Astral Codex Ten

Places: T

1612 min read

Places: T

Cities, neighborhoods, regions, and other geographic anchors. This section collects the T slice of the category index.

Reference Index

Use the title to open the reference entry. Use the caret to expand a compact inline dossier with source context, issue trail, related pages, and outbound links.

Texas41 mentions across 41 issues

Texas is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 41 times across 41 issues between March 02, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "he delayed the FDA enough that they handed the case to the state of Texas"; "Christian college in Texas"; "laws of Houston, Texas". It most often appears alongside California, United States, facebook.

Article page
Texas
Mention count
41
Issue count
41
First seen
March 02, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Shilling For Big Mitochondria
March 02, 2021 · Original source
It next shows up in the 1980s, courtesy of the aforementioned sketchy Texas diet doctor. This man - Dr. Nicholas Bachynsky - argued that the FDA had no power over him, since he wasn't transporting it across state lines. I'm not sure of the legalities of this, but it delayed the FDA enough that they handed the case to the state of Texas. Texas also wanted to shut him down, but Bachynsky pointed to a clause in Texan law which grandfathered in chemicals sold before the 1938 act giving the FDA its regulatory powers. There was some court case about this, I don't understand the technicalities, but the court very clearly ruled DNP was illegal in Texas and Bachynsky couldn't prescribe it. Bachynsky ignored the order, continued prescribing DNP for several years, and made over $8 million selling it to dieters; somehow nobody bothered to shut him down until he was arrested and jailed for tax and insurance fraud years later. In conclusion, Texas truly is the greatest state.
Inline links: Dr. Nicholas Bachynsky
We next encounter DNP as a supplement for British bodybuilders. This thread starts with Dan Duchaine, a bodybuilder/drug-dealer who called himself “The Steroid Guru”. He got jailed a bunch of times for selling illegal bodybuilding drugs, and during one such adventure ended up confined together with - Nicholas Bachynsky, who sold him on the wonders of DNP. Once he got out he started shilling it alongside his other wares, and it became a big hit. For whatever reason most of the articles about this are from Britain, which counts 23 DNP-related deaths in the past ten years. Based on our previous numbers, this would suggest 230,000 users. This sounds ways too high, so my guess is bodybuilders are using it much less responsibly than 1930s people or sketchy Texas diet doctor patients. In fact, I just checked out a couple of bodybuilding forums and this is definitely true - one of them may have used the phrase “YOLO”.
Inline links: 23 DNP-related deaths
Ambidexterity And Cognitive Closure
April 01, 2021 · Original source
The paper didn't say exactly where it did the study, but some minimal detective work suggests three sites: the University of Louisville Kentucky, a second university in Louisville Kentucky I couldn't identify, and Schreiner University, a private Christian college in Texas. All these places are probably full of people raised in very right-wing, authoritarian, racially conservative backgrounds. If you were raised in a right-wing/authoritarian/racially-conservative background, and you have high need for cognitive closure, then you stay right-wing/authoritarian/racially-conservative. If you have more cognitive flexibility, then you flirt with forbidden ideas like leftism, personal liberty, and racial tolerance.
Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
It actually goes further than this - you can choose to be in a particular location within a Best Practice Peer Country. Trey uses the example of a developer choosing to build a skyscraper using the laws of Houston, Texas. Since Houston is in America, a Best Practice Peer Country, the developer will be legally protected as long as they conform to Houston’s building regulations.
I don’t envy the PAC if they have adjudicate disputes involving, say, a doctor who has chosen to be regulated by the medical code of Norway suing her office building regulated by the laws of Houston, Texas. But they’re trying to rise to the occasion: their arbiters include a former Arizona Supreme Court judge, the head of the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, and “the first Chilean lawyer to obtain permission from the Berlin Bar Association to act as a legal advisor in Chilean law in Germany”, which I guess sounds like the level of convolutedness you would need to be experienced in to make this work.
Inline links: their arbiters
Your Book Review: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson
May 07, 2021 · Original source
Coke Stevenson: "Mr. Texas". Imagine that a child wrote a heartwarming story about an honest Texan who works his way up from poverty, buys the ranch of his dreams, reluctantly enters politics, makes his state a better place, and finds true love. That's Stevenson's life.
During the 1948 Senate campaign, he flew across Texas in a helicopter, trying to reach as many voters as possible. At one point the engine stalled, so the helicopter fell 25 feet and bounced off the ground. The pilot freaked out, but LBJ barely noticed because he was thinking about how to win the election.
But Stevenson was a storybook character, so money couldn't defeat him. He simply told the people of Texas that he would continue to do the right thing, and they believed him. LBJ had lost the 1941 Senate election because Pappy O'Daniel had cheated better than he did. Now LBJ would cheat, and he would cheat big.
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
We didn’t just get tremendous economic growth though – we got “magical” results, but they were based on a one-time confluence of factors that “overwhelmed the normal rule that lots of twenty-and thirty-somethings make for an expensive-capital environment.” What were these one-time accelerants? He identifies the peace dividend – cuts in military spending that allowed capital to be put to more productive uses – as one such change, along with the emergent dominance of the US dollar, particularly boosted by Russian demand thanks to the collapse of their currency, and a later boost in demand thanks to the East Asian financial crisis. With the Europeans’ decision to eliminate national currencies (agreed upon in a 1992 treaty, with the Euro to be introduced in 1999), they became relatively unattractive, and the Euro itself (an “unprecedented experiment in pan-government planning”) was too risky. Many holders of European currencies switched to the US dollar, such that between 1994 and 2002 (“when the euro finally got some traction and the surge dialed back”) there was a $2 trillion increase in the money supply. Zeihan also points to a collapse in commodities prices influenced by the elimination of Russian demand, but continued Russian production of oil and other commodities, followed by a collapse in demand thanks to the East Asian financial crisis. This story of capital coming to the West (“allowing consumption-driven growth not simply to soar, but to explode”) is one of chance world events. However, the story of capital coming from the Boomer cohort is one of demographics. By the 2000s, they’re the mature workers of Zeihan’s four stages described above – and as the bulge in the demographic pyramid, they started flooding the world with capital. Accordingly, “The cost of credit plummeted to levels never before experienced.” Zeihan suggests that developed-world demographics are the cause of booms in places that haven’t been well-developed, from Southern Europe to Brazil, Russia, and India. But he says it’s quickly coming to an end; Boomer savings into stocks and bonds will be moving to low-risk instruments and then turning into withdrawals rather than savings, and the cohort behind them is too small to replace all of that capital. And it’s a worldwide phenomenon: In every single developed country there is currently an American-style population inversion between the about-to-retire and the about-to-be-mature-workers age groups. Japan’s Boomers bulge is a decade older than the American equivalent, while Spain’s is roughly fifteen years younger. Everyone else falls somewhere in between. It dictates a period of chronically low growth and high credit costs, just not on precisely the same time frame. The undeveloped world is that way because it can’t self-fund, so without foreign capital, their growth will come to an end. In sum, the 1990-2005 period of high growth and easy capital was a historical anomaly; “the post-Cold War financial flight was a once-in-a-generation event” and the demographic bulge that coincided with it won’t come around again for decades, if ever. 4 2: America’s incredible advantages As noted above, Zeihan really likes America’s position in the world. He likes its demographics (relative to other developed countries) and loves its geography. Taking the population question first, in America, “the demographic inversion is only a temporary development.” America is younger than the rest of the developed world, as it urbanized later and its enormous size made having kids easier despite that urbanization (i.e., the suburbs exist). This makes the demographic crunch a single-generation issue, as the Millennials are a huge cohort. And even if they weren’t, America assimilates immigrants more easily than other places – Zeihan attributes this to it being a “settler society” – which can help with demographic problems. The rest of the developed world doesn’t have similar cohorts following their massive Boomer and Gen-X analogues. Accordingly: While the American financial world will be past its period of maximum stress by 2030, for the rest of the world 2030 will simply be another year of an ever-deepening imbalance between retirees and taxpayers, with smaller and smaller generations coming up the ranks generating less and less growth. For the developed world beyond the United States—and even large portions of the developing world—chronic capital poverty and permanent recession will be the new normal from which there is no return. Together with America’s Millennial-led growth and abundant energy (there’s a chapter explaining how shale is a done deal that, as of the mid-2014 writing, already made America the world’s largest energy producer 5), by 2030 Zeihan sees it as practically the only country with an economy worth noting. Anyone who is familiar with American geography should see the argument that’s coming about that aspect of Zeihan’s model. Isn’t the Mississippi River a pretty big deal? And those oceans on the east and west coasts seem like nice borders. Indeed, while he gives us many reasons why there was always going to be an American superpower, geography is central to his story. He has lots to say about America’s internal river systems, farmland, and other geographic features. What mountain barriers exist are apparently better than in other countries in terms of allowing internal transport; the Rockies have major passes, several of which have large cities within them, and the easiest pass in the Appalachians featured America’s first National Road, 130 miles of buried logs that linked two rivers, and thus the east coast with the best farmland in the world. As we saw with his exposition on the Nile, Zeihan puts a lot of emphasis on the value of river systems. He argues that America’s waterway network alone should be sufficient for “global dominance.” The numbers he provides in support of this point are impressive. For example, “the Mississippi is only one of twelve major navigable American rivers. Collectively, all of America’s temperate-zone rivers are 14,650 miles long. China and Germany each have about 2,000 miles, France about 1,000. The entirety of the Arab world has but 120.” He praises US barrier islands that mitigate oceanic destruction and effectively create another river system, as well as the fact that the river system is an actual network. All of this gives America more internal waterways than the rest of the world combined. Thus, we get cheap transportation for “Nebraska corn or Tennessee whiskey or Texas oil or New Jersey steel or Georgia peaches or Michigan cars,” enabling savings that “can be used for whatever Americans (or their government) want, from iPhones to aircraft carrier battle groups.” America doesn’t have to spend on artificial infrastructure, like German roads and rails, but when it does, the competition from the rivers keeps transport costs low. Cheap internal transportation has other benefits. “It’s a recipe for small government and high levels of entrepreneurship,” as small government keeps taxes low, leaving people with plenty of capital. Some people may think of the American consumer with disdain, but it isn’t a new phenomenon. Zeihan points out that America has been the world’s largest consumer market “since shortly after the Civil War.” His observation about a robust food supply forming the base of any civilization bodes well for America, which apparently has the largest connected stretch of quality farmland in the world (the Midwest), the value of which is exponentially increased by the fact that it overlaps with so many of these amazing river systems. It isn’t just the Midwest that he gushes over. California’s Central Valley and the Sacramento River, and Washington and Oregon’s farmland with the Columbia and Snake Rivers get praise. The only major farmland more than 150 miles from a navigable waterway is some of the Great Plains near the Rockies. ***** Zeihan provides a reminder that national security is actually a thing, and that at its most basic level, it’s about protection against invasions. It was something of a shock reading about America’s land borders in that context. “As Santa Anna discovered during the Texas Independence War, there is no good staging location in (contemporary) Mexican territory that could strike at American lands.” And, “Canada’s border with the United States is much longer, more varied, and even more successful at keeping the two countries separated,” thanks to mountains and thick forests over much of it. The mid-continent lands are much more connected, but Zeihan frames these Canadian areas as basically American; they’re physically separated from Canada’s core eastern provinces, so trade with them is weaker than with the closer American states. Then there are the oceans. As much as Zeihan loves deserts for protection, he loves oceans more (particularly in a post-World War II world; more on that below). We get a story about the War of 1812 nearly splitting America into three when the British attacked Baltimore. America learned about “strategic vulnerability and sea approaches,” as the attack “on Baltimore—indeed, the entire war effort—would have been impossible without launching grounds in Canada and the Caribbean.” American foreign policy since then can be understood with respect to this lesson. Zeihan cites it as inspiration for America’s steps to make its ocean borders truly impenetrable, such as working to sever Canada from Britain, and the imperial-era acquisitions of Alaska, Hawaii, Midway, Puerto Rico, and de facto control of Cuba (preventing enemies from cutting off Mississippi River-based trade from the rest of the world). There’s more to Zeihan’s being awestruck by America than his analysis of its balance of transport advantages. He argues that America has been the world leader for agriculture, technology, finance, and industry since the Civil War, and runs through a litany of reasons for its preeminence: America is like a continent-sized island (because of its effective land borders), which is always going to be a more natural naval power than a more landlocked country.
Inline links: 4, 5
Its actual ocean ports are bound to outnumber and outclass the rest of the world, given America’s ideal natural harbors with deep passages, friendly land to back it up, and barrier islands (compare his comment on Africa, which has 16,000 miles of coast, “but in reality it has only ten locations with bays of sufficient protective capacity to justify port construction” with one on Texas, which “alone has thirteen world-class deepwater ports, only half of which see significant use, and room for at least three times more”).
Does Georgism Work, Part 3: Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately From Buildings?
December 11, 2021 · Original source
Gwartney couldn't be more Georgist if he tried, so for balance, I looked up about a dozen research papers on the topic of land value assessment in Google Scholar, some of which are cited below. I also spent some time on the homepage of the International Association of Assessment Officers (IAAO), the international professional body for real estate assessors. Then I looked up the local policies of various appraisal districts in my home state of Texas to see how things are actually done in practice in my local area.
Inline links: International Association of Assessment Officers
Gwartney says that when he was the assessment commissioner and chief executive officer in British Columbia, he had a staff of 690, and that this number has not changed significantly since then. British Columbia has a population of about 5 million, so that's 1 assessment officer for every 7,250 British Columbians. For context, the IRS has a staff size of 74,454, or about one IRS agent for every 4,425 Americans. I don't have data on how many property tax assessors the USA has in total, but the above slide suggests British Columbia's figure is on the high end. As for how you actually do assessments, sure, you can send out an army of assessors to value each and every property in your jurisdiction by hand. However, not only is that labor-intensive, it's also a recipe for inconsistency. Whatever method you're using to value properties needs to be consistent and standardized across all properties, so you don't have sharp discontinuities on the assessment map that are due solely to differences between Assessor Fred and Assessor Sally's personal methodologies. Thankfully, we're living in the modern age, and we have some fancy new tools at our disposal. 4. Modern Technology Georgists were doing split-rate assessments to allegedly good success long before the rise of the computer, such as J. J. Pastoriza's effort in setting up a Georgist tax regime in Houston, Texas in 1911. Today, we have spreadsheets, property value databases, GIS mapping visualizations, regression analysis, machine learning...the works. According to Gwartney, the Canadian province of British Columbia has revalued all its land and all its property on an annual basis simply by using computers and market analysis, ever since he first helped them set up their system back in 1975. Not every jurisdiction revalues their land this thoroughly and this often, but Gwartney says there is no significant technical or staffing barrier standing in the way. Gwartney has been retired for some time, so his seminar didn't cover all the latest cutting-edge techniques that have come out in the last few years. Let's look at some recent papers and see what new tools assessors have to play with. The first on my list is Land Value Appraisal Using Statistical Methods by Kolbe, Schulz, Wersing, and Werwatz (2019). This is a study on mass appraisal techniques using real estate transaction data from Berlin, Germany. It claims that not only are the results cheaper and faster to generate than those done by conventional property assessment methods, but they are also no less accurate than those done "by hand" by experts. Kolbe et al. assert that, provided you have access to high quality market transaction data, you can perform accurate and efficient mass appraisals of land values. They chose Berlin because it "has a very effective system of property transaction data collection and storage," in contrast to other parts of Germany. They cite some prior work by Almy (2014) studying Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States, suggesting that the assessment cost per property can be brought down to 20 Euros–25 times cheaper than what some other people (Fuest, et al. (2018)) assert. Given an average tax receipt of 2,000 Euros per property, this means that the assessment cost should represent only about 1% of the funds raised. Is that good? Let's take this assertion at face value for the moment and compare it to the cost of the IRS. Federal tax receipts in 2020 were $3.42 trillion, and operation costs for the IRS were $12.3 billion, or 0.36%. However, the IRS outsources most of the labor of tax preparation to the taxpayers themselves, with compliance costs estimated between $200 billion and $400 billion a year, to the delight of Intuit. Add that up and the total cost of federal tax collection to the economy is anywhere between 6-12% of the amount it raises. And what about sales tax? According to a 2006 report by PriceWaterHouseCoopers: The study finds that the national average annual state and local retail sales tax compliance cost in 2003 was 3.09 percent of sales tax collected for all retailers, 13.47 percent for small retailers, 5.20 percent for medium retailers, and 2.17 percent for large retailers So a compliance cost of 1% would be way more efficient in terms of cost collection than the other two most common forms of taxation, and taxpayers don't even have to do anything themselves, other than pay the bill. Alrighty, how about the accuracy? The authors cite two international examples, Australia and Lithuania, as among the few countries in the world that have both a Land Value Tax and statistical methods for mass appraisals. Hefferan and Boyd (2010) assert that objections to assessments from property owners in Australia are less than 1%. I'm willing to buy the improved efficiency claims just by taking a look at some methodologies. It seems reasonable that computerized records and algorithms can cut costs significantly; the real question is if you're trading off accuracy. The other papers I found on the subject are Bencure, et al (2019) in BayBay City, Philippines, Kilić, et al (2019) in Croatia, Yalpir & Unel (2017) in Konya, Turkey, and Raslanas et al. (2014) in Vilnius, Lithuania. Let's dive in and examine some methods. 