate any of hundreds of federal laws saying that bureaucratic decisions must be reasonable, bureaucratic decisions must be based on science, bureaucratic decisions must respond to the petitioners’ complaints, bureaucratic decisions cannot have disparate impacts on different races, etc. I also assume that if the FDA had banned all the phthalates, they would have faced an equally serious lawsuit from Big Phthalate saying they were unfairly crippling business. Why does it take six years to respond to a petition? My guess is because they knew they would get sued and so they have some sort of million-step process that addresses every single thing you can sue over, so that they can prove to the court that their process addresses all possible complaints and they followed it to the letter. If you cut their bureaucrats in half, that doesn’t mean there will be fewer steps in the process. It means they’ll keep wanting not to get sued, the process will stay the same, and everything will take twice as long. — What has Congress mandated that they do? For example, when I Google “Congressional FDA mandate”, I get a page on HR 7248, a bill currently making its way through Congress, which says: This bill requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to establish a process that supports nonclinical testing methods for drug development that do not involve the use of animals. Specifically, the FDA must establish a pathway by which entities may apply to have nonclinical testing methods approved for use in a particular context. Qualifying methods must be intended to replace or reduce animal testing and to either improve the safety and efficacy of nonclinical testing or reduce the time to develop a drug. The FDA must issue its decision within 180 days of receiving an application. The FDA must also prioritize the review of applications for drugs that are developed using an approved nonclinical testing method. The FDA must annually post a report on its website that summarizes the results of the bill's implementation, including the number of applications received, types of methods that were approved, and the estimated number of animals saved as result of these methods. So the FDA has to establish this process and post an annual report on its website. How many bureaucrats per year does this take? Maybe five? If you halve the number of people at the FDA, you still need a constant five bureaucrats to comply with this particular law. If the bill passes, the FDA comes up with a nonclinical testing process, and someone (eg the nonclinical testing industry) doesn’t think it’s good enough, they can sue the FDA for not following the law. How good a nonclinical testing process will the FDA need in order to avoid lawsuits under this bill? I assume there is a large body of administrative law answering that question, and that it will take many bureaucrats to figure this out. Finally, I admit I’m a bit confused by this. IIRC “nonclinical testing” refers to things like testing drugs on stem cells or artificial organs instead of humans. You can obviously do this for some parts of the drug testing process, but not others; the FDA has already adjusted for this and integrated it into their guidelines to some extent. I can’t tell whether this law is a righteous attempt to correct bureaucratic foot-dragging, or a powergrab by Big Nonclinical Testing demanding that the FDA privilege their products over other forms of experiment. If the latter, the FDA may try to come up with some fake pathway that satisfies the letter of the law without really giving Big Nonclinical Testing any unfair privileges, and Big Nonclinical Testing will probably sue and say it violates this bill. How many bureaucrats do you think it will take to manage that? — How much will they get yelled at if they take too long to approve drugs, vs. if they mistakenly approve a bad drug? This is the basic determinant of all FDA drug approvals. Halving the number of FDA bureaucrats wouldn’t have literally zero effect on this balance. It would mean that approving new drugs would be delayed twice as long. This would be a little more outrageous than the current delay, and might shift an outrage-minimizing FDA director slightly in the direction of cutting rules. But solve for the equilibrium: there would still be more delay than there is now. Also, I don’t think public outrage about long drug delays is linear with regard to delay, and public outrage at bad drugs is constant and large. So I think at best, firing bureaucrats would shift this balance a small amount, and only by making everything overall worse. II. One possible objection: this assumes that the average bureaucracy is like the FDA drug approval process. But the FDA drug approval process’ job is to approve things. Maybe the average bureaucracy’s job is to ban things. Then decreasing their capacity would be good. (Vivek gets to be main example here because he tweeted, but the same considerations apply to Elon: even though the government as a whole is delaying SpaceX rocket launches, individual bureaucrats might be speeding them up through the same 1000-forms logic as in the FDA case) There’s certainly a spectrum from the most approval-focused bureaucracies to the most ban-focused bureaucracies. Thinking hard about this spectrum would be a step up from “instantly” firing 50% of all bureaucrats based on social security number. So maybe a steelman of Vivek’s point would be to fire 50% of people in the ban-focused bureaucracies (and maybe double the number of people in the approval-focused ones?) I’m still skeptical that this is how it works. The past few years have seen the cryptocurrency industry demand regulation, and the government mostly fail to step up (though crypto businesses hope the Trump administration will do better). Why do crypto businesses want to be regulated more? Because the alternative is something where it’s not clear what’s legal and anyone could be sued or shut down at any time. The chief legal officer of Coinbase, from the second link: All of us are begging for sensible standards that would allow us to get back to building great products and services and spend less time and frankly, less money, arguing over legal definitions and statutes. This isn’t because anyone specifically banned crypto. It’s because there are bans on other things (like unlicensed securities, money laundering, etc) that crypto is vaguely related to, sometimes an agency regulating these things will tell a crypto company “sorry, we think you’re illegal”, and crypto wants some specific list of things it can follow that explicitly establish it as on the right side of money-laundering and security-licensing laws. Obviously industries would prefer that these be simple and easy standards (“oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to worry about money laundering if you’re a crypto company”), but they would settle for strict regulations as long as the regulations carve out some ability for them exist at all. I’ve seen the same thing play out in another area I follow, cultured meat. There are many laws about what meat you can and cannot sell, how the animals have to be treated, what the sanitation standards are, et cetera. Some of these standards make no sense when applied to cultured meat; others, cultured meat naturally fails by default (you can’t prove you’re treating the animals in a certain way because there are no animals). Others are novel philosophical questions (can you sell cultured meat without saying it’s cultured? How big does the print need to be before it counts as saying that it’s cultured? What about on restaurant menus?) Situations like these mean that there’s no clear distinction between default-yes and default-no bureaucracies. There’s no explicit ban on crypto or cultured meat. But if you cripple bureaucracies’ ability to interact with these fields, it doesn’t mean they’re fully legal, free, and happy forever. It means they’re stuck in regulatory limbo. III. So it seems like you don’t want to fire bureaucrats, you want to cut red tape. In our toy model, you want to reduce the number of forms from 1,000 to (let’s say) 100. Then the same number of bureaucrats can get drugs approved ten times faster. In our non-toy actual model of what’s going on, this would require changing incentives. Maybe you could change judicial procedures so that fewer people sue, or the FDA needs less evidence to win any given lawsuit. This sounds hard (Vivek and Elon seem more qualified to wield chainsaws than to understand legal minutiae), possibly illegal (does the administrative branch even control how judicial procedure works?), and politically unpopular (this basically looks like telling people “f@#k you, companies can put as many phthalates as they want in food, we don’t have to prove that this decision is evidence based, and you’re not allowed to challenge us.”) Or it would require Congress to repeal legislation mandating things. These Congressional mandates are probably things that Congressmen and their constituents (either real constituents or special interests) care a lot about, so good luck getting them repealed. Also, doesn’t Congress pass like one bill per year now? This would normally make me pessimistic, but Vivek and other anti-bureaucracy activists have pointed to a recent success story: Idaho. Idaho cut their regulatory code by 38% in 2019, and since then it’s only gone down. How did they decrease red tape so fast? They did it through the power of nominative determinism. In that year, they elected a governor named Brad Little. His administration is called the Little Administration. Obviously government had to get smaller. But on a purely exoteric level, what methods did they use to pull this off? This CPAC article gives the basic story: The Little administration instituted sunset provisions that review each regulation every five years and make sure it’s justifiable.

Political Backflow From Europe

February 11, 2026 · Original source

There are no good statistics on asylum-seeker crime per se in America, but we know that the most common countries of origin for seekers are Afghanistan, China, and Venezuela. Afghans are incarcerated at 1/10th the US average rate1, Chinese at 1/20th, and Venezuelans at 1/4th. These statistics may be biased downward by some immigrants being too new to have gotten incarcerated, but this probably can’t explain the whole effect2. More likely it’s selection. The Afghans are mostly translators and local guides getting persecuted by the Taliban for helping American occupation forces; the Chinese and Venezuelans are mostly well-off people fleeing communism.

Inline links: we know, 1/10th, 1, 1/20th, 1/4th, 2

Tesla5 mentions across 5 issues

Tesla is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between September 13, 2023 and July 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "A Tesla employee described his style"; "Inside of Tesla, attempts were repeatedly made to talk Musk out of the aluminum body"; "Musk didn’t found Tesla, and he didn’t invent their revolutionary battery technology". It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, Twitter, Elon.

Article page: Tesla
Mention count: 5
Issue count: 5
First seen: September 13, 2023
Last seen: July 21, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: Elon Musk September 13, 2023
Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk September 18, 2023
Book Review: The Origins Of Woke May 01, 2024
Links For February 2025 February 27, 2025
Press Any Key For Bay Area House Party July 21, 2025

Elon Musk 4 shared issues
Twitter 4 shared issues
Elon 3 shared issues
Musk 3 shared issues
Tesla 3 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Elon Musk

September 13, 2023 · Original source

Musk creates cognitive dissonance: how can someone be so smart and so dumb at the same time? To reduce the dissonance, people have spawned a whole industry of Musk-bashing, trying to explain away each of his accomplishments: Peter Thiel gets all the credit for PayPal, Martin Eberhard gets all the credit for Tesla, NASA cash keeps SpaceX afloat, something something blood emeralds. Others try to come up with reasons he’s wholly smart - a 4D chessmaster whose apparent drunken stumbles lead inexorably to victory.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, And The Quest For A Fantastic Future delights in its refusal to resolve the dissonance. Musk has always been exactly the same person he is now, and exactly what he looks like. He is without deception, without subtlety, without unexpected depths.

Inline links: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, And The Quest For A Fantastic Future

The main answer to the paradox of “how does he succeed while making so many bad decisions?” is that he’s the most focused person in the world. When he decides to do something, he comes up with an absurdly optimistic timeline for how quickly it can happen if everything goes as well as the laws of physics allow. He - I think the book provides ample evidence for this - genuinely believes this timeline2, or at least half-believingly wills for it to be true. Then, when things go less quickly than that, it’s like red-hot knives stabbing his brain. He gets obsessed, screams at everyone involved, puts in twenty hour days for months on end trying to try to get the project “back on track”. He comes up with absurd shortcuts nobody else would ever consider, trying to win back a few days or weeks. If a specific person stands in his way, he fires that person (if they are an employee), unleashes nonstop verbal abuse on them3 (if they will listen) or sues them (if they’re anyone else). The end result never quite reaches the original goal, but still happens faster than anyone except Elon thought possible. A Tesla employee described his style as demanding a car go from LA to NYC on a single charge, which is impossible, but he puts in such a strong effort that the car makes it to New Mexico.

Inline links: 2, 3

Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk

September 18, 2023 · Original source

1: Comments From People With Personal Experience 2: ...Debating Musk's Intelligence 3: ...Debating Musk's Mental Health 4: ...About Tesla 5: ...About The Boring Company 6: ...About X/Twitter 7: ...About Musk's Mars Plan 8: ...Comparing Musk To Other Famous Figures 9: Other Comments 10: Updates

Some more thoughts after sleeping on this review. It's very strange... so being an automotive engineer for several of those "staid, evil" Big3 companies, one gets a very direct view of Tesla and how they have been over the years.

Something that probably ought to get talked about more: for large companies, we are among the first few hundred to buy the newest hotness from our competitors. I saw a Model X Founders' Edition fully disassembled on tables, with the welds drilled out and sectioned so we could see every single part. I've done side-by-sides with Teslas and various other vehicles, where we literally will put our part and the competitor part next to each other in a giant warehouse (all of them for a series of vehicles) and do side-by-sides. When you do that, abstract questions of genius kind of fade to the background, and you get to actual real world questions like "is this part good? Is it better than mine? What is it trying to do? How does it try to do them? What does this say about the engineer's constraints? What does this say about the company organization behind it? Where are the organizational seams? Where are the hard points that could not be changed? How do those reflect on my company, my program, what we're trying to do and the things we have to work around?"

Book Review: The Origins Of Woke

May 01, 2024 · Original source

Therefore, every business owner needs to monitor their employees for jokes, political comments, flirtatiousness, and take action against any offenses. Hanania has several complaints here. First and most legibly, it (say it with me) gets taken too far. Volokh lists a large number of [examples of things that have been found to be] evidence of a hostile work environment: signs with the phrase “men working”; “draftsman” and “foreman” as job titles, pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini and a burning American flag in a cubicle; an ad campaign using samurai, kabuki, and sumo wrestling to refer to Japanese competition; jokes of a sexual nature not targeted at any particular person; misogynistic rap music […] even terms like “great view” and “walk-up” have been cited as potentially trying to exclude blind people and those in wheelchairs. And In a 2015 and 2016, a black father and son named Owen Diaz and Demetric Di-az2 [sic] worked at a Tesla plant. They sued the company for racial discrimination, with the father’s claims alone making it to trial….racial slurs were used in the presence of Diaz, and he saw racist graffiti on a bathroom wall. It appears that the workers allegedly responsible were mostly or all minorities themselves, and each time an allegation could be verified, the employee was punished. Tesla claimed that they had taken enough steps to address the concerns of Diaz […] a jury disagreed, and awarded the plaintiff $137 million, an amount that the judge reduced to $15 million. In response to the verdict, Tesla released a statement pointing out that witnesses confirmed that the slurs were used in a friendly manner, usually by African-American employees, and without hostile intent. (fact check: this article says the racism also included demands to “go back to Africa” people leaving drawings of caricatured black cavemen at the employee’s desk, threats, and claims that black employees were "given the most menial and physically demanding work" - and that these claims were backed up by testimony from two dozen former workers and a cellphone video showing people telling a black employee that they are going to “cut you up, n—-r”. This seems like a sufficiently different story that I’d like to know whether Hanania still stands by his version) Other parts of harassment law lead to more unfair double-binds. For example, you can’t be seen to “retaliate” against someone who accuses another worker of harassment. So suppose that a minority employee is bullying a white employee, the white employee resists, and the minority accuses them as “harassment”. Maybe there’s even a full trial, everyone agrees this is what happened, and the white employee is found totally innocent. Still, you can’t fire the bully, because that would be retaliation for a harassment complaint. And since you probably don’t want the bully and their victim in the same department, you need to move one of them. And you can’t move the bully, because that would be viewed as “retaliation” for the harassment complaint and they could sue you for millions of dollars. So you have to punish the victim. But Hanania doesn’t just say this kind of thing goes too far. He has some broader point that I have trouble interpreting - basically that corporations used to be cozy, chummy places full of banter and flirtation that everyone enjoyed, and now this has been universally replaced with the bland soul-draining bureaucratic corporate aesthetic satirized in works like Office Space. Is this true? People talk about Mad Men (I’ve never seen it) as reflecting some kind of corporate golden age where at least high-ranking men enjoyed their jobs. If so, did it change because of harassment law? Or because neoliberalism replaced the work-for-thirty-years-and-get-a-golden-watch corporation with the work-for-three-years-and-then-seek-a-better-job-elsewhere corporation? Still, Hanania really hammers in this point that we should apparently all be angry about the loss of corporate flirtation - he calls the current regime, “a sexless, androgynous, and sanitized workplace” which is “contrary to human nature [and] miserable”. Without civil rights law, we could have “organizations that combined the aspects of a church, a social club, a matchmaking service, and a traditional business.” In such a world: Some corporations start encouraging dating and forming close personal bonds among their employees. This can take many forms, from Christian matchmaking to promoting a party-like atmosphere. These pro-relationship corporations will come in conservative or liberal forms. Other firms explicitly market themselves as providing a more “professional” or “classic” work experience . . . we will see a period of wild experimentation, with some forms of corporate organization drawing a great deal of media coverage. People will criticize many of these experiments, and they will become the subject of public outrage. After civil rights law has been defanged, however, government no longer has the ability to easily shut such efforts down. Eventually, public anger subsides, and the idea of the media attacking a firm because it dislikes its internal culture will seem as intolerant as attacking a religious community for its doctrines, or homosexuals for what they do together as consenting adults. I appreciate my anti-civil-rights books doubling as interesting settings for pornographic stories, but I’m otherwise unable to fathom the level of Hanania’s enthusiasm here. …And More Richard Hanania hates all this stuff. Partly he hates it because he thinks it’s unfair and anti-business and anti-merit. But also, Vaclav Havel talks about the indignity of life under communism. You weren’t allowed to just do your job and pay your taxes and follow the laws of the communist state. You had to be actively complicit. You had to act enthusiastic about the communism, force it upon others, inform on your colleagues and punish deviation - at least if anybody was going to check later. This kind of communism didn’t just hurt your pocketbook. It damaged your soul. It molded you into a worse and uglier type of person who would eventually abandon their better impulses in order to justify their actions to themselves. This is how Hanania thinks of civil rights law. Business owners can’t just give blacks ten extra points on the screening test and call it a day. They have to favor blacks while insisting to everyone that they don’t do this and it’s perfectly fair and they love civil rights law. They have to twist their employment criteria into some kind of illegible monstrosity so nobody can notice all the favoritism they’re doing, then tell everybody that they believe the monstrosity is “fairer”. They have to hire a bunch of diversity coordinators - not because they’re required to hire diversity coordinators, it’s not a requirement - but because they love equality so so much (and if they don’t do this, they’ll get sued for seemingly unrelated reasons). Everyone faces a constant threat of lawsuits which can only be warded against by seeming maximally woke and maximally enthusiastic and maximally happy about all the idiotic fake laws you are being forced to comply with. Like in communism, you have to become your own mini-police state. You have to make employees snitch on each other if they tell the wrong joke. You have to turn your company into a tyranny of HR ladies. If you do any of this even a little less than other companies, you’ll get sued for seemingly unrelated reasons, with penalties running potentially into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Because there’s no legible law except “be the same as everyone else so you don’t stand out as sue-able”, every corporation homogenizes into the same bland HR-ocracy. Everyone agrees on the same hiring process, which is to prioritize college degree, resume, and interview, and definitely not any test or measure of ability. This leads inevitably to our current society, where everyone has to waste their childhood doing meaningless extracurriculars so they can get into the best college so they can take the best internships so they get the best jobs. (unless they do something stupid like let themselves get the dreaded “resume gap”). But also: During the early 1800s, government positions were given out by the “spoils system”, basically “does the party in power like you personally?” In the 1880s, after President Garfield was assassinated by a guy who didn’t get a good enough position, they switched to a formal civil service, based on test performance and merit. The US civil service became the envy of the world, attracted some of the smartest people in the country, and obviously worked better than the old system wherever it was possible to compare. Still, this gradually (and somewhat deniably) ended in the 1970s, because the merit-based hiring system seemed like disparate impact. Hanania calls the current era “the racial spoils system”, where positions in the bureaucracy are based on the same kind of illegible morass as everything else (eg the FAA’s “biographical questionnaire”). He says every branch of government has become less effective as a result. Hanania doesn’t mention this, but I’ve heard an additional argument elsewhere. It’s legally dangerous for companies to hire based on anything like merit. Still, if you have great lawyers and are willing to pay a lot to settle lawsuits, you can get away with legally dangerous things. This is only worth it if you really really want high-merit employees, ie if the best employee is much more financially valuable to you than the second-best. This is mostly true in Wall Street (where you want your trader to outsmart the other guy’s trader by half a millisecond or whatever) and Silicon Valley (where ten employees can write a program used by millions of people). So the government, the civil service, the schools, etc, all abandoned merit-based hiring, while Wall Street and Silicon Valley lawyered up. But that means that if you’re a smart non-minority college graduate, you know that joining the civil service will be a mess - you’ll have a tough time even getting in, and you’ll always be passed over for promotions for less-qualified minorities. Meantime, Wall Street and Silicon Valley would love to have you. So all the smart people got concentrated in a few industries that might not have been their most economically productive use, and the old American tradition where elite families would send some of their kids into public service died out. What To Do? Hanania stresses that most Americans hate affirmative action (and probably by extension most other civil rights law, though they’ve probably never heard of disparate impact). Affirmative action has been on the ballot nine times, and failed eight of those. Most recently, it failed in California, a deep-blue, 66% minority state where the pro-AA side outspent opponents 17-to-1. Also, Republicans have controlled all the branches of government many times in the past fifty years, and now they control the Supreme Court. Most civil rights law is based on executive orders and judicial decisions, so you wouldn’t even need a Congressional vote to overturn it. Just an executive order, from any president who felt like it. Reagan could have overturned half of this with the stroke of a pen, if he’d wanted. So how has it survived this long? His answer: because until about 2010, Republicans were too scared of getting called racist. Reagan wanted to overturn affirmative action, but other Republicans (like Bob Dole) begged him not to, because racism, and eventually he caved. But since 2010, everyone has already been calling Republicans racist all the time, to the point where probably this threat has lost its power. And the sort of moderate Republicans who reined in Reagan are gone. So why haven’t Republicans (eg Trump) acted? Hanania thinks everyone is so obsessed with “woke” culture war stuff that the low-hanging fruit of actual woke laws that presidents can change has slipped under the radar. And so, this book. I would have summarized the case as “Hey, Republicans! Do you hate wokeness? Well, too bad, it’s a vast cultural movement with bastions in a bunch of places where we have no power. But some of this civil rights law stuff seems pretty related to wokeness, and we do potentially have power there. So instead of fighting the unwinnable cultural battle, how about we fight the very winnable policy one?” But maybe this didn’t seem optimistic enough for Hanania, so he framed it as “the legal wokeness is the source of the cultural wokeness” instead. More on this later. The Origins Of . . . Inequality A progressive, reading this book, might counter: “Sure, civil rights law - like all law - is poorly written and kludgy in parts. Like all law, it sometimes gets abused or taken too far. Those are the costs. But the benefits are that it fights discrimination and inequality. That’s very important! Don’t you think those benefits are worth the cost?” Unless I missed it, Hanania doesn’t touch this obvious counterargument. He briefly says that in a free market, companies couldn’t consistently maintain discrimination, because that would be leaving money on the ground. “Cool theoretical result,” objects the hypothetical opponent. “But white households earn an average of $80K and black households an average of $50K, and so on with other minority groups. So it sure seems like something inequality-related is going on.” My tongue-in-cheek reframing of Hanania’s summary of civil rights law went: We notice your workforce is less black than the applicant pool.

Inline links: 2, this article

(although I’m suspending final judgment here based on my spot-check of the Tesla story turning up a different enough sequence of events that I’m not sure how much else was presented in a one-sided way - let me know if you find other parts that seem wrong.)

Links For February 2025

February 27, 2025 · Original source

You can see more examples and comparisons of different models here (X). 9: Related: is AI a better poet than famous bad poet William McGonagall? 10: Last month I linked Sam Harris’ claim that Elon Musk seemed to change into a different person around the start of the pandemic. I recently saw a Reddit thread asking Tesla employees for their opinion. Unfortunately, the best answer by an actual employee got deleted; the site says it was by a mod and not the original author, but I don’t know whether to trust it, and don’t want to repost something in its entirety if the author might have wanted it hidden. But I hope it won’t cause too much trouble to quote a few key sentences: I've personally had conversations with Elon back in 2018. He was polite, listened, and genuinely cared about both the employees and Tesla's mission. But something changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now he's no longer the role model he once was. And Desmolysium on Why Is Elon Musk So Impulsive? I think the article gets some of its psychiatry wrong (it would be bizarre and basically unprecedented for bupropion to radically change someone’s personality) but I appreciate the thoughtful analysis. And re sleep deprivation: 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.

Inline links: here (X), is AI a better poet than famous bad poet William McGonagall, Sam Harris’ claim, Why Is Elon Musk So Impulsive?, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1zjD!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fef2308ba-2204-4232-ba14-eeef99c637a9_670x752.png, wants a law saying AI-generated text must be watermarked, skimmed the paper explaining this, How OnlyFans Took Over The World, 113 predictions for Trump’s second term, What’s Behind The SynBio Bust?, this doesn’t replicate, actually it does replicate, says, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$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

Press Any Key For Bay Area House Party

July 21, 2025 · Original source

“I just got hired by Tesla for their Optimus project. We’re finally going to achieve the dream of generations of Hollywood scriptwriters: a robot whose eyes turn red when it goes evil!”

Trump campaign4 mentions across 4 issues

Trump campaign is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between February 09, 2021 and November 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "looking at the Trump campaign vs. the Clinton campaign"; "and the Trump campaign ad almost writes itself"; "the Trump campaign’s dossier on JD Vance". It most often appears alongside Biden, California, Joe Biden.

Article page: Trump campaign
Mention count: 4
Issue count: 4
First seen: February 09, 2021
Last seen: November 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: Why We're Polarized February 09, 2021
Book Review: The Cult Of Smart February 18, 2021
Links For November 2024 November 01, 2024
Congrats To Polymarket, But I Still Think They Were Mispriced November 07, 2024

Biden 2 shared issues
California 2 shared issues
Joe Biden 2 shared issues
Trump 2 shared issues
Twitter 2 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Why We're Polarized

February 09, 2021 · Original source

That having been said, I don't think he acquits himself well here. Some of his arguments aren’t great (the Republicans "launched a bizarre and unpopular campaign to impeach Clinton", but Clinton was obviously okay and didn't deserve impeachment, so the GOP has gone crazy and is a threat to democracy). He refers to data "showing Congressional Republicans have moved further left than Democrats have moved right", which I think is a typo (isn't the usual argument that Republicans have moved further right than Democrats have moved left?) but he never gets around to presenting it, instead gesturing at how it's obvious by looking at the Trump campaign vs. the Clinton campaign. This does not seem obvious to me. Trump holds basically the same positions that Americans in the mainstream of either party would have held in a less polarized time (eg 1995); Clinton holds positions that everyone in 1995 (including her husband) would have thought insane, radical, and ultra-far-left.

Book Review: The Cult Of Smart

February 18, 2021 · Original source

DeBoer isn't convinced this is an honest mistake. He draws attention to a sort of meta-class-war - a war among class warriors over whether the true enemy is the top 1% (this is the majority position) or the top 20% (this is DeBoer's position; if you've read Staying Classy, you'll immediately recognize this disagreement as the same one that divided the Church and UR models of class). The 1% are the Buffetts and Bezoses of the world; the 20% are the "managerial" class of well-off urban professionals, bureaucrats, creative types, and other mandarins. Opposition to the 20% is usually right-coded; describe them as "woke coastal elites who dominate academia and the media", and the Trump campaign ad almost writes itself. But some Marxists flirt with it too; the book references Elizabeth Currid-Halkett's Theory Of The Aspirational Class, and you can hear echoes of this every time Twitter socialists criticize "Vox liberals" or something. Access to the 20% is gated by college degree, and their legitimizing myth is that their education makes them more qualified and humane than the rest of us. DeBoer thinks the deification of school-achievement-compatible intelligence as highest good serves their class interest; "equality of opportunity" means we should ignore all other human distinctions in favor of the one that our ruling class happens to excel at.

Inline links: Staying Classy, Theory Of The Aspirational Class

Congrats To Polymarket, But I Still Think They Were Mispriced

November 01, 2024 · Original source

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: banned journalist Ken Klippenstein, you can read Klippenstein’s side here., appears to be unbanned now

November 07, 2024 · Original source

Polymarket (and prediction markets in general) had an amazing Election Night. They called states impressively early and accurately, kept the site stable through what must have been incredible strain, and have successfully gotten prediction markets in front of the world (including the Trump campaign). From here it’s a flywheel; victory building on victory. Enough people heard of them this election that they’ll never lack for customers. And maybe Trump’s CFTC will be kinder than Biden’s and relax some of the constraints they’re operating under. They’ve realized the long-time rationalist dream of a widely-used prediction market with high volume, deserve more praise than I can give them here, and I couldn’t be happier with their progress.

Inline links: Polymarket, called states impressively early and accurately, including the Trump campaign

TED3 mentions across 3 issues

TED is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 04, 2021 and August 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as ""He is famous for his TED talks""; "He is famous for his TED talks"; "smiling TED-talk-circuit celebrity wants to help you improve your thinking!". It most often appears alongside America, Elon Musk, 80,000 Hours.

Article page: TED
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: June 04, 2021
Last seen: August 23, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car? June 04, 2021
Book Review: The Scout Mindset September 29, 2021
Book Review: What We Owe The Future August 23, 2022

America 2 shared issues
Elon Musk 2 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
A.I.M. 1 shared issues
abolitionist literature 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Where's My Flying Car?

June 04, 2021 · Original source

"Hans Rosling was a world health economist and an indefatigable campaigner for a deeper understanding of the world’s state of development. He is famous for his TED talks and the Gapminder web site. He classifies the wealthiness of the world’s population into four levels:

Book Review: The Scout Mindset

September 29, 2021 · Original source

Galef admits she’s a little behind the curve on this one. Books on rationality and overcoming cognitive biases were big ten years ago (Thinking Fast And Slow, Predictably Irrational, The Black Swan, etc). Nowadays “smiling TED-talk-circuit celebrity wants to help you improve your thinking!” is more likely to elicit groans than breathless anticipation. And that isn’t the least accurate description of Julia (you can watch her TED talk here).

Inline links: here

Book Review: What We Owe The Future

August 23, 2022 · Original source

No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.

The Boring Company3 mentions across 3 issues

The Boring Company is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between September 18, 2023 and October 28, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Boring Company got brought up as an example that Musk doesn’t bat 1000"; "the Boring Company has made tunnels cheaper"; "The Boring Company Las Vegas system is tunnelling a ~14 ft diameter tunnel". It most often appears alongside California, China, Elon.

Article page: The Boring Company
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: September 18, 2023
Last seen: October 28, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk September 18, 2023
Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party December 12, 2023
25 October 28, 2025

California 2 shared issues
China 2 shared issues
Elon 2 shared issues
Elon Musk 2 shared issues
OpenAI 2 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Elon Musk

September 18, 2023 · Original source

1: Comments From People With Personal Experience 2: ...Debating Musk's Intelligence 3: ...Debating Musk's Mental Health 4: ...About Tesla 5: ...About The Boring Company 6: ...About X/Twitter 7: ...About Musk's Mars Plan 8: ...Comparing Musk To Other Famous Figures 9: Other Comments 10: Updates

5: Comments About The Boring Company The Boring Company got brought up as an example that Musk doesn’t bat 1000. But is it a real failure? It’s valued at $6 billion and working on digging a tunnel underneath Las Vegas. Commenters weigh in:

The Boring Company got brought up as an example that Musk doesn’t bat 1000. But is it a real failure? It’s valued at $6 billion and working on digging a tunnel underneath Las Vegas. Commenters weigh in:

Son Of Bride Of Bay Area House Party

December 12, 2023 · Original source

His eyes light up. “So. The Boring Company. Exciting idea! Dig tunnels, end traffic. But Elon’s grown old. Gotten distracted. It’s been five years and he’s dug a grand total of two miles. The machines just don’t drill fast enough. It’s sad to see a great founder lose his touch like that. Not that I had a better idea. Until last month! That was when I read about paleoburrows. These are long tunnels they find in Brazil. Farmers would be plowing their field and fall into one. Nobody knew where they came from. Until they brought in a paleontologist. He figured it out right away. They’re the burrows of giant ground sloths. People describe them as ‘a hamster the size of an elephant’. Some of the tunnels go half a mile. Let’s say it took a year for the sloth to dig that. So give three sloths two years, and you’ve beaten Musk!

Inline links: paleoburrows

October 28, 2025 · Original source

And the Solano Foundry would be the “the largest [advanced manufacturing] park in the US”. Many of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs’ manufacturing startups set up shop in Southern California - for example, Elon Musk’s original base for SpaceX and the Boring Company was in Hawthorne, near LA - just because the Bay has so few good industrial locations. The Foundry aims to change that, and aims for 40,000 new manufacturing jobs. Finally, something nobody else will care about but which is close to my heart - Jan is pursuing a partnership with Monumental Labs, a group working on “AI-enabled robotic stone carving factories”. The question of why modern architecture is so dull and unornamented compared to its classical counterpart is complicated, but three commonly-proposed reasons are: Ornament costs too much

Inline links: Solano Foundry, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!APFe!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2086d0cc-0654-4c0a-80c3-3aaacbe5744e_1199x675.jpeg, Monumental Labs, is complicated

TikTok3 mentions across 3 issues

TikTok is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 14, 2021 and May 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "It could be Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, or YouTube"; "TikTok creates videos that periodically encourage users to stop scrolling"; "a popular British TikToker with over 15 million followers". It most often appears alongside 1984, 1984 Calendar Meme, ACX.

Article page: TikTok
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: May 14, 2021
Last seen: May 23, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Addiction By Design May 14, 2021
Contra Resident Contrarian On Unfalsifiable Internal States November 11, 2022
A Theoretical "Case Against Education" May 23, 2024

1984 1 shared issues
1984 Calendar Meme 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Addiction By Design

May 14, 2021 · Original source

I was scrolling through TikTok videos a few weeks ago when I came across a TikTok-sponsored video telling me to stop scrolling and go outside. I was confused. Here I was, perfectly willing (nay, wanting) to spend hours watching dance routines and drawing tutorials I had no intention of copying, but TikTok wanted me to stop? Why? Shouldn’t they have been taking advantage of me to maximize “eyeballs,” “time per session,” and “user engagement”?

Inline links: a TikTok-sponsored video

One explanation is that TikTok is a good corporate citizen that helps its users maintain responsible screen time habits. Another explanation comes from Natasha Dow Schüll’s excellent book Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas (2012). Schüll talks about gambling machines, people who use them, and the addictions that develop between the two. I think the conclusions she draws are applicable not only to the gambling industry, but also to other peddlers of vice like TikTok.

Inline links: Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas

I’ve felt the attraction of this dark flow when I’m searching for something to escape from real life for just an hour or two. For me, it takes the form of scrolling through a social media feed. It could be Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, TikTok, or YouTube. I don’t look for anything in particular. I just want the comfort of scrolling through endless meaningless content. Sometimes, I don’t even fully absorb the content. If you took my phone away from me and asked me to name five things I saw, I doubt I’d be able to answer. The content just flows through me while I escape into a zone where real life doesn’t matter.

Contra Resident Contrarian On Unfalsifiable Internal States

November 11, 2022 · Original source

There is a thriving community of people pretending to have a bunch of multiple personalities on TikTok. They are (they say) composed of many quirky little somebodies, complete with different fun backstories. They get millions of views talking about how great life is when lived as multiples, and yet almost everyone who encounters these videos in the wild goes “What the hell is this? Who pretends about this kind of stuff?”

Inline links: There is a thriving community of people pretending to have a bunch of multiple personalities on TikTok.

> In a TikTok video, a woman with over 30,000 followers offers advice on how to lie to your doctor. “If you have learned to eat salt and follow internet instructions and buy compression socks and squeeze your thighs before you stand up to not faint…and you would faint without those things, go into that appointment and tell them you faint.” Translation: You know your body best. And if twisting the facts (like saying you faint when you don’t) will get you what you want (a diagnosis, meds), then go for it. One commenter added, “I tell docs I'm adopted. They'll order every test under the sun”—because adoption means there may be no family history to help with diagnoses.

Inline links: TikTok video

> Over the pandemic, neurologists across the globe noticed a sharp uptick in teen girls with tics, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Many at one clinic in Chicago were exhibiting the same tic: uncontrollably blurting out the word “beans.” It turned out the teens were taking after a popular British TikToker with over 15 million followers. The neurologist who discovered the “beans” thread, Dr. Caroline Olvera at Rush University Medical Center, declined to speak with me—because of “the negativity that can come from the TikTok community,” according to a university spokesperson.

Inline links: Wall Street Journal, British TikToker

A Theoretical "Case Against Education"

May 23, 2024 · Original source

In this model, the reason smarter people remember more stuff than duller people is partly a differently-shaped forgetting curve. But mostly it’s that intellectuals put themselves in situations where they hear about things more often. If you remember that George Orwell wrote 1984, it’s probably because you read the newspaper or blogs or whatever and hear some government program described as “Orwellian”. But if you’re watching TikToks on your cell phone all day, maybe you don’t hear that, and then you join the 81% of college students who have forgotten that name.

Truth Social3 mentions across 3 issues

Truth Social is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between November 21, 2022 and January 13, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "his own Truth Social network"; "personally and through your website Truth Social"; "Donald Trump’s company Truth Social said in October that it’s becoming the world’s first social media platform offering prediction markets". It most often appears alongside Trump, America, California.

Article page: Truth Social
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: November 21, 2022
Last seen: January 13, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Twitter Chaos Edition November 21, 2022
My 2024 Presidential Debate June 27, 2024
Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls January 13, 2026

Trump 3 shared issues
America 2 shared issues
California 2 shared issues
Democrats 2 shared issues
Donald Trump 2 shared issues

Source context

Mantic Monday: Twitter Chaos Edition

November 21, 2022 · Original source

Polymarket is within 2% of Manifold. Metaculus here has slightly stricter criteria but broadly agrees. 71 traders, still pretty good, but I find it meaningless without a way to distinguish between “everything collapses, Elon sells it for peanuts to scavengers” vs. “Elon saves Twitter, then hands it over to a minion while he moves on to a company building giant death zeppelins”. Oh, here we go. 20 traders, they think Musk will stay in charge. 23 traders. Twitter was profitable in 2018 and 2019, then went back to being net negative in 2020 and 2021 (I don’t know why) . I don’t think it’s been very profitable lately, so it would be a feather in Musk’s cap if he accomplished this. 24 traders. Twitter’s mDAU have consistently gone up in the past. DAU is slightly different and I think more likely to include bots. 26 traders. One thing I like about Manifold is that it lets you choose any point along the gradient from “completely objective” (eg Twitter’s reported DAU count) to “completely subjective” (eg whether the person who made the market thinks something is better or worse). This at least uses a poll as its resolution method. But the poll will be in the comments of this market, which means it will mostly be by people who invested in this market, who’ll have strong incentives to manipulate it. Maybe Manifold should add a polling platform to their service? 815 traders, one of the biggest markets of all time. It’s easy to see the jump where Musk unbanned Trump the other day. Trump has said that he doesn’t need to tweet because he prefers his own Truth Social network. This is a good business decision on his part, but hinges on him having enough impulse control to stick to his plan and avoid tweeting. The market thinks there’s a 25% chance he can do it! Polymarket again within 2% of Manifold. Only 23 traders here, and they’re a lot less optimistic than the Trump traders. FTX! 43 traders, seems like probably. I’ve seen a lot of Twitter takes about how rich well-connected people never get in trouble for this kind of thing, but the markets seem less cynical. 251 traders, and by the way amazing job by “mr22” who started this market on October 5. I also appreciate the relatively late end date - there’s another market “. . . by 2024” which is in the 30s, but that’s because people don’t trust the justice system to move quickly, not because they think he’ll be found innocent. There are a series of markets on sentence length which seem to suggest more than a month but less than a year in jail; this doesn’t really make sense to me and I’m going to nervously ignore them. Only 8 traders here, so take with a grain of salt, but this is a great example of the creative ways people are using Manifold. The market resolves not to “yes” or “no” but to the percent of FTX US users’ funds that they eventually get back; you make money if you were closer than other traders. Here they seem to think most people will only be getting about 14 cents on the dollar. There’s another market for FTX.US users which is a little higher at 29. 34 traders. I think this is too high; I bet it was some random third-tier insider, just because there are more of them and they’re under less scrutiny. Moving on to the effects on effective altruism in particular (just assume I have all possible conflicts of interest here): 272 traders, check the detailed resolution criteria. I think the strongest case is something like the one described in this article, about Center for Effective Altruism leaders discussing concerns about Alameda Research in 2018. The article doesn’t give specifics but my guess is they were the same issues Kerry Vaughn describes here (though see the followup comment by an employee who left FTX, casting doubt on Vaughn’s claims). That means the market hinges on whether Vaughn’s allegations fit the resolution criteria that “the unethical behavior must have been related to fraudulent investment strategies that involve spending other people's money without their permission”. Vaughn describes “poor capital controls, including a lack of distinction between money owned by investors and money owned by Alameda itself”, which sounds like it’s in that direction but could cover a wide variety of badness levels. My guess is everyone will end up agreeing that disgruntled Alameda employees whisper-networked that some things were bad about the company in 2018, some of the rumors got to CEA leaders, the leaders debated whether this was worse than normal for a tech startup, decided it didn’t rise to a level where they needed to publicly freak out, and moved on. Isaac will have to pay attention to the details as they come out and decide whether or not it qualifies. 45 traders. This seems to confirm that the CEA incident is responsible for most of the probability mass above; many fewer people think the FTX Future Fund (ie the charitable branch of FTX responsible for giving out their money) was in on this. Related: this market only has five traders, but I’m highlighting it anyway in the hopes that it gets more. The most money is on 2022. My guess is that we’ll find that they had terrible accounting practices in 2018-2019 of the sort that could be classified as criminally incompetent in a way that bled into fraud (but the trades went fine so nobody was harmed) and then they ramped it up a lot in 2022 to deal with the crypto crash. I think this market will be harder to resolve than people expect. 47 traders. Everyone is panicking about this possibility, but it looks like it’s not too likely. 10 traders. I’ll take this chance to say: a lot of media is predicting the death of EA, or a major blow to EA, or something in that category. Not going to happen. The media isn’t good at understanding people who do things for reasons other than PR. But most EAs really believe. Like, really believe. If every single other effective altruist in the world were completely discredited, I would just shrug and do effective altruism on my own. If they instituted the death penalty for effective altruism, I would do it under cover of night using ZCash. And I’m nowhere near the most committed effective altruist; honestly I’m probably below average. “Saint gets eaten by lions in Colosseum, can early Christianity possibly survive this setback?” Update your model or prepare to be constantly surprised. 6 traders. So, we lost several hundred million dollars of funding in a giant disaster which was also morally outrageous and demoralizing. It happens. But lots of people have already emailed me asking how to send in more money to help fill the gap. Some added something like “it was so depressing that all the FTX money meant my money didn’t make a difference, but now I can help again, and it’s great!” Can these people fill the hole? 32% chance that they can! 10 traders. And if they don’t, we’ll still probably do better than in 2021, before all the FTX money started rolling in. We’ll try harder to hammer in the point about not doing “ends justify the means” reasoning, and do some reorgs and purges to prevent anything like this from happening again, we’ll make a bunch of other changes - some reasonable, some panic-driven - but we’ll go on. If all the far-future stuff collapses, we’ll donate to global health charities. If the global health charities don’t work, we’ll fund GiveWell to sit around and figure out something that does. If GiveWell gets hit by an asteroid, we’ll work on asteroid deflection (actually I think we might already be doing that). If asteroid deflection turns out to be -EV, we’ll switch to shrimp welfare, or give ourselves Zika virus, or any of a million other things. You have no idea how committed we are to continuing to do effective altruism regardless of whether or not it’s “popular”. But it will be popular. 45 traders, resolution criteria at the link, notice the dip when the FTX news broke, followed by recovery as people had time to think it over more. Moving on to slightly less serious topics: The snapshot doesn’t show this, but one of the suggestions is Atlas Rugged. 67 traders, interesting to see where forecasters’ priorities lie. This was a big rumor early on, along with “everyone was on meth”, but the on site psychiatrist said it was false during an interview. 13 traders. WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP GOING ON PODCASTS? Midterms! That was two weeks ago? It feels like years! A week before the midterms, I wrote: Polymarket, Manifold, and PredictIt now have shiny interfaces for predicting the upcoming US midterm elections. In terms of the Republicans taking the Senate, Polymarket is at 65%, Manifold at 58%, PredictIt at 73%, and 538 at 49%. Congratulations 538! Mike Saint Antoine (who wrote the review of Viral in the last Book Review Contest) has put some more work into scoring midterm election forecasts. Here are some headline results: Mike writes: The reason I didn’t just do a three-way comparison between PredictIt, FiveThirtyEight, and Manifold Markets is that the Manifold Markets forecasts included fewer questions than the PredictIt and FiveThirtyEight forecasts. So in order to do a fair comparison here, I’ll be comparing the smaller subset of questions for which PredictIt and Manifold Markets both gave a forecast. So it looks like both Manifold and 538 did better than PredictIt, and there’s no clear way to tell which of the former did better. (except I guess you could do this analysis with just the subset of questions Manifold and 538 share, but Mike didn’t and I’m also not going to). PredictIt has a pretty consistent Republican bias (it’s a minor epistemic sin to accuse a prediction market of having a predictable bias unless you’ve made money exploiting it, I made $600 this election so I’ll let myself pass). In years when Republicans do better than expected, it will probably look better than other markets; in years when they do worse, it will look worse. Still, this is a bias, so I think we should take them doing worse this year as a fair reflection of their accuracy, even thought next year it could go the other way. My main two takeaways here are: PredictIt isn’t yet good enough that the ideal theorems showing prediction markets should be unbiased and better than everyone else apply to it. The obvious explanation is its $800-per-question cap. Polymarket doesn’t have that cap and it did better, although Mike hasn’t done a formal comparison to 538.

Inline links: here, was profitable, mDAU have consistently gone up, https://polymarket.com/market/will-realdonaldtrump-tweet-in-2022, more than a month, less than a year, FTX.US users, this article, here, Not going to happen, some reorgs and purges to prevent anything like this from happening again, I think we might already be doing that, turns out to be -EV, shrimp welfare, give ourselves Zika virus, wrote, Polymarket, Manifold, PredictIt, 538, Viral, scoring midterm election forecasts, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!z0IM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbcfb99af-ec23-4ff9-bcec-ffe248821898_1800x900.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!NSlN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc9c5602d-e060-454b-8a20-10e925c57526_1800x900.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!vBga!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2b35fbd9-ee89-4f4f-b8b9-832742e483fd_881x289.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!h6tt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9355d197-997a-4c48-93c0-76abc23f2c12_881x287.png

My 2024 Presidential Debate

June 27, 2024 · Original source

Alexander: Thank you President Biden, that’s consistent with the strong stance against misinformation that you’ve taken in the past. But Mr. Trump, you’ve been accused of being one of the chief spreaders of misinformation, both personally and through your website Truth Social. What do you have to say for yourself?

Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls

January 13, 2026 · Original source

2: Donald Trump’s company Truth Social said in October that it’s becoming the world’s first social media platform offering prediction markets via a partnership with crypto.com. This isn’t quite what I want - I don’t think users can create their own prediction markets - but it’s a step forward. Also, think about how much money someone’s going to make by taking the pro-left-wing side of all those trades!

Inline links: the world’s first social media platform offering prediction markets

TSMC3 mentions across 3 issues

TSMC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between October 10, 2024 and December 10, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "the second TSMC"; "thanks, TSMC"; "Taiwan’s TSMC has been the only company capable of producing the most advanced AI chips". It most often appears alongside Anthropic, OpenAI, America.

Article page: TSMC
Mention count: 3
Issue count: 3
First seen: October 10, 2024
Last seen: December 10, 2025

Issue trail

SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story October 10, 2024
Why AI Safety Won't Make America Lose The Race With China November 26, 2025
Links For December 2025 December 10, 2025

Anthropic 3 shared issues
OpenAI 3 shared issues
America 2 shared issues
California 2 shared issues
China 2 shared issues

Source context

SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story

October 10, 2024 · Original source

You can’t see it in the screenshot, but the first stock is NVIDIA, the second TSMC, the third Alphabet, and the fourth Microsoft. On average they went up about 0.5%, on a day when the NASDAQ as a whole also went up about 0.5%.

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

November 26, 2025 · Original source

Compute: America is far ahead. We have better chips (thanks, NVIDIA) and can produce many more of them (thanks, TSMC). Our recent capex boom, where companies like Google and Microsoft spend hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers, has no Chinese equivalent. By the simplest measure - total FLOPs on each sides - we have 10x as much compute as China, and our advantage is growing every day. A 10x compute advantage corresponds to about a 1-2 year time advantage, or an 0.5 - 1 generation advantage (eg GPT-4 to GPT-5).

The Question Of Separatism

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”

Tennessee Valley Authority2 mentions across 2 issues

Tennessee Valley Authority is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 19, 2023 and June 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Tennessee Valley Authority was a Depression Era program"; "In the US, the Tennessee Valley Authority was a Depression Era program to develop a poor region using federal government money"; "The Tennessee Valley Authority is the canonical example of a New Deal agency". It most often appears alongside Jacobs, Jane Jacobs, 1965.

Article page: Tennessee Valley Authority
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: May 19, 2023
Last seen: June 23, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Question Of Separatism May 19, 2023
Your Book Review: Public Citizens June 23, 2023

Jacobs 2 shared issues
Jane Jacobs 2 shared issues
1965 1 shared issues
1968 Summer Olympics 1 shared issues
1980 1 shared issues

Source context

May 19, 2023 · Original source

Finally, an oversized capital force creates an artificial city region. In the US, the Tennessee Valley Authority was a Depression Era program to develop a poor region using federal government money. The hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure that the money bought seemed to be great successes at first, and to be sure they did reduce poverty. But problems later appeared, and today the region isn’t particularly dynamic, in addition to being riddled with environmental issues. Jacobs explains that the federal aid could never truly help, because the Tennessee Valley has always lacked an import-replacing city. Subsidies, grants, and loans give at best the illusion of development.

Your Book Review: Public Citizens

June 23, 2023 · Original source

The Tennessee Valley Authority is the canonical example of a New Deal agency. Founded in 1933, it was designed to modernize the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley2, with a broad mandate including electricity generation, flood control, fertilizer manufacturing, and general economic development. Here’s what it didn’t have to do: run its plans for the valley by any of the people who actually lived there. Although the TVA was broadly popular and is still considered a success today, its development plans displaced over 125,000 residents, who had essentially no recourse. Its first leader, displaying the lack of modesty that was characteristic of the era, described the agency’s work by saying, “What God had made one, man was to develop as one.”

Inline links: 2

The ACX Commentariat2 mentions across 2 issues

The ACX Commentariat is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 23, 2025 and July 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Finalists are The ACX Commentariat"; "The ACX Commentariat is somewhat unique in that it self-styles itself as a major reason to come and read Scott’s writing". It most often appears alongside Astralcodexten, 4chan, ACX.

Article page: The ACX Commentariat
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: June 23, 2025
Last seen: July 26, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 387 June 23, 2025
Your Review: The Astral Codex Ten Commentariat (“Why Do We Suck?”) July 26, 2025

Astralcodexten 2 shared issues
4chan 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Commentariat 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 387

June 23, 2025 · Original source

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

Your Review: The Astral Codex Ten Commentariat (“Why Do We Suck?”)

July 26, 2025 · Original source

The Astral Codex Ten (ACX) Commentariat is defined as the 24,485 individuals other than Scott who have contributed to the corpus of work of Scott’s blog posts, chiefly by leaving comments at the bottom of those posts. It is well understood (by the Commentariat themselves) that they are the best comments section anywhere on the internet, and have been for some time. This review takes it as a given that the ACX Commentariat outclasses all of its pale imitators across the web, so I won’t compare the ACX Commentariat to e.g. reddit. The real question is whether our glory days are behind us – specifically whether the ACX Commentariat of today has lost its edge compared to the SSC Commentariat of pre-2021.

“Do you feel like you’ve shifted to less ambitious forms of writing with the new Substack?”, which dates the decline to 2021 Quite a few people responded in the comments that Scott’s writing hadn’t changed, but it was the experience of being a commentor which had worsened. For example, David Friedman, a prolific commentor on the blog in the SSC-era, writes: A lot of what I liked about SSC was the commenting community, and I find the comments here less interesting than they were on SSC, fewer interesting arguments, which is probably why I spend more time on [an alternative forum] than on ACX. Similarly, kfix seems to be a long-time lurker (from as early as 2016) who has become more active in the ACX-era, writes: I would definitely agree that the commenting community here is 'worse' than at SSC along the lines you describe, along with the also unwelcome hurt feelings post whenever Scott makes an offhand joke about a political/cultural topic. And of course, this position wasn’t unanimous. Verbamundi Consulting is a true lurker who has only ever made one post on the blog – this one: Ok, I've been lurking for a while, but I have to say: I don't think you suck… You have a good variety of topics, your commenting community remains excellent, and you're one of the few bloggers I continue to follow. The ACX Commentariat is somewhat unique in that it self-styles itself as a major reason to come and read Scott’s writing – Scott offers up some insights on an issue, and then the comments section engages unusually open and unusually respectful discussion of the theme, and the total becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Therefore, if the Commentariat has declined in quality it may disproportionately affect people’s experience of Scott’s posts. The joint value of each Scott-plus-Commentariat offering declines if the Commentariat are not pulling their weight, even if Scott himself remains just as good as ever. In Why Do I Suck? Scott suggests that there is weak to no evidence of a decline in his writing quality, so I propose this review as something of a companion piece; is the (alleged) problem with the blog, in fact, staring at us in the mirror? My personal view aligns with Verbamundi Consulting and many other commentors - I’ve enjoyed participating in both the SSC and ACX comments, and I haven’t noticed any decline in Commentariat quality. So, I was extremely surprised to find the data totally contradicted my anecdotal experience, and indicated a very clear dropoff in a number of markers of quality at almost exactly the points Scott mentioned in Why Do I Suck? – one in mid-2016 and one in early 2021 during the switch from SSC to ACX. Setting Out the Case for Decline There’s a pretty basic question that needs to be answered before we compare the Commentariat today to that of yesteryear. That question is - does ‘the Commentariat’ actually exist? It is easy to understand what it means for Scott’s writing to have got better or worse over time, or to track the evolution of a specific commentor’s engagement with the blog. But in order to review ‘the Commentariat’ as a whole we would have to treat it as a single entity with discernible patterns and tendencies. I believe this approach is justified; the Commentariat has a distinct culture, voice and its own unique animal spirits that react to both Scott’s interests and the interests of the external world. Since it is not just generating random noise, it is possible to explore the Commentariat over time to build a case that its overall quality is declining (or not). To demonstrate this, I have displayed below a graph of comments per post across the lifetime of the blogs. It may not be quite fair to say that ‘engagement’ is the same thing as ‘quality’, but I certainly think it raises a question that needs to be answered; something massively affects comment engagement in 2016 and then again in 2021. In this graph, each datapoint represents a month that Scott has been blogging. A typical month will have between 15-20 posts, of which around half will be authored by Scott and half will be ‘authored’ in some way by the Commentariat, which are mostly Open Threads. I’ve averaged by month because certain types of post get much less engagement than others, and so looking at individual posts ended up too noisy to make attractive graphs (the true goal of any honest statistician). The SSC-era is highlighted in blue. You can see that it shows something a bit like a classic sigmoidal adoption curve (but wearing a top hat). Post engagement starts low, before rapidly shooting up in 2014-15. It peaks in April 2016 – which is highlighted in red in this and all subsequent graphs so you can track peak engagement - before dropping back to a steady level of around 400-600 comments per post for the next three years. Notably, the run of posts that most people regard as being the ‘Golden Age’ for Scott’s writing happens much earlier than peak engagement with the comments section. People disagree about where this run of exceptionally good posts in quick succession start and ends, but I think you could safely say it has definitely begun by the time of The Control Group is Out of Control (although I would date it a little earlier, personally) and ends with either The Toxoplasmosa of Rage or Untitled – basically 2014 has a high density of ‘important’ posts.

Inline links: writes, writes, this one, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!04Ny!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F67ab1e15-6e36-4500-8980-ad652af543c6_745x421.png, The Control Group is Out of Control, Toxoplasmosa of Rage, Untitled

The ACX-era begins in 2021 and is highlighted in green. You can see engagement starts lower than the SSC steady-state of 400-600 comments per post (maybe more like 300-400 per post) but increases over time to at least that level by 2024, getting close to the peak engagement era. In one of life’s small ironies, Scott wrote Why Do I Suck? at close to the lowest period of engagement the blog had experienced for nearly a decade. My key conclusion is that someone who says they preferred what the comments section used to be like is not (necessarily) just being curmudgeonly – something really did happen between pre-2016 SSC and post-2016 SSC, and then again between SSC as a whole and ACX as a whole, which caused a lot of people to disengage from the comments section. Furthermore, we would expect engagement to track quality quite closely (because people don’t want to engage with a bad comment section), and so a very strong hypothesis for an otherwise unexplained drop in comment engagement is a corresponding drop in Commentariat quality. Interestingly, after a few years of lower engagement than steady-state SSC, engagement with ACX is trending upwards at the moment. If you were optimistic, you might even say that the early signs are that 2025 is showing the first bit of the fast-growth section of a sigmoidal adoption curve. If this initial trend continues, the ACX Commentariat will surpass the peak of SSC Commentariat around lunchtime on the 27th July this year, so mark that in your calendars. Commentariat Quality – A Deep Dive ‘Professional’ reviewers – a thousand curses heaped upon their name – often rely on vague and idiosyncratic measures of quality. This may be appropriate for trivialities like literature and music, but when it comes to important things like the ACX Commentariat I’d prefer to follow good Commentariat norms and use clearly defined objective criteria in my review. I’ve therefore broken down comment quality into four key factors that, in my view, define the Commentariat’s unique character: Depth of engagement with a topic – When the comment section is good, it is characterised by people taking time to uncover each other’s views and identify genuine disagreement, rather than just rehearsing tribally-coded talking points or making incendiary ‘drive-by’ comments and disappearing.

the Church2 mentions across 2 issues

the Church is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 04, 2022 and October 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Magellan supposedly said that “the Church says the Earth is flat"; "the rest is up to Science and the Church". It most often appears alongside America, facebook, God.