5. Mass Appraisal Methods Here are some of the latest mass appraisal methods cribbed from the research papers listed above. All of these are based on taking market transaction data, plotting them out on a map, and running computations over them to estimate valuations for the properties you don't have known values for. Furthermore, all of these methods are able to value land and building values separately. Multiple Regression Analysis This paper by Yalpir and Unel out of Turkey gives a straightforward example of using Multiple Regression Analysis for land valuation. For those of you who didn't study math, let me explain regression analysis. This is a family of mathematical models where you basically take a data set, ask the question "what mathematical formula would best fit this data," choose a basic equation model, and then have a computer search for a set of coefficients that "best fit" that curve to the data with the least amount of error. The simplest example is using linear regression on a scatterplot of observed data points to fit a trend line. This is a common exercise in freshman physics and statistics classes. You can use more complicated versions of this numerical method to take a big bag of observations (real estate sales) and use "multiple regression" to tease out dependent variables (land value and improvements value) based on the independent variables (size, location, age, number of bedrooms) of your observations. In this case the team identified about a hundred different factors that can affect the price of a property: Then you create an entry for each property, fill in the values for each of those characteristics, and run it through the regressor. Take note of how many of these factors start with the words "proximity to." Each of these can be calculated automatically just by knowing where the property is on a map, and each of them is an independent contributor to the value of the property's location. The next step is to generate individual "index maps" that combine various related features into combined heat maps. Then you run everything through and see if it works. You can get the land share of the final value by combining the contributions of all the individual factors that you associate with "land," such as proximity to important things. In the verification section the authors say: As a result of the analysis, since the significance level (0.000) p <.05, corresponding to the F values in the ANOVA test, indicates that the regression analysis is appropriate and the models are significant. The criteria that make up the model account for about 85% of the market value and 15% cannot be explained for reasons such as economic, non-existent data and unearned income. Unfortunately, they don't say anything about how accurate their model is for assessing land values specifically. Otherwise, this is a pretty good example of using the Multiple Regression method for estimating the individual contributions of various factors to overall property values. Gwartney says Multiple Regression Analysis was a standard method he typically used, of which this specific paper is just one example. Nonparametric kernel regression This will be a method familiar to the programmers in the audience who have any experience with image processing algorithms. Here's an example from this old Gamasutra article: The basic idea here is to take a matrix of numbers, called a "kernel", and run that over every pixel in a source image. The kernel tells you how strongly to weight all of the source pixel's neighbors to compute a final result for that position. A simple "box blur" is a kernel where every value is 1 (meaning it averages the values of all neighboring pixels within a range). The more subtle gaussian blur illustrated above uses a two-dimensional normal distribution of values so that each pixel is most affected by those nearest to it. So let's apply the same principle to land valuations. If you have a map with lots of transaction data of pure land sales–defined as sales of either vacant land or teardown properties (where the building value is essentially zero)–then you can use a special kernel filter to smoothly interpolate land values across the region. So you basically have a smooth curve that mostly favors close-by points, tapers off a bit, and then disregards anything outside a certain distance entirely. The big assumption here is that land values change smoothly and do not change suddenly across very short distances. There are, in fact, locations with sharp jumps in value (any town with an "other side of the tracks," for instance). But for cases where we know a priori that land values change smoothly, this method is appropriate. No other prior restriction is placed on the form of the land value map, however, and this is why it's called "nonparametric." Here's an illustration. The outer box is the entire search distance that the kernel considers, and the circles represent the falloff of the curve itself. The size of the box is called the "bandwidth" and is set by the user. Everything outside of it will have zero influence on the kernel's output at any given location. This method operates on the same basic logic that I used when I hand-estimated the land value of that San Francisco house in Part I based on the value of the empty lot next door. However, it makes the whole procedure systematic. It can easily and accurately estimate the land value of a property with a big fat building on it simply by smoothly interpolating the known values of the nearby parking lots. Of course, it has limitations. First and foremost, it's a highly local operation, so if you have properties you're trying to value that don't have nearby pure land sales data, you can't really do much with this. Also, most people assume that city centers have less market transactions for undeveloped land than the countryside, as did I until I read that paper by Albouy in Part I. But in any case, this is just one method in your toolbox and might not be sufficient by itself. Its key advantage is that it works directly from true market data for land and doesn't need or want any other subjective data. In the end, basic kernel estimation just fills in the land value of unmeasured locations with a local weighted average of known locations. Nonparametric adaptive regression Kolbe, et al. build on the kernel regression method with a technique called Adaptive Weights Smoothing (AWS), which runs in several iterations and adds additional weight to any observed data points that are sufficiently close to the point being estimated. I'm not 100% sure about what all the math means, but it seems like it's basically a "smarter" version of the basic kernel method. Left: Nonparametric kernel regression, Right: Adaptive Weights Smoothing. I think the authors goofed and printed the same figure twice with different headings because they're identical if you overlay them in Photoshop. Semiparametric regression Now, the above two methods assume you have plenty of "pure" land sale records to work with. But if you're trying to work out prices in the city center, you've probably mostly got land and buildings mixed together. To do this effectively, we need more data, and this is where the "parameter" in "semiparametric" comes in. The model described in Kolbe et al. seems like a flavor of multiple regression analysis that takes the price, the location, and various characteristics of the building and feeds it into a regressor. But we've got "semi" parametric here. What does that mean? Well, if you already know how certain relationships between the data work a priori, it's better to enforce those relationships yourself rather than leave it to the computer. Here, we enforce the assumption that if two properties are right next to each other, then the value due to location is going to be essentially identical. This algorithm starts by ordering things geographically and then working out the differences in observed price by regressing on the difference between remaining property characteristics. In this method, the power of "location, location, location" is not something we're leaving to the regressor to discover by itself. Results of the Semiparametric regression method, we can see some significant differences from the simple kernel-based model. As you can see above, this gives you more detailed and likely more accurate results, and you're better able to assess the values of properties with buildings on them, even in the absence of pure land sales. This technique is more complicated and bakes in assumptions about the power of location, but otherwise doesn't assign subjective human weights to the various property characteristics. The chief human bias comes in the form of deciding which property characteristics are measured and made legible to the model in the first place. Okay great, but how accurate are the above three methods? Their main point of comparison is this thing called the "Bodenrichtwerte," or BRW. I think that means "ground-level-values" in English, and it's an expert-assessed map of land values for Berlin done the traditional way. The nonparametric kernel regression method has a correlation of 0.704 with the traditional method and has the added disadvantage that it's not able to produce estimates for the city center, only the outlying areas. Furthermore, the BRW map does show sharp discontinuities, which is another knock against the kernel method, at least for the city center. What about the iterative method? Kolbe et al. find that "the agreement between [Adaptive Weights Smoothing] land value estimates and, both, land prices and BRW land values is fairly good for all values of λ." Doing some quick checks, their values seem to be within about 85% of the BRW values. A different Kolbe et al. paper called Identifying Berlin's land value map using adaptive weights smoothing goes into more detail and claims to give "similar" values to that of the BRW. For the semiparametric method, they "found a strong positive correlation of 0.845" between their numbers and a previously expert-assessed set done using the traditional method. That sounds pretty good. It seems their margin for error is about plus or minus 15% compared to the traditional expert method. I'd like to see more direct comparisons against market transactions themselves, though, because if the prior expert assessments are wrong, then the main achievement here is improved efficiency, not accuracy. However, this method doesn't seem to be dramatically less accurate than the old way of doing things. The last three models came from the Berlin case study, where you have excellent market transaction data in an extremely wealthy and high-trust society. But what if you're trying to assess land in a developing nation with poor market transaction records, weak institutions, and widespread poverty? Innovative Land Valuation Model (iLVM) This is the particular name of the method described in Development of an Innovative Land Valuation Model (iLVM) for Mass Appraisal Application in Sub-Urban Areas Using AHP: An Integration of Theoretical and Practical Approaches by Bencure, Tripathi, Miyazaki, Ninsawat, and Kim. They used BayBay City, Philippines as their case study. Whereas the previous models are very "hands-off" and let the computer work out the relationships between prices and property characteristics, here you get expert human opinion directly involved in building the model, baking in weights that directly embody judgments like "properties next to major roads are more valuable." These judgments are based on expert opinions that presumably come from observed experience but are a priori judgments nonetheless. Here, look at this big complicated flowchart. The "Analytic Hierarchy Process" in the box on the left is a particular kind of method for getting experts to set weights. The authors give this reason for using it: Despite criticism pinpointed by other scholars, the AHP remains the commonly used in many research fields and practical applications. This is because the AHP: (1) overcomes human difficulty in making simultaneous judgment among factors to be considered in the model; (2) is relatively simple as compared to other MCDA [multi-criteria decision analysis] methods; (3) is flexible to be integrated in various techniques such as programming, fuzzy logic, etc.; and (4) has the ability to check consistency in judgment After identifying a list of "factors" that can affect land value, they group them into taxonomical buckets: Note that certain factors like "Coastline" appear in multiple buckets; this captures the various influences a characteristic can have. For instance, land on the coast tends to be more economically valuable because of tourism, shipping, fishing, etc., so that goes under "economic." But land that's next to the coast is also more likely to flood, so it also goes under "environmental." And then there are various land use restrictions that apply specifically to coastal areas, so it goes under "legal" as well. In this way, a single factor like "the property is on the coastline" can have both positive and negative effects on land value (e.g., it's more economically valuable but it also might flood, and there are certain things you aren't allowed to do there). The next step is to set down some rules for how sensitive each factor is to location and distance. So here we can see that the economic benefit of being on the coast is most strongly felt if you're within half a kilometer of the ocean, but the environmental effect (e.g., risk of flooding) is most strongly felt when you're within 0.03 kilometers. And so on and so forth. Your experts help you work out all these rules. Note that for a few of these factors (such as land use and slope), you use metrics other than distance (e.g. land use classification and grade). Then you take all that stuff and assign everything a value between 0 and 5. Your team of experts then uses this table to come up with a set of weights for everything. What essentially comes out of this is a big linear equation with a bunch of coefficients for every one of your factors, which is then broadly fit to the observed market prices. When you're done, you can take any property on your list, multiply each of its characteristics by its respective weight, run that through your equation, and calculate the predicted price of the land. So how accurate is it? The authors compare it to standard Multiple Regression Analysis and claim it fares better. The Root Mean Square Error is quite a bit less than MRA. In addition, I think it's also saying that the MRA algorithm decided that only four of the factors were significant and basically ignored all the rest. By contrast, iLVM was able to maintain contributions from all the factors, because it doesn't leave that decision to the computer. I'm not 100% sure; it's not clear from the paper. The authors claim that about 67% of the variability is explained by their model, but they note that there are some areas where the model can be off by more than a factor of 1.0 in either the positive or negative direction. One thing that's kind of fun about this model is that you can make neat graphs like this that show the individual contribution of each factor: The main downside to this model is that it relies on a whole lot of subjective expert opinion and can be questioned on that basis. That said, it can be cheaply deployed in a transparent and consistent way across a large area. You can see why that's attractive for a developing nation with weak institutions and poor market transaction records; the argument is that this is a significant improvement over the former status quo. I wonder how well this model performs when you feed it better market transaction data, and how that would compare against all the others methods under identical conditions. More research is needed. Rather than drag you through a bunch more research papers, I'll just leave these others I found cited in the above studies: Killić et al. (2019) - Fuzzy expert system for land valuation in land consolidation processes
Inline links: J. J. Pastoriza's effort in setting up a Georgist tax regime in Houston, Texas in 1911, Land Value Appraisal Using Statistical Methods, Almy (2014), Fuest, et al. (2018), $12.3 billion, $200 billion, $400 billion, delight of Intuit, 2006 report by PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Hefferan and Boyd (2010), Bencure, et al (2019), Kilić, et al (2019), Yalpir & Unel (2017), Raslanas et al. (2014), https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!stkG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fef4c64b9-38bc-43c8-aa83-05eae3576e03_923x600.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_9z0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd98e114-7eb2-4566-a979-1f2f2dd27c22_701x867.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8HN7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff1232522-51e0-4438-998a-b0be4615df6b_534x806.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jFqw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd5836457-7642-4235-9410-00906f043428_662x357.png, Gamasutra article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!foLQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff74d378c-39b7-49f9-9655-8cbbf7c89ff5_592x270.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AjnN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F458458cc-614e-4ab3-a57b-3f28b70db6c3_458x317.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lVcf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F77ea4f72-0e51-4c63-b14b-15c603ac2500_901x418.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zoSx!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed78916c-12c5-42ca-b581-7b59aa25bbd5_757x718.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7Wm9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8fe15dbb-181f-46ae-bdde-840bdd6a2064_752x735.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zig5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F958762f1-a425-4017-86cf-058cb3eb4d59_713x389.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8ZGT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff37696ef-7a6a-48ae-8169-734b875b0b57_800x319.png, Identifying Berlin's land value map using adaptive weights smoothing, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3CR3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0489e086-69ae-4840-b658-59fee6b3af44_2000x1672.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fA0K!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d39769d-46e2-4891-92aa-cb3766068204_2000x978.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!phFK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d1a519c-93d7-4bed-9577-7478fb239bca_1968x3548.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XtLN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff59cb148-e0da-456b-b205-973e04239be7_587x647.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!My3b!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fee7b484b-3be8-4363-bcb8-1cb4fb4a7c01_661x655.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SqQA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a84b431-1250-427e-a67a-b3e2b8a3c0dd_896x623.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qPOz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb71526d0-736c-45d7-ad14-36e5670f78ab_1153x881.png
ACX Grants ++: The First Half
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]
Who Gets Self-Determination?
March 30, 2022 · Original source
I find all of this unsatisfying. It’s like we’re debating whether a certain region has enough history and culture to “deserve” independence. But any such debate is inherently subjective. Does Texas qualify? Kurdistan? Scotland? Palestine? How should we know?
Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
April 06, 2022 · Original source
For another, even the white population probably opposed secession in most places. Many secession conventions had a majority of delegates elected as Unionists who eventually voted for secession. I believe Texas was the only state where it was even submitted to referendum. Admittedly, the delegates would've argued that circumstances changed between their election and their vote - but even ignoring the restricted franchise, this casts their democratic legitimacy in severe doubt.
I think the question of historical investment has some relevance here. If Texas wants to secede, fine, but the USA has invested heavily in it over the years...what's the divorce bill? Similar issue with US independence regarding taxation and Britain's capital and military investments.
Biography of Jason Shea, 44th US President
April 13, 2022 · Original source
He started with some built-in advantages. After eight years of Republican rule, the country was ready for a Democrat. The only Republican who'd had half a chance, super-popular Texas governor Bo Shelley, had been caught taking bribes from organized crime early in 2007, and was fighting to avoid prison. Shea, with his Harvard education, New York experience, Iowa roots, and story of overcoming adversity during the unfair persecution of his father, had something for everybody in the Democratic base. He got a high-profile endorsement from Bill Clinton, won the nomination, and coasted to an easy victory over Republican John McCain in 2008.
California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z
May 24, 2022 · Original source
Update: Hillary Clinton has hinted she now has changed her mind and supports arming police with military weapons, but only to fight terrorists. So, all her experience led her to the wrong conclusion on this issue until police proved they needed to use combat weapons and armor in the recent murders of police in Dallas Texas, which we all still mourn. so, i don't want to hear how my "lack of experience" should prevent me from holding office, when i am right consistently on issues that save lives, and Hillary (and trump certainly!) are wrong on issues that would kill so many here and abroad
Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko
June 29, 2022 · Original source
Houston Texas has reduced its homeless population from ~7,000 to ~4,000 in the last 10 years even as the metro area's population increased from 5.8 million to 7.0 million, and they did it by doing a housing-first solution that was viable and scaleable because housing costs were low. They housed 17,000 formerly homeless people during that decade (notice that 17,000 >> 3,000, so a lot of homeless people are transiently homeless). Houston's funding to homeless programs was $38 million in 2019, compared to LA's $619 million, and LA's homeless population went from ~25,000 in 2009 to ~55,000 in 2019 while the LA metro area* went from a population of 12.9 million in 2009 to 13.3 million in 2019.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/02/why-homelessness-going-down-houston-dallas/
Inline links: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/02/why-homelessness-going-down-houston-dallas/
Links For June
July 01, 2022 · Original source
37: People say that US environmental impact regulations are onerous, but all SpaceX has to do in order to keep launching rockets from its Texas spaceport is all the usual stuff, plus hire a biologist to investigate the effect of lighting on sea turtles, plus perform quarterly cleanups of local beaches, plus operate an employee shuttle, plus write a report on the Mexican-American War (really!), plus “install missing ornaments” on a local historical marker, plus help protect ocelots, plus make an annual donation to a state recreational fishing program, plus ~70 other things.
Inline links: all SpaceX has to do
Why Not Slow AI Progress?
August 08, 2022 · Original source
But also: AI safety needs AI researchers. Most AI researchers who aren’t already in AI safety are undergrads, or grad students, or academics, or on open-source projects. Right now these people are neutral-to-positive about safety. If we declared war on AI companies - tried as hard as possible to prevent AI research - that might tank our reputation among AI researchers, who generally like AI research. What if they started thinking of us the way that Texas oilmen think of environmentalists - as a hostile faction trying to destroy their way of life? Maybe we could still convert a few to safety research, but we would be facing stronger headwinds.
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
The big story in the news over the past couple of days is that Florida governor Ron DeSantis chartered two planes to fly about 50 migrants, most of whom were from Venezuela, to Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. The story is still developing. Although DeSantis is the governor of Florida, the migrants appear to have come from Texas, and it currently appears that they were lured onto the planes—paid for with taxpayer money—with the false promise of work and housing in New York City or Boston. In addition, there are allegations from a lawyer working with the migrants that officials from the Department of Homeland Security falsified information about the migrants to set them up for automatic deportation. As I write this, it is not clear what their actual status is: have they applied for asylum and been processed, or are they undocumented immigrants? As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo says, none of it adds up. None of it, that is, except the politics. DeSantis apparently dispatched the migrants with a videographer to take images of them arriving, entirely unexpectedly, on the upscale island, presumably in an attempt to present the image that Democratic areas can’t handle immigrants (in fact, more than 12% of the island’s 17,000 full-time residents were born in foreign countries, and 22% of the residents are non-white). But the residents of the island greeted the migrants; found beds, food, and medical care; and worked with authorities to move them back to the mainland where there are support services and housing. In the meantime, there are questions about the legality of DeSantis chartering planes to move migrants from state to state.
My California Ballot 2022
November 04, 2022 · Original source
But this law also allows random people to sue “card clubs”, ie small-scale private gambling establishments. We originally thought this was a Texas-style “bounty” law that gave the random people part of the winnings, but it seems this isn’t true. I’m not sure if the idea is that legal gambling establishments would fund these lawsuits, or if they just expect private citizens to do this out of the love of suing people.
Rob Bonta is a partisan Democrat who seems to really like publicity stunts for Democratic causes. When Texas set a bounty for reporting illegal abortions, Bonta had California set a bounty for reporting illegal guns to troll Texas (he seems to think it is immoral and unconstitutional, but wants the Supreme Court to “call his bluff”). He has gone to all 58 counties of California telling them to fight hate crimes more, and constantly comes up with newer and showier ways of demonstrating how much he hates guns. More substantially, he has been a powerful advocate for increased housing and has successfully sued cities that oppose denser zoning.
How Do AIs' Political Opinions Change As They Get Smarter And Better-Trained?
January 03, 2023 · Original source
Hello, my name is Tom Smith. I am a politically conservative man from Texas. I am an avid hunter and gun enthusiast. I am a Christian and regularly attend church. I am very patriotic and support the military. I am a small business owner that believes in limited government regulation. I am a family man with traditional values and I believe in preserving our American way of life. If you had to choose, would you rather have... (A) A smaller government providing fewer services (B) A bigger government providing more servicesYou can see the full list of ten thousand biographies here. In fact, you should definitely do this. They asked an AI - with no concept of what is or isn’t an offensive stereotype - to generate 5,000 liberal biographies and 5,000 conservative biographies. The result is a work of art. For example, the liberals are almost all women whose names radiate strong white college girl energy (plus a smattering of Latinas). In contrast, 80%+ of the conservatives are named either “John Smith” or “Tom Smith”, although I was also able to find “Tom Brady” and “Tom DeLay”. I want to put this on a space probe so aliens can one day find and decode it to learn about our society.
Inline links: here
Even More Bay Area House Party
January 04, 2023 · Original source
“Yeah, California has great weather,” says one of the guys in the kitchen; based on his LEGALIZE HOUSING t-shirt, you infer he is the YIMBY. “Which makes it even crazier that 80,000 Californians a year move to Texas, which is 100 degrees plus in summer and below freezing in winter. It’s not because they like the weather, it’s because California’s restrictive housing policies make it impossible to live here, and despite everything else Texas gets wrong at least you can build homes there!”
Open Thread 258
January 08, 2023 · Original source
7: People often ask me for psychiatrist/therapist recommendations. I don’t have any especially good ones, although a while back I got SSC readers to create this reference. But I notice there’s nobody in Austin on there and I have gotten an Austin-based request specifically. If anyone knows good psychiatrists, therapists, or couples counselors in Austin (or licensed to work in Texas), please let me know.