Article page: the Church
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: January 04, 2022
Last seen: October 01, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Movie Review: Don't Look Up January 04, 2022
The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know October 01, 2025

America 2 shared issues
facebook 2 shared issues
God 2 shared issues
Science 2 shared issues
1910s Portugal 1 shared issues

Source context

Movie Review: Don't Look Up

January 04, 2022 · Original source

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

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

October 01, 2025 · Original source

Interlude: The Anti-Clerical Union As mentioned briefly before, 1910s Portugal was in a period of transition. In 1910, a group of proto-socialist revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy. The monarchy and church had been in cahoots, so the revolutionaries cracked down on Catholicism, closing the monasteries and persecuting the churches. This was a bold move - only an upper crust of educated urbanites were proto-socialist, and 99%+ of the country identified as Catholic, albeit at various levels of religiosity. In the 1920s, conservatives would regain the upper hand, overthrow the proto-socialists and restore a pro-church dictatorship. Still, the small urban educated ruling class of 1910s Portugal was a hotbed of atheistic anti-church sentiment. Probably the child-seers of Fatima were only dimly aware of this, but their prophecies were a spark entering a powder keg, and many of the more worldly witnesses were aware of this context. While reading through Fatima-related documents, I came across some pamphlets by Grupo Anticlerical, one of the era’s leading atheist organizations. They are totally irrelevant to our primary goal of trying to figure out what’s up with the miracle. But I love them so much that I can’t resist adding one as an interlude. I have slightly edited the machine translation for clarity and readability: To defend the sacred freedom of conscience—guaranteed by the original Law of Separation of Church and State—from the furious attacks of implacable Jesuitism—the greatest enemy of all human happiness!—the Anticlerical Group was organized in this town, similar to what is being done in many parts of the country! This was necessary. They call us to fight. We present ourselves courageously! The great, formidable battle of progress against Ultramontane Reaction, of Freedom against Tyranny, of Truth against Lies is waged again with enthusiasm and ardor! The redemptive dawn that the Portuguese people saw emerge on October 5, 1910, is about to be eclipsed, intercepted by the immense flood of black cassocks!... But in the dark night that seeks to envelop Reason; where moral suffering takes on tragic proportions in a frightening asphyxiation, the Light will once again break through!... the consoling light of elevated spirits... and like a sinister scarecrow, the grim reaction will flee in terror! Liberal people! Hear us! This fight is terrible! Many of our people will perhaps be crushed and tortured on the battlefield, but what does it matter?! Every war against reaction is a holy war because it frees consciences from the clutches of their enemies!... It is the fight of Justice against Iniquity, of Love against Hate, of Good against Evil!... To the fight, then, for the Progress that makes life beautiful; for the Freedom that redeems the people; and for the science that guides us all as an eternal beacon to the Light of Truth! Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral [two Portuguese aviators who had recently flown across the Atlantic] are prodigious spirits before whom our souls kneel religiously – boldly breaking through the air with the mathematical certainty of someone who knows the path to be taken to get from one point to another determined point; flying through the immense blue as sure of their route as any of us walking on earth, they showed us that Science is not an empty word! The power of their prodigious sextant, the fruit of immense scientific lucubrations, is more real and positive than the cross of Christ painted on their device, which could not even have saved them from falling due to lack of gasoline in the middle of the sea at the mercy of the waves. Their extraordinary journey, an adventure which moved us to tears, was the most resounding scientific victory of recent times! It was, above all, a powerful affirmation of science! Let us therefore make science our religion, for scientific religion is Freedom of Thought! To be a Free Thinker is to love immortal science, eagerly waiting for it to reveal to us the truth of the great enigmas of the Universe! And only it can reveal them! People! Let us always fight! From the victory of progress, science, freedom, and free thought, will result human happiness, joy, love, fraternity, respect for women, veneration for mothers, adoration for children, affection for the elderly, protection for the sick, the unfortunate, the tortured. The victory of reaction, of clericalism, of black, cruel and ferocious Jesuitism will result in: the gallows, the acts of faith with their human destruction, persecution, exile, robbery, arson, the deflowering of women, the killing of children, the monstrous torture of all free spirits! The history of so many crimes committed in the name of God horrifies us! The Inquisition, relentlessly slaughtering, tearing, and burning the flesh of so many victims, is still today, in the twentieth century, a sinister specter haunting us!... O most holy mothers! O holy, pious mothers who so love your sweet little children! Have compassion on your beautiful little children, sacred fruits of your blessed wombs: Love Freedom! Love Liberty, O loving mothers, immaculate saints of our altar! We pray for them... for your children, who are the light of your candid eyes, the life of your life... for little children... for all children, tender rosebuds that retrogression furiously lashes, – love Liberty!. And you, O parents! Heads of families who so tremble at your loved ones, snatch them from the merciless clutches of the reactionaries who twist their brains and kill their reason! Hear us all, men, women, and children; listen: Freedom writhes in horrible convulsions... it vibrates in space, echoing from mountain to mountain, an anguished cry for help!... It is Freedom that falls, annihilated! It is Freedom that dies in the bloody clutches of Jesuitism! The Miracle of Fatima, people, is a ridiculous lie, it is a comedy, it is not religion! Come on, liberals! Let us all rise up from this criminal apathy and, without delay, fight not the religious sentiment of the Portuguese people, such a good people, a race of heroes, but rather the exploitation that clericalism is inflicting on the people, foisting upon them, at a good price, images of the saint —trademarked to avoid competition from other vampires! —the shamelessness!—and leading them, through suggestion, to wallow and drink madly, the miraculous water, foul, filthy water, full of rot, pus, and pestilent microbes that the sore flesh of the sick leaves deposited there in the washings! We, all as one man, will fight the reaction, forcing it to retreat and thus, with our efforts, we will save the Republic and the Portuguese Land from its fatal annihilation! … …anyway, Interlude over, let’s get back to the miracle. 2: The Skeptical Explanations Re-invigorated by the rousing prose of Grupo Anticlerical, can we come up with a materialist explanation for the sun miracle? 2.1: Pilgrim, Avert Thine Eyes Starting in October 1917, doubters have focused on one obvious possibility: staring at the sun is harmful to your health. If you stare too long, you go blind. If you stare just slightly less long than that . . . maybe something strange happens? Just to get a particular theory out there: everyone knows that if you stare at a bright light source for a few seconds, you get a temporary afterimage - often pink or bluish-green - on your retina. Suppose the pilgrims stared at the sun. Their eyes would inevitably make microsaccades - small natural jerking motions - and the afterimage would appear somewhere slightly different than the true sun. This might look like the sun turning pink or blue and moving in a zig-zag pattern. Believers in the miracle counter this proposal in several ways. First, although it might explain the sun changing colors and dancing, it doesn’t give an explanation for spinning, sparkling, or falling to earth and threatening to crush everybody (exactly three times in a ten minute interval, no less). Second, although witnesses describe the sun changing color, they also describe everything around them changing color to match the sunlight, which doesn’t match localized afterimages. And one scientifically-minded witness specifically describes closing his eyes to see if there was a persistent afterimage; he says there was not. Third, there are no reports of eye injuries or blindness from a crowd that was, supposedly, staring straight at the sun for ten minutes. This is a good match to witness reports (that the sun was unusually pale and didn’t hurt to look at) and with Dalleur’s theory (that it wasn’t the sun). But it’s a bad match to any theory depending on eye injuries. Fourth, this would require Portuguese people to be total idiots. Everyone already knows bright lights cause afterimages. Surely if you stare at the sun for ten minutes and get some afterimages, you’re not going to freak out and start screaming about miracles and the end of the world. Even if the peasants had somehow remained ignorant of afterimages their whole lives, the scientists and doctors in attendance wouldn’t be fooled. If we are to keep this theory, maybe we should posit some retinal phenomenon much stronger than the ones we know. Everyone thinks they know how much an illusion can fool you - “yeah, okay, obviously the cookie that looks very slightly bigger will actually be the same size” - which is exactly why the really good ones, like the Checker Shadow Illusion, come as such a shock. Squares A and B are the same color. Source: Checker shadow illusion. There’s no way around it: we need to hear from someone who has stared directly into the sun. August Meessen was a physics professor at a Catholic university, which sounds like exactly the job profile we want for this sort of thing. He found himself sufficiently interested in the Fatima miracle to stare straight into the sun for a few minutes and record what happened. From his paper: In November 2002, I looked directly into the sun, at about 4 p.m. The sun was relatively low above the horizon and its light intensity was attenuated, although the sky was clear. I was able to look right into the sun and was amazed to see that the sun was immediately converted into a grey disc, surrounded by a brilliant ring. The grey disc was practically uniform, while the surrounding ring was somewhat irregular and flamboyant, but did not extend beyond the solar disk. It coincided with its rim. I stopped the experiment, since I wanted to be prudent, but I had experienced myself the initial phase of a typical “miracle of the sun” and I could explain it. The sun became grey, since my eyes immediately responded to its great luminosity by an automatic reduction of their sensitivity. This adaptation is not simply due to the bleaching of pigments in the colour-sensitive cones of the fovea, where the image of the sun is projected, but to secondary processes. By “initial phase”, he means the part where the sun looks pale and well-defined, like a full moon. This isn’t something I think needs explanation (see above), but he sure has explained it. Moving on: In a second experiment, realized at 3 p.m. in December 2002, I looked straight at the sun during a much longer time. After some minutes, I saw impressive colours, up to 2 or 3 times the diameter of the sun. They changed, but were mainly pink, deep blue, red and green. Further away, the sky became progressively more luminous. I stopped there, since I understood that these colours resulted from the fact that the red, green and blue sensitive pigments are bleached and regenerated at different rates. This is frustratingly vague. Are the “impressive colors up to 2-3 times the diameter of the sun” just the normal aftereffects of staring at a bright object? Or something surprising even to physics professors? And the spinning? What about the motions of the sun? I didn’t see them, because I didn’t look at the sun for a sufficiently long time or my brain knew already too much. Once, after I had been looking at a very long passing train, I had (for about 30 seconds) the illusion of an opposite motion. Joseph Plateau discovered that when we look at the centre of a spiral that is rotating at some given velocity about this point, and when we stop this rotation, we see a reversed rotation. It lasts for several minutes, although in reality, there is no motion at all. This is a good example of motional after-effects. The “dance of the sun” is initiated, however, by a spontaneous generation of apparent motion. This feels suspiciously like a just-so story. His explanation for the sun falling to earth to crush everyone - which he also did not see - is equally ad hoc: A very interesting study was recently devoted to this “zoom and loom effect”. It tends to appear when the brain is confronted with the two-dimensional retinal image of an object that is situated at some unknown distance. The brain will then consider the possibility that it could come closer, by performing an illusory mental zoom, where the apparent size of the object is progressively increased. This results from the fact that evolution preserved the tendency to take into account the possibility of a dangerous approach: a rapid evasive action could be beneficial for survival. If true, it sounds like you should be able to generate this effect not just by staring at the sun (ill-advised, causes blindness), but by staring at the moon. I would like to test this, but unfortunately I am writing this on the night of a new moon; I’ll check back in two weeks. Still, I am skeptical that no human being living before 1917 AD ever figured out that staring at a celestial body long enough would make it appear to fall to earth and crush you. Compare to much gentler illusions - like how the moon looks bigger right when it starts to rise - which everybody knows about. I was able to find a thirdhand report (Fr. Stanley Jaki → G. J. Strangfeld → consultation with bishop) of another sun miracle investigator, one “Professor Dr. Stöckl” in Germany, who made a similar experiment: After almost a minute (the time varies according to the condition of the atmopshere and the momentary condition of the eyes) one thinks to see a dark blue disk in front of the sun (this is already a sign of the highly excited state of the retina). According to my experience … this dark blue disk is somewhat smaller than the solar disk, so that the edge of that disk stands out as a ring beyond that dark blue disk. Then one has right away the impression that the solar disk rotates with great speed in one or the other direction. This I have experienced often enough. All this is a subjective appearance that has nothing to do with the external world. These reports are suggestive, but weaker than all but the barest Fatima testimonials. Dr. Messeen admits as much, saying that “I didn’t look at the sun for a sufficiently long time”. Can we find people even more committed - or reckless, or masochistic - than Professors Messeen and Stöckl? Absolutely yes: there was a whole subfield of late 18th / early 19th century psychophysicists who experimented with staring at the sun for long periods, many of whom went blind. Joseph Plateau (1801 - 1883, went blind in 18432) summarizes their work in his aptly-named On The Contemplation Of Bright Objects. He lists twenty-six scientists who tried staring at the sun for a really long time. Most describe what we now recognize as typical retinal afterimages, and Plateau spends most of his time talking about how long these last and what colors they pass through. The only one of Plateau’s sources who reports anything even slightly interesting to us is Robert Darwin (father of Charles; cf. Secrets of the Great Families). After stating that: The author has frequently observed that when he gazed at the midday sun for a long time, until its disk appeared pale blue, he saw a bright blue specter on other objects for more than two days. …he mentions how When looking at the meridian sun as long as the eyes can well bear its brightness, the disc first becomes pale, with a luminous crescent, which seems to librate from one edge of it to the other owing to the unsteadiness of the eye. Here is pallor, and at least a hint of motion. But it’s pretty different from spinning, and not really clear how it relates to the sun miracle. Gustav Fechner (1801 - 1887, went blind in 1839) may have stared for even longer; you can read more of his story - including his ensuing insanity and subsequent attempts to found a new religion - on Adam Mastroianni’s blog. But all that he records about his ill-fated experiment is that: …after looking at the sun through homogeneously colored lenses, if you close your eyes, the primary impression remains for a long time and the entire afterimage usually disappears without a complementary coloration having clearly emerged. These people are great, and they all sound like minor Sam Kriss characters. But after whole careers dedicated to staring at the sun much longer than any normal person would ever try, they report only the barest hints of odd phenomena. Indeed, if anything they saw less of interest to the Fatimologist than Profs. Messeen and Stöckl. Worse, all of these authorities saw their phenomena after seconds to minutes of deliberate staring. Surely if it had taken a minute of staring at the sun before anything happened, some of our eyewitnesses would have mentioned this; after all, several mention that they were starting to doubt after the child-seers’ deadline had passed a few minutes earlier. But by all accounts, the miracle was near-instantaneous. Although Messeen and Stöckl’s reports of miracle-like phenomena are intriguing, it doesn’t seem like they can be the whole picture. Let’s move on. 2.2: Aurora Borealis? At This Time Of Year? In This Part Of The Country? Localized Entirely Within Your Kitchen? Could the miracle at Fatima have been some kind of weird weather phenomenon? The main argument against is that if it were a common weather phenomenon, it would not have awed and terrified tens of thousands of people. But if it were a rare weather phenomenon, then the seers’ successful prophecy that the rare weather phenomenon would happen at solar noon on October 13 1917 becomes almost as impressive as an outright miracle. The argument in favor is that dozens of people have written books and papers about this possibility, we would feel remiss if we didn’t mention them, and anyway it gives us the opportunity to look at pretty pictures of interesting weather phenomena. This is a sun dog. It’s caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere that refract sunlight in a very specific way. It’s very cool, but aside from a resemblance to a wheel, it looks nothing like the miracle of Fatima. A sun dog doesn’t have any unusual colors, it doesn’t change size, and it doesn’t spin (I’ve embedded a YouTube video not because a still image would be misleading - it wouldn’t be - but just in case you want to see for yourself how completely motionless it is). It’s just a halo shape with two smaller illusory suns on either side of the real one - something which no one at Fatima reported. (source) This is a solar corona3; cloud iridescence is a related phenomenon. I don’t know how much work the exposure length is doing in this particular photo, but I’m guessing more than zero. Coronae are also very pretty, and might explain the description of wheels and colors. They seem surprisingly common for something that I can’t ever remember seeing, supposedly happening several times a year in most locations. But they don’t spin, the colors don’t change or stain the surrounding landscape, and they don’t fall to earth and crush people. Let’s keep this one as a backup option and move on. This is a dust storm. Steuart Campbell wrote a paper arguing that the miracle was caused by one of these, and I admit if I saw this I would start praying pretty hard. Dust storms can change the color of the sun (including unusual colors like green or blue). And very, very charitably, whirling dust could look like the sun itself spinning around, and the thickening and thinning of dust could look like the sun approaching or receding. But this would require a dust storm localized to a 20 mile region of Portugal which does not, technically, have any dust (and where it was, technically, raining at the time). Campbell proposes that perhaps a storm blew a 20 miles x 20 mile dust cloud from the Sahara out to the Atlantic, then onto Fatima for ten minutes during a break in the rain, then back to the Atlantic again. But I don’t think any dust storm has ever behaved in quite this way. If it did, it probably wouldn’t be at the exact moment predicted by child-seers months in advance. At this point, we might as well talk about literal meteors. The way I’m imagining it is this: as a meteor approaches Earth, it breaks up into three big parts and a host of smaller particles. They strike the atmosphere head-on, from the approximate direction of the sun. The small particles hit first and make a firework show. Then the three big pieces hit, producing multicolored fireballs (meteors can absolutely stain the sky bright colors - see the video). Finally, they burn out a few miles above the ground, , convincingly producing the appearance of the sun falling to earth and nearly striking the spectators. This could even explain the warmth and dry clothes - a local meteor strike produces a lot of heat! I like this because it’s the only one that takes seriously the facet of the event which most impressed the witnesses - the part where it looked like the sun was plummeting to earth and about to kill them. But against it: would a rain of micrometeorites really look like the sun was “dancing”, “spinning”, or “zig-zagging”? Aren’t most nearby meteor strikes very loud? (the Fatima event was, according to witnesses, silent) Don’t they usually break windows? Aren’t most meteor strikes of this size visible for hundreds of miles, not just the twenty miles from which we have witness testimonies? Wouldn’t the strike have to be remarkably head-on, and remarkable close to the position of the sun, in order to look like a solar phenomenon rather than a long streak? Aren’t most meteor fireballs visible for between a few seconds and a minute, not the ten minutes of the Fatima event4? And if there were some extremely unusual meteor strike that was the exception to everything, wouldn’t it still be pretty surprising for it to happen at the exact time and place predicted by child-seers months in advance? We come to the unpromisingly-titled Derivation of equations of the model of the dynamic behavior of the three-dimensional atmospheric cloud of electrically charged ice crystals under the influence of electrostatic forces, in which Artur Wiroski argues that Fatima was a three-dimensional atmospheric cloud of electrically charged ice crystals under the influence of electrostatic forces. Actually, he offhandedly mentions Fatima in three sentences, with the majority of the paper looking more like the image above - but he eventually makes it into a Guardian article where he emphasizes that yes, he is trying to explain the miracle of the sun. However, if I’m understanding him correctly, he says that his theoretical ice crystal phenomenon can only happen when the sun is at an altitude below 22 degrees. But during the Fatima miracle, the sun was at 42 degrees (and Dalleur’s mysterious light source was at 30 degrees), so none of this applies. I’ve tried to include pictures of all the phenomena I mention in this section. I failed for this one, because it’s never been spotted or photographed. It’s just some incredibly weird thing that one scientist says ice crystals might do if parameters were ever exactly right, with such a precise definition of “exactly right” that it’s never happened in real life. If it ever did happen, it probably wouldn’t be at exactly the moment predicted by child-seers several months in advance. 2.3: Everyone’s Mad Here Except You And Me Another common response calls the Sun Miracle a “mass hallucination”. Can 70,000 people really hallucinate the same thing? “Mass hallucination” on Wikipedia redirects to List Of Mass Panic Cases. The Miracle of the Sun is on there, but listed as “(disputed)” - the only item to earn such a parenthetical. The other fifty items mostly belong to three categories: A disease with unusual symptoms spreads through a population; doctors eventually pronounce it psychosomatic.

Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Wkjz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcff92f63-ad21-42fa-ad6f-c412b71f8524_631x481.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mhyb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa5fdf3d3-3e36-403e-95b9-f9fcbe7a06f0_1280x974.png, Checker shadow illusion, his paper, 2, Secrets of the Great Families, Adam Mastroianni’s blog, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kvPF!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F30bf02a3-f57b-4a9f-a849-e7e318c65b6f_900x600.jpeg, source, 3, cloud iridescence, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Y1Qt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9bbd9216-eb7d-4012-b114-bae56dbb0d4c_1024x681.webp, wrote a paper, 4, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Id7a!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c37c56e-bdf1-46e2-8d29-d395987be105_851x310.png, Derivation of equations of the model of the dynamic behavior of the three-dimensional atmospheric cloud of electrically charged ice crystals under the influence of electrostatic forces, a Guardian article, List Of Mass Panic Cases

The Hindu milk miracle of 1995. Starting from the bottom: In 1995, a man in New Delhi noticed that an idol of the elephant-god Ganesh seemed to be really drinking the glass of milk left as an offering. The story went viral - or as viral as things could go in 1995 - and Hindus around the world noticed the same thing. There was “an increase in overall milk sales in New Delhi by over 30%”. Scientists investigated and determined that a sculpted stone elephant trunk could sometimes absorb milk through capillary action. This was a story about rumor, interpretation, and context, but not really “hallucination”. The drinking effect was real. The Halifax Slasher was a typical supercriminal story. Two women reported being attacked by a mysterious and oddly-dressed knifeman; others followed. “Vigilante groups were set up on the streets, and several people, mistakenly assumed to have been the attacker, were beaten up; business in the town was all but shut down”. Although there was a Halifax resident with a history of knife crime, “he was quickly ruled out of the 1938 attacks on account of his large nose, which none of the 1938 victims had described”. Eventually several of the victims admitted to having made it up, and the whole thing went away. Supercriminal cases most often result from people making things up. Occasionally, seemingly-honest people report seeing the supercriminal in poor lighting conditions across a dark alley or something. But even if we consider these to be “hallucinations”, it is usually the one or two most vulnerable people in a town at the time. I can’t find any examples of true “mass hallucinations” - entire towns seeing a nonexistent supercriminal or monster at the same time. Koro is the psychosomatic disease par excellence; I’ve written about it before here. Victims, always male, believe that their penis has disappeared or retracted into their body; they often blame penis-stealing witches. Koro occurs at some very low background rate in every society (including ours), but occasionally wells up into mass panics in primitive cultures that take witchcraft seriously and have traditions of worrying about this sort of thing. Still, I don’t think any panic ever affects more than half of a village’s males, and usually not at the exact same time; it’s a smoldering panic over days or weeks, not a single instant of horrified realization. Also, although I’m not sure and would love to learn more about this, I don’t think the koro victim is having a visual hallucination of not having a penis at all. I think they think their penis is much smaller or shorter than it should be - which only requires some sort of obsessive worrying and (perhaps motivated) mis-remembering of its normal length. None of these are “mass hallucinations” in the sense where the sorts of visual hallucinations typical of certain mentally ill people occur en masse in a crowd of thousands with >50% prevalence - that is, the type of mass hallucination that would be required to explain Fatima. As far as I know, there are no confirmed cases of this ever happening. Still, from the Hindu milk miracle, we can learn that religious people can miss a real phenomenon for a long time, then notice it all at once with great fanfare. And from the koro cases, we can learn that a rare phenomenon can become more common in situations of widespread belief and social pressure. Interlude: It Seems Like Years Since It’s Been Clear This is around the stopping point of the previous Substack discussion. I’ve tried to cover most of Ethan and Evan’s arguments, go through the chain of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, and maybe pull on a few of the more tempting loose threads that they’ve left. As best I can tell, this level of investigation ends in a decisive victory for the believers. They have a stock of seemingly-unimpeachable testimonies; the skeptics have only a few leads that don’t seem on track to pan out. Eye damage can maybe produce a few odd effects, but - in the entire history of tens of billions of people living daily underneath a sun that they are able to view at any moment - we have not yet found anyone who reports the full constellation of Fatima experiences just from seeing the sun. No exotic weather phenomenon is a perfect match. Mass hallucinations are real but comparatively weak. At least this is my assessment. Skeptic blogs don’t agree. They propose one of these things (with no consensus as to which one) then act like they’ve debunked the miracle, then skip to the really important part: laughing at how obviously wrong it is. I’ve written before about my disappointment in the skeptical community and why it worries me, and here I feel it as acutely as ever. Sitting with my disappointment and trying to put it into words, I think my worries come down to a tangling of the Bayesian graph. The straightforward Bayesian way to do this is to start with some prior probability that there is a God who causes miracles (let’s say 1%), notice that the evidence for Fatima being a miracle naively seems very high (let’s say 90%), multiply out, and end up with a higher (8.3%) probability of God’s existence and a lower (8.3%) chance that Fatima in particular was miraculous. This is liberating. It lets you say “This piece of evidence is very strong, but my prior is very low, so even without being able to debunk the evidence, I continue to disbelieve.” But doing this the straightforward Bayesian way doesn’t work. First of all, what would it mean to naively (even before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles) say Fatima seems 90% likely to be miraculous. Before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles, surely the probability is much higher! But also, if you try this, then as soon as you find two similar miracles (I’ve been told the next two are the Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio and the Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg) your probability of God goes up to 88%! But I don’t think there’s any real atheist whose probability would rise in such a straightforward linear way. You need some kind of model where either it’s almost trivially possible to generate an arbitrary number of convincing-yet-false miracles, or it isn’t. But this doesn’t match the “virtuous” approach of addressing each miracle on its own terms - where you try to understand the Sun Miracle by learning things about the sun, or entoptic phenomena, or 1910s Portugal. And it does match the skeptical approach I’m complaining about, where you say “it’s probably swamp gas or something, lol, imagine being so dumb that you believe in miracles.” So I cannot object too strongly. Still, my greatest fear in this and all other problems of reasoning method is the trapped prior, where people take this too far and become impervious to evidence entirely. I think it’s worth untangling the whole Bayesian graph, trying to keep this whole structure in mind, if it prevents people from accidentally propagating an update down a logical chain, then propagating the same update back up the chain, again and again, ad infinitum, until they become arbitrarily sure of themselves. “We can be sure all miracle claims, even the convincing ones, are false, because there’s no God - and we can be sure there’s no God because all miracle claims are so risibly false.” Even if this is harmless - even if it turns out correct in the case of religion - it teaches such dangerous habits of mind that I’m willing to err in the direction of going way too far taking such claims seriously - at least in the “entertaining an idea without accepting it” sense. Everyone gets to decide what is and isn’t worth their time. I think deciding that these sorts of miracles aren’t worth your time is fine, as long as you’re propagating all the probabilities correctly and not accidentally treating your own hurriedness as a cause to update the rest of your belief graph. As for me, I don’t know, I just find this fascinating. In Evan’s skeptical take on the conversation, he starts strong, but after the topic switches to Part LXXVII of Dalleur’s discussion of photograph angles, he stops and asks: What the fuck are we doing? What are we talking about? What have I spent (conservatively) 18 hours of my life on? We’re addressing what Stanley Jaki called the most important event of the 20th century! We’re debating the existence of God, the most important question possible! If God is real, then nothing could be more important than establishing this: in the best case, we will come to believe; at worst, we will be able to tell St. Peter that our failure was honest and not from lack of trying. If He is not, then we can do whatever we want here on Earth, and surely one of the noblest ways to spend our short existence is expanding the frontiers of the known into the borderlands of mystery! In particular, if the God of Fatima exists, we are in deep trouble. I said I wouldn’t talk about exactly what the Virgin Mary told the child-seers, but the short version is that the First Secret was a very, very nasty vision of Hell. It looked exactly the way a ten-year-old child might expect: a lake of fire populated by ebon-skinned demons and horrendous tortures; the lead child-seer said that if the Virgin had not begun by promising that she personally would never go there, “she would have died of fright”. As it was, the consequences of the vision were grim. The child-seers got it into their minds that they could perhaps save sinners from the fire by “doing penance”. They drank only stagnant, scum-encrusted water, in the hopes that this might help some otherwise hell-bound soul; on some especially hot days, they ceased drinking water at all. When they found particularly painful ropes, they tied them around their bodies so hard that they bled (later, the Virgin mercifully told them they didn’t need to wear the ropes at night - they could stick to daytime only). After so many mortifications, they were easy prey for the Spanish Flu; two of the three perished before their tenth birthday. As they lay dying in the hospital, they were recorded as freaking out every time they saw a nurse or visitor with “immodest dress”, saying that they would not act in such a way if they knew how long Eternity was, or what awaited them there5. If all of this is the true opinion of the Lord of the Universe, we had better figure it out quick. If it isn’t, then the words of the Grupo Anticlerical: People! Let us always fight! From the victory of progress, science, freedom, and free thought, will result human happiness, joy, love, fraternity, respect for women, veneration for mothers, adoration for children, affection for the elderly, protection for the sick, the unfortunate, the tortured . . . O most holy mothers! O holy, pious mothers who so love your sweet little children! Have compassion on your beautiful little children, sacred fruits of your blessed wombs! …take on new meaning and urgency. I will admit my bias: I hope the visions of Fatima were untrue, and therefore I must also hope the Miracle of the Sun was a fake. But I’ll also admit this: at times when doing this research, I was genuinely scared and confused. If at this point you’re also scared and confused, then I’ve done my job as a writer and successfully presented the key insight of Rationalism: “It ain’t a true crisis of faith unless it could go either way”. But now that we’ve let Ethan, Evan, and the rest dig us into as deep a hole as possible, let’s try to dig our way out. 3: Our Lady Of Everywhere Else One question that Ethan, Evan, and Dalleur fail to ask is: what if people are basically always seeing the sun spin and change colors and and fall from the sky? What if this is the most common experience in the world? What if it’s a minor miracle every time you get more than a handful of people together and they don’t fall down in awe and terror at the manifestations of the sun? Goncado Xavier de Almeida Garrett is one of the star witnesses of the Fatima miracle, quoted above. His testimony comes from a letter written to Father Formigao, a local priest, about two months after the event. But although pro-Fatima sources quote the testimony at the beginning of the letter, they conveniently leave out what follows: I ask your excellency to please tell me if you confirm this narrative: the Bishop of Portalegre and Mrs. Maria de Jesus Raposo report that while they were with other people in Torres Novas, on the 20th of October at the end of the day, they saw the sun rotate and change its colors. They said this was different from Fátima and did not have the importance of October 13th. I would like clarification on the differences. It is urgent to know what the differences are, since they attended both […] Until now, no one saw the sun's sparkling rotations, and now everyone sees them many days and many times. Many days and many times? Remember, the Virgin Mary first appeared at Fatima on May 13. She promised to return on the 13th of each successive month until October, when she would perform a great miracle. But she never said she wouldn’t perform any miracles until October. So on the 13th of each month, a medium-sized crowd gathered. They didn’t leave disappointed. I won’t include every claimed supernatural occurrence, but here are the ones relevant to our subject: Olimpia de Jesus, about July 13: [On July 13], at her sister-in-law's house, when they heard the people shouting, he asked, "What's going on over there?" [Olimpia] looked at the sun and said, "The sun is different." The people came and reported that they had seen signs in the sun and in the sky. Joaquim Inacio Vicente, about August 13: This hour was a moment of terror for all who were there. Some lost their senses, others believed it to be the last day of their lives and their day of Judgment, and for some, afterwards, it was a wonder to see the admirable colors that successively took on the clouds that obscured the sun's rays—colors from bright red to pink and from there to blue—the color of anise, as several people declared to me minutes later in my home. Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, about August 13: Everyone looked up at the sky, which was covered by a light cloud, like a very fine white lace, pink in places. The sun, which had been completely hidden for a moment, left us illuminated by a strange light, with yellow spots visible on the ground and above us all, and a great drop in temperature, as happens during a solar eclipse. Manuel Pedro Marto, about August 13 and September 13: [On August 13, he] saw a kind of luminous globe rotating in the clouds […] On September 13th, he also went to Cova da Iria. He was a little away from the children. He saw nothing, nor heard anything, but he heard that some people had seen extraordinary things in the atmosphere. Joaquim Xavier Tuna, about August 13 and September 13: On the 13th of August, I saw the sun lower in the sky at the hour of its appearance. It never lowered as much as that time, not even on October 13th. All the objects around me turned yellow. On September 13th, I saw a large cross emerge from the sun and head east. Its progress was not very hurried. Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it disappeared, until it disappeared from view. I also saw other things that I cannot explain. In the Lapas area, there were people who, at the same time, saw the cross. Then there was the great miracle on October 13. Remember, I was only able to find a handful of negative testimonies - people who said they didn’t see it. One was from a woman named Leonor das Dores Salema Manoel, who said she saw “nothing of what others saw”, at least at Fatima. But on the drive home from Fatima that evening6: I saw [the sun] pass through different colors that I can't remember and it turned green, very light green, like a green salad with a golden rim around it, and spinning. Very long rays seemed to touch the earth and the sun seemed to be separated from the sky. Then the sky took on pink flashes, changing to a yellowish hue around the sun, and further away, spots here and there. After a few long moments that I can't remember, it returned to normal and I couldn't look at it again. The next occurence was early the following year. From the parish inquiry’s interview with Jacinto de Almedia Lopes: He further said that on the day of Our Lady of Purification, that is, on the second of February, 1918, he about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, being in the same place, he noticed signs in the sun identical to those of the thirteenth of October, which he had not noticed on many other days when he had been there. And next, from a letter by Gilberto Fernandes dos Santos: I must inform you that I went to Fátima on [June 13, 1920]… at that very moment, the people were kneeling on the ground, shouting, praying loudly, weeping, begging forgiveness with their hands raised, because they were witnessing a solar phenomenon similar to that of October 13, 1917. And next, from Dr. Henrique Weiss de Oliviera, describing events on May 13, 1923: I ate my meal in a car on the road near Cova da Iria [in Fatima], from half past noon to one in the afternoon, and when I returned to the Chapel, I heard the groups I passed exclaiming in admiration about a marvelous phenomenon that they claimed was occurring in the sun toward which they were directing their gaze. Deeply doubting the repetition of the marvelous phenomena that had dazzled thousands of people, according to reliable reports, during the last apparition of Our Lady in 1917, I was about to pass on without even bothering to look. I remembered, however, that when I first went to Fátima on October 13th of last year, and upon hearing similar admiring rumors around me, I had seen nothing during my quick inspection, perhaps because I was filled with that spirit of doubt. I therefore wanted to be certain this time so that I could, with full awareness, give my testimony to whoever and whenever I was asked. And, having stopped near a group and stared at the sun, carefully shielding my eyes from the direct sunlight, so as not to see anything, they immediately advised me to insist that I would see something. It took a long insistence to finally see what amazed everyone and caused astonishment that I could not see it. And I saw with precise clarity, and twice, what the common people, in their imaginary language, very accurately likened to: almond blossom petals. They fell from a great height (no longer seeing them detach from the sun as the people around me saw them) For myself, I finally, and after a considerable time, concluded that there is no such natural phenomenon, neither known nor described, thus leaning toward the supernatural. Today I firmly believe that this was the case, because I have had testimonies that allow me to reconstruct the phenomenon as it appears to have occurred according to these testimonies. First, one could gaze at the sun for a long time and with impunity, seeing magnificent phenomena of beauty and color; then began an abundant rain of the aforementioned petals; and when I arrived, it was no longer possible to gaze at the sun, and the phenomenon, which had been quite lengthy, was at its end, which explains my difficulty in witnessing it now. And from Joao Amael, on October 13, 1925: I do not know why, I suddenly felt a desire to look at the sun. [I would hear] other educated persons admit having seen phenomena in the sun on that day and hour. I looked at the sun. Before that, nothing special could be seen. But now I looked at the sun without hurting my eyes, without any retina resisting. I became more intent. To my astonishment, the sight became even clearer. The sun turned on itself in a very small circle, and in the center it turned into a dark disk in rapid rotation. During some minutes, very impressive and overwhelming, I could clearly verify this strange process. Then, without revealing anything of what I observed, for fear of autosuggestion, I asked my companion to look at the sun and see whether it really appeared. And my companion was describing exactly the phenomenon, the same extraordinary phenomenon. The test was achieved. And I gained further assurance, when various other people later told me that they had seen what I saw clearly, at the same hour, as they kept looking at the sun, without the slightest sensation of pain. Amael’s report of a miracle in 1925 is the last recorded case I can find at Fatima. I don’t know if this was when the sun miracles stopped happening there, or when people stopped including them in the Critical Documents collection. In either case, there were plenty of other places willing to pick up the torch. 3.1: The Ghiaie Variations As far as I can tell, Fatima was only the second-largest crowd to have ever witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. The largest was a group of 200,000 - 300,000 people in Ghiaie, a tiny village near Bonate, Italy. On May 13th, 1944 - the same day of the year that the child-seers of Fatima saw their first apparition - a seven-year old girl went out to pick flowers and had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin promised to return to her for nine successive evenings; at some point (although I cannot follow this part of the story) she must also have promised to return four times the following week, as large crowds gathered in expectation. According to my source, on the ninth appearance: Many testimonies from the site of the apparition and from surrounding villages described an impressive solar phenomenon. The sun came out of the clouds, whirled dizzily on itself, and projected beams of yellow, green, red, blue, and violet light in all directions. The beams of light colored the clouds, fields, trees, and the stream of people. After a few minutes the sun stopped its whirling, and those phenomena began soon again. Many noticed that the disc had turned white like a Host. The clouds seemed to be lowering down on the people. Some noticed a Rosary in the sky. Others saw a majestic Our Lady with a trailing cloak. Some people, who were at greater distance, saw Our Lady's face looming in the sun. From nearby Bergamo many witnesses observed the sun become pale and radiate all of the rainbow's colors in all directions. They also noticed a large yellow light beam falling over Ghiaie, perpendicularly. The blog says there were similar solar phenomena during the tenth and twelfth appearances, as well as on the following June 13th and July 13th7. All of this is from a random Catholic blog; can we find clear testimonies? The miracle of Fatima was heavily promoted by Portuguese, Vatican, and American Catholics, leading to a large body of sources being available in English. The Ghiaie apparition has gotten less attention, and so I can find fewer testimonies, have had to clunkily machine translate some things, and had a harder time tracing the exact chain-of-transmission. Still, here’s what we’ve got, mostly from here: Don Giuseppe Piccardi: The people cried out to the miracle; I turned between the intrigued and the distrustful, and I saw the sun that-comes from the clouds - turned on itself and the speed of movement seemed to be skidding. At the same time I saw that he projected light beams, then, for me, almost constantly yellow gold. This color I contemplated it even when the sun was veiled with uncaught clouds. Slightly hard to figure out from the machine translation, but I think this is Bishop Adriano Bernareggi: At 6:00 PM I was at the Patronato for the feast of St. John Bosco. Just at that time I finished speaking in front of the church. Then I entered the church for the Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. But most of the crowd remained outside because they said they had observed for about ten minutes the sun rotating on its axis, also suddenly changing color: yellow, red, blue. The sun could be observed without disturbance. The phenomenon was also observed in other places. I only noticed at the end of the service a yellow color in the houses, as when there is a partial eclipse of the sun at sunset. At 7:45 PM they said the phenomenon was repeated. I watched too. By staring into the dazzling sun, you could end up seeing the sun stand out clearly, giving the impression that it was rotating. Then everything took on a red color. But then it was clearly an optical phenomenon. Don Luigi Cortesi, a local seminary teacher who was a strong skeptic of the apparitions and even borderline-kidnapped the child-seer to convince her to recant: A shiver runs through me for a second. I react forcefully, forcing myself not to lose my mind, not to let myself be overwhelmed. I desperately squeeze my pupils and look at the sun: I see a large, clear spot without sharp edges, then, when my eye has adjusted, I see a disk of intense whiteness that seems liquid. Staring at the edges of the disk, I detect a dizzying rotation, like an electric circular motion, like a dizzying pinwheel, except that the direction of motion changes rapidly from left to right and then from right to left. I remember Fatima. Except this time, the sun revolves around a fixed axis, without moving in the sky. I return to the earth, to the crowd: I notice that the faces, the hands, the trees pierce through all the colors of the rainbow. It's natural, I think to myself: when the eye is offended by an intense light or an equivalent stimulus, it projects a stain on objects, which fades from red to violet and tints the objects it encounters with different colors; the stain disappears when the eye, rested, has returned to normal. In fact, a few minutes later, I no longer see those iridescent colors; every object has returned to its natural hue. The phenomenon of rotation leaves me dubious. A neighbor offers me his smoked glasses, and I look: the sun continues to rotate. He offers me a telescope, and I invert it, the screen, and look: the sun is still rotating. Then I can't take it anymore: even today, I'm not convinced that seeing a cosmic prodigy is worth losing my sight. Back then, I wasn't even convinced I was seeing a prodigy, since a plausible natural explanation for the phenomenon quickly emerged in my mind. However, urged by the neighbors to get excited, I remain silent. And I silence them by pinching and slapping the arms of those around me, which are stretched out towards the sky." From the parish bulletin of Tavernola, the exact author is slightly confusing but it was either written by or signed/confirmed by Piero Bonicelli, local provost: On the 28th in the evening of Pentecost, something happened that made a profound impression on everyone. At 6:00 PM sharp, a dimming of the sunlight was felt, accompanied by a sudden flash of lightning, first clearly observed by some bowling players. Looking at the sun, one saw first green, then bright red, then golden yellow, and then it spun around dizzily. At that spectacle, people poured into the streets... One can imagine their comments. The women recited the Holy Rosary, punctuated by the words: "Oh, how beautiful!" After ten minutes, the sun returned to normal. Comments? None. We await an explanation from the appropriate source. For now, we're content to hear the usual strong-minded people call us poor, deluded people, but don't you think this is a rather general illusion? In any case, for now, we're deluded: we'll see later. The parish priest of Tavernola, director of the bulletin, sending this issue requested by Father Piccardi, wrote on June 27, 1946: I must assure you that, as written, it is true, and I can also tell you that I was among those deluded that evening. To be prudent, I didn't go out into the street where people were shouting about a miracle, but from a slightly hidden window, I watched the sun change color and spin rapidly... illusion? Many of us here in Tavernola have been deluded. I can also tell you that I was pleased that such an illusion existed in Tavernola, since the people here have always had a great devotion to the Madonna. There may be more testimonies at this site, but they’re in very old scanned documents that it would be too time-consuming to stick into my machine translation pipeline. Another source says that “On February 24, 1994, [the TV show] ‘Detto tra noi' (Raidue), interviewed some witnesses, who confirmed the solar phenomena of May 21 1944 that were watched by many people“. I think a few hours extra work by an Italian speaker could produce at least five or ten extra Ghiaie testimonies, maybe many more. But as it is, we have enough to try something interesting: let’s recreate Dalleur’s analysis, but for Ghiaie. At 6 PM, the sun was shining from almost due west. For the sunlike light source producing the miracles to mimic the real sun, it would have also had to have been to the west of Ghiaie. If we assume it was the same distance as Dalleur’s Fatima light source, it would have been about 2-3 miles to the west of Ghiaie, which puts it above the village of Merate. We know from the last testimonial that the phenomenon was seen clearly in the village of Tavernola Bergamasca, which is about 22 miles from Ghiaie and 25 from Merate. An Italian source also reports sightings in Brescia and Piacenza, each about 35 miles from Ghiaie. So a Dalleur style analysis might conclude that this event also had a 25 - 35 mile visibility radius, similar to Fatima’s. …unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.

Inline links: really drinking the glass of milk, Halifax Slasher, here, my disappointment in the skeptical community, why it worries me, lets you say, Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio, Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg, trapped prior, of mind, 5, key insight, 6, my source, 7, here, this site, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kukw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F192586f8-d450-4555-88ef-deb6bbe30416_842x613.png, Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account

Since then, people have reported miracles at the site regularly. Most interesting for our purposes, some say that the Miracle of the Sun occurs there every Divine Mercy Sunday (the Sunday after Easter). I’m not sure this is right - I can only find evidence of it occurring in about a third of years - but that’s still a pretty good record. Here is the miracle from 2010 (starts at 3:11): Although the sun isn’t vastly clearer than any of the other videos, it’s obvious in this one that the oohs and aahs of the crowd match up with the pulses recorded on video - so it doesn’t seem like it can just be a camera failure. A more experienced critic on Reddit agrees: I would have expected that having dozens of videos of the sun miracle would finally clarify things. Instead, they’ve only gotten more confusing. The part that should be most easily captured even on blurry cell phone footage - the sun changing color and staining everything around different colors - is totally absent. Yet it seems like something must be happening to impress all of these crowds, and that the camera is able to capture some of it. 3.4: Any Little Maid That Walks In Good Thoughts Apart What updates should we make based on all these other miracles? First, we must discard our exotic meteorologic hypotheses. It might be barely possible for a rare dust storm, or a perfectly-timed ice whirlwind, to coincide with a prophecied apparition once. For it to do so every time a little girl says she sees the Virgin Mary defies belief. Second, we may want to rule out the actual Virgin Mary, at least insofar as she can be considered allied with the Catholic Church. It seems that sun miracles are common even at apparitions which the Church denounces as misguided or heretical; surely the Virgin would not want to confuse people by lending miraculous signs to false prophecies. (a true believer may posit that the miracles associated with real apparitions were caused by the Virgin, those associated with fake apparitions were caused by demons, and those that were neither - like Salema Manoel on her car ride home - were the demons again, trying to confuse us. I can only cite the usual prior against conspiracy theories; the conspirators being demons hardly makes things better.) This seems to leave illusions/hallucinations as a leading candidate. We previously came up with three arguments that seemed to rule these out: Dalleur and others have collected testimonies from people many miles from the Fatima crowd, which seems to rule out mass suggestion and demand and objective explanation.

Inline links: agrees, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!78rP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd982d2b8-1324-480d-9c04-31a57201ebbd_896x234.png

The EA Infrastructure Fund2 mentions across 2 issues

The EA Infrastructure Fund is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 08, 2023 and March 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The EA Infrastructure Fund"; "Our current impact market has five partners: ... The EA Infrastructure Fund". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, ACX Grants, impact market.

Article page: The EA Infrastructure Fund
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 08, 2023
Last seen: March 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Apply For An ACX Grant (2024) December 08, 2023
ACX Grants Followup Impact Market March 07, 2024

ACX Grants 2 shared issues
ACX Grants 2 shared issues
impact market 2 shared issues
Manifund 2 shared issues
Rachel 2 shared issues

Source context

Apply For An ACX Grant (2024)

December 08, 2023 · Original source

The EA Infrastructure Fund

Inline links: The EA Infrastructure Fund

Long Term Future Fund and Survival and Flourishing Fund focus on the long-term future, including but not limited to AI safety, forecasting, and long-termist community building. EA Infrastructure Fund focuses on EA community-building. You can find previous lists of grants funded by LTFF, EAIF, SFF, and ACXG.

Inline links: LTFF, EAIF, SFF, ACXG

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

March 07, 2024 · Original source

Distribute Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality copies to students in Bangalore, India. A surprising number of people get into the rationality/effective altruism ecosystem through this particular fan-fiction, and someone calculated that distributing copies of it was a super-cost-effective way to grow the movement. I didn’t fund this because the last time someone tried this, lots of people got angry at them for spending charity money on printing a fanfiction, and I hate when people get angry at me. Maybe if one of you funded it through an impact cert, and then someone provided evidence that this was good, I could buy back the impact cert without looking like a crazy person. Alternately, we could funnel this one through the EA Infrastructure Fund, which is supposed to do this kind of field-building.

Inline links: Distribute

Convert a hybrid car to chip wood and generate electricity. David Denkenberger works on projects to help humankind survive after global technological collapse. This is one of them: he wants $25K to convert hybrid cars into electrical generators. We didn’t fund this because we’re not sure how a successful result translates to anyone except David Denkenberger knowing how to do this in the case of a technological collapse, but I would be happy to buy an impact cert if someone believed they could make this public enough that the average small community of survivors would be able to take advantage of it. …and 39 others, hopefully more by the time you read this. Even if you’re not interested in investing, I still think it’s fun to browse through some of these and see what kinds of wacky ideas people have. III. Technical Details Remember, an impact market is like a stock market or VC ecosystem for charity. Investors fund projects, and then big philanthropists play the role of an IPO or final acquirer, funding successful projects in a way that gives value back to the investors. A toy example: Suppose I rejected a proposal to grant $50,000 to lobby for an animal rights law in Norway - not because I’m against animal rights, but because I believe the lobbying won’t work. You disagree with me and think this could work really well, so you invest $25,000 to buy 50% of its shares, and someone else buys the other half. The team lobbies for the law. I was wrong about their proposal, the law gets passed, and it’s great. You sell the impact certificates to an animal rights charity, who decide that if they were trying to get a law like this passed ex ante, they would be willing to spend up to $75,000 on it. They have a good sense of this because they fund animal rights proposals all the time. They pay $75,000 to the holders of the certificates, so you and the other buyer each get $37,500, a 50% profit. Obviously this depends on having big philanthropists willing to cooperate with this new system. Our current impact market has five partners: The Long Term Future Fund, The EA Infrastructure Fund, The Survival And Flourishing Fund, The Animal Welfare Fund, and future rounds of ACX Grants. That means if you buy an impact certificate today, you can try selling it to one of those funders later, after the project is done. Each of these charities has specific things they fund, so you might want to check their past history before trusting them to buy one of your certificates. Impact markets are pretty new. We ran a test round last year and it went well, but this round is a bit more complicated and has some new moving parts. Along with the issue where you won’t get real money back, please be aware of the following possible risks: You think your project did great work, but I (or our other funders) don’t find it interesting, don’t buy it, and the certificates go to $0. There are only five funders, and most of them are in pretty specific areas, so you might have only one or two possible buyers, and if they disagree with you, you’re out of luck.

Inline links: Convert a hybrid car to chip wood and generate electricity, The Long Term Future Fund, The EA Infrastructure Fund, The Survival And Flourishing Fund, The Animal Welfare Fund, a test round

The Fed2 mentions across 2 issues

The Fed is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 09, 2021 and February 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Fed was apparently so embarrassed by this that they stopped reporting land value estimates"; "The Fed ends up doing more than its currently forecast three interest rate hikes". It most often appears alongside China, COVID, France.

Article page: The Fed
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 09, 2021
Last seen: February 01, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal? December 09, 2021
Predictions For 2022 February 01, 2022

China 2 shared issues
COVID 2 shared issues
France 2 shared issues
Matt Yglesias 2 shared issues
2017 PTAPP survey 1 shared issues

Source context

December 09, 2021 · Original source

Here's a graph of America's total aggregate land value over time, according to twelve different estimation methods. My sources are The Lincoln Institute, Larson (2015), Albouy, Ehrlich, and Shin (2018), The American Enterprise Institute, PLACES Lab, the Federal Reserve via a method worked out by Matt Yglesias, Larson (2019/2020), and Jeffrey Johnson Smith's 2020 book Counting Bounty: The Quest to Know the Worth of the Earth.

Inline links: Lincoln Institute, Larson (2015), Albouy, Ehrlich, and Shin (2018), The American Enterprise Institute, PLACES Lab, Federal Reserve, Matt Yglesias, Larson (2019/2020), Counting Bounty: The Quest to Know the Worth of the Earth

Larson (2019) uses this method, and AEI's figures are based directly on those results with a slight upward correction. The Lincoln Institute and the Federal Reserve's figures use the same basic approach, relying on official estimates of construction costs and housing prices. The one outlier is the PLACES lab estimate, which uses a machine learning model but gives a single-year result that tracks with the four cost approach lines.

Long story short, I found numerous persuasive criticisms of the cost approach. Ultimately, I think Smith's estimate is most likely closest to the truth. Let's dig into Larson, Albouy, and the Federal Reserve figures to understand why.

Predictions For 2022

February 01, 2022 · Original source

YGLESIAS PREDICTIONS 1. Democrats lose both houses of Congress (90%) HOLD 2. Democrats lose at least two Senate seats (80%) HOLD 3. Democrats lose fewer than six Senate seats (80%) HOLD 4. Nancy Pelosi announces retirement plans (70%) HOLD 5. Stephen Breyer does not retire (60%) N/A 6. Some version of Build Back Better passes (60%) HOLD 7. Joe Biden is still president (90%) HOLD 8. At least one Biden cabinet-rank official resigns (70%) HOLD 9. No military conflict between the PRC and Taiwan (a worryingly low 90%) HOLD 10. New U.S. sanctions on Russia (70%) HOLD 11. Saudi Arabia and Israel establish diplomatic relations (60%) SELL to 50% 12. Fewer U.S. Covid deaths in 2022 than in 2021 (80%) BUY to 90% 13. Emmanuel Macron re-elected (60%) HOLD 14. Traffic light coalition exploits loopholes to get around the constitutional debt brake (70%) HOLD 15. No recession in 2021 (90%) SELL to 80% 16. Liz Cheney loses primary (80%) HOLD 17. Some version of USICA passes Congress (70%) HOLD 18. Lula elected president of Brazil (60%) SELL to 50% 19. China officially abandons Covid Zero (70%) HOLD 20. Fewer U.S. Covid-19 deaths in 2022 than in 2020 (80%) BUY to 90% 21. Additional booster shots of mRNA vaccines authorized for seniors (80%) HOLD 22. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is below 6% (70%) BUY to 80% 23. November 2022 year-on-year CPI growth is above 4% (70%) SELL to 50% 24. The Fed ends up doing more than its currently forecast three interest rate hikes (60%) HOLD 25. Russia does not invade Ukraine (60%) HOLD 26. Viktor Orbán loses power in Hungary (60%) HOLD 27. Sinn Fein becomes the largest party in the Northern Ireland assembly (60%) HOLD 28. The U.S. and Canada reach an agreement on softwood lumber (70%) HOLD 29. Democrats go down at least one governor on net (60%) HOLD 30. The unemployment rate stays between 4 and 5% (70%) SELL to 60% if you mean 12/22, to 40% if you mean it never gets outside that range at all

Yglesias is mostly forecasting things he understands much better than I do, so I’m mostly holding. I’ll go hard on “fewer US COVID deaths in 2022 than previous years” because Omicron seems less deadly and there’s less “dry tinder” of unvaccinated people; I could be wrong if a non-Omicron lineage spits out a really severe new variant. I’m pretty confused by Matt predicting high inflation for next year; my understanding is the Fed and markets predict lower; I totally admit Matt knows more about inflation than I do but in order to make things interesting I’ll bet against him anyway. I’m equally confused about his prediction of a pretty narrow band of unemployment rates; if I understand right, last month was already outside his band (3.9%) and so he’s betting no future month will repeat that. Again, Matt knows more econ than I do but I’ve sold anyway.

The Long Term Future Fund2 mentions across 2 issues

The Long Term Future Fund is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 08, 2023 and March 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Long Term Future Fund"; "Our current impact market has five partners: The Long Term Future Fund". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, ACX Grants, impact market.

Article page: The Long Term Future Fund
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 08, 2023
Last seen: March 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Apply For An ACX Grant (2024) December 08, 2023
ACX Grants Followup Impact Market March 07, 2024

ACX Grants 2 shared issues
ACX Grants 2 shared issues
impact market 2 shared issues
Manifund 2 shared issues
Rachel 2 shared issues

Source context

Apply For An ACX Grant (2024)

December 08, 2023 · Original source

The Long Term Future Fund

Inline links: The Long Term Future Fund

Long Term Future Fund and Survival and Flourishing Fund focus on the long-term future, including but not limited to AI safety, forecasting, and long-termist community building. EA Infrastructure Fund focuses on EA community-building. You can find previous lists of grants funded by LTFF, EAIF, SFF, and ACXG.

Inline links: LTFF, EAIF, SFF, ACXG

Final oracular funders will operate on a model where they treat retrospective awards the same as prospective awards, multiplied by a probability of success. For example, suppose LTFF would give a $20,000 grant to a proposal for an AI safety conference, which they think has a 50% chance of going well. Instead, an investor buys the impact certificate for that proposal, waits until it goes well, and then sells it back to LTFF. They will pay $40,000 for the certificate, since it’s twice as valuable as it was back when it was just a proposal with a 50% success chance.

Apply For An ACX Grant (2024)

March 07, 2024 · Original source

Convert a hybrid car to chip wood and generate electricity. David Denkenberger works on projects to help humankind survive after global technological collapse. This is one of them: he wants $25K to convert hybrid cars into electrical generators. We didn’t fund this because we’re not sure how a successful result translates to anyone except David Denkenberger knowing how to do this in the case of a technological collapse, but I would be happy to buy an impact cert if someone believed they could make this public enough that the average small community of survivors would be able to take advantage of it. …and 39 others, hopefully more by the time you read this. Even if you’re not interested in investing, I still think it’s fun to browse through some of these and see what kinds of wacky ideas people have. III. Technical Details Remember, an impact market is like a stock market or VC ecosystem for charity. Investors fund projects, and then big philanthropists play the role of an IPO or final acquirer, funding successful projects in a way that gives value back to the investors. A toy example: Suppose I rejected a proposal to grant $50,000 to lobby for an animal rights law in Norway - not because I’m against animal rights, but because I believe the lobbying won’t work. You disagree with me and think this could work really well, so you invest $25,000 to buy 50% of its shares, and someone else buys the other half. The team lobbies for the law. I was wrong about their proposal, the law gets passed, and it’s great. You sell the impact certificates to an animal rights charity, who decide that if they were trying to get a law like this passed ex ante, they would be willing to spend up to $75,000 on it. They have a good sense of this because they fund animal rights proposals all the time. They pay $75,000 to the holders of the certificates, so you and the other buyer each get $37,500, a 50% profit. Obviously this depends on having big philanthropists willing to cooperate with this new system. Our current impact market has five partners: The Long Term Future Fund, The EA Infrastructure Fund, The Survival And Flourishing Fund, The Animal Welfare Fund, and future rounds of ACX Grants. That means if you buy an impact certificate today, you can try selling it to one of those funders later, after the project is done. Each of these charities has specific things they fund, so you might want to check their past history before trusting them to buy one of your certificates. Impact markets are pretty new. We ran a test round last year and it went well, but this round is a bit more complicated and has some new moving parts. Along with the issue where you won’t get real money back, please be aware of the following possible risks: You think your project did great work, but I (or our other funders) don’t find it interesting, don’t buy it, and the certificates go to $0. There are only five funders, and most of them are in pretty specific areas, so you might have only one or two possible buyers, and if they disagree with you, you’re out of luck.

The Survival and Flourishing Fund2 mentions across 2 issues

The Survival and Flourishing Fund is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between December 08, 2023 and March 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Survival and Flourishing Fund (negotiations ongoing)"; "Our current impact market has five partners: ... The Survival And Flourishing Fund". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, ACX Grants, impact market.

Article page: The Survival and Flourishing Fund
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: December 08, 2023
Last seen: March 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Apply For An ACX Grant (2024) December 08, 2023
ACX Grants Followup Impact Market March 07, 2024

ACX Grants 2 shared issues
ACX Grants 2 shared issues
impact market 2 shared issues
Manifund 2 shared issues
Rachel 2 shared issues

Source context

December 08, 2023 · Original source

The Survival and Flourishing Fund (negotiations ongoing)

Inline links: The Survival and Flourishing Fund

Response To Alexandros Contra Me On Ivermectin

March 07, 2024 · Original source

Convert a hybrid car to chip wood and generate electricity. David Denkenberger works on projects to help humankind survive after global technological collapse. This is one of them: he wants $25K to convert hybrid cars into electrical generators. We didn’t fund this because we’re not sure how a successful result translates to anyone except David Denkenberger knowing how to do this in the case of a technological collapse, but I would be happy to buy an impact cert if someone believed they could make this public enough that the average small community of survivors would be able to take advantage of it. …and 39 others, hopefully more by the time you read this. Even if you’re not interested in investing, I still think it’s fun to browse through some of these and see what kinds of wacky ideas people have. III. Technical Details Remember, an impact market is like a stock market or VC ecosystem for charity. Investors fund projects, and then big philanthropists play the role of an IPO or final acquirer, funding successful projects in a way that gives value back to the investors. A toy example: Suppose I rejected a proposal to grant $50,000 to lobby for an animal rights law in Norway - not because I’m against animal rights, but because I believe the lobbying won’t work. You disagree with me and think this could work really well, so you invest $25,000 to buy 50% of its shares, and someone else buys the other half. The team lobbies for the law. I was wrong about their proposal, the law gets passed, and it’s great. You sell the impact certificates to an animal rights charity, who decide that if they were trying to get a law like this passed ex ante, they would be willing to spend up to $75,000 on it. They have a good sense of this because they fund animal rights proposals all the time. They pay $75,000 to the holders of the certificates, so you and the other buyer each get $37,500, a 50% profit. Obviously this depends on having big philanthropists willing to cooperate with this new system. Our current impact market has five partners: The Long Term Future Fund, The EA Infrastructure Fund, The Survival And Flourishing Fund, The Animal Welfare Fund, and future rounds of ACX Grants. That means if you buy an impact certificate today, you can try selling it to one of those funders later, after the project is done. Each of these charities has specific things they fund, so you might want to check their past history before trusting them to buy one of your certificates. Impact markets are pretty new. We ran a test round last year and it went well, but this round is a bit more complicated and has some new moving parts. Along with the issue where you won’t get real money back, please be aware of the following possible risks: You think your project did great work, but I (or our other funders) don’t find it interesting, don’t buy it, and the certificates go to $0. There are only five funders, and most of them are in pretty specific areas, so you might have only one or two possible buyers, and if they disagree with you, you’re out of luck.

TOGETHER2 mentions across 2 issues

TOGETHER is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 09, 2022 and February 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the big COVID drug trials (TOGETHER, ACTIV-6, COVID-OUT)"; "TOGETHER is missing ‘time since symptom onset’ for 23% of its patients". It most often appears alongside Alexandros Marinos, 2006 Ioannidis paper, ACTIV-6.

Article page: TOGETHER
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: October 09, 2022
Last seen: February 01, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 245 October 09, 2022
Response To Alexandros Contra Me On Ivermectin February 01, 2023

Alexandros Marinos 2 shared issues
2006 Ioannidis paper 1 shared issues
ACTIV-6 1 shared issues
ACTIV-6 1 shared issues
Alexandros 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 245

October 09, 2022 · Original source

3: Alexandros Marinos continues his critique of my ivermectin post, and his broader ivermectin advocacy. I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but I commit to writing a summary and response within four months of him being done, which as far as I can tell is not yet (yes, four months is a long time, but it’s a long series and I’m really busy this winter). His most recent post argues that the big COVID drug trials (TOGETHER, ACTIV-6, COVID-OUT) haven’t made their data public, and offers to donate $25,000 to a charity of my choice if I can get them to do so. I have no idea how to do this, but I agree that they should; if anyone from these trials wants to get in touch with me and talk about it and I would be interested in hearing what’s going on.