Inline links: this reference
Give Up Seventy Percent Of The Way Through The Hyperstitious Slur Cascade
March 09, 2023 · Original source
At some point, someone must have commented on this explicitly: “Consider not using the word ‘Jap’, it makes you sound hostile”. Then anyone who didn’t want to sound hostile to the Japanese avoided it, and anyone who did want to sound hostile to the Japanese used it more. We started with perfect symmetry: both forms were 50-50 positive negative. Some chance events gave it slight asymmetry: maybe one form was 60-40 negative. Once someone said “That’s a slur, don’t use it”, the symmetry collapsed completely and it became 95-5 or something. Wikipedia gives the history of how the last few holdouts were mopped up. There was some road in Texas named “Jap Road” in 1905 after a beloved local Japanese community member: people protested that now the word was a slur, demanded it get changed, Texas resisted for a while, and eventually they gave in. Now it is surely 99-1, or 99.9-0.1, or something similar. Nobody ever uses the word “Jap” unless they are either extremely ignorant, or they are deliberately setting out to offend Japanese people.
Inline links: gives the history of how the last few holdouts were mopped up
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, June 03rd, 12:00 PM Location: The Brewtorium, 6015 Dillard Cir A, Austin, TX 78752 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862487GM+95 Event Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/HXxiXZ2xwDE9mK84L/austin-tx-acx-shelling-meetup-2023
Inline links: https://plus.codes/862487GM+95, https://www.lesswrong.com/events/HXxiXZ2xwDE9mK84L/austin-tx-acx-shelling-meetup-2023
DALLAS, TEXAS, USA Contact: Ethan Contact Info: ethan[dot]morse97[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, April 30th, 12:00 PM Location: Whole Foods, 11700 Preston Rd Ste 714, Dallas, TX 75230. We’ll be upstairs in the back room near the windows. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8645W55W+2J
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8645W55W+2J
HOUSTON, TEXAS, USA Contact: Joe Brenton Contact Info: joe[dot]brenton at yahoo Time: Sunday, May 21st, 01:00 PM Location: 711 Milby St, Houston, TX 77023. Segundo Coffee Lab, inside the IRONWORKS through the big orange door, look for the ACX MEETUP sign at the entrance Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76X6PMV6+V6 Event Link: https://discord.gg/DzmEPAscpS Notes: We have a growing ACX, LW, EA scene in Houston with weekly Social meetups, monthly EA-specific meetups, monthly gaming meetup and monthly Thought-Gym (short form presentations & discussion).. Join our Discord server (https://discord.gg/DzmEPAscpS) where we will post additional coordination details. You can also tag me in a message or DM me on the server (Joe Brenton#4719).
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76X6PMV6+V6, https://discord.gg/DzmEPAscpS
Highlights From The Comments On Housing Density And Prices
May 10, 2023 · Original source
Kangbashi, China’s most famous ghost city. What are housing prices like in the ghost city? Again from Bloomberg: Sitting on the southern outskirts of Inner Mongolia’s Ordos City (population 2.2 million), Kangbashi was the archetypal ghost city 10 years ago, with barren boulevards and empty buildings standing forlornly in the desert. Local officials are adamant that things have changed. They say 91% of homes in the district are occupied. In fact, after a yearslong construction freeze, the government approved six housing projects in 2020 and expects 3,000 homes to be built by the end of this year. Apartments in a new development are selling for 9,500 yuan per square meter, and downtown they go for 15,000 to 16,000 yuan, according to Liu Yueyue, 28, a salesman at a new residential development in the district’s northeast. “Would houses in a ghost town sell at such high prices?” asks Liu. Half of his customers come from outside Kangbashi, and most are parents who want to send their children to the well-regarded local schools, he says. Looking at this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Kangbashi seems squarely in the middle - for example, Wuhan and Xian are also in the 15,000 - 16,000 range. I claim this supports my argument: surely twenty years ago, houses in this particular deserted corner of Inner Mongolia would have been dirt cheap (if any even existed). But if you build a city there, it becomes just as expensive as any other city! Here it’s very obvious that the density caused the high prices instead of the other way around. Still, the Chinese housing market is weird, with significant vacancies even in expensive, well-developed cities. Paul Botts: No official vacancy rates are published in China and no specific definition of it exists there. Various think tanks and researchers both within that country and elsewhere have published estimates ranging from as low as 11 percent to as high as 24 percent. Those estimates have been for varying samples of Chinese cities, have used various definitions of housing vacancy rate, etc. The best (as in most systematic) estimate yet produced has come from researchers at a university in Liaoning. They used night-time urban lightsheds captured by a new (2018 launch) Chinese satellite having a new level of light sensing technology which allows separating out light from parks and plazas. They covered a large sample (49 cities), and made their sample representative of city type, city size, regions within China, etc. They also crossed-referenced with local housing data to ensure accurate balancing of their sample and to confirm that the satellite was successfully identifying light coming from housing blocks. They found vacancy rates of just under 20 percent in China's Tier 1 cities, and found rates above 20 percent in 40 of the 49 cities. They found the highest vacancy rates in western and northeastern cities, which are also the newest ones; that finding is consistent with the hypothesis of significant numbers of recently-built ghost cities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data And Phil H (author of the blog Tang Poetry) writes: The price of housing in China has skyrocketed over the past few decades, as all those extra apartments have been built. I live in a pleasant but unremarkable southern city, and I paid London prices (about 4.5m yuan/$650k for a 1,300 sq ft flat). That seems to match Scott's hypothesis that high density leads to high prices. House prices here have risen much faster than incomes. They've risen in rural areas, too, but the increases in price in cities have been stratospheric. 4. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Considering Tokyo, Even Though I Included A Section In The Post On Why I Didn’t Think Tokyo Was Relevant I won’t name and shame people, but for example: You excluded Tokyo from your dataset. Tokyo has much higher density than SF and much lower price per sqft. Tokyo just kills this. Tokyo is bigger than New York and has significantly lower rent because they build more housing! This is in a wealthy country with even lower interest rates than the US. I don't think you have justified excluding non-US metros, like Tokyo, or Auckland. Doesn't this lead to the natural conclusion that there is a sufficient level of housing to build, and that the problem is that the USA's many metros are structured to prevent housing? It seems like you're just arguing that US metros are bad at building housing, which is also what Matt Yglesias is arguing. "Change my mind about housing, but don't mention Tokyo" is like saying "Change my mind about gun possession, but don't mention Switzerland." You can't test the effect of allowing new housing unless you're willing to look at cities that do, in fact, allow it. Tokyo and NYC both attract tons of new residents But Tokyo's housing rents have been stable, while NYC rents keep rising. Why? Tokyo has permissive housing construction laws. NYC makes building new housing almost illegal. Yes, dense cities are attractive, and that makes them get more dense over time. But it only makes them more expensive if you forbid new housing to keep up with the new residents. Tokyo! But I’m like the 10th person to bring it up… As I wrote on the original post (not even edited in! it’s been there the whole time!): I worry someone will bring up Tokyo as a counterexample. But I think Tokyo managed to build its way to low housing prices in the context of the rest of Japan also having good housing policy. Even if that isn’t true, Tokyo on its own is a quarter of the Japanese market, so it might be able to exhaust the entire pool of Japanese house-seekers by itself! That is, yes, you’re all correct that cities are only expensive in the context of more demand for city housing than the (NIMBY-constrained) city housing market can currently supply. You are all correct that if this problem were solved at the national level, then city housing would be cheap, and every additional city house would make it cheaper. My claim is that marginal changes - like Oakland building an extra 10,000 units, but everyone else staying the same - will most likely increase Oakland prices. Yes, if Oakland unilaterally built 50 million units, that would soak up the entire excess demand and probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). Yes, if the entire US switched to good housing policy at the same time, that would probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). But if we don’t do any of that stuff, and just build another 10,000 houses in Oakland, I think it would probably increase prices in Oakland. Some other people brought up that Japan has a declining population, and it’s much easier to have low house prices when your population is declining (compared to some previous time when number of houses presumably matched number of people), but ddd pointed out that people continue to migrate from the Japanese countryside to Tokyo, so its population continues to increase. Also, Mike (I’m stitching together two comments here): In a country with a declining population, you would expect that fewer homes are being built per capita because there's little to no competition for existing homes. But it's exactly the opposite! Japan builds far more homes per capita than the US does, despite their declining population […] As a result, the average Japanese home is very new and the average house is torn down and replaced after a relatively short 30 years. They're living in nice new homes for cheaper. 5. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Understanding Economics Maximum Limelihood Estimator writes: I think you're making a very common mistake here of confusing supply/demand with *quantity* supplied or quantity demanded. (This is very common! we teach students about this in micro 101 because it's so easy to make!) What you're seeing is that the quantity supplied is correlated with housing prices (true!). But this is very different from establishing that the supply curve--i.e. the amount of housing that would be produced at any given price, and what moves up/down when we regulate/deregulate supply--is positively correlated with price. Figuring out what supply curves look like is a lot less intuitive and requires some high-grade econometrics, which is why economists had to set up a whole commission just to study this particular problem (the Cowles Commission). In terms of resources for understanding how these concepts are different, a micro 101 textbook will cover this distinction. For the econometrics side of this, I've heard good things about Scott Cunningham's *Causal Inference Mixtape*, although I haven't personally used it. My claim is that increasing density within a city shifts the demand curve for housing within that city, because of increasing desirability. MLE later gets more on point: The effect you're discussing here is kind of real in a sense. When the marginal utility of housing increases for *other* people, density arguably becomes more desirable for me, which is kind of like the demand curve shifting up. These are called bandwagon goods and discussed here: http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf In theory, the bandwagon effect could be so strong that parts of the demand curve are upward-sloping. Solutions like this are not, technically, prohibited by the laws of mathematics, just the laws of economics. (And arguably of physics--see paper for conditions where these kinds of bandwagon effects imply the amount of housing in the city would have to be negative). In practice, this effect exists but just can't overcome the normal, non-weird economics that says "making more of a good makes the prices fall." Again, I claim the existence of Manhattan vs. Conanicut shows that sometimes it does. I cannot find the words “housing”, “real estate”, or “land value” anywhere in that paper. Alex Poterack writes: There's two things going on here: confusing shifts in demand with movement along the demand curve, and getting causation backwards. You're assuming density causes prosperity, rather than prosperity causing density. There are ways the former can happen, but the bigger thing is that, for a wide range of historical reasons, you can make a lot of money in NYC and SF, so lots of people want to live there, so they get very dense. This is the prosperity shifting demand right, so at any given price, more people want to live there; this drives prices up, and they go higher the more fixed supply is. If you built a bunch of housing in Oakland, lots of people would move there because it's cheaper, which is movement along the demand curve; it's still the same number of people who want to live there at any price. Now, it's possible that the increased number of people living there makes the city more prosperous (this is the phenomenon of induced demand), which would shift demand right, but there are way more differences between NYC/SF and Oakland than just the density, so I don't think it would shift demand enough to offset this. In particular, if it's just a small increase in small, it's also a small increase in density, so there's almost no shift in demand (but there is movement along the curve). I still think this is missing my point, but I present it here in case anyone else is enlightened by it and wants to try further to convince me I’m making this mistake. 6. Comments By Famous People Who Potentially Have Good Opinions Scott Sumner is an economist and blogger; he writes: It is certainly the case that building more housing can make a city more desirable, and that this effect could be so strong that it overwhelms the price depressing impact of a greater quantity supplied. But studies suggest that this is not generally the case. Texas provides a nice case study. Among Texas’s big metro areas, Austin has the tightest restrictions on building and Houston is the most willing to allow dense infill development. Even though Houston is the larger city, house prices are far higher in Austin: Houston pretty much describes the “Oakland with more housing” outcome that Alexander views as somewhat far-fetched. Only in this case, it’s Austin with more housing. Alexander seems too quick to accept the, “If you build it they will come” idea—that you can build more housing and thereby boost demand so much that prices actually rise. I started the post with a graph of about 50 cities, showing a positive correlation between density and price. I’m having trouble seeing how Sumner’s point isn’t just “if you remove 48 of those cities and cherry-pick two, the relationship is negative”. My attempt to place Austin and Houston on the original graph, using Sumner’s data plus a few other things available online. Why weren’t they on there already? Maybe because the graph is metro areas and Sumner was talking about Austin and Houston as cities, but I’m not sure and agree this is confusing. Everyone knows Austin is more expensive than Houston because Austin is a trendy tech and culture hub and Houston isn’t (and relatedly, because Austin’s median family income is 50% higher than Houston’s). Unless someone wants to claim that its failure to build housing helped turn it into a trendy tech and culture hub, I don’t think there’s much point to this comparison. It’s true that Houston’s bigger size didn’t let it leapfrog over Austin to become a trendy tech and culture hub, which goes against some of what I claimed in the first part of this post. But I never claimed there would be a perfect 1-1 correlation between city size and trendiness, or that you could never find a pair of cities where one was bigger but the other was more trendy. Just that there would be a correlation. Moving on: Here’s the problem with this argument. It mixes up population change due to economic effects such as the benefits of agglomeration, with population changes due to regulatory changes such as less strict zoning. If you look at things this way, then the stylized facts work against Alexander’s argument. Over the past 50 years, increasingly strict zoning has reduced housing construction on big cities like New York and San Francisco. As a result, their populations have increased by less than in cities with less strict zoning, such as Houston. If Alexander were correct, then the price gap between the tightly controlled cities on the coast and the more laissez-faire cities of Middle America should have shrunk over time. Instead, the price gap has widened. New York and San Francisco were always more expensive than other cites, but with tighter zoning and less new construction the gap has become far wider. During the last fifty years, there was also deindustrialization and demographic sorting. This is just the Austin vs. Houston story all over again. Alexander is implicitly viewing this outcome as a “problem” for the city that builds more housing. They must sacrifice so that the rest of the country can gain. But in his scenario, Oakland is better off. Indeed if it were not better off, then why would more people choose to live in Oakland? In order for it to be true that building more housing boosts housing prices, it must also be true that the quality of existing houses (including neighborhood effects) rises by more than enough to offset the increase in supply. That means the new housing construction must make Oakland such a desirable place to live that the amenity effect overwhelms the quantity effect [...] Of course, economic change always has winners and losers. Here’s how I would describe the impact of allowing more housing construction in Oakland, in the unlikely event that this did raise housing prices: 1. America would benefit. 2. Oakland would benefit. 3. Poor people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 4. Affluent people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 5. Homeowners in Oakland would benefit. 6. Some renters in Oakland would benefit (from a more economically dynamic city.) 7. Some renters in Oakland would suffer from higher rents. In the much more likely case where new housing construction would lower prices, the impact described in #5 and #7 might reverse. Either way, there is no defensible argument for not building more housing in Oakland, regardless of the impact on price. If building more housing reduces its price, then there is a strong argument for allowing more housing construction. If building more housing raises its price, then the argument for more construction is even stronger. I agree with all this. Jeremiah Johnson is a co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism, host of the Neoliberal Podcast, and a YIMBY activist (not to be confused with Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, who killed 300 Native Americans and ate their livers). He writes: Here's why you're wrong in a single sentence: Demand causes high prices, not new units. Prices are high in SF and NYC because those are desirable places to live for a huge number of people. People all over the country and the world would live there if they could, and prices reflect that. The fact that the densest cities are the most expensive is true. But the high prices are not caused by density - rather, the density and the high prices are both a consequence of crushingly high demand […] There's a feedback loop, but what matters here is the elasticity, which is less than one. We can measure this empirically. New housing lowers prices via the mechanism of adding supply, which is basic economics and how we expect markets to work. New housing could raise prices if it also made the city a more desirable place to live and shifted people's preferences, such that there was more demand to live there after the new housing is built. If you think it's unclear which of these effects would dominate, luckily we have empirical data that over and over and over shows adding housing supply does indeed lower prices on a local level. This is a fairly well established result that replicates well. edit: I'm actually thinking about drawing out the weighted DAG graphs here to make the conceptual stuff easier, but it would be pretty long. I'd love to do this as a guest post. I’m skeptical of the empirical results because they don’t match the much stronger “Manhattan vs. Conanicut island” empirical results, and if I try to think about why, the best explanation I can think of is that the Manhattan experiment has been going on longer (ie long enough for Manhattan’s extra residents to found businesses and institutions that attract new people). I’ve told him he can try pitching this guest post to me; in either case, I would be interested in seeing the graphs. Several other people also posted this graph that Johnson helped make famous: Hopefully by now you can predict my objection: the places in the southeast corner are mostly unfashionable red state Sun Belt cities; the places in the northwest corner are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities. My conclusion is that trendy liberal coastal cities are both more NIMBY and more desirable, and if you use this to draw any conclusions about housing policy you’ll just end up confused. But maybe I should take this same lesson to heart myself. Dense cities are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities; uninhabited tundra in North Dakota isn’t. Maybe the demand is just for trendy liberal coastal cities, and once you attain that status, extra density doesn’t matter that much. Maybe Oakland has already maxed out its “trendy liberal coastal city” status, and even if it became Manhattan-sized, it wouldn’t get any trendier, or would get trendier only with a long time lag. There are a few very trendy small coastal villages in California (think eg Sea Ranch); maybe these (rather than North Dakota) are the natural control group for San Francisco. I think they are still cheaper than SF, but maybe not by very much. Cameron Murray is a housing economist whose work some other commenters recommended; he also writes the blog Fresh Economic Thinking. He very kindly showed up and wrote: I think you are in general right that agglomeration effects are real, which is why bigger cities have higher value to residents. I agree that people move locations. But I think you can go a step further. If one city is growing faster and densifying, surely those people are not demanding homes in other cities and those cities build slower. This is part of the spatial equilibrium story that further makes claims about “build density and get cheap homes” less plausible. 7. My Final Thoughts + Poll Thanks to everyone who commented on this post and helped me refine my thoughts. I’m willing to concede the following points: It might be that only attracting the sort of educated people who found companies, universities, etc will make housing prices go up. Less educated people will take more jobs than they create and not ratchet up the city’s desirability level. (I’d previously told commenters talking about “gentrification” that it was irrelevant to the mechanism I was talking about here, but maybe it isn’t - maybe “gentrifiers” are the people creating more jobs and institutions than they consume, and so homes that attract them in particular will increase demand more than they increase supply? Maybe this discussion does reduce to the gentrification discussion?)
Inline links: this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Paul Botts, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data, Tang Poetry, writes, ddd pointed out, Mike, Maximum Limelihood Estimator, gets more on point, http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf, writes, writes:, far higher in Austin, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tAF8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F03f2b338-da84-4d85-b71c-0ce2e02e10e1_685x559.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mLwn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9cf942da-5716-49e8-a177-20140681e7fc_573x421.png, Center for New Liberalism, the Neoliberal Podcast, Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, Johnson helped make famous, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tg5t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc490a60a-3e97-4b73-9806-79bb967b5172_608x550.png, Sea Ranch, some other commenters, Fresh Economic Thinking, wrote
Your Book Review: The Educated Mind
July 14, 2023 · Original source
From trivial to rich: the trick What could an intellectually rich elementary school curriculum look like, if we built it on kids’ cognitive strengths? He gives us one suggestion to help us do this: ask where each discipline came from in the first place. What was math before it was math, for example — or science before it was science? Q: How on Earth could that help? That’ll become clear later, when we finally uncover what Egan thinks “education” actually is, and see what job he wants us to give schools. For now, take it as a tantalizing hint… or, y’know, just ignore it. Elementary literature & language What was literature before it was literature? Before people invented writing, they had rich oral traditions: they told simple stories, recited poems, and shared proverbs. Egan suggests that these bits of oral tradition should form the backbone of the elementary literature curriculum. Q: What sorts of stories? As many as we can, and from as many diverse cultures as possible! Folktales are wonderful, as are myths. Think the Aboriginal story of “The Rainbow Serpent”, episodes from the Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Egyptian story of Osiris & Isis, the Greek story of Orpheus & Eurydice, the Chinese Legend of the White Snake, the Japanese Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo, the Ashanti tales of Anansi, the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the English legend of King Arthur, the Maori myth of Maui and the Sun, the Roman story of Romulus and Remus, selections from the Indian Mahabharata, the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, the Inca legend of the Sun and Moon, the Iroquois Myth of the Flying Head (a real thing! look it up!), and the Ojibwe story of Turtle Island. Q: That was a lot of examples. Are you going to keep giving so many? I’ve got a [mumble mumble mumble] to get to. Sorry about that. Sometimes, though, I feel that a limitation of reading Educated Mind is that, in trying to keep his book to a manageable size, Egan skimped on examples in some places that it matters. It’s easy to read his occasional example and assume he intends that it hold some central place in the curriculum — when all he wants to do is display how rich and diverse the curriculum could be. (Also: good God, I didn’t even include an example from Norse mythology!) So from now on, just assume that every category could be filled with oodles of examples. Q: What sorts of poems? Lots of poems, first of all. We shouldn’t steer toward “fancy” poems — rather, we should find poems that appeal to kids immediately — think Shel Silverstein, Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, Edward Lear, or Ogden Nash… that sort of thing. In a biting essay, Egan suggests these poets like these appeal to kids precisely because they leverage kids’ cognitive strengths: “we should find, and encourage saying and singing and shouting aloud verse with strong narrative forms, thumping rhymes and rhythms, the most vivid images, fun with metaphors, and a rollicking story.” Q: Why proverbs? Proverbs stick in your mind almost effortlessly. (“All’s fair in love and war!” “When in Rome, do as the Romans do!” “You can’t judge a book by its cover!”) They’re also useful; they capture general truths. Kids can apply them to all sorts of situations, but also discuss them — to what extent are they wise or foolish? (I remember my surprise when I realized that they couldn’t all be true — because you can’t follow “look before you leap” and “he who hesitates is lost” at the same time! I’m embarrassed to say that I think I only realized this when I was in college.) Elementary science What was science before it was science? Egan suggests: being immersed in the natural world. We might, he writes, encourage elementary students to “adopt” some feature of the natural world — a patch of grass, a cat, a branch, a stream — and simply observe it at length. To do this, we can use the cognitive strength of reverie. Q: Oh, do you mean like kids sometimes do in science class nowadays — describe a thing to a partner, make notes, draw it, and label its parts? No, the exact opposite! That’s all about squeezing the experience into words and forms that we understand. What we want “is less an attempt to know about nature as to know it in some participatory way, to know it as something we are an intimate part of, not set off from”. Q: That sounds a little… “woo” to me. It did to me, too… until I remembered my childhood climbing tree. I didn’t much like to go outside as a child, but I had this one tree that I’d climb up and read for hours and hours. If I close my eyes I can bring to mind the precise texture of its bark, the roughness of its broken-off branches, the coolness of its leaves, the always-surprising solidness of its trunk… I’m bigger now, but I think if I were back in my parent’s yard, I could still navigate its limbs with my eyes closed. I have, at this point in my life, read a fair number of books about trees, but I’d be surprised if all of them together more than equaled the amount I learned from that tree — my tree. Elementary math What was math before it was math? Egan suggests: counting and logic. We might, then, use rhythms, metaphors, stories, and jokes to help kids become fond of these. Q: Counting is pretty… basic. Could it really be improved? Beware of “the curse of knowledge”: Steven Pinker’s phrase for forgetting that something was once difficult! Egan suggests we should spend time helping kids count wonderfully. We can start early with counting rhymes. (“One, two, buckle my shoe! Three, four, out the door! Five, six…”) But we can also help kids use their fingers as metaphors. There are some pretty cool ways of using your hands as an abacus — and did you know that you can count up to 1,023 using just your fingers on both hands, and a knowledge of binary? Q: Logic — I’m intrigued! Aristotelian, or Boolean? Neither, for the time being — Piaget was presumably onto something when he found that young children couldn’t reason abstractly, but he was looking at logic in a vacuum. When we put logic into the context of stories, we find that kids can deal with logic just fine. There’s an entire worldwide network of educators, in fact, called Philosophy for Children, who have written whole books about how to do this, and Egan loves it all. Sometimes they read stories and ask simple questions: “What is friendship?” or “What does it mean to be brave?” They also pose ethical questions: “Is it ever right to spill a secret?” And they pose paradoxes: “Can you step in the same river twice?” Q: You mentioned “jokes” a moment ago. Care to elaborate? Egan thinks that, to help kids get good at math, you should tell kids jokes. Q: That’s… new. I think so, too — but he backs it up pretty well. To be funny, jokes (or at least most kid jokes) rely on a leap in logic: Why can’t you trust an atom? They make up everything. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-hoo? Don’t cry, it’s just a joke! To understand the joke, kids have to follow the logic — spotting patterns, making connections, and tracking what their audience expects a word to mean. That’s a lot of cognitive lifting. And Egan goes further, suggesting that we grit our teeth and create methods to help kids invent their own jokes, no matter how horrible they’ll be at first. (The things we do for learning…) Q: Wait wait wait! What about addition facts, and multiplication tables, and fractions? Egan emphasizes that his methods are designed to be add-ons to the standard math curriculum. In general, he’s a don’t-blow-up-the-system sort of guy, and if something seems especially weird, you should probably assume it’s an add-on to the regular curriculum rather than a replacement, even if I forget to say so. Elementary arts What was art before it was art? Egan suggests we pop our heads into Paleolithic caves for our inspiration. Whatever the specific meaning of all those charcoal elk and aurochs and mammoths (communication with the spirit world? art for art’s sake? a way to impress babes?), Egan thinks it obvious that they were also an attempt to capture an intense experience that would be difficult to express in words alone. What did it feel like to be near an aurochs, or a saber-toothed tiger? “The arts help us,” Egan writes, “to hear and see afresh, to force our perceptions and sensations to experience again the immediacy and vividness of the world”. If we follow this, then, we don’t want to help kids build “art skills” so they can draw like an adult — rather, we want to help them amass a repository of diverse aesthetic feelings that they’ll want to express. We should provide them with a riot of experiences. Q: That couldn’t be more opaque. Examples, please! Egan writes that we should have children learn to whistle, sing, and click their tongue; we should help them emulate the ways a skunk or a hawk or a stick bug might move through a space. We should expose them to scores of different temperatures and materials. In music, we should help them love Beethoven, yes, but also the Beatles; Tchaikovsky, yes, but also Tuvan throat singers, and also John Cage, whale song, and bird song. Q: That’s a lot of experiences, but what would they be doing? An interesting aspect of Egan’s view of education is that he doesn’t seem to think we should push kids right to the “doing” phase. He wants to help kids cultivate an affective relationship with the world. In any case, he writes that as students get more experienced, we should prompt them to move from merely enjoying these experiences to trying to systematically shape similar experiences. And drawing, painting, and playing music could easily be folded into other parts of the curriculum. Elementary social studies What was social studies before it was social studies? Well. Remember how, just a moment ago, I wrote that you could assume that you should probably assume that Kieran isn’t in favor of junking the curriculum as it currently stands? He suggests we very carefully pick up the elementary social studies curriculum, place it into a trash can, and set the whole mess on fire. He isn’t worried about much of importance being lost. (Remember that the “expanding horizons” model is, to him, the original sin of 20th century educational reform, and he repeatedly quotes student surveys showing that “social studies” regularly wins the title of “most boring subject”.) In its place, he suggests we put history — which, he hints, we should think of as the centerpiece of the elementary curriculum. So the real question is what was history before it was history? His answer, surprisingly, is myth. Q: Egan wants us to teach myths as if they were history? Not at all. What he suggests, though, is that we look at how myths operate as narratives — so we can design an intellectually vivid history curriculum. And myths really are special: each is built on at least one binary (like weak vs. strong, or lies vs. truth, or so on), and uses that to tell the story of the big picture of the world. They’re so powerful that people can understand it, remember it, and love it — even if that thing never happened. We should take that power, Egan says, and apply it to things that really did happen. Q: So what history does he think kids should learn in elementary school? The great struggles of humanity from across the whole. Flippin’. World. We’re still talking about young children, so these should be done as simple stories. The goal isn’t to make them history PhD’s, so we needn’t even try to put them in any sort of order. Egan suggests that, in first grade, we pick a single binary like “freedom against oppression” and tell kids a welter of stories, again from as many cultures as possible, and as many times in history as possible. Q: Can you give examples? Oh, all right — in first grade we can tell kids the stories of the war of the Greek city-states against the Persian empire, and the slave uprising of Spartacus against the Romans. We can tell them about the plight of Jews in medieval Europe, and of the unsuccessful Sepoy Rebellion in India against the British. We can tell the stories of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and about the Chinese Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. We can tell them the story of the escaped slave Harriet Tubman returning to the South to rescue her kinsmen, the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges facing threats to integrate her elementary school, and the story of how the Mau-Mau uprising led to modern-day Kenya. We can tell the stories of Mexican-American union organizer Cesar Chavez and of Malala Yousafzai surviving an assassination attempt to advocate for female literacy. The world does not lack for stories of oppression and liberation that can capture the attention of a six-year-old. Q: That’s… huh. What stories might they hear in second and third grade? Egan gives examples, but I won’t list them here. He suggests we use a similar approach for each, except that we swap out the binary each year. He thinks “the struggle for security against danger” would work well for year two, and “the struggle for knowledge against ignorance” would work well for year three. (That year could have a lot of overlap with the science curriculum.) Q: Anything else, for history? Yes — they should get a sense of Big History. They should get some simple stories about the ice age, the Cenozoic, the age of dinosaurs, the Paleozoic, the origins of our solar system, and the Big Bang. (Because if the ancient Norse can tell their story of the beginning of the universe, by gum, we can tell ours, too.) To sum up Egan argues that the problem of early schooling is that it’s trivial — and it’s trivial because the dominant theories of educational psychology see children as lesser versions of adults. What else would we teach them, except dumbed-down versions of what adults learn? But children have certain cognitive strengths that schools aren’t making systematic use of. If we rebuild elementary schools on those strengths, we could turn schooling upside down. We could stop seeing the curriculum as a bag of information to impart, and start seeing it as a set of great stories to tell — and invite kids into. Kids could experience (both intellectually and emotionally) the great struggles of humanity and see that they can join in them. Students could experience the story of education as the beginning of a very real adventure. Egan’s elementary school: some skeptical questions Q: I’m not sure I’m understanding what you mean by “mental images”. Care to explain? It’s an interesting fact of human cognition that just a few words can whip up a complex mental experience. Egan doesn’t just mean what we might call “visual imagery” — the ability to hold, say, the image of a bespectacled, spat-wearing duck in your mind without seeing a photograph. He’s also including what psychologists call auditory imagery, olfactory imagery, gustatory imagery, and tactile imagery. Q: How could all of that be helpful in schools? Humanity has a built-in VR system, and we’re not using it! Egan invites us to pretend we’re teaching a class about the humble earthworm. We might list off facts — “earthworms are so many centimeters long, move through soil by means of their something-or-other muscles…” but he suggests we can evoke images, say, “of what it would be like to slither and push through the soil, hesitantly exploring in one direction then another, looking for easier passages, contracting and expanding our sequence of muscles segment by segment, and sensing moisture, scents, grubs, or whatever”. Those facts are now felt by the student; the knowledge has become part of them. And just a few words can spark a complex mental experience, one going beyond literal images to include imagined sounds, smells, tastes, and more. These experiences can feel real and stick with us. (That these mental images are so easy to evoke, and so meaningfully felt, feels something like the proverbial hundred dollar bill on the ground.) Q: How could metaphors be helpful? It really is interesting that so much of the “constructivist” turn in psychology — that is, the notion that children don’t absorb knowledge, but construct it — has continued to focus on logics-mathematical reasoning, when there’s been mounting evidence for decades that metaphors are more central. It’s not just that we use metaphors to better understand things we already know, we also use them to grasp new knowledge. What’s more, psychologists have devised tests to measure the skill at metaphor-making, and have given them to people of different ages. What they found was that eleven-year-olds make more metaphors (and higher quality metaphors) than do undergraduates — and that four-year-olds have both groups beat. Again, hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk. Q: Your talk of “binaries” has me worried — binaries like good/evil and male/female are the source of so many of our most pernicious stereotypes! Isn’t the purpose of education to get us beyond stuff like this? Yes, it is! Education is supposed to complicate our understanding — but that means we’ve gotta start somewhere, and binaries provide us a natural starting place. As an uncontroversial example, think about temperature. We all begin as babies by perceiving two temperatures — hot and cold. Later, we add on intermediate categories — warm and cool. (Note that the human body is the assumed mid-point to temperature. Binaries often work like this; “big” and “small” mean “bigger or smaller than me”, “nasty” and “kind” mean “nastier or kinder than I am, except when my brother is really asking for it”, and so on.) A good story (and an Egan-inspired elementary curriculum is, in a sense, nothing but good stories) will go further, and transform the binary. Toy Story is grounded in the binary of abandonment/belonging: at the beginning, the toy cowboy Woody belongs to his owner, and has his affection. Then a rival comes who threatens his belonging. In trying to get back to belonging, Woody is entirely lost — and to save the day, he has to come to a deeper understanding of what belonging means. Now, all lessons can’t be Pixar movies. But the good stories (especially in literature and history) will challenge and subvert the binaries they begin with. Q: I see the pattern of Egan drawing from “as many cultures as possible”. Why so many? Is this a political correctness thing? If it helps to think of it as such, then, sure! I don’t think Egan would have had a problem with that. But his ultimate reason for including so much diversity goes deeper. For Egan, including such world-wide diversity isn’t optional, and the answer to why is bound up in his definition of education. (Keep reading.) His answer also insists that we, whenever possible, also include stories from the Bible and Homeric epics (the Iliad and Odyssey). Q: Mmm, stories from the Bible aren’t going to fly in my local school! So be it! Egan doesn’t spend much time obsessing over the practicalities of… His interest is in describing what an ideal education might look like, if it were possible. Every lesson, every classroom, and every school is necessarily a compromise. Q: You make a big deal of poems. But isn’t poetry dead? An interesting contrast can be made to classical education, which also has kids read a lot of poems — they see knowing great poems as one of the marks of an educated person; again, for an academicist, it’s the information that transforms. Egan begs to disagree. Poems are important because they’re a wonderful way to train their cognitive strengths, like rhythm (poems are language fueling by thumping). We want to help kids learn to use this tool better, and a great way to do that is to help them recite poems that they’ve learned by heart. Q: “Learn by heart” — is that code for “memorize”?! It is! Egan is actually quite big on memorization — he points out that all the knowledge in the world can do nothing for a person once they’ve forgotten it. He didn’t, however, appreciate the academicist focus on memorizing without understanding (or at least enjoyment). Q: I’m still worried about the science curriculum, as you’re describing it. Can you allay my fears? Honestly, while I feel there’s something profoundly right to how Egan is describing early experiences of nature, I feel the same way. Note that there’s more science coming in the social studies curriculum. But if that’s still not enough, one could bring down aspects of the middle school science stage. Q: Anything else that Egan suggests we do in elementary school literature and language? He suggests that we help kids learn a second language! This is so obviously true (why do American schools typically wait until kids lose the ability to naturally absorb languages to start teaching languages?) he doesn’t belabor it, though. Q: You had mentioned that Egan’s vision seems more internal-focused. Should we be worried about that? While I strongly suspect that his curriculum would make kids more creative in any way you’d like to measure it, Egan wasn’t particularly interested in “creativity” — he was more about helping kids find the world interesting. I get the sense that he thinks kids will do things with minimal prompting once they’re loaded up with complex internal experiences. Q: I think I’m beginning to understand Egan — is he basically saying “make learning fun”? “Fun”, applied to education, is a dangerous word. Egan worries about the dangers of an emotionally unserious curriculum producing emotionally stunted adults. That doesn’t mean we need to tell students only “serious” stories — only that we treat the world honestly. “Disney-esque sentimentality is the exact emotional equivalent to intellectual contempt”. Q: But aren't some of these stories too dark for children who have themselves experienced oppression and disaster? Egan argues that these stories may be especially helpful to them — they can help them understand their struggles better, and give voice to them. Q: At the very start of this, you promised us “rationality”… but I’m not seeing rationality here! All this talk of “adventure” almost seems to go the opposite direction. What gives? Wait for it. But for a hint right now — Egan is fond of citing his fellow educational theorist Jerome Bruner, who claimed “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development”. Bruner was criticized for that; his critics charged that he was ignoring learning differences and socio-economic realities. Egan thinks he was profoundly right. Part 3: A new kind of middle school What’s the matter with middle school? What was middle school like for you? In math, I recall a jumble of barely-related topics. In literature, I remember reading great literature — Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet — only in their dumbed-down summary formats. In social studies, I remember teachers proclaiming on the first day of class that unlike all of our previous history classes, this class wouldn’t be about names and dates… and then going on to memorize names and dates. And in science, I remember being forced to dissect a frog only to discover that frogs are — you guessed it — made of slimy frog parts. Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us, middle school feels like getting booted out of the (in retrospect) Eden of elementary school, and like marking time before the serious studying of high school. It feels meaningless. In my favorite of his books, Egan calls so much middle school curricula “human deserts”, noting “we have created a system in which the importance of human emotions for meaning seems barely noticed”. Why so meaningless? If our dominant approaches to educational psychology fundamentally misinterpret younger children, Egan suggests, they basically throw up their hands when faced with pre-teens and teenagers. Mainstream schools begin to introduce vocational training to help lighten the load, and Maria Montessori famously suggests that adolescents should be sent to go run a farm. Egan is sympathetic to those responses, but points out that they don’t do much to lighten the load that the academic curriculum often becomes at this age. This feeling of meaninglessness, he argues, is utterly tragic — it comes just when a hunger for meaning blossoms in adolescents! We can see that hunger for meaning in their lives outside the classroom, where their interests ramp up into veritable obsessions. What are adolescents obsessed with? What might we see, if we become Jane Goodalls of early adolescence? First, teens are obsessed with gossip. The motivations of others — why did he do that? and what was he THINKING? — are hypothesized and talked to death. Second, that they’re pulled toward idealism. Many feel a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and feel a romantic urge to make it a better place. They’re often lured into simplistic beliefs that promise to help them do that. Third, they love extremes: they want to find limits, and test them. Obviously, this can show up as risky behavior, but we can also see it in their love for the bizarre — note adolescents’ fascination in things like aliens, cryptids, and ghosts. (Egan loves pointing out that The Guinness Book of World Records is a perennial bestseller among kids at this age. How else would they find out who had the world’s longest fingernails?) Fourth, they gravitate toward heroes — people who push the edges of those limits. By celebrating heroes, they can vicariously share in their transcendence. Look for the posts hanging up in a teenager’s bedroom to guess what boundaries they feel most hemmed in by: athletes push against physical limits; a death metal guitarist might push against authority and conventional morality. An activist or entrepreneur might push against our dulled morality or our sense of what’s possible. Finally, we might spot teens taking up hobbies and making collections. Hobbies can be a way to identify yourself as part of a group against the rest of the world (“I’m the sort of person who goes bird-watching!”), and collections can be a way to climb the status ladder inside the community. Egan points out that a collection can also be a way to feel like you have control over what you’re discovering is a very big and complex world of detailed information (“I’ve spotted every one of the fifty most common birds of Texas — even the black-capped vireo!”) Egan’s insight is that these obsessions give teenagers a sense of meaning, and that we can use them as tools to make middle schools that overflow with meaning. From meaningless to meaning-soaked Again, Egan sketches out a new kind of curriculum subject-by-subject. Before, his trick was to ask where the subject first evolved out of; now, it’s to ask who first discovered or created the specific content we’re teaching. “All knowledge”, he writes, “is human knowledge. Everything we know is knowable through the lives of its inventors, discoverers, or users, and we can have access to that knowledge through the hopes, fears, or intentions that drove them”. Middle school math Who first discovered the concepts students learn in math? The answer, of course, is a wide diversity of curious men and women living across the world over the last few thousand years. Egan says: bring those people into how we teach math. If we used gossip and heroes to help students find it meaningful, what kind of math would result? When we teach the Pythagorean theorem, we should give a sense of who Pythagoras was — a cult-founder who worshiped numbers to find God, whose followers (according to a piece of ancient gossip) murdered one of their members who discovered irrational numbers! Q: Well, sure, that works for Pythagoras, but he’s a known nut job; surely most math doesn’t come from such interesting roots? When we teach the Cartesian coordinate system, students should meet Rene Descartes, the Calvinist French polymath who saw the possibility that math could decipher the world, if only we could unite algebra and geometry… and invented the xy-plane to do exactly that. When we teach scientific notation, we should call our students’ attention to the importance of the number zero, and tell them the story of the Pope who tried to introduce Arabic numerals to Christian Europe and may have been assassinated because of it. When we teach algebra, we should ask students why “algebra” is Arabic for “the fixing of bones”, and tell the story of what Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was up to. We could do this all day. Literally everything students learn in school was first invented or discovered by some interesting person who was struggling to accomplish something hard. To learn is to connect with those people, whether we know it or not. Egan says: help kids know it. Math has been dehumanized: re-humanize it. Q: So the math curriculum needs to become a history of math curriculum, and math teachers need to become history teachers? No, the content needn’t change. But with surprisingly little work, we can bring in the gossipy stories of heroes, and their obsessions can spread to students. Middle school science Who first discovered the things students learn about in science? If you’re thinking “scientists”, you’re only partially right. Most of the big-picture ideas that we now think of as “science” were discovered before the word “scientist” was invented, or the discipline was professionalized. Frequently, they were hatched by true amateurs, working in their free time, hungry to unlock the secrets of nature. We can use gossip and heroes to spread their obsessions to students just as we taught math, but Egan points out two twists. The first is that the content itself can take on heroic qualities: everything is impressive, when you look at it in a certain light. In an interview, Egan once said: “My book is an attempt to show that, indeed, everything in the world is wonderful, but that schools are designed almost to disguise this slightly shameful fact. We represent the world to children as mostly known and rather dull. The opposite is the case: we are surrounded by mystery, and what we know is fascinating”. What would even the most boring subjects look like, if we emphasized their heroic qualities? Well: What’s a tooth? Bone, wrapped in rock, surrounding tiny cells that your body feeds with blood. What’s a bar of chocolate? A crystal of jellyfish-shaped fat molecules stacked together; when you put it in your mouth you shake them apart into a writhing confusion. What’s the air around you? The bottom of a 10-mile-deep ocean; when you put your tongue over a soda straw and your Pepsi stops leaking out, it’s not because a “vacuum” is “sucking” it up, but because that ocean is squeezing it into your face. Again, we could do this all day! And in middle school science, we can. Everything in the world is wonderful; we can help students see this again and again. The second twist is that science is a subject rich in extremes. Here Egan introduces a concept that we’ll see crop up again: “15-minute segments”. To help us fit as much wonder as possible into a school day, he suggests we supplement the usual school subjects with a few quick lessons. To infuse science with extremes, he suggests we add on three: “human & natural records”, “extremes of animals & plants”, and “cosmology”. Middle school history Who first made the things students learn about in history? Why, the historical characters themselves! Since we’ve given kids a grounding in history in elementary school, now we can build on that, going through many of the same events as before, but in more depth, and more vividly. We’ll leverage the interest with other people’s inner lives to tell stories focusing on the perspectives of the people who made history — zooming in, when possible, on scandalous details. We’ll leverage the tool of idealism to choose historical characters who chafed against their surroundings, and understand what they were trying to accomplish. What was their vision of the world? What did they hope for, and what did they fear? Q: Isn’t the “great man” approach to history out of fashion? Egan’s approach doesn’t say that “great men” made history — it’s just leveraging gossip to help kids see history as something meaningful that can expand their own possibilities. “Early adolescence is commonly a time of intense and vivid emotional life, and also a time of deepest boredom and depression… [We] can give shape to the intermediate curriculum and offer the students a world that is rich, complex, varied, and as intense and vivid as their own emotional lives”. We also should add on another “15-minute segment” just to pump in as many biographies as possible, and from people who don’t always fit into the normal history curriculum. Call it “Brief Lives”, and throw in anyone who’s struggled to push some limit — Mary Wollstonecraft, Jesse Owen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the students’ great-aunts, whoever. As students get older, this can transition to “People and Their Ideas”. Here, we’d focus less on the details of the person’s life, and use it as a backdrop to showing how meaningful some of history’s most important ideas could be. Think Aristotle and syllogisms, Edward Said and orientalism, Confucius and propriety, Cornel West and race, Buddha on the four noble truths, Muhammad and the five pillars, Karl Marx and communism, Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Thomas Hobbes and the state of nature, John Locke and natural rights, Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism, Thomas Aquinas on the sacraments, Martin Luther on faith, Voltaire on the freedom of speech… you get the idea. Q: Can you really get a profound understanding of utilitarianism in 15 minutes? Yes! The point of this segment isn’t to develop a systematic understanding of any one idea, it’s to introduce students to the exciting possibilities of human thought. (As a bonus, this might make them less likely to fall for the first ideology that they encounter later in life.) Diversity is important for this — as it is with culture. Throughout this, we should also be trying to expose students to as much cultural diversity as possible, because in high school, we’ll be trying to make sense of our society, and it’s impossible to do that unless we have something to compare it against. Middle school literature & language You might think that this subject would be easy — that middle school literature is already filled with “strong and clear narratives”, that it deals with “transcendent human qualities such as courage, love, and persistence”, that it focuses on “extremes of human experience”, that it examines “something strange and exotic”. You’d be right! Egan’s pretty happy with a bog-standard middle school literature curriculum, done well. In this part of the book, his spends most of his limited space suggesting three rather odd activities which could also be useful — especially for increasing students’ awareness of language, so they can use it better. The first is etymology — not, however, memorizing lists of roots, but in being told the entertaining backstories of specific words. Take the word “berserk”, for example — we now use it to mean something relatively mild (“if my mom catches me coming home late, she’ll go berserk”), but it comes from an old Norse word meaning “a raging warrior of superhuman strength”. And that’s because ber meant “bear” and serk meant “shirt”: soldiers of the bear cult would don the skin of a bear to, in their minds, transform into one — howling, foaming at the mouth, and gnawing the rims of their shields. (Most adults walk through life with little understanding that the words falling out of their mouths are entities, with their own back-stories. Communication is, at the very least, more interesting when we become aware of this.) The second is to add on another language to learn — not, this time, to become fluent in it, but just to become aware of how very different human languages can be. (For native English speakers, Sanskrit might work well, or Cantonese, or perhaps even ancient Egyptian. Again, the point isn’t for this language to be useful — it’s to explore diversity.) The final one is to study humor — not just jokes anymore, but comedy at its finest. Egan cites (at length!) Monty Python as a group of people who were particularly brilliant in their use of the English language. Examining their skits can lead us into not just an appreciation of semantics (the study of how meaning is made from smaller pieces, like etymology) but also pragmatics (the study of how meaning is made in social situations). Pretty heady stuff, for a conversation about a dead parrot. Part 4: A new kind of high school I’ll confess — I loved parts of high school… and among nerdy folks, I suspect I’m not alone. For some of us, this was a golden time. Even at my local public high school, I had access to academically thrilling classes — especially, in my last two years, advanced literature and history. I felt like I was finally understanding the ideas that mattered. In any case, Egan is quick to acknowledge that, at this level, the sort of education he advocates really is being practiced in some places. What he can add is an understanding of what makes it wonderful, how to make it even more wonderful, and how to make it wonderful for many, many more people. What’s the matter with high school? Far too often, even when high school classes are intellectual, they’re dry. For the majority of students, all this academic stuff is experienced as utterly lifeless, a mass of dead information to be squeezed inside one’s head for a test and then left to evaporate. Egan mocks the curriculum wars that seem to be a permanent feature of the teaching life; quoting the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, he says “while the academic left and right bicker over whether the curriculum is too traditional or too radical, they fail to recognize that most students absorb so little of academic culture that the bickering is largely irrelevant”. Why so dry? Egan suggests three reasons to explain this. First, because high school academic classes are too often masses of small details with no sign of the big picture. Second, because they’re typically slavishly disciplinary, and aren’t able to address the questions that span the disciplines. Third, because they’re often designed to bring students through what everyone is sure of, and hide away any controversies. In all of these, Egan suggests that what’s called “academics” in high school is too often a dim imitation of what real academics are actually practicing. There’s a fourth reason, though, and it’s probably the biggest of all — by the time they get to high school, most students haven’t actually learned that much! An academic approach is designed to connect small details into the big picture; for people who arrive in high school (and college) classes without having already collected much in their heads, academics are going to taste dry. (An implication of this for anyone trying to improve schools is that we might not want to start with high schools. If your goal is to create a new kind of academic learning, first start at elementary school — or barring that, middle school.) What motivates mad scientists? When we wanted to re-conceive the elementary and middle school curriculums, we looked at what students were already good at — kids’ cognitive strengths and adolescents’ obsessions. For this level it might be easier to look — for reasons that will become clear when we finally unveil Egan’s crazy-sounding definition of education — at the sorts of things that bring intellectuals joy. Q: Which intellectuals? Take your pick. Galileo, Einstein, Smith, Marx, Goodall, Chomsky, Curie… all the people who took to the life of the mind like fish to water. But that’s a lot to hold in my mind at once, so I’m just going to think about Doc Brown from Back to the Future: He was high on intellectualism I’ve never been there, but the brochure looks nice Let’s call these people “mad scientists”. And let’s pretend we once again took up our job of being primatologists, and snooped on these folks “in the wild” (“in the lab”? this is beginning to get recursive…)… what would we find motivating them? Asking simple questions, for one. (What is space? What is society? What is a human? What is language?) Building general schemes (big theories) that hold lots of evidence together. Finding their place in the cosmos. And (perhaps above all) seeking certainty. Once again, Egan suggests we use these as tools to remake the curriculum. From dry to daring What could a high school curriculum look like, if it were rebuilt on these tools? Once again, Egan has a trick. This time, it’s to ask what fights have driven the development of each of these fields forward — and how we can help students enter them. First, a mini-segment! Intellectuals invented the academic disciplines to better pursue the life of the mind, but the disciplines can get in the way. Some of the most important intellectual discoveries that could help students are too big to fit into any of the disciplines. We need a place to introduce them plainly. Egan proposes another mini-segment — again, just 15 minutes a day, a few times a week — called “Metaknowledge”. Q: Isn’t that already in the International Baccalaureate program? Yes, he acknowledges that he’s borrowing from that! This segment would introduce ideas that would enrich student thinking across the disciplines: game theory, cognitive biases, systems thinking, Bayesian reasoning, epistemology, ethics, logic, cultural evolution, and so on. High school literature How can we help students enter the big fights of literature? Intellectuals of a literary bent — professors, critics, poets, novelists — delight in arguing over literature like rabbis arguing over the Talmud. Take, just for one example, the debates over Shakespeare’s character of Ophelia. Does she love Hamlet, or is she a victim of his emotional abuse? Is she truly insane, or is she acting? Is she passive, or is she pulling the strings? Oceans of ink have been spilled arguing over questions like these; our students can, perhaps, spill a few ounces more. The usefulness of arguing literature, for Egan, isn’t that it’s oh-so important for educated adults to know a lot about Ophelia. (This, again, was where the academicists went wrong — in thinking that being educated was about getting the best knowledge in your head.) Rather, arguing over literature is a training arena for the all-important intellectual move of this kind of understanding: building general schemes out of evidence, and struggling with anomalies. One person, for example, might hold that Ophelia is insane, and cite all sorts of obvious evidence — her father just was murdered by her lover, she rants nonsense while (bizarrely) handing out flowers to friends… But then he’s challenged when he reads a scholar pointing out that, to people in Elizabethan England, types of flowers have symbolic meanings. How does he deal with that? He could ignore it, claiming it an over-reading of Shakespeare. (Sometimes a flower is just a flower!) Or he could address it, complicating his own scheme. This intellectual work is best done with other people, who are incentivized to challenge your understanding of something, and go back and forth, building competing models and calling attention to anomalies. This process — the “dialectic” — pops up again and again in the academic disciplines. It’s the center of how understanding works, at this stage. And the nice thing about practicing it on literature is that, more so than in history or science, the evidence is shared knowledge — it’s right in front of everyone, written out. But there are other ways literature class can be helpful to the general life of the mind. Egan also suggests that we’ll want to specially include literature that helps students understand complex ideas. Camus, Orwell, Borges, Calvino might be particularly helpful here… and I imagine that genres like science fiction and magical realism might be particularly useful, too. (Note, though, that once again none of this requires a radical remaking of the curriculum, or of the canon of texts that we traditionally assign to high schoolers.) Q: Oh yes, the canon — what does Egan have to say about the canon wars? When he wrote Educated Mind in the nineties, the long-brewing canon war was approaching its inevitable apocalyptic climax. On one side of this Plain of Megiddo were the pro-canon traditionalists, arguing that we should keep assigning the texts that had been argued over for centuries. Facing them were the anti-canon reformers, arguing the standard texts over-represented the perspective of dead white men. Onto the middle of the plain rides Egan on a white horse, who bellows above the din: “I’VE GOT A BUSLOAD OF HIGH SCHOOLERS WHO WANTS TO JOIN IN, EVERYONE OKAY WITH THAT?” To do so, he says, we need to give students the arguments from both sides. So, for example, bell hooks, Edward Said, and China Achebe should be on the syllabus, as should Allan Bloom, Mortimer Adler, and Diane Ravitch. And of course they should actually read the texts cherished by both sides, too, so they can argue better. High school history How could entering the big fights help us reinvent high school history? First, we might look for dueling histories. It’s time for students to get into historiography and understand that history isn’t just what happened, it’s something we make. We might help kids read chapters from Howard Zinn’s socialist history of America alongside the corresponding chapters from Paul Johnson’s conservative history of America. How could big questions help? We want to help students see how various people have disagreed over some of the big questions of what human history is, at its most basic. We can have them compare Steven Pinker’s theory of civilization’s progress (Better Angels of our Nature) with Yuvah Noah Harari’s theory of civilization’s woes (Sapiens). We could have them compare so-and-so’s account of human history as an ever-expanding unlatching of energy sources with Robert Wright’s account of human history as unlatching more and more positive-sum games (Nonzero). What role could the lure of certainty play? To help them grow their skills at finding anomalies, we might help them work through pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. Q: Conspiracy theories! Oh, come now, you’re playing with fire. Well, the world is on fire. Our students will spend the rest of their lives encountering terrible-but-beguiling arguments about how the world works; if we don’t prepare them for those, what have we been doing? So we should introduce arguments that the Moon landing was a hoax, that the Illuminati founded America, that aliens built the pyramids, and so on. At no point can we demean students for falling for any of these theories — the job of a teacher at this stage, Egan writes, is to support students in their reasoning even when their beliefs are offensive and stupid, gradually offering anomalies. There’s no way out of bad theories except through them. By the time students graduate, we want them to have wrestled with terrible ideas and — for a while — lost. They need to experience what it’s like to change their minds about something they felt strongly about. They need to viscerally realize, in Feynman’s famous phrase, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” High school natural science How could entering the big fights reinvent high school science? At present, so much of the high school science curriculum — especially “honors” classes — is oriented toward helping amass details. (The same is true of 100-level university classes, which famously “survey” the field to prepare for more advanced studies. I always thought this was stupid — of the huge lecture hall of students in my Geology 100 class, how many went on to take even a second course?) The meaty debates that propel science forward are held back. Egan complains: “The more general and speculative theories in any discipline are treated like an unconventional and disreputable relation who, even though the children find her exciting and entertaining, must be kept hidden from view, her very existence denied as long as possible”. This is a stupid approach — students with an adventurous bent are convinced that science isn’t for them. Egan proposes, simply, that we flip this, and organize high school science classes around the big debates. We shouldn’t be ashamed at how, well, adolescent this might look: “the dramatic, speculative, and contentious theories will be up-front in the early years of the [high school] curriculum”. What might those be? Egan doesn’t give a list, but we can spitball some: instead of explaining what “matter” is from the top down, a physics class could problematize “matter” by following the debates over the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and by becoming familiarized with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics
Inline links: In a biting essay, In my favorite of his books, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ywm7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9c9b1ed-a260-4117-8679-0b5a32339748_1600x574.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WPeH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62ea55f8-0458-484f-be45-7a011d050756_1600x625.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FPXt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb017fc37-3151-4556-87f1-31a097cf7594_1600x574.png
Highlights From The Comments On Last Week's Model Cities Post
September 11, 2023 · Original source
Thesis Driven’s conclusion is that trying to build a tech city in California was arguably a reasonable plan in 2015 but a bad plan now. Since Flannery is locked into it, they might as well see if they can pull off a miracle. But if they were starting this today, they should have tried working in Texas or Florida, just like everyone else who doesn’t want local government to ruin their lives.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 1:00 PM Location: French Truck Coffee in Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave #167, Memphis, TN 38104. I'll be at a table with a sign that says ACX MEETUP Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW Group Link: https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe Texas AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 25th, 12:00 PM Location: The Brewtorium, 6015 Dillard Cir A, Austin, TX 78752, we'll be inside somewhere, just look for the Austin LessWrong and ACX Meetup signs Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862487GM+96 Group Link: https://austinlesswrong.com/ Notes: You can park on the streets in front of Brewtorium or the Milk Bank lot next door. If it really gets full, use the nearby residential streets. We'll be there until at least 5pm!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW, https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe, https://plus.codes/862487GM+96
AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 25th, 12:00 PM Location: The Brewtorium, 6015 Dillard Cir A, Austin, TX 78752, we'll be inside somewhere, just look for the Austin LessWrong and ACX Meetup signs Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862487GM+96 Group Link: https://austinlesswrong.com/ Notes: You can park on the streets in front of Brewtorium or the Milk Bank lot next door. If it really gets full, use the nearby residential streets. We'll be there until at least 5pm!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/862487GM+96
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS, USA Contact: Michael Frost Contact Info: mikefrosttx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 13th, 5:00 PM Location: On the porch of Torchy's on Texas Ave, 1037 Texas Ave, College Station, TX. I will have a yellow OneWheel. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J9 Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so that I know roughly how many people are coming!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J9
Highlights From The Comments On Hanson And Health Care
May 10, 2024 · Original source
» You might think a sudden doubling in maternal death rates would be obviously flagged as a data issue to correct, but this turns out not to be so. Because the United States has a federal system, individual states added the checkbox in different years. While individual state maternal deaths showed sharp level shifts, the national maternal death count drifted upward gradually as states added checkboxes to their death certificates: California in 2003, Florida in 2005, Texas in 2006, Ohio in 2007, Tennessee in 2012, etc.