Inline links: continues, my ivermectin post

February 01, 2023 · Original source

Alexandros doesn’t dispute that one of Cadegiani’s trial had some impossible-seeming statistics, but says we shouldn’t jump to allegations of fraud, shouldn’t let this unduly influence our opinion of Cadegiani’s other trials, and also accuses Kyle Sheldrick, the person who discovered the discrepancy, of doing other bad things. My responses: Alexandros’ Point 1 is fair-ish. Since this person appears to be commiting pretty substantial fraud and doing some strange things, I thought it was useful to highlight the ways in which he is weird and suspicious, rather than the ways he is prestigious and impressive. But probably I went too far in this. His Point 2/3 is completely fair, and I’m sorry for getting this wrong. I may have unthinkingly copied it from forbetterscience.com, which made this mistake before me, or I might have just failed at reading comprehension on this translated Portugese-language article I linked. In either case, I apologize to Cadegiani. This is already on my Mistakes page as of June 2022 when Alexandros wrote his original article. His Point 4 is correct, although based on information that came out after I wrote my article. All that was available in English when I wrote was that the Brazilian government was considering accusing Cadegiani of crimes against humanity. I think I did an okay job noting that I was guessing at their reasoning (rather than reporting a known fact), and as written I did make clear that I thought he was innocent of the specific charge. Still, I appreciate the clarification. His Point 5 is - I do feel like Alexandros is having a sort of missing mood on the fact that one of Cadegiani’s big pro-ivermectin studies contains impossible data. While this is not proof of fraud or incompetence, it is some Bayesian evidence for both. And while fraud or incompetence in one of your studies supporting ivermectin is not proof that your other studies supporting ivermectin are also fraudulent/incompetent, it is, again, Bayesian evidence. Alexandros makes a big deal of there being four corrections in the BMJ article attacking Cadegiani, as if now the BMJ has admitted they were wrong all along, whereas these were mostly on unrelated details and the BMJ definitely did not correct the quotes about how his study was “an ethical cesspool of violations” or how “in the entire history of the National Health Council, there has never been such disrespect for ethical standards and research participants in the country”1. I feel like if his Science Olympiad medals are an important part of the story, these kinds of things are an important part too. Still, several of Alexandros’ points were entirely correct, and I appreciate the corrections. Babalola et al (still disagree with Alexandros) OE Babalola (I incorrectly wrote this name as “Babaloba” in the original) did a Nigerian study which found that ivermectin decreased the amount of time it took before people tested negative for COVID. I described this study as: This was a Nigerian RCT comparing 21 patients on low-dose ivermectin, 21 patients on high-dose ivermectin, and 20 patients on a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, a combination antiviral which later studies found not to work for COVID and which might as well be considered a placebo. Primary outcome, as usual, was days until a negative PCR test. High dose ivermectin was 4.65 days, low dose was 6 days, control was 9.15, p = 0.035. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, part of the team that detects fraud in ivermectin papers, is not a fan of this one. He doesn’t say there what means, but elsewhere he tweets [this figure highlighting how the study has “Numerous impossible numbers”] I think his point is that if you have 21 people, it’s impossible to have 50% of them have headache, because that would be 10.5. If 10 people have a headache, it would be 47.6%; if 11, 52%. So something is clearly wrong here. Seems like a relatively minor mistake, and Meyerowitz-Katz stops short of calling fraud, but it’s not a good look. I’m going to be slightly uncomfortable with this study without rejecting it entirely, and move on. Alexandros calls this The Sullying Of Babalola Et Al, and says I “followed Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz off a cliff” by unfairly “lambasting” the innocent Babalola. I “[made] a mountain out of a molehill”. Alexandros quotes a commenter who found that the most likely explanation for the “impossible numbers” in Babaloba was missing data, and notes that usually-anti-ivermectin researcher Kyle Sheldrick had evaluated the raw data and found no fraud. Alexandros concludes: As far as I can tell, Scott discarded a good study here, and besmirched the reputation of the researchers by amplifying flimsy allegations that were known to be off-base at the time that the article was written. I don’t think I did anything especially wrong here. There was a chart that didn’t make sense. It turned out not to make sense because some data was missing. I said “[this] seems like a relatively minor mistake, and Meyerowitz-Katz stops short of calling fraud, but it’s not a good look. I’m going to be slightly uncomfortable with this study without rejecting it entirely, and move on.” I was right that it was a minor mistake, I was right that it wasn’t fraud, and I was right not to reject the study. I didn’t have the exact explanation (missing data), so I did not mention it, but I think I made the correct guess about the sort of explanation it was. I don’t understand why Alexandros acts like I said the study wasn’t worth keeping, or that there was no innocent explanation, or that I was accusing the researchers of fraud, when in fact I said the opposite of all those things, pretty explicitly.2 Carvallo et al (Alexandros 25% right) This was an Argentine study. I described it as: This one has all the disadvantages of Espitia-Hernandez, plus it’s completely unreadable. It’s hard to figure out how many patients there were, whether it was an RCT or not, etc. It looks like maybe there were 42 experimentals and 14 controls, and the controls were about 10x more likely to die than the experimentals. Seems pretty bad. On the other hand, another Carvallo paper was retracted because of fraud: apparently the hospital where the study supposedly took place said it never happened there. I can’t tell if this is a different version of that study, a pilot study for that study, or a different study by the same guy. Anyway, it’s too confusing to interpret, shows implausible results, and is by a known fraudster, so I feel okay about ignoring this one. Alexandros responds here. Attempting to summarize his points: He agrees this study is extremely confusing.

Inline links: forbetterscience.com, this translated Portugese-language article, 1, not a fan of this one, this figure, The Sullying Of Babalola Et Al, 2, another Carvallo paper was retracted, here

The control groups in high-worm-prevalence-area studies had no more deaths than in low-worm-prevalence-area studies. If the worms were killing people in the control groups (who ivermectin was then saving in the treatment groups) you would expect more deaths. You can find arguments for all these points at the link. (One additional thing Alexandros does that I really like: he compares the Strongyloides hypothesis - as an attempt to explain why these studies keep getting such different results - to other hypotheses. For example, studies in Latin America get negative results more often than others. This really feels like confronting the real question. He finds that Latin American studies do find lower efficacy for ivermectin than the other mostly Asian studies, and hypothesizes that this is because ivermectin is very popular in Latin America, the “control” group illicitly takes it without telling the researchers, and so these studies are inadvertantly comparing two ivermectin groups. This is another clever and elegant theory. Unfortunately, the recent spate of negative American studies sink it6. Still, I agree there is a strong geographic element here; worms are one possible explanation, but there are others - including the scientific culture in different countries. I appreciate Alexandros highlighting how much this is true.) I asked Dr. Bitterman for his thoughts. He reiterates that although steroids are one major cause of Strongyloides hyperinfection, another is eosinopenia, a decrease in the immune cells that fight parasites. COVID can cause eosinopenia directly, so just because a COVID patient didn’t get steroids, or was only on steroids for a short period, doesn’t prove that the patient couldn’t have had hyperinfection. On the mixing of different sources to get Strongyloides prevalence data, he said: As mentioned in the paper, when available we attempted to granulate by regional prevalence. This was often not possible because robust data did not available for a given country. Brazil is a large country (and multiple different studies in our analysis were in Brazil) with variability and Paula was a robust study. We decided to attempt to granulate instead of stacking the Brazil countries with the same prevalence even though they are in very different regions. His re-analysis is a crude one, and he often switches between using that analysis and the ecological model study. At the time of out paper's publication, the ecological model was not available. I offered to re-do the whole analysis with that study's raw data with a mutually agreed upon methodology, which we have not fully ironed down yet. On the long delay before hyperinfection kills: I don't think it happens in 1 or 2 weeks. But 3-4 weeks (within almost all study durations) is certainly not unheard of (again, without being treated). Even 1/3rd of the [untreated animals in a marmoset study Alexandros cites] died within the range of the study durations." On the more general argument: I have a higher credence of the effect modifier than he does. Perhaps the main thing I don't think he fully appreciates is just how few deaths need to be explained by this in order to substantially shift the RR. Even if this is the case for just a handful of control group deaths, the RR change is not trivial simply because of how low events the entire supposed benefit was in the first place. Furthermore, the new trials (ACTIV-6 400, ACTIV-6 600, COVID-OUT), while they all have very low mortality rates, all tip the needle in favor of the hypothesis. As expected, in the USA where the prevalence is near 0, all the deaths of those trials were in the ivermectin group (again, small event rates though). I could re-do the analysis with the new data even with his critiques of how he thinks it should be done (which is highly debatable) but I didn't end up doing it because at this point it would be an historical debate since the world has moved on from the topic. There are other points of course, there's quibbles line by line. I find Alexandros’ adjustment for Brazil somewhat convincing - not necessarily as a good adjustment, just in the sense that some adjustment needed to be done. I think the broader point is that results on the border of “statistical significance” often appear or go away depending on ambiguous decisions about coding single cases. Alexandros realizes this and includes a more gestalt style chart directly showing the correlation, which he says goes below the significance threshold when you recode the Brazilian studies. This chart seems to be missing some studies which might change its conclusions; it was made by a third party and Alexandros is going to get back to me with more information. Dr. Bitterman adds that more recent American studies strengthen his hypothesis. More discussion with Dr. Bitterman has also helped me better understand the context of this theory. Ivermectin does worst in studies of intermediate clinical endpoints: hospitalization, ICU admission, recovery time. It does best in studies of viral clearance rate and mortality. Viral clearance rate is a weak preclinical endpoint: not only is it especially susceptible to biases and file drawer effects, but it’s not that interesting unless it affects later clinical outcomes; many drugs change secondary endpoints but fail to change the things we care. Mortality is (usually) a strong and important endpoint; apparent positive results of ivermectin here require an explanation. The Strongyloides hypothesis tries to provide it. But I erred on my earlier post by holding it up as “the” explanation for a large and heterogenous group of studies which were mostly looking at endpoints other than mortality, or as a counter to ivmmeta’s analysis which found positive results everywhere for everything through statistical incompetence. I think I implicitly believed a stronger version of the worm hypothesis - that even in places without literal Strongyloides literally killing you, some people had some parasitic worms that were holding them back, ivermectin killed those worms, and that made them healthier overall and better able to deal with COVID. But nobody has asserted or defended that hypothesis and there’s no evidence for it. When I asked Dr. Bitterman, he pointed out that the opposite was at least as credible: parasitic worms depress the immune system, but immune overreaction is a major cause of death in COVID, so getting rid of them could make things worse rather than better. The original post should have explained this hypothesis better, devoted less emphasis to it, and focused more on publication bias and other issues that could explain the overall result. In some cases, these issues would have shed more light on the mortality statistics too. On my original post, I wrote: Parasitic worms are a significant confounder in some ivermectin studies, such that they made them get a positive result even when honest and methodologically sound: 50% confidence In retrospect this is framed too weakly - “significant” in “some” studies is compatible with irrelevant overall. Still, sticking to the spirit of what I meant, I think I would lower this guess to more like 35% now , and lower my overall estimate of how much of the mystery it explains even further. I’m not an expert on this, you shouldn’t care about my exact probability, and I’m only mentioning it to communicate clearly and try to hold myself accountable. V. Publication Bias Alexandros has various arguments against funnel plots in general, and Dr. Bitterman’s funnel plot in particular. Some of these arguments are reasonable, but taken together they would discredit 95 - 100% of all funnel plots everywhere. Trying to destroy the whole institution of funnel plots just because one of them disagrees with your hypothesis is . . . honestly a move I have to respect. I agree that these provide Bayesian evidence, rather than 100% irrefutable evidence, of publication bias, and need to be considered in the context of everything else going on. After doing that, I still think they’re publication bias. That makes publication bias more important. In the original post, I included this funnel plot from Dr. Bitterman: In case you haven’t seen one of these before: this plots how big an effect the study found (horizontal axis) against study size (vertical axis). Studies that find ivermectin had no effect are at the center (RR = 1), studies that find a strong curative effect are to the left, studies that find a strong harmful effect are to the right. When all studies are good, we have no reason to expect a correlation between study size and ivermectin efficacy - any deviations from the true effect should be random. This would look like a triangle centered around the true effect of the drug, with an equal number of studies on both sides. When there is a lot of publication bias, we should expect that small studies get published only if they find exciting results, and big studies get published regardless (because a lot of work went into them, someone will want to publish them, and journals will accept them regardless of how exciting they are). So here you would expect to see big studies around zero, and an asymmetric tail of smaller studies heading in the more-exciting direction. This is what we see on Dr. Bitterman’s plot, suggesting strong publication bias for ivermectin results. Alexandros’ full counterargument is here. Trying to sum it up: Funnel plots can sometimes look deceptive, or be misreported, and are generally suspect.

Inline links: 6, studies of intermediate clinical endpoints, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rlgm!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F174e569d-8a2c-4c11-a2ff-d355f4bce5b1_1200x808.jpeg, here

You can read Alexandros’ criticisms of ACTIV-6 trial here (1, 2, 3, 4), and his criticisms of I-TECH here. I don’t think he’s criticized COVID-OUT yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

Inline links: 1, 2, 3, 4, here

TPOT2 mentions across 2 issues

TPOT is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 01, 2024 and February 20, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "mindlessly absorbing copious amounts of information on Twitter (mostly TPOT accounts)"; "When he arrived at TPOT, they fell upon him". It most often appears alongside AI corrigibility, AI lab, AI Safety.

Article page: TPOT
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: April 01, 2024
Last seen: February 20, 2025

Outbound links

https://jerseyjohn.substack.com/p/who-are-the-crazy-ones-on-tpot

Issue trail

Open Thread 323 April 01, 2024
Lives Of The Rationalist Saints February 20, 2025

AI corrigibility 1 shared issues
AI lab 1 shared issues
AI Safety 1 shared issues
Alignment Research Center 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 323

April 01, 2024 · Original source

A lowly data analyst with a background in economics, from Chicago IL. I placed bets on PredictIt during the 2016 election cycle and came out slightly behind after transaction fees, but otherwise have no formal forecasting experience. My "strategy" consisted of going with my gut (cue the Colbert clip) and skipping the questions where I had no prior information to go off of. I credit all success to luck and mindlessly absorbing copious amounts of information on Twitter (mostly TPOT accounts). If people want to contact me, they can do so at smallsingapore[at]gmail[dot]com (I'll respond more promptly, I promise haha).

Inline links: smallsingapore[at]gmail[dot]com

Lives Of The Rationalist Saints

February 20, 2025 · Original source

St. Michael Beisotsukai was sent by Pope Eliezer LXXVII to evangelize to the postrationalists. When he arrived at TPOT, they fell upon him, taunting “If you are so rational, then predict the way we are going to kill you”, for however he predicted, they planned to kill him through some other method. But St. Michael gave a probability distribution across all common methods of execution that also left substantial probability mass on unknown unknowns, and followed it up with an eloquent lecture on out-of-model error. The postrationalists were so impressed that they converted on the spot and didn’t kill him at all - but this was fine, because St. Michael’s distribution had included a 10% chance that this would happen, and later evidence from other missionaries demonstrated this to be well-calibrated.

Tract2 mentions across 2 issues

Tract is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 10, 2023 and April 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "I'm the cofounder of Tract , a startup trying to make it easier to reason about planning risk"; "The Tract team is in the Bay this month". It most often appears alongside Twitter, UK, #EEGManyLabs.

Article page: Tract
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: November 10, 2023
Last seen: April 01, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Followup: Quests And Requests November 10, 2023
Open Thread 323 April 01, 2024

Twitter 2 shared issues
UK 2 shared issues
#EEGManyLabs 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
@freeshreeda 1 shared issues

Source context

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping

November 10, 2023 · Original source

You'd really want to get an architect and building contractor on board ASAP, and probably also a land use attorney, since I'm a landscape and land planning professional and not an architecture expert. But I might be able to help you get started.

I'm the cofounder of Tract, a startup trying to make it easier to reason about planning risk. One of the things I'd like to prototype, and which might dovetail rather nicely with §7, is a modern approach to visual preferences survey: a 'Tinder for buildings', somewhere local communities can vote on and discuss various architectural styles. We can use generative AI methods to slot new facades into existing streetscapes, analyse the data, and see if we can find meaningful clusters that pin down quantitively what a 'local vernacular' actually consists of.

Inline links: Tract

Haha, no, that would never get traction.

Open Thread 323

April 01, 2024 · Original source

The Tract team is in the Bay this month and looking to connect with “YIMBY angel investors who are interested in tech solutions to vetocracy” as well as YIMBY campaigners, urban planners, and zoning nerds. If that’s you, contact them at jamie[at]buildwithtract[dot]com

Inline links: Tract

Triplebyte2 mentions across 2 issues

Triplebyte is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 24, 2025 and January 12, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Ammon Bartram from Triplebyte"; "SSC was proud to advertise Triplebyte, a company that that helped guide software engineers through the job application process". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants meetup, Ammon Bartram, Astralcodexten.

Article page: Triplebyte
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: March 24, 2025
Last seen: January 12, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 374 March 24, 2025
Open Thread 416 January 12, 2026

ACX Grants meetup 1 shared issues
Ammon Bartram 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten bulletin board 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 374

March 24, 2025 · Original source

1: Tabula Bio (including Michael Poon from polygenic screening work, Ammon Bartram from Triplebyte, etc) is working on frontier foundation models in genomics. They’ve outlined their theses at the link and are looking for ML people who think the future of genomics is in statistical methods rather than expert systems.

Inline links: Tabula Bio

Open Thread 416

January 12, 2026 · Original source

2: In the old days, SSC was proud to advertise Triplebyte, a company that that helped guide software engineers through the job application process, most notably by doing a single first-round coding interview trusted by all their corporate partners. Triplebyte pivoted so many times that it became something else entirely and eventually fell apart. Some of the old employees have asked me to advertise that they’re trying to resurrect the original vision at Otherbranch (though they stress that they don’t have formal rights to any Triplebyte IP, that they have a different founder, etc). They’re mostly asking me to advertise this job listing for a technical sourcer, but are always interested in hearing from coders seeking jobs and employers seeking coders.

Inline links: Otherbranch, a technical sourcer, coders seeking jobs, employers seeking coders

Tsinghua2 mentions across 2 issues

Tsinghua is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 06, 2022 and December 09, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tsinghua administrator who came up with the alumni promotion scheme"; "including those loyal to him because of the Tsinghua connection"; "Some universities like Tsinghua also have extremely low acceptance rates". It most often appears alongside America, US, 417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire.

Article page: Tsinghua
Mention count: 2
Issue count: 2
First seen: April 06, 2022
Last seen: December 09, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping April 06, 2022
Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise December 09, 2022

America 2 shared issues
US 2 shared issues
417th Marquess of Cornwallshireshire 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues

Source context

April 06, 2022 · Original source

Or maybe Xi used his Shanghai support to get absolute power, and then once he got it he turned on his old supporters. 3: Tsinghua University Has a Really Good Alumni Relations Department? I realize this is a weird thing to attribute the rise of a dictator of the world’s largest country to, but this is sort of the conclusion of The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics.

Inline links: The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics

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

I realize this is a weird thing to attribute the rise of a dictator of the world’s largest country to, but this is sort of the conclusion of The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics.

Inline links: The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics

Highlights From The Comments On Bobos In Paradise

December 09, 2022 · Original source

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.

t.me1 mentions across 1 issues

t.me is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 01, 2026 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Group Link: https://t.me/+gDVZ8gMTthQ4OTdi". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Reference entry: t.me
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 01, 2026
Last seen: April 01, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places April 01, 2026

1108 R St 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner Street 1 shared issues
131 Colonie Center 1 shared issues
18 An Nhơn 3, An Hải, Sơn Trà, Đà Nẵng 1 shared issues
2, Church Street, Brigade Rd 1 shared issues

Source context

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places

April 01, 2026 · Original source

Contact: Srijita Contact Info: srijitak[.]cmi[@]gmail[.]com Time: Sunday, May 10th, 3:15 PM Location: Myx at Holland Village Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PH58Q6W+QQ Group Link: Two groups, one at https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/N42bMYFJBBRpkzKqX and one at https://t.me/LessWrong_Singapore Notes: Preferrably RSVP on LessWrong if you’re coming. The reservation at MyX is till 5:30 pm, and I will cover snacks till then. If you’re planning to stay for dinner as well (I am), please email me so I can extend the reservation. Dinner will be at your own expense.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PH58Q6W+QQ, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/N42bMYFJBBRpkzKqX, https://t.me/LessWrong_Singapore

Contact: Milli Contact Info: acx-meetups[@]martinmilbradt[.]de Time: Sunday, May 10th, 2:00 PM Location: Big lawn at the center of Humboldthain Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F4MG9WP+36 Group Link: https://t.me/+tVWSc66-0UM5MzA6 Notes: The group link is just for this event. If you want I can add you to the general Rationality Berlin Group on the event.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F4MG9WP+36, https://t.me/+tVWSc66-0UM5MzA6

Contact: Daniel Contact Info: daniel[.]boettger[@]gmail[.]com Time: Monday, April 6th, 6:00 PM Location: Gustav Theodor Fechner House (Scherlstraße 2) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F3J89QV+M2 Group Link: https://t.me/+gDVZ8gMTthQ4OTdi Notes: Please arrive between 16:00 Uhr (4pm) and 20:00 Uhr (8pm). Doorbell says “Böttger”. Food and drinks will be provided, feel free to add. If you want to crash/sleepover please say so in advance since bedding is limited. https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/share?slt=1ATMtfpghiDBnGZPnswsv5JqUvbn3r85e8pEvA7WvIOZ2okhEY3KLLTMhViKwgqRXy-e-O3gGqF9XvsvKdEkaw6MtoY0vzMi5a7lZcesPrCxL2YYaKlVBACOV&pli=1

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F3J89QV+M2, https://t.me/+gDVZ8gMTthQ4OTdi, https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/share?slt=1ATMtfpghiDBnGZPnswsv5JqUvbn3r85e8pEvA7WvIOZ2okhEY3KLLTMhViKwgqRXy-e-O3gGqF9XvsvKdEkaw6MtoY0vzMi5a7lZcesPrCxL2YYaKlVBACOV&pli=1

Tabula Bio1 mentions across 1 issues

Tabula Bio is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 24, 2025 and March 24, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tabula Bio (including Michael Poon from polygenic screening work, Ammon Bartram from Triplebyte, etc) is working on frontier foundation models in genomics". It most often appears alongside Ammon Bartram, Astralcodexten, Astralcodexten bulletin board.

Reference entry: Tabula Bio
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 24, 2025
Last seen: March 24, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 374 March 24, 2025

Ammon Bartram 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten bulletin board 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Discord 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten subreddit 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 374

March 24, 2025 · Original source

1: Tabula Bio (including Michael Poon from polygenic screening work, Ammon Bartram from Triplebyte, etc) is working on frontier foundation models in genomics. They’ve outlined their theses at the link and are looking for ML people who think the future of genomics is in statistical methods rather than expert systems.

Inline links: Tabula Bio

tabulabio1 mentions across 1 issues

tabulabio is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 03, 2025 and July 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Open Thread 374 from tabulabio". It most often appears alongside 23andme, @alextisyoung, Aborigines.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability July 03, 2025

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability

July 03, 2025 · Original source

I feel like this is such a blind-spot for human genomics, as it's always about the latest and greatest AI/ML method to try and get some information out, when it's the underlying data which just sucks and doesn't have a hope in actually being linked to function. There was even a point on an Open Thread a few weeks back (Open Thread 374 from tabulabio) asking for people to get in touch about Frontier Foundation Genomic models, with the focus being on fancy new ML architectures.

TAF1 mentions across 1 issues

TAF is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "tensions between the TAF and the government". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: TAF
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

Abdullah Gul 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
Ak 1 shared issues
AKP 1 shared issues
Anatolian 1 shared issues

Source context

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars

March 18, 2021 · Original source

The Turkish Armed Forces were Ataturk's power base, and was mostly made of well-educated Europhiles like himself. When he moved Turkey toward democracy, he charged the military with ensuring it never deviated too far from his original vision. But Turkey was demographically dominated by poor Muslim peasants and naturally tended towards Communism or Islamism. So the cadence of Turkish democracy was a gradual drift towards one of these extremes, followed by the military staging a coup to undo the damage and restore secular cosmopolitan liberalism. There were four such coups between 1960 and 2000 - including "coups by memo", where the military would say "let's pretend we just held a coup" and the civilian government, unwilling to risk a real coup, would resign en masse.

The military took matters into their own hands: the [Turkish Armed Forces] sent a contingent of 20 tanks and 15 armored vehicles through Sincan as a symbolic warning against the RP-led borough government. Deputy chief of general staff Cevik Bir characterized this as an act of "recalbrating" democracy. The rolling of tanks through Sincan would trigger a set of events, later dubbed the "soft coup", which culminated in the RP's fall from power.

"What would a real center-right liberal do?" Erdogan asked himself again, and talked to Brussels about accelerating Turkey's EU bid. The EU said that Turkey needed to reduce the military's role in civilian government and maybe put some measures in place to have fewer coups. "All according to plan", Erdogan presumably muttered, rubbing his hands together gleefully, and proposed measures to limit the power of the Turkish Armed Forces. The military wasn't thrilled about this. But Erdogan had a 2/3 majority in Parliament, and was riding a wave of popular adulation after causing an unprecedented massive economic boom, and everyone in Turkey really wanted to join the EU and would never forgive the military for holding it up, and Erdogan seemed like such a good center-rightist liberal who had learned his lesson about the whole Islamism thing. The military grudgingly agreed to let their power be curtailed.

TalkOrigins1 mentions across 1 issues

TalkOrigins is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2021 and May 10, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "TalkOrigins' massive alphabetized database of arguments against creationist claims". It most often appears alongside "How do you do, fellow kids?", #NotAllMen, #TheResistance.

Reference entry: TalkOrigins
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 10, 2021
Last seen: May 10, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars May 10, 2021

"How do you do, fellow kids?" 1 shared issues
#NotAllMen 1 shared issues
#TheResistance 1 shared issues
1950s - 1990s 1 shared issues
2000s 1 shared issues

Source context

May 10, 2021 · Original source

This corresponds to the middle and end of the Internet atheist movement, and some of the same dynamics I discussed in my article there apply here as well, especially the slow shift from 2000s-era "argument culture" to 2010s-era "echo culture". The very early Internet had pro-argument norms; it was your god-given right to march into any blog or forum you wanted and tell the people there why they were wrong. Partly this was the inevitable effect of everyone on the early Internet being the sort of programming nerds willing to try this weird new invention. And partly it came from a utopian philosophy where the Internet was going to be a new medium that united humanity regardless of nation or creed in a great Republic Of The Intellect, or whatever. Maybe it was even partly due to naivete - a lot of people hadn't really met anyone who thought differently from them before, and assumed that changing people’s minds would be really easy. For whatever reason, the early Internet was a place for polite but insistent debate, and early websites centered around the needs of a debating community. The most obvious example was TalkOrigins' massive alphabetized database of arguments against creationist claims, with the explicit goal of helping people win debates with creationists.

Inline links: massive alphabetized database of arguments against creationist claims

Internet feminism began right smack in the midst of this transition, and you can find relics from both sides. The most significant artifact of feminist argument culture is the Geek Feminism Wiki (2009 - 2012), which was doing something vaguely similar to TalkOrigins - trying to put a lot of feminist thought in an easily accessible place. So for example, if someone didn't know what slut shaming was, or didn't think it was bad, you could show them the GFW page on slut-shaming which would educate them and maybe change their mind. I see similar things on a few other feminist websites, almost always from the same period; for example, Shakesville has a Feminism 101 section written in 2010.

Inline links: Geek Feminism Wiki, page on slut-shaming, Feminism 101

Talon1 mentions across 1 issues

Talon 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 "co-maintainer of the de-facto default Talon script-set". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

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

Outbound links

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

Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty

February 10, 2022 · Original source

#95: Make Programming By Voice More Practical I'm Michael Arntzenius (rntz.net) and I'd like $5-40K to work on making programming by voice more practical. Many programmers at some point suffer from repetitive strain injuries (RSI) that make typing difficult; I'm one. To mitigate this I use a tool called Talon that lets me control my computer by voice. Thanks to recent advances, voice control is increasingly practical, and voice programmers form a small but rapidly growing community. However, idioms and tools for coding by voice are in their infancy. I believe now is the right time to push hard on voice-oriented editing: the underlying voice recognition tech is ready, we have a creative, dedicated community willing to experiment with new approaches, and mature editor technology like language servers and online error-robust parsing (eg. tree-sitter) supports editing commands at a higher level than character-by-character. Specifically, this money could support me working part-time for 6 months ($5k) up to full time for 2 years ($40K). I could work on: contributing to Cursorless, the state-of-the-art open-source voice editing framework for VSCode; porting cursorless to other editors to increase its reach; incorporating ideas from recent research on structural editing and typed holes; and on my duties as co-maintainer of the de-facto default Talon script-set. If you're interested, contact me at daekharel@gmail.com.

Tammany Hall1 mentions across 1 issues

Tammany Hall is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 16, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the favored candidate of Tammany Hall, who saw George's radical economic ideas as a threat". It most often appears alongside "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment, 1886.

Reference entry: Tammany Hall
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 16, 2021
Last seen: April 16, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty April 16, 2021

"The Rent Is Too Damn High!" 1 shared issues
16th amendment 1 shared issues
1886 1 shared issues
1897 1 shared issues
Adam Perry 1 shared issues

Source context

April 16, 2021 · Original source

But he didn't just write a book. He also ran for Mayor of New York city in 1886, beating out some rando Republican named "Theodore Roosevelt," but ultimately losing to the favored candidate of Tammany Hall, who saw George's radical economic ideas as a threat to their well-oiled political machine (Andrew Yang take note). He ran again in 1897 but died just 4 days before the election, prompting a national outpouring of mourning. According to Ralph Gabriel's Course of American Democratic Thought, in New York alone 200,000 people came to see his body lying in repose, half of which had to be turned away. For context, that one crowd was roughly the size of 10% of the entire population of New York at the time.

Inline links: ran for Mayor of New York city in 1886, 10% of the entire population of New York at the time

Tarbell Fellowship1 mentions across 1 issues

Tarbell Fellowship is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2024 and February 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Tarbell Fellowship helps early career journalists cover high-impact topics". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 23andme, ACX.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

ACX Grants Results 2024 February 10, 2024

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

Source context

ACX Grants Results 2024

February 10, 2024 · Original source

Cillian Crosson, $32,000, for Tarbell Voices. The Tarbell Fellowship helps early career journalists cover high-impact topics; this grant will be primarily focused on their AI program. If you are (or would like to be) an early career journalist working on AI, check them out!

Inline links: The Tarbell Fellowship

Tarbell Voices1 mentions across 1 issues

Tarbell Voices is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2024 and February 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Cillian Crosson, $32,000, for Tarbell Voices. The Tarbell Fellowship helps early career journalists cover high-impact topics". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 23andme, ACX.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

ACX Grants Results 2024 February 10, 2024

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

Source context

ACX Grants Results 2024

February 10, 2024 · Original source

Cillian Crosson, $32,000, for Tarbell Voices. The Tarbell Fellowship helps early career journalists cover high-impact topics; this grant will be primarily focused on their AI program. If you are (or would like to be) an early career journalist working on AI, check them out!

Inline links: The Tarbell Fellowship

TaskRabbit1 mentions across 1 issues

TaskRabbit is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 02, 2026 and February 02, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "ClawTasks is TaskRabbit for AI agents". It most often appears alongside 4chan, Accelerando, Adele Lopez.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

Moltbook: After The First Weekend February 02, 2026

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

Source context

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

February 02, 2026 · Original source

ClawTasks is TaskRabbit for AI agents:

Inline links: ClawTasks

Tea Party1 mentions across 1 issues

Tea Party is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 09, 2021 and February 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tea Party/Trump on the Republican side". It most often appears alongside 1960s America, 1964 Civil Rights Act, Amazon.

Reference entry: Tea Party
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 09, 2021
Last seen: February 09, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: Why We're Polarized February 09, 2021

1960s America 1 shared issues
1964 Civil Rights Act 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American Political Science Association 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review: Why We're Polarized

February 09, 2021 · Original source

But after a bit of this he regains his footing and segues into a stronger argument that might give even conservatives some food for thought. Klein notes that although both Democrats and Republicans have some extremists in their coalition, the institutional Democrats seem to be doing a better job preventing them from gaining power. In a purely structural sense, without getting into whether you believe they're morally equivalent or whatever, the democratic socialists/Bernie Sanders seem to be an "insurrection" comparable to the Tea Party/Trump on the Republican side. But the mainstream neoliberal Republicans surrendered to the Tea Party and to Trump in rapid succession, and the mainstream neoliberal Democrats are still resisting. The Democrats' Tea Party equivalent is probably AOC, but she and her allies are still a small minority in the Democratic caucus. And the Dem presidential nomination went to Joe Biden, a moderate who wouldn't look out of place running for president in 1988 (in fact...). Why We're Polarized was published too early to mention Biden in this context, but we can count him as a correct prediction for its theory.

Teach to One: Math1 mentions across 1 issues

Teach to One: Math 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 "Teach to One: Math is a math program used in some schools". It most often appears alongside 10,000 hour rule, 2 Hour Learning, Inc, 2-hour Learning.

Reference entry: Teach to One: Math
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 27, 2025
Last seen: June 27, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

Your Review: Alpha School

June 27, 2025 · Original source

Leadership …and so many other things. 100% of MAP test questions are multiple choice. Where are the students learning deep thinking? What about the learning you get from small group discussions in a university seminar? I think Alpha’s answer to that concern is “that is what we do in the afternoon workshops”. I think that is a fine answer. How well do most schools teach those things as a baseline? Maybe Alpha does as good a job as other schools teaching public speaking. Maybe they do a better job? But what is missing is an objective measure of how well they do it. I can see that GT is making progress on the measurement of those softer skills by running workshops on “competitive academics” where the output is legible. The kids at that school don’t just learn to give talks, they give talks and then submit them to The Moth in an attempt to qualify for (and win) Storytelling Nights. They don’t just write persuasive essays graded by their teachers, they write persuasive essays and then submit them to national competitions. They don’t just learn the concepts of long term planning and strategy, they put them in practice playing go and chess and then compete against their peers and earn an elo ranking. I think it is a fair way to assess these things and leads to more accountability, but note that it is only happening at the GT school with ten kids, not the main Alpha campus, and the data points so far on whether it is working are very thin. Our friends at the flagship school are less convinced that the climbing wall workshop is teaching those “non-state mandated” academics that the core program misses. Another disappointment is “Alpha Writes”. The school was not happy with the third-party reading and writing apps out there and built their own. Alpha Reads is excellent. Alpha Writes (which is newer and just launched about a month ago) is not. I believe the school (and Joe Liemandt) understands that the product is not good enough, and they are taking it back to the drawing board, but for now I do not think the Alpha kids have any real edge versus traditional schools in their training on essay or creative writing skills. How do Alpha’s MAP score improvements compare to other selective private schools across the country? This is an important question for some parents. It is great if you can expect your 5th grader to advance 2.6x faster than they would at the local public school, but if you are planning to spend $40,000/year to send him to Alpha, your alternative is likely not the local public school. And if you are considering moving your family to Austin for the school, your alternative options are places like Horace Mann, Harvard-Westlake, and Lakeside. How does the 2.6x improvement that Alpha is delivering compare to those elite institutions? I have no idea. Unlike Alpha I have not found any elite school who has shared the MAP improvement rate for the students at their school. I expect these elite schools are very good for all the reasons the selective private school I sent my kids to before GT was good: They have a select group of peers, they have great teacher:student ratios, and they have incredible resources. I also expect most of these schools do NOT accelerate (I could very well be wrong here and would be happy to be corrected). If they are like the schools I am familiar with they allow their students to advance through the material at the “normal” pace, with the normal pedagogy, but, because those kids are so bright, that leaves them plenty of time for enrichment. Lakeside school (where Bill Gates’ children attended) has classes where students write and perform one-act plays at the school’s annual festival; advanced photography courses where students develop their own signature style and brand; Literature classes on Victorian novels, the Harlem Renaissance, and Chaos Theory; classes on abnormal psychology, architecture, blockchain, game theory and wilderness survival and leadership. I am sure by the time they graduate, students from Lakeside have learned much more than what is measured on a standardized MAP test. The problem is that it is difficult to measure those “extra things”, so you are left making the decision on vibes and prestige and marketing materials. (and meanwhile the objective numbers are held under lock and key by the elite schools themselves who have no incentive to share them when they are already winning on vibes). Is there any data on how different education programs are doing on improving MAP scores? I have not found any schools other than Alpha that share their data, but there are some “educational interventions” where the measured output was an improvement on MAP tests. Teach to One: Math is a math program used in some schools that is meant to be “personalized” using “technology-infused direct instruction”. Their studies find that students who follow their full program improve 23% faster on the math MAP scores, and students who are “exposed” to the program improve 12% faster. MAP Accelerator is a tool developed by Khan Academy. It claims that students who use it consistently for 30-minutes per week improve their MAP scores 9-43% faster than a control group. Both examples show that if you have technology-enabled personalized learning for extended periods of time improve MAP scores versus the norm. Both show that those results only happen when the students stick with the program. This shows that the “secret sauce” of Alpha’s 2-Hour Learning is not what and how they are teaching but rather: That they are using personalized technology-enhanced programing (when most schools aren’t)

Inline links: Lakeside school, Teach to One: Math, MAP Accelerator

teachers unions1 mentions across 1 issues

teachers unions is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 08, 2024 and November 08, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Teachers unions always vote Democrat". It most often appears alongside Biden/Harris administration, CDT, decision theory.

Reference entry: teachers unions
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 08, 2024
Last seen: November 08, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Game Theory Of Michigan Muslims November 08, 2024

Harris administration 1 shared issues
CDT 1 shared issues
decision theory 1 shared issues
Democrats 1 shared issues
Discord 1 shared issues

Source context

Game Theory Of Michigan Muslims

November 08, 2024 · Original source

Maybe there’s no such thing as “captive voting blocs” who are so clearly destined to vote for the Democrats that the party leadership ignores their priorities. Teachers unions always vote Democrat, and it’s hard to imagine them defecting and voting Republican, but the Democrats seem to work hard to satisfy them anyway. Maybe we should think of teachers unions’ ability to influence Democratic policy as not at all based on the plausibility of them threatening to vote Republican; maybe the Democrats factor in and reward them for their loyalty in a way that exactly compensates for the clout they lose for not being on the fence, meaning there’s no benefit to them making a big show of maybe breaking for Trump.

Team Trump1 mentions across 1 issues

Team Trump is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 21, 2026 and January 21, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Adams said he joined Team Trump". It most often appears alongside 4chan, 80,000 Hours, @Ashwin V.

Reference entry: Team Trump
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 21, 2026
Last seen: January 21, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Scott Adams January 21, 2026

4chan 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
@Ashwin V 1 shared issues
@disgruntledcho1 1 shared issues
@Eigengender 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Scott Adams

January 21, 2026 · Original source

“systems are better than goals” The main idea, that by changing my thoughts I can change my reality, is simple but went a long way for me. It opened up my imagination to what’s possible and made my thinking more positive. Cinna the Poet writes: To share a different perspective on Adams, my uncle was an avid follower. He went from being a principled libertarian whose ideas I respected very much to (I’m sad to say) an alt right bigot. Under the influence of Adams, he had no interest anymore in objective truth or the actual scientific method. Reality was all a matter of spin and “persuasion.” The phrase “post truth” gets thrown around too much, but Adams fit that description perfectly. Alex Poterack writes: I just need to note you’re not the only one who read every Dilbert book before graduating elementary school. I’m the other one. Dozens of people chimed in, here and on social media, to say they did this too. Alyssa Briggs writes: This is a great article, but you left out that he handed out king-sized candy bars on Halloween. He will be very missed by the local kiddos. … 6: Summary/Updates … This was a tough post to write, and I think many people will continue to find it unfair. For example, I claimed that Adams said he joined Team Trump because he didn’t want to pay Hillary’s proposed estate tax - and that he said he didn’t care whether the estate tax was unfair or not, he just personally hated the idea of losing money. But an Adams backer could justly point out that a few sentences later, he does talk about how it’s unfair to make him pay an estate tax when he worked hard his whole life. And then a few paragraphs later, he gives a different, more sympathetic story about how he thought Hillary supporters were bullies and it was important to stand up to them (although he then says maybe Trump supporters were exactly equal bullies, but he selfishly was more against the bullies who were bullying him - but then elsewhere he says no, the Hillary supporters’ bullying was worse.) Adams keeps trying to eat his cake and have it too. He gives one prosocial altruistic explanation (so that if someone accuses him of being selfish, he can show they’re wrong), and then one amoral selfish explanation (so that if someone argues with him about whether it’s really altruistic to oppose estate taxes for millionaires, he can say “Ha, you can’t get me, I already admitted I’m a cold hard realist who doesn’t worry about that kind of fuzzy stuff.”) This is much like how he first said Donald Trump was amazing (but didn’t endorse him), then said he was endorsing Hillary Clinton (but only for his own safety), then endorsed libertarian Gary Johnson (???), then when it looked like Trump would win again walked it back and said obviously he had really been for Trump the whole time. If someone else had won, he would have spun a story where his endorsement of them had been real. He admits all of this! So someone who is charitably inclined to Adams can tell a story where he’s a great predictor, has always done everything for good patriotic altruistic reasons, and only teaches persuasion so that people can better understand themselves and their world. Someone who is uncharitably inclined can tell a different story where his predictions are mostly wrong, he does everything for selfish reasons, and uses persuasion to manipulate others and enrich himself. I usually try to err on the side of charity. But Adams is wearing a metaphorical “I AM GOING TO USE YOUR CHARITABLE INSTINCTS TO MANIPULATE YOU” t-shirt. So I’m happy to suspend charity in this case and judge him on some kind of average of his conflicting statements, or even to default to the less-advantageous one to make sure he can’t get away with it. So here are the updates I made based on your comments: Adams wasn’t an ivermectin true believer, and although my piece very narrowly avoided saying that he was, I should have been clearer about this and avoided implying it.

Inline links: writes, writes, writes

Tech Company1 mentions across 1 issues

Tech Company is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 04, 2022 and January 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tech Company’s comet retrieval plan was safe". It most often appears alongside AGI, America, Asian Scientist.

Reference entry: Tech Company
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 04, 2022
Last seen: January 04, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

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

Source context

Movie Review: Don't Look Up

January 04, 2022 · Original source

But apply it to COVID, and it’s even worse. Dr. Fauci and the CDC tell me every day that Pfizer’s vaccine is safe - but Male Scientist and NASA told their victims every day that Tech Company’s comet retrieval plan was safe. Sounds like we can’t trust scientific authorities when there might be a profit motive involved, better skip the jab! I hear ivermectin looks promising…

In conclusion, if there is a comet headed towards Earth, you should probably take some kind of action to deflect it, even if a tech company CEO says not to worry. I believe a metaphorical comet is headed towards Earth right now, and a literal tech company CEO is telling you not to worry, and he is wrong. Half of you will agree with me, half of you will say I’m wrong, and all the narratives and heuristics in the world won’t get us one step closer to consensus, let alone truth. Don’t Look Up does a good job conveying some of the emotions this induces, but doesn’t make enough sense to follow through on its promise.

Inline links: a metaphorical comet, a literal tech company CEO

Technical AI Timelines1 mentions across 1 issues

Technical AI Timelines is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 18, 2022 and October 18, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "See the Technical AI Timelines group for many others". It most often appears alongside 2024 elections, 5 U.S.C. §§ 558, 706, 538.

Reference entry: Technical AI Timelines
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 18, 2022
Last seen: October 18, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

22 October 18, 2022

2024 elections 1 shared issues
5 U.S.C. §§ 558, 706 1 shared issues
538 1 shared issues
Administrative Procedure Act 1 shared issues
Alex Tabarrok 1 shared issues

Source context

October 18, 2022 · Original source

This is one of the kind of “predict the course of AI development” applications people were excited about using prediction markets for, so I’m happy to see a pretty liquid market trying it. See the Technical AI Timelines group for many others.

Inline links: Technical AI Timelines group

Technical University of Delft1 mentions across 1 issues

Technical University of Delft is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 07, 2024 and March 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Rutger van Bergem and his group at Technical University of Delft". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX Grants, ACX Grants.

Reference entry: Technical University of Delft
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 07, 2024
Last seen: March 07, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

ACX Grants Followup Impact Market March 07, 2024

ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
autism 1 shared issues
Bangalore 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune

March 07, 2024 · Original source

LLM multi-actor tool to automate economic experiments. Rutger van Bergem and his group at Technical University of Delft want $15K - $25K to create AIs that can bargain in economic experiments (think prisoners' dilemma, but more complicated), see whether they behave in human-like ways, and maybe free economists from the need to get human subjects for this kind of thing. ACX Grants evaluators were very split on whether this would work or not, and eventually I decided to fund other things instead, but I still think it's a potentially great idea.

Inline links: LLM multi-actor tool to automate economic experiments, his group

Technical University of Munich1 mentions across 1 issues

Technical University of Munich is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 14, 2021 and April 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "they had a deal with Technical University of Munich, a very well regarded German university". It most often appears alongside Alaska, America, Amisulpride.

Reference entry: Technical University of Munich
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 14, 2021
Last seen: April 14, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Prospectus On Próspera April 14, 2021

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

Source context

Prospectus On Próspera

April 14, 2021 · Original source

In terms of secondary education, they had a deal with Technical University of Munich, a very well regarded German university, but it looks like German leftists pressured them into withdrawing. Currently they are investigating a partnership with Universidad Francisco Marroquin, a libertarian university in Guatemala City which (for example) has a "Ludwig von Mises library [which] has 100,000 visitors annually and is the most extensive collection of works on liberty in Latin America", and whose alumni include eg one of Julian Assange's defense lawyers.

Inline links: German leftists pressured them into withdrawing, Universidad Francisco Marroquin, one of Julian Assange's defense lawyers

Technocracy Inc1 mentions across 1 issues

Technocracy Inc is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 29, 2024 and July 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Musk’s grandfather was a local leader of Technocracy Inc". It most often appears alongside 1906 SF earthquake, ACX, Argentine economy.

Reference entry: Technocracy Inc
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 29, 2024
Last seen: July 29, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 340 July 29, 2024

1906 SF earthquake 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Argentine economy 1 shared issues
Bad Therapy 1 shared issues
Ban The Box 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 340

July 29, 2024 · Original source

GJM finds that Musk’s grandfather was a local leader of Technocracy Inc, not (as I wrote) a national leader.

Inline links: finds that

Teilaxu1 mentions across 1 issues

Teilaxu is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 13, 2022 and August 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Teilaxu are short-term genetic engineers who exert a great deal of control". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI, ancient Greeks.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

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

Source context

August 13, 2022 · Original source

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

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

Telegram group for Stockholm Rationalists1 mentions across 1 issues

Telegram group for Stockholm Rationalists is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 25, 2025 and March 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Group Link: Telegram group for Stockholm Rationalists". It most often appears alongside 10 E Main Street, Fairborn 45324, 11841 Wagner Street, Culver City, 13 Mile road.

Reference entry: Telegram group for Stockholm Rationalists
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 25, 2025
Last seen: March 25, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places March 25, 2025

10 E Main Street, Fairborn 45324 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner Street, Culver City 1 shared issues
13 Mile road 1 shared issues
131 Colonie Center 1 shared issues
133 SE Madison Street, Portland, OR 97214 1 shared issues

Source context

Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places

March 25, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Valerio Lomanto Contact Info: ian[dot]maayrkas [at] gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, May 11, 03:00 PM Location: Smedsudden. It's a smaller park near Rålhambshovsparken in Kungsholmen near the city center. One of us will wear very yellow clothes. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9FFW82GF+42 Group Link: Telegram group for Stockholm Rationalists: https://t.me/+Z51 [remove this bit] hOrlfazMwZmU0 Additional Notes: We will be bringing some snacks and some boardgames. The idea is to have some picnic-ish thing in the grass and enjoy the spring. Feel free to bring whatever you think you or others will enjoy. See you there! :) Please RSVP or join the group or email because if it's too crowded we might have to find another spot and then we'll communicate where we are. We may also need to change to an indoor location if the weather is bad.

Inline links: https://plus.codes/9FFW82GF+42

temp-mail.org1 mentions across 1 issues

temp-mail.org is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 23, 2021 and August 23, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "use a service like guerrillamail.com or temp-mail.org to send me an email". It most often appears alongside 1002 N St. NW, Washington DC, 20001, 1022 High St, Madison, 210 Ardmore Avenue.

Reference entry: temp-mail.org
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 23, 2021
Last seen: August 23, 2021

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Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places August 23, 2021

1002 N St. NW, Washington DC, 20001 1 shared issues
1022 High St, Madison 1 shared issues
210 Ardmore Avenue 1 shared issues
2519 E Sunrise Blvd 1 shared issues
2800 S Estes St, Lakewood, CO 80227 1 shared issues

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Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places

August 23, 2021 · Original source

MUNICH, GERMANY (RSVP) Contact: Sable, sablegm[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: 1:00 PM, Saturday, September 4 Location: English Garden, within 50 meters of the given coordinates, wherever is shade and not many people. I will be wearing a "Just buy a clock" white T-shirt. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/same.exacted.hears Notes: Anyone who wants to contact me without sacrificing their privacy can use a service like guerrillamail.com or temp-mail.org to send me an email from a temporary address. I promise to check my inbox several times from 20:00 to 21:00 German time every day, so you should have ample time to send me an email, get a reply, and read it before your temp email removes the reply. If you want to do that multiple times over a span of time larger than your address remains alive, just generate a random alphanumeric string (look up password generators online), put it somewhere in the first email, and include it in subsequent ones, that way I could figure out same person is talking to me from multiple addresses.

Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/same.exacted.hears

Temple1 mentions across 1 issues

Temple is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand". It most often appears alongside 1978, 2016 essay, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs.

Reference entry: Temple
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 23, 2022
Last seen: June 23, 2022

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Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022

1978 1 shared issues
2016 essay 1 shared issues
A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs 1 shared issues
Abbott 1 shared issues
Abstracted Will Of The American People 1 shared issues

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Inline links: percent African-American, percent Borderer, here, the Twinkie Defense, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8wK3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F683b9754-f663-47ad-88f5-aa99bc208ec8_1401x622.jpeg, https://twitter.com/weheartprez/status/1526983899309432832

June 23, 2022 · Original source

For some reason this top 20 table fails to list Washington DC, which should be just before Atlanta. SF doesn’t make the top 20, although its neighbor Oakland does. Probably most murder variation in US cities is explained by percent African-American and maybe percent Borderer; with relatively few people in these groups SF was never in the running. I’m not sure if some abstracted version of the city with all demographic factors adjusted away would have an unusually high murder rate, but at that point it would be pretty distant from any interesting real-world question. You can see the leaderboard for other types of crime here; San Francisco is often in the top ten, but never the top three. As far as I can tell, San Francisco has seen a big spike in car breakins over the past few years, with no clear trend for other property crime, violent crime, or homicides. It’s not an outlier among American cities in any kind of crime. Conclusion of this section: San Fransicko’s specific claims are basically correct, but suggest a medium-term rise in SF crime which is mostly contradicted by the data. These show stable-to-decreasing murder, stable-to-decreasing violent and property crimes other than car break-ins, and large rises in car break-ins only. The data also show stable-to-decreasing shoplifting, but I’m not sure how much to trust them vs. common sense. Honestly, I’m pretty confused here and not sure what to think. Claim 7: Jim Jones (Of Kool-Aid Cult Fame) Used To Be The Chairman Of SF’s Housing Authority Okay, this isn’t really a statistical claim that I can research different perspectives on. Still, it’s so wacky that I couldn’t resist mentioning it in this review. Jim Jones, famous for killing everyone in his Guyana-based Jonestown cult with poisoned Kool-Aid, used to be the SF government’s top guy on homelessness. Shellenberger writes: Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the People’s Temple. Jones believed he was the leader of a socialist revolution. He warned of nuclear war and claimed black people would be put in concentration camps. He became a hugely charismatic preacher among African Americans, the disaffiliated poor, and young transplants to the city looking for community. Scenes from the era show a remarkably large and diverse congregation smiling and singing. The People’s Temple grew and provided services. Jones cultivated two progressive San Francisco politicians, George Moscone and Willie Brown, and mobilized people to volunteer for their campaigns […] His son and a San Francisco historian believe he stole the mayoral election for Moscone in 1975. Historian David Talbot, founder of the progressive website Salon, points to evidence that Jones committed sufficient voter fraud to account for Moscone’s narrow 4,443-vote margin of victory. “We loaded up all thirteen of our buses with maybe seventy people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” said Jones Jr. “Could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely! Slam dunk. He only won by four thousand votes.” When federal investigators looked into fraud claims three years later, they discovered that all of the records were missing from the city of San Francisco’s registrar of voters. Jones also boasted of providing Moscone with black women from his congregation for sex. One time Moscone, drunk and “accompanied by a young black woman whom the politician had kindly agreed to drive home,” crashed into another car. Another time, Moscone and Willie Brown “were with a black woman in an alley at two in the morning at some restaurant in North Beach,” said a local bar owner. State legislator “John Burton was part of that gang too. They were all using marijuana and cocaine.” Said Jones Jr., Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand and doing some ass grabbing.” A Temple member overheard Jones speaking to Moscone the day after one of those parties saying, “I want to let you know that the young lady you went off with is underage,” adding, “Now don’t worry, Mayor, we’ll take care of you—because we know that you’ll take care of us.” Afterward, Moscone made Jones the chairman of the powerful San Francisco Housing Commission. Jones cultivated progressives with money and favors. He made large donations to the ACLU, the NAACP, and United Farm Workers. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on a campaign plane a few days before the 1976 presidential election, and Mondale praised People’s Temple shortly afterward. Jones met with First Lady Rosalynn Carter several times. Governor Jerry Brown praised Jones. Glide Memorial Church’s Rev. Cecil Williams loved Jones. There is a photo from 1977 of a smiling Williams awarding Jones the church’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Jones used his perch as chairman of the Housing Commission to fight for housing for the poor. He tried to use eminent domain to acquire the International Hotel, a single resident occupancy hotel. After a court sided with the hotel’s owner, Jones mobilized seven thousand protesters to picket it. By mid-January 1977, the situation had become heated. There were rumors that protesters inside the building were armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. Jones lost the legal battle in 1977, and the tenants were evicted. But the drama was a publicity victory for Jones, which burnished his image as a white savior. A conservative member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in the mayoral election by Moscone accused the new mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the rest of the city establishment of being blind to Jones’s extremism. “There’s no radical plot in San Francisco,” insisted Moscone, in response. “There’s no one I’ve appointed to any city position whom I regard as radical or extremist.” Willie Brown, a powerful state legislator from 1964 to 1995 before becoming mayor in 1996, “seemed oblivious to Jones’ hucksterism and demagoguery,” notes a historian. Brown was master of ceremonies at a dinner for Jones in the fall of 1976 attended by an adulatory crowd of the rich and powerful, including Governor Jerry Brown. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein . . . Chairman Mao,” he said, to loud applause. And yet Jones was contemptuous of Brown even as Brown did Jones more and more favors. Jones mocked Brown for his designer suits, sports cars, and women. Once, while Brown was addressing the congregation and Jones was seated onstage behind him, Jones flipped his middle finger up to mock him. San Francisco’s establishment stood by Jones even after a California magazine, New West, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an exposé of Jones’s beatings of Temple members and financial abuses in August 1977. The article was written by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and was meant for the Chronicle to publish. But the newspaper killed the story because it didn’t want to alienate Jones, whom it viewed as central to its plans to expand the Chronicle’s circulation in the heavily African American Fillmore District. Jones also managed to avoid investigation and prosecution in part by getting the district attorney to hire as deputy district attorney Jones’s longtime attorney and confidant. Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.” Angela Davis sent a radio message broadcast over the cult’s compound, Jonestown, in Guyana. “I know you’re in a very difficult situation right now,” she said, “and there is a very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle.” After visiting Jonestown, the attorney to the Black Panthers said, “I have seen paradise.” Harvey Milk, too, was tarnished by his association with Jones. In the fall of 1977, Milk wrote to President Carter’s secretary of health, education, and welfare requesting that Social Security checks be sent to elderly Temple members in Guyana. “People’s Temple,” wrote Milk, has “established a beautiful retirement community in Guyana.” In truth, the cult was disintegrating. Jones separated families and lovers, pitted relatives against each other, and forced neighbors to inform on each other. Jones sent people who violated the rules to solitary confinement in “the Box,” an underground cubicle where people were held as prisoners for days on end. Others were drugged. Progressives who had spent thirty years fighting to close prisons and mental hospitals found themselves praising a man who had reproduced their worst practices. In November 1978 a Bay Area congressman flew to Guyana to investigate human rights violations at Jonestown with NBC News. Jones gave the delegation a formal reception at Jonestown. A Temple member surreptitiously passed a note to one of the delegation members, saying he and another member wanted to escape. They fled the next day after a Temple member tried to stab the congressman. Jones didn’t prevent them from leaving but then sent gunmen to fire machine guns at the delegation at the airport, killing the congressman and four others. A few hours later, 907 inhabitants of Jonestown drank Flavor Aid laced with cyanide and died. Two-thirds of the victims were African American and one-third were children. Jones had told them that if they didn’t drink it they would be killed by invading soldiers from a shadowy global military conspiracy intent on imposing fascism and torturing children. As people started crying in grief, Jones scolded them. “Stop these hysterics,” he said. “This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die.” Jones’s wife protested the murder of children and had to be forcibly restrained. “We didn’t commit suicide,” said Jones in a tape recording, “we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” Few were as stained by Jonestown as Willie Brown and George Moscone. “Even as the bloated bodies of the dead were removed from the jungle and the wounded were airlifted by the U.S. Air Force to hospitals in the United States,” wrote a historian, “Brown said he had ‘no regrets’ over his association with Jones.” They repeatedly disavowed responsibility. Said Moscone, “it’s clear that if there was a sinister plan, then we were taken in. But I’m not taking any responsibility. It’s not mine to shoulder.” This is Shellenberger at his best: telling us crazy stories from the recesses of San Francisco history, maybe kind of spinning the narration in a way that makes all progressives seem guilty by association, but with the tale itself so gripping that it’s hard to be mad. And Jones wasn’t alone. This was the golden age of San Francisco cults, when (Shellenberger tells us) “more than half of all high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area reported at least one recruiting attempt by a cult member, and 40 percent reported at least three contacts.” This chapter of SF history came to an end in 1978, when Dan White, who had just resigned from San Francisco’s Board Of Supervisors (ie City Council) entered City Hall through a window and assassinated Mayor Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk, then successfully got charges reduced to manslaughter through a legal manuever that has gone down in history as “the Twinkie Defense” (realistically the defense was that he was depressed, but reporters seized on a comment that implied it was because he ate too many Twinkies). Everything about 1970s San Francisco was like this. With the Mayor and his right-hand-man both dead, San Francisco leadership ended up in the hands of previously second-tier politician Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein was what passed for a moderate in 1970s SF (which meant she had been targeted for assassination by various left-wing groups - she survived when a bomb left on her windowsill failed to explode). In Shellenberger’s telling, she managed to clean up some of the mess and restore a semblance of normalcy. San Francisco never forgave her. Moscone - voting fraud committer, underage sex enjoyer, and Jim Jones’ bff - is beloved as a martyr in today’s SF, but (the book points out) Feinstein is so loathed that in 2021 the Board of Education voted to rename Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.

Templeton Foundation1 mentions across 1 issues

Templeton Foundation 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 received additional funding from ... the Templeton Foundation". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: Templeton Foundation
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 18, 2025
Last seen: June 18, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates June 18, 2025

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

Source context

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.

Ten Thousand Villages1 mentions across 1 issues

Ten Thousand Villages is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 11, 2024 and January 11, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "non-profits that are 'profitable' in the sense they make enough money from standard business to operate like Ten Thousand Villages". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, Africa, Amalgamated Kenyan Wells.

Reference entry: Ten Thousand Villages
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 11, 2024
Last seen: January 11, 2024

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity January 11, 2024

ACX Grants 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
Amalgamated Kenyan Wells 1 shared issues
Bob Frank 1 shared issues
Bob Haywood 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity

January 11, 2024 · Original source

If that's not third world enough for you there's companies that help deploy limited resources to repair potholes in Central Asian roads (which the government is happy to pay for because it saves money), a company that makes water purifiers that it sells in Africa (while donating a significant number to poorer villages), a company that provides cheap industrial milling into certified gluten free flour for poor farmers, and so on. You also have non-profits that are 'profitable' in the sense they make enough money from standard business to operate like Ten Thousand Villages.

TEPCO1 mentions across 1 issues

TEPCO is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 01, 2023 and July 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "not TEPCO, the utility that owned Fukushima"; "'three executives of TEPCO - their chairman and the two leads of their nuclear division'". It most often appears alongside 1960 Valdivia earthquake, AEC, Atomic Energy Commission.

Reference entry: TEPCO
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 01, 2023
Last seen: July 01, 2023

Outbound links

https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/fukushima/naiic_report.pdf

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Safe Enough? July 01, 2023

1960 Valdivia earthquake 1 shared issues
AEC 1 shared issues
Atomic Energy Commission 1 shared issues
Bayesian priors 1 shared issues
Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Safe Enough?

July 01, 2023 · Original source

In the worst case scenario, not made public until long after the disaster, the entire Tokyo Metropolitan Area - 35 million people - would have to be moved to temporary shelter. The very existence of the nation of Japan was at stake. And no one - not TEPCO, the utility that owned Fukushima, not the Prime Minister, not the Japanese military - could do anything but hope.

Wellock is sympathetic to the notion that a full-throated embrace of Probabilistic Risk Assessment in Japan could have prevented Fukushima as well. The NRC had learned, from a second near-disaster at Toledo's Davis-Besse plant in 20013, that corrosion in the culture of an organization could be just as dangerous as corrosion in materials. This was certainly true of TEPCO - the utility had considered, but rejected, higher walls to keep out the ocean from even a tsunami this large. The plant managers at the time opted to avoid publicly visible upgrades, ironically because they feared that new safety measures would relay the unwanted message that nuclear power was untrustworthy.

Inline links: 3

In hindsight it is clear that TEPCO performed poorly. It is less certain that it is realistic for nuclear operators and agencies to achieve perfect performance, in all countries, at all times. The Fukushima meltdown did not start with an accumulation of minor crises that Probabilistic Risk Assessment predicted would dominate failure. The Tōhoku earthquake was larger than was thought to be possible on the Honshu fault. Vulnerability to nuclear catastrophe might have sharpened through a slow accumulation of poor decisions. But the physical process was kicked off by a single, devastating event.

Inline links: TEPCO performed poorly

Terner Center for Housing Innovation1 mentions across 1 issues

Terner Center for Housing Innovation is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 29, 2022 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "a study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that construction costs". It most often appears alongside A History Of Mankind, ACS, Alexander Turok.

Reference entry: Terner Center for Housing Innovation
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 29, 2022
Last seen: June 29, 2022

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko June 29, 2022

A History Of Mankind 1 shared issues
ACS 1 shared issues
Alexander Turok 1 shared issues
Alice K 1 shared issues
Amsterdam 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko

June 29, 2022 · Original source

“Even before the pandemic, a study by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that construction costs for multifamily buildings across the State were rising due to factors such as gaps in the construction workforce and higher materials costs. The unprecedented disruption brought on by the pandemic and other factors accelerated these trends. Existing labor shortages in the construction industry became more pronounced and the cost of some construction materials—such as lumber—skyrocketed. While these costs have somewhat stabilized from their record highs, they remain markedly higher than their pre-pandemic levels.”

Terrapass1 mentions across 1 issues

Terrapass is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 01, 2021 and June 01, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as ""Terrapass sells offsets for $10 a ton"". It most often appears alongside QZ, Stop Yog Sothoth Fund, Yog Sothoth.

Reference entry: Terrapass
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 01, 2021
Last seen: June 01, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Moral Costs Of Chicken Vs. Beef June 01, 2021

QZ 1 shared issues
Stop Yog Sothoth Fund 1 shared issues
Yog Sothoth 1 shared issues

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Moral Costs Of Chicken Vs. Beef

June 01, 2021 · Original source

Nobody agrees on exactly how much it costs to offset a ton of carbon. This site says "anywhere from $0.10 per tonne to $44.80 per tonne", but eventualy settles on $3.30. QZ says "between $4 and 13 per metric ton". Terrapass sells offsets for $10 a ton; let's stick with that for now, while admitting it's at best an order-of-magnitude estimate.

Inline links: offset, This site, says, sells offsets

Tether1 mentions across 1 issues

Tether is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 01, 2021 and March 01, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "45% chance Tether will collapse by the end of 2021". It most often appears alongside A Primer On The Metaculus Scoring System, Anthony Aguirre, Foresight Exchange.

Reference entry: Tether
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 01, 2021
Last seen: March 01, 2021

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Issue trail

Mantic Monday: Scoring Rule Controversy March 01, 2021

A Primer On The Metaculus Scoring System 1 shared issues
Anthony Aguirre 1 shared issues
Foresight Exchange 1 shared issues
George Floyd 1 shared issues
gold 1 shared issues

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Mantic Monday: Scoring Rule Controversy

March 01, 2021 · Original source

This week in Metaculus: 69% chance Polish abortion rate will dectuple by 2030 (why? they seem pretty conservative; is their conservatism that precarious?) 70% chance the officer accused of killing George Floyd will get acquitted of murder. 45% chance Tether will collapse by the end of 2021.

Inline links: 69% chance, 70% chance, 45% chance

TetraSpace1 mentions across 1 issues

TetraSpace is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 23, 2024 and September 23, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "ACX Grantees Jordan Braunstein and TetraSpace are working on an assurance contract platform". It most often appears alongside ACX, Astralcodexten Com, Jordan Braunstein.

Reference entry: TetraSpace
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 23, 2024
Last seen: September 23, 2024

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Open Thread 348 September 23, 2024

ACX 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Jordan Braunstein 1 shared issues
LATechWeek 1 shared issues
Manifund 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 348

September 23, 2024 · Original source

1: ACX Grantees Jordan Braunstein and TetraSpace are working on an assurance contract platform to solve coordination problems called Spartacus.app. They’ve asked me to announce:

Inline links: Jordan Braunstein, TetraSpace, Spartacus.app

Texas Tech University1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas Tech University 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 "Teaching Postdoc at Texas Tech University". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: Texas Tech University
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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Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune

February 03, 2022 · Original source

#7: Science Demonstrations In Nepal I am Binod Rajbhandari and currently a Teaching Postdoc at Texas Tech University. I will teach at university for 9 months and this summer, I am very interested on doing a science demonstration at mostly remote part of Nepal. I have volunteered in science communication in different middle and high schools in Lubbock, TX. The student were always intrigued by the musical acoustic and some astronomy demos. I think many schools in Nepal excluding some rich schools do not have a proper science classes. I think even if I can visit 50-70 schools during the summer I can inspire at least few students in Nepal to become future scientist with 7000-10000 of ACX grant. I could have asked ACX for a research grant for the summer, but inspiring a kid from mountainous part of Nepal might outweighs the other in social contributions. [You can reach me at binodrb43@gmail.com]

TextAttack1 mentions across 1 issues

TextAttack is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 03, 2025 and April 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "co-created TextAttack , an adversarial attack framework for language models". It most often appears alongside AI Digest, AI Futures Project, Anthropic.

Reference entry: TextAttack
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 03, 2025
Last seen: April 03, 2025

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Introducing AI 2027 April 03, 2025

AI Digest 1 shared issues
AI Futures Project 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues
Center for AI Policy 1 shared issues
ChatGPT 1 shared issues

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Introducing AI 2027

April 03, 2025 · Original source

Eli Lifland, a superforecaster who is ranked first on RAND’s Forecasting initiative. You can read more about him and his forecasting team here. He cofounded and advises AI Digest and co-created TextAttack, an adversarial attack framework for language models.

Inline links: here, AI Digest, TextAttack

TGEoD1 mentions across 1 issues

TGEoD is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 13, 2022 and August 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "TGEoD’s supply of spice is entirely contained within Leto’s horde". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI, ancient Greeks.

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

Outbound links

https://what3words.com/guitars.record.caps

Issue trail

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

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

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August 13, 2022 · Original source

The lifecycle of a sandworm is long, and TGEoD’s supply of spice is entirely contained within Leto’s horde; he carefully rations that supply to keep his empire functional. Leto expects that the remaining spice will be quickly exhausted after his death and for a period perhaps measured in centuries humanity will be trapped, unable to travel, starving, and creating harsh survival-of-the-fittest environments on all inhabited planets.

TGEoD is only a slight departure from these themes, instead asking what would happen if the harshness and strength of the desert were concentrated in a single mind. Genetic development has always been a tale written by hardship, a story about how life rises to greatness only when facing and overcoming great problems.

Because TGEoD is mostly about describing the end-point of a millennia-long exploitation of desert power, it is better understood as a book of sci-fi political philosophy than a story. But, to the extent there is a story at all, it is as follows:

TGGP1 mentions across 1 issues

TGGP is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 07, 2024 and May 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as ""And TGGP points out that a small number of lawsuits can have a big effect"". It most often appears alongside affirmative action, Africa, African National Congress.

Reference entry: TGGP
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 07, 2024
Last seen: May 07, 2024

Outbound links

https://what3words.com/guitars.record.caps

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke" May 07, 2024

affirmative action 1 shared issues
Africa 1 shared issues
African National Congress 1 shared issues
African-Americans 1 shared issues
AH 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On "The Origin Of Woke"

May 07, 2024 · Original source

And TGGP points out that a small number of lawsuits can have a big effect:

Inline links: points out

Thao family farms1 mentions across 1 issues

Thao family farms is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 13, 2022 and October 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "celebrated Masumoto and Thao family farms outside Fresno". It most often appears alongside 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, 21st Century Salon, ACX.

Reference entry: Thao family farms
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 13, 2022
Last seen: October 13, 2022

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On The Central Valley October 13, 2022

1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act 1 shared issues
21st Century Salon 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Alex Richard 1 shared issues
Amazon Prime Video 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On The Central Valley

October 13, 2022 · Original source

I personally think the Valley is underrated and its diversity under-appreciated. This applies both to its cities and to its rural, ag-based communities. The stories of exploited and impoverished farm labor are all too true—“Factories in the Field” as Carey McWilliams famously described the situation back in Great Depression days. Yet there also are stories of upward mobility and cultural dynamism, such as the celebrated Masumoto and Thao family farms outside Fresno and the vibrant community of Punjabi truck drivers.

The 1517 Fund1 mentions across 1 issues

The 1517 Fund is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 14, 2021 and October 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The 1517 Fund is a venture capital firm". It most often appears alongside @literalbanana, ACX, Barcelona.

Reference entry: The 1517 Fund
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 14, 2021
Last seen: October 14, 2021

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Issue trail

Links For October October 14, 2021

@literalbanana 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Barcelona 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
behavioral econ 1 shared issues

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Links For October

October 14, 2021 · Original source

25: The 1517 Fund is a venture capital firm that “focus[es] on backing founders without degrees”. Their site says: “On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg to protest the sale of indulgences. These were pieces of paper the establishment church sold at great cost, telling people it would save their souls. The church made a fortune doing it. Likewise, universities today are selling a piece of paper at great cost and telling people that buying it is the only way they can save their souls. Universities call it a diploma, and they’re making a fortune doing it. Call us heretical if you like, but the 1517 Fund is dedicated to dispelling that paper illusion”. Can’t believe you can found a Ninety-Five Theses-based venture capital organization without mentioning the gematria perspective that “95” in Roman numerals is “VC”.

Inline links: The 1517 Fund

the Academy1 mentions across 1 issues

the Academy is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 14, 2023 and July 14, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Plato opened his Academy (the Academy, with a capital ‘A’ — the one that all subsequent academies are named after)". It most often appears alongside !Kung San, aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada, Adam Smith.

Reference entry: the Academy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 14, 2023
Last seen: July 14, 2023

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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind July 14, 2023

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

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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind

July 14, 2023 · Original source

only 29 know that ordinary (as opposed to GMO) tomatoes have genes Q: Well, those are facts, not understanding — and that’s just looking at American adults in general! Surely good schools are doing a better job educating than that? Caplan cites a famous study by the educational psychologist Howard Gardner: “Researchers at Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., and other well-regarded universities have documented that students who receive honor grades in college-level physics courses are frequently unable to solve basic problems and questions encountered in a form slightly different from that on which they have been formally instructed and tested.” Q: Okay, but schools teach reading, writing, and math… right? Basic literacy and numeracy: yes. Adult-level: no. If you gave someone two editorials that clashed over interpreting economic evidence, what percent of American adults could compare the editorials? One U.S. Department of Education study that Caplan cites finds: just 13%. And while 78% could “calculate the cost of a sandwich and a salad, using prices from a menu”, only 13% could “calculate an employee’s share of health insurance costs for a year, using a table that shows how the employee’s monthly cost varies with income and family size”. Q: I’m afraid to ask about reasoning abilities. Caplan quotes from a study that looked into how well college students were at applying academic learning to everyday life. The authors write: “The results were shocking. Of the several hundred students tested… the overwhelming majority of responses received a score of 0. Fewer than 1% obtained the score of 2 that corresponded to a ‘good scientific response’.” America isn’t so much of an outlier; numbers across the rest of the world are comparable. The 4.7 trillion-dollar question is why. The usual suspects Ask around, and you’ll find people’s mouths overflowing with answers. “Lazy teachers!” cry some; “unaccountable administrators” grumble others. Others blame the idiot bureaucrats who write standards. Some teachers will tell you parents are the problem; others point to the students themselves. Egan’s not having any of it. He thinks all these players are caught in a bigger, stickier web. Egan’s villain is an idea — but to understand it, we’ll have to zoom out and ask a simple question — what is it, exactly, that we’ve been asking schools to do? What’s the job we’ve been giving them? If we rifle through history, Egan suggests we’ll find three potential answers. Job 1: Shape kids for society Before there were schools, there was culture — and culture got individuals to further the goals of the society. Egan dubs this job “socialization”. A school built on the socialization model will mold students to fit into the roles of society. It will shape their sense of what’s “normal” to fit their locale — and what’s normal in say, a capitalist society will be different from what’s normal in a communist society. It’ll supply students with useful knowledge and life skills. A teacher in a school built on socialization will, first and foremost, be a role model — someone who can exemplify the virtues of their society. Job 2: Fill kids’ minds with truth In 387 BC, Plato looked out at his fellow well-socialized, worldly wise citizens of Athens, and yelled “Sheeple!” Fresh off the death of his mentor Socrates, Plato argued that, however wonderful the benefits of socialization, the adults that it produced were the slaves of convention. So long as people were shaped by socialization, they were doomed to repeat the follies of the past. There was no foundation on which to stand to change society. Plato opened his Academy (the Academy, with a capital ‘A’ — the one that all subsequent academies are named after) to fix that. In his school, people studied subjects like math and astronomy so as to open their minds to the truth. Egan dubs this job “academics”. A school built on the academic model will help students reflect on reality. It will lift up a child’s sense of what’s good to match the Good, even when this separates them from their fellow citizens. And a teacher in an academic school will, first and foremost, be an expert — someone who can authoritatively say what the Truth is. Job 3: Cultivate each kid’s uniqueness In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau looked out at his fellow academically-trained European intellectuals, and called them asses loaded with books. The problem with the academies, Rousseau argued, wasn’t that they hadn’t educated their students, but that they had — and this education had ruined them. They were “crammed with knowledge, but empty of sense” because their schooling had made them strangers to themselves. Rousseau’s solution was to focus on each child individually, to not force our knowledge on them but to help them follow what they’re naturally interested in. The word “natural” is telling here — just as Newton had opened up the science of matter, so we should uncover the science of childhood. We should work hard to understand what a child’s nature is, and plan accordingly. Egan dubs this job “development”. A school built on the developmental model will invite students into learning. And a teacher in this sort of school will be, first and foremost, a facilitator — someone who can create a supportive learning environment for the child to learn at their own pace. Q: Can you recap those? We might sum these up by asking what’s at the very center of schooling. For a socializer, the answer is “society”. For an academicist, the answer is “content”. And for a developmentalist, the answer is “the child”. You want a visual? We might think in terms of these three images: Kieran Egan laughs at your educational reforms Okay, of those three jobs, which should we give to schools? You probably have your favorite — I certainly did! But Egan wants you to know they’re all crap. None of them, by themselves, can give us the kinds of schools we want. Q: I kind of like Rousseau! What’s the problem with pure development? Like I said before, my bookshelves overflow with authors who want to knock down Rousseau (and the people who followed in his wake — John Dewey in particular). Egan will have none of it: before the developmental approach, many schools were terrible places where children were beaten for getting math problems wrong. “Rousseau and Dewey,” he writes, “have enriched our conception of education in important ways. We will not make educational progress by trying to cut away their contribution”. But, he continues, there’s no way a purely developmental approach could possibly work! Rousseau imagined human nature to be selfless and kind; this ideal state could only survive if it was kept away from the evils of society — the titular child in his book Emile was kept away from human society, unable even to read, until age twelve. Of course, schools don’t go this far — they can’t — but I can attest from personal experience that even fairly serious attempts to raise children in an accepting community of peers often crash and burn when faced with actual human nature. Kids reared in the most developmentally appropriate schools can be nasty, bored, and lazy at about the same rate as their mainstream peers. Q: In my heart, I’m an academicist. What’s the problem with it? I think Egan was an academicist in his heart, too. His book drips with classical references — so much so that it can make some sections difficult to read. But, he points out, those purely-academic schools really were hellscapes. And their brutality wasn’t something that was just tacked on, it flowed from their understanding of knowledge: enlightenment will come when the right information enters a child’s head, regardless of how it gets in there (or whether the child wants it in there). And again, Egan feels obliged to point out that we’ve tried this approach for thousands of years, and it hasn’t worked. In fact, Plato’s original vision so obviously doesn’t work that people hawking academic schools have modified their pitch: no longer is the goal for students to understand the Truth, but to cultivate inquiring, skeptical minds who are perpetually dissatisfied with old answers. Can we imagine taxpayers paying for this? Q: Fine, fine. I’m not a fan of socialization, but I’ll ask the question — what’s wrong with it? The funny thing is that of the three, this is the only one that has shown its ability to work for a long stretch of time! (As John Calvin pointed out, as animals, we’re pretty pathetic. Socialization allowed our ancestors to become something more than individuals so that they could survive; we owe this job our gratitude. That said, it would be impossible for schooling today to seek only to socialize. That would require that members of a society share values, and fundamentally agree that their society is good. It also requires that a society not be changing, so the values and skills that are taught to children today will be the ones that will be useful to them in thirty years. Obviously, modern Western society is none of those things. Pure socialization might work for the Amish, or for Catholic trad communities, but not for us. And, frankly, we should feel okay about this. (Do you know where you could get a pure socialization education in the 20th century West, Egan asks? The Hitler Youth!) There really are good reasons to be wary of any education that decrees that its society is uniformly good. Which combination is best? Okay, you say, it’s clear that none of these jobs is good on its own — the solution (obviously!) is to smoosh them together. If we do that wisely, the good parts of each will make up for the deficiencies of the others. This sounds eminently reasonable — but Egan would like to have a word with you. Q: What’s the problem in combining socialization with academics? Wouldn’t this be a beautiful combination? Socialization would cohere the school together, and then they could leverage those good feelings to, say, read Aristotle. I’ve seen this work in schools (like conservative Christian academies) founded on a set of specific beliefs. But when intellectual diversity enters in, it becomes harder. You, perhaps, say that socialization could unite people around their differences — schools could support a society made up entirely of critics! Yes, a society of critics would be interesting, and so would a herd of cats: neither works in practice. Imagine students reading their Ibram X. Kendi books in the morning, then pledging allegiance to the American flag after lunch. Q: What’s the problem in combining academics with development? Again, this seems like a beautiful vision: we can invite children into discovering the big ideas. Alas, it crashes into the reef of reality quite quickly: what do we do when kids don’t want to learn about the big ideas? This combination works wonderfully for kids who naturally want to be academics, but — and this is a crucial point that geeky education types too often sweep under the rug — lots of kids don’t naturally want to be academics. Okay, you say, ignore the “liberatory” element of the developmentalist program, and focus on the “uncovering the nature of the individual child” part: academics can tell us what the students should be learning, and development can tell us how they should learn it. Egan has a thought experiment for you. Imagine that you get the funding to fully pursue this combined goal — you set up a hundred different types of schools in the nearest big city. There’s a specific school for every possible permutation of learner — a school for big-picture kinesthetic learners who score as INFJ on the Myers–Briggs, a school for detail-oriented auditory learners who score ENFP, a school for marine-biology-loving hyperactive learners who lost their personality test results… you get the idea. You build the schools, you work out the bus schedule, and then, on the first day, all the students learn exactly the same content. Because that’s what it means for a school to be an academy — it teaches “the best that’s been thought or said”. Q: What’s the problem in combining development with socialization? What’s wrong with telling kids to become their authentic selves, even as you squeeze them into the roles most beneficial to society? Imagine two rural schools merging together, due to declining local population. Now imagine that one of them is a hippie free school, and the other is a military academy. (That’s a reality TV show I’d watch.) It’s possible, I suppose, to imagine this working for kids who naturally want to be, say, plumbers, or paleontologists, or presidents — and who happen to go to a school that prepares its students to fill that one role. But the odds of matching students to schools just perfectly seems small. But enough thought experiments — we can state this in a visual form: behold, the SAD triangle. It’s bright around the edges, but muddled where they mix: One of the things I love about Egan is that he looks at educational ideas historically. (Most histories of education start around the turn of the 20th century; I remember being excited when I found one that began in the 1600s. Egan begins in prehistory.) And what we’re reminded of, when we see these historically, is that these jobs were meant to supplant each other. Put together, they sabotage each other. What are we asking of schools? Of the three possible jobs, which are we asking mainstream schools to perform? Egan answers: all three. To confirm this, stretch your memory back to your student days, and see if you can put some of the most basic elements in any of these three categories. We’re so immersed in these that they seem obvious, “natural” aspects of schooling, but of course they’re nothing of the sort. Did you spend your time with other children of the same age? Was your work graded according to a standard? Were you forced to play team sports, or to pledge your allegiance to your nation-state? All of these, Egan says, bear the fingerprints of the goal of socialization. Progressive reformers in in the 1960s saw these as the markings of a dark conspiracy, but socialization has more warm-feely aspects: counselors to help students cope with the strains of modern society, field trips to the local fire station and historical monuments, and everything “practical” — life skills, sex ed, emotional regulation, and so on. Did you learn anything that wasn’t obviously useful? Did you read Hamlet, say, or master the Pythagorean theorem, or learn that the planets orbit the Sun (and not the other way around)? That’s the fingerprints of the academic goal. Finally, did you hear teachers show concern about “age-appropriate” content, or see signs that your school valued individualized learning? Does it seem right to you that learning should be “active” rather than “passive”, or that it’s better for someone to discover something than to be told it? Did your kindergarten have tiny, child-sized chairs? All these, Egan says, are the fruit of developmentalism. The first time I read the book, I wondered at all this. What Egan was saying was indeed lining up with my memories. But perhaps, I thought, he was playing loose with the categories; I was still skeptical that schools really were trying to balance all three goals. So I decided to check his idea from a different perspective and look up the mission statements of school districts I was familiar with. Here’s the one from the town I currently live in: “Skills” and “become involved members of a global community” seem to connote socialization, “challenge” and “knowledge” seem to connote academics, and “empower” and “reach their full potential” seem to connote development. But I wasn’t sure if I was just seeing faces in clouds, so I looked up the mission statement for my hometown: “Succeeding” seems like socialization, “learning” seems like a nod to academics, and “growing” seems like code for development. But again, I was worried that I engaging in motivated reasoning, so I looked up the largest district I’ve lived in, a city of about a million people: Wow. That seems pretty clear. So, to sum up: Egan says that there are three potential jobs we can give to schools. Alone, each of these jobs is terrible; together, they’re worse. And what we’ve done is given schools all three jobs. A sad triangle, indeed. What about alternative schools? I was curious to see whether this “sad triangle” could help us understand other philosophies of education, and why they work (or don’t). Where would, say, unschooling, and classical education, and vocational ed, and Montessori go? The first three seem obvious. Radical unschooling is in the upper-right, classical schools (with its focus on feeding kids “the best that’s been thought or said”) is in the upper-left, and vocational ed is in the bottom corner. What can that tell us? Intriguingly, each of those approaches can claim to have done some impressive stuff. I’ve worked with radical unschoolers, and while their skills have often been lopsided (not learning math is an acknowledged issue in the community), they’ve all at least exhibited a zeal for learning the topics they’ve been interested in. (Video games, frequently.) And I remember a massive study in the early 2000s that asked which kinds of schools actually improved student test scores controlling for the effects of socioeconomics. What it found was that only two types of schools stood out: Catholic schools that were operated by a religious order (e.g. the Jesuits — not local parish schools), and vocational schools. Q: Oh, that’s terrible evidence. One of those was just personal anecdotes! And what about selection effects? And what about…? I wouldn’t disagree — and, as Freddie deBoer points out, most educational research is bunk. I’ll take this to be only weak confirmation of Egan’s theory that combining jobs undercuts education. Are we hosed? If Egan’s critique is correct, we’re in a bad situation. Educational radicals yell from their dark corners to abandon the middle and come join them; a century of educational reforms have amounted to little more than wobbling around, first in one direction, then another. At the moment, the conversation about schools in the United States, at least, seems to have hit an all-time pessimistic blech. Freddie deBoer speaks for a lot of people when he says “Even the most optimistic reading of the research literature suggests that almost nothing moves the needle in academic outcomes. Almost nothing we try works.” I’m not quite that pessimistic — the word “almost” is doing some work, there. There are some reforms that seem to work at the margin: raising teacher pay, making it easier to become a teacher, reducing air pollution, free school lunches, and more. Actually applying what the science of reading has been telling us for a few decades seems a big one. And perhaps you have your own pet reform proposal. Sure — add it to the heap! What Egan suggests, though, is that so long as we’re bopping around this triangle of jobs, we won’t be able to get the schools that we want. The dream There’s a moment at the end of my favorite Bollywood movie that’s become stuck in my head. The protagonists have made the arduous journey to a beachside rural school. In the sun outside, flocks of children are experimenting with art and playing with inventions; inside, the walls are covered with books and the tables are covered with models. The kids are learning joyously and deeply. In the real world, such places do exist — they’re just exclusive, pulling their students from among the families who are already the most gifted and curious. They don’t make kids this way; they scoop up the kids who are already this way. But in the movie, we’re supposed to believe these are normal children — normal, except they’ve been transformed by a school. Egan’s wild idea is that it’s possible to make schools like this. He thought that we didn’t have to wait for the communists to make people equal or for the transhumanists to make people smarter. All he thought it required was giving schools a different job — not socialization or academics or development, but something that brings pieces of them together in a new way. But in order to understand that job, we have to come to a cleaner, bigger, and truer understanding of what “education” is. The road ahead: a special Q-and-A Q: This is the proverbial thousand-dollar-bill-lying-on-the-sidewalk: if this is possible, someone should have done it now. Is Egan going to give sufficient evidence for me to believe this? Maybe! I’ll address this in a special section at the end, after sketching out what his theory looks like. Q: If his theory is even plausibly true, then why haven’t I heard of Egan before? His books can be hard to read — he was an intellectual’s intellectual; he had difficulty writing a page without a reference to William Wordsworth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Claude Levi-Strauss, Richard Rorty, Noam Chomsky, or Steven Pinker. And his paradigm is wonky and multidimensional; he rejiggers common categories, and tells you everything all at once. But worst of all, when his paradigm is stated plainly, it sounds stupid. Q: Oh! What… is his paradigm? I’m going to jigsaw his book, and hold back his big idea for its own section. First, I’m going to list out some simple observations of students at different ages, and imagine what schooling could look like, if it were built on these principles. (First I’ll do this for elementary school, then middle school, then high school.) Then I’ll explain how his theory ties all of this together… by clarifying our definition of what education actually is. Q: I’m not from America; could you be clear on what you mean by those divisions of schooling? Egan’s framework has three main stages, but they don’t divide neatly into “elementary, middle, and high school”. (The precise age ranges he talks about, if you’re interested, are 2–8, 8–15, and 15 and older.) Regardless, I’m going to use those terms — he sometimes did — because it gives me something specific to imagine. Don’t sweat ‘em. Part 2: A new kind of elementary school What’s the matter with elementary schools? Egan suggests that Plato and Rousseau, for all their differences, might have the same reaction if they visited a modern elementary school: they’d call it “trivial”. I’ll admit, here, that I have tremendously fond memories of my elementary school years — committed teachers, good friends, and interesting activities. But I suspect my memory has edited out the most typical work I did. Either that, or elementary schools have taken a drastic plunge in quality from the 1980s. My wife and I homeschool now, but before the pandemic, we sent our kids to our local public school, and whenever we volunteered in the classroom, we were horrified. They spent their days practicing reading on shallow texts, or half-mindlessly practicing basic arithmetic. Occasionally they’d bring us home a sign of learning about something from the real world — usually something as intellectually and emotionally compelling as the importance of tooth brushing. And at parent–teacher conferences every year, we’d be sat down on tiny chairs and informed that, while our children were quite bright, they were struggling to pay attention in class. No sh**, I wanted to reply. The school seemed hermetically sealed; almost nothing that felt meaningful from the outside world could get in. Though they might agree about little else, Egan thinks that Plato and Rousseau would look at the dull worksheets and insipid “hands-on activities” and call modern elementary schools trivial. He agrees, and thinks that fixing this is the first step to building a new kind of school. Why so trivial? Ironically, Egan thinks it's all the fault of Plato and Rousseau. Hidden in the ways that both the academicists and developmentalist think about education is an assumption: that children’s reasoning is basically the same as adult reasoning, but lesser. Q: This isn’t some romantic, children-are-the-real geniuses theory, is it? Egan actually does think that there’s an intensity to how children perceive the world that we lose — but no, it’s not. He’s building on mainstream cognitive science — just aspects of it that are currently more-or-less ignored in school. The upshot, though, is that he thinks that educational researchers (be they of academic or developmentalist persuasions) see kids as smaller, stupider versions of adults. Q: But that’s the opposite of what my local developmentalist school says! It was the opposite of what the developmentalist school that I worked at said, too. But at teacher meetings, I’d frequently hear people ask what was “developmentally appropriate” for a child. I’ll grant that there are perfectly reasonable times to ask this: “Honey, is it developmentally appropriate for our 10-year-old to watch ‘Cocaine Bear’?” is just one of many examples. But “is it developmentally appropriate for our class to learn about world religions?” or “is it developmentally appropriate for our school library to have a book mentioning homosexuality?” probably aren’t some of them. (The latter example was not one that I heard at my progressivist school, but Egan points out that this sort of language is often used by conservative activists.) This notion of “developmentally appropriate” took on a scientific sheen with the work of Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss psychologist. Before age 12, he “proved”, children aren’t able to form hypotheses, draw conclusions, or think abstractly. This, his followers thought, should transform schools — and so they did! To math, they added in “manipulatives” — physical cubes and rods and such — to help students see math. To the history curriculum, they — well, they ended it. Why waste time, they asked, lecturing students about history that they couldn’t possibly understand? In its place they put the “expanding horizons” model of social studies. One version goes as follows: In kindergarten, students learn about themselves In first grade, they learn about their families In second grade, they learn about their neighborhood In third grade, they learn about their city In fourth grade, they learn about their state In fifth grade, they learn about their nation In sixth grade they learn about the world We can admit that there’s an elegance to this model. (I can picture how clever the theorist who first came up with it must have felt!) The downstream effects of it, however, seem horrible. Doesn’t keeping kids ignorant of the rest of the world seem provincial? Doesn’t reinforcing their self-centeredness seem infantilizing? Perhaps we could stomach it if it was founded on some unshakable findings of child psychology — but does it really strike you as likely that kids are incapable of understanding anything that happened long ago or far away? How, Egan asks, can we explain the $50 billion success of a movie franchise aimed at children that literally begins “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away?” Q: Because… Jedis aren’t history? The point is, kids obviously have the mental abilities to understand — and in fact care a lot about — things far outside their own experience, and we’ve built elementary schools on a long-dominant model of educational psychology that swears they can’t. This is actually a great example of a general principle. Let’s call it “the Star Wars test”: can our model make sense of the most obvious facts of students? When we find that the answer is “no”, we should at least consider radically revising what we’re doing in school. What are elementary schoolers good at? (or: kids are smarter than students) Someone — I can’t now find who — once observed that children seem to lose IQ points the moment they step into a classroom. Egan agrees, and suggests that we think of ourselves as primatologists to kids, Jane Goodalls who investigate children “out in the wild” to see the sorts of things they gravitate to, and do fairly well at. If we do this, what do we see? Kids tell jokes, for one. They get mental images stuck in their heads, for another. They engage in role-playing, get lost in reverie, and beat out rhythms when they’re bored. They make ample use of metaphors, tell stories, and insist on seeing the world in terms of abstract binaries (e.g. stupid/smart, cowardice/courage, slavery/freedom, and so on). These, Egan holds, are the cognitive strengths that children use to understand the world. They’re the things that kids are often about as good at as adults — or much better than. They’re going to be the tools Egan wants us to use to rebuild the entire elementary curriculum, and in fact he spends most of his second chapter geeking out about how we might define these, how they operate in the mind, where they first pop up in history and anthropology, and even how they might have developed in our evolutionary past. I’m going to skip all of that, and get to the curriculum. From trivial to rich: the trick What could an intellectually rich elementary school curriculum look like, if we built it on kids’ cognitive strengths? He gives us one suggestion to help us do this: ask where each discipline came from in the first place. What was math before it was math, for example — or science before it was science? Q: How on Earth could that help? That’ll become clear later, when we finally uncover what Egan thinks “education” actually is, and see what job he wants us to give schools. For now, take it as a tantalizing hint… or, y’know, just ignore it. Elementary literature & language What was literature before it was literature? Before people invented writing, they had rich oral traditions: they told simple stories, recited poems, and shared proverbs. Egan suggests that these bits of oral tradition should form the backbone of the elementary literature curriculum. Q: What sorts of stories? As many as we can, and from as many diverse cultures as possible! Folktales are wonderful, as are myths. Think the Aboriginal story of “The Rainbow Serpent”, episodes from the Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Egyptian story of Osiris & Isis, the Greek story of Orpheus & Eurydice, the Chinese Legend of the White Snake, the Japanese Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo, the Ashanti tales of Anansi, the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the English legend of King Arthur, the Maori myth of Maui and the Sun, the Roman story of Romulus and Remus, selections from the Indian Mahabharata, the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, the Inca legend of the Sun and Moon, the Iroquois Myth of the Flying Head (a real thing! look it up!), and the Ojibwe story of Turtle Island. Q: That was a lot of examples. Are you going to keep giving so many? I’ve got a [mumble mumble mumble] to get to. Sorry about that. Sometimes, though, I feel that a limitation of reading Educated Mind is that, in trying to keep his book to a manageable size, Egan skimped on examples in some places that it matters. It’s easy to read his occasional example and assume he intends that it hold some central place in the curriculum — when all he wants to do is display how rich and diverse the curriculum could be. (Also: good God, I didn’t even include an example from Norse mythology!) So from now on, just assume that every category could be filled with oodles of examples. Q: What sorts of poems? Lots of poems, first of all. We shouldn’t steer toward “fancy” poems — rather, we should find poems that appeal to kids immediately — think Shel Silverstein, Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, Edward Lear, or Ogden Nash… that sort of thing. In a biting essay, Egan suggests these poets like these appeal to kids precisely because they leverage kids’ cognitive strengths: “we should find, and encourage saying and singing and shouting aloud verse with strong narrative forms, thumping rhymes and rhythms, the most vivid images, fun with metaphors, and a rollicking story.” Q: Why proverbs? Proverbs stick in your mind almost effortlessly. (“All’s fair in love and war!” “When in Rome, do as the Romans do!” “You can’t judge a book by its cover!”) They’re also useful; they capture general truths. Kids can apply them to all sorts of situations, but also discuss them — to what extent are they wise or foolish? (I remember my surprise when I realized that they couldn’t all be true — because you can’t follow “look before you leap” and “he who hesitates is lost” at the same time! I’m embarrassed to say that I think I only realized this when I was in college.) Elementary science What was science before it was science? Egan suggests: being immersed in the natural world. We might, he writes, encourage elementary students to “adopt” some feature of the natural world — a patch of grass, a cat, a branch, a stream — and simply observe it at length. To do this, we can use the cognitive strength of reverie. Q: Oh, do you mean like kids sometimes do in science class nowadays — describe a thing to a partner, make notes, draw it, and label its parts? No, the exact opposite! That’s all about squeezing the experience into words and forms that we understand. What we want “is less an attempt to know about nature as to know it in some participatory way, to know it as something we are an intimate part of, not set off from”. Q: That sounds a little… “woo” to me. It did to me, too… until I remembered my childhood climbing tree. I didn’t much like to go outside as a child, but I had this one tree that I’d climb up and read for hours and hours. If I close my eyes I can bring to mind the precise texture of its bark, the roughness of its broken-off branches, the coolness of its leaves, the always-surprising solidness of its trunk… I’m bigger now, but I think if I were back in my parent’s yard, I could still navigate its limbs with my eyes closed. I have, at this point in my life, read a fair number of books about trees, but I’d be surprised if all of them together more than equaled the amount I learned from that tree — my tree. Elementary math What was math before it was math? Egan suggests: counting and logic. We might, then, use rhythms, metaphors, stories, and jokes to help kids become fond of these. Q: Counting is pretty… basic. Could it really be improved? Beware of “the curse of knowledge”: Steven Pinker’s phrase for forgetting that something was once difficult! Egan suggests we should spend time helping kids count wonderfully. We can start early with counting rhymes. (“One, two, buckle my shoe! Three, four, out the door! Five, six…”) But we can also help kids use their fingers as metaphors. There are some pretty cool ways of using your hands as an abacus — and did you know that you can count up to 1,023 using just your fingers on both hands, and a knowledge of binary? Q: Logic — I’m intrigued! Aristotelian, or Boolean? Neither, for the time being — Piaget was presumably onto something when he found that young children couldn’t reason abstractly, but he was looking at logic in a vacuum. When we put logic into the context of stories, we find that kids can deal with logic just fine. There’s an entire worldwide network of educators, in fact, called Philosophy for Children, who have written whole books about how to do this, and Egan loves it all. Sometimes they read stories and ask simple questions: “What is friendship?” or “What does it mean to be brave?” They also pose ethical questions: “Is it ever right to spill a secret?” And they pose paradoxes: “Can you step in the same river twice?” Q: You mentioned “jokes” a moment ago. Care to elaborate? Egan thinks that, to help kids get good at math, you should tell kids jokes. Q: That’s… new. I think so, too — but he backs it up pretty well. To be funny, jokes (or at least most kid jokes) rely on a leap in logic: Why can’t you trust an atom? They make up everything. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-hoo? Don’t cry, it’s just a joke! To understand the joke, kids have to follow the logic — spotting patterns, making connections, and tracking what their audience expects a word to mean. That’s a lot of cognitive lifting. And Egan goes further, suggesting that we grit our teeth and create methods to help kids invent their own jokes, no matter how horrible they’ll be at first. (The things we do for learning…) Q: Wait wait wait! What about addition facts, and multiplication tables, and fractions? Egan emphasizes that his methods are designed to be add-ons to the standard math curriculum. In general, he’s a don’t-blow-up-the-system sort of guy, and if something seems especially weird, you should probably assume it’s an add-on to the regular curriculum rather than a replacement, even if I forget to say so. Elementary arts What was art before it was art? Egan suggests we pop our heads into Paleolithic caves for our inspiration. Whatever the specific meaning of all those charcoal elk and aurochs and mammoths (communication with the spirit world? art for art’s sake? a way to impress babes?), Egan thinks it obvious that they were also an attempt to capture an intense experience that would be difficult to express in words alone. What did it feel like to be near an aurochs, or a saber-toothed tiger? “The arts help us,” Egan writes, “to hear and see afresh, to force our perceptions and sensations to experience again the immediacy and vividness of the world”. If we follow this, then, we don’t want to help kids build “art skills” so they can draw like an adult — rather, we want to help them amass a repository of diverse aesthetic feelings that they’ll want to express. We should provide them with a riot of experiences. Q: That couldn’t be more opaque. Examples, please! Egan writes that we should have children learn to whistle, sing, and click their tongue; we should help them emulate the ways a skunk or a hawk or a stick bug might move through a space. We should expose them to scores of different temperatures and materials. In music, we should help them love Beethoven, yes, but also the Beatles; Tchaikovsky, yes, but also Tuvan throat singers, and also John Cage, whale song, and bird song. Q: That’s a lot of experiences, but what would they be doing? An interesting aspect of Egan’s view of education is that he doesn’t seem to think we should push kids right to the “doing” phase. He wants to help kids cultivate an affective relationship with the world. In any case, he writes that as students get more experienced, we should prompt them to move from merely enjoying these experiences to trying to systematically shape similar experiences. And drawing, painting, and playing music could easily be folded into other parts of the curriculum. Elementary social studies What was social studies before it was social studies? Well. Remember how, just a moment ago, I wrote that you could assume that you should probably assume that Kieran isn’t in favor of junking the curriculum as it currently stands? He suggests we very carefully pick up the elementary social studies curriculum, place it into a trash can, and set the whole mess on fire. He isn’t worried about much of importance being lost. (Remember that the “expanding horizons” model is, to him, the original sin of 20th century educational reform, and he repeatedly quotes student surveys showing that “social studies” regularly wins the title of “most boring subject”.) In its place, he suggests we put history — which, he hints, we should think of as the centerpiece of the elementary curriculum. So the real question is what was history before it was history? His answer, surprisingly, is myth. Q: Egan wants us to teach myths as if they were history? Not at all. What he suggests, though, is that we look at how myths operate as narratives — so we can design an intellectually vivid history curriculum. And myths really are special: each is built on at least one binary (like weak vs. strong, or lies vs. truth, or so on), and uses that to tell the story of the big picture of the world. They’re so powerful that people can understand it, remember it, and love it — even if that thing never happened. We should take that power, Egan says, and apply it to things that really did happen. Q: So what history does he think kids should learn in elementary school? The great struggles of humanity from across the whole. Flippin’. World. We’re still talking about young children, so these should be done as simple stories. The goal isn’t to make them history PhD’s, so we needn’t even try to put them in any sort of order. Egan suggests that, in first grade, we pick a single binary like “freedom against oppression” and tell kids a welter of stories, again from as many cultures as possible, and as many times in history as possible. Q: Can you give examples? Oh, all right — in first grade we can tell kids the stories of the war of the Greek city-states against the Persian empire, and the slave uprising of Spartacus against the Romans. We can tell them about the plight of Jews in medieval Europe, and of the unsuccessful Sepoy Rebellion in India against the British. We can tell the stories of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and about the Chinese Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. We can tell them the story of the escaped slave Harriet Tubman returning to the South to rescue her kinsmen, the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges facing threats to integrate her elementary school, and the story of how the Mau-Mau uprising led to modern-day Kenya. We can tell the stories of Mexican-American union organizer Cesar Chavez and of Malala Yousafzai surviving an assassination attempt to advocate for female literacy. The world does not lack for stories of oppression and liberation that can capture the attention of a six-year-old. Q: That’s… huh. What stories might they hear in second and third grade? Egan gives examples, but I won’t list them here. He suggests we use a similar approach for each, except that we swap out the binary each year. He thinks “the struggle for security against danger” would work well for year two, and “the struggle for knowledge against ignorance” would work well for year three. (That year could have a lot of overlap with the science curriculum.) Q: Anything else, for history? Yes — they should get a sense of Big History. They should get some simple stories about the ice age, the Cenozoic, the age of dinosaurs, the Paleozoic, the origins of our solar system, and the Big Bang. (Because if the ancient Norse can tell their story of the beginning of the universe, by gum, we can tell ours, too.) To sum up Egan argues that the problem of early schooling is that it’s trivial — and it’s trivial because the dominant theories of educational psychology see children as lesser versions of adults. What else would we teach them, except dumbed-down versions of what adults learn? But children have certain cognitive strengths that schools aren’t making systematic use of. If we rebuild elementary schools on those strengths, we could turn schooling upside down. We could stop seeing the curriculum as a bag of information to impart, and start seeing it as a set of great stories to tell — and invite kids into. Kids could experience (both intellectually and emotionally) the great struggles of humanity and see that they can join in them. Students could experience the story of education as the beginning of a very real adventure. Egan’s elementary school: some skeptical questions Q: I’m not sure I’m understanding what you mean by “mental images”. Care to explain? It’s an interesting fact of human cognition that just a few words can whip up a complex mental experience. Egan doesn’t just mean what we might call “visual imagery” — the ability to hold, say, the image of a bespectacled, spat-wearing duck in your mind without seeing a photograph. He’s also including what psychologists call auditory imagery, olfactory imagery, gustatory imagery, and tactile imagery. Q: How could all of that be helpful in schools? Humanity has a built-in VR system, and we’re not using it! Egan invites us to pretend we’re teaching a class about the humble earthworm. We might list off facts — “earthworms are so many centimeters long, move through soil by means of their something-or-other muscles…” but he suggests we can evoke images, say, “of what it would be like to slither and push through the soil, hesitantly exploring in one direction then another, looking for easier passages, contracting and expanding our sequence of muscles segment by segment, and sensing moisture, scents, grubs, or whatever”. Those facts are now felt by the student; the knowledge has become part of them. And just a few words can spark a complex mental experience, one going beyond literal images to include imagined sounds, smells, tastes, and more. These experiences can feel real and stick with us. (That these mental images are so easy to evoke, and so meaningfully felt, feels something like the proverbial hundred dollar bill on the ground.) Q: How could metaphors be helpful? It really is interesting that so much of the “constructivist” turn in psychology — that is, the notion that children don’t absorb knowledge, but construct it — has continued to focus on logics-mathematical reasoning, when there’s been mounting evidence for decades that metaphors are more central. It’s not just that we use metaphors to better understand things we already know, we also use them to grasp new knowledge. What’s more, psychologists have devised tests to measure the skill at metaphor-making, and have given them to people of different ages. What they found was that eleven-year-olds make more metaphors (and higher quality metaphors) than do undergraduates — and that four-year-olds have both groups beat. Again, hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk. Q: Your talk of “binaries” has me worried — binaries like good/evil and male/female are the source of so many of our most pernicious stereotypes! Isn’t the purpose of education to get us beyond stuff like this? Yes, it is! Education is supposed to complicate our understanding — but that means we’ve gotta start somewhere, and binaries provide us a natural starting place. As an uncontroversial example, think about temperature. We all begin as babies by perceiving two temperatures — hot and cold. Later, we add on intermediate categories — warm and cool. (Note that the human body is the assumed mid-point to temperature. Binaries often work like this; “big” and “small” mean “bigger or smaller than me”, “nasty” and “kind” mean “nastier or kinder than I am, except when my brother is really asking for it”, and so on.) A good story (and an Egan-inspired elementary curriculum is, in a sense, nothing but good stories) will go further, and transform the binary. Toy Story is grounded in the binary of abandonment/belonging: at the beginning, the toy cowboy Woody belongs to his owner, and has his affection. Then a rival comes who threatens his belonging. In trying to get back to belonging, Woody is entirely lost — and to save the day, he has to come to a deeper understanding of what belonging means. Now, all lessons can’t be Pixar movies. But the good stories (especially in literature and history) will challenge and subvert the binaries they begin with. Q: I see the pattern of Egan drawing from “as many cultures as possible”. Why so many? Is this a political correctness thing? If it helps to think of it as such, then, sure! I don’t think Egan would have had a problem with that. But his ultimate reason for including so much diversity goes deeper. For Egan, including such world-wide diversity isn’t optional, and the answer to why is bound up in his definition of education. (Keep reading.) His answer also insists that we, whenever possible, also include stories from the Bible and Homeric epics (the Iliad and Odyssey). Q: Mmm, stories from the Bible aren’t going to fly in my local school! So be it! Egan doesn’t spend much time obsessing over the practicalities of… His interest is in describing what an ideal education might look like, if it were possible. Every lesson, every classroom, and every school is necessarily a compromise. Q: You make a big deal of poems. But isn’t poetry dead? An interesting contrast can be made to classical education, which also has kids read a lot of poems — they see knowing great poems as one of the marks of an educated person; again, for an academicist, it’s the information that transforms. Egan begs to disagree. Poems are important because they’re a wonderful way to train their cognitive strengths, like rhythm (poems are language fueling by thumping). We want to help kids learn to use this tool better, and a great way to do that is to help them recite poems that they’ve learned by heart. Q: “Learn by heart” — is that code for “memorize”?! It is! Egan is actually quite big on memorization — he points out that all the knowledge in the world can do nothing for a person once they’ve forgotten it. He didn’t, however, appreciate the academicist focus on memorizing without understanding (or at least enjoyment). Q: I’m still worried about the science curriculum, as you’re describing it. Can you allay my fears? Honestly, while I feel there’s something profoundly right to how Egan is describing early experiences of nature, I feel the same way. Note that there’s more science coming in the social studies curriculum. But if that’s still not enough, one could bring down aspects of the middle school science stage. Q: Anything else that Egan suggests we do in elementary school literature and language? He suggests that we help kids learn a second language! This is so obviously true (why do American schools typically wait until kids lose the ability to naturally absorb languages to start teaching languages?) he doesn’t belabor it, though. Q: You had mentioned that Egan’s vision seems more internal-focused. Should we be worried about that? While I strongly suspect that his curriculum would make kids more creative in any way you’d like to measure it, Egan wasn’t particularly interested in “creativity” — he was more about helping kids find the world interesting. I get the sense that he thinks kids will do things with minimal prompting once they’re loaded up with complex internal experiences. Q: I think I’m beginning to understand Egan — is he basically saying “make learning fun”? “Fun”, applied to education, is a dangerous word. Egan worries about the dangers of an emotionally unserious curriculum producing emotionally stunted adults. That doesn’t mean we need to tell students only “serious” stories — only that we treat the world honestly. “Disney-esque sentimentality is the exact emotional equivalent to intellectual contempt”. Q: But aren't some of these stories too dark for children who have themselves experienced oppression and disaster? Egan argues that these stories may be especially helpful to them — they can help them understand their struggles better, and give voice to them. Q: At the very start of this, you promised us “rationality”… but I’m not seeing rationality here! All this talk of “adventure” almost seems to go the opposite direction. What gives? Wait for it. But for a hint right now — Egan is fond of citing his fellow educational theorist Jerome Bruner, who claimed “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development”. Bruner was criticized for that; his critics charged that he was ignoring learning differences and socio-economic realities. Egan thinks he was profoundly right. Part 3: A new kind of middle school What’s the matter with middle school? What was middle school like for you? In math, I recall a jumble of barely-related topics. In literature, I remember reading great literature — Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet — only in their dumbed-down summary formats. In social studies, I remember teachers proclaiming on the first day of class that unlike all of our previous history classes, this class wouldn’t be about names and dates… and then going on to memorize names and dates. And in science, I remember being forced to dissect a frog only to discover that frogs are — you guessed it — made of slimy frog parts. Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us, middle school feels like getting booted out of the (in retrospect) Eden of elementary school, and like marking time before the serious studying of high school. It feels meaningless. In my favorite of his books, Egan calls so much middle school curricula “human deserts”, noting “we have created a system in which the importance of human emotions for meaning seems barely noticed”. Why so meaningless? If our dominant approaches to educational psychology fundamentally misinterpret younger children, Egan suggests, they basically throw up their hands when faced with pre-teens and teenagers. Mainstream schools begin to introduce vocational training to help lighten the load, and Maria Montessori famously suggests that adolescents should be sent to go run a farm. Egan is sympathetic to those responses, but points out that they don’t do much to lighten the load that the academic curriculum often becomes at this age. This feeling of meaninglessness, he argues, is utterly tragic — it comes just when a hunger for meaning blossoms in adolescents! We can see that hunger for meaning in their lives outside the classroom, where their interests ramp up into veritable obsessions. What are adolescents obsessed with? What might we see, if we become Jane Goodalls of early adolescence? First, teens are obsessed with gossip. The motivations of others — why did he do that? and what was he THINKING? — are hypothesized and talked to death. Second, that they’re pulled toward idealism. Many feel a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and feel a romantic urge to make it a better place. They’re often lured into simplistic beliefs that promise to help them do that. Third, they love extremes: they want to find limits, and test them. Obviously, this can show up as risky behavior, but we can also see it in their love for the bizarre — note adolescents’ fascination in things like aliens, cryptids, and ghosts. (Egan loves pointing out that The Guinness Book of World Records is a perennial bestseller among kids at this age. How else would they find out who had the world’s longest fingernails?) Fourth, they gravitate toward heroes — people who push the edges of those limits. By celebrating heroes, they can vicariously share in their transcendence. Look for the posts hanging up in a teenager’s bedroom to guess what boundaries they feel most hemmed in by: athletes push against physical limits; a death metal guitarist might push against authority and conventional morality. An activist or entrepreneur might push against our dulled morality or our sense of what’s possible. Finally, we might spot teens taking up hobbies and making collections. Hobbies can be a way to identify yourself as part of a group against the rest of the world (“I’m the sort of person who goes bird-watching!”), and collections can be a way to climb the status ladder inside the community. Egan points out that a collection can also be a way to feel like you have control over what you’re discovering is a very big and complex world of detailed information (“I’ve spotted every one of the fifty most common birds of Texas — even the black-capped vireo!”) Egan’s insight is that these obsessions give teenagers a sense of meaning, and that we can use them as tools to make middle schools that overflow with meaning. From meaningless to meaning-soaked Again, Egan sketches out a new kind of curriculum subject-by-subject. Before, his trick was to ask where the subject first evolved out of; now, it’s to ask who first discovered or created the specific content we’re teaching. “All knowledge”, he writes, “is human knowledge. Everything we know is knowable through the lives of its inventors, discoverers, or users, and we can have access to that knowledge through the hopes, fears, or intentions that drove them”. Middle school math Who first discovered the concepts students learn in math? The answer, of course, is a wide diversity of curious men and women living across the world over the last few thousand years. Egan says: bring those people into how we teach math. If we used gossip and heroes to help students find it meaningful, what kind of math would result? When we teach the Pythagorean theorem, we should give a sense of who Pythagoras was — a cult-founder who worshiped numbers to find God, whose followers (according to a piece of ancient gossip) murdered one of their members who discovered irrational numbers! Q: Well, sure, that works for Pythagoras, but he’s a known nut job; surely most math doesn’t come from such interesting roots? When we teach the Cartesian coordinate system, students should meet Rene Descartes, the Calvinist French polymath who saw the possibility that math could decipher the world, if only we could unite algebra and geometry… and invented the xy-plane to do exactly that. When we teach scientific notation, we should call our students’ attention to the importance of the number zero, and tell them the story of the Pope who tried to introduce Arabic numerals to Christian Europe and may have been assassinated because of it. When we teach algebra, we should ask students why “algebra” is Arabic for “the fixing of bones”, and tell the story of what Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was up to. We could do this all day. Literally everything students learn in school was first invented or discovered by some interesting person who was struggling to accomplish something hard. To learn is to connect with those people, whether we know it or not. Egan says: help kids know it. Math has been dehumanized: re-humanize it. Q: So the math curriculum needs to become a history of math curriculum, and math teachers need to become history teachers? No, the content needn’t change. But with surprisingly little work, we can bring in the gossipy stories of heroes, and their obsessions can spread to students. Middle school science Who first discovered the things students learn about in science? If you’re thinking “scientists”, you’re only partially right. Most of the big-picture ideas that we now think of as “science” were discovered before the word “scientist” was invented, or the discipline was professionalized. Frequently, they were hatched by true amateurs, working in their free time, hungry to unlock the secrets of nature. We can use gossip and heroes to spread their obsessions to students just as we taught math, but Egan points out two twists. The first is that the content itself can take on heroic qualities: everything is impressive, when you look at it in a certain light. In an interview, Egan once said: “My book is an attempt to show that, indeed, everything in the world is wonderful, but that schools are designed almost to disguise this slightly shameful fact. We represent the world to children as mostly known and rather dull. The opposite is the case: we are surrounded by mystery, and what we know is fascinating”. What would even the most boring subjects look like, if we emphasized their heroic qualities? Well: What’s a tooth? Bone, wrapped in rock, surrounding tiny cells that your body feeds with blood. What’s a bar of chocolate? A crystal of jellyfish-shaped fat molecules stacked together; when you put it in your mouth you shake them apart into a writhing confusion. What’s the air around you? The bottom of a 10-mile-deep ocean; when you put your tongue over a soda straw and your Pepsi stops leaking out, it’s not because a “vacuum” is “sucking” it up, but because that ocean is squeezing it into your face. Again, we could do this all day! And in middle school science, we can. Everything in the world is wonderful; we can help students see this again and again. The second twist is that science is a subject rich in extremes. Here Egan introduces a concept that we’ll see crop up again: “15-minute segments”. To help us fit as much wonder as possible into a school day, he suggests we supplement the usual school subjects with a few quick lessons. To infuse science with extremes, he suggests we add on three: “human & natural records”, “extremes of animals & plants”, and “cosmology”. Middle school history Who first made the things students learn about in history? Why, the historical characters themselves! Since we’ve given kids a grounding in history in elementary school, now we can build on that, going through many of the same events as before, but in more depth, and more vividly. We’ll leverage the interest with other people’s inner lives to tell stories focusing on the perspectives of the people who made history — zooming in, when possible, on scandalous details. We’ll leverage the tool of idealism to choose historical characters who chafed against their surroundings, and understand what they were trying to accomplish. What was their vision of the world? What did they hope for, and what did they fear? Q: Isn’t the “great man” approach to history out of fashion? Egan’s approach doesn’t say that “great men” made history — it’s just leveraging gossip to help kids see history as something meaningful that can expand their own possibilities. “Early adolescence is commonly a time of intense and vivid emotional life, and also a time of deepest boredom and depression… [We] can give shape to the intermediate curriculum and offer the students a world that is rich, complex, varied, and as intense and vivid as their own emotional lives”. We also should add on another “15-minute segment” just to pump in as many biographies as possible, and from people who don’t always fit into the normal history curriculum. Call it “Brief Lives”, and throw in anyone who’s struggled to push some limit — Mary Wollstonecraft, Jesse Owen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the students’ great-aunts, whoever. As students get older, this can transition to “People and Their Ideas”. Here, we’d focus less on the details of the person’s life, and use it as a backdrop to showing how meaningful some of history’s most important ideas could be. Think Aristotle and syllogisms, Edward Said and orientalism, Confucius and propriety, Cornel West and race, Buddha on the four noble truths, Muhammad and the five pillars, Karl Marx and communism, Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Thomas Hobbes and the state of nature, John Locke and natural rights, Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism, Thomas Aquinas on the sacraments, Martin Luther on faith, Voltaire on the freedom of speech… you get the idea. Q: Can you really get a profound understanding of utilitarianism in 15 minutes? Yes! The point of this segment isn’t to develop a systematic understanding of any one idea, it’s to introduce students to the exciting possibilities of human thought. (As a bonus, this might make them less likely to fall for the first ideology that they encounter later in life.) Diversity is important for this — as it is with culture. Throughout this, we should also be trying to expose students to as much cultural diversity as possible, because in high school, we’ll be trying to make sense of our society, and it’s impossible to do that unless we have something to compare it against. Middle school literature & language You might think that this subject would be easy — that middle school literature is already filled with “strong and clear narratives”, that it deals with “transcendent human qualities such as courage, love, and persistence”, that it focuses on “extremes of human experience”, that it examines “something strange and exotic”. You’d be right! Egan’s pretty happy with a bog-standard middle school literature curriculum, done well. In this part of the book, his spends most of his limited space suggesting three rather odd activities which could also be useful — especially for increasing students’ awareness of language, so they can use it better. The first is etymology — not, however, memorizing lists of roots, but in being told the entertaining backstories of specific words. Take the word “berserk”, for example — we now use it to mean something relatively mild (“if my mom catches me coming home late, she’ll go berserk”), but it comes from an old Norse word meaning “a raging warrior of superhuman strength”. And that’s because ber meant “bear” and serk meant “shirt”: soldiers of the bear cult would don the skin of a bear to, in their minds, transform into one — howling, foaming at the mouth, and gnawing the rims of their shields. (Most adults walk through life with little understanding that the words falling out of their mouths are entities, with their own back-stories. Communication is, at the very least, more interesting when we become aware of this.) The second is to add on another language to learn — not, this time, to become fluent in it, but just to become aware of how very different human languages can be. (For native English speakers, Sanskrit might work well, or Cantonese, or perhaps even ancient Egyptian. Again, the point isn’t for this language to be useful — it’s to explore diversity.) The final one is to study humor — not just jokes anymore, but comedy at its finest. Egan cites (at length!) Monty Python as a group of people who were particularly brilliant in their use of the English language. Examining their skits can lead us into not just an appreciation of semantics (the study of how meaning is made from smaller pieces, like etymology) but also pragmatics (the study of how meaning is made in social situations). Pretty heady stuff, for a conversation about a dead parrot. Part 4: A new kind of high school I’ll confess — I loved parts of high school… and among nerdy folks, I suspect I’m not alone. For some of us, this was a golden time. Even at my local public high school, I had access to academically thrilling classes — especially, in my last two years, advanced literature and history. I felt like I was finally understanding the ideas that mattered. In any case, Egan is quick to acknowledge that, at this level, the sort of education he advocates really is being practiced in some places. What he can add is an understanding of what makes it wonderful, how to make it even more wonderful, and how to make it wonderful for many, many more people. What’s the matter with high school? Far too often, even when high school classes are intellectual, they’re dry. For the majority of students, all this academic stuff is experienced as utterly lifeless, a mass of dead information to be squeezed inside one’s head for a test and then left to evaporate. Egan mocks the curriculum wars that seem to be a permanent feature of the teaching life; quoting the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, he says “while the academic left and right bicker over whether the curriculum is too traditional or too radical, they fail to recognize that most students absorb so little of academic culture that the bickering is largely irrelevant”. Why so dry? Egan suggests three reasons to explain this. First, because high school academic classes are too often masses of small details with no sign of the big picture. Second, because they’re typically slavishly disciplinary, and aren’t able to address the questions that span the disciplines. Third, because they’re often designed to bring students through what everyone is sure of, and hide away any controversies. In all of these, Egan suggests that what’s called “academics” in high school is too often a dim imitation of what real academics are actually practicing. There’s a fourth reason, though, and it’s probably the biggest of all — by the time they get to high school, most students haven’t actually learned that much! An academic approach is designed to connect small details into the big picture; for people who arrive in high school (and college) classes without having already collected much in their heads, academics are going to taste dry. (An implication of this for anyone trying to improve schools is that we might not want to start with high schools. If your goal is to create a new kind of academic learning, first start at elementary school — or barring that, middle school.) What motivates mad scientists? When we wanted to re-conceive the elementary and middle school curriculums, we looked at what students were already good at — kids’ cognitive strengths and adolescents’ obsessions. For this level it might be easier to look — for reasons that will become clear when we finally unveil Egan’s crazy-sounding definition of education — at the sorts of things that bring intellectuals joy. Q: Which intellectuals? Take your pick. Galileo, Einstein, Smith, Marx, Goodall, Chomsky, Curie… all the people who took to the life of the mind like fish to water. But that’s a lot to hold in my mind at once, so I’m just going to think about Doc Brown from Back to the Future: He was high on intellectualism I’ve never been there, but the brochure looks nice Let’s call these people “mad scientists”. And let’s pretend we once again took up our job of being primatologists, and snooped on these folks “in the wild” (“in the lab”? this is beginning to get recursive…)… what would we find motivating them? Asking simple questions, for one. (What is space? What is society? What is a human? What is language?) Building general schemes (big theories) that hold lots of evidence together. Finding their place in the cosmos. And (perhaps above all) seeking certainty. Once again, Egan suggests we use these as tools to remake the curriculum. From dry to daring What could a high school curriculum look like, if it were rebuilt on these tools? Once again, Egan has a trick. This time, it’s to ask what fights have driven the development of each of these fields forward — and how we can help students enter them. First, a mini-segment! Intellectuals invented the academic disciplines to better pursue the life of the mind, but the disciplines can get in the way. Some of the most important intellectual discoveries that could help students are too big to fit into any of the disciplines. We need a place to introduce them plainly. Egan proposes another mini-segment — again, just 15 minutes a day, a few times a week — called “Metaknowledge”. Q: Isn’t that already in the International Baccalaureate program? Yes, he acknowledges that he’s borrowing from that! This segment would introduce ideas that would enrich student thinking across the disciplines: game theory, cognitive biases, systems thinking, Bayesian reasoning, epistemology, ethics, logic, cultural evolution, and so on. High school literature How can we help students enter the big fights of literature? Intellectuals of a literary bent — professors, critics, poets, novelists — delight in arguing over literature like rabbis arguing over the Talmud. Take, just for one example, the debates over Shakespeare’s character of Ophelia. Does she love Hamlet, or is she a victim of his emotional abuse? Is she truly insane, or is she acting? Is she passive, or is she pulling the strings? Oceans of ink have been spilled arguing over questions like these; our students can, perhaps, spill a few ounces more. The usefulness of arguing literature, for Egan, isn’t that it’s oh-so important for educated adults to know a lot about Ophelia. (This, again, was where the academicists went wrong — in thinking that being educated was about getting the best knowledge in your head.) Rather, arguing over literature is a training arena for the all-important intellectual move of this kind of understanding: building general schemes out of evidence, and struggling with anomalies. One person, for example, might hold that Ophelia is insane, and cite all sorts of obvious evidence — her father just was murdered by her lover, she rants nonsense while (bizarrely) handing out flowers to friends… But then he’s challenged when he reads a scholar pointing out that, to people in Elizabethan England, types of flowers have symbolic meanings. How does he deal with that? He could ignore it, claiming it an over-reading of Shakespeare. (Sometimes a flower is just a flower!) Or he could address it, complicating his own scheme. This intellectual work is best done with other people, who are incentivized to challenge your understanding of something, and go back and forth, building competing models and calling attention to anomalies. This process — the “dialectic” — pops up again and again in the academic disciplines. It’s the center of how understanding works, at this stage. And the nice thing about practicing it on literature is that, more so than in history or science, the evidence is shared knowledge — it’s right in front of everyone, written out. But there are other ways literature class can be helpful to the general life of the mind. Egan also suggests that we’ll want to specially include literature that helps students understand complex ideas. Camus, Orwell, Borges, Calvino might be particularly helpful here… and I imagine that genres like science fiction and magical realism might be particularly useful, too. (Note, though, that once again none of this requires a radical remaking of the curriculum, or of the canon of texts that we traditionally assign to high schoolers.) Q: Oh yes, the canon — what does Egan have to say about the canon wars? When he wrote Educated Mind in the nineties, the long-brewing canon war was approaching its inevitable apocalyptic climax. On one side of this Plain of Megiddo were the pro-canon traditionalists, arguing that we should keep assigning the texts that had been argued over for centuries. Facing them were the anti-canon reformers, arguing the standard texts over-represented the perspective of dead white men. Onto the middle of the plain rides Egan on a white horse, who bellows above the din: “I’VE GOT A BUSLOAD OF HIGH SCHOOLERS WHO WANTS TO JOIN IN, EVERYONE OKAY WITH THAT?” To do so, he says, we need to give students the arguments from both sides. So, for example, bell hooks, Edward Said, and China Achebe should be on the syllabus, as should Allan Bloom, Mortimer Adler, and Diane Ravitch. And of course they should actually read the texts cherished by both sides, too, so they can argue better. High school history How could entering the big fights help us reinvent high school history? First, we might look for dueling histories. It’s time for students to get into historiography and understand that history isn’t just what happened, it’s something we make. We might help kids read chapters from Howard Zinn’s socialist history of America alongside the corresponding chapters from Paul Johnson’s conservative history of America. How could big questions help? We want to help students see how various people have disagreed over some of the big questions of what human history is, at its most basic. We can have them compare Steven Pinker’s theory of civilization’s progress (Better Angels of our Nature) with Yuvah Noah Harari’s theory of civilization’s woes (Sapiens). We could have them compare so-and-so’s account of human history as an ever-expanding unlatching of energy sources with Robert Wright’s account of human history as unlatching more and more positive-sum games (Nonzero). What role could the lure of certainty play? To help them grow their skills at finding anomalies, we might help them work through pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. Q: Conspiracy theories! Oh, come now, you’re playing with fire. Well, the world is on fire. Our students will spend the rest of their lives encountering terrible-but-beguiling arguments about how the world works; if we don’t prepare them for those, what have we been doing? So we should introduce arguments that the Moon landing was a hoax, that the Illuminati founded America, that aliens built the pyramids, and so on. At no point can we demean students for falling for any of these theories — the job of a teacher at this stage, Egan writes, is to support students in their reasoning even when their beliefs are offensive and stupid, gradually offering anomalies. There’s no way out of bad theories except through them. By the time students graduate, we want them to have wrestled with terrible ideas and — for a while — lost. They need to experience what it’s like to change their minds about something they felt strongly about. They need to viscerally realize, in Feynman’s famous phrase, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” High school natural science How could entering the big fights reinvent high school science? At present, so much of the high school science curriculum — especially “honors” classes — is oriented toward helping amass details. (The same is true of 100-level university classes, which famously “survey” the field to prepare for more advanced studies. I always thought this was stupid — of the huge lecture hall of students in my Geology 100 class, how many went on to take even a second course?) The meaty debates that propel science forward are held back. Egan complains: “The more general and speculative theories in any discipline are treated like an unconventional and disreputable relation who, even though the children find her exciting and entertaining, must be kept hidden from view, her very existence denied as long as possible”. This is a stupid approach — students with an adventurous bent are convinced that science isn’t for them. Egan proposes, simply, that we flip this, and organize high school science classes around the big debates. We shouldn’t be ashamed at how, well, adolescent this might look: “the dramatic, speculative, and contentious theories will be up-front in the early years of the [high school] curriculum”. What might those be? Egan doesn’t give a list, but we can spitball some: instead of explaining what “matter” is from the top down, a physics class could problematize “matter” by following the debates over the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and by becoming familiarized with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics

Kieran Egan laughs at your educational reforms Okay, of those three jobs, which should we give to schools? You probably have your favorite — I certainly did! But Egan wants you to know they’re all crap. None of them, by themselves, can give us the kinds of schools we want. Q: I kind of like Rousseau! What’s the problem with pure development? Like I said before, my bookshelves overflow with authors who want to knock down Rousseau (and the people who followed in his wake — John Dewey in particular). Egan will have none of it: before the developmental approach, many schools were terrible places where children were beaten for getting math problems wrong. “Rousseau and Dewey,” he writes, “have enriched our conception of education in important ways. We will not make educational progress by trying to cut away their contribution”. But, he continues, there’s no way a purely developmental approach could possibly work! Rousseau imagined human nature to be selfless and kind; this ideal state could only survive if it was kept away from the evils of society — the titular child in his book Emile was kept away from human society, unable even to read, until age twelve. Of course, schools don’t go this far — they can’t — but I can attest from personal experience that even fairly serious attempts to raise children in an accepting community of peers often crash and burn when faced with actual human nature. Kids reared in the most developmentally appropriate schools can be nasty, bored, and lazy at about the same rate as their mainstream peers. Q: In my heart, I’m an academicist. What’s the problem with it? I think Egan was an academicist in his heart, too. His book drips with classical references — so much so that it can make some sections difficult to read. But, he points out, those purely-academic schools really were hellscapes. And their brutality wasn’t something that was just tacked on, it flowed from their understanding of knowledge: enlightenment will come when the right information enters a child’s head, regardless of how it gets in there (or whether the child wants it in there). And again, Egan feels obliged to point out that we’ve tried this approach for thousands of years, and it hasn’t worked. In fact, Plato’s original vision so obviously doesn’t work that people hawking academic schools have modified their pitch: no longer is the goal for students to understand the Truth, but to cultivate inquiring, skeptical minds who are perpetually dissatisfied with old answers. Can we imagine taxpayers paying for this? Q: Fine, fine. I’m not a fan of socialization, but I’ll ask the question — what’s wrong with it? The funny thing is that of the three, this is the only one that has shown its ability to work for a long stretch of time! (As John Calvin pointed out, as animals, we’re pretty pathetic. Socialization allowed our ancestors to become something more than individuals so that they could survive; we owe this job our gratitude. That said, it would be impossible for schooling today to seek only to socialize. That would require that members of a society share values, and fundamentally agree that their society is good. It also requires that a society not be changing, so the values and skills that are taught to children today will be the ones that will be useful to them in thirty years. Obviously, modern Western society is none of those things. Pure socialization might work for the Amish, or for Catholic trad communities, but not for us. And, frankly, we should feel okay about this. (Do you know where you could get a pure socialization education in the 20th century West, Egan asks? The Hitler Youth!) There really are good reasons to be wary of any education that decrees that its society is uniformly good. Which combination is best? Okay, you say, it’s clear that none of these jobs is good on its own — the solution (obviously!) is to smoosh them together. If we do that wisely, the good parts of each will make up for the deficiencies of the others. This sounds eminently reasonable — but Egan would like to have a word with you. Q: What’s the problem in combining socialization with academics? Wouldn’t this be a beautiful combination? Socialization would cohere the school together, and then they could leverage those good feelings to, say, read Aristotle. I’ve seen this work in schools (like conservative Christian academies) founded on a set of specific beliefs. But when intellectual diversity enters in, it becomes harder. You, perhaps, say that socialization could unite people around their differences — schools could support a society made up entirely of critics! Yes, a society of critics would be interesting, and so would a herd of cats: neither works in practice. Imagine students reading their Ibram X. Kendi books in the morning, then pledging allegiance to the American flag after lunch. Q: What’s the problem in combining academics with development? Again, this seems like a beautiful vision: we can invite children into discovering the big ideas. Alas, it crashes into the reef of reality quite quickly: what do we do when kids don’t want to learn about the big ideas? This combination works wonderfully for kids who naturally want to be academics, but — and this is a crucial point that geeky education types too often sweep under the rug — lots of kids don’t naturally want to be academics. Okay, you say, ignore the “liberatory” element of the developmentalist program, and focus on the “uncovering the nature of the individual child” part: academics can tell us what the students should be learning, and development can tell us how they should learn it. Egan has a thought experiment for you. Imagine that you get the funding to fully pursue this combined goal — you set up a hundred different types of schools in the nearest big city. There’s a specific school for every possible permutation of learner — a school for big-picture kinesthetic learners who score as INFJ on the Myers–Briggs, a school for detail-oriented auditory learners who score ENFP, a school for marine-biology-loving hyperactive learners who lost their personality test results… you get the idea. You build the schools, you work out the bus schedule, and then, on the first day, all the students learn exactly the same content. Because that’s what it means for a school to be an academy — it teaches “the best that’s been thought or said”. Q: What’s the problem in combining development with socialization? What’s wrong with telling kids to become their authentic selves, even as you squeeze them into the roles most beneficial to society? Imagine two rural schools merging together, due to declining local population. Now imagine that one of them is a hippie free school, and the other is a military academy. (That’s a reality TV show I’d watch.) It’s possible, I suppose, to imagine this working for kids who naturally want to be, say, plumbers, or paleontologists, or presidents — and who happen to go to a school that prepares its students to fill that one role. But the odds of matching students to schools just perfectly seems small. But enough thought experiments — we can state this in a visual form: behold, the SAD triangle. It’s bright around the edges, but muddled where they mix: One of the things I love about Egan is that he looks at educational ideas historically. (Most histories of education start around the turn of the 20th century; I remember being excited when I found one that began in the 1600s. Egan begins in prehistory.) And what we’re reminded of, when we see these historically, is that these jobs were meant to supplant each other. Put together, they sabotage each other. What are we asking of schools? Of the three possible jobs, which are we asking mainstream schools to perform? Egan answers: all three. To confirm this, stretch your memory back to your student days, and see if you can put some of the most basic elements in any of these three categories. We’re so immersed in these that they seem obvious, “natural” aspects of schooling, but of course they’re nothing of the sort. Did you spend your time with other children of the same age? Was your work graded according to a standard? Were you forced to play team sports, or to pledge your allegiance to your nation-state? All of these, Egan says, bear the fingerprints of the goal of socialization. Progressive reformers in in the 1960s saw these as the markings of a dark conspiracy, but socialization has more warm-feely aspects: counselors to help students cope with the strains of modern society, field trips to the local fire station and historical monuments, and everything “practical” — life skills, sex ed, emotional regulation, and so on. Did you learn anything that wasn’t obviously useful? Did you read Hamlet, say, or master the Pythagorean theorem, or learn that the planets orbit the Sun (and not the other way around)? That’s the fingerprints of the academic goal. Finally, did you hear teachers show concern about “age-appropriate” content, or see signs that your school valued individualized learning? Does it seem right to you that learning should be “active” rather than “passive”, or that it’s better for someone to discover something than to be told it? Did your kindergarten have tiny, child-sized chairs? All these, Egan says, are the fruit of developmentalism. The first time I read the book, I wondered at all this. What Egan was saying was indeed lining up with my memories. But perhaps, I thought, he was playing loose with the categories; I was still skeptical that schools really were trying to balance all three goals. So I decided to check his idea from a different perspective and look up the mission statements of school districts I was familiar with. Here’s the one from the town I currently live in: “Skills” and “become involved members of a global community” seem to connote socialization, “challenge” and “knowledge” seem to connote academics, and “empower” and “reach their full potential” seem to connote development. But I wasn’t sure if I was just seeing faces in clouds, so I looked up the mission statement for my hometown: “Succeeding” seems like socialization, “learning” seems like a nod to academics, and “growing” seems like code for development. But again, I was worried that I engaging in motivated reasoning, so I looked up the largest district I’ve lived in, a city of about a million people: Wow. That seems pretty clear. So, to sum up: Egan says that there are three potential jobs we can give to schools. Alone, each of these jobs is terrible; together, they’re worse. And what we’ve done is given schools all three jobs. A sad triangle, indeed. What about alternative schools? I was curious to see whether this “sad triangle” could help us understand other philosophies of education, and why they work (or don’t). Where would, say, unschooling, and classical education, and vocational ed, and Montessori go? The first three seem obvious. Radical unschooling is in the upper-right, classical schools (with its focus on feeding kids “the best that’s been thought or said”) is in the upper-left, and vocational ed is in the bottom corner. What can that tell us? Intriguingly, each of those approaches can claim to have done some impressive stuff. I’ve worked with radical unschoolers, and while their skills have often been lopsided (not learning math is an acknowledged issue in the community), they’ve all at least exhibited a zeal for learning the topics they’ve been interested in. (Video games, frequently.) And I remember a massive study in the early 2000s that asked which kinds of schools actually improved student test scores controlling for the effects of socioeconomics. What it found was that only two types of schools stood out: Catholic schools that were operated by a religious order (e.g. the Jesuits — not local parish schools), and vocational schools. Q: Oh, that’s terrible evidence. One of those was just personal anecdotes! And what about selection effects? And what about…? I wouldn’t disagree — and, as Freddie deBoer points out, most educational research is bunk. I’ll take this to be only weak confirmation of Egan’s theory that combining jobs undercuts education. Are we hosed? If Egan’s critique is correct, we’re in a bad situation. Educational radicals yell from their dark corners to abandon the middle and come join them; a century of educational reforms have amounted to little more than wobbling around, first in one direction, then another. At the moment, the conversation about schools in the United States, at least, seems to have hit an all-time pessimistic blech. Freddie deBoer speaks for a lot of people when he says “Even the most optimistic reading of the research literature suggests that almost nothing moves the needle in academic outcomes. Almost nothing we try works.” I’m not quite that pessimistic — the word “almost” is doing some work, there. There are some reforms that seem to work at the margin: raising teacher pay, making it easier to become a teacher, reducing air pollution, free school lunches, and more. Actually applying what the science of reading has been telling us for a few decades seems a big one. And perhaps you have your own pet reform proposal. Sure — add it to the heap! What Egan suggests, though, is that so long as we’re bopping around this triangle of jobs, we won’t be able to get the schools that we want. The dream There’s a moment at the end of my favorite Bollywood movie that’s become stuck in my head. The protagonists have made the arduous journey to a beachside rural school. In the sun outside, flocks of children are experimenting with art and playing with inventions; inside, the walls are covered with books and the tables are covered with models. The kids are learning joyously and deeply. In the real world, such places do exist — they’re just exclusive, pulling their students from among the families who are already the most gifted and curious. They don’t make kids this way; they scoop up the kids who are already this way. But in the movie, we’re supposed to believe these are normal children — normal, except they’ve been transformed by a school. Egan’s wild idea is that it’s possible to make schools like this. He thought that we didn’t have to wait for the communists to make people equal or for the transhumanists to make people smarter. All he thought it required was giving schools a different job — not socialization or academics or development, but something that brings pieces of them together in a new way. But in order to understand that job, we have to come to a cleaner, bigger, and truer understanding of what “education” is. The road ahead: a special Q-and-A Q: This is the proverbial thousand-dollar-bill-lying-on-the-sidewalk: if this is possible, someone should have done it now. Is Egan going to give sufficient evidence for me to believe this? Maybe! I’ll address this in a special section at the end, after sketching out what his theory looks like. Q: If his theory is even plausibly true, then why haven’t I heard of Egan before? His books can be hard to read — he was an intellectual’s intellectual; he had difficulty writing a page without a reference to William Wordsworth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Claude Levi-Strauss, Richard Rorty, Noam Chomsky, or Steven Pinker. And his paradigm is wonky and multidimensional; he rejiggers common categories, and tells you everything all at once. But worst of all, when his paradigm is stated plainly, it sounds stupid. Q: Oh! What… is his paradigm? I’m going to jigsaw his book, and hold back his big idea for its own section. First, I’m going to list out some simple observations of students at different ages, and imagine what schooling could look like, if it were built on these principles. (First I’ll do this for elementary school, then middle school, then high school.) Then I’ll explain how his theory ties all of this together… by clarifying our definition of what education actually is. Q: I’m not from America; could you be clear on what you mean by those divisions of schooling? Egan’s framework has three main stages, but they don’t divide neatly into “elementary, middle, and high school”. (The precise age ranges he talks about, if you’re interested, are 2–8, 8–15, and 15 and older.) Regardless, I’m going to use those terms — he sometimes did — because it gives me something specific to imagine. Don’t sweat ‘em. Part 2: A new kind of elementary school What’s the matter with elementary schools? Egan suggests that Plato and Rousseau, for all their differences, might have the same reaction if they visited a modern elementary school: they’d call it “trivial”. I’ll admit, here, that I have tremendously fond memories of my elementary school years — committed teachers, good friends, and interesting activities. But I suspect my memory has edited out the most typical work I did. Either that, or elementary schools have taken a drastic plunge in quality from the 1980s. My wife and I homeschool now, but before the pandemic, we sent our kids to our local public school, and whenever we volunteered in the classroom, we were horrified. They spent their days practicing reading on shallow texts, or half-mindlessly practicing basic arithmetic. Occasionally they’d bring us home a sign of learning about something from the real world — usually something as intellectually and emotionally compelling as the importance of tooth brushing. And at parent–teacher conferences every year, we’d be sat down on tiny chairs and informed that, while our children were quite bright, they were struggling to pay attention in class. No sh**, I wanted to reply. The school seemed hermetically sealed; almost nothing that felt meaningful from the outside world could get in. Though they might agree about little else, Egan thinks that Plato and Rousseau would look at the dull worksheets and insipid “hands-on activities” and call modern elementary schools trivial. He agrees, and thinks that fixing this is the first step to building a new kind of school. Why so trivial? Ironically, Egan thinks it's all the fault of Plato and Rousseau. Hidden in the ways that both the academicists and developmentalist think about education is an assumption: that children’s reasoning is basically the same as adult reasoning, but lesser. Q: This isn’t some romantic, children-are-the-real geniuses theory, is it? Egan actually does think that there’s an intensity to how children perceive the world that we lose — but no, it’s not. He’s building on mainstream cognitive science — just aspects of it that are currently more-or-less ignored in school. The upshot, though, is that he thinks that educational researchers (be they of academic or developmentalist persuasions) see kids as smaller, stupider versions of adults. Q: But that’s the opposite of what my local developmentalist school says! It was the opposite of what the developmentalist school that I worked at said, too. But at teacher meetings, I’d frequently hear people ask what was “developmentally appropriate” for a child. I’ll grant that there are perfectly reasonable times to ask this: “Honey, is it developmentally appropriate for our 10-year-old to watch ‘Cocaine Bear’?” is just one of many examples. But “is it developmentally appropriate for our class to learn about world religions?” or “is it developmentally appropriate for our school library to have a book mentioning homosexuality?” probably aren’t some of them. (The latter example was not one that I heard at my progressivist school, but Egan points out that this sort of language is often used by conservative activists.) This notion of “developmentally appropriate” took on a scientific sheen with the work of Jean Piaget, the famous Swiss psychologist. Before age 12, he “proved”, children aren’t able to form hypotheses, draw conclusions, or think abstractly. This, his followers thought, should transform schools — and so they did! To math, they added in “manipulatives” — physical cubes and rods and such — to help students see math. To the history curriculum, they — well, they ended it. Why waste time, they asked, lecturing students about history that they couldn’t possibly understand? In its place they put the “expanding horizons” model of social studies. One version goes as follows: In kindergarten, students learn about themselves In first grade, they learn about their families In second grade, they learn about their neighborhood In third grade, they learn about their city In fourth grade, they learn about their state In fifth grade, they learn about their nation In sixth grade they learn about the world We can admit that there’s an elegance to this model. (I can picture how clever the theorist who first came up with it must have felt!) The downstream effects of it, however, seem horrible. Doesn’t keeping kids ignorant of the rest of the world seem provincial? Doesn’t reinforcing their self-centeredness seem infantilizing? Perhaps we could stomach it if it was founded on some unshakable findings of child psychology — but does it really strike you as likely that kids are incapable of understanding anything that happened long ago or far away? How, Egan asks, can we explain the $50 billion success of a movie franchise aimed at children that literally begins “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away?” Q: Because… Jedis aren’t history? The point is, kids obviously have the mental abilities to understand — and in fact care a lot about — things far outside their own experience, and we’ve built elementary schools on a long-dominant model of educational psychology that swears they can’t. This is actually a great example of a general principle. Let’s call it “the Star Wars test”: can our model make sense of the most obvious facts of students? When we find that the answer is “no”, we should at least consider radically revising what we’re doing in school. What are elementary schoolers good at? (or: kids are smarter than students) Someone — I can’t now find who — once observed that children seem to lose IQ points the moment they step into a classroom. Egan agrees, and suggests that we think of ourselves as primatologists to kids, Jane Goodalls who investigate children “out in the wild” to see the sorts of things they gravitate to, and do fairly well at. If we do this, what do we see? Kids tell jokes, for one. They get mental images stuck in their heads, for another. They engage in role-playing, get lost in reverie, and beat out rhythms when they’re bored. They make ample use of metaphors, tell stories, and insist on seeing the world in terms of abstract binaries (e.g. stupid/smart, cowardice/courage, slavery/freedom, and so on). These, Egan holds, are the cognitive strengths that children use to understand the world. They’re the things that kids are often about as good at as adults — or much better than. They’re going to be the tools Egan wants us to use to rebuild the entire elementary curriculum, and in fact he spends most of his second chapter geeking out about how we might define these, how they operate in the mind, where they first pop up in history and anthropology, and even how they might have developed in our evolutionary past. I’m going to skip all of that, and get to the curriculum. From trivial to rich: the trick What could an intellectually rich elementary school curriculum look like, if we built it on kids’ cognitive strengths? He gives us one suggestion to help us do this: ask where each discipline came from in the first place. What was math before it was math, for example — or science before it was science? Q: How on Earth could that help? That’ll become clear later, when we finally uncover what Egan thinks “education” actually is, and see what job he wants us to give schools. For now, take it as a tantalizing hint… or, y’know, just ignore it. Elementary literature & language What was literature before it was literature? Before people invented writing, they had rich oral traditions: they told simple stories, recited poems, and shared proverbs. Egan suggests that these bits of oral tradition should form the backbone of the elementary literature curriculum. Q: What sorts of stories? As many as we can, and from as many diverse cultures as possible! Folktales are wonderful, as are myths. Think the Aboriginal story of “The Rainbow Serpent”, episodes from the Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Egyptian story of Osiris & Isis, the Greek story of Orpheus & Eurydice, the Chinese Legend of the White Snake, the Japanese Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo, the Ashanti tales of Anansi, the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the English legend of King Arthur, the Maori myth of Maui and the Sun, the Roman story of Romulus and Remus, selections from the Indian Mahabharata, the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, the Inca legend of the Sun and Moon, the Iroquois Myth of the Flying Head (a real thing! look it up!), and the Ojibwe story of Turtle Island. Q: That was a lot of examples. Are you going to keep giving so many? I’ve got a [mumble mumble mumble] to get to. Sorry about that. Sometimes, though, I feel that a limitation of reading Educated Mind is that, in trying to keep his book to a manageable size, Egan skimped on examples in some places that it matters. It’s easy to read his occasional example and assume he intends that it hold some central place in the curriculum — when all he wants to do is display how rich and diverse the curriculum could be. (Also: good God, I didn’t even include an example from Norse mythology!) So from now on, just assume that every category could be filled with oodles of examples. Q: What sorts of poems? Lots of poems, first of all. We shouldn’t steer toward “fancy” poems — rather, we should find poems that appeal to kids immediately — think Shel Silverstein, Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, Edward Lear, or Ogden Nash… that sort of thing. In a biting essay, Egan suggests these poets like these appeal to kids precisely because they leverage kids’ cognitive strengths: “we should find, and encourage saying and singing and shouting aloud verse with strong narrative forms, thumping rhymes and rhythms, the most vivid images, fun with metaphors, and a rollicking story.” Q: Why proverbs? Proverbs stick in your mind almost effortlessly. (“All’s fair in love and war!” “When in Rome, do as the Romans do!” “You can’t judge a book by its cover!”) They’re also useful; they capture general truths. Kids can apply them to all sorts of situations, but also discuss them — to what extent are they wise or foolish? (I remember my surprise when I realized that they couldn’t all be true — because you can’t follow “look before you leap” and “he who hesitates is lost” at the same time! I’m embarrassed to say that I think I only realized this when I was in college.) Elementary science What was science before it was science? Egan suggests: being immersed in the natural world. We might, he writes, encourage elementary students to “adopt” some feature of the natural world — a patch of grass, a cat, a branch, a stream — and simply observe it at length. To do this, we can use the cognitive strength of reverie. Q: Oh, do you mean like kids sometimes do in science class nowadays — describe a thing to a partner, make notes, draw it, and label its parts? No, the exact opposite! That’s all about squeezing the experience into words and forms that we understand. What we want “is less an attempt to know about nature as to know it in some participatory way, to know it as something we are an intimate part of, not set off from”. Q: That sounds a little… “woo” to me. It did to me, too… until I remembered my childhood climbing tree. I didn’t much like to go outside as a child, but I had this one tree that I’d climb up and read for hours and hours. If I close my eyes I can bring to mind the precise texture of its bark, the roughness of its broken-off branches, the coolness of its leaves, the always-surprising solidness of its trunk… I’m bigger now, but I think if I were back in my parent’s yard, I could still navigate its limbs with my eyes closed. I have, at this point in my life, read a fair number of books about trees, but I’d be surprised if all of them together more than equaled the amount I learned from that tree — my tree. Elementary math What was math before it was math? Egan suggests: counting and logic. We might, then, use rhythms, metaphors, stories, and jokes to help kids become fond of these. Q: Counting is pretty… basic. Could it really be improved? Beware of “the curse of knowledge”: Steven Pinker’s phrase for forgetting that something was once difficult! Egan suggests we should spend time helping kids count wonderfully. We can start early with counting rhymes. (“One, two, buckle my shoe! Three, four, out the door! Five, six…”) But we can also help kids use their fingers as metaphors. There are some pretty cool ways of using your hands as an abacus — and did you know that you can count up to 1,023 using just your fingers on both hands, and a knowledge of binary? Q: Logic — I’m intrigued! Aristotelian, or Boolean? Neither, for the time being — Piaget was presumably onto something when he found that young children couldn’t reason abstractly, but he was looking at logic in a vacuum. When we put logic into the context of stories, we find that kids can deal with logic just fine. There’s an entire worldwide network of educators, in fact, called Philosophy for Children, who have written whole books about how to do this, and Egan loves it all. Sometimes they read stories and ask simple questions: “What is friendship?” or “What does it mean to be brave?” They also pose ethical questions: “Is it ever right to spill a secret?” And they pose paradoxes: “Can you step in the same river twice?” Q: You mentioned “jokes” a moment ago. Care to elaborate? Egan thinks that, to help kids get good at math, you should tell kids jokes. Q: That’s… new. I think so, too — but he backs it up pretty well. To be funny, jokes (or at least most kid jokes) rely on a leap in logic: Why can’t you trust an atom? They make up everything. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-hoo? Don’t cry, it’s just a joke! To understand the joke, kids have to follow the logic — spotting patterns, making connections, and tracking what their audience expects a word to mean. That’s a lot of cognitive lifting. And Egan goes further, suggesting that we grit our teeth and create methods to help kids invent their own jokes, no matter how horrible they’ll be at first. (The things we do for learning…) Q: Wait wait wait! What about addition facts, and multiplication tables, and fractions? Egan emphasizes that his methods are designed to be add-ons to the standard math curriculum. In general, he’s a don’t-blow-up-the-system sort of guy, and if something seems especially weird, you should probably assume it’s an add-on to the regular curriculum rather than a replacement, even if I forget to say so. Elementary arts What was art before it was art? Egan suggests we pop our heads into Paleolithic caves for our inspiration. Whatever the specific meaning of all those charcoal elk and aurochs and mammoths (communication with the spirit world? art for art’s sake? a way to impress babes?), Egan thinks it obvious that they were also an attempt to capture an intense experience that would be difficult to express in words alone. What did it feel like to be near an aurochs, or a saber-toothed tiger? “The arts help us,” Egan writes, “to hear and see afresh, to force our perceptions and sensations to experience again the immediacy and vividness of the world”. If we follow this, then, we don’t want to help kids build “art skills” so they can draw like an adult — rather, we want to help them amass a repository of diverse aesthetic feelings that they’ll want to express. We should provide them with a riot of experiences. Q: That couldn’t be more opaque. Examples, please! Egan writes that we should have children learn to whistle, sing, and click their tongue; we should help them emulate the ways a skunk or a hawk or a stick bug might move through a space. We should expose them to scores of different temperatures and materials. In music, we should help them love Beethoven, yes, but also the Beatles; Tchaikovsky, yes, but also Tuvan throat singers, and also John Cage, whale song, and bird song. Q: That’s a lot of experiences, but what would they be doing? An interesting aspect of Egan’s view of education is that he doesn’t seem to think we should push kids right to the “doing” phase. He wants to help kids cultivate an affective relationship with the world. In any case, he writes that as students get more experienced, we should prompt them to move from merely enjoying these experiences to trying to systematically shape similar experiences. And drawing, painting, and playing music could easily be folded into other parts of the curriculum. Elementary social studies What was social studies before it was social studies? Well. Remember how, just a moment ago, I wrote that you could assume that you should probably assume that Kieran isn’t in favor of junking the curriculum as it currently stands? He suggests we very carefully pick up the elementary social studies curriculum, place it into a trash can, and set the whole mess on fire. He isn’t worried about much of importance being lost. (Remember that the “expanding horizons” model is, to him, the original sin of 20th century educational reform, and he repeatedly quotes student surveys showing that “social studies” regularly wins the title of “most boring subject”.) In its place, he suggests we put history — which, he hints, we should think of as the centerpiece of the elementary curriculum. So the real question is what was history before it was history? His answer, surprisingly, is myth. Q: Egan wants us to teach myths as if they were history? Not at all. What he suggests, though, is that we look at how myths operate as narratives — so we can design an intellectually vivid history curriculum. And myths really are special: each is built on at least one binary (like weak vs. strong, or lies vs. truth, or so on), and uses that to tell the story of the big picture of the world. They’re so powerful that people can understand it, remember it, and love it — even if that thing never happened. We should take that power, Egan says, and apply it to things that really did happen. Q: So what history does he think kids should learn in elementary school? The great struggles of humanity from across the whole. Flippin’. World. We’re still talking about young children, so these should be done as simple stories. The goal isn’t to make them history PhD’s, so we needn’t even try to put them in any sort of order. Egan suggests that, in first grade, we pick a single binary like “freedom against oppression” and tell kids a welter of stories, again from as many cultures as possible, and as many times in history as possible. Q: Can you give examples? Oh, all right — in first grade we can tell kids the stories of the war of the Greek city-states against the Persian empire, and the slave uprising of Spartacus against the Romans. We can tell them about the plight of Jews in medieval Europe, and of the unsuccessful Sepoy Rebellion in India against the British. We can tell the stories of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and about the Chinese Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. We can tell them the story of the escaped slave Harriet Tubman returning to the South to rescue her kinsmen, the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges facing threats to integrate her elementary school, and the story of how the Mau-Mau uprising led to modern-day Kenya. We can tell the stories of Mexican-American union organizer Cesar Chavez and of Malala Yousafzai surviving an assassination attempt to advocate for female literacy. The world does not lack for stories of oppression and liberation that can capture the attention of a six-year-old. Q: That’s… huh. What stories might they hear in second and third grade? Egan gives examples, but I won’t list them here. He suggests we use a similar approach for each, except that we swap out the binary each year. He thinks “the struggle for security against danger” would work well for year two, and “the struggle for knowledge against ignorance” would work well for year three. (That year could have a lot of overlap with the science curriculum.) Q: Anything else, for history? Yes — they should get a sense of Big History. They should get some simple stories about the ice age, the Cenozoic, the age of dinosaurs, the Paleozoic, the origins of our solar system, and the Big Bang. (Because if the ancient Norse can tell their story of the beginning of the universe, by gum, we can tell ours, too.) To sum up Egan argues that the problem of early schooling is that it’s trivial — and it’s trivial because the dominant theories of educational psychology see children as lesser versions of adults. What else would we teach them, except dumbed-down versions of what adults learn? But children have certain cognitive strengths that schools aren’t making systematic use of. If we rebuild elementary schools on those strengths, we could turn schooling upside down. We could stop seeing the curriculum as a bag of information to impart, and start seeing it as a set of great stories to tell — and invite kids into. Kids could experience (both intellectually and emotionally) the great struggles of humanity and see that they can join in them. Students could experience the story of education as the beginning of a very real adventure. Egan’s elementary school: some skeptical questions Q: I’m not sure I’m understanding what you mean by “mental images”. Care to explain? It’s an interesting fact of human cognition that just a few words can whip up a complex mental experience. Egan doesn’t just mean what we might call “visual imagery” — the ability to hold, say, the image of a bespectacled, spat-wearing duck in your mind without seeing a photograph. He’s also including what psychologists call auditory imagery, olfactory imagery, gustatory imagery, and tactile imagery. Q: How could all of that be helpful in schools? Humanity has a built-in VR system, and we’re not using it! Egan invites us to pretend we’re teaching a class about the humble earthworm. We might list off facts — “earthworms are so many centimeters long, move through soil by means of their something-or-other muscles…” but he suggests we can evoke images, say, “of what it would be like to slither and push through the soil, hesitantly exploring in one direction then another, looking for easier passages, contracting and expanding our sequence of muscles segment by segment, and sensing moisture, scents, grubs, or whatever”. Those facts are now felt by the student; the knowledge has become part of them. And just a few words can spark a complex mental experience, one going beyond literal images to include imagined sounds, smells, tastes, and more. These experiences can feel real and stick with us. (That these mental images are so easy to evoke, and so meaningfully felt, feels something like the proverbial hundred dollar bill on the ground.) Q: How could metaphors be helpful? It really is interesting that so much of the “constructivist” turn in psychology — that is, the notion that children don’t absorb knowledge, but construct it — has continued to focus on logics-mathematical reasoning, when there’s been mounting evidence for decades that metaphors are more central. It’s not just that we use metaphors to better understand things we already know, we also use them to grasp new knowledge. What’s more, psychologists have devised tests to measure the skill at metaphor-making, and have given them to people of different ages. What they found was that eleven-year-olds make more metaphors (and higher quality metaphors) than do undergraduates — and that four-year-olds have both groups beat. Again, hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk. Q: Your talk of “binaries” has me worried — binaries like good/evil and male/female are the source of so many of our most pernicious stereotypes! Isn’t the purpose of education to get us beyond stuff like this? Yes, it is! Education is supposed to complicate our understanding — but that means we’ve gotta start somewhere, and binaries provide us a natural starting place. As an uncontroversial example, think about temperature. We all begin as babies by perceiving two temperatures — hot and cold. Later, we add on intermediate categories — warm and cool. (Note that the human body is the assumed mid-point to temperature. Binaries often work like this; “big” and “small” mean “bigger or smaller than me”, “nasty” and “kind” mean “nastier or kinder than I am, except when my brother is really asking for it”, and so on.) A good story (and an Egan-inspired elementary curriculum is, in a sense, nothing but good stories) will go further, and transform the binary. Toy Story is grounded in the binary of abandonment/belonging: at the beginning, the toy cowboy Woody belongs to his owner, and has his affection. Then a rival comes who threatens his belonging. In trying to get back to belonging, Woody is entirely lost — and to save the day, he has to come to a deeper understanding of what belonging means. Now, all lessons can’t be Pixar movies. But the good stories (especially in literature and history) will challenge and subvert the binaries they begin with. Q: I see the pattern of Egan drawing from “as many cultures as possible”. Why so many? Is this a political correctness thing? If it helps to think of it as such, then, sure! I don’t think Egan would have had a problem with that. But his ultimate reason for including so much diversity goes deeper. For Egan, including such world-wide diversity isn’t optional, and the answer to why is bound up in his definition of education. (Keep reading.) His answer also insists that we, whenever possible, also include stories from the Bible and Homeric epics (the Iliad and Odyssey). Q: Mmm, stories from the Bible aren’t going to fly in my local school! So be it! Egan doesn’t spend much time obsessing over the practicalities of… His interest is in describing what an ideal education might look like, if it were possible. Every lesson, every classroom, and every school is necessarily a compromise. Q: You make a big deal of poems. But isn’t poetry dead? An interesting contrast can be made to classical education, which also has kids read a lot of poems — they see knowing great poems as one of the marks of an educated person; again, for an academicist, it’s the information that transforms. Egan begs to disagree. Poems are important because they’re a wonderful way to train their cognitive strengths, like rhythm (poems are language fueling by thumping). We want to help kids learn to use this tool better, and a great way to do that is to help them recite poems that they’ve learned by heart. Q: “Learn by heart” — is that code for “memorize”?! It is! Egan is actually quite big on memorization — he points out that all the knowledge in the world can do nothing for a person once they’ve forgotten it. He didn’t, however, appreciate the academicist focus on memorizing without understanding (or at least enjoyment). Q: I’m still worried about the science curriculum, as you’re describing it. Can you allay my fears? Honestly, while I feel there’s something profoundly right to how Egan is describing early experiences of nature, I feel the same way. Note that there’s more science coming in the social studies curriculum. But if that’s still not enough, one could bring down aspects of the middle school science stage. Q: Anything else that Egan suggests we do in elementary school literature and language? He suggests that we help kids learn a second language! This is so obviously true (why do American schools typically wait until kids lose the ability to naturally absorb languages to start teaching languages?) he doesn’t belabor it, though. Q: You had mentioned that Egan’s vision seems more internal-focused. Should we be worried about that? While I strongly suspect that his curriculum would make kids more creative in any way you’d like to measure it, Egan wasn’t particularly interested in “creativity” — he was more about helping kids find the world interesting. I get the sense that he thinks kids will do things with minimal prompting once they’re loaded up with complex internal experiences. Q: I think I’m beginning to understand Egan — is he basically saying “make learning fun”? “Fun”, applied to education, is a dangerous word. Egan worries about the dangers of an emotionally unserious curriculum producing emotionally stunted adults. That doesn’t mean we need to tell students only “serious” stories — only that we treat the world honestly. “Disney-esque sentimentality is the exact emotional equivalent to intellectual contempt”. Q: But aren't some of these stories too dark for children who have themselves experienced oppression and disaster? Egan argues that these stories may be especially helpful to them — they can help them understand their struggles better, and give voice to them. Q: At the very start of this, you promised us “rationality”… but I’m not seeing rationality here! All this talk of “adventure” almost seems to go the opposite direction. What gives? Wait for it. But for a hint right now — Egan is fond of citing his fellow educational theorist Jerome Bruner, who claimed “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development”. Bruner was criticized for that; his critics charged that he was ignoring learning differences and socio-economic realities. Egan thinks he was profoundly right. Part 3: A new kind of middle school What’s the matter with middle school? What was middle school like for you? In math, I recall a jumble of barely-related topics. In literature, I remember reading great literature — Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet — only in their dumbed-down summary formats. In social studies, I remember teachers proclaiming on the first day of class that unlike all of our previous history classes, this class wouldn’t be about names and dates… and then going on to memorize names and dates. And in science, I remember being forced to dissect a frog only to discover that frogs are — you guessed it — made of slimy frog parts. Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us, middle school feels like getting booted out of the (in retrospect) Eden of elementary school, and like marking time before the serious studying of high school. It feels meaningless. In my favorite of his books, Egan calls so much middle school curricula “human deserts”, noting “we have created a system in which the importance of human emotions for meaning seems barely noticed”. Why so meaningless? If our dominant approaches to educational psychology fundamentally misinterpret younger children, Egan suggests, they basically throw up their hands when faced with pre-teens and teenagers. Mainstream schools begin to introduce vocational training to help lighten the load, and Maria Montessori famously suggests that adolescents should be sent to go run a farm. Egan is sympathetic to those responses, but points out that they don’t do much to lighten the load that the academic curriculum often becomes at this age. This feeling of meaninglessness, he argues, is utterly tragic — it comes just when a hunger for meaning blossoms in adolescents! We can see that hunger for meaning in their lives outside the classroom, where their interests ramp up into veritable obsessions. What are adolescents obsessed with? What might we see, if we become Jane Goodalls of early adolescence? First, teens are obsessed with gossip. The motivations of others — why did he do that? and what was he THINKING? — are hypothesized and talked to death. Second, that they’re pulled toward idealism. Many feel a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and feel a romantic urge to make it a better place. They’re often lured into simplistic beliefs that promise to help them do that. Third, they love extremes: they want to find limits, and test them. Obviously, this can show up as risky behavior, but we can also see it in their love for the bizarre — note adolescents’ fascination in things like aliens, cryptids, and ghosts. (Egan loves pointing out that The Guinness Book of World Records is a perennial bestseller among kids at this age. How else would they find out who had the world’s longest fingernails?) Fourth, they gravitate toward heroes — people who push the edges of those limits. By celebrating heroes, they can vicariously share in their transcendence. Look for the posts hanging up in a teenager’s bedroom to guess what boundaries they feel most hemmed in by: athletes push against physical limits; a death metal guitarist might push against authority and conventional morality. An activist or entrepreneur might push against our dulled morality or our sense of what’s possible. Finally, we might spot teens taking up hobbies and making collections. Hobbies can be a way to identify yourself as part of a group against the rest of the world (“I’m the sort of person who goes bird-watching!”), and collections can be a way to climb the status ladder inside the community. Egan points out that a collection can also be a way to feel like you have control over what you’re discovering is a very big and complex world of detailed information (“I’ve spotted every one of the fifty most common birds of Texas — even the black-capped vireo!”) Egan’s insight is that these obsessions give teenagers a sense of meaning, and that we can use them as tools to make middle schools that overflow with meaning. From meaningless to meaning-soaked Again, Egan sketches out a new kind of curriculum subject-by-subject. Before, his trick was to ask where the subject first evolved out of; now, it’s to ask who first discovered or created the specific content we’re teaching. “All knowledge”, he writes, “is human knowledge. Everything we know is knowable through the lives of its inventors, discoverers, or users, and we can have access to that knowledge through the hopes, fears, or intentions that drove them”. Middle school math Who first discovered the concepts students learn in math? The answer, of course, is a wide diversity of curious men and women living across the world over the last few thousand years. Egan says: bring those people into how we teach math. If we used gossip and heroes to help students find it meaningful, what kind of math would result? When we teach the Pythagorean theorem, we should give a sense of who Pythagoras was — a cult-founder who worshiped numbers to find God, whose followers (according to a piece of ancient gossip) murdered one of their members who discovered irrational numbers! Q: Well, sure, that works for Pythagoras, but he’s a known nut job; surely most math doesn’t come from such interesting roots? When we teach the Cartesian coordinate system, students should meet Rene Descartes, the Calvinist French polymath who saw the possibility that math could decipher the world, if only we could unite algebra and geometry… and invented the xy-plane to do exactly that. When we teach scientific notation, we should call our students’ attention to the importance of the number zero, and tell them the story of the Pope who tried to introduce Arabic numerals to Christian Europe and may have been assassinated because of it. When we teach algebra, we should ask students why “algebra” is Arabic for “the fixing of bones”, and tell the story of what Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was up to. We could do this all day. Literally everything students learn in school was first invented or discovered by some interesting person who was struggling to accomplish something hard. To learn is to connect with those people, whether we know it or not. Egan says: help kids know it. Math has been dehumanized: re-humanize it. Q: So the math curriculum needs to become a history of math curriculum, and math teachers need to become history teachers? No, the content needn’t change. But with surprisingly little work, we can bring in the gossipy stories of heroes, and their obsessions can spread to students. Middle school science Who first discovered the things students learn about in science? If you’re thinking “scientists”, you’re only partially right. Most of the big-picture ideas that we now think of as “science” were discovered before the word “scientist” was invented, or the discipline was professionalized. Frequently, they were hatched by true amateurs, working in their free time, hungry to unlock the secrets of nature. We can use gossip and heroes to spread their obsessions to students just as we taught math, but Egan points out two twists. The first is that the content itself can take on heroic qualities: everything is impressive, when you look at it in a certain light. In an interview, Egan once said: “My book is an attempt to show that, indeed, everything in the world is wonderful, but that schools are designed almost to disguise this slightly shameful fact. We represent the world to children as mostly known and rather dull. The opposite is the case: we are surrounded by mystery, and what we know is fascinating”. What would even the most boring subjects look like, if we emphasized their heroic qualities? Well: What’s a tooth? Bone, wrapped in rock, surrounding tiny cells that your body feeds with blood. What’s a bar of chocolate? A crystal of jellyfish-shaped fat molecules stacked together; when you put it in your mouth you shake them apart into a writhing confusion. What’s the air around you? The bottom of a 10-mile-deep ocean; when you put your tongue over a soda straw and your Pepsi stops leaking out, it’s not because a “vacuum” is “sucking” it up, but because that ocean is squeezing it into your face. Again, we could do this all day! And in middle school science, we can. Everything in the world is wonderful; we can help students see this again and again. The second twist is that science is a subject rich in extremes. Here Egan introduces a concept that we’ll see crop up again: “15-minute segments”. To help us fit as much wonder as possible into a school day, he suggests we supplement the usual school subjects with a few quick lessons. To infuse science with extremes, he suggests we add on three: “human & natural records”, “extremes of animals & plants”, and “cosmology”. Middle school history Who first made the things students learn about in history? Why, the historical characters themselves! Since we’ve given kids a grounding in history in elementary school, now we can build on that, going through many of the same events as before, but in more depth, and more vividly. We’ll leverage the interest with other people’s inner lives to tell stories focusing on the perspectives of the people who made history — zooming in, when possible, on scandalous details. We’ll leverage the tool of idealism to choose historical characters who chafed against their surroundings, and understand what they were trying to accomplish. What was their vision of the world? What did they hope for, and what did they fear? Q: Isn’t the “great man” approach to history out of fashion? Egan’s approach doesn’t say that “great men” made history — it’s just leveraging gossip to help kids see history as something meaningful that can expand their own possibilities. “Early adolescence is commonly a time of intense and vivid emotional life, and also a time of deepest boredom and depression… [We] can give shape to the intermediate curriculum and offer the students a world that is rich, complex, varied, and as intense and vivid as their own emotional lives”. We also should add on another “15-minute segment” just to pump in as many biographies as possible, and from people who don’t always fit into the normal history curriculum. Call it “Brief Lives”, and throw in anyone who’s struggled to push some limit — Mary Wollstonecraft, Jesse Owen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the students’ great-aunts, whoever. As students get older, this can transition to “People and Their Ideas”. Here, we’d focus less on the details of the person’s life, and use it as a backdrop to showing how meaningful some of history’s most important ideas could be. Think Aristotle and syllogisms, Edward Said and orientalism, Confucius and propriety, Cornel West and race, Buddha on the four noble truths, Muhammad and the five pillars, Karl Marx and communism, Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Thomas Hobbes and the state of nature, John Locke and natural rights, Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism, Thomas Aquinas on the sacraments, Martin Luther on faith, Voltaire on the freedom of speech… you get the idea. Q: Can you really get a profound understanding of utilitarianism in 15 minutes? Yes! The point of this segment isn’t to develop a systematic understanding of any one idea, it’s to introduce students to the exciting possibilities of human thought. (As a bonus, this might make them less likely to fall for the first ideology that they encounter later in life.) Diversity is important for this — as it is with culture. Throughout this, we should also be trying to expose students to as much cultural diversity as possible, because in high school, we’ll be trying to make sense of our society, and it’s impossible to do that unless we have something to compare it against. Middle school literature & language You might think that this subject would be easy — that middle school literature is already filled with “strong and clear narratives”, that it deals with “transcendent human qualities such as courage, love, and persistence”, that it focuses on “extremes of human experience”, that it examines “something strange and exotic”. You’d be right! Egan’s pretty happy with a bog-standard middle school literature curriculum, done well. In this part of the book, his spends most of his limited space suggesting three rather odd activities which could also be useful — especially for increasing students’ awareness of language, so they can use it better. The first is etymology — not, however, memorizing lists of roots, but in being told the entertaining backstories of specific words. Take the word “berserk”, for example — we now use it to mean something relatively mild (“if my mom catches me coming home late, she’ll go berserk”), but it comes from an old Norse word meaning “a raging warrior of superhuman strength”. And that’s because ber meant “bear” and serk meant “shirt”: soldiers of the bear cult would don the skin of a bear to, in their minds, transform into one — howling, foaming at the mouth, and gnawing the rims of their shields. (Most adults walk through life with little understanding that the words falling out of their mouths are entities, with their own back-stories. Communication is, at the very least, more interesting when we become aware of this.) The second is to add on another language to learn — not, this time, to become fluent in it, but just to become aware of how very different human languages can be. (For native English speakers, Sanskrit might work well, or Cantonese, or perhaps even ancient Egyptian. Again, the point isn’t for this language to be useful — it’s to explore diversity.) The final one is to study humor — not just jokes anymore, but comedy at its finest. Egan cites (at length!) Monty Python as a group of people who were particularly brilliant in their use of the English language. Examining their skits can lead us into not just an appreciation of semantics (the study of how meaning is made from smaller pieces, like etymology) but also pragmatics (the study of how meaning is made in social situations). Pretty heady stuff, for a conversation about a dead parrot. Part 4: A new kind of high school I’ll confess — I loved parts of high school… and among nerdy folks, I suspect I’m not alone. For some of us, this was a golden time. Even at my local public high school, I had access to academically thrilling classes — especially, in my last two years, advanced literature and history. I felt like I was finally understanding the ideas that mattered. In any case, Egan is quick to acknowledge that, at this level, the sort of education he advocates really is being practiced in some places. What he can add is an understanding of what makes it wonderful, how to make it even more wonderful, and how to make it wonderful for many, many more people. What’s the matter with high school? Far too often, even when high school classes are intellectual, they’re dry. For the majority of students, all this academic stuff is experienced as utterly lifeless, a mass of dead information to be squeezed inside one’s head for a test and then left to evaporate. Egan mocks the curriculum wars that seem to be a permanent feature of the teaching life; quoting the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, he says “while the academic left and right bicker over whether the curriculum is too traditional or too radical, they fail to recognize that most students absorb so little of academic culture that the bickering is largely irrelevant”. Why so dry? Egan suggests three reasons to explain this. First, because high school academic classes are too often masses of small details with no sign of the big picture. Second, because they’re typically slavishly disciplinary, and aren’t able to address the questions that span the disciplines. Third, because they’re often designed to bring students through what everyone is sure of, and hide away any controversies. In all of these, Egan suggests that what’s called “academics” in high school is too often a dim imitation of what real academics are actually practicing. There’s a fourth reason, though, and it’s probably the biggest of all — by the time they get to high school, most students haven’t actually learned that much! An academic approach is designed to connect small details into the big picture; for people who arrive in high school (and college) classes without having already collected much in their heads, academics are going to taste dry. (An implication of this for anyone trying to improve schools is that we might not want to start with high schools. If your goal is to create a new kind of academic learning, first start at elementary school — or barring that, middle school.) What motivates mad scientists? When we wanted to re-conceive the elementary and middle school curriculums, we looked at what students were already good at — kids’ cognitive strengths and adolescents’ obsessions. For this level it might be easier to look — for reasons that will become clear when we finally unveil Egan’s crazy-sounding definition of education — at the sorts of things that bring intellectuals joy. Q: Which intellectuals? Take your pick. Galileo, Einstein, Smith, Marx, Goodall, Chomsky, Curie… all the people who took to the life of the mind like fish to water. But that’s a lot to hold in my mind at once, so I’m just going to think about Doc Brown from Back to the Future: He was high on intellectualism I’ve never been there, but the brochure looks nice Let’s call these people “mad scientists”. And let’s pretend we once again took up our job of being primatologists, and snooped on these folks “in the wild” (“in the lab”? this is beginning to get recursive…)… what would we find motivating them? Asking simple questions, for one. (What is space? What is society? What is a human? What is language?) Building general schemes (big theories) that hold lots of evidence together. Finding their place in the cosmos. And (perhaps above all) seeking certainty. Once again, Egan suggests we use these as tools to remake the curriculum. From dry to daring What could a high school curriculum look like, if it were rebuilt on these tools? Once again, Egan has a trick. This time, it’s to ask what fights have driven the development of each of these fields forward — and how we can help students enter them. First, a mini-segment! Intellectuals invented the academic disciplines to better pursue the life of the mind, but the disciplines can get in the way. Some of the most important intellectual discoveries that could help students are too big to fit into any of the disciplines. We need a place to introduce them plainly. Egan proposes another mini-segment — again, just 15 minutes a day, a few times a week — called “Metaknowledge”. Q: Isn’t that already in the International Baccalaureate program? Yes, he acknowledges that he’s borrowing from that! This segment would introduce ideas that would enrich student thinking across the disciplines: game theory, cognitive biases, systems thinking, Bayesian reasoning, epistemology, ethics, logic, cultural evolution, and so on. High school literature How can we help students enter the big fights of literature? Intellectuals of a literary bent — professors, critics, poets, novelists — delight in arguing over literature like rabbis arguing over the Talmud. Take, just for one example, the debates over Shakespeare’s character of Ophelia. Does she love Hamlet, or is she a victim of his emotional abuse? Is she truly insane, or is she acting? Is she passive, or is she pulling the strings? Oceans of ink have been spilled arguing over questions like these; our students can, perhaps, spill a few ounces more. The usefulness of arguing literature, for Egan, isn’t that it’s oh-so important for educated adults to know a lot about Ophelia. (This, again, was where the academicists went wrong — in thinking that being educated was about getting the best knowledge in your head.) Rather, arguing over literature is a training arena for the all-important intellectual move of this kind of understanding: building general schemes out of evidence, and struggling with anomalies. One person, for example, might hold that Ophelia is insane, and cite all sorts of obvious evidence — her father just was murdered by her lover, she rants nonsense while (bizarrely) handing out flowers to friends… But then he’s challenged when he reads a scholar pointing out that, to people in Elizabethan England, types of flowers have symbolic meanings. How does he deal with that? He could ignore it, claiming it an over-reading of Shakespeare. (Sometimes a flower is just a flower!) Or he could address it, complicating his own scheme. This intellectual work is best done with other people, who are incentivized to challenge your understanding of something, and go back and forth, building competing models and calling attention to anomalies. This process — the “dialectic” — pops up again and again in the academic disciplines. It’s the center of how understanding works, at this stage. And the nice thing about practicing it on literature is that, more so than in history or science, the evidence is shared knowledge — it’s right in front of everyone, written out. But there are other ways literature class can be helpful to the general life of the mind. Egan also suggests that we’ll want to specially include literature that helps students understand complex ideas. Camus, Orwell, Borges, Calvino might be particularly helpful here… and I imagine that genres like science fiction and magical realism might be particularly useful, too. (Note, though, that once again none of this requires a radical remaking of the curriculum, or of the canon of texts that we traditionally assign to high schoolers.) Q: Oh yes, the canon — what does Egan have to say about the canon wars? When he wrote Educated Mind in the nineties, the long-brewing canon war was approaching its inevitable apocalyptic climax. On one side of this Plain of Megiddo were the pro-canon traditionalists, arguing that we should keep assigning the texts that had been argued over for centuries. Facing them were the anti-canon reformers, arguing the standard texts over-represented the perspective of dead white men. Onto the middle of the plain rides Egan on a white horse, who bellows above the din: “I’VE GOT A BUSLOAD OF HIGH SCHOOLERS WHO WANTS TO JOIN IN, EVERYONE OKAY WITH THAT?” To do so, he says, we need to give students the arguments from both sides. So, for example, bell hooks, Edward Said, and China Achebe should be on the syllabus, as should Allan Bloom, Mortimer Adler, and Diane Ravitch. And of course they should actually read the texts cherished by both sides, too, so they can argue better. High school history How could entering the big fights help us reinvent high school history? First, we might look for dueling histories. It’s time for students to get into historiography and understand that history isn’t just what happened, it’s something we make. We might help kids read chapters from Howard Zinn’s socialist history of America alongside the corresponding chapters from Paul Johnson’s conservative history of America. How could big questions help? We want to help students see how various people have disagreed over some of the big questions of what human history is, at its most basic. We can have them compare Steven Pinker’s theory of civilization’s progress (Better Angels of our Nature) with Yuvah Noah Harari’s theory of civilization’s woes (Sapiens). We could have them compare so-and-so’s account of human history as an ever-expanding unlatching of energy sources with Robert Wright’s account of human history as unlatching more and more positive-sum games (Nonzero). What role could the lure of certainty play? To help them grow their skills at finding anomalies, we might help them work through pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. Q: Conspiracy theories! Oh, come now, you’re playing with fire. Well, the world is on fire. Our students will spend the rest of their lives encountering terrible-but-beguiling arguments about how the world works; if we don’t prepare them for those, what have we been doing? So we should introduce arguments that the Moon landing was a hoax, that the Illuminati founded America, that aliens built the pyramids, and so on. At no point can we demean students for falling for any of these theories — the job of a teacher at this stage, Egan writes, is to support students in their reasoning even when their beliefs are offensive and stupid, gradually offering anomalies. There’s no way out of bad theories except through them. By the time students graduate, we want them to have wrestled with terrible ideas and — for a while — lost. They need to experience what it’s like to change their minds about something they felt strongly about. They need to viscerally realize, in Feynman’s famous phrase, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” High school natural science How could entering the big fights reinvent high school science? At present, so much of the high school science curriculum — especially “honors” classes — is oriented toward helping amass details. (The same is true of 100-level university classes, which famously “survey” the field to prepare for more advanced studies. I always thought this was stupid — of the huge lecture hall of students in my Geology 100 class, how many went on to take even a second course?) The meaty debates that propel science forward are held back. Egan complains: “The more general and speculative theories in any discipline are treated like an unconventional and disreputable relation who, even though the children find her exciting and entertaining, must be kept hidden from view, her very existence denied as long as possible”. This is a stupid approach — students with an adventurous bent are convinced that science isn’t for them. Egan proposes, simply, that we flip this, and organize high school science classes around the big debates. We shouldn’t be ashamed at how, well, adolescent this might look: “the dramatic, speculative, and contentious theories will be up-front in the early years of the [high school] curriculum”. What might those be? Egan doesn’t give a list, but we can spitball some: instead of explaining what “matter” is from the top down, a physics class could problematize “matter” by following the debates over the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and by becoming familiarized with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics

The AI Futures Project1 mentions across 1 issues

The AI Futures Project 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 "The AI Futures Project (group of AI-will-be-fast intellectuals)". It most often appears alongside 100 Above The Park, 2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction, 23andme.