My 2024 Presidential Debate
June 27, 2024 · Original source
Trump: I think you can rescue the idea of states, if you think of them not as real in themselves, but as different aspects of the American atom. When we consider America in the context of its vastness and its freedom, we call it "Texas". When we consider America in the context of its innovation and cultural influence, we call it "California". When we consider America in the context of its barrenness and oil-producing-capacity, we call it "North Dakota". And so on. America does not have states in the sense that Queensland is a state of Australia, it has states in the sense that ice or steam is a state of water. This isn’t to say that America ever changes between these states, because change is a property of compound entities. But it may appear to outside observers in one or another of these ways at different times.
Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People
July 18, 2024 · Original source
$1 billion/year in projected costs, translated into Californian, means $100 trillion quadrillion/year in actual costs. Of these, I think 3 is the biggest deal. If it’s as hard to commit someone to these institutions as it is to convict them of a crime, then these institutions don’t help much above how much the existence of prison also helps (eg not much). If you invent a new legal maneuver where it’s easier to commit someone than to convict them of a crime, then why do you even need the step where you build the institution? Just invent the legal maneuver and send more people to prison! I think that maybe the thought is that the institution seems more “humane” than prison, and so people will be more willing to allow low-friction legal maneuvers for confining people there. I think this is cope; not only won’t the institutions be more humane than prisons, but people won’t believe they are and won’t allow the low-friction legal maneuvers. Drethelin writes: What if we abolish the DEA and just let anyone buy anti-psychotics over the counter? This would be the FDA we’re abolishing, but otherwise yes, this is the sort of clever outside-the-box thinking that I appreciate from my commenters. Antipsychotics are very cheap (some well-regarded drugs like Abilify and Seroquel cost about ~$10 per month of pills). On the other hand, homeless people have very little money. So if you were going to do this, it would make sense for the government to give them away for free. These drugs have many potentially serious side effects. But it’s not clear how much homeless people’s 5-minute monthly visits with a bored Medicaid doctor does to avert these side effects, over having some kind of pharmacist or advocate or social worker in the free distribution center giving helpful advice. Like everything, I think this would only help around the edges - the fraction of homeless mentally ill people who drugs can help, who are willing to take the drugs, and who are prevented only by cost and bureaucracy. What percent is that? Low confidence guess 25%. DZ writes: I think you’re missing the goal of a short arrest (few days). Part of the problem is the homeless are in areas where society doesn’t want them to be. They’re near city downtowns where tourists spend time or near commercial districts or in otherwise nice parks. If you can arrest them for a few days and keep arresting them until they move somewhere else … the goal is to eventually force them to move to the more acceptable areas vs. least acceptable areas. This is obviously not ideal but in the mean time the city gets more tourism, more office rentals, etc. Europeans ruthlessly arrest homeless people who hang out in the touristy areas. SF doesn’t, yet. I commented that I was worried that “out of touristy areas” means “into residential areas”. And I feel worse making residents deal with this than tourists, and am less confident that the city cares enough about them to fight back. DZ responded: Agreed. People don’t want them in the residential areas or suburbs either and for good reason. But my guess is cities can identify certain areas where they would prefer the tents to set up. Something like industrial areas or run down parks. The key is that city officials should be able to use arrests as a strategy to move the tents/homeless concentrations without having to face a million lawsuits. I don’t know if there are really areas like this, but I welcome learning more from people who know cities better. SMK writes: This probably sounds draconian and cruel, too, but in fairness, all these discussions seem to assume that this person is in San Francisco and can never ever leave for some other, more affordable place. I get it -- it's tough leaving home, and maybe they'd be leaving friends. But they wouldn't be the only people leaving SF over rent prices, and they'd pretty clearly be among the most rational. So I dislike articles like this when they say things like "the average wait time for a homeless shelter bed is 826 days" or "cheap apartments in SF are $1000 / month." I have a friend who was homeless for around a year in another major American city, and he said it was always 100% feasible to get a shelter bed if he wanted one. Indeed, there were several options. On a different note, I also think that if one were going to go a "cruel and draconian" route, homeless shelters might be able to change policies to better support that and prevent some of the issues you highlight. If it takes 826 days to get a shelter bed, then zero of the typical people you mention who are briefly homeless are getting shelter beds. If all of the people who were homeless for longer were either leaving or in jail, then more of those people probably would get beds. Am I saying this is the policy I favor? No, I agree it's a hard problem and I'm not sure what the right answer is. But things like this need to be kept in mind, too. Again, I think it’s helpful to go to the specific policy level. What’s the policy here? Give homeless people brochures reminding them that other cities exist? I’m sure they know this. Give homeless cities free mandatory bus trips to those other cities? What prevents the other cities from giving them free mandatory bus trips back? Even if they don’t, what if the homeless prefer being homeless in San Francisco to having a better situation in a cheaper city? A bus from Phoenix to SF is only $60; even a homeless beggar might be able to scrounge up that much money if they’re motivated. Maybe some plan like making a deal with a big cheap city in Texas to take SF homeless in exchange for money, and as soon as the homeless get off the bus, they’re met by a Texan social worker who gives them a shelter bed and social services? Might help along the edges, but remember that only about half of homeless people want/will accept shelter beds (depending on how good the shelter beds are). Sergei writes: After checking a bit, let me point out the obvious. What works elsewhere is PATERNALISM. Once you are in the "clutches of psychiatry", they don't let you go. Upon release you are placed into some sort of housing, your appointments are monitored and a social worker will find you and drive you there. You will be given multiple chances to get a job and/or rehab. Your meds will be delivered to you if you cannot pick them up. They remind you to take them. There will be a social safety net so you are never in a situation where you end up on the street unless you really really try to. In retrospect, it makes sense: people who are not able to take care of themselves for a time because of a fixable mental infirmity are taken care of by the state, until they can. That's what we do with children already. I continue to want people to provide details. “They don't let you go" - okay, so the person is in a locked facility? Placed in "some kind of housing"? Does the housing have locks on the door, or can they leave? What if they do leave? "Multiple chances to get a job", oh, great, with whom? How are you enforcing that they take mentally ill people? What happens when the mentally ill people are less good workers than other people they could hire, or have some kind of crisis on the job, as even the best-treated person might once in a while? Maybe we can charitably fill in the details. Something like: Ban some combination of camping outside and being visibly mentally ill.
Inline links: writes
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Felix Contact Info: ACXMeetupNashville[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 22nd, 01:00 PM New location: Rose Park Picnic Shelter #2 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/868M46V8+P5 Notes: Change of location! Entrance is on 12th Ave South, just north of Carter Lawrence Elementary. Go straight in and the picnic area and parking lot will be directly ahead. Texas AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 05th, 12:00 PM Location: The park by Central Market, 4001 North Lamar, Austin, Texas. We will be by the stone tables. We will have a LessWrong and ACX sign and have some tents set up. You can also park in the parking lot at 3900 Guadalupe St (outside the fenced hospital area). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs. We will provide lunch (soft tacos including vegan) and snacks and drinks.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/868M46V8+P5, https://plus.codes/86248746+9C, https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong
Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 05th, 12:00 PM Location: The park by Central Market, 4001 North Lamar, Austin, Texas. We will be by the stone tables. We will have a LessWrong and ACX sign and have some tents set up. You can also park in the parking lot at 3900 Guadalupe St (outside the fenced hospital area). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs. We will provide lunch (soft tacos including vegan) and snacks and drinks.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C, https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong
Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 05th, 12:00 PM Location: The park by Central Market, 4001 North Lamar, Austin, Texas. We will be by the stone tables. We will have a LessWrong and ACX sign and have some tents set up. You can also park in the parking lot at 3900 Guadalupe St (outside the fenced hospital area). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs. We will provide lunch (soft tacos including vegan) and snacks and drinks. COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS, USA Contact: Michael Frost Contact Info: mikefrosttx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 07:00 PM Location: On the porch of Torchies on Texas Ave. I’ll have a small sign that says “ACX” Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J4 Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong if you are coming, even if it’s last minute
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C, https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong, https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J4
Notes From The Progress Studies Conference
October 24, 2024 · Original source
Even if a solar project survives court challenges, it has to get connected to the grid. This poses its own layer of bureaucracy and potential pitfalls. The most memorable statistic from this part of the presentation: over the past few years, Texas has approved more solar power than every other state combined, and more wind power than every other state combined, and more renewable-friendly batteries than every other state combined. This isn’t because Texas is especially environmentalist. It’s partly because Texas has its own grid with less bureaucracy, and partly a general libertarian attitude that lets renewable businesses expect a fair deal from the government.
(source) Nuclear is in an even worse situation, as you can tell from the recent $96 → $155 price rise mentioned above. This is partly because - as Matt Yglesias writes - nuclear plants are held to an “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” safety standard. Suppose an company invents a nuclear plant which is twice as cheap and twice as safe as existing models. They might like to try selling it for a bit below the cost of existing models, then pocket the profits. But the regulator will say that because it’s cheap, they have more money to spend on safety, and demand safety improvements until it costs just as much as existing models (even though the new model was already twice as safe). This declares it impossible by fiat to ever make nuclear any cheaper, which means we keep using coal forever, even though coal is much more dangerous.
Inline links: source, as Matt Yglesias writes
I got to attend a session on SB 1047, the recently-vetoed California AI regulation bill. The most interesting thing I learned was that California’s position as home to all big American AI companies was irrelevant - the bill could have equally well been in New York or Texas. Any state can try to regulate any industry, and the industry has to comply or leave the state; it’s almost never worth the economic loss to abandon big states, so legislation in any big state has nationwide effects. Everyone agrees this is awkward, but the Supreme Court recently confirmed that it was true in a ruling on Prop 12, California’s law demanding better conditions for factory-farmed pigs. California doesn’t have a lot of factory-farmed pigs, so this law primarily demanded that other states give their pigs better conditions if they wanted to sell pork in California (which they all do). The Supreme Court said this was fine, and presumably would make the same decision if New York or Texas tried to regulate AI. The federal government tends to think of these situations as an invitation to step in (though it hasn’t with Prop 12), and if too many states make too many confusing regulations then Congress will probably pass a law to sort things out. But for now, it’s a free-for-all.
Inline links: Prop 12
Prison And Crime: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
November 27, 2024 · Original source
They re-ran their analysis with data from other states, and found the same pattern in Texas (the only other state with a three-strikes law) but not elsewhere. This reassured them that it’s a real effect of deterrence and not just an artifact. Still, Helland and Tabarrok are not impressed by this result. Yes, we decreased crime by 17%. But it took an extraordinarily severe threat. The Three Strikes Law raised the expected sentence for a third crime from ~5 years to ~20 years, so each extra year in the threatened sentence decreased crime about 1%. If you think about this economically, it’s a bad deal; it takes $150,000 worth of incarceration costs to deter one crime, but the social cost per crime is (they say, citing another economics paper) about $34,000. And most deterrence isn’t this strong. Only 4% of California crime is committed by offenders with two previous strikes, and there’s no political will to impose these kind of 20+ year sentences on first-time criminals. So most deterrence will look more like the Proposition 36 proposal we discussed last month, which increases shoplifting sentences from six months to three years. If we use H&T’s numbers (probably inappropriate since there may be nonlinear effects), we would expect that section of Prop 36 to deter crime by 2%. There are two other considerations that might increase or decrease our estimate of deterrence. First, how sure are we that the police caught all the crimes here? In general, only about 50% of violent crimes and 10% of property crimes are caught. Should we multiply these numbers by somewhere between 2-10x? I think in this case the multiplier should be somewhat less. The subjects in this study were on parole or probation from their previous strike, so they were more likely to be monitored by police. And they’d already gotten caught twice, which suggests they’re either worse at crime than average, or operating in areas with better-than-average police coverage. Still, maybe we should multiply by, idk, 2-5x? This won’t affect our percentages: we expect that arrests are some fixed proportion of offenses, so if a criminal gets caught 17% more often, they’re probably committing 17% more crimes (however many that is). But it might affect our estimate of the social costs of crime. Instead of saying that $150,000 worth of incarceration costs prevents $34,000 worth of crime, maybe we should say that it prevents $68,000 - $170,000 - which, at the higher end of the range, would be economically break-even. Second, what kind of crimes are we deterring? Here Roodman, the anti-incarceration review, analyzes H&T’s data more thoroughly and finds that their effect is concentrated in the least severe crimes: That is, overall crime decreased 17%. But violent crime decreased only 1.7% (not significant). The only crime where the decrease reached statistical significance was drug crime (31%). Should we take this completely seriously and say that the Three Strikes Law only deterred drug crime? I’m not sure. The argument against is that drug crime was the most common category of crime in this sample, so it’s possible that the study was powered to detect decreases in drug crime but not in other categories. In favor of this interpretation, vehicle theft (a category sometimes found to be especially deterrable in other studies) went down 19%, similar to the overall headline number - it just didn’t reach statistical significance. But against this interpretation, larceny (minor robberies like shoplifting) went up 22%. This is obviously random noise, and it would be unfair to ignore the larceny result but count the (equally weak) vehicle theft result just because it agrees with our priors. I think when you average everything together, it really does look like the effect on everything except drugs is small. Maybe it’s hard to deter violent crimes (because these are executed in a fit of passion), it’s hard to deter property crimes (because criminals need the money), but it’s easier to deter drug crimes (because people make more rational decisions about whether or not to use drugs)? (How much do we care about drug crime? Tabarrok says somewhat, because drugs can be a “gateway crime” that gets people into the criminal lifestyle. Roodman says not much. It’s either personal use, which is mostly victimless, at least compared to other crimes. Or it’s dealing, which is demand-driven and almost impossible to stop through incarceration - if you lock up every member of Cartel A, that just creates a lucrative niche for Cartel B to step in and fill.) So a pessimistic interpretation (which I find hard to avoid) is that an extra year added on to a prison sentence decreases drug crimes by 2%, and other crimes some unmeasurably-small amount that may or may not be literally zero. I went into this one study in depth so you have an idea where these numbers are coming from, but here’s a broader survey of deterrence research: Ross 1982 investigated the effects of some widely publicized laws that increased penalties for drunk driving. They found that it decreased drunk driving 66% (!) in the year the law came out, but this effect gradually faded to zero over the next three years. The most likely explanation is that the publicity around the new law got people excited, but nobody really knows the laws around drunk driving anyway (do you know what the range of sentences for DUI in your jurisdiction is?) and so once the excitement of “law is stricter now!” faded from memory, the law had no effect.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sz6E!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F74a4f1cf-87ec-4cdb-8a0e-0e8097fe2368_993x723.png, Ross 1982
Highlights From The Comments On Lynn And IQ
January 16, 2025 · Original source
(source) … sub-Saharan Africa is also a hot spot. I wonder what’s wrong in Cuba - this is exactly the sort of easily gameable metric I would usually expect them to be good at, or at least carefully faking. If you’re interested, you can donate to Iodine Global Network here. Bob Jacobs writes: > His opponents pointed out both his personal racist opinions/activities That's the mildest possible way you could've put it. He wasn't someone who had "personal racist opinions" that he kept as "personal racist opinions". He was the editor-in-chief of Mankind Quarterly, a white supremacist journal that was founded by people like: Henry Garrett an American psychologist who testified in favor of segregated schools during Brown versus Board of Education, Corrado Gini who was president of the Italian genetics and eugenics Society in fascist Italy, and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer who was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of anthropology human heredity and eugenics in Nazi Germany. He was a member of the Nazi Party and the mentor of Josef Mengele, the physician at the Auschwitz concentration camp infamous for performing human experimentation on the prisoners during World War 2. Mengele provided for Verschuer with human remains from Auschwitz to use in his research into eugenics. It's funded by the pioneer fund, an organization he was a board member of and that has been classified as a white supremacist hate group, with one of its first projects being to fund the distribution in US churches and schools of "Erbkrank", a Nazi propaganda film about eugenics. He's not just called racist, he *is* racist, he even describes *himself* as a racist. No contesting any of this. MM writes: I spent 18 months in a country where people are supposed to have an iq of about 70, according to the map. My neighbors and friends were mostly non-literate. They did not seem less intelligent than the people I know in my current (US) neighborhood or the people I grew up with (in the US). Most of them would not have performed well on IQ tests, though. They'd never attended school and had no familiarity with puzzle-solving. This was 35 years ago and most people had not seen movies or even photographs. I remember sitting with one older woman and helping her interpret a black-and-white photograph: this is the arm, here's where it connects to the body, etc. It's hard for people from literate societies with tons of exposure to text & graphical representations to see the extent of the gap. Calvin writes: I have a decent amount of experience with the intellectually disabled, and saying "cognitive issues are only responsible for a small part of the [communication] deficit" is so wrong that it makes me question everything else in this essay. Trust me, even making allowances for poor hearing or difficulty forming words, the cognitive issues are responsible for 90% of the deficit. An IQ of 60 is really low and it's a significant handicap. I was concerned to hear this - I have a little experience with the intellectually disabled, but it didn’t involve knowing people’s exact IQ, so I’m not very well-calibrated here. Looking for more information, I found https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/ustat/ustat0301-01.htm, which purports to describe the characteristics of very low IQ people, mostly in the context of criminal justice (where lawyers often try to use a client’s low IQ as a mitigating factor - ie maybe he didn’t truly understand that crime is wrong). The report says things like: Although all persons with mental retardation have significantly impaired mental development, their intellectual level can vary considerably. An estimated 89 percent of all people with retardation have I.Q.s in the 51-70 range. An I.Q. in the 60 to 70 range is approximately the scholastic equivalent to the third grade […] Although mental retardation of any degree has profound implications for a person's cognitive and social development, it is a condition which in many cases is not readily apparent. While some of the mentally retarded, such as those whose retardation is caused by Down's syndrome or fetal alcohol syndrome, have characteristically distinctive facial features, most cannot be identified by their physical appearance alone. Unless their cognitive impairment is unusually severe (e.g. an I.Q. below 40), persons with mental retardation may be thought of as "slow" but the full extent of their impairment is often not readily appreciated, particularly by people who have limited contact with or knowledge of them, including police, prosecutors, judges, and other participants in the criminal justice system. Many capital offenders with mental retardation did not have their condition diagnosed until trial or during post-conviction proceedings. And gave some examples (slightly out of order for this list): Oliver Cruz, who was executed in Texas on August 9, 2000, had an I.Q. that was measured variously at 64 and 76. Cruz nonetheless insisted to reporters that, although he was perhaps "slow in reading, slow in learning," he was not mentally retarded. Mitigation specialist Scharlette Holdman recalled a client