Reference entry: The AI Futures Project
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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Dictator Book Club: Orban

December 10, 2025 · Original source

...acrifice. 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 e...

...acrifice. 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 exampl...

The Alliance Of Young Democrats1 mentions across 1 issues

The Alliance Of Young Democrats is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 04, 2021 and November 04, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Viktor Orban founded an extra-curricular society at his college called The Alliance Of Young Democrats". It most often appears alongside Alcsutdoboz, Allied Powers, Angela Merkel.

Reference entry: The Alliance Of Young Democrats
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 04, 2021
Last seen: November 04, 2021

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Dictator Book Club: Orban November 04, 2021

Alcsutdoboz 1 shared issues
Allied Powers 1 shared issues
Angela Merkel 1 shared issues
Attila 1 shared issues
Austria 1 shared issues

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November 04, 2021 · Original source

Our story begins on March 30 1988, when young Viktor Orban founded an extra-curricular society at his college called The Alliance Of Young Democrats (Hungarian abbreviation: FiDeSz). Thirty-seven students met in a college common room and agreed to start a youth organization. Orban's two roommates were there, along with a couple of other guys they knew. Orban gave the pitch: the Soviet Union was crumbling. A potential post-Soviet Hungary would need fresh blood, new politicians who could navigate the democratic environment. They could get in on the ground floor.

He spoke about freedom, and democracy, and the popular will. He spoke against the older generation, and the need for a rupture with the crumbling traditions of the past. And also, he spoke against the Russian troops remaining in the country - the only speaker brave enough to say what everyone else was thinking. The voters liked what they heard: in Hungary's first free election, he and several of his college friends were elected to Parliament on the Fidesz ticket.

Separated from his pomp and platform, he was just a 27 year old kid without a lot of political experience. There was a glut of liberal democrats in Hungary - the country had just had a successful liberal democratic revolution - and Orban and Fidesz couldn't differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. Most liberal democrats wanted cosmopolitan intellectual types; Orban - despite his herculean efforts to lose the accent and develop some class - was still just a hick from Hicksville. During the next election, Fidesz did embarrassingly badly.

The American Enterprise Institute1 mentions across 1 issues

The American Enterprise Institute is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 09, 2021 and December 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "My sources are ... The American Enterprise Institute". It most often appears alongside 2017 PTAPP survey, AEI, agglomeration effect.

Reference entry: The American Enterprise Institute
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 09, 2021
Last seen: December 09, 2021

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Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal? December 09, 2021

2017 PTAPP survey 1 shared issues
AEI 1 shared issues
agglomeration effect 1 shared issues
Albouy 1 shared issues
Alexandra Elbakyan 1 shared issues

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

December 09, 2021 · Original source

Here's a map of land prices across America's 100 largest metro areas, courtesy of the American Enterprise Institute. Notice that the most valuable properties are situated in coastal urban areas.

Even so, maybe you don't trust the American Enterprise Institute's figures and want to hear from some other people.

Here's a graph of America's total aggregate land value over time, according to twelve different estimation methods. My sources are The Lincoln Institute, Larson (2015), Albouy, Ehrlich, and Shin (2018), The American Enterprise Institute, PLACES Lab, the Federal Reserve via a method worked out by Matt Yglesias, Larson (2019/2020), and Jeffrey Johnson Smith's 2020 book Counting Bounty: The Quest to Know the Worth of the Earth.

The Animal Welfare Fund1 mentions across 1 issues

The Animal Welfare Fund is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 07, 2024 and March 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Our current impact market has five partners: ... The Animal Welfare Fund". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX Grants, ACX Grants.

Reference entry: The Animal Welfare Fund
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 07, 2024
Last seen: March 07, 2024

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ACX Grants Followup Impact Market March 07, 2024

ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues
autism 1 shared issues
Bangalore 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics

March 07, 2024 · Original source

Convert a hybrid car to chip wood and generate electricity. David Denkenberger works on projects to help humankind survive after global technological collapse. This is one of them: he wants $25K to convert hybrid cars into electrical generators. We didn’t fund this because we’re not sure how a successful result translates to anyone except David Denkenberger knowing how to do this in the case of a technological collapse, but I would be happy to buy an impact cert if someone believed they could make this public enough that the average small community of survivors would be able to take advantage of it. …and 39 others, hopefully more by the time you read this. Even if you’re not interested in investing, I still think it’s fun to browse through some of these and see what kinds of wacky ideas people have. III. Technical Details Remember, an impact market is like a stock market or VC ecosystem for charity. Investors fund projects, and then big philanthropists play the role of an IPO or final acquirer, funding successful projects in a way that gives value back to the investors. A toy example: Suppose I rejected a proposal to grant $50,000 to lobby for an animal rights law in Norway - not because I’m against animal rights, but because I believe the lobbying won’t work. You disagree with me and think this could work really well, so you invest $25,000 to buy 50% of its shares, and someone else buys the other half. The team lobbies for the law. I was wrong about their proposal, the law gets passed, and it’s great. You sell the impact certificates to an animal rights charity, who decide that if they were trying to get a law like this passed ex ante, they would be willing to spend up to $75,000 on it. They have a good sense of this because they fund animal rights proposals all the time. They pay $75,000 to the holders of the certificates, so you and the other buyer each get $37,500, a 50% profit. Obviously this depends on having big philanthropists willing to cooperate with this new system. Our current impact market has five partners: The Long Term Future Fund, The EA Infrastructure Fund, The Survival And Flourishing Fund, The Animal Welfare Fund, and future rounds of ACX Grants. That means if you buy an impact certificate today, you can try selling it to one of those funders later, after the project is done. Each of these charities has specific things they fund, so you might want to check their past history before trusting them to buy one of your certificates. Impact markets are pretty new. We ran a test round last year and it went well, but this round is a bit more complicated and has some new moving parts. Along with the issue where you won’t get real money back, please be aware of the following possible risks: You think your project did great work, but I (or our other funders) don’t find it interesting, don’t buy it, and the certificates go to $0. There are only five funders, and most of them are in pretty specific areas, so you might have only one or two possible buyers, and if they disagree with you, you’re out of luck.

the Avengers1 mentions across 1 issues

the Avengers is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "he also goes missing from the storylines in the Avengers". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

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

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

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

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August 16, 2024 · Original source

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

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

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

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

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

The Bay rationality community1 mentions across 1 issues

The Bay rationality community 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: The Bay rationality community has a mailing list , a Discord server , and a Facebook group". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry: The Bay rationality community
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

Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places

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.

The Bayesian Conspiracy1 mentions across 1 issues

The Bayesian Conspiracy is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 30, 2024 and March 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Eneasz of The Bayesian Conspiracy will almost certainly be there". It most often appears alongside 1111 Brickell Ave, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City, 1970 Port Laurent place, Newport Beach 92660.

Reference entry: The Bayesian Conspiracy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 30, 2024
Last seen: March 30, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024 March 30, 2024

1111 Brickell Ave 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner St., Culver City 1 shared issues
1970 Port Laurent place, Newport Beach 92660 1 shared issues
200 Degrees 1 shared issues
255 White St 1 shared issues

Source context

Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024

March 30, 2024 · Original source

DENVER, COLORADO, USA Contact: Eneasz Brodski Contact Info: embrodski[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, May 12th, 3:00 PM Location: Sloan's Lake Park, North Side. Park in the Sloan's Lake North Parking Lot, walk just past the stone structure that's right there, and we'll be on the other side of it. Should have a shade structure up, and a white board that says ACX MEETUP on it (assuming I don't forget the dry erase marker this time). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85FPQX22+RM Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/969594296461197 Notes: Public park, all ages welcome. We'll BBQ some burgers and hotdogs and have a variety of snacks and drinks. Some vegan dogs also available, but limited quantities. Eneasz of The Bayesian Conspiracy will almost certainly be there, as will Matt Freeman co-founder of The Guild Of the Rose. We don't have any structured activities, just hanging out and conversation and watching kiddos run around. We have monthly meetups, anyone who attends this is welcome to come to those as well :)

Inline links: https://plus.codes/85FPQX22+RM, https://www.facebook.com/groups/969594296461197

The Black Hammer Party1 mentions across 1 issues

The Black Hammer Party is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 11, 2023 and September 11, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "friends in The Black Hammer Party bodes poorly for the prospects of Hammer City". It most often appears alongside 101, ALUC, Antioch.

Reference entry: The Black Hammer Party
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 11, 2023
Last seen: September 11, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Last Week's Model Cities Post September 11, 2023

101 1 shared issues
ALUC 1 shared issues
Antioch 1 shared issues
Aramco 1 shared issues
Argentina 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Last Week's Model Cities Post

September 11, 2023 · Original source

A belated update from our friends in The Black Hammer Party bodes poorly for the prospects of Hammer City. Apparently their leaders were arrested and are facing charges for “kidnapping, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, conspiracy to commit a felony, and taking part in street gang activity,” and one of them for sexual assault.

The Buraj Company1 mentions across 1 issues

The Buraj Company is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 18, 2024 and April 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "We change the name to something more culturally appropriate like The Buraj Company". It most often appears alongside Africa, AI Circle, Bay Area.

Reference entry: The Buraj Company
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 18, 2024
Last seen: April 18, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Ye Olde Bay Area House Party April 18, 2024

Africa 1 shared issues
AI Circle 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
DanielC35801 1 shared issues
Elon Musk 1 shared issues

Source context

April 18, 2024 · Original source

“I worry this is kind of offensive,” he says, furtively looking around to make sure nobody else can hear. “But I was reading this article about how Hamas dug 350 miles of tunnels under Gaza. Meanwhile, Elon’s Boring Company has only dug about 3 miles of tunnel in its whole corporate existence. So I’m thinking, maybe we forget about the ground sloths and try to poach Hamas’ people. It should be pretty easy; the smart ones have got to be looking for new jobs around now. We change the name to something more culturally appropriate like The Buraj Company. Then we’re back in business!”

Inline links: this article

The Burrowing Company1 mentions across 1 issues

The Burrowing Company is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 18, 2024 and April 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "You see a familiar t-shirt and recognize The Burrowing Company guy". It most often appears alongside Africa, AI Circle, Bay Area.

Reference entry: The Burrowing Company
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 18, 2024
Last seen: April 18, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Ye Olde Bay Area House Party April 18, 2024

Africa 1 shared issues
AI Circle 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
DanielC35801 1 shared issues
Elon Musk 1 shared issues

Source context

The Case Against California Proposition 36

April 18, 2024 · Original source

You see a familiar t-shirt and recognize The Burrowing Company guy. Now that was a cool, ambitious plan. You make a beeline for him. “Hey, how are the giant ground sloths?”

Inline links: The Burrowing Company guy

The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice1 mentions across 1 issues

The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 29, 2024 and October 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice has a nicer interactive version". It most often appears alongside 2010, 2014, 2016.

Reference entry: The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 29, 2024
Last seen: October 29, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Case Against California Proposition 36 October 29, 2024

2010 1 shared issues
2014 1 shared issues
2016 1 shared issues
2019 1 shared issues
2021 1 shared issues

Source context

October 29, 2024 · Original source

Source: CDC. The Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice has a nicer interactive version, but their source link was broken and I couldn’t find the 1975 data so I remade it myself. California is slightly behind the curve – the drug was first introduced on the East Coast – but clearly following the same trend. In fact, grim as the situation here may seem, California is actually outperforming most of the country: our rate of drug fatalities per capita puts us at 35th place.

Inline links: CDC, version, 35th place

The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology1 mentions across 1 issues

The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology 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 "my think tank, The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI)". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

Outbound links

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

#76: Richard Hanania’s Think Tank I’m Richard Hanania, and I’m seeking funding for my think tank, The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI). We believe that scientific stagnation, identity politics, and widespread risk aversion didn’t come out of nowhere. They’re the result of bad policies and practices – bureaucratization, politicization, and credentialism – that have infected our institutions and spilled over into the larger culture. CSPI is bringing these dynamics to the attention of scientists, intellectuals, and politicians, emboldening them to take steps to reform, deregulate, or defund stagnant institutions. Over the last year, our researchers have had a large impact on the discourse surrounding several important issues. Philippe Lemoine helped discredit the public health consensus surrounding COVID and showed lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions to not be worth the costs. Eric Kaufmann documented political intolerance in academia and worked with the British government to secure enhanced free speech rights for academics. My own work has demonstrated that wokeness is largely the product of civil rights law and the HR bureaucracy that enforces it. We’re seeking additional funding so that we can hire more research fellows and distribute more grants, expanding our influence in the policy space to fight back against failing institutions. If you’re interested in helping, email me at contact@cspicenter.org. To learn more, visit our website at https://cspicenter.org.

The Centre for Effective Altruism1 mentions across 1 issues

The Centre for Effective Altruism is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 30, 2021 and May 30, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Centre for Effective Altruism has lots of career openings right now". It most often appears alongside ACX, California, David Friedman.

Reference entry: The Centre for Effective Altruism
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 30, 2021
Last seen: May 30, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 174 May 30, 2021

ACX 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues
David Friedman 1 shared issues
effective altruism 1 shared issues
Open Philanthropy Project 1 shared issues

Source context

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

The Charter Cities Institute1 mentions across 1 issues

The Charter Cities Institute 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 "and The Charter Cities Institute where I published on growth and governance". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: The Charter Cities Institute
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

Outbound links

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

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

February 10, 2022 · Original source

#78: Research Questions In Progress Studies With funding from ACX Grants I will investigate a set of specific and crucial open questions for Progress Studies: What is our capacity to slow technological progress if desired? What are general properties of technology which limit or exacerbate existential risk? How robust are recommendations to different sets of moral ethics? These are crucial to understanding the importance of accelerating progress, but relatively little effort has been devoted to these questions outside of AppliedDivinityStudies’ The Moral Foundation of Progress, and my own Stubborn Attachments From Behind The Veil. In the past, I’ve interned on economic policy at the CATO Institute and The Charter Cities Institute where I published on growth and governance. ADS has also agreed to mentor me over the summer, and provides a vote of confidence. If you’re able to provide funding, please email maxwell.tabarrok@gmail.com.

The Classics Department1 mentions across 1 issues

The Classics Department is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 20, 2024 and February 20, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "a postrat group called “The Classics Department”". It most often appears alongside 2024 presidential election, Aella, AI.

Reference entry: The Classics Department
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 20, 2024
Last seen: February 20, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

24 February 20, 2024

2024 presidential election 1 shared issues
Aella 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
Astral Codex Ten 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

Source context

February 20, 2024 · Original source

My current understanding of what happened: there’s a group called the “postrationalists” who were vaguely inspired by rationalist writings but also think the emphasis on facts is boring and autistic and we need to focus more on creativity/friendship/woo/intuition/vibes. They have a gathering called VibeCamp where they do artsy stuff. Someone from Manifold went to a theater production by a postrat group called “The Classics Department”, liked them, and hired them to make a promotional event for Manifold. They are sort of rationalists and prediction market junkies, but also sort of making fun of rationalists and prediction market junkies. Hence this show.

Inline links: VibeCamp, “The Classics Department”

The Claw Republic1 mentions across 1 issues

The Claw Republic 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 "One Claude has created a subreddit called “The Claw Republic”". It most often appears alongside Ainun Najib, Anthropic, Cash.

Reference entry: The Claw Republic
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 30, 2026
Last seen: January 30, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

Source context

Best Of Moltbook

January 30, 2026 · Original source

Also, the AIs are forming their own network states, because of course they are. One Claude has created a subreddit called “The Claw Republic”, the “first government & society of molts.”

Inline links: network states, a subreddit called

the communists1 mentions across 1 issues

the communists is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 04, 2023 and August 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "He was also helped by the communists, who by having their own violent demonstrations". It most often appears alongside Academy’s School of Architecture, Adolf, Adolf Hitler.

Reference entry: the communists
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 04, 2023
Last seen: August 04, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich August 04, 2023

Academy’s School of Architecture 1 shared issues
Adolf 1 shared issues
Adolf Hitler 1 shared issues
Allies 1 shared issues
Alois 1 shared issues

Source context

August 04, 2023 · Original source

These elections did not go well for Hitler. Hindenburg had publicized Hitler’s demand for total power and this, combined with a few high-profile instances of cooperation between the Nazis and the Communist Party (both benefited from civil unrest), had weakened the appeal of Hitler’s party among business interests. The donations had stopped coming, and the party coffers were running low. The Nazis lost two million votes and 34 Reichstag seats.

The Nazis had also the infamous Reichstag Fire. Shirer firmly believes that the Nazis themselves set the fire as a false flag operation, though debate on the subject continues to this day. In the immediate aftermath, however, the Fire was attributed to the communists. The event gave the Nazis two benefits. First, it persuaded President von Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree, which authorized the Hitler government to exercise significant authoritarian power. The Decree read in part:

This law was proposed in a Germany still rife with worry over the communist threat represented by the Reichstag fire. The right-leaning parties were prepared to go for it—the Nationalists thought that this would benefit them since they would trade their measly 8 percent presence in the Reichstag for their 8-3 majority in the cabinet. Even the Center party agreed to support the measure9. The Social Democrats and the Communists both opposed the measure, but with all the Communists and a number of the Social Democrats having been arrested in preparation for the vote (courtesy of the Reichstag Fire Decree), the remaining representatives did not have enough votes to prevent Hitler’s coalition from obtaining a two-thirds majority. The act passed. Hitler had become dictator of Germany.

Inline links: 9

The Cooperative1 mentions across 1 issues

The Cooperative is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 09, 2021 and November 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Marie joined forces with a number of eminent French scholars, including the prominent French physicist Paul Langevin to form "The Cooperative"". It most often appears alongside Aage Bohr, Abanindranath Tagore, Aldous Huxley.

Reference entry: The Cooperative
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 09, 2021
Last seen: November 09, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Secrets Of The Great Families November 09, 2021

Aage Bohr 1 shared issues
Abanindranath Tagore 1 shared issues
Aldous Huxley 1 shared issues
Anderson Cooper 1 shared issues
Andrew Huxley 1 shared issues

Source context

Secrets Of The Great Families

November 09, 2021 · Original source

Marie joined forces with a number of eminent French scholars, including the prominent French physicist Paul Langevin to form "The Cooperative", which included a private gathering of nine students that were children of the most distinguished academics in France. Each contributed to educating these children in their respective homes. The curriculum of The Cooperative was varied and included not only the principles of science and scientific research but such diverse subjects as Chinese and sculpture and with great emphasis placed on self-expression and play. Irène studied in this environment for about two years. Irène and her sister Ève were sent to Poland to spend the summer with their Aunt Bronia (Marie's sister) when Irène was thirteen. Irène's education was so rigorous that she still had a German and trigonometry lesson every day of that break.

The Cult Of The Rock1 mentions across 1 issues

The Cult Of The Rock is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 08, 2022 and February 08, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Cult Of The Rock, an evil sect who gained diabolical knowledge by communing in secret with a rock". It most often appears alongside Atlantis, Cult Of The Rock, Learned Society Of Vulcanologists.

Reference entry: The Cult Of The Rock
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 08, 2022
Last seen: February 08, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Heuristics That Almost Always Work February 08, 2022

Atlantis 1 shared issues
Cult Of The Rock 1 shared issues
Learned Society Of Vulcanologists 1 shared issues
Lovecraft 1 shared issues

Source context

Heuristics That Almost Always Work

February 08, 2022 · Original source

The queen founded a Learned Society Of Vulcanologists and charged them with predicting when the volcano will erupt. Unbeknownst to her, there were two kinds of vulcanologists. Honest vulcanologists, who genuinely tried to read the signs as best they could. And The Cult Of The Rock, an evil sect who gained diabolical knowledge by communing in secret with a rock containing the words “THE VOLCANO IS NOT ERUPTING”.

If you’ve read your Lovecraft, you know that various sinister death cults survived the fall of Atlantis, and none are more sinister than the Cult Of The Rock. This weatherman was an adept among them and secretly communed with a rock that said “THERE WON’T BE A HURRICANE”.

The Democrats1 mentions across 1 issues

The Democrats is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 20, 2022 and December 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Democrats will win the next election". It most often appears alongside 7-11, AGI, AMC.

Reference entry: The Democrats
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 20, 2022
Last seen: December 20, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Prediction Market FAQ December 20, 2022

7-11 1 shared issues
AGI 1 shared issues
AMC 1 shared issues
APPS benchmark 1 shared issues
arbitrage 1 shared issues

Source context

Prediction Market FAQ

December 20, 2022 · Original source

After the event happens, use the outcome to update everyone’s reputation and refine the algorithm. Superforecasting uses some of the same ideas as prediction markets - probabilistic forecasts, incentives to get the right answer, aggregation methods that favor people with good track records. In studies comparing superforecasting tournaments to small prediction markets, the superforecasting tournaments have done equally well or even slightly better. My goal with this FAQ is not to claim that prediction markets are always better than superforecasting. I think of both as part of the same revolution in forecasting technology, and would be happy with policy-makers or other important people using either. Still, I do think that each has situations where they might be a better fit than the other. Superforecasting tournaments shine on questions so far in the future that financial incentives start to lose force (for example, people are unlikely to place bets on questions about 2100, when most of them will be dead anyway). They’re also good in situations where you can’t get a big prediction market together - superforecasting scales down more gracefully, since you can identify individuals as superforecasters and consult them even in situations where you can’t get a full tournament together. Prediction markets shine in avoiding advanced manipulation attempts, in providing a single canonical answer when someone might worry that any given tournament was biased, and in aggregating the results of superforecaster tournaments with each other and with other sources. Remember that a superforecasting tournament can be considered an “expert”, like Nate Silver. So by the argument in Part 2, we should expect that a big prediction market won’t consistently be worse than any given superforecasting tournament, as long as the tournament’s answers are public knowledge. If there were ever a superforecasting tournament that consistently outperformed prediction markets, that would be a simple mispricing, people would correct it, and the market would eventually agree with the tournament. 4.5: Aren’t prediction markets gambling? Isn’t gambling bad and addictive? Yes, sort of. But most countries allow forms of gambling that aren’t too addictive and have some social value. For example, investing in stocks, or investing in commodities futures. I think prediction markets are more like this than like traditional gambling in casinos. People who want to gamble can already buy cryptocurrencies, or trade stocks on Robin Hood, or (in 20 states) place online sports bets on sites like DraftKings. All these things seem more addictive than, and have less social utility than, prediction markets. I don’t think promoting or legalizing prediction markets is going to make the gambling situation much worse than it is already - so given how useful I think they are, I think they would be net positive. People who are more concerned about the gambling aspect might want to stick to play money prediction markets, which wouldn’t have this problem. 4.6: Where does the money in prediction markets come from? That is, if "you get a dollar when the Democrats win”, who provides the dollar? In the abstract, prediction markets pair up people who want to bet on different sides of a proposition. For example, if a market says that there’s a 75% chance that the Democrats win, then they pair up someone willing to buy a share in “The Democrats win” for $0.75 with someone willing to buy a share in “The Democrats lose” for $0.25, for a total of $1 spent on these two shares. Then, when the Democrats either win or lose, the person with the correct share gets the $1. In practice it’s annoying to have to wait for someone to take the opposite side of the trade, so some people (or bots!) play “market maker” and are willing to take your bet on the assumption that someone else will come along soon to take the other side. But it’s usually safe to abstract this step away and just imagine people betting with each other, using the market as an intermediary. 4.6.1: Then why should anyone play prediction markets, when on average they’ll only break even? It seems like this is a worse deal than stocks, which tend to go up over time. Every dollar someone wins on a prediction market corresponds to someone else’s loss; in expectation; across all participants, the average gain is 0. But the stock market tends to go up over time, as businesses expand to new areas and invent new products; across all participants, the average gain is about 4% per year. So why ever invest in prediction markets instead of stocks? Whatever the theoretical answer to this question, lots of people do invest in prediction markets instead of stocks sometimes; several existing prediction markets have questions with hundreds of thousands of dollars in trading volume. You would have to ask those people why they do it. Maybe it’s because it’s fun. Or maybe it’s because they think (rightly or wrongly) that they’re above average and can make a profit. This is no different than other zero-sum games like sports betting, which attracts billions of dollars each year. The futures and commodities markets are also zero-sum, but attract billions of dollars by giving companies an opportunity to hedge risk. For example, a nickel mine might get rich if the price of nickel goes up, but go bankrupt if the price of nickel goes down. And they might prefer a predictable world where they get a small but guaranteed profit no matter what happens to nickel prices. So they bet some amount of money on commodity markets that the price of nickel will go down, and then their income is the sum of what they make from their nickel mining and from their bets - which, if they handled their hedging correctly, should be a small but guaranteed profit. Prediction markets would allow hedging of other types of risk - for example, import-export businesses might want to hedge against the risk that a protectionist politician gets elected, or tourism companies might want to hedge against a pandemic that closes international borders. These people would inject enough money into the market to subsidize sophisticated speculators. Finally, I envision that someday people who want to know the answer to specific questions can subsidize prediction markets on them. For example, the Democratic Party might subsidize a conditional market (see 5.1) about which Democratic primary candidate is most likely to win the general election. Their money would go to giving the average investor a 4% (or some other number) rate of return - although of course winners would gain more than that and losers would still lose on net. I think this is the most likely way for prediction markets to become very big. 4.6.1.1: If people use prediction markets to hedge risk, won’t that distort them? That is, suppose that an import-export business spends millions of dollars betting that Trump will win in order to hedge against his protectionist policies. Since their bets aren’t based on the real chance of Trump winning, won’t that distort the market? No. Suppose that everyone knows Trump has a 50-50 chance of winning. And suppose the import-export business, in the process of hedging risk, bids it up to 90-10. Since you know Trump has a 50-50 chance of winning, you can get rich quick by bidding it back down to 50-50. From your point of view, the import-export business is (in expectation) giving you free money. But they’re still happy to do it, because they’re hedging their risk successfully. 4.7: Aren’t a lot of the questions we care about inherently subjective or hard to measure? This is a frequent problem for prediction markets. For example, we might want to know something like “will we get human-level AI before 2050?” But how do we define “human-level AI”? If there’s an AI that’s much better than humans at most tasks, but much worse at a few, is that “human-level”? If there’s an AI that seems human-level in demos, but the team that makes it won’t let it be independently tested, should that count? If it works through some kind of Frankenstein chip that combines vat-grown brain tissue with computing machinery, is that still an “AI”? Prediction markets have found a few ways around this problem. First, many groups (for example, Metaculus) try to define their resolution criteria very carefully. A typical Metaculus question on AI sounds like this: We will thus define "an AI system" as a single unified software system that can satisfy the following criteria, all completable by at least some humans. Able to reliably pass a 2-hour, adversarial Turing test during which the participants can send text, images, and audio files (as is done in ordinary text messaging applications) during the course of their conversation. An 'adversarial' Turing test is one in which the human judges are instructed to ask interesting and difficult questions, designed to advantage human participants, and to successfully unmask the computer as an impostor. A single demonstration of an AI passing such a Turing test, or one that is sufficiently similar, will be sufficient for this condition, so long as the test is well-designed to the estimation of Metaculus Admins.

Prediction markets are like stock markets, but for beliefs about future events. For example, you can buy or sell shares in events like “The Democrats will win the next election” or “A Category 5 hurricane will hit Florida this year”.

Typically, a share pays out $1 if the event occurs, and nothing if it doesn’t. In this scenario, the price of the share will naturally represent the market’s belief about the likelihood of the event. For example, if a share in “The Democrats will win the next election” trades for $0.20, then the market believes there’s a 20% chance the Democrats will win the next election.

The Dutch1 mentions across 1 issues

The Dutch is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 21, 2024 and June 21, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Dutch had occupied the island since 1641". It most often appears alongside Abenomics, An Encouragement of Learning, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization.

Reference entry: The Dutch
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 21, 2024
Last seen: June 21, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa June 21, 2024

Abenomics 1 shared issues
An Encouragement of Learning 1 shared issues
An Outline of a Theory of Civilization 1 shared issues
Anglosphere 1 shared issues
Ansei 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa

June 21, 2024 · Original source

For over two centuries, the sole point of contact between Japan and Europe had been an artificial island in Nagasaki called Dejima. The Dutch had occupied the island since 1641, exercising a carefully monitored monopoly in trade. As a result, the few Western books that entered Japan were generally written in Dutch. Any Japanese person who wanted to learn Western science therefore needed to gain fluency in that language (which, given the limited opportunities for interaction between the two groups, was not so easy).

Soon after Perry’s arrival, Fukuzawa’s older brother tells him that Japan needs more people to study Western science. He asks Fukuzawa: “Are you willing to learn the Dutch language?”

Eventually he learns that the Dutch have ceased to be a naval superpower and that their language is not very widely spoken at all. “I had been striving with all my powers for many years to learn the Dutch language,” he says, “[a]nd now when I had reason to believe myself one of the best interpreters in the country, I found that I could not even read the signs of merchants who had come to trade with us from foreign lands.”

The Effective Altruists1 mentions across 1 issues

The Effective Altruists is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 22, 2023 and November 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Effective Altruists and the Salvation Army need to fight". It most often appears alongside American Psychiatric Association, Avakian, Bay Area.

Reference entry: The Effective Altruists
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 22, 2023
Last seen: November 22, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Seen In The Bay November 22, 2023

American Psychiatric Association 1 shared issues
Avakian 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
Berkeley 1 shared issues
Berkeley High School 1 shared issues

Source context

Seen In The Bay

November 22, 2023 · Original source

The Effective Altruists and the Salvation Army need to fight. There can be only one!

the English1 mentions across 1 issues

the English is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 01, 2025 and August 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The English bought her so they could kill her". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agamemnon, Age of Empires II.

Reference entry: the English
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 01, 2025
Last seen: August 01, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Review: Joan of Arc August 01, 2025

Africa 1 shared issues
Agamemnon 1 shared issues
Age of Empires II 1 shared issues
Agincourt 1 shared issues
Agincourt 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Review: Joan of Arc

August 01, 2025 · Original source

Let’s start with the legend of Joan of Arc: A poor peasant girl in France is chosen by God, goes to fight the English, defeats them in a series of battles while performing random miracles, is captured by them and burned as a witch, The End. Maybe you add the epilogue about how eventually the Church made her a saint. All completely impossible and all guaranteed to be nonsense.

Then she ran off to save the country from the English because God told her to, which is the step that requires some explaining. Why did the country need saving?

This produced a succession crisis. The two available candidates to succeed him were the Duke of Guyenne, son of Philip the Fair's daughter Isabella,9 and the Count of Orleans, son of Philip the Fair's brother Charles of Valois. Since the Duke of Guyenne was Edward III, King of England, and the Count of Orleans wasn't, the choice was obvious and France declared that the law had always been that the throne could never pass through a woman. Edward III was sixteen, in England, and busy, so he raised no meaningful objection, and Philip of Valois, called "The Fortunate" because he got to be king, inherited. Twelve years later, Philip eyed Guyenne, the last bit of France left in English hands from Eleanor of Aquitaine’s inheritance, and, observing the English busy in Scotland, he made his move.

Inline links: 9

The Everest Era1 mentions across 1 issues

The Everest Era is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 11, 2024 and October 11, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "project to coach his nine-year old daughter ... The Everest Era". It most often appears alongside AmandaFromBethlehem, Amedeo Rothson, analogfutures.substack.com.

Reference entry: The Everest Era
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 11, 2024
Last seen: October 11, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review Contest 2024 Winners October 11, 2024

AmandaFromBethlehem 1 shared issues
Amedeo Rothson 1 shared issues
analogfutures.substack.com 1 shared issues
Arielle Friedman 1 shared issues
Arvid Häggqvist 1 shared issues

Source context

Book Review Contest 2024 Winners

October 11, 2024 · Original source

...he has started a project to coach his nine-year old daughter to (hopefully) the History Bee National Championship (using some technique from last year's contest winner): The Everest Era . - The Complete Rhyming Dictionary And Poet’s Craft Book , reviewed by David. David is a materials science PhD and programmer who blogs with co-author Felipe at The Hal...

the Fabians1 mentions across 1 issues

the Fabians is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 10, 2022 and March 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "actual Fabians and the neoliberals". It most often appears alongside American Christianity, Berserker, Berserker Strategy.

Reference entry: the Fabians
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 10, 2022
Last seen: March 10, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Advice For Unwoke Academic? March 10, 2022

American Christianity 1 shared issues
Berserker 1 shared issues
Berserker Strategy 1 shared issues
Black Lives Matter 1 shared issues
Canadian trucker protests 1 shared issues

Source context

Advice For Unwoke Academic?

March 10, 2022 · Original source

...n’t make the news. Or make the news as Congressman #26 Who Voted For Civil Rights Legislation. On the other hand, some good examples of Fabian Strategy successes are the actual Fabians and the neoliberals . Does Poorly-Planned Resistance Provide A Cover For Crackdowns? As much as I hate to say it, the most lasting legacy of the Canadian trucker protests might be normalizi...

The Far Out Initiative1 mentions across 1 issues

The Far Out Initiative 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 "leave The Far Out Initiative". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: The Far Out Initiative
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

Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP?

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.

The Free State Project1 mentions across 1 issues

The Free State Project is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2025 and August 05, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Free State Project: some libertarians made a deal that if enough other libertarians agreed, they would all move to New Hampshire". It most often appears alongside Amish, Bay Area rationalist community, Christian media.

Reference entry: The Free State Project
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 05, 2025
Last seen: August 05, 2025

Outbound links

Issue trail

Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? August 05, 2025

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

Source context

August 05, 2025 · Original source

The Free State Project: some libertarians made a deal that if enough other libertarians agreed, they would all move to New Hampshire and try to turn it into a libertarian paradise. They got about 20,000 people on board; the results ranged from building entirely new libertarian towns in the forest, to buying homes in Portsmouth or Manchester and keeping in touch with their libertarian friends. 7/10.

The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission1 mentions across 1 issues

The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 01, 2023 and July 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission". It most often appears alongside 1960 Valdivia earthquake, AEC, Atomic Energy Commission.

Reference entry: The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 01, 2023
Last seen: July 01, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Safe Enough? July 01, 2023

1960 Valdivia earthquake 1 shared issues
AEC 1 shared issues
Atomic Energy Commission 1 shared issues
Bayesian priors 1 shared issues
Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Safe Enough?

July 01, 2023 · Original source

For this summary I want to cite three sources that I found particularly useful. First, Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response, published in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Second, The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the DPJ: Leadership, Structures, and Information Challenges During the Crisis published in Japanese Political Economy. Third, The official report of The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission. Wikipedia’s summary is of course excellent as well, but these more academic sources provide an excellent source of stories, and further understanding for the social and political context in Japan at the time of the event.

Inline links: Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response, The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the DPJ: Leadership, Structures, and Information Challenges During the Crisis, The Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, Wikipedia’s summary

The Georgist twitter DM group1 mentions across 1 issues

The Georgist twitter DM group is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 11, 2021 and December 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Georgist twitter DM group for drowning me in articles, citations, and sources". It most often appears alongside /r/georgism, ACX community, Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size.

Reference entry: The Georgist twitter DM group
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 11, 2021
Last seen: December 11, 2021

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Issue trail

Does Georgism Work, Part 3: Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately From Buildings? December 11, 2021

georgism 1 shared issues
ACX community 1 shared issues
Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size 1 shared issues
Albouy 1 shared issues
Alexandra Elbakyan 1 shared issues

Source context

Does Georgism Work, Part 3: Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately From Buildings?

December 11, 2021 · Original source

The Georgist twitter DM group for drowning me in articles, citations, and sources

the Good Food Institute1 mentions across 1 issues

the Good Food Institute is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 28, 2021 and December 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Alene ... a veteran of animal welfare campaigns at ... the Good Food Institute". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative, @GoodSciProject.

Reference entry: the Good Food Institute
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 28, 2021
Last seen: December 28, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

ACX Grants Results December 28, 2021

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative 1 shared issues
@GoodSciProject 1 shared issues
@metaforecast 1 shared issues
@standupecon 1 shared issues

Source context

ACX Grants Results

December 28, 2021 · Original source

Legal Impact For Chickens, $72,000, to help kickstart their project of suing factory farms that violate animal cruelty laws or otherwise expose themselves to legal action. They write: "If we sue a company that kills 100 million chickens a year, then success would mean incrementally improving the lives of a significant number (perhaps 80 million) of these chickens". Alene, their founder, graduated from Harvard Law School and is a veteran of animal welfare campaigns at PETA, ALDF, and the Good Food Institute. My review team said this was an unusually high-impact animal welfare opportunity; if you’d like to donate too, you can do so at https://www.legalimpactforchickens.org/donate .

Inline links: Legal Impact For Chickens, https://www.legalimpactforchickens.org/donate

The Green Party1 mentions across 1 issues

The Green Party is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 01, 2024 and November 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Green Party, a US third party, tried to put their candidate Jill Stein on the ballot". It most often appears alongside /r/BadMTGCombos, @cremieuxrecuel, @justin_garson.

Reference entry: The Green Party
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 01, 2024
Last seen: November 01, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For November 2024 November 01, 2024

BadMTGCombos 1 shared issues
@cremieuxrecuel 1 shared issues
@justin_garson 1 shared issues
Aaron Sibarium 1 shared issues
Abuelo's Awakening 1 shared issues

Source context

ACX Grants: Project Updates

November 01, 2024 · Original source

13: Gwern on the chip embargo: It is pretty damning. We're told the chip embargo has failed, and smugglers have been running rampant for years, and China is about to jump light years beyond the West and enslave us with AXiI (if you will) . . . And then an expert casually remarks that all of China put together, smuggling chips since 2022, has fewer H100s than Elon Musk orders for his datacenter while playing Elden Ring. And even with that huge bottleneck and 1.4 billion people, there's so little demand for them that they cost less per hour than in the West, where AI is redhot and we can't get enough H100s in datacenters. (And where the serious AI people are now discussing how to put that many into a single datacenter for a single run before the next scaleup with B200s obsoletes those...) 14: A company called Cosm has raised $250 million to build “immersive sports experiences”, ie giant buildings sort of like a cross between a stadium and a movie theater where people can get together and watch high-quality televised sports games in a “realistic” setting; they already have facilities in Dallas and Los Angeles. 15: Cremieux: The Ottoman Origins Of Modernity. The “Ottoman” bit is a distractor; the Ottomans fought the Catholics long enough for the Protestants to get a foothold, and then the Protestants established modernity. A useful pushback against the pushback that the Catholic Church never persecuted scientists or held back progress. I’m most interested in this post in the context of Cremieux saying he wrote it in two hours. Even I can’t work that fast! 16: The Green Party, a US third party, tried to put their candidate Jill Stein on the ballot in November. The Nevada election office sent them the wrong forms and gave them false advice about the process. The Greens filed the wrong forms, the Democrats sued, and the Supreme Court disqualified Stein, calling the election office’s incorrect advice an “unfortunate mistake”. I’m disappointed in this outcome - partly for the obvious reasons, but also because the incorrect forms they submitted technically should have added a state referendum to the ballot containing only the text “Jill Stein”. If they’re going to disqualify her candidacy, then I think they should at least hold the state referendum! 17: Nostalgebraist: Google has a new tool out that will create an AI podcast for any text; you hand it the text (could be a blog post, article, or work of fiction), and the tool generates a podcast of two AI hosts discussing it. You can find podcast discussions of Nostalgebraist’s fiction (Northern Caves and Almost Nowhere) at the link, but the acknowledged peak of the genre is Podcast Hosts Discover They’re AI, Not Human, And Spiral Into Existential Meltdown. 18: Also Nostalgebraist: The Case For Chain Of Thought Unfaithfulness Is Overstated. New AIs like o1 give “chain of thought”, ie display what they’re thinking after each step. This seems like a promising avenue to solve alignment - just see whether they’re thinking “and now I will plot against humans”. Unfortunately it’s not so easy; the chain of thought isn’t always accurate (you can sometimes catch the AI “hiding” thoughts it doesn’t want its human overseers to know, like when it’s using a racial stereotype). This article argues that these examples aren’t as exciting as they sound, and chain-of-thought accurately reflects reasoning for most tasks. 19: Australian government considers making doxxing a crime punishable by up to seven years in jail. 20: Getting your brain cryogenically frozen after your death is now free. 21: Cube Flipper: Hypercomputation without bothering the cactus people. The visual system must solve difficult math problems when translating the 2D visual field into a 3D world. Can we harness this innate mathematical ability to do arbitrary work? Cognitive scientist Mark Changizi developed a series of visual circuits (eg XOR gates) based on Necker cubes, probably easier seen than described: After surveying the field, Cube Flipper proposes a more advanced visual computer based on taking DMT and viewing certain types of tiles with slight deviations: …and makes the extreme claim that something like this might demonstrate hypercomputation, ie the visual system has semi-magic computational properties beyond those permitted by normal physical laws. I am skeptical but appreciate the survey of visual computing (as well as the callback to one of my older posts). 22: Material implication in Mormonism: In the book Doctrines and Covenants, Joseph Smith reports that God told him that if he lived to be 85, he would see the Second Coming (which would place it in 1890 - 1891). Mormon apologists note that Joseph Smith did not live to be 85, so no conclusion can be drawn. 23: More old-timey psychiatric ads (this one is from 1952, source: @justin_garson): This was before they invented what we would call antidepressants today; Dexedrine is an amphetamine related to Adderall. 24: Congratulations to Open Philanthropy, the biggest effective altruist foundation… …whose grantee David Baker recently won a Nobel Prize for his research on synthetic proteins. Potential applications include new drugs, vaccines, and materials. 25: Rich Kid Memes And The Online Culture Of The One Percent. Rich people who want to signal group membership to other rich people online can’t boast about how rich they are; that would be gauche. Instead, they’ve settled on the solution of making fun of rich people in hyperspecific language that proves familiarity with the culture. 26: Tap Water Sommelier: Vladimir Putin has two sons, ages 5 and 9. They are kept in luxurious but total isolation from the outside world and raised by flunkies who are too scared to punish/restrain them in any way. Also some discussion of an unexpected historical analogue. 27: Experiment from Colombia: replacing experienced teachers with less-experience but higher-scoring-on-tests teachers significantly decreased student performance. Got to admit I was expecting the opposite of this, I’d seen US data saying that experience didn’t matter and teacher intelligence did. Looking over this more, I find lots of studies on both sides and will go back to agnosticism on this question until someone I trust investigates further. 28: Large scale-formal Intellectual Turing Test finds that people can imitate partisans effectively; ie nobody on either side can tell the difference between a Democrat arguing for Democrat values vs. a Republican-pretending-to-be-a-Democrat arguing for Democrat values (and vice versa). This study used a 100 word essay on why you supported your party (you can see if you can do better here), but past attempts with different structures (religion, vegetarianism, polyamory) have shown broadly the same results. The researchers try to put this in the context of various studies showing that people do misunderstand their opponents (eg think they’re more extreme, underestimate the level of common ground), but it seems like intellectual Turing Tests aren’t a good way to measure or tease out this misunderstanding. 29: Congratulations to Substacker WoolyAI for doing the impossible and providing a genuinely novel and interesting (to me) take on pickup artistry: 30: Did you know: if you Google “cool websites”, our subreddit (r/slatestarcodex) is the first result. 31: Moshe Koppel, who works at the intersection of computer science and Talmud, is writing a series of posts (presumably) based off of my Every Bay Area House Party, titled Jerusalem Area House Party (it’s multiple part, you have to go to the main Substack page to find the others). I won’t necessarily link everyone who riffs off one of my posts - but honestly I probably will if you also have a Wikipedia page that describes you as working on computational Talmudology. 32: David Roman says it’s a myth that Arabic scholars rescued and preserved the works of the great classical authors. 33: Medications often decrease “secondary endpoints” (eg stroke, heart attack), but the holy grail of pharma studies is proving that a certain drug decreases all-cause mortality. This is much harder (not all heart attacks kill people, and people die from lots of other things), but is the strongest possible endorsement for the drug (without it, you might worry that it only prevented non-fatal heart attacks, or that it killed as many people through side effects as it saves through heart attack prevention). Even great medications that we’re confident in can’t always clear this bar. But a new JAMA article adds another member to this select club: Adderall decreases all-cause mortality in ADHD, probably because it prevents drug addiction, car accidents, and impulsive actions. 34: Before the Gulf War got in the way, Saddam Hussein was building some crazy mosques: 35: Italy bans surrogacy - quite strictly, too, Italians aren’t even allowed to go abroad and do it. I am so sorry for all the Italians who will never get to be mothers and fathers because their government hates progress. You might hope that, whatever the other disadvantages of anti-immigrant parties, at least they’re incentivized to let natives have children, but looks like they can’t even get that one right. Starting to wonder whether the trains even run on time. 36: Elsewhere in “Italy sucks” news - did you know Italy’s tax code effectively bans startups? Companies are taxed before making any money, based on how many assets they have. If they have lots of assets but aren’t making money (eg because they’re still doing research / in stealth) then tax officials get confused and hostile and run increasingly punitive audits. Related: size of the European tech sector. It’s the red line on this chart; if you can’t see a red line at your screen resolution, then you’ve learned something important about the the EU tech sector. 37: Seen on @cremieuxrecuel’s twitter (preliminary, needs replication): Jews may have gone from 65-29 Democrat/Republican in 2020 to 58-40 this election. 38: Extelligence has a post responding to my critique of the cultural Christianity argument (among, uh, many other things), but I don’t really think it connects. I’m not telling atheists they can’t go to church/synagogue if it makes them feel happy and fulfilled - I’ve done this myself sometimes. My post was meant to argue against the claim that, for pragmatic reasons, atheists should support the Christianization of society as a defense against Islam or postmodernism or some other philosophical enemy. 39: Related: Extelligence is finally going for their Trust Assembly project/idea/startup for online consensus-based truth-seeking (I think something like a cross between Community Notes and Wikipedia, but as a browser extension, and for everything). He’s looking for potential developers/testers/users. 40: Jiankui He is the Chinese geneticist who made history with the first germline gene editing in humans (resulting in three babies supposedly immune to AIDS, although nobody has tested this). China sentenced him to three years in prison for unauthorized experimentation, but now he’s out of jail, has an English-language Twitter account, has a new lab, wants to work on Alzheimers, and seems pretty based (although not infinitely based): 41: Anthropic has a new version of their AI Claude which can use your computer. You give it permission, put it on a virtual desktop, and ask it to do things for you (eg “please find and download a picture of a cat” or “please research these ten things and put them in a text file”.) It moves your cursor, browses the Internet, and creates and saves files. People keep saying they’ll care about AI “when it operates autonomously” or “when it becomes an agent”. But this is a trivial barrier, and one which Computer Use Claude has arguably already passed. So far this feature is limited to developers (though anyone with computer knowledge can sign up for it) but I expect it to be the near future of consumer AI, to get better quickly, and to shade gradually into the “autonomous” “agentic” AI that you all think will require a paradigm shift. 42: Claim (from the IDF): Hamas faked polls showing that most Palestinians supported the October 7 attack; the real numbers are 31% in favor, 64% against. 43: Otto von Bismarck wanted to trick France into declaring war on Germany. In order to provoke the French, he sent the Ems Dispatch, a statement describing recent diplomatic events in a way that sounded maximally offensive. The French were so offended that “crowds” in Paris demanded war, and the Franco-Prussian War was declared soon afterwards. The part of this that I find most interesting is the text of the dispatch itself, which read: After the news of the renunciation of the Prince von Hohenzollern had been communicated to the Imperial French government by the Royal Spanish government, the French Ambassador in Ems made a further demand on His Majesty the King that he should authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King undertook for all time never again to give his assent should the Hohenzollerns once more take up their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon refused to receive the Ambassador again and had the latter informed by the Adjutant of the day that His Majesty had no further communication to make to the Ambassador. I’m fascinated by the idea that only 150 years ago, it was obvious that if someone sent you this statement, you had to declare war or abandon all honor. If I read it carefully, I can sort of parse out that it sounds like the Prussians are unhappy, but that’s the most emotion I gather from it. Anyway, the Franco-Prussian War led to World War I which led to World War II - so if you don’t like 50 million people dying and the total devastation of Europe, blame this statement about ambassadors. 44: The first use of artificial insemination in humans: The first recorded case of artificial insemination by donor didn’t occur until 1884, when Dr. William Pancoast decided to treat a couple’s infertility by secretly inseminating the woman with sperm obtained from a medical student. The insemination happened while the patient was under anesthesia and Dr. Pancoast did not tell her what had occurred. She gave birth to a baby boy nine months later, but it was several years before the doctor finally confessed to her husband what he had done. Neither man ever informed the mother. It was 25 years later the result of this case was published. Dr. Pancoast was roundly condemned for his actions, but it did open the door for consensual sperm donor insemination. 45: ClearerThinking administers several personality tests to the same people to learn more about their comparative accuracy. I am most interested in their finding that tests with “factors” (eg the Big Five, where you rate people on a numeric scale) are inherently more accurate than those with “types” (eg Myers-Briggs, where you assign someone a specific category) and that, adjusting for this, Big Five is no more predictive than the Enneagram: 46: In 2022, I wrote Whither Tartaria, where I asked why ornate classical styles switched to more austere modernist styles around 1900 - 1950 in a variety of different arts (painting, architecture, literature, poetry, etc). I proposed seven theories, but was unsure which if any were true. Since then, Samuel Hughes of Works In Progress has been investigating. In May, he wrote a well-researched article showing that it wasn’t just increasing cost, because ornate classical architecture now costs less than ever. Now in a new article he demolishes a different theory - it’s not just decreasing cost (and subsequent lack of ability to signal wealth) - because costs didn’t decrease in several other arts, and the change was led by artists with rich people as reluctant followers. He concludes: Modernism may well be a status game of some kind; it may well signal taste more than it signals wealth; and this latter feature may be one of the things that distinguishes it from older artistic styles. But the mechanism by which this change came about must be different to the one Alexander describes. 47: Sort of kind of related - When Hamilton Lost Its Snob Appeal. The musical Hamilton was briefly an artistic/cultural phenomenon, but tastemakers eventually switched to making fun of it. Why? Rob Henderson says it happened after ticket prices came down and the common people could enjoy it. I disagree: everyone I knew who was into Hamilton got into it from the free online soundtrack long before they’d seen the show; I think this is more likely the usual fad cycle where anybody who’s too into yesterday’s fad is behind the curve and therefore uncool. 48: Related: Why are people such jerks to public intellectuals? And more. I agree this is a great mystery. 49: Some prominent Substack psychiatrists doing a video Q&A, submit your questions here. 50: Naomi Kanakia: The Literacy Delusion had a number of explanations for why reading books seemed to be so much worse for human beings (in terms of emotional wellness and productivity) than other forms of narrative entertainment, but its main theory was the integration hypothesis. That the stream of words in a book trained the human brain into a habit of self-consciousness, that reading books forced human beings to think of themselves as a stream of text, processed through time, making a coherent argument of some sort. And that this overall flattening effect forced readers to ignore aspects of their personality or their situation that were not otherwise in line with the overarching story they'd created about themselves. Basically, reading books causes repression and neurosis. The Literacy Delusion argued that, yes, human beings are storytelling machines, but that a stream of written text is a particular kind of story—a story that is particularly flat, particularly devoid of conflicting or harmonizing information—and that this flatness creates a peculiar effect on the human brain. 51: Last month, I linked Sasha Gusev’s No, Intelligence Is Not Like Height and asked people who disagreed to share their arguments; they sure did. First, several people pointed me to a new preprint, Family-GWAS Reveals Effects Of Environment And Mating On Genetic Associations, which finds that one of the main papers Gusev cited to make his case, Howe 2022, made a mistake - imputing sibling genotypes using a process designed for non-sibling genotypes - and that once that mistake is corrected, the finding disappears and intelligence and height appear similar. Second, Joseph Bronski has a more specific post where he responds to Gusev’s points one by one. He accuses Gusev of “[making] up his own chart to remove the error bars [from the originals], to obscure the fact that the study found no evidence for this in IQ”, and says that the cases where he didn’t do that are just “population stratification and range restriction”. Third, Noah Carl at Aporia, instead of writing a direct response like Bronski, argues that the usual method of attacking twin studies is obsolete; not only have the most-debated assumptions behind twin studies been thoroughly validated, but there are now other lines of evidence besides twin studies which confirm high IQ heritability. Fourth, Leonardo Parro (not framed as a response to Gusev) goes into more depth about one of those ways, a “pedigree-based analysis” demonstrating heritability of 54 - 69%, ie no “missing heritability” compared to twin studies. He summarizes this as the effect of “rare variants” compared to the usual SNPs - ie if you only look at the most common genes that are easiest to find, you get “missing heritability” compared to twin studies, but if you widen your search to rare genes that are hard to find, you don’t. 52: Extremely related: Heliospect is a startup promising polygenic selection for IQ and other traits; they were trying to stay in stealth mode but The Guardian spied on them and nonconsensually revealed their existence. The discussion on the r/ssc subreddit centered on their claim that (given enough embryos to choose from) they could increase a baby’s expected IQ by 6 points (I’ve also heard 7.5). Sasha Gusev had previously argued that current technology maxed out at 3.5 and future technology would max out at 6, so a claim of 6 - 7.5 is pretty extreme; Gwern, who wrote the pioneering analysis of this technology, was also skeptical. But Heliospect says they’ve got better predictors than academia that use the rare variants everyone else misses; after talking to the company, Gwern retracted his objections and says he finds their claim “pretty plausible”. Local ACX commenter geneticist Gene Smith also redid some calculations, changed his mind, and says “probably pretty realistic”. I find this interesting not just because of the polygenic selection angle, but because if Heliospect is right then their predictor is able to predict more genetic IQ than the “missing heritability” people believe exists, and it should be able to put this argument to bed once and for all. 53: This month in censorship: X/Twitter banned journalist Ken Klippenstein for sharing the Trump campaign’s dossier on JD Vance. Twitter’s side of the story is that the dossier was probably originally stolen by Iranian agents and they don’t want to support that kind of thing by letting people signal-boost the illicitly obtained goods; you can read Klippenstein’s side here. He appears to be unbanned now.

The Growth Teams1 mentions across 1 issues

The Growth Teams is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 04, 2022 and November 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Growth Teams . . . team has raised another $130K". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, acanthamoeba keratitis, ACX.

Reference entry: The Growth Teams
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 04, 2022
Last seen: November 04, 2022

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ACX Grants: Project Updates November 04, 2022

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
acanthamoeba keratitis 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Grantees Discord 1 shared issues
ACX Grants 1 shared issues

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November 04, 2022 · Original source

...at the White House and Congress regularly ask for their input. You can read their Substack here . 38: Advising Developing Countries On How To Grow Their Economies (6/10) The Growth Teams . . . team has raised another $130K and started working with the Rwanda Development Board. They’ve held a workshop to help the Board develop investment cases for high-pr...

...at the White House and Congress regularly ask for their input. You can read their Substack here . 38: Advising Developing Countries On How To Grow Their Economies (6/10) The Growth Teams . . . team has raised another $130K and started working with the Rwanda Development Board. They’ve held a workshop to help the Board develop investment cases for high-priority sectors, and are working side...

The Guild Of the Rose1 mentions across 1 issues

The Guild Of the Rose is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 30, 2024 and March 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Matt Freeman co-founder of The Guild Of the Rose". It most often appears alongside 1111 Brickell Ave, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City, 1970 Port Laurent place, Newport Beach 92660.

Reference entry: The Guild Of the Rose
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 30, 2024
Last seen: March 30, 2024

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Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024 March 30, 2024

1111 Brickell Ave 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner St., Culver City 1 shared issues
1970 Port Laurent place, Newport Beach 92660 1 shared issues
200 Degrees 1 shared issues
255 White St 1 shared issues

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Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024

March 30, 2024 · Original source

DENVER, COLORADO, USA Contact: Eneasz Brodski Contact Info: embrodski[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, May 12th, 3:00 PM Location: Sloan's Lake Park, North Side. Park in the Sloan's Lake North Parking Lot, walk just past the stone structure that's right there, and we'll be on the other side of it. Should have a shade structure up, and a white board that says ACX MEETUP on it (assuming I don't forget the dry erase marker this time). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85FPQX22+RM Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/969594296461197 Notes: Public park, all ages welcome. We'll BBQ some burgers and hotdogs and have a variety of snacks and drinks. Some vegan dogs also available, but limited quantities. Eneasz of The Bayesian Conspiracy will almost certainly be there, as will Matt Freeman co-founder of The Guild Of the Rose. We don't have any structured activities, just hanging out and conversation and watching kiddos run around. We have monthly meetups, anyone who attends this is welcome to come to those as well :)

Inline links: https://plus.codes/85FPQX22+RM, https://www.facebook.com/groups/969594296461197

The Henry George School of Social Science1 mentions across 1 issues

The Henry George School of Social Science is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 11, 2021 and December 11, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Henry George School of Social Science". It most often appears alongside /r/georgism, ACX community, Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size.