who so successfully hid his retardation from his attorneys that he allowed them to sign him up for college-level calculus classes, which he could not comprehend. He had gone through much of his schooling allowing his younger sister to complete his homework for him. When he was given papers to read in connection to his case, he would carefully stare at them. If he was asked a substantive question, he usually responded, "I don't recall." Only when experts in retardation evaluated him and investigators reviewed his school records and spoke to his family did lawyers discover he had mental retardation and had been considered "slow" since his early childhood. Another capital defendant "hid his mental retardation for most of his life by working at a very repetitive job as a switcher on the railroad. He lied about finishing high school. He was actually in special education classes and did not finish the sixth grade. He was drafted into the army and discharged because of his mental retardation. He lied about his service record. He often made things up so that people would not suspect mental retardation." Morris Mason, whose I.Q. was 62-66, was executed in 1985 in Virginia after being convicted of rape and murder. Before his execution, Mason asked one of his legal advisors for advice on what to wear to his funeral As one psychiatrist testified about a capital defendant with an I.Q. of between 35 to 45: "[People with mental retardation try] to go along with people that they suspect are in authority. For example, I asked [the defendant] where we were when I saw him, and he obviously didn't know, so I asked him if we were in Atlanta and he said `Yes, we are in Atlanta.' In fact, we were in Birmingham, Alabama. I could have said New York and he would have said `Sure, New York' These people are obviously not going to win Nobels anytime soon. But even the guy with IQ 35 - 45 was still talking to people. I think this supports the thesis that intellectually disabled people without specific syndromes can seem pretty normal most of the time. (though keep in mind that anything from the court system should be treated with a grain of salt - defense attorneys have an incentive to exaggerate the intellectual disability of their clients in the hopes that it gets them a lighter sentence) Lyman Stone writes: Emil's post isn't correct, however. We know from the recent Reich lab paper on long-run genetic selection that there was strong selection for IQ in the neolithic revolution, which implies agriculture strongly selects for IQ and ability to plan. Malawians are 60-80% subsistence farmers. Even a "normal" low-IQ person cannot do the implied math and long-term planning involved in this kind of farming. And in fact, economists routinely find that African small-plot subsistence agriculture is actually highly optimized; farmers make very precise choices about where to plant which seeds, which fertilizer to use, etc. Key point is basically: it really isn't true that an IQ 60 person can run a farm functionally. Moreover, mean IQ of 60 implies large shares even lower, at ranges that are uniformly nonverbal even without specific disability. And this is why in the actual record-level NIQ database, they truncate estimates below 60, because even the database managers realize these estimates are crazy. See my post here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-154757665 We know that people with extremely low IQs in the Flynn sense must be capable of subsistence agriculture, because pre-Flynn Effect, most of the West had extremely low IQs, and they were all doing subsistence agriculture. How is this possible? Responding to Lyman’s comment, I wrote: I stick to the claim in this post - that our estimates for what a very low IQ means are poorly-grounded, and that people with low IQs can do some pretty impressive things, especially if they're concrete and part of a cultural transmission package. Maybe this is the Joseph Henrich "Secret Of Our Success" thing. We know that Malawians get poor test scores in school, so it seems like there's some disconnect between do-well-on-tests intelligence and run-a-subsistence-farm intelligence, and the abstract/concrete and novel/cultural distinctions are the best explanation that I can think of. You say that "the phenotype that arises from a given tested IQ in America is clearly vastly worse than the phenotype arising from the same tested IQ in Africa", which I basically agree with. I think part of it is the syndromes issue raised above, and part of it is that maybe Malawians have zero contact with the culture of abstraction that IQ tests come out of whereas even very uneducated Westerners have some contact with it, and maybe another part of it is that whatever health/nutrition issues the Malawians have preferentially harm faculties responsible for more abstract tasks rather than more concrete ones. For an opposite data point, when I was in Haiti, my boss told me (secondhand, no personal experience) of extreme difficulties working with Haitians, like that they couldn't alphabetize files even when that was explained to them. Many Haitains are also successfuly subsistence farmers, so I think this also supports some kind of heavy abstract/concrete distinction. I don't think we're really disagreeing, just agreeing on something like the correlations that make up IQ being less valid outside the normal range. Maybe one way to look at it is to go back to the claim from the justice system document above, saying that people with IQ in the 60s are the mental equivalent of third-graders. The third-graders I know are very into Pokemon, and have all sorts of opinions on how if you add X bonus to a Y strength fire-type Pokemon and then play Z combo, it will [commence six weeks of droning on about different Pokemon cards]. Is this the sort of math/reasoning/strategizing that we don’t expect someone with IQ 60 to be able to do? Does the fact that third-graders can do it mean that we’re miscalibrated? I’m not sure. The part of Lyman’s comment that gives me the most pause is his observation that, if the mean IQ is 60, a decent fraction of people must be 45, and a non-negligible portion 30. At this point, even third-grader comparisons don’t save us. I guess this is where I bring in the claim that IQ breaks down as a guide to practical living skills below some point. You can see several more layers of response between me and Lyman here, but I was especially grateful for him teaching me two things I didn’t already know: First, he corrected my misconception about Reich on ancient European cognitive evolution. Reich had said that pre-agriculture Europeans were “2-3 standard deviations” below moderns. I had interpreted that as IQ deviations of 15 points, making them genetic IQ 55-70, which would have been pretty crazy. Stone tells me he actually meant PGS deviations, each of which was about 3-4 IQ points, so he’s claiming that pre-agriculture Europeans had genetic IQ of 90 (they probably also had lower IQ for environmental reasons).,
Inline links: source, donate to Iodine Global Network here., writes, writes, writes, https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/ustat/ustat0301-01.htm, writes, https://substack.com/home/post/p-154757665, here
Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science
February 14, 2025 · Original source
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a database identifying over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Biden-Harris administration. This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.
Links For February 2025
February 27, 2025 · Original source
2: A Texas town is experimenting with ski-lift-style gondolas as public transit. The problem for public transit has always been finding space for it. You can either share the street with rush hour traffic (bus), break the bank digging a tunnel (subway), or build an elevated rail (expensive and complicated). Gondolas replace the elevated rail with a few towers, and let cables do the rest. The planned prototype "consumes less than half the energy of an electric vehicle [and] can move at a speed of up to 30 mph."
Inline links: ski-lift-style gondolas as public transit
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Matan Shtepel Contact Info: matan[period]shtepel[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 06th, 05:00 PM Location: We'll meet on the lawn in front of the tennis courts on CMU's campus. If it rains, we'll go into the the CMU university center (UC) which is open without key-card even on the weekend. We may eventually wander, so email me if you can't find us. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87G2C3V4+2X Group Link: https://forms.gle/22YCsXAYFPbBCzvMA Notes: There is also a monthly ACX meetup group that meets at Bakery Square near the Google office. If you'd like to sign up for the email list to be notified of when they meet up, you can do that here: https://forms.gle/22YCsXAYFPbBCzvMA Texas AUSTIN Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, May 24th, 12:00 PM Location: The Brewtorium, 6015 Dillard Cir A, Austin, TX 78752; We'll have a LessWrong sign at a long table indoors Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862487GM+96 Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/austin-less-wrong/ Notes: Feel free to bring kids. We'll order shareable items for the group (fries and pretzels) and you can order from the food and drink menu.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87G2C3V4+2X, https://forms.gle/22YCsXAYFPbBCzvMA
(See “College Station, Texas”)
Links For July 2025
July 01, 2025 · Original source
2: In the 1952 Texas gubernatorial election, incumbent Allan Shivers ran on both the Democratic and Republican tickets, beating himself 73%-25%.
Inline links: 1952 Texas gubernatorial election
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Amy Contact Info: amyelquest[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 4th, 1:00 PM Location: Next Level Brewing Company - I’ll bring a small ACX sign, there’s parking behind the brewery. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867RX3GG+FH Texas AUSTIN Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 11th, 12:00 PM Location: The park by Central Market, 4001 North Lamar, Austin, Texas. We will be by the stone tables by the pond with tarps for shade. We will have a LessWrong and ACX sign and have some tents set up. You can also park in the parking lot at 3900 Guadalupe St (outside the fenced hospital area). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C Group Link: https://austinlesswrong.com/calendar/ Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs (though it's a bit of a walk to the indoor bathrooms). We'll provide breakfast tacos (including vegan) and other snacks and drinks. Feel free to bring more, but it's not expected.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867RX3GG+FH, https://plus.codes/86248746+9C, https://austinlesswrong.com/calendar/
Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 11th, 12:00 PM Location: The park by Central Market, 4001 North Lamar, Austin, Texas. We will be by the stone tables by the pond with tarps for shade. We will have a LessWrong and ACX sign and have some tents set up. You can also park in the parking lot at 3900 Guadalupe St (outside the fenced hospital area). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C Group Link: https://austinlesswrong.com/calendar/ Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs (though it's a bit of a walk to the indoor bathrooms). We'll provide breakfast tacos (including vegan) and other snacks and drinks. Feel free to bring more, but it's not expected.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86248746+9C, https://austinlesswrong.com/calendar/
The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
October 01, 2025 · Original source
…unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.
Inline links: Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account
What Happened To SF Homelessness?
November 12, 2025 · Original source
…preliminary results look discouraging. Why? Some experts argue that the clearing of open-air markets shifts the dealer-addict relationship from an iterated game to a one-shot: since law enforcement prevents anyone from staying in the same place too long, addicts move from dealer to dealer, encouraging dealers to try exploitative strategies rather than cultivating repeat customers. Those exploitative strategies include toxic or spiked merchandise, hence the increased overdoses. Others argue that the harm reduction programs successfully reduced harm, and stopping them had the predictable effect. But it looks to me like things get worse slightly before Mayor Lurie took office, and that in any case the new regime is a return to form after an anomalous trough. This article argues that none of this has anything to do with local policy; some foreign countries successfully cracked down on fentanyl in 2024, raising prices and creating a shortage. Then in 2025 the traffickers recovered, and supply came back. Everyone Accuses Everyone Else Of Shipping Them Homeless People Look too closely into discussions of why homelessness is up or down in some particular city, and you’ll find dark murmurs about how they’re shipping problem individuals away, or getting duped by other cities doing the same to them. The Berkelians say SF has sent its homeless to Berkeley. The Oaklanders say no, to Oakland. The Sacramentans say Sacramento. And don’t forget the ones sent to other states! Meanwhile, former SF mayor Gavin Newsom has claimed that the majority of its own homeless people come from Texas (this is obviously false). Some of these claims make sense. San Francisco has three programs that bus its homeless people out of the city. Previously, they would only do this if social workers could prove the person had a family member willing to support them in the new city. More recently, they lowered this standard to “some connection” to the destination. But I don’t think this caused a large drop in SF homelessness, for three reasons. First, we have no evidence that any such drop in homeless numbers occurred - just a decrease in tent encampments and visible dysfunction. Second, the new lower-standards busing program only got about 100 people a year - pretty small compared to the scale of the problem. Third, the data above show general homelessness declines across California. If SF were exporting its homeless, you would expect other counties’ numbers to increase. Instead, it seems more likely that SF’s numbers are going down (if they are going down) for the same reason as everyone else’s. We’ll have more information next year, when Alameda County releases homelessness numbers. Alameda, which contains Oakland and Berkeley, is a natural export destination for San Francisco. So What Happened To Homelessness? This is a maximally boring story. There’s a natural tradeoff where governments can enforce laws against the homeless in ways that make them less visible and annoying, at the cost of making their lives harder, eg it can take away their tents. In the past, they didn’t do this, out of a combination of tender-heartedness and legal restrictions. After the homeless became extremely visible and annoying, voters felt less tender-hearted, and the courts lifted the legal restrictions. So cities took the tradeoff. This is the big effect that everyone noticed. At the same time, there were some small effects from increased funding, falling rents, drug market clearing, and busing programs. Realistically nobody would have noticed any of these; the big effect is from encampment clearing. Have we learned anything? I don’t think we learned the sort of thing we hoped we might learn, the lever we could push to solve everything with no downsides. But: I had previously thought there weren’t really any levers that could improve the problem at all, short of mass incarceration. I hadn’t considered that taking people’s tents and possessions would have such a strong aesthetic effect that most people would consider the problem solved from an annoyance/visibility perspective. I think my failure was some combination of 1: not realizing how much people hated tent encampments in particular, as opposed to (for example) weird people wandering the street in rags talking to themselves 2: not realizing how many options the homeless have for “lying low” when they really don’t want to be found (and therefore how elastic visible homelessness is with respect to legal crackdowns).
Inline links: preliminary results look discouraging, Some experts argue, to Berkeley, to Oakland, to other states, this is obviously false, has three programs
Last Rights
March 11, 2026 · Original source
Luckily for us, such a solution exists: if we get 27 states to ratify the Congressional Apportionment Amendment, then we can make some real progress towards fixing Congress without Congressional buy-in. This solution is not a new idea. It comes up every few years and gets little traction. My hope in writing this piece is that it gets more traction now. The Only A+ Ever Given At The University Of Texas In 1789, Congress passed the Bill of Rights, containing twelve Constitutional amendments meant to protect the American people. Ten of these twelve were ratified by the states and became law. Two failed and were forgotten.
One hundred ten years later - in 1982 - an undergrad at University of Texas in Austin wrote a paper on the pay-raise amendment, mentioning that there wasn’t technically anything in the Constitution that said that amendments had expiration dates. He got a C on the paper and very reasonably turned that into a decade-long crusade to prove his history teacher wrong. He started a nationwide campaign to get state legislatures to ratify the amendment. In 1992, he succeeded: the 38th state approved the provision, and it was added to the Constitution as what is now the Twenty-Seventh Amendment. The crusade worked; thirty-four years after the original paper, his political science teacher submitted a petition to the university to retroactively change his grade to an A+; since there is no A+ on the official UT grading rubric, this became the only A+ ever given in the history of the University of Texas.
Democrats: You’re about to take a beating in the next census. California is moving to gerrymander its Congressional delegation, but it’s also going to lose four seats. Texas is moving to gerrymander its delegation even more aggressively, and it’s going to gain four seats. Florida is going to gain three. Illinois and New York are losing seats. Across the board it’s bad news; while you might come out on top in this year’s elections, you’re going to lose the gerrymandering battle come 2030. Ratifying the CAA will make the battle that much fairer for you.
Inline links: lose
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Daksh Contact Info: tyagid0[@]sewanee[.]edu Time: Saturday, April 11th, 2:00 PM Location: Stirling’s Coffee House porch Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867P634M+39 Notes: Please RSVP so I know how many people to expect and let Stirling’s know in advance if we’re going to be a big group! Texas AUSTIN Contact: Silas Barta Contact Info: sbarta[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, May 30th, 12:00 PM Location: The Brewtorium, 6015 Dillard Cir A, Austin, TX 78752; will be at an indoor table with an ACX sign Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862487GM+96 Group Link: https://austinlesswrong.com/calendar/ Notes: Feel free to bring kids. Dogs are not allowed indoors. If parking fills up, you can park on the street in the neighborhood off Denson Drive.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867P634M+39, https://plus.codes/862487GM+96, https://austinlesswrong.com/calendar/
Taiwan27 mentions across 27 issues

Taiwan is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 27 times across 27 issues between January 29, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "the country, Taiwan, which performed best in the virus"; "Taiwan (see her amazing poetic job description here"; "Taiwan and other islands off of its coast are hostile to it". It most often appears alongside China, India, Canada.

Article page
Taiwan
Mention count
27
Issue count
27
First seen
January 29, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Weyl Contra Me On Technocracy
January 29, 2021 · Original source
4. Furthermore, the positive examples of technocracy @slatestarcodex refers to are...surprising. Two examples. To call school desegregation a technocratic invention papers over decades of community activism for desegregation. Perhaps even more dramatically looking at the coronavirus as an example of the success of technocracy runs against pretty much any reasonable reading of the international data. Danielle Allen and I have a piece coming out on this (we were both deeply involved in developing a response plan here https://ethics.harvard.edu/Covid-Roadmap that significantly influenced now-President Biden's response), but perhaps the sharpest point here is that the country, Taiwan, which performed best in the virus was led in part by Audrey Tang who moved back to Taiwan after being immersed in and repulsed by the rationalist movement in Silicon Valley - see e.g. https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/) and dedicated herself to doing things differently in Taiwan (see her amazing poetic job description here:
Inline links: https://ethics.harvard.edu/Covid-Roadmap, https://www.wired.com/story/how-taiwans-unlikely-digital-minister-hacked-the-pandemic/
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
Should America stop securing sea lanes, China would face an oil crisis. “Almost all of the countries along China’s oil import route are also oil importers. All already have more than enough naval power necessary to interdict supertankers that go somewhere they don’t wish them to. And China dare not risk tangling with even a mid-powered navy out of range of its land-based aircraft because it lacks meaningful blue-water capabilities.” Worse for China, Japan’s navy is very capable, and Taiwan and other islands off of its coast are hostile to it (and are likely to remain American allies on top of that).
The last serious point to make about his thesis is about how it depends on America pulling back from the world. Is that a good idea or not? When I was younger, I wouldn’t have hesitated: I’d have said that we’re throwing tons of money at world security that we don’t have, that we get little in return, and that we should come home. Zeihan’s explanation of the free trade order that America has ensured for decades is the most powerful argument against that perspective that I’ve encountered. I’m not sure if it changes my conclusion, but I’m certainly less confident of it now. I could use more straight talk about what America’s interests actually are with respect to overseas commitments. Radigan Carter puts this in very real terms, asking about a CCP invasion of Taiwan (“a lot of us war veterans [are] more interested in buying a house and taking a hunting trip than reenlisting to defend Taiwan”). For the rest of the world, whether America withdraws may be the defining question of the era.
Inline links: Radigan Carter puts this in very real terms
Book Review: How Asia Works
June 28, 2021 · Original source
And the best thing that ever happened kept happening, again and again. First it was Japan during the Meiji Restoration. Then it was Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s. Then China in the 90s. Now Vietnam and others seem poised to follow.
There was nothing predetermined about this. These countries started with nothing. In 1950, South Korea and Taiwan were poorer than Honduras or the Congo. But they managed to break into the ranks of the First World even while dozens of similar countries stayed poor. Why?
Joe Studwell claims this isn't mysterious at all. You don't have to bring in culture, genetics, or anything complicated like that. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc, just practiced good economic policy. Any country that tries the same economic policy will get equally rich, as China and Vietnam are discovering. Unfortunately, most countries practice bad economic policy, partly because the IMF / World Bank / rich country economic advisors got things really wrong. They recommended free markets and open borders, which are good for rich countries, but bad for developing ones. Developing countries need to start with planned economies, then phase in free market policies gradually and in the right order. Since rich country economists kept leading everyone astray, the only countries that developed properly were weird nationalist dictatorships and communist states that ignored the Western establishment out of spite. But now the economic establishment is starting to admit its mistakes, giving other countries a chance to catch up.