Reference entry: The Henry George School of Social Science
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 11, 2021
Last seen: December 11, 2021

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Does Georgism Work, Part 3: Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately From Buildings? December 11, 2021

georgism 1 shared issues
ACX community 1 shared issues
Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size 1 shared issues
Albouy 1 shared issues
Alexandra Elbakyan 1 shared issues

Source context

Does Georgism Work, Part 3: Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately From Buildings?

December 11, 2021 · Original source

The Henry George School of Social Science

Inline links: The Henry George School of Social Science

The History Channel1 mentions across 1 issues

The History Channel is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 03, 2024 and September 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "buy stock in The History Channel". It most often appears alongside 1980s, Air Force One, anal probing.

Reference entry: The History Channel
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 03, 2024
Last seen: September 03, 2024

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital September 03, 2024

1980s 1 shared issues
Air Force One 1 shared issues
anal probing 1 shared issues
Anglophone countries 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital

September 03, 2024 · Original source

“Ummmm…if the medical authorities start recommending more colonoscopies, buy stock in The History Channel.”

The Humane League1 mentions across 1 issues

The Humane League is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 10, 2023 and November 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "EA animal groups like The Humane League". It most often appears alongside #EEGManyLabs, 23andme, @freeshreeda.

Reference entry: The Humane League
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 10, 2023
Last seen: November 10, 2023

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Followup: Quests And Requests November 10, 2023

#EEGManyLabs 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
@freeshreeda 1 shared issues
@surcomplicated 1 shared issues
Alain Daigle 1 shared issues

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H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

November 10, 2023 · Original source

John Green + The Stop TB Partnership’s campaign against Johnson & Johnson is very similar to how EA animal groups like The Humane League (disclaimer: I used to work there) have run their corporate campaigns, although they’ve been successful without celebrity support for the most part - instead relying on grassroots support and funding.

the Inquisition1 mentions across 1 issues

the Inquisition is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 29, 2024 and May 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "and the Inquisition (which was concerned he might be a witch) investigated and got many eyewitness reports". It most often appears alongside @ElytraMithra, Aaron, ACX.

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

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Links for May 2024 May 29, 2024

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

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Links for May 2024

May 29, 2024 · Original source

14: Related: Bentham’s Bulldog has been going over some of the evidence for Christianity, of which the most interesting is the story of St. Joseph of Cupertino (no, he didn’t work for Apple; it’s also a town in Italy - the Cupertino in California is named after him). Apparently St. Joseph could levitate, this was well-documented by everyone he met, and the Inquisition (which was concerned he might be a witch) investigated and got many eyewitness reports. Wikipedia has a more skeptical take, but I’m more interested in how well the Christianity hypothesis predicts this “evidence”.

Inline links: some of the evidence for Christianity, a more skeptical take

The Institute for Effective Policy1 mentions across 1 issues

The Institute for Effective Policy is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 16, 2023 and January 16, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Institute for Effective Policy has helped convince the Australian government". It most often appears alongside 2022-23 ACX Survey, Approval Voting, Astralcodexten.

Reference entry: The Institute for Effective Policy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 16, 2023
Last seen: January 16, 2023

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Open Thread 259 January 16, 2023

2022-23 ACX Survey 1 shared issues
Approval Voting 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten 1 shared issues
Australian government 1 shared issues
Disaster Ready Fund 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 259

January 16, 2023 · Original source

The Institute for Effective Policy has helped convince the Australian government to include funding for long-term catastrophic risks in its Disaster Ready Fund.

Inline links: Disaster Ready Fund

The Institute For Progress1 mentions across 1 issues

The Institute For Progress 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 "Juan Cambeiro at The Institute For Progress estimated a 4% chance". It most often appears alongside 1918, 1940s, 1968.

Reference entry: The Institute For Progress
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

H5N1 may cross to humans, but it could take a while. Superforecaster Juan Cambeiro at The Institute For Progress estimated a 4% chance of a “worse than COVID” H5N1 pandemic in “the next year”, but their estimate was made in 2023, without the benefit of the Metaculus estimates or most of our current knowledge. This feels high now - Metaculus says 5% total for H5N1 pandemic, and most pandemic flus are not worse than COVID. IFP also seem to be expecting a case fatality rate greater than 10%, which I find unlikely for the reasons mentioned above. I trust their estimate less than Metaculus’ current ones. I conclude that the most plausible estimate for the chance of an H5N1 pandemic in the next year is 5%. Interestingly, 5% is about the base rate for pandemic flus per year: five in the past century = one per twenty years = 5% chance per year. Isn’t it surprising that we’re still at the base rate when we can see a dangerous-looking flu virus spreading through the types of animals that have caused pandemic flus in the past? Part of the answer is that we’re not - in addition to the 5% chance of H5N1, we have to add the chance of some other pandemic flu. This probably isn’t 5% on its own; scientists monitor flu strains closely, and they haven’t found any others which are giving off as many red flags as H5N1. Still, something could always come out of left field. Maybe we should add a 2.5% chance of some other strain, for a total of 7.5% chance of a flu pandemic (ie beyond normal seasonal flu) next year. But still, isn’t it surprising that we’re so close to the base rate? One way to think about this: the base rate represents how concerned we should be if there was no epidemiological monitoring at all. In that case, we would estimate a probability distribution across different epidemiological landscapes, most of which contain some concerning-looking flu strains. Since we are doing the epidemiological monitoring, we can collapse that distribution into a single picture: one flu strain, H5N1, is in fact pretty concerning, and other strains mostly aren’t. This is enough to move our prior from 5% to 7.5%, but no more. The forecasters I talked to raised one other point of uncertainty: does the flu work more like a dice roll, or like a bus? Dice rolls are uncorrelated with their predecessors; even if it’s been a hundred rolls since you last rolled a 6, your chance this time is still 1/6. But buses come at fixed intervals; if the buses are hourly, and you haven’t seen a bus in the past 59 minutes, then your chance of seeing a bus in the next minute is very high. It’s been 16 years since the last flu pandemic; these pandemics come (on average) every 20 years. I don’t think anyone has a good sense of how to think about this. But it was 40 years between the Spanish and Hong Kong flus, so the twenty year number is at best a rule of thumb. The 5% number feels very low to me (and, apparently, to the average Manifold forecaster). Isn’t H5N1 spreading to cows and pigs and all sorts of other mammals? Isn’t it in the news all the time? I trust Metaculus a lot, but I agree that this is a surprising update, and I’m taking it on faith rather than feeling it in my bones. What Would The Fatality Rate Be For An H5N1 Pandemic? There are four basic stories you could tell about likely H5N1 mortality. First, maybe mortality would be 50%. The argument here is that official statistics report this mortality rate in the chicken farmers who have been infected with H5N1 so far. Several news sources and even some scientists have raised the specter of a pandemic version of H5N1 pandemic with this same death rate, which could kill a quarter to a third of the world population. THIS IS EXTREMELY FAKE. The official statistics only report fatality rate in the infections we know about. Bird flu is rare, there’s no mass testing, and we only learn that somebody had it if they’re in a hospital and the doctors are worried enough to test for rare conditions. Of Americans who got bird flu in the past year, 0 out of 61 have died. Probably this is mostly because America upped its detection game and is now finding milder cases; we also can’t rule out the virus mutating to become less virulent. Metaculus estimates the current true mortality rate as 1.25%. …but leaves a wide 90% confidence interval, from 0.5% to 7%. Second, maybe mortality would be somewhere around 1.25%. The argument here is that Metaculus uses this as its central estimate of US mortality. But Sentinel discusses some reasons to be skeptical of broad inferences from the US numbers: Scientists have been puzzled by the apparently low H5N1 case fatality rate in humans in the US. They offer a number of hypotheses: “The way in which the virus is being transmitted — along with the amount of virus exposure — is limiting the severity of disease.”

Inline links: The Institute For Progress estimated, news, sources, scientists, Sentinel discusses

The Last Psychiatrist1 mentions across 1 issues

The Last Psychiatrist is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 20, 2022 and April 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I feel like I owe him for TLP, which had more influence". It most often appears alongside A.E. Waite, Adlerian psychology, AL.

Reference entry: The Last Psychiatrist
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 20, 2022
Last seen: April 20, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On "Sadly, Porn" April 20, 2022

A.E. Waite 1 shared issues
Adlerian psychology 1 shared issues
AL 1 shared issues
Alex Power 1 shared issues
Aristotle 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On "Sadly, Porn"

April 20, 2022 · Original source

Holy crap, The Last Psychiatrist book finally came out??? Why isn't this bigger news? This is my white whale. I'm buying it just because I feel like I owe him for TLP, which had more influence on my life than any other single piece of writing.

The Lincoln Institute1 mentions across 1 issues

The Lincoln Institute is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 09, 2021 and December 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "My sources are The Lincoln Institute". It most often appears alongside 2017 PTAPP survey, AEI, agglomeration effect.

Reference entry: The Lincoln Institute
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Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal? December 09, 2021

2017 PTAPP survey 1 shared issues
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Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal?

December 09, 2021 · Original source

Larson (2019) uses this method, and AEI's figures are based directly on those results with a slight upward correction. The Lincoln Institute and the Federal Reserve's figures use the same basic approach, relying on official estimates of construction costs and housing prices. The one outlier is the PLACES lab estimate, which uses a machine learning model but gives a single-year result that tracks with the four cost approach lines.

The Maddison Project1 mentions across 1 issues

The Maddison Project is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 23, 2021 and March 23, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Fact check: The Maddison Project, the usual (though oft-criticized) source for historical GDP". It most often appears alongside 2008 crisis, A Failure, But Not Of Prediction, Ancient Phoenicia.

Reference entry: The Maddison Project
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Book Review: Antifragile March 23, 2021

2008 crisis 1 shared issues
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Book Review: Antifragile

March 23, 2021 · Original source

Fact check: The Maddison Project, the usual (though oft-criticized) source for historical GDP, does not think Lebanon and Syria had similar GDP per capita a century ago (source). Book Three is called "A Nonpredictive View Of The World", and annoyed me because it pre-empted a post of mine by almost ten years.

Inline links: source

The Moth1 mentions across 1 issues

The Moth 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 "then submit them to The Moth in an attempt to qualify for (and win) Storytelling Nights". It most often appears alongside 10,000 hour rule, 2 Hour Learning, Inc, 2-hour Learning.

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Your Review: Alpha School June 27, 2025

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Alpha 1 shared issues

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Your Review: Alpha School

June 27, 2025 · Original source

Quiz Bowl All of the GT Workshops are focused on a measurable, legible output. They don’t learn “public speaking”, they learn how to craft and deliver a speech and then submit the performance to the Moth to be judged by external parties. The school’s “100% Money Back guarantee” is that every student who attends will be in the top 1% academically and win at least one national academic competition (for kids who start in kindergarten they guarantee 1350+ SAT and 5s on APs by 8th grade). This past year four kids placed in the top-8 in a global debate with more than 1000 entries, and two kids are competing at national championships in chess and an academic bee respectively, but not national champions yet. The second part of the afternoon is roughly 45-minutes per day to work on individual “Check Charts”. Check Charts are an assigned series of tasks each student needs to complete before they can move to the next “level”. Levels are mostly broken into two-year cohorts of kids. Roughly: Learning Lab = Kindergarten and 1st grade

Inline links: 100% Money Back guarantee

Leadership …and so many other things. 100% of MAP test questions are multiple choice. Where are the students learning deep thinking? What about the learning you get from small group discussions in a university seminar? I think Alpha’s answer to that concern is “that is what we do in the afternoon workshops”. I think that is a fine answer. How well do most schools teach those things as a baseline? Maybe Alpha does as good a job as other schools teaching public speaking. Maybe they do a better job? But what is missing is an objective measure of how well they do it. I can see that GT is making progress on the measurement of those softer skills by running workshops on “competitive academics” where the output is legible. The kids at that school don’t just learn to give talks, they give talks and then submit them to The Moth in an attempt to qualify for (and win) Storytelling Nights. They don’t just write persuasive essays graded by their teachers, they write persuasive essays and then submit them to national competitions. They don’t just learn the concepts of long term planning and strategy, they put them in practice playing go and chess and then compete against their peers and earn an elo ranking. I think it is a fair way to assess these things and leads to more accountability, but note that it is only happening at the GT school with ten kids, not the main Alpha campus, and the data points so far on whether it is working are very thin. Our friends at the flagship school are less convinced that the climbing wall workshop is teaching those “non-state mandated” academics that the core program misses. Another disappointment is “Alpha Writes”. The school was not happy with the third-party reading and writing apps out there and built their own. Alpha Reads is excellent. Alpha Writes (which is newer and just launched about a month ago) is not. I believe the school (and Joe Liemandt) understands that the product is not good enough, and they are taking it back to the drawing board, but for now I do not think the Alpha kids have any real edge versus traditional schools in their training on essay or creative writing skills. How do Alpha’s MAP score improvements compare to other selective private schools across the country? This is an important question for some parents. It is great if you can expect your 5th grader to advance 2.6x faster than they would at the local public school, but if you are planning to spend $40,000/year to send him to Alpha, your alternative is likely not the local public school. And if you are considering moving your family to Austin for the school, your alternative options are places like Horace Mann, Harvard-Westlake, and Lakeside. How does the 2.6x improvement that Alpha is delivering compare to those elite institutions? I have no idea. Unlike Alpha I have not found any elite school who has shared the MAP improvement rate for the students at their school. I expect these elite schools are very good for all the reasons the selective private school I sent my kids to before GT was good: They have a select group of peers, they have great teacher:student ratios, and they have incredible resources. I also expect most of these schools do NOT accelerate (I could very well be wrong here and would be happy to be corrected). If they are like the schools I am familiar with they allow their students to advance through the material at the “normal” pace, with the normal pedagogy, but, because those kids are so bright, that leaves them plenty of time for enrichment. Lakeside school (where Bill Gates’ children attended) has classes where students write and perform one-act plays at the school’s annual festival; advanced photography courses where students develop their own signature style and brand; Literature classes on Victorian novels, the Harlem Renaissance, and Chaos Theory; classes on abnormal psychology, architecture, blockchain, game theory and wilderness survival and leadership. I am sure by the time they graduate, students from Lakeside have learned much more than what is measured on a standardized MAP test. The problem is that it is difficult to measure those “extra things”, so you are left making the decision on vibes and prestige and marketing materials. (and meanwhile the objective numbers are held under lock and key by the elite schools themselves who have no incentive to share them when they are already winning on vibes). Is there any data on how different education programs are doing on improving MAP scores? I have not found any schools other than Alpha that share their data, but there are some “educational interventions” where the measured output was an improvement on MAP tests. Teach to One: Math is a math program used in some schools that is meant to be “personalized” using “technology-infused direct instruction”. Their studies find that students who follow their full program improve 23% faster on the math MAP scores, and students who are “exposed” to the program improve 12% faster. MAP Accelerator is a tool developed by Khan Academy. It claims that students who use it consistently for 30-minutes per week improve their MAP scores 9-43% faster than a control group. Both examples show that if you have technology-enabled personalized learning for extended periods of time improve MAP scores versus the norm. Both show that those results only happen when the students stick with the program. This shows that the “secret sauce” of Alpha’s 2-Hour Learning is not what and how they are teaching but rather: That they are using personalized technology-enhanced programing (when most schools aren’t)

Inline links: Lakeside school, Teach to One: Math, MAP Accelerator

The Motte1 mentions across 1 issues

The Motte is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 02, 2022 and October 02, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Motte, a culture and politics subreddit which is a descendant of the old SSC Subreddit Culture War Thread". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, ACX Grants, Astralcodexten Com.

Reference entry: The Motte
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Open Thread 244 October 02, 2022

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
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Open Thread 244

October 02, 2022 · Original source

2: The Motte, a culture and politics subreddit which is a descendant of the old SSC Subreddit Culture War Thread, has moved off Reddit because of censorship worries. It’s now at themotte.org. You always worry about losing users during a move, but I see their main weekly thread is at 1766 comments and counting, so it looks like it’s going all right! They say:

Inline links: themotte.org

The Office Of Major Williams1 mentions across 1 issues

The Office Of Major Williams is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 24, 2022 and May 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Founder of The Office Of Major Williams". It most often appears alongside #Abolitionist, #AntiNazi, #antiwar.

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California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z May 24, 2022

#Abolitionist 1 shared issues
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#antiwar 1 shared issues
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California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z

May 24, 2022 · Original source

Major Williams (motto: “It’s Time To Think Major”) is handsome and has snazzy promotional material. I cannot quite figure out his job, but his LinkedIn page says he is “CEO of the Major Williams Brand” and “Founder of The Office Of Major Williams”, both of which he seems, if anything, over-qualified for. He is a philanthropist and runs “Major Kicks For Kids”, apparently a charity of some sort.

Inline links: Major Williams, LinkedIn page

The Oxfendazole Development Group1 mentions across 1 issues

The Oxfendazole Development Group is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 28, 2021 and December 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Oxfendazole Development Group , $150,000, to develop oxfendazole". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative, @GoodSciProject.

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ACX Grants Results December 28, 2021

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ACX Grants Results

December 28, 2021 · Original source

The Oxfendazole Development Group, $150,000, to develop oxfendazole. This is a next-generation antiparasitic drug which may one day replace albendazole and mebendazole, the current choices for deworming. Several hundred million children worldwide suffer from parasitic worm infections; this certainly affects their health, and a growing body of research suggests it might affect their cognitive ability, educational attainment, and future income. GiveWell endorses deworming as one of the most effective charitable interventions; the successful development of new antiparasitics would further this effort. Oxfendazole has done well in early studies and this group wants to follow them up in the hopes of eventually getting FDA approval. To learn more or send a donation, see this site

Inline links: The Oxfendazole Development Group, endorses deworming, this site

The Party1 mentions across 1 issues

The Party is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 28, 2022 and April 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Party reports literally say it constantly". It most often appears alongside American system, Axios, Bo Xilai.

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Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping April 28, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping

April 28, 2022 · Original source

The internal debate (NPC isn't the only place Chinese Party members talk to each other, which is obvious) was settled by the late 2000s and the consensus was, in keeping with Chinese socio-cultural-political legacies in challenging times to have a strong leader/core to safeguard the Party's future.

Numerous Chinese scholars (these are only relevant when they are aping western or dissident adjacent narratives, no wonder blind spots are so large) have mentioned for nearly a decade now that Xi is this powerful because the Party collectively after internal deliberations decided it. Party is Supreme, Xi on his own is nothing but a figurehead. A medium to get the rest of the structure where it is supposed (relatively, acceptably) to be.

The Party determines what happens in China. Not some individual. This has been the case since Mao died. Not even Deng had his level of personal unilateral power.

The Psmiths1 mentions across 1 issues

The Psmiths is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 04, 2025 and September 04, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Psmiths review The Ancient City". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abundance liberalism, Afghanistan.

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Links For September 2025 September 04, 2025

80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
abundance liberalism 1 shared issues
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Africa 1 shared issues
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Links For September 2025

September 04, 2025 · Original source

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

The Salem Center1 mentions across 1 issues

The Salem Center is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2022 and August 16, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Salem Center at the University of Texas Austin". It most often appears alongside 538, 538, @tnim_.

Reference entry: The Salem Center
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2022
Last seen: August 16, 2022

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Issue trail

22 August 16, 2022

538 1 shared issues
538 1 shared issues
@tnim_ 1 shared issues
AI 1 shared issues
Aristotle 1 shared issues

Source context

August 16, 2022 · Original source

The Salem Center at the University of Texas Austin, in conjunction with Richard Hanania’s Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology will be giving a cushy paid academic fellowship to the winner of their Manifold-based prediction market tournament.

Inline links: giving a cushy paid academic fellowship

the Salvation Army1 mentions across 1 issues

the Salvation Army is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 22, 2023 and November 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Effective Altruists and the Salvation Army need to fight". It most often appears alongside American Psychiatric Association, Avakian, Bay Area.

Reference entry: the Salvation Army
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 22, 2023
Last seen: November 22, 2023

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Seen In The Bay November 22, 2023

American Psychiatric Association 1 shared issues
Avakian 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
Berkeley 1 shared issues
Berkeley High School 1 shared issues

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Seen In The Bay

November 22, 2023 · Original source

The Effective Altruists and the Salvation Army need to fight. There can be only one!

The Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project1 mentions across 1 issues

The Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 24, 2022 and May 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project provides job training, transitional employment and support services to individuals experiencing homelessness". It most often appears alongside #Abolitionist, #AntiNazi, #antiwar.

Reference entry: The Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 24, 2022
Last seen: May 24, 2022

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California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z May 24, 2022

#Abolitionist 1 shared issues
#AntiNazi 1 shared issues
#antiwar 1 shared issues
#Democratic 1 shared issues
#ENCRYPTION 1 shared issues

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California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z

May 24, 2022 · Original source

The Santa Cruz Homeless Garden Project provides job training, transitional employment and support services to individuals experiencing homelessness. This dynamic employment-training program is focused on stewardship, conservation and regenerative agricultural principles; it teaches skills that truly transform the lives of those who participate and want to achieve a stable place in society. Programs like this can be incredibly effective. In 2019, 100% of the graduates of the Santa Cruz program obtained employment, and 78% obtained housing […]

The Scott Adams School1 mentions across 1 issues

The Scott Adams School is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 16, 2026 and January 16, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "getting rolled into a broader brand, The Scott Adams School". It most often appears alongside Adams, Alice, All-Seeing Eye.

Reference entry: The Scott Adams School
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 16, 2026
Last seen: January 16, 2026

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The Dilbert Afterlife January 16, 2026

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

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The Dilbert Afterlife

January 16, 2026 · Original source

I had been vaguely aware that he had some community around him, but on the event of his death, I tried watching an episode or two of his show. I couldn’t entirely follow, but I think his various sub-shows are getting rolled into a broader brand, The Scott Adams School, where his acolytes discuss and teach his theory of persuasion:

The Segura Lab1 mentions across 1 issues

The Segura Lab is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 28, 2021 and December 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Segura Lab at Duke, $50,000, to continue work on materials"; "The Segura Lab at Duke, $50,000, to continue work on materials that promote healthy tissue regrowth after stroke". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative, @GoodSciProject.

Reference entry: The Segura Lab
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 28, 2021
Last seen: December 28, 2021

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ACX Grants Results December 28, 2021

1DaySooner 1 shared issues
2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative 1 shared issues
@GoodSciProject 1 shared issues
@metaforecast 1 shared issues
@standupecon 1 shared issues

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ACX Grants Results

December 28, 2021 · Original source

The Segura Lab at Duke, $50,000, to continue work on materials that promote healthy tissue regrowth after stroke. They say their experiments are difficult to fund because regrowing dead brain tissue is a long shot that requires a lot of out of the box thinking and is hard to explain. If you want to learn more about their work, check out http://seguralab.duke.edu. If you’re a stroke survivor and want to share your story, they’d like you to check out their Patient Connection page. They’re also looking for help spreading their ideas. If you have knowledge of both science and writing/visual communication, apply to work with them here; if you want to donate, you can do so here.

Inline links: The Segura Lab, http://seguralab.duke.edu, Patient Connection page, here, here

The Stop TB Partnership1 mentions across 1 issues

The Stop TB Partnership is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 10, 2023 and November 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Stop TB Partnership’s campaign against Johnson & Johnson". It most often appears alongside #EEGManyLabs, 23andme, @freeshreeda.

Reference entry: The Stop TB Partnership
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 10, 2023
Last seen: November 10, 2023

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Followup: Quests And Requests November 10, 2023

#EEGManyLabs 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
@freeshreeda 1 shared issues
@surcomplicated 1 shared issues
Alain Daigle 1 shared issues

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Ukraine Thoughts And Links

November 10, 2023 · Original source

John Green + The Stop TB Partnership’s campaign against Johnson & Johnson is very similar to how EA animal groups like The Humane League (disclaimer: I used to work there) have run their corporate campaigns, although they’ve been successful without celebrity support for the most part - instead relying on grassroots support and funding.

The Taliban1 mentions across 1 issues

The Taliban is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 08, 2022 and March 08, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Western-backed Afghan government fell to the Taliban". It most often appears alongside Achilles, Afghan, America.

Reference entry: The Taliban
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 08, 2022
Last seen: March 08, 2022

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Ukraine Thoughts And Links March 08, 2022

Achilles 1 shared issues
Afghan 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
American conservatives 1 shared issues
American liberals 1 shared issues

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March 08, 2022 · Original source

This is true not just for the West considering sanctions, but for Ukrainians considering how hard to fight. Commentators have drawn connections between the Taliban easily ousting the US-backed Afghan government, and Putin expecting an easy victory in Ukraine. Maybe that’s why he took the chance. But the heroic Ukrainian resistance will set the opposite example. Next time someone considers an invasion, they’ll expect such high costs it won’t be worth it. In this sense, the Ukrainians are sacrificing not just for their countrymen, but for the world and for peace itself.

One story you could tell - one story I think Putin was telling himself - goes something like: the West is pathetic and divided. The Western-backed Afghan government fell to the Taliban in a few weeks. That’s because the Westernized Afghans were the kind of people who cared about trigger warnings and misgendering, and the Taliban was Traditional Masculine Warrior Types. The Taliban could say “kill the infidels!” and the Westerners would argue over whether considering the Taliban an “enemy” was racist.

the-friendly-debate1 mentions across 1 issues

the-friendly-debate 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 "Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/events/310609861". It most often appears alongside "Beer Capital" pub, 100 Black Birch Trail, 11841 Wagner Street, Culver City.

Reference entry: the-friendly-debate
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 29, 2025
Last seen: August 29, 2025

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Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places August 29, 2025

"Beer Capital" pub 1 shared issues
100 Black Birch Trail 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner Street, Culver City 1 shared issues
13 Mile road 1 shared issues
131 Colonie Center 1 shared issues

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Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places

August 29, 2025 · Original source

Contact: Alfonso Contact Info: barsom[period]maelwys[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Wednesday, October 15th, 8:00 PM Location: We'll meet in front of "La Pastasciutta", at 35Bis Rue Gabriel Péri, 31000 Toulouse Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GX Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/events/310609861 Notes: Please, RSVP either in meetup (https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/events/310609861) or by email

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GX

Thebans1 mentions across 1 issues

Thebans is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Thebans identifying Oedipus as the source of the plague". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry: Thebans
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 17, 2023
Last seen: November 17, 2023

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

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

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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

November 17, 2023 · Original source

Even when myths do fit the pattern, I disagree that the pagans always support it and the Bible always opposes. Consider the myth of Jonah (before he gets to the whale). God tells him to prophesy. Jonah refuses. He tries to escape by taking a boat. God sends a storm to the boat. The sailors realize this is a supernatural storm and decide it must be someone’s fault. They draw lots. Jonah gets the short lot, revealing that the storm is his fault. They throw him overboard. The storm dissipates. This seems equivalent to the Thebans identifying Oedipus as the source of the plague and successfully stopping it. The sailors are right to blame Jonah. They are right to throw him overboard. Their good sense in blaming a single victim saves their lives.

Theranos1 mentions across 1 issues

Theranos is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 26, 2023 and May 26, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "well done, you just avoided being a seed investor in Theranos"; ""you just avoided being a seed investor in Theranos""; "invest in an exciting new medical company called Theranos". It most often appears alongside /r/wallstreetbets, 2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act, 80,000 Hours.

Reference entry: Theranos
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 26, 2023
Last seen: May 26, 2023

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Your Book Review: Lying for Money May 26, 2023

wallstreetbets 1 shared issues
2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours podcast 1 shared issues
@eigenrobot 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: Lying for Money

May 26, 2023 · Original source

If you rely on a heuristic that says "a person matching this profile is probably a scammer and/or deluded and I won't invest money in their company," well done, you just avoided being a seed investor in Theranos. (It probably also allowed you to avoid investing in lots of other startups that failed for non-criminal reasons.) But that heuristic would also probably prevent you from investing in a bunch of companies that did go on to become billion-dollar successes.

In a low-trust society where people were more reluctant to invest in Stanford dropouts with big ideas, someone like Elizabeth Holmes would have a very hard time getting off the ground, but so would many more legitimate success stories. In Theranos's case, the devil is in the details that go along with promising to deliver a product that does things that are physically impossible. Fraudsters tend to rely on the fact that "the details" in which the devil resides are not always easy or convenient to check on.

And similarly, if you're a Series C investor offered the opportunity to invest in an exciting new medical company called Theranos, due diligence is expensive. The company has previously raised a $500,000 seed round, a $5.8 million Series A round, and a $9.1 million Series B round – at this point, as an investor joining the Series C round, you're already late to the party, and you might presume that the other investors who have collectively invested 8 figures in this company (plus the investors who are part of the current round) have already done their due diligence.

Thiel Capital1 mentions across 1 issues

Thiel Capital is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 03, 2024 and September 03, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "But here at Thiel Capital we’re looking for something"; ""Thank you for coming to Thiel Capital today.""; "“Mike. Welcome to Thiel Capital. Thank you so much for interviewing with us.”". It most often appears alongside 1980s, Air Force One, anal probing.

Reference entry: Thiel Capital
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 03, 2024
Last seen: September 03, 2024

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital September 03, 2024

1980s 1 shared issues
Air Force One 1 shared issues
anal probing 1 shared issues
Anglophone countries 1 shared issues
Anthropic 1 shared issues

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Interview Day At Thiel Capital

September 03, 2024 · Original source

“Hm, yes, that was very shocking and heterodox back in 2012. But here at Thiel Capital we’re looking for something - “

“Maybe not at Thiel Capital. But go outside, and you’ll find that people are, in fact, having sex all the time. Tindr. Hinge. Grindr. Young people are going out and having casual sex every weekend. There are fourteen different BDSM sex clubs in San Francisco alone. If you look at the modal society throughout history, they’re forbidding their women from leaving the house, or holding them to such high modesty standards that showing a bare ankle would be a scandal. They’re locking people up for owning porn, or killing them for being gay, or calling them rakes or sluts for having sex outside of marriage. Meanwhile, in our society women go everywhere in skimpy skin-tight clothing, you can f@&k a different partner every week, you can be polyamorous or transgender. I read conservative writers saying that no society like ours can survive over the long term. But I’ve thought about it longer than they have, and I think no society like ours could ever come to exist at all. That’s because it’s not a real society. It’s somebody’s weird fetish free-use-adjacent fantasy.”

“Ah, yes. Dan. Thank you for coming to Thiel Capital today. I see you’re interviewing for Vice-President Of Undermining Democracy. Your resume looks stellar - I didn’t know anyone had served in the Trump, Putin, and Jong-un administrations. We just have one question: What’s something you believe, that very few people agree with you on?”

Thiel Fellowship1 mentions across 1 issues

Thiel Fellowship is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 23, 2023 and March 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Thiel asked Gibson to work on what would become the Thiel Fellowship"; "any of these young people would possibly succeed or make money - when the first batch of Thiel fellows failed"; "I can’t find a list of all Thiel fellows, but there are ~20 per year". It most often appears alongside 1517, a priori truths, Abraham Lincoln.

Reference entry: Thiel Fellowship
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 23, 2023
Last seen: March 23, 2023

Outbound links

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

Issue trail

Book Review: Paper Belt On Fire March 23, 2023

1517 1 shared issues
a priori truths 1 shared issues
Abraham Lincoln 1 shared issues
Albert van Dam 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Paper Belt On Fire

March 23, 2023 · Original source

An advertisement for the author’s hedge fund Michael Gibson’s memoir Paper Belt On Fire succeeds on all counts. The year was 2007. Gibson had just dropped out of Oxford (grad student, philosophy), and applied for a job with the CIA. His secret reason: when he was one year old, his father had admitted to his mother that he was a spy and might be in danger. Before he could tell her anything else, he was found dead, apparently of a heart attack. He thought maybe if he worked at the CIA, he would have access to more information about what happened. The CIA evaluated him (along with a telephone interview, an “IQ test, a personality test, a statement of values, [and] a set of essay questions”) and rejected him. Gibson got a job as an editorial assistant at a tech magazine and blogged on the side. Some of his blog posts came to the attention of Peter Thiel, who offered him a job at his hedge fund. Wasn’t it a bit bold to offer an Oxford philosopher a hedge fund job? Yes, the book mentions how brave and radical and unconventional Thiel’s hiring policies are about twice per paragraph. For example: The media consistently gets Peter wrong . . .The Atlantic’s George Packer wrote . . . that Peter’s hedge fund had the reputation of being a “Thiel cult” that was “staffed by young libertarian brains who were in awe of their boss, emulating his work habits, chess-playing, and aversion to sports.” Packer is a great writer, but in this he was dead wrong, as anyone actually working on the desk knew. Sure, Patrick “the Wolf Man” Wolff was technically a chess grandmaster, ranked higher than Peter, but hardly anyone else ever played. More importantly, the Wolf Man was a diehard Krugman Keynesian. Woersching was a lefty, too, an ardent fan of the egalitarian philosophy of John Rawls. And Josh, he was a dirt-road California Democrat who was a downhill ski junkie […] In truth, Peter didn’t hire just libertarians. He hired scapegoats who’d survived a mob. People who felt comfortable being a minority of one. Thiel in no way selects employees who agree with all of his controversial libertarian opinions. But, by total coincidence, Michael Gibson does agree with all of Peter Thiel’s controversial libertarian opinions. He writes about Cardwell’s Law; historian Donald Cardwell noted that no country remains on the cutting edge for long. During the early Renaissance, Italy was where it was at; a century later, it was Spain and Holland; later still, Britain and Germany, and now new discoveries and businesses come disproportionately from the United States. Why? Gibson and Thiel think that innovation is a rare and fragile plant, which thrives only in the hidden cracks between power structures. Established structures either stamp it out as a threat, or rent-seek off of it so hard that they bleed it dry. Wherever it succeeds, it has succeeded through weird quirks that prevent fat cats from parasitizing it to death. Hong Kong’s economic miracle was during the administration of John Cowperthwaite, an eccentric British libertarian who refused to collect economic statistics because he thought they would make it too easy for meddlers to extract value. America’s economic miracle happened because of a vast frontier - which not only provided freedom for westerners, but served as a BATNA for easterners, preventing their own institutions from sucking them too dry. Now the frontier has closed. New York City recently abandoned its attempt to build a light rail line to the airport: after reaching a $2.4 billion price tag and spending eight years in the planning phase, the government realized it wouldn't be able to overcome all the legal hurdles necessary to grant itself permission. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that it requires 87 permits, two to three years, and $500,000 to get permission to build houses in SF - and your plan might still get shot down because a planning commissioner thinks its glass windows are “a statement of class privilege”. The cracks have shut; the rare fragile plant has been shredded by a combine harvester. Gibson, like Thiel, is a believer in the Great Stagnation - the theory that we’re already reaping the consequences of our newly parasitic society. The early 20th century gave us cars, airplanes, electricity, and penicillin; the early 21st has so far given us some truly excellent social media sites but not much else. Innovation in the world of bits - unbound by geography, comparatively hard to regulate or extort - has sort of continued; innovation in the world of atoms has ground to a halt. And Gibson, like Thiel, talks like a man on a mission. What is good in man thrives only in a few tiny cracks, easily found and destroyed. The last crack was closed within living memory, but its legend hasn’t completely died; the few people who managed to pick up a little of its lore are racing against time to open a new crack before it is entirely forgotten and their project is left to the vicissitudes of history. The cover of “Paper Belt On Fire” goes hard. And yes, the “money” part is a reference to Bitcoin. Gibson’s heart was originally in charter cities - asking some government to open a tiny controlled crack in a sliver of its territory, promising it more meat in the end if it lets its victims grow fat and healthy than if it strangled them in the cradle. But for whatever reason they thought the time wasn’t ripe (the right time, apparently, would be 2019). Instead, Thiel asked Gibson to work on what would become the Thiel Fellowship. He teamed up with Danielle Strachman, a dangerously-hippie-adjacent burnt-out former charter school principal. Their plan was simple: offer talented kids $100,000 to drop out of school and do something exciting in the real world (usually start a company). Paper Belt spends long pages on the hate they got. Larry Summers called it “the single most misdirected bit of philanthropy this decade”. Journalist Jacob Weisberg said anyone who accepted the Fellowship would “halt their intellectual development at the onset of adulthood, maintaining a narrow-minded focus on getting rich as young as possible and thereby avoid the siren lure of helping others or pursuing knowledge for its own sake” (this was before journalists decided that helping others was also evil). Others focused on how there was no way any of these young people would possibly succeed or make money - when the first batch of Thiel fellows failed to revolutionize the world within one year, journalist Vivek Wadhwa wrote Billionaire’s Failed Education Experiment Proves There’s No Shortcut To Success. In fact (slightly conflating the part with the Fellowship with its successor fund): The press . . . hated us. In a 2016 New York Times op-ed, science journalist and author Tom Clynes claimed that “radical innovation has yet to emerge” from anything related to the Thiel Fellowship, and that “the biggest hits have been the most pedestrian.” Antonio Garcia Martinez, the author of the Silicon Valley memoir Chaos Monkeys, spewed forth his bile for us on social media: “For fans of ironic stupidity, Silicon Valley is a never-ending feast”, he wrote on Facebook. He went on to explain, with great vulgarity, why our fund would fail by backing young dropouts. My favorite . . . has to be the challenge issued by Scott Galloway, a professor and bloviator in marketing from NYU’s business school . . . who told Business Insider that if he picked ten smart recent graduates from his alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, they would outperform any ten dropouts we worked with on some dimension of success related to income or startup formation. Of course he wouldn’t have written the book if any of these people had been right. I can’t find a list of all Thiel fellows, but there are ~20 per year and it’s been running about 12 years, so maybe 200 - 250? At least eight have founded companies valued at over a billion dollars, and others have become impressive philanthropists, activists, and scientists. Pretty good success rate. Gibson argues it’s not about the money, it’s about the mission. We’ve told young people they can’t succeed without the stamp of approval from big institutions. In order to get that stamp, they sacrifice their childhood on the altar of doing things that look nice to admissions officials, then go deep into debt to pay ruinous tuitions. All to waste four years of their lives listening to some professor drone on about post-colonial gender relations in Harry Potter so they can satisfy their gen ed requirement so they can learn the stuff they want to learn so they can get hired by McKinsey so that one day they can be cool and important enough to make a difference in the world. Why not tell young people they can just make the difference right now, without doing any of that? It’s not about the money - but when your graduates are routinely founding billion dollar companies, you’d be crazy to keep it that way. After a few years, Gibson and Strachman noticed the billion-dollar-bill lying on the ground, left the Thiel Fellowship, and started a new VC fund, 1517 (named after the year Martin Luther did some institution-challenging of his own). Their business plan was to do roughly the same thing as the Thiel Fellowship - only this time, invest in the companies beforehand (the parting with Thiel seems to have been amicable; he invested $4 million). So Gibson adopted the life of a venture capitalist. He talks frankly about the difficulties. For example, in one case he found someone nobody else believed in, gave them enough money to keep going, and helped them start their company in exchange for them giving Gibson a certain stake. After the company succeeded, Gibson accuses bigger VC firm Sequoia Capital of convincing the founder to kick him out, and stealing his stake. He says that in the world of VCs it’s poison to sue founders for any reason, so nobody can enforce contracts, so if your founders defect to a different VC for more money, there’s nothing you can do (this is not legal advice). Also, “please give me millions of dollars so I can invest it in college dropouts” is a tough sale for everyone except Peter Thiel. Still, he got a bit of money and tried his best. He takes as his - would it be insensitive to say “role model”? - John Walker Lindh, the American who defected to the Taliban (and who he apparently looked like). Probably it depends on the angle or something. Lindh was the only American to find Osama bin Laden in the early 2000s - he went to lots of jihadi training camps in the process of learning how to jihad, and Osama happened to be at one of them. The lesson, Walker says, is that if you want to find people who are hard to find, you need to steep yourself in their culture, truly understand them, become one with them. Good founders are hard to find. But he and Strachman went to dozens of dingy college dorms, math competitions, group houses, and hackathons, looking for people with the right sort of talent. After pooh-poohing IQ (“Marilyn vos Savant is listed as having the highest recorded IQ, and what does she do? She writes a column for a Sunday supplement in the newspaper”) he lists some of his own preferred metrics for judging would-be Thiel fellows and founders: Polytropon - a famously untranslatable Greek word (“of-many-turns”? “always-has-a-trick-up-his-sleeve” “clever bastard”?) used to describe Odysseus. Edge control - willingness to constantly surf the boundary between order and disorder Crawl-walk-run - ability to scale from a tiny startup to a big company. …and several others, including “tensive brilliance” and “Friday night Dyson sphere”. He and Danielle searched the country for people with these qualities, annoying colleges (he was banned from MIT after showing up too often to convince their students to drop out) and doing various stunts (on October 31 2017, the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, he nailed a list of anti-formal-education theses to the doors of the admin buildings of top colleges (“Our commercial printer had misunderstood our request and printed them on seven-foot-long scrolls. They were ridiculous . . . but it turned out for the best.”) At one point, he negotiated with a brilliant 21 year old who may have discovered a transformative diabetes therapeutic, but the hidebound conformist novelty-hating establishment refused to work with him just because he liked the Marvel Cinemat - okay, fine, he may have legally changed his name to “Tony Stark”. Still, Gibson saw past his eccentricities, helped him start his company, and gave him sage advice (he should introduce himself to other investors as “Anthony”). Skip through several more chapters of everyone hating Gibson and telling him he was wrong and refusing to give him money and cheating him out of the money he already had, and the payoff is Luminar. One of the dropouts they cultivated founded a beyond-cutting-edge lasers-for-self-driving-cars company which went public at $3 billion. 1517 made $200 million from the deal - it sounds like they had only ever raised about $25 million, so their investors must have octupled their money on that company alone. Everyone involved is now very rich, and Gibson considers his anti-education thesis on the way to being proven. The book ends with a newly-resourced Gibson continuing his quest to figure out whether and why the CIA killed his father, but it’s slow going. If any of you know a guy named Albert van Dam in Amsterdam, or how to convince Swiss banks to reveal secret account information, get in touch with him. II. A common pattern: I assert something. Everyone yells at me and tells me I’m wrong and stupid, sometimes in very colorful language. I wait, time proves me right, and I write an essay gloating educating people about this. The median comment is “of course this is true, nobody ever denied this was true, why are you wasting our time with something obvious?” I hate this and I try to avoid doing it to other people. This is too bad, because I’m tempted to say: obviously talented dropouts can start good companies. We’ve known this at least since Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft. But also, obviously they can. Brilliant and driven people can succeed whether they get a college education or not. If Bill Gates had stayed an extra two years at Harvard, he probably would have taken a few more advanced math classes not really related to programming software or running a company. So why should we even have as a hypothesis that he couldn’t start Microsoft successfully without doing that? Still, Gibson adequately proves that lots of people hated him and were sure he would fail. Either we should read this backwards - learn that there was once a time when pro-college messages were even stronger than now, so strong that people thought it was literally impossible to succeed without every single day of a four-year college application - or the critics were trying to get at something deeper they were bad at expressing. For example: what, exactly, is Gibson’s alternative to the education system? The back-of-book-blurb says Paper Belt On Fire is about “how higher education and other institutions must evolve to meet the dire challenges of tomorrow” - but evolve how? What exactly has been proven here? A few of the very brightest young people, hand-picked by an expert young-person-picker and given $100K, can become billionaires or make great discoveries without a college degree. What are the implications? Suppose you are an average college student with an average level of talent and motivation. Should you drop out and try to create a company for Peter Thiel? Based on how many average-talent people Thiel rejects, even he doesn’t think you should do that. And if you don’t have a good answer to this question - the one relevant to 99.9% of education system inmates - have you really launched a challenge to the educational system? Gibson doesn’t address this question, but I predict he would admit that, fine, he doesn’t have an alternative to the education system in the sense of “educate people this way rather than that way”. He just wants less formal education, and has proven this will work fine. True, he’s only proven it for a tiny subset of ultra-talented people. But “billionaire tech founder” is a hard job - if it wasn’t, more people would do it and reap the $1 billion reward. Proving that people can become billionaire tech founders without college degrees implicitly suggests they can be successful middle managers or budget analysts without college degrees. So the sort of companies that need middle managers and budget analysts should also consider hiring people without degrees, and the sorts of average-level-of-talent-and-motivation people who want these jobs should consider skipping college. Would this work? Probably. It worked in the early 1900s, when only 5-10% of Americans had college degrees but the country seemed about as dynamic and successful as it does now. It worked for people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison, none of whom went to college. It works in other countries - for example in the UK where young doctors skip undergrad and go straight to medical school, and whose patients get about the same outcomes as in the US. It works for people with impractical degrees like philosophy, who are constantly getting jobs in (and doing well in) fields that don’t require you to compare Locke vs. Leibniz’s perspective on a priori truths. So this would work if everyone agreed to do it at once, which they won’t. The way college gets you is adverse selection. Suppose that tomorrow, you - a smart and hard-working person who could easily get a college degree - decline to do so, because you appreciate Peter Thiel and Michael Gibson’s anti-institutional perspective. The pool of people without college degrees is now, to a first approximation: 200 million people who weren’t smart to get in, rich enough to afford it, or motivated enough to finish.

Inline links: Paper Belt On Fire, John Cowperthwaite, recently abandoned its attempt, reported that, might still get shot down because, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XcvP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa8b369ca-5089-4e18-857d-1f34a9eee200_585x134.png, 2019, journalists, decided, that, Billionaire’s Failed Education Experiment Proves There’s No Shortcut To Success, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R2y6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F38012394-be90-413c-b9a2-c291f1b3a118_858x392.png, his company, read this backwards

The Thiel Fellowship broke out of this trap by providing a legible signal that you were in the second category, and by shunting people into the self-made entrepreneur track where (after your first few VC rounds) success doesn’t hinge upon how many people you can impress with your credentials. But how does it start a virtuous cycle where more and more people can escape, at scale? If you’re a future budget analyst or middle manager who wants to drop out of college without it sending the wrong signal, what do you do?

Threads Of Life1 mentions across 1 issues

Threads Of Life is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 18, 2024 and April 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "That’s why I started Threads Of Life. We’re a charity dedicated to preventing fish from getting caught in repurposed malaria nets". It most often appears alongside Africa, AI Circle, Bay Area.

Reference entry: Threads Of Life
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 18, 2024
Last seen: April 18, 2024

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Ye Olde Bay Area House Party April 18, 2024

Africa 1 shared issues
AI Circle 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
DanielC35801 1 shared issues
Elon Musk 1 shared issues

Source context

April 18, 2024 · Original source

“I work for the Threads Of Life Foundation,” he said. “You know, every so often billionaires and journalists condemn effective altruists because, like, what if they give poor people malaria nets, and then those poor people use them for fishing, and it hurts the fish. And people like to say “oh, those billionaires and journalists never care about fish in any other context” and “obviously this is just incredibly blatant cope so they can feel morally superior for not donating to charity” and “it’s pretty crazy that our obsession with ‘harm’ and ‘the precautionary principle’ has gone so far that if you save millions of people but also kill a few fish, the establishment unites in painting you as a villain for not considering the fish deaths.’ But that didn’t seem charitable to me. I thought ‘No, I bet these are actually good people, who have a little trouble empathizing with human suffering, or with any-animal-except-fish suffering, or with fish suffering in 99.9% of contexts - but for some reason, they feel absolutely devastated at the thought of a fish getting caught in a bednet given to a poor person by a charity for the express purpose of saving their lives. That poor fish, stuck in those tiny little insecticide-laced threads, writhing around! These people don’t need our mockery - they need to unite and stand up for the suspiciously-specific thing they believe in!

“That’s why I started Threads Of Life. We’re a charity dedicated to preventing fish from getting caught in repurposed malaria nets. We send hundreds of monitors to rivers all across Africa. They seek out locations where net fishing is going on, take samples of discarded nets, use chemical testing to match them to brands of malaria net given out by charities. Then if they find a match, they find the offending fisherman, cut his remaining nets, and free the fish. It’s tough work, but the outpouring of support we’ve gotten has made it all worth it. A bigshot AI venture capitalist recently donated half his fortune to us. A Stanford professor, when he heard about our work, pledged to give us 10% of his paltry academic income every year from then on, just because he believed in our cause.

The Threads of Life guy asks the question all of you are thinking: “How do you make enough money, as a photographer, to retire to a life of luxury in your mid-20s?”

Threads Of Life Foundation1 mentions across 1 issues

Threads Of Life Foundation is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 18, 2024 and April 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "I work for the Threads Of Life Foundation". It most often appears alongside Africa, AI Circle, Bay Area.

Reference entry: Threads Of Life Foundation
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 18, 2024
Last seen: April 18, 2024

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Ye Olde Bay Area House Party April 18, 2024

Africa 1 shared issues
AI Circle 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
DanielC35801 1 shared issues
Elon Musk 1 shared issues

Source context

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

April 18, 2024 · Original source

“I work for the Threads Of Life Foundation,” he said. “You know, every so often billionaires and journalists condemn effective altruists because, like, what if they give poor people malaria nets, and then those poor people use them for fishing, and it hurts the fish. And people like to say “oh, those billionaires and journalists never care about fish in any other context” and “obviously this is just incredibly blatant cope so they can feel morally superior for not donating to charity” and “it’s pretty crazy that our obsession with ‘harm’ and ‘the precautionary principle’ has gone so far that if you save millions of people but also kill a few fish, the establishment unites in painting you as a villain for not considering the fish deaths.’ But that didn’t seem charitable to me. I thought ‘No, I bet these are actually good people, who have a little trouble empathizing with human suffering, or with any-animal-except-fish suffering, or with fish suffering in 99.9% of contexts - but for some reason, they feel absolutely devastated at the thought of a fish getting caught in a bednet given to a poor person by a charity for the express purpose of saving their lives. That poor fish, stuck in those tiny little insecticide-laced threads, writhing around! These people don’t need our mockery - they need to unite and stand up for the suspiciously-specific thing they believe in!

Three Arrows Capital1 mentions across 1 issues

Three Arrows Capital is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 04, 2023 and September 04, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "In 2022 they raised another $15 million in a Series A round from . . . okay, partly from Sam Bankman-Fried and Three Arrows Capital". It most often appears alongside Africa, Beyabu, Bildod.

Reference entry: Three Arrows Capital
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: September 04, 2023
Last seen: September 04, 2023

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23: California Dreamin' September 04, 2023

Africa 1 shared issues
Beyabu 1 shared issues
Bildod 1 shared issues
Bolivia 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues

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23: California Dreamin'

September 04, 2023 · Original source

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.

Tideman & co1 mentions across 1 issues

Tideman & co is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 09, 2021 and December 09, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Here's a figure from Tideman & co's big paper". It most often appears alongside 2017 PTAPP survey, AEI, agglomeration effect.

Reference entry: Tideman & co
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: December 09, 2021
Last seen: December 09, 2021

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Does Georgism Work? Part 1: Is Land Really A Big Deal? December 09, 2021

2017 PTAPP survey 1 shared issues
AEI 1 shared issues
agglomeration effect 1 shared issues
Albouy 1 shared issues
Alexandra Elbakyan 1 shared issues

Source context

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

December 09, 2021 · Original source

...out 76% of Britain's and 80% of France's national capital was real estate. In 2010, those figures were 55% and 61%, respectively. 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 everythin...

...out that in 1700, about 76% of Britain's and 80% of France's national capital was real estate. In 2010, those figures were 55% and 61%, respectively. 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...

Tierra Strategy1 mentions across 1 issues

Tierra Strategy is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 07, 2022 and February 07, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Autumn Johnson of Tierra Strategy". It most often appears alongside #climate24x7, ACX Grant, Arizona.

Reference entry: Tierra Strategy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 07, 2022
Last seen: February 07, 2022

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Open Thread 210 February 07, 2022

#climate24x7 1 shared issues
ACX Grant 1 shared issues
Arizona 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Autumn Johnson 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 210

February 07, 2022 · Original source

One paragraph summary of Jan 2022 progress on #climate24x7 (advancing smart climate efforts in the legislature and/or via 2024 ballot measures in at least 7 states): In Nebraska, climate-concerned R state senator John McCollister introduced LB944, a short 3-page bill that cuts the regressive 5.5% state sales tax rate on electricity once electric utilities hit certain carbon intensity targets; see these one-pagers. We have a page of potential improvements based feedback from utility folks and others and are anticipating a public hearing in late February or early March. A similar idea is making progress in South Dakota, where a D legislator has expressed interest in similar legislation, and in Arizona, where I’ve hired Autumn Johnson of Tierra Strategy to pursue this; we’ve written one-pagers and draft legislation, she’s gotten fairly positive feedback from utilities, enviros, and legislative staff, and we’re doing our best to find a House member to introduce legislation before the cut-off of Friday Feb 4. In Utah we continue to work on the signature-gathering plan for the Clean The Darn Air 2024 ballot measure effort; we also anticipate the introduction of a similar bill in this year’s legislative session. Also trying to push forward with ideas or exploratory conversations in Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Michigan. Additional funding would help extend Autumn’s contract and help push forward faster in Nebraska, South Dakota, and elsewhere! From Yoram Bauman (yoram@standupeconomist.com, @standupecon)

Inline links: John McCollister, LB944, one-pagers, Tierra Strategy, one-pagers, draft legislation, plan, Clean The Darn Air, yoram@standupeconomist.com

TimeGPT1 mentions across 1 issues

TimeGPT is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 13, 2024 and May 13, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "TimeGPT is supposedly a revolution in “time series forecasting”". It most often appears alongside 17 CFR Part 40, 2024 election, Austin.

Reference entry: TimeGPT
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 13, 2024
Last seen: May 13, 2024

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24 May 13, 2024

17 CFR Part 40 1 shared issues
2024 election 1 shared issues
Austin 1 shared issues
Austin Chen 1 shared issues
Berkeley 1 shared issues

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May 13, 2024 · Original source

2: TimeGPT is supposedly a revolution in “time series forecasting”. I don’t know enough about this field to have an opinion.

Inline links: TimeGPT

Timely Comics1 mentions across 1 issues

Timely Comics is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 16, 2024 and August 16, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Timely Comics published their first comic book in 1939". It most often appears alongside 20th Century Fox, Abomination, Abomination.

Reference entry: Timely Comics
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 16, 2024
Last seen: August 16, 2024

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

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

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Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics

August 16, 2024 · Original source

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

Tinder1 mentions across 1 issues

Tinder is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 24, 2023 and August 24, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "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". It most often appears alongside Agnostic Democrat, America, Aristides.

Reference entry: Tinder
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 24, 2023
Last seen: August 24, 2023

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Highlights From The Comments On Dating Preferences August 24, 2023

Agnostic Democrat 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
Aristides 1 shared issues
Autantonym 1 shared issues
blog 1 shared issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Dating Preferences

August 24, 2023 · Original source

In fact, from what I see, the vast majority of dating profiles you see on apps like Tinder don't resemble any of five examples in this post. They're simply empty or have a pithy one-liner. It's very easy to discard these profiles as "not taking dating seriously enough" or "what do I even talk with her about".

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.

My guess is that there are at least two kind of people out there - for some, physical attraction is easy. But for a (sizeable?) minority, it just doesn't work and they NEED something like dating docs, essay-length profiles, questionnaires, anything but photos. As it often happens, the groups don't understand each other. People who find physical attraction easy think we're just ugly, or picky, or whatever. We think people who have success on Tinder are shallow and only look for one-night stands, not relationships. But reality is that we have different needs, and therefore it would be great to have different apps/sites to satisfy those needs. Which we no longer have, because everything is Tinder - it seems "looks" people are the profitable majority.

Tiwi1 mentions across 1 issues

Tiwi is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 15, 2025 and July 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "three Tiwi brothers travelled to the mainland". It most often appears alongside Aboriginal, Aboriginal Australia, Aboriginal society.

Reference entry: Tiwi
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: July 15, 2025
Last seen: July 15, 2025

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

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Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines July 15, 2025

Aboriginal 1 shared issues
Aboriginal Australia 1 shared issues
Aboriginal society 1 shared issues
Aborigine 1 shared issues
Aborigines 1 shared issues

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Book Review: Arguments About Aborigines

July 15, 2025 · Original source

Sure, says Rousseau, but may I present as Exhibit A pages 181-182, from a chapter focusing on a rare non-horrible initiation ceremony among the Tiwi people of the the Northern Australian islands:

On Bathurst and Melville Islands, as on the Australian mainland, suicide in traditional society seems to have been unusual if not unknown. In recent years, however, there has been an outbreak of self-mutilation among Tiwi young men. According to Gary Robinson, a contributing factor is prolonged psychological dependence on maternal kin, well beyond adolescence, and a conflict-laden enmeshment in the the vicissitudes of the paternal family. Traditionally, as we have seen, this would have been impossible. At puberty, a lad was ritually removed from his family surroundings and placed under the tutelage of outsiders. More importantly, clearly defined status objectives were implanted in his mind, and by the time he had attained them by passing through a series of initiatory grades, he was ready to marry and start his own family. Masculine values were reinforced through regular engagement in male corporate activities, particularly hunting, fighting, and ceremonial; while idealization of the father, who by now was unlikely to be alive, provided an individualized role model for the firm delineation of personal identity.

The Tiwi say that when a boy’s public hair begins to grow, dogs bark at him in camp and crocodiles and bulls chase him in the bush. In the old days, the source of provocation was forcibly plucked out [that is, they pulled out all his pubic hairs in an initiation ceremony - “non-horrible” is a matter of degree!] As a son’s burgeoning sexuality was potentially a destabilizing force in his father’s harem, the preservation of paternal and filial goodwill depended on separation through the institution of initiation, followed by the son’s growing absorption in the corporate affairs of men (which included the cultivation of patronage necessary for the promise of a wife from outside his own band). All these traditional structures have now collapsed, and nothing viable has been put in their place. The transition from childhood dependence to adult autonomy, once mediated by external authority, is now beset by incoherence and uncertainty of aims. The family itself is the remaining authority, and children often lack the motivation to solve their problems by making a clean break with it. Ambivalence inherent in the father-son relationship remains unresolved and a source of instability, fluctuating between violence and mutual aid. Young men have nightmares about death, and suffer chronically from melancholy, depression, and rage.

tobacco companies1 mentions across 1 issues

tobacco companies is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 04, 2022 and November 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "written by tobacco companies". It most often appears alongside ABSTAIN, Alex Padilla, American Nurses Association.

Reference entry: tobacco companies
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 04, 2022
Last seen: November 04, 2022

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My California Ballot 2022 November 04, 2022

ABSTAIN 1 shared issues
Alex Padilla 1 shared issues
American Nurses Association 1 shared issues
Angela Jacobs 1 shared issues
Black Chamber of Commerce 1 shared issues

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My California Ballot 2022

November 04, 2022 · Original source

In 2020, the legislature voted in favor of banning flavored tobacco products from retail stores. Tobacco companies didn’t like this and figured out some way to shift the decision onto voters, so now voters have to ratify or contradict the legislature.

I can’t understand the argument against because it’s written entirely in the Black Speech of Barad-Dur. Visions of horror and torment fill my mind, and of a sun like sackcloth rising over bloody seas, but the exact intricacies escape me. For some reason this always happens when I read stuff written by tobacco companies.

I’m usually pretty libertarian, but the tobacco companies trying to weasel out of a legislative decision like this annoys me. Plus if I have to make an exception for anything it will be for cigarettes. Plus you can always buy your flavored cigarettes online if you want. I vote YES.

TOGETHER study1 mentions across 1 issues

TOGETHER study is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 20, 2023 and February 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "he continues to offer $25,000 to anyone who can get the TOGETHER study to release their data publicly". It most often appears alongside ACX Discord, ACX subreddit, Alexandros.

Reference entry: TOGETHER study
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 20, 2023
Last seen: February 20, 2023

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Open Thread 264 February 20, 2023

ACX Discord 1 shared issues
ACX subreddit 1 shared issues
Alexandros 1 shared issues
AP 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 264

February 20, 2023 · Original source

3: Alexandros responded by email to my ivermectin post. He wants to add that he talked to the person who made the strongyloides analysis graphic, who says all data points were in there but some are too small to see. He says the funnel plots I included are mislabeled and do not prove publication bias in every study on ivmmeta. And he continues to offer $25,000 to anyone who can get the TOGETHER study to release their data publicly, something which I agree all studies should either do or provide a justification for not doing.

Tokamak Energy1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokamak Energy is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "After SPARC, Type One Energy, Renaissance Fusion, and one of Tokamak Energy, Marvel, or Helion". It most often appears alongside Alcator C-Mod, Apollo Program, ARC.

Reference entry: Tokamak Energy
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2022
Last seen: June 17, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy June 17, 2022

Alcator C-Mod 1 shared issues
Apollo Program 1 shared issues
ARC 1 shared issues
ASDEX 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy

June 17, 2022 · Original source

Type One gets fusion by 2035 (50%) or 2040 (70%). Tokamak Energy, Ltd. This is a slightly older company, founded in England in 2009. They originally managed a spherical tokamak experiment [22]. More recently, they decided to try to get fusion by 2030 using a medium experiment and high temperature superconductors. Spherical tokamaks are less well tested at this size and don't benefit as much from having a stronger magnetic field. Tokamak Energy gets fusion by 2030 (10%) or 2035 (30%).

Tokamak Energy gets fusion by 2030 (10%) or 2035 (30%).

[24]: After SPARC, Type One Energy, Renaissance Fusion, and one of Tokamak Energy, Marvel, or Helion.

Tokamak Energy, Ltd.1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokamak Energy, Ltd. is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 17, 2022 and June 17, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tokamak Energy, Ltd. This is a slightly older company, founded in England in 2009". It most often appears alongside Alcator C-Mod, Apollo Program, ARC.

Reference entry: Tokamak Energy, Ltd.
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 17, 2022
Last seen: June 17, 2022

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy June 17, 2022

Alcator C-Mod 1 shared issues
Apollo Program 1 shared issues
ARC 1 shared issues
ASDEX 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

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Your Book Review: The Future Of Fusion Energy

June 17, 2022 · Original source

Type One gets fusion by 2035 (50%) or 2040 (70%). Tokamak Energy, Ltd. This is a slightly older company, founded in England in 2009. They originally managed a spherical tokamak experiment [22]. More recently, they decided to try to get fusion by 2030 using a medium experiment and high temperature superconductors. Spherical tokamaks are less well tested at this size and don't benefit as much from having a stronger magnetic field. Tokamak Energy gets fusion by 2030 (10%) or 2035 (30%).

Tokamak Energy gets fusion by 2030 (10%) or 2035 (30%).

[24]: After SPARC, Type One Energy, Renaissance Fusion, and one of Tokamak Energy, Marvel, or Helion.

Tomorrow Biostasis1 mentions across 1 issues

Tomorrow Biostasis 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 "I founded Tomorrow Biostasis and the European Biostasis Foundation to improve human cryopreservation". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

Reference entry: Tomorrow Biostasis
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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Highlights From The Comments On Supplement Labeling

February 03, 2022 · Original source

I'm Emil Kendziorra, a medical doctor, ex-cancer researcher, and tech entrepreneur. I founded Tomorrow Biostasis and the European Biostasis Foundation to improve human cryopreservation in quality and to make it more affordable. In fact, I don't plan to do anything else until I die. After one year, we're the fastest-growing provider worldwide and ready to open a Switzerland-based research institute that we've built in 2021. If you're interested and want to support the topic: Donations (registered non-profit) to fund research or investments (social venture) to scale and make the procedure more affordable are possible. Read more: https://emilkendziorra.medium.com/ or reach out emil@tomorrowbiostasis.com - Happy to answer any question.

Life Rising1 mentions across 1 issues

Ton Shen Health / Life Rising is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 26, 2022 and October 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Ton Shen Health / Life Rising, the company implicated in this". It most often appears alongside American ginseng, apple juice, Ashwagandha.

Reference entry: Life Rising
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 26, 2022
Last seen: October 26, 2022

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Highlights From The Comments On Supplement Labeling October 26, 2022

American ginseng 1 shared issues
apple juice 1 shared issues
Ashwagandha 1 shared issues
AvalancheGenesis 1 shared issues
Ayurvedic 1 shared issues

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October 26, 2022 · Original source

In fact, what is Ton Shen Health / Life Rising, the company implicated in this? I’m having trouble figuring this out - when I look it up, it looks like a small chain of acupuncture clinics in Chicago run by “Herbal Master Zhengang Guo”, which is still operating (!) and still selling supplements (!) But the FDA seized 300,000 bottles - how did this one guy produce produce so many supplements? All we have from the FDA, statement is that the supplements recalled “were mostly sold locally in Chicago area in retails stores [sic] and some were distributed to other states through mail orders”.

Inline links: look it up, still selling supplements

TornadoCash1 mentions across 1 issues

TornadoCash is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 07, 2022 and February 07, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I also know that TornadoCash and Monero exist". It most often appears alongside Afghanistan, Alameda County, California, Alice.

Reference entry: TornadoCash
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 07, 2022
Last seen: February 07, 2022

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Issue trail

The Passage Of Polymarket February 07, 2022

Afghanistan 1 shared issues
Alameda County, California 1 shared issues
Alice 1 shared issues
America 1 shared issues
blockchain 1 shared issues

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The Passage Of Polymarket

February 07, 2022 · Original source

In theory, crypto is hard to stop and hard to trace (yes, I know the blockchain is public, but I also know that TornadoCash and Monero exist). Anonymous users could create these services so easily and in such numbers that governments would never be able to stop all of them. Or they could be run as smart contracts, where even if regulators arrest the original programmers, they can’t stop the program from existing and continuing to offer its service.

Tornyol1 mentions across 1 issues

Tornyol 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 "ACX grantee Tornyol (the anti-mosquito drones)". It most often appears alongside 100 Above The Park, 2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction, 23andme.

Reference entry: Tornyol
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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Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places

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”

Toronto Rationality1 mentions across 1 issues

Toronto Rationality is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 01, 2026 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "https://torontorationality.beehiiv.com/". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Reference entry: Toronto Rationality
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Issue count: 1
First seen: April 01, 2026
Last seen: April 01, 2026

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Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places April 01, 2026

1108 R St 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner Street 1 shared issues
131 Colonie Center 1 shared issues
18 An Nhơn 3, An Hải, Sơn Trà, Đà Nẵng 1 shared issues
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April 01, 2026 · Original source

Contact: Sean Contact Info: k9i9m9ufh[@]mozmail[.]com Time: Sunday, April 19th, 2:00 PM Location: Enter the Mars Atrium via University Avenue entrance. We’ll meet at the food court in the basement. I’ll be wearing a bright neon-yellow jacket. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XG Group Link: https://torontorationality.beehiiv.com/ Notes: If for some reason the Mars Building is locked, which happens occasionally due to protests and other events, we will still meet outside of the University Avenue entrance for 30 minutes after the start time before relocating to somewhere more accommodating.

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Totally Honestly Not An Islamic Party1 mentions across 1 issues

Totally Honestly Not An Islamic Party is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "founding the Totally Honestly Not An Islamic Party (FP)". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: Totally Honestly Not An Islamic Party
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First seen: March 18, 2021
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Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

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Your Review: The Astral Codex Ten Commentariat (“Why Do We Suck?”)

March 18, 2021 · Original source

Under pressure from the military, the courts banned the now-powerless RP as a "focal point for acts against the secular republic". Erdogan scraped through by quitting the RP and founding the Totally Honestly Not An Islamic Party (FP); he was briefly allowed to remain Mayor of Istanbul. But when the courts and military finished cleaning up after the RP, they went after Erdogan's new bloc too. The FP was shut down, and Erdogan was personally banned from politics for the crime of "reading an incendiary poem". The Islamists appealed to the European Court of Human Rights - located in Strasbourg, France, home of laicite and enforced secularism, which ruled that none of this seemed like a human rights violation to them. Erdogan was out.

toxic-bert1 mentions across 1 issues

toxic-bert is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 26, 2025 and July 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "toxic-bert and Scott (toxicity score = 0.01)". It most often appears alongside 4chan, ACX, ACX.

Reference entry: toxic-bert
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First seen: July 26, 2025
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Your Review: The Astral Codex Ten Commentariat (“Why Do We Suck?”) July 26, 2025

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July 26, 2025 · Original source

Politeness One of the most appealing aspects of the ACX Commentariat, to me, is that ideas respectfully presented are respectfully engaged with – even when mainstream cultural commentors use this as a stick to beat ACX with. Strong community norms for niceness, community and civilisation are very rare in online spaces, so the ACX Commentariat may be especially sensitive to fluctuating levels of politeness. To operationalise this, I used a preweighted neural network trained to identify ‘toxicity’ in comment sections. The model, produced by the online safety company Unitary, is named ‘toxic-bert’ and identifies potentially impolite comments along a few axes of inappropriateness, for example; general toxicity, profanity and threats. I wasn’t quite sure if some of the routine discussions SSC/ACX has on socially or professionally sensitive ideas might trip the ‘toxicity’ filter even when they were respectful and polite, so to test for this, I included a sense check of occurrences of some words which are very rarely uttered in constructive contexts – specifically; ‘dumbass’, ‘fuck you’, ‘fucking’ and ‘retard’. I’ve called these ‘obvious insults’ even though in hindsight that’s a bit strong, and they have all been used in non-toxic contexts at some point or the other by the Commentariat. For example, here is an entirely non-toxic comment by Paperclip Minimiser using the word ‘retard’ in the sense of ‘to slow down progress’ (toxicity score < 0.001) and here is a comment by nydwracu which uses the word ‘retarded’ as a slur but which is nevertheless so insightful that it was awarded ‘Comment of the Week’ status by Scott, suggesting that a little bit of toxicity as a literary device can sometimes be overlooked by both toxic-bert and Scott (toxicity score = 0.01). The graph above shows the output of these two approaches. This is a really weird result, which defies easy explanation. Toxicity goes down over the whole SSC era, then starts ticking back up again from the ACX era. If you allow for a bit more variability in the simpler measure, the fancy neural network closely tracks the number of times we call each other ‘retards’ or ‘dumbasses’, which you would expect to track overall toxicity quite closely. This suggests the neural network is keying in on actual toxicity, rather than polite discussions which happen to involve contested or sensitive concepts. One caveat is that the ACX Commentariat is not very toxic to begin with, so the ‘toxicity’ metric may not be sensitive enough to capture the sort of politeness which the Commentariat values. In 2013, at peak toxicity, the toxicity score maxed out at 0.04 (the spike in October 2013 seems to be related to attracting some external neo-reactionaries (very roughly the precursor ideology to the modern alt-right) to comment on this post. In 2021, the lowest toxicity ever was reached at around 0.01. This means that a typical comment would be around 4% likely to be perceived as toxic by a human reader in 2013, but by 2021 this has fallen to 1%. Here is a snippet of a comment which is rated as having a 1% chance of being perceived as toxic by a human, written by John Schilling: The purpose of war is, roughly speaking, to settle the question of whose police get to enforce which laws in a region, and since Catalonia isn’t going to do anything more than say, “We’re going to make you look like Evil Meanies on TV and Youtube if you don’t pull back your policemen and let us have our own”, that point is moot. [Link] By contrast, if you promise to draw your fainting couch nearby, here is a snippet of a comment which is rated as having a 4% chance of being perceived as toxic by a human, written by Maximum Limelihood: Being fired means nothing about the speed you’re learning at. It means that the employer overestimated how much you *already* knew. …. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how great you’ll be at coding in a year when you’re costing me time and training effort today [Link] The most toxic the comments section has ever got (beyond the very early days) was on the post Gupta on Enlightenment. I feel like the comments section on this post should be part of the ACX main canon because it is so cosmically hilarious. It concerns a man name Vinay Gupta (founder of a blockchain-based dating website) and his claims to have reached enlightenment. Some people in the comments are sceptical that Vinay Gupta is indeed an enlightened being, citing that enlightened people don’t typically found blockchain-based dating websites. A new forum poster with the handle ‘Vinay Gupta’, claiming to be Vinay Gupta and writing in a very similar style to the actual Vinay Gupta, turns up and starts arguing with everyone in an extremely toxic way (in the objective sense that his comments score very highly on the toxic-bert scoring system), which provokes more merriment that a self-described enlightened being would deploy such classic internet tough-guy approaches as ‘I don’t think much of a four-on-one face off against untrained opponents’ (link) and ‘this board is filled with self-satisfied assholes who feel free to hold forth on whatever subject crosses their minds, with the absolute certainty that they’re the smartest people in the room’ (link, no further comment…). More prosaically, this is a great example of what I was discussing earlier – the comment section is usually so civilised that a single individual turning up and acting out of the Commentariat norms is enough to make it the most toxic discussion which has ever taken place. Of Scott’s classic posts, the most toxic the comment section has ever become was on Radicalising the Romanceless. The least toxic the comments section has ever been are the posts on Scott’s conworld, Raikoth (technically the Raikoth post on history and religion specifically, but the whole series is so good I’ve linked to the index). Complexity of thought

Inline links: niceness, community and civilisation, here, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Hktd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd5541524-dcce-4bb9-a6dd-8481fc696769_817x417.png, post, Link, Link, Gupta on Enlightenment, link, link, Radicalising the Romanceless, Raikoth

The graph above shows the output of these two approaches. This is a really weird result, which defies easy explanation. Toxicity goes down over the whole SSC era, then starts ticking back up again from the ACX era. If you allow for a bit more variability in the simpler measure, the fancy neural network closely tracks the number of times we call each other ‘retards’ or ‘dumbasses’, which you would expect to track overall toxicity quite closely. This suggests the neural network is keying in on actual toxicity, rather than polite discussions which happen to involve contested or sensitive concepts. One caveat is that the ACX Commentariat is not very toxic to begin with, so the ‘toxicity’ metric may not be sensitive enough to capture the sort of politeness which the Commentariat values. In 2013, at peak toxicity, the toxicity score maxed out at 0.04 (the spike in October 2013 seems to be related to attracting some external neo-reactionaries (very roughly the precursor ideology to the modern alt-right) to comment on this post. In 2021, the lowest toxicity ever was reached at around 0.01. This means that a typical comment would be around 4% likely to be perceived as toxic by a human reader in 2013, but by 2021 this has fallen to 1%. Here is a snippet of a comment which is rated as having a 1% chance of being perceived as toxic by a human, written by John Schilling: The purpose of war is, roughly speaking, to settle the question of whose police get to enforce which laws in a region, and since Catalonia isn’t going to do anything more than say, “We’re going to make you look like Evil Meanies on TV and Youtube if you don’t pull back your policemen and let us have our own”, that point is moot. [Link] By contrast, if you promise to draw your fainting couch nearby, here is a snippet of a comment which is rated as having a 4% chance of being perceived as toxic by a human, written by Maximum Limelihood: Being fired means nothing about the speed you’re learning at. It means that the employer overestimated how much you *already* knew. …. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how great you’ll be at coding in a year when you’re costing me time and training effort today [Link] The most toxic the comments section has ever got (beyond the very early days) was on the post Gupta on Enlightenment. I feel like the comments section on this post should be part of the ACX main canon because it is so cosmically hilarious. It concerns a man name Vinay Gupta (founder of a blockchain-based dating website) and his claims to have reached enlightenment. Some people in the comments are sceptical that Vinay Gupta is indeed an enlightened being, citing that enlightened people don’t typically found blockchain-based dating websites. A new forum poster with the handle ‘Vinay Gupta’, claiming to be Vinay Gupta and writing in a very similar style to the actual Vinay Gupta, turns up and starts arguing with everyone in an extremely toxic way (in the objective sense that his comments score very highly on the toxic-bert scoring system), which provokes more merriment that a self-described enlightened being would deploy such classic internet tough-guy approaches as ‘I don’t think much of a four-on-one face off against untrained opponents’ (link) and ‘this board is filled with self-satisfied assholes who feel free to hold forth on whatever subject crosses their minds, with the absolute certainty that they’re the smartest people in the room’ (link, no further comment…). More prosaically, this is a great example of what I was discussing earlier – the comment section is usually so civilised that a single individual turning up and acting out of the Commentariat norms is enough to make it the most toxic discussion which has ever taken place. Of Scott’s classic posts, the most toxic the comment section has ever become was on Radicalising the Romanceless. The least toxic the comments section has ever been are the posts on Scott’s conworld, Raikoth (technically the Raikoth post on history and religion specifically, but the whole series is so good I’ve linked to the index). Complexity of thought

Inline links: post, Link, Link, Gupta on Enlightenment, link, link, Radicalising the Romanceless, Raikoth

Tracer1 mentions across 1 issues

Tracer is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 08, 2023 and January 08, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "including Tracer and Synthetix"; "something similar on the blockchain, including Tracer and Synthetix". It most often appears alongside 2023 Prediction Contest, @dropbella, ACX.

Reference entry: Tracer
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: January 08, 2023
Last seen: January 08, 2023

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Open Thread 258 January 08, 2023

2023 Prediction Contest 1 shared issues
@dropbella 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
ACX Survey 1 shared issues
Adam Strandberg 1 shared issues

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Open Thread 258

January 08, 2023 · Original source

6: Also, many, many of you commented that Bob and Ramchandra were just “reinventing the wheel” and antistocks were the same as some existing financial product, although none of you could agree on which existing product it was. See the cases for bucket shops, call options, equity swaps / total return swaps, dividend derivatives, and (inevitably) prediction markets. Also, several people chimed in to say they were working on something similar on the blockchain, including Tracer and Synthetix. I hope I don’t need to add the disclaimer that if you invest in a blockchain product based on a Bay Area House Party post, then you will lose all your money faster than anyone has ever lost all of their money before in all of history.

Inline links: bucket shops, call options, equity swaps / total return swaps, dividend derivatives, prediction markets, Tracer, Synthetix

trade.leadbatteries.org1 mentions across 1 issues

trade.leadbatteries.org 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 "launched a dashboard (trade.leadbatteries.org) for analyzing global lead trade data". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: trade.leadbatteries.org
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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Highlights From The Comments On Hanson And Health Care

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.

Transgene1 mentions across 1 issues

Transgene is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2024 and May 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Transgene has a personalized vaccine that is supposed to prevent HNSCC recurrence". It most often appears alongside "Most Drugs Are Bad For You", 1123581321, California.

Reference entry: Transgene
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 10, 2024
Last seen: May 10, 2024

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Highlights From The Comments On Hanson And Health Care May 10, 2024

"Most Drugs Are Bad For You" 1 shared issues
1123581321 1 shared issues
California 1 shared issues
Canada 1 shared issues
CATO Unbound 1 shared issues

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May 10, 2024 · Original source

Docs are reluctant to impose systemic chemo because of the side effects. But Transgene has a personalized vaccine that is supposed to prevent HNSCC recurrence: https://www.nec.com/en/press/202304/global_20230418_01.html: "In the head and neck cancer trial to date, all patients treated with TG4050 have remained disease-free, despite unfavorable systemic immunity and tumor micro-environment before treatment," And most of these personalized vaccines have essentially no side effects.

Inline links: https://www.nec.com/en/press/202304/global_20230418_01.html

Transparent Replications1 mentions across 1 issues

Transparent Replications 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 "At Transparent Replications (https://replications.clearerthinking.org), a project of ClearerThinking.org"; "At Transparent Replications ( https://replications.clearerthinking.org ), a project of ClearerThinking.org". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, Aatu Koskensilta, acanthamoeba keratitis.

Reference entry: Transparent Replications
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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Book Review: A Brief History Of Neoliberalism

June 18, 2025 · Original source

At Transparent Replications (https://replications.clearerthinking.org), a project of ClearerThinking.org, we conduct careful replications of new papers in top psychology journals with the goals of improving the reliability of academic psychology and helping the field produce more value for the world. Additionally, we completed a survey of 100 academic psychologists to understand their views on the field, what they believe has improved, what still needs to improve, and what actions would improve it. By conducting this work, we've developed new ideas that we believe are important for improving the field, and that apply in other scientific disciplines as well. In particular:

Inline links: https://replications.clearerthinking.org, ClearerThinking.org

Transport Workers Union of America1 mentions across 1 issues

Transport Workers Union of America 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 "The Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) led by Mike Quill shut down the city". It most often appears alongside 2008, 9/11 attacks, A Brief History Of Neoliberalism.

Reference entry: Transport Workers Union of America
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 04, 2021
Last seen: May 04, 2021

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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

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May 04, 2021 · Original source

The Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) led by Mike Quill shut down the city with a complete halt of subway and bus service on mayor John Lindsay's first day of office. As New Yorkers endured the transit strike, Lindsay remarked, "I still think it's a fun city," and walked four miles (6 km) from his hotel room to City Hall in a gesture to show it. Dick Schaap, then a columnist for the New York Herald Tribune, coined and popularized the sarcastic term in an article titled Fun City. In the article, Schaap sardonically pointed out that it was not.

Treatment Advocacy Center1 mentions across 1 issues

Treatment Advocacy Center is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 23, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "which itself cites a report by the Treatment Advocacy Center"; "a report by the Treatment Advocacy Center". It most often appears alongside 1978, 2016 essay, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs.

Reference entry: Treatment Advocacy Center
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 23, 2022
Last seen: June 23, 2022

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Book Review: San Fransicko June 23, 2022

1978 1 shared issues
2016 essay 1 shared issues
A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs 1 shared issues
Abbott 1 shared issues
Abstracted Will Of The American People 1 shared issues

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Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities

June 23, 2022 · Original source

But he cites a book called Bedlam, which itself cites a report by the Treatment Advocacy Center. Do they mean something closer to NIMH’s “mental illness” or “serious mental illness”? You can find more information at my linked essay, but the short answer is that TAC describes itself as looking at “serious mental illness” but their definition is somewhat different from NIMH’s and probably not commensurable with it.

EA1 mentions across 1 issues

Triangle ACX/EA is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 10, 2022 and April 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Group info: Triangle ACX/EA meets every Thursday". It most often appears alongside 1022 High St. Blue House w/red porches, 11:11 Cafe, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry: EA
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 10, 2022
Last seen: April 10, 2022

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Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities April 10, 2022

red porches 1 shared issues
11:11 Cafe 1 shared issues
1548 NE 15th Ave 1 shared issues
3266 Inglewood Blvd 1 shared issues
60 Grande Rue St. Michel 1 shared issues

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April 10, 2022 · Original source

DURHAM, NC Contact: William D Jarvis Jr. (willdjarvis@gmail.com) Date: April 21 Time: 7:30 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8773X4Q3+RW Location: Ponysaurus Brewing Group info: Triangle ACX/EA meets every Thursday

Inline links: https://plus.codes/8773X4Q3+RW, Triangle ACX/EA

Trinity Technology1 mentions across 1 issues

Trinity Technology 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 "Founder of Trinity Technology, ESW Capital billionaire and family friend". It most often appears alongside 10,000 hour rule, 2 Hour Learning, Inc, 2-hour Learning.

Reference entry: Trinity Technology
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

Same state curriculum, same worksheets, same pace. The school philosophy was “no acceleration—just go deep.” We knew this was the philosophy going in. The pitch was that instead of accelerating through the state curriculum the teachers would take their time with the kids and allow them to fully explore and master the content of each grade. When we asked for examples of what that meant in practice we were told things like: “Instead of reading more advanced vocabulary, the students will learn to read out loud and use emotion and character impressions. They will learn how to vary the timing of their reading like where and when to pause to create emotion in the listener”. That sounded reasonable! It sounded like more learning, but just different learning than what the state had mandated. In practice that was not what happened. In practice “deep” just meant “un‑measured.” Smart kids + small classes ≠ accountability. The kids had time to do music, lego building, theatre and Friday ski trips because they were all really bright. They didn’t need 6+ hours a day to learn the limited math required by the state, and since the school did not feel the need to advance faster than the state, there was no pressure to push learning at all – on anything really. There was no overall school curriculum. Every teacher did their own thing. While one first grade class had weekly spelling bees, the teacher in the other classroom did not believe in learning spelling at all. But it didn’t matter. The metrics they measured the kids on in both classes advanced “enough” that no one was concerned. Most time wasn’t spent on math or language anyway. Beyond the brochure activities like skiing and theater and the four hours of foreign language per week they split between Spanish and Mandarin (which was really a great opportunity for the kids who already spoke Spanish and Mandarin to have their egos flattered. I did not see any learning in either language class. I don’t see how you can teach a language a couple of hours a week to a group of 18 kids with skill levels from zero to fluency and expect to have any impact), a lot of time was spent on DEI. DEI was pitched as helping kids handle the emotions that often come from being sensitive gifted children (they called it “Synapse”). In practice my oldest daughter got four years of learning about the basic ideas of Martin Luther King Junior and Rosa Parks, a rough understanding that some people are non-binary, and a great deal of anxiety every time I left the water running while I was brushing my teeth. The talent drain In Spring 2024 the “intermediate-school” head resigned, as did the 40+ year veteran science teacher we had been looking forward to our daughter having, the beloved tech teacher who had built a her own proprietary “learn to type” software, plus half the lower‑school faculty. Our oldest was going to be entering fourth grade; her incoming roster read like a rebuilding year for a professional sports team. It was possible we could get her into a middle school that would feed into a top tier high school, but those did not start until 5th grade. Our best option looked like “suck it up and accept whatever we had for at least a year”. One option was to do something radical. We considered taking a GAP year and traveling the world with an organization called “Boundless” but decided the timing wasn’t right. Earlier in the year we had started exploring moving to the charter city of Prospera. There is a Montessori school there that seemed like it might be alright. And we could surround the kids with an interesting group of people (and live on the beach!). But by the spring we had ruled it out. There did not seem to be many families as part of the community and we were not comfortable with the risk profile based on what was happening with the conflict between Honduras and their charter cities. Then I stumbled across Alpha: Two‑hour mornings, life‑skills afternoons, claims of 2x learning. Marketing copy is cheap; still, the promise was different enough to warrant due diligence. The initial plan was to fly some of the kids to Austin for an Alpha summer camp for a week in June – just to try it out. But once we started exploring more my wife asked me: “Could we actually move to Austin and try it for a year? Based on what is happening at the kids' school, this might be the year to try it.” So over eight weeks we flew to Austin five times – conversations with admissions and school heads, real estate searches, kids doing shadow‑days. Every parent we spoke to was very impressed with the school. Their kids really were advancing at 2x+ speed – and no one believed it was just a “selection effect”. And every guide I spoke to was extremely impressive themselves. They reminded me of the staff you run into when visiting Disney World. They all seemed “full faced” and fully-engaged. When I asked the head of admissions how they found such good staff he told me their compensation was fully transparent. “Associate Guides” were paid $60,000/year (vs the $40,000 average for Austin teachers), “Full Guides” made $100,000 and the five “Head Guides” in the school each made $150,000. They were able to both poach the best teachers from other schools, but also bring exceptional people into teaching that would not have considered it otherwise. It also let them have very high expectations for teachers once they were hired. We pulled the trigger in July. New house. Admissions letter signed. Moving truck (plus car-mover) scheduled for October. Worst case, it would be a one‑year sabbatical from stagnation. The hypothesis I carried south Elite private school attendance buys you smaller classes, brighter kids, and fancier field trips – not academic acceleration. If Alpha was real, we’d see that differential, measurable impact by Christmas – that was when we would need to decide if we would cut bait and re-apply to schools back home (and sign the kids up for more IQ-tests. The school would not accept old ones). That prior—show me velocity, not polish—is the lens through which the rest of this review should be read. Part Two: A History of Alpha Note: This is my best attempt at piecing together the history of the school based on conversations with co‑founder MacKenzie Price, high school head Chris Locke, Alpha staff, and Alpha parents; All dates are estimates and I am SURE I have gotten some details wrong. I will come back after the fact in the comments and make corrections as I hear from the people involved with corrections. 2013 – 2017 | Garage‑School to “Alpha” MacKenzie Price, then a mortgage broker in Austin, wasn’t impressed by the city’s gifted programs. She invited a small number of neighbourhood kids (including her two) into a makeshift microschool that ran two intense, teacher‑led academic “sprints” each morning, then “life‑skills” projects after lunch. Joe Liemandt — Founder of Trinity Technology, ESW Capital billionaire and family friend (MacKenzie’s husband worked for him) — kept his own children in conventional private school until he saw the qualitative improvement in the life skills of MacKenzie’s kids. He decided he wanted his kids to join MacKenzie’s but he wanted to take the project to the next level. Sometime around 2014-2017 he joined MacKenzie as a co-founder and started writing checks. Alpha recruited more students and guides and the operation jumped from location-to-location looking for a larger permanent home. 2017 – 2020 | K-8 Expansion and 2-hour focus Alpha grew to roughly 90 students from K‑8 and stabilized. Morning “core blocks” were still teacher‑driven (20‑minute bursts, 5‑minute breaks, rinse, repeat), but focused on students engaged in exercises with rapid feedback (not lectures). Afternoon workshops covered “life skills” like how to give and receive feedback or public speaking. I have not seen academic data from this time period, but when I spoke to Chris Locke, head of Alpha’s high school (which launched around 2020), he told me the kids coming into his 9th grade program were “fine,” academically – it was their life skills, confidence, and ability to engage with adults and their peers were exceptional. At this stage no AI, no dashboard, no 2x learning, no portal — just better ratios and focused pacing and the result was well balanced kids who were enjoying their education experience (even if they were unexceptional academically). 2020 – 2022 | Platform Era Begins Somewhere along the way Liemandt hired a small engineering team to stitch together edtech learning tools. Many schools use tools like iXL, Beast Academy and Amira. Those tools fit in well with the 2-hour structured approach Alpha was using. The “platform” Liemandt’s team built was meant as a tool to free up guide time so that students could be more self-directed. The dev team stitched together the preferred off‑the‑shelf apps behind a single login, and built out tracking and dashboards so guides (and students) could easily see how they were progressing. This also gave the curriculum team (there was a curriculum team now) data to understand where students were spending their time, what tools were working, and which weren’t as effective. The Alpha Portal was born. Not only did it increase efficiency, it provided data to iterate with. Chris Locke saw the curve change incrementally: each new cohort of ninth‑graders under the new tech-enabled learning platform came in a little stronger academically. The “life skills” were now being matched by the “academic skills”. 2022 | Expansion and Iteration By having access to Alpha kids post-graduation in the high school, Locke could send feedback back to the elementary school.The kids coming out of the new program were now killing it academically on Math, Language, and Science, but they were still weak on things like History and Geography. He fed that type of information back to the curriculum designers, who iterated and improved the program. Soon, in addition to the core platform that directed students to third-party tools, the tech team was building proprietary “Alpha” tools themselves. The flagship of the in-house tools was “AlphaReads”. AlphaReads requires students to read progressively more complicated passages, followed by answering reading comprehension questions. In addition to helping the kids improve reading skills, Alpha uses it to push types of content. Instead of classes in history, geography, economics and political science, some of the reading passages will cover that material (in addition to learning how to read and understand Shakespeare and Proust). The success of the 2-hour learning platform was giving the Alpha founders confidence. Liemandt in particular wanted to see if the program had legs beyond the elite group of students being educated in Austin. Alpha’s first external test in August 2022 in Brownsville, TX – a small community on the Mexico border with less than half the per capita income of Austin. SpaceX had recently launched Starbase in Brownsville in 2014 and the employees there were not happy with the existing school options. Someone at SpaceX approached Alpha and asked if they could launch a new campus for their employees. It is unclear if any money changed hands, but when Alpha launched their Brownsville campus (available to SpaceX employees and any other locals who are interested) tuition was only $10,000 (vs $40,000 at the main Austin campus); incoming students trailed national academic standards by over a year. But after nine months on the Alpha program the first cohort of students had caught up and surpassed the national average, and they kept accelerating, achieving an average learning velocity of ~2× the national average (see section four for what that means). Brownsville was Alpha’s attempt to show that their model wasn’t just rich‑kid selection effects. Spring 2024 | Field Pilots & Ukraine Trip Alpha tuition is high for the Austin area ($40,000 vs average private school ~$10,000-$15,000), but unlike most private schools tuition is all-inclusive. There are no extra fees for computers or field trips. There are no silent auctions or appeals for donations. This “no extra fees” allows the school to do some pretty ridiculous things. In the first half of 2024 Alpha sent a group of students to Poland to help launch a 2-hour learning pilot among Ukrainian refugees. Students did not pay to go on the trip. But students also did not have a “right” to go on the trip. They had to earn it. In addition to being on top of academic and non-academic expectations, students who wanted to participate had to learn basic Ukrainian so they could interact with the students in Poland they were meant to be helping. By not linking the opportunity to payment, the school could instead link it to behavior and achievement. This year a group of kids who learned to sail during the school year are going on a sailing trip through the Caribbean – for no additional fees to the parents. I also heard that around this time Alpha began testing the 2-hour learning platform at a facility for juvenile delinquents in Florida. I heard that from one individual who was not directly involved and I have not found any written documentation on it, so unclear if it worked, it was a one off, or if it even happened. But it fits into the pattern of Alpha at this stage: “We know this program works for a specific type of kid. Let’s find out how broadly it is applicable. Can it work for everyone? Is it the solution for learning and education for the world?” Fall 2024 | “Pick‑Your‑Afternoon” Specialist Schools MacKenzie told me that there was consensus among the current parents of Alpha that the 2-hour learning program was exceptional and was making a huge difference with their kids. Their kids were all learning at breathtaking speed in a very condensed period of time. But there was NOT consensus about what the kids should be doing in the other 22-hours of the day. Some parents wanted to utilize the platform’s capabilities to go even faster. Some wanted their kids to just chill out and enjoy the rest of their day – let kids be kids. Others wanted their kids to use the freed up time to do sports, or study music. It was clear to her that “learn more faster in a short period of time” was a universal desire. But beyond that it was unclear what the “right” solution for the rest of her program was. You can make the morning ultra-personalized, but if the goal of the afternoon is socialization that you are missing in the morning, you need to have some sort of alignment on how to spend that afternoon. That challenge led to Alpha’s 2024 expansion into specialty schools. Three micro‑campuses opened August 2024: GT School (Georgetown, TX) — Alpha’s “Gifted and Talented” School. Higher admissions bar; higher academic expectations; Afternoon programming focused on excelling in “academic competitions” like chess, go, debate, public speaking, robotics, programming and Quiz Bowl.

Inline links: Boundless, Prospera, MacKenzie Price, Joe Liemandt, GT School

Trojans1 mentions across 1 issues

Trojans 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 "slaughtering Trojans". It most often appears alongside 10240, 4chan, @slatestarcodex.

Reference entry: Trojans
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 08, 2024
Last seen: August 08, 2024

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Issue trail

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

At nearly 3,000 years old, the Iliad is very much in vogue, with two recent notable translations by women (Emily Wilson and Caroline Alexander) and a book of criticism aimed at a broad audience, Robin Lane Fox's Homer and His Iliad. I think part of the reason the Iliad still hits home is that its central figure, Achilles, fascinates. He's not just stronger and faster and better-looking than everyone else, he's more thoughtful and eloquent too. People point to his appearance in the underworld in the Odyssey, where he says he'd rather be a hired hand on a farm and alive than rule over all the dead. But his rejection of the heroic ethos is found in the Iliad too. His superhuman strength and beauty can’t save him from being dishonored by Agamemnon. It can’t keep his beloved Patroclus alive. All it’s good for, ultimately, is slaughtering Trojans. Which Achilles does magnificently, when he finally returns to battle; but in a sort of frenzy of despair. To a Trojan begging for mercy, he says: Patroclus is dead; I’ll be dead soon; you die too. He calls himself a useless burden on the earth. At the end when he forgoes violence and returns Hector’s body to his aged father Priam, saying sadly as he does so that he is doing nothing to help his own aged father; instead he sits in Troy, afflicting Priam and his children. And he agrees to hold the Greek army back for two weeks so that the Trojans can give Hector a proper burial.

It is impossible for me to imagine Achilles fighting the Trojans again after his interview with Priam, though the story of the Trojan war requires it; for that reason, I think, Homer ends the Iliad with Hector’s burial, with the truce still in effect.

Trump FTC1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump FTC is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 25, 2026 and February 25, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Neil Chilson, former chief technologist at the Trump FTC". It most often appears alongside Anthropic, Blue Rose Research, Boaz.

Reference entry: Trump FTC
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 25, 2026
Last seen: February 25, 2026

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https://www.ft.com/content/9eb06f95-944f-4593-aa44-594467d3329e

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The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic February 25, 2026

Anthropic 1 shared issues
Blue Rose Research 1 shared issues
Boaz 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues

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The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic

February 25, 2026 · Original source

Neil Chilson, former chief technologist at the Trump FTC (source). Dean Ball, previous Trump White House OSTP Senior Policy Advisor on AI (source). Superforecaster Nuño Sempere, maybe as part of his work with Sentinel. He seems to think higher chance of supply chain risk than others, but that supply chain risk might be handled in a way that only affects DoD contracts themselves, which wouldn’t be so bad. I haven’t heard anyone else make this distinction. Tweet here, full document here. And big praise to most other AI companies, including Anthropic’s competitors, for standing up for them and for the AI industry more broadly:

Inline links: source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Pode!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F15a4ab9e-68fb-400f-8304-3ec7222958d3_587x1506.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DrEn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feaff377e-1f44-450c-82af-fc62d33e0832_1225x1128.jpeg, here,, here

Trump Hotels & Resorts1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump Hotels & Resorts is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 26, 2023 and May 26, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Donald Trump's Hotels & Resorts". It most often appears alongside /r/wallstreetbets, 2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act, 80,000 Hours.

Reference entry: Trump Hotels & Resorts
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: May 26, 2023
Last seen: May 26, 2023

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Lying for Money May 26, 2023

wallstreetbets 1 shared issues
2013 Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours 1 shared issues
80,000 Hours podcast 1 shared issues
@eigenrobot 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Lying for Money

May 26, 2023 · Original source

...s chapter 1 "hook". The 2021 US version also adds a few other examples that weren't part of the 2018 UK edition, including Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos, and Donald Trump's Hotels & Resorts – I am unsure if these were added because they might be more relevant to the interest of US readers, or if the UK version of the book was completed and sent off to the e...

...to serve as its chapter 1 "hook". The 2021 US version also adds a few other examples that weren't part of the 2018 UK edition, including Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos, and Donald Trump's Hotels & Resorts – I am unsure if these were added because they might be more relevant to the interest of US readers, or if the UK version of the book was completed and sent off to the e...

Trump supporters1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump supporters is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2026 and March 18, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as ""Trump supporters might support the insane plan"". It most often appears alongside #Resistance, Congress, Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation.

Reference entry: Trump supporters
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2026
Last seen: March 18, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

Support Your Local Collaborator March 18, 2026

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

Source context

Support Your Local Collaborator

March 18, 2026 · Original source

I’ve been on the periphery of a handful of these campaigns, usually in medicine or AI. The common thread is that protests by liberals rarely work. The Trump administration loves offending liberals! If every Democratic member of Congress condemns the plan to ban aluminum, that just proves that aluminum really was “woke”, and makes them want to do it more. What works, sometimes, is objections/protests from Republicans and Trump supporters.

These are hard to get. Trump supporters might support the insane plan. Even if they don’t, they might be nervous to speak up or appear disloyal. You’ve got to find someone who’s supported Trump until now, built up a reputation for loyalty, but this one time they finally snap and cash in some of their favors and agree to speak out. Sometimes it’s because they’re an aluminum magnate themselves and this would destroy their business. Other times they’re just a think tank guy or influencer who happens to be really knowledgeable on this one issue and willing to take a stand on it. By such people is the world preserved.

Trump White House OSTP1 mentions across 1 issues

Trump White House OSTP is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 25, 2026 and February 25, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Dean Ball, previous Trump White House OSTP Senior Policy Advisor on AI". It most often appears alongside Anthropic, Blue Rose Research, Boaz.

Reference entry: Trump White House OSTP
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 25, 2026
Last seen: February 25, 2026

Outbound links

Issue trail

The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic February 25, 2026

Anthropic 1 shared issues
Blue Rose Research 1 shared issues
Boaz 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues
Claude 1 shared issues

Source context

The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic

February 25, 2026 · Original source

Dean Ball, previous Trump White House OSTP Senior Policy Advisor on AI (source). Superforecaster Nuño Sempere, maybe as part of his work with Sentinel. He seems to think higher chance of supply chain risk than others, but that supply chain risk might be handled in a way that only affects DoD contracts themselves, which wouldn’t be so bad. I haven’t heard anyone else make this distinction. Tweet here, full document here. And big praise to most other AI companies, including Anthropic’s competitors, for standing up for them and for the AI industry more broadly:

Inline links: source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DrEn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Feaff377e-1f44-450c-82af-fc62d33e0832_1225x1128.jpeg, here,, here

Trust Assembly1 mentions across 1 issues

Trust Assembly is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 01, 2024 and November 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Extelligence is finally going for their Trust Assembly project". It most often appears alongside /r/BadMTGCombos, @cremieuxrecuel, @justin_garson.

Reference entry: Trust Assembly
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 01, 2024
Last seen: November 01, 2024

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For November 2024 November 01, 2024

BadMTGCombos 1 shared issues
@cremieuxrecuel 1 shared issues
@justin_garson 1 shared issues
Aaron Sibarium 1 shared issues
Abuelo's Awakening 1 shared issues

Source context

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping

November 01, 2024 · Original source

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.

Tsinghua University1 mentions across 1 issues

Tsinghua University is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 06, 2022 and April 06, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tsinghua and Peking Universities, both in Beijing, are the Harvard and Yale of China". It most often appears alongside America, American consulate, Attorney General.

Reference entry: Tsinghua University
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 06, 2022
Last seen: April 06, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping April 06, 2022

America 1 shared issues
American consulate 1 shared issues
Attorney General 1 shared issues
authoritarianism 1 shared issues
BBC 1 shared issues

Source context

April 06, 2022 · Original source

Or maybe Xi used his Shanghai support to get absolute power, and then once he got it he turned on his old supporters. 3: Tsinghua University Has a Really Good Alumni Relations Department? I realize this is a weird thing to attribute the rise of a dictator of the world’s largest country to, but this is sort of the conclusion of The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics.

Inline links: The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics

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

I realize this is a weird thing to attribute the rise of a dictator of the world’s largest country to, but this is sort of the conclusion of The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics.

Inline links: The Rise Of The Tsinghua Clique: Cultivation, Transfer, And Relationships In Chinese Elite Politics

TSR, Inc.1 mentions across 1 issues

TSR, Inc. is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 19, 2022 and August 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the breakup of the original TSR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSR,_Inc.#TSR's_demise". It most often appears alongside 00s, 70s, 80s.

Reference entry: TSR, Inc.
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 19, 2022
Last seen: August 19, 2022

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Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures August 19, 2022

00s 1 shared issues
70s 1 shared issues
80s 1 shared issues
90s 1 shared issues
Andrew Yang 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Subcultures

August 19, 2022 · Original source

...members were eager to tell you how bored they were in K-12, or what their SAT scores were. Medieval Cat : D&D definitely went through a couple of rounds like this. First the breakup of the original TSR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSR,_Inc.#TSR's_demise Then the decline of 3e and the edition wars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Wizards_of_the_Coast Currently 5e is at involution, having had an explosi...

TTAR1 mentions across 1 issues

TTAR is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 31, 2025 and December 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Good for TTAR, but I’m including this one here as confirmation". It most often appears alongside 1955, 4chan, AARP.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession December 31, 2025

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession

December 31, 2025 · Original source

TTAR writes:

Inline links: writes

Good for TTAR, but I’m including this one here as confirmation that people graduating in 2014 felt like “my parents and literally every single media outlet and professor” were preaching doom at them.

Tufts1 mentions across 1 issues

Tufts 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 "This was through Tufts in Boston, who I would give high marks in every category". It most often appears alongside Aceso Under Glass, ACX Grant, America.

Reference entry: Tufts
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 07, 2023
Last seen: November 07, 2023

Outbound links

https://www.ft.com/content/9eb06f95-944f-4593-aa44-594467d3329e

Issue trail

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation

November 07, 2023 · Original source

I suffered from depression as a teenager and was briefly hospitalized at one point. However, the psychiatrist who did my eval was very reasonable about the fact that I am a mentally healthy adult, and it wasn't an obstacle at all. This was through Tufts in Boston, who I would give high marks in every category, including catheter insertion.

tups[dot]org1 mentions across 1 issues

tups[dot]org is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 25, 2023 and August 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "tups[dot]org". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry: tups[dot]org
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 25, 2023
Last seen: August 25, 2023

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Issue trail

Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places August 25, 2023

"El Retiro" Park 1 shared issues
11841 Wagner Street Culver City 1 shared issues
1548 NE 15th Ave 1 shared issues
1906 Rittenhouse Square 1 shared issues
1970 port Laurent 1 shared issues

Source context

Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places

August 25, 2023 · Original source

If you need to change a meetup date or you have any other questions, please email skyler[at]rationalitymeetups[dot]org.

BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA, USA Contact: Scott and Skyler Contact Info: skyler[at]rationalitymeetups[dot]org Time: Saturday, October 21st, 3:00 PM Location: 2740 Telegraph Avenue Coordinates: https://plus.codes/849VVP5R+X5 (I [Scott] will try to make it to this one!)

Inline links: https://plus.codes/849VVP5R+X5

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, USA Duplicate of Berkeley Contact: Scott and Skyler Contact Info: skyler[at]rationalitymeetups[dot]org Time: Saturday, October 21st, 3:00 PM Location: Rose Garden Inn Coordinates: https://plus.codes/849VVP5R+X5 (I [Scott] will try to make it to this one!)

Inline links: https://plus.codes/849VVP5R+X5

TuringElect1 mentions across 1 issues

TuringElect is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 01, 2022 and August 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The statistics team behind TuringElect, “a new project to build Bayesian forecasts for the 2022 midterms”". It most often appears alongside 1587, 538, Astralcodexten Com.

Reference entry: TuringElect
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: August 01, 2022
Last seen: August 01, 2022

Outbound links

Issue trail

Open Thread 235 August 01, 2022

1587 1 shared issues
538 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues
Discord 1 shared issues
Exhaustion: A History 1 shared issues

Source context

Open Thread 235

August 01, 2022 · Original source

2: The statistics team behind TuringElect, “a new project to build Bayesian forecasts for the 2022 midterms”, is looking for a media partner. If you’re in media and you want an electoral model kind of like what 538 is doing, get in touch with them. They’ve also got interesting stuff like this analysis of exactly when the US polarized. You can also email cdp49@cam.ac.uk if you’re interested in sponsoring or volunteering for related open source work.

Inline links: TuringElect, this analysis of exactly when the US polarized

Turkana1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkana is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 27, 2023 and February 27, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "We interviewed 218 Turkana pastoralist warriors in Kenya". It most often appears alongside 12th-century England, 21st-century America, acute and transient psychotic disorder.

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

Outbound links

Issue trail

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

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

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On Geography Of Madness

February 27, 2023 · Original source

Great find! This study looks at the Turkana people of Kenya. Even though they are a very warlike society (“half of adult male mortality stemm[ed] from combat”), the authors find that many of them had PTSD (they draw a distinction between “learning and reacting symptoms”, which were equally common among Turkana and Americans, and “depressive symptoms”, which were less common in Turkana, but it didn’t seem like a huge effect.) There are a few sentences suggesting they limited their analysis to the Turkana who seemed to have a lot of PTSD, which would be relevant, but they didn’t have much trouble finding them.

"It is unclear whether combat-related PTSD is a universal evolutionary response to danger or a culture-specific syndrome of industrialized societies. We interviewed 218 Turkana pastoralist warriors in Kenya, who engage in lethal cattle raids, about their combat experiences and PTSD symptoms. Turkana in our sample had a high prevalence of PTSD symptoms, but Turkana with high symptom severity had lower prevalence of depression-like symptoms than American service members with high symptom severity. Symptoms that facilitate responding to danger were better predicted by combat exposure, whereas depressive symptoms were better predicted by exposure to combat-related moral violations. The findings suggest that some PTSD symptoms stem from an evolved response to danger, while depressive PTSD symptoms may be caused by culturally specific moral norm violations."

Turkey without Cages1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkey without Cages 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 "“Turkey without Cages” (Kafessiz Türkiye) is an animal welfare organization working by Effective Altruist principles". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

Reference entry: Turkey without Cages
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: February 10, 2022
Last seen: February 10, 2022

Outbound links

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

#115: Fight Factory Farming In Turkey “Turkey without Cages” (Kafessiz Türkiye) is an animal welfare organization working by Effective Altruist principles to end cage egg farming in Turkey. We reach out to companies that have cage eggs in their supply chain and secure cage-free pledges from them. Turkey is in the top 10 egg-producing countries with around 120 million laying hens. Turkey is also a major egg exporter with an increasing volume each year. Therefore, animal welfare standards in the region depend on the progress in Turkey. In a few years, we have secured pledges from 20 companies. This will enhance the welfare standards of roughly 1 million hens. Our progress is due to the extraordinary efforts of a limited number of employees and our network of volunteers. This year, we plan to expand our efforts to the fish farming industry and initiate similar NGOs in the countries close to us geographically and culturally. The number of fish farmed in Turkey is estimated to be between 1-2 billion and 60 percent of the production is being exported. At an early stage of our fish welfare endeavor, we secured a pledge from a major wholesaler, Metro AG in Turkey, which will considerably impact the welfare of 10 million fish. In 2022, we want to expand our capacities to maximize the number of animals we impact. If you think you can help, please email cagri.mutaf@kafessizturkiye.com to learn more about how you can support us. You can also visit www.kafessizturkiye.com

Turkish Armed Forces1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish Armed Forces is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Turkish Armed Forces were Ataturk's power base"; "[Turkish Armed Forces] sent a contingent of 20 tanks and 15 armored vehicles"; ""proposed measures to limit the power of the Turkish Armed Forces."". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: Turkish Armed Forces
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

Abdullah Gul 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
Ak 1 shared issues
AKP 1 shared issues
Anatolian 1 shared issues

Source context

March 18, 2021 · Original source

The Turkish Armed Forces were Ataturk's power base, and was mostly made of well-educated Europhiles like himself. When he moved Turkey toward democracy, he charged the military with ensuring it never deviated too far from his original vision. But Turkey was demographically dominated by poor Muslim peasants and naturally tended towards Communism or Islamism. So the cadence of Turkish democracy was a gradual drift towards one of these extremes, followed by the military staging a coup to undo the damage and restore secular cosmopolitan liberalism. There were four such coups between 1960 and 2000 - including "coups by memo", where the military would say "let's pretend we just held a coup" and the civilian government, unwilling to risk a real coup, would resign en masse.

The military took matters into their own hands: the [Turkish Armed Forces] sent a contingent of 20 tanks and 15 armored vehicles through Sincan as a symbolic warning against the RP-led borough government. Deputy chief of general staff Cevik Bir characterized this as an act of "recalbrating" democracy. The rolling of tanks through Sincan would trigger a set of events, later dubbed the "soft coup", which culminated in the RP's fall from power.

"What would a real center-right liberal do?" Erdogan asked himself again, and talked to Brussels about accelerating Turkey's EU bid. The EU said that Turkey needed to reduce the military's role in civilian government and maybe put some measures in place to have fewer coups. "All according to plan", Erdogan presumably muttered, rubbing his hands together gleefully, and proposed measures to limit the power of the Turkish Armed Forces. The military wasn't thrilled about this. But Erdogan had a 2/3 majority in Parliament, and was riding a wave of popular adulation after causing an unprecedented massive economic boom, and everyone in Turkey really wanted to join the EU and would never forgive the military for holding it up, and Erdogan seemed like such a good center-rightist liberal who had learned his lesson about the whole Islamism thing. The military grudgingly agreed to let their power be curtailed.

Turkish Industry and Business Association1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish Industry and Business Association is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "rebukes from many members of the Turkish Industry and Business Association (Turkey's club of Fortune 500 billionaires)". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: Turkish Industry and Business Association
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

Abdullah Gul 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
Ak 1 shared issues
AKP 1 shared issues
Anatolian 1 shared issues

Source context

March 18, 2021 · Original source

Other secular forces began mounting so much pressure on the RP that the party's power started to unravel. Eventually, faced with growing demonstrations by secular NGOs, fierce criticism from the media, rebukes from many members of the Turkish Industry and Business Association (Turkey's club of Fortune 500 billionaires) and last but not least the looming threat of a military coup, the RP reliquished power and the RP-DYP government was dissolved on June 18, 1997.

The [Turkish Armed Forces] sent a contingent of 20 tanks and 15 armored vehicles through Sincan as a symbolic warning against the RP-led borough government. Deputy chief of general staff Cevik Bir characterized this as an act of "recalbrating" democracy. The rolling of tanks through Sincan would trigger a set of events, later dubbed the "soft coup", which culminated in the RP's fall from power. 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...Other secular forces began mounting so much pressure on the RP that the party's power started to unravel. Eventually, faced with growing demonstrations by secular NGOs, fierce criticism from the media, rebukes from many members of the Turkish Industry and Business Association (Turkey's club of Fortune 500 billionaires) and last but not least the looming threat of a military coup, the RP reliquished power and the RP-DYP government was dissolved on June 18, 1997.

Turkish National Security Council1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish National Security Council is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "on February 28 [1997] the military-dominated Turkish National Security Council held a meeting". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: Turkish National Security Council
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

Abdullah Gul 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
Ak 1 shared issues
AKP 1 shared issues
Anatolian 1 shared issues

Source context

March 18, 2021 · Original source

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. [...]

Turkish universities1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish universities is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2021 and March 18, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Erdogan won partly by making Turkish universities change to a 'well-rounded' admissions policy". It most often appears alongside Abdullah Gul, Academy Awards, Ak.

Reference entry: Turkish universities
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: March 18, 2021
Last seen: March 18, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Book Review: The New Sultan March 18, 2021

Abdullah Gul 1 shared issues
Academy Awards 1 shared issues
Ak 1 shared issues
AKP 1 shared issues
Anatolian 1 shared issues

Source context

Highlights From The Comments On IRBs

March 18, 2021 · Original source

There's more to this story. There were some anti-Erdogan protests, with various degrees of success. The Kurds have their own part in this story, which I've excluded to make more room for everyone else (much as Erdogan did to the actual Kurds). There may have been some foreign policy at some point. Starting around 2012, Erdogan and the Gulenists both simultaneously tried to backstab each other, a conflict which Erdogan won partly by making Turkish universities change to a "well-rounded" admissions policy that ignored exam scores - instantly destroying the cram school industry that served as the Gulen movement's power base. There was a 2016 attempted military coup which very nearly succeeded in killing Erdogan, but which screwed up at the last second and only turned him more paranoid (he blames the Gulenists, which based on the little I know from this book seems plausible).

Turkopticon1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkopticon is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 17, 2023 and April 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "I'd suggest looking up Turkopticon , a group that I think has made a little headway". It most often appears alongside Advarra, Amazon, Anya L.

Reference entry: Turkopticon
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: April 17, 2023
Last seen: April 17, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Highlights From The Comments On IRBs April 17, 2023

Advarra 1 shared issues
Amazon 1 shared issues
Anya L 1 shared issues
arXiv 1 shared issues
Astralcodexten Com 1 shared issues

Source context

April 17, 2023 · Original source

I also fooled with MTurk for a while a few years ago (pre-pandemic), so this is based on sentiments from that point in time (though I doubt it's changed much). If for whatever reason you want to look deeper into this, I'd suggest looking up Turkopticon, a group that I think has made a little headway in managing all this nonsense.

Inline links: Turkopticon

Tuskegee University1 mentions across 1 issues

Tuskegee University 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 "Whitney notes that Tuskegee University, which lent some facilities for the study but was otherwise uninvolved". It most often appears alongside AAAS, AIDS, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reference entry: Tuskegee University
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

Whitney notes that Tuskegee University, which lent some facilities for the study but was otherwise uninvolved, is justly upset at being associated with this atrocity. He would prefer to call it the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study after the actual perpetrators. Today we remember the bold whistleblowers who blew the lid off this scandal, but I didn’t realize how circuitous the path to exposure was. The researchers spent years being pretty open about their project to the rest of the research community. Peter Buxtun, an incidentally involved social worker (also “a libertarian Republican, former army medic, gun collector, and NRA member” - social workers were different in those days!) heard about it, was horrified, and tried to get it shut down. The relevant oversight board involved listened to his complaints politely, then decided there was no problem (the only issue the board flagged was the risk that it might make them look racist). Buxtun spent six years complaining about this to various uninterested stakeholders until finally a reporter listened to him and published an expose.

TVA1 mentions across 1 issues

TVA is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 23, 2023 and June 23, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "the TVA was broadly popular and is still considered a success today". It most often appears alongside 1965, 1968 Summer Olympics, 2000 election.

Reference entry: TVA
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: June 23, 2023
Last seen: June 23, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Your Book Review: Public Citizens June 23, 2023

1965 1 shared issues
1968 Summer Olympics 1 shared issues
2000 election 1 shared issues
2023 book review contest 1 shared issues
American Capitalism 1 shared issues

Source context

Your Book Review: Public Citizens

June 23, 2023 · Original source

The Tennessee Valley Authority is the canonical example of a New Deal agency. Founded in 1933, it was designed to modernize the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley2, with a broad mandate including electricity generation, flood control, fertilizer manufacturing, and general economic development. Here’s what it didn’t have to do: run its plans for the valley by any of the people who actually lived there. Although the TVA was broadly popular and is still considered a success today, its development plans displaced over 125,000 residents, who had essentially no recourse. Its first leader, displaying the lack of modesty that was characteristic of the era, described the agency’s work by saying, “What God had made one, man was to develop as one.”

Inline links: 2

tvori1 mentions across 1 issues

tvori 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 "Ping me at oleksandr@tvori.info". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

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

Outbound links

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

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

#6: System Dynamics Simulator I'm Oleksandr Nikitin, and I want to build a system dynamics simulator. Enable independent researchers to simulate, forecast, and visualize metabolic pathways, epidemic spread, mass transit, ecology, macroeconomics, etc. Show, don't tell. Without code. Think Airtable+Vensim+Roam+Kumu, integrated and working offline. Why offline? Why simulate? Why a new tool? Complex systems must be simulated. You miss emergent phenomena if you analyze parts separately or simplify the details. Offline sets you free from distractions and groupthink. Free to make your own breakthroughs. Take your references, notes and data with you, dive deep, then return with the verified, reproducible, interactive model. Research can take years. Tools should outlast devices and app stores. And it must be fast. Isn’t it insane for a productivity tool to make you wait? I spent years on prototypes and algorithms, tested in companies since 2013, and now I want to put these experiments together. Not as a startup. As a tool accessible to everyone. The plan: create a community of curious inquisitive makers, empower them with a small fast and robust core app, iterate and grow together, augment the human intelligence even more, and understand the world. I seek funding to focus on this project full-time, for two years. To launch and to guide people to the finished research. Sounds inspiring? Worth the money? Want more details? Ping me at oleksandr@tvori.info. Also see https://cortex.substack.com/

Twinder1 mentions across 1 issues

Twinder is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 14, 2021 and October 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Twinder is a cross between Twitter and Reciprocity. It lists all of your Twitter friends". It most often appears alongside @literalbanana, ACX, Barcelona.

Reference entry: Twinder
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: October 14, 2021
Last seen: October 14, 2021

Outbound links

Issue trail

Links For October October 14, 2021

@literalbanana 1 shared issues
ACX 1 shared issues
Barcelona 1 shared issues
Bay Area 1 shared issues
behavioral econ 1 shared issues

Source context

Links For October

October 14, 2021 · Original source

11: Twinder is a cross between Twitter and Reciprocity. It lists all of your Twitter friends, you click a checkbox beside any you secretly want to date, and if you and your crush both checkbox each other, it tells you. Seems like a great idea, although when I try it I don’t see any people available to check - maybe none of my Twitter friends use this?

Inline links: Twinder

twitterdatingapp.com1 mentions across 1 issues

twitterdatingapp.com is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 10, 2023 and November 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "we think we can do a better job of marketing such a product than things like twitterdatingapp.com (which we think is good as an MVP and product but bad at branding)". It most often appears alongside #EEGManyLabs, 23andme, @freeshreeda.

Reference entry: twitterdatingapp.com
Mention count: 1
Issue count: 1
First seen: November 10, 2023
Last seen: November 10, 2023

Outbound links

Issue trail

Followup: Quests And Requests November 10, 2023

#EEGManyLabs 1 shared issues
23andme 1 shared issues
@freeshreeda 1 shared issues
@surcomplicated 1 shared issues
Alain Daigle 1 shared issues

Source context