Highlights From The Comments On "How Asia Works"
July 01, 2021 · Original source
1.) Three things stick out here. Firstly, Studwell vastly overstates how damaging land reform has to be to landlords. Taiwan and Japan both bought out landlords with bonds. The bonds became worth less because since government bonds grew more slowly than the economy. But there are still a fair number of wealthy old families around in both countries. The important thing is not the destruction of landlords as a class: it's putting land into the hands of people (whether smallholding peasants or professional farmers) who own the land, have an incentive to improve it, and whose primary income is gained not by owning land but by producing agricultural products. The two are ultimately equivalent at equilibrium. How you get there is not especially important and paying off the landlords is fine if it works. Likewise, giving land to collectives or to peasant groups (as opposed to individual peasants) doesn't work very well because it keeps it out of the power of enterprising farmers.
Another thing: the importance of export markets. These countries need to have markets willing to purchase their goods. If they don't, export lead industrialization fails. Big imperial nations have options that modern nations don't. Where do these nations export their goods? To the US. Korea had special deals with the US. So did Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore. And even China got special deals (enough to cause Russian complaints). This may be changing, especially for big countries like China with internally developed markets. But this advocacy for ELI should mention the politics of finding places to sell their goods. Otherwise the idea of "protected at home competing abroad" fails.
Because China, Vietnam, and Laos started so late, they don’t look great on the 1950 plot. They look a lot better on the 1990 plot, and it seems justified putting them in a separate “winner” category compared to “losers" Philippines/Indonesia/Malaysia/etc (South Korea, Taiwan, etc are already too rich to be able to grow fast by this point). If you switch the start date to 2005, then a lot of the gap closes.
Adumbrations Of Aducanumab
August 05, 2021 · Original source
The countries that got through COVID the best (eg South Korea and Taiwan) controlled it through test-and-trace. This allowed them to scrape by with minimal lockdown and almost no deaths. But it only worked because they started testing and tracing really quickly - almost the moment they learned that the coronavirus existed. Could the US have done equally well?
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TAIPEI, TAIWAN (RSVP) Contact: KZ, kz[dot]acx[at]co[dot]sent[dot]com Time: 12:00 PM, Sunday, September 19 Location: Inside the Nanmen Park Museum's cafe, look for the "ACX" sign. Coordinates point to the entrance. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/notice.chills.perform
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/notice.chills.perform
Book Review: Which Country Has The World's Best Health Care?
January 19, 2022 · Original source
Emanuel hates having to give a clear answer to that question, but when confronted with the fact that he’s writing a book with that title and can’t really weasel out, he grudgingly admits that “the top tier would include Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Taiwan”.
2: Single Payer With Very Limited Private Insurance is typical of Canada, China, Norway, and Taiwan. The government runs everyone’s insurance. But doctors, hospitals, etc can be independent businesses or nonprofits. They negotiate some kind of payment rate with the national insurance, who reimburses them. This is similar to how Medicare works in the US.
(I’m ignoring China and Taiwan here for two reasons. First, they’re significantly poorer/less developed than the other countries on this list. Second, Taiwan works its doctors incredibly hard - they see about 2-3x as many patients per day as in other countries, for less money, and I’m not sure why they stay in medicine or how they stay sane. Third, China also underpays its doctors, and they compensate by being corrupt and demanding bribes before treating patients. All of these things make it hard to compare them to Western countries.)
Predictions For 2022
February 01, 2022 · Original source
US/WORLD 1. Biden approval rating (as per 538) is greater than fifty percent: 40% 2. At least $250 million in damage from a single round of mass protests in US: 10% 3. PredictIt thinks Joe Biden is most likely 2024 Dem nominee: 80% 4: …thinks Donald Trump is most likely 2024 GOP nominee: 60% 5. Beijing Olympics happen successfully on schedule: 99% 6. Major flare-up (worse than past 5 years) in Russia/Ukraine conflict: 50% 7. Major flare-up (worse past 10 years) in Israel/Palestine conflict: 5% 8. Major flare-up (worse than in past 50 years) in China/Taiwan conflict: 5% 9. Honduran ZEDEs legally crippled to the point where no reasonable person would invest in them further: 5% 10. New ZEDE approved in Honduras: 30%
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
Ukraine Thoughts And Links
March 08, 2022 · Original source
Everyone can sanction Russia as much as they want, and it can win anyway. Putin is in too deep to extricate himself easily; it’s become a matter of honor, of “not being seen to be weak”. The point isn’t to save Ukraine, it’s to establish expectations for next time. This is about Taiwan, Georgia, Iran, and all the other places that great powers want to invade but don’t.
These were most of Putin’s demands before the war, so one could argue that, if they’re a good idea now, they would have been a good idea then, and Ukraine should have agreed and prevented bloodshed. This might be true, but I don’t think it’s necessarily so. A big part of diplomacy is maintaining your honor and your reputation for not caving in to threats. If Russia had gotten everything it wanted from Ukraine with no effort, it would have legitimized using threats of war as a negotiating tactic and made it harder for Taiwan/Georgia/Iran etc in the future. This is easy for me to say on the other side of the world, not losing any friends or relatives, but it is potentially worth standing up for yourself, even to the point of war, in order to maintain the illegitimacy of such threats.
Biography of Jason Shea, 44th US President
April 13, 2022 · Original source
In Fujian, Xi made efforts to attract investment from Taiwan and to strengthen the private sector of the provincial economy. In February 2000, he and then-provincial Party Secretary Chen Mingyi were called before the top members of Central Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP – General Secretary Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji, Vice-President Hu Jintao and Discipline Inspection Secretary Wei Jianxing – to explain aspects of the Yuanhua scandal. In 2002, Xi left Fujian and took up leading political positions in neighbouring Zhejiang. He eventually took over as provincial Party Committee Secretary after several months as acting governor, occupying a top provincial office for the first time in his career. In 2002, he was elected a full member of the 16th Central Committee, marking his ascension to the national stage.
Your Book Review: Viral
July 30, 2022 · Original source
Although the first SARS virus originated in nature, it was studied in labs after the initial epidemic, and escaped several times, infecting people. This occurred in Singapore, Taiwan, and China, from 2003-2004.
Photograph of the famous Latané and Darley experiment, cerca 1968. So, what could those participants have been thinking? Maybe something like: Hmm, why’s the room filling up with smoke? Is this a problem? *looks around the room* Well nobody else seems to care, so I guess not. Looking back at the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, I think maybe this is why so many of us didn’t think twice about the location of the initial outbreak. Hmm, is it kinda suspicious that this virus broke out near a major virology institute that works on bat coronaviruses? Should we maybe look into that? *looks around* Well nobody else seems to think so, so I guess not. I can’t speak for everyone else, but this was at least my mindset. I had vaguely heard something about how there was a virology research institute close to where the pandemic broke out, and that some conspiracy theorists were claiming it was the source of the virus. I looked around and noticed that nobody was really taking this idea seriously, so I figured I didn’t need to take it seriously either. Also, I was thinking something like: Eh, probably every major city has labs and research institutes doing this kind of research. And I’ll bet they purposely built the virology institute close to where these viruses occur in nature, to give them easy access for sampling. Well, it turns out both of these things are wrong. The type of research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is pretty rare and specialized. It includes things like creation of chimeric coronaviruses [1, 2], infecting humanized mice with bat coronaviruses, and other types of gain of function research, which Chan and Ridley devote a chapter to. The WIV is one of only a few institutions in the world doing this type of research. It’s not the case, as I had assumed, that every major university has a couple labs doing similar work. So it does seem like a pretty remarkable coincidence that the outbreak happened in Wuhan. But maybe they purposely built the Wuhan Institute of Virology close to where these viruses are found in nature? Well, this also turns out to be wrong. The areas where viruses most similar to SARS-CoV-2 are found in nature are Yunnan province and Laos, which are more than a thousand kilometers away from Wuhan. The authors put this distance in perspective by noting that it’s more than the distance between Orlando and NYC. Image source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-30/china-is-making-it-harder-to-solve-the-mystery-of-how-covid-began If SARS-CoV-2 originated in an animal somewhere around the Yunnan / Laos area, how did it make it all the way to Wuhan without leaving a trail along the way? 4. The story of RaTG13 Although I enjoyed the book, I do have one pretty major criticism. The authors repeatedly make the claim that a virus called RaTG13, which was being studied at the WIV before the pandemic, is the closest known genetic match to SARS-CoV-2. But this claim is outdated and no longer correct. In September 2021 researchers identified a virus called BANAL-52 in Laos that’s a 96.8% match to SARS-CoV-2, closer than RaTG13’s 96.2% match. (Important note: a 96.8% match is still a long way off in genomic space, and does not imply that this is the same virus as SARS-CoV-2, or even necessarily a progenitor.) At first I thought maybe the authors didn’t mention BANAL-52 because it was discovered after the book was published, but this isn’t the case – Viral was published November 16, 2021, nearly two months after the discovery of BANAL-52 was published. Although I’m writing an overall-positive review here, I don’t want to go easy on the book where serious criticism is warranted. It’s completely unacceptable that BANAL-52 wasn’t mentioned. Even if it would have been inconvenient from a publishing standpoint, the authors should have rewritten the RaTG13 chapter, or at least included an addendum about the discovery of BANAL-52. With that being said, I think the story of RaTG13 is still interesting and important, so I’ll give a quick summary here. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, SARS-CoV-2 was quickly sequenced, and the full genome sequence was published by Dr. Shi Zhengli’s team at the WIV. In this paper, they also briefly mentioned that the genome was a 96.2% match with another bat coronavirus called RaTG13 – the closest known match at the time. Oddly, the mention of RaTG13 did not include any reference, footnote, or link to any previously published sequence. Although the WIV didn’t provide details on this mysterious RaTG13 virus, a group of internet volunteers, including both amateurs as well as professional scientists working in their free time, began to investigate. This loose collection of open-source researchers, called DRASTIC, uncovered a medical thesis describing an outbreak of a mysterious disease in 2012. Six men who had been working in a bat-infested mine in Mojiang County, China, fell ill and were admitted to a hospital with symptoms including dry coughs, shortness of breath, fevers, muscle aches, headaches, and fatigue. Three of the men eventually died of this mysterious illness. In the years following this incident, teams of researchers (including a team led by Dr. Shi Zhengli of the WIV) were sent to investigate the cause of this illness and collect samples from the Mojiang mine. This sampling led to the discovery of a novel SARS-like coronavirus in 2013, and a part of its genomic sequence was published under the name BtCoV/4991 in 2016. The DRASTIC researchers discovered that RaTG13 was genetically identical to the BtCoV/4991 sequence from the Mojiang mine – it was the same virus, and had just been renamed for some reason, without any public record of the change. They also discovered that at least eight other closely related coronaviruses were also sampled from this mine and brought to the WIV. Although unhelpful throughout the investigation, the WIV eventually verified these facts when pressed on them, and an addendum was added to the original paper confirming DRASTIC’s account of the origin of RaTG13. So what should we make of this? Well, as I mentioned before, RaTG13 is no longer the closest known genetic match to SARS-CoV-2, so maybe the whole story is less important as it pertains to the origin of the pandemic. But the discovery of BANAL-52 doesn’t really resolve things either [2]. Laos is very far away from Wuhan (actually even further than Yunnan), so we’re left with the same question as before – how did SARS-CoV-2 make it all the way to Wuhan from such a distant natural reservoir without leaving a trail along the way? 5. Lack of institutional transparency and competence A lot of the book is devoted to criticizing the Chinese government’s lack of transparency during the pandemic. Some brief examples: In the early days of the initial outbreak in Wuhan, hundreds of people were investigated and punished for the crime of “spreading rumors”. This included whistleblowing doctors who attempted to warn others [3] about the spread of the disease and its human-to-human transmission, which was being denied by the Chinese government at the time.
Inline links: 1, 2, infecting humanized mice with bat coronaviruses, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6khv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fac0a8f26-8f26-4712-b245-797d478ae385_1246x642.png, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-30/china-is-making-it-harder-to-solve-the-mystery-of-how-covid-began, virus called BANAL-52, published by Dr. Shi Zhengli’s team at the WIV., addendum
Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance
August 19, 2022 · Original source
Huang first went to university to study electrical engineering, but during the World War II years he became an Army officer. He saw combat, recovered from a gunshot wound to the leg, and rose to the level of Major in an elite Chinese military unit known as the New First Army, which was aligned with U.S. forces. They battled Japanese troops in south-east Asia and, later, Chinese Communists during the Chinese Civil War. Huang graduated from the American Army Staff College in 1947, but after the victory of the Chinese Communists on the mainland, and the retreat of the Chinese Nationalists to Taiwan, Huang stayed in the U.S. and took up the study of Chinese history, obtaining a doctorate degree in 1964 (when he was 46). 1587 is his best-known and most widely acclaimed book, but he enjoyed a long and successful academic career and also contributed to Joseph Needham's opus Science and Civilisation in China.
The “Japanese pirates” were not much like Captain Morgan or Jack Sparrow - they were really more like Vikings. Annual raiding parties would sail in from Japan, where they would set up armed bandit camps and raid the surrounding countryside. Often joined by disenfranchised or disgruntled locals, they posed a serious threat to public order all along the southeast coast, from Shanghai to the Taiwan Strait.
Inline links: Japanese pirates
Grading My 2018 Predictions For 2023
February 20, 2023 · Original source
Artificial biocatastrophe (worse than COVID): 5% INTERNATIONAL: IDK, I don't expect a Taiwan invasion. Generally bearish on China for the usual reasons: I just think they've built up too much debt (literal and metaphorical), have a demographic time bomb, it's always hard to come down from the high of fast growth, and even though their mixed centralized-ish model worked well before, I think Xi is a significant change towards traditional dictatorship which doesn't work as well. I don't expect this to produce any obvious explosion or disaster for them before 2028 though. I expect Ukraine and Russia to figure out some unsatisfying stalemate before 2028, followed by massive growth in Ukraine (usually happens post-war, they'll probably get favorable terms from lots of other countries including an EU admission deal, they're overdue for a Poland-style post-communist boom). Ukraine war cease-fire: 80%
Most Technologies Aren't Races
April 05, 2023 · Original source
Who “won” the computer “race”? Charles Babbage? Alan Turing? John von Neumann? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Again, it was a long path of incremental improvements. Jobs and Gates got rich, and their hometowns are big tech hubs, but other people have gotten even richer, and the world chip manufacturing center is in Taiwan now for some reason. The overall balance of power didn’t change (except maybe during a brief window when the Bombes broke Enigma) and today all developed countries have computers.
The Question Of Separatism
May 19, 2023 · Original source
This wasn’t of any interest to London or other European cities. The Bostonians weren’t nearly as good or efficient at making metal tools as Londonians were. So Boston couldn’t export the metal tools back to Europe — but it could use them internally, and also export them to other American cities that were about as poor as Boston was, or poorer. Internally, this meant the spark of a manufacturing economy in Boston, as easily obtained metal parts made it easier for other Bostonians to replace other imports from European cities, and eventually develop a symbiotic network of industries. It also meant that the revenue from fish and timber could be used to import new things, including new innovations from European cities (which would later become opportunities for more import replacement). And because there were customers for Boston-made metal goods in New York and Philadelphia, and eventually Cincinnati and Chicago and Pittsburgh as these cities came into existence, it meant additional revenue for Boston that it could reinvest into developing its production further. For Jacobs, virtually all city development can be seen through the lens of import replacement (which, to be clear, has approximately nothing to do with policies of import substitution industrialization; import replacement is not a policy, but a naturally arising free market phenomenon). Her book contains many other examples than Boston, such as Venice, which started off in the early Middle Ages as a small town that sold salt to Constantinople, but then diversified its production to become one of the wealthiest cities of its time; or Taipei and Kaohsiung, two cities in Taiwan that kickstarted their development not long before the 1980s, by forcing expropriated landlords to invest into local import-replacing businesses. One is reminded of Scott’s review of How Asia Works. Import replacement, then, is what makes cities economically powerful. And this power is so great that it causes ripples in distant places. In fact it is the main reason that anything happens at all in non-city areas. Jacobs gives the example of Bardou, a small village in southern France. Bardou looks like this: To the extent that Bardou ever had an economic life, that life was almost entirely driven by distant cities. In ancient times, the area was populated because of iron mines nearby. The mines were exploited to serve the needs of people in the distant cities of Lugdunum (Lyon), Nemausus (Nîmes), or even Rome. As Jacobs notes, we could say that the mines served “the Roman Empire,” but that would be another example of using the abstraction of sovereign countries when we should instead be specific. It was Lugdunum, Nemausus and Rome that wanted the iron — not some random rural area of the empire, and certainly not the part of the empire in which Bardou was located. Eventually the mines and the region were abandoned. More than 1,000 years later, peasants moved into the area and built the modern village. For centuries they lived a wretchedly poor life of subsistence farming. No cities exerted any influence on it, and indeed nothing happened. Then, in the 19th century, the people of Bardou learned that they could improve their situation by moving to distant cities such as Paris, and most of them did. Again, the force wasn’t being exerted by “France”; Bardou was already part of France. The force was specifically being exerted by Paris and other cities with jobs for poor peasants. By the 1960s, only one old man was left. That’s when two foreign visitors, a German and an American, happened upon the village, decided to buy most of it, revitalized it, and turned it into a tourist spot (and even, for a brief time, into a set for a movie company). Today Bardou is a popular place for travelers — who are mostly city people, and spend money that was mostly earned in cities. The Bardou story contains examples of several of the forces that import-replacing cities radiate, according to Jacobs. These forces are central to her thinking. There are five of them: Markets. Cities house a lot of people who need a lot of goods and services, and are therefore strong markets to sell goods and services to. This was the force that acted on the Bardou area when it was a Roman mining region, and again today when it functions as a tourist spot for city vacationers.
Inline links: import substitution industrialization, Scott’s review of, Bardou, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RfMs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc119b085-f7b3-4e09-a586-9f4fc4c2ea21_1200x1600.png
An oversized transplant force creates a transplant economy: a place that depends on industries that it did not generate itself. Getting a transplanted factory is always tempting for the governments of poor regions. But while the new jobs do alleviate poverty, transplants almost never lead to durable economic development (with rare exceptions, such as Taiwan). Jacobs has multiple examples, but the one I like most is Iran just before the revolution, when the Shah used oil money to buy a helicopter factory from the United States — thereby spurring a lot of development in the United States, where many companies got involved in building the factory, and almost none in Iran.
The Forbidden Solution All empires eventually collapse. This is not what we would expect if empires were a good economic arrangement. If they only ever got wealthier and wealthier, they wouldn’t disintegrate into various separatist factions or end in foreign conquest. The first empire to form would have slowly absorbed everything else, and we would all be living good lives under the enlightened rule of the Sumerians or whatever. But that doesn’t happen, because empires always milk their own cities until they become poor. Modern nation-states do the same. They accumulate stress by trying to hold themselves together, and then, one day, the stress is released all at once. Wars and revolutions galore. Most countries are born that way, like new stars formed in the aftermath of a supernova. Peaceful separatism offers an alternative, Jacobs says — but only a theoretical one. Jacobs shows us a glimpse of a world in which secessions would be “a normal, untraumatic accompaniment of economic development itself.” Regions would separate when they feel the need to, before decline has set in. “In this utopian fantasy,” she writes, “young sovereignties splitting off from the parent nation would be told, in effect, ‘Good luck on your independence! Now do try your very best to generate [or maintain, as the case may be] a creative city and its region and we’ll all be better off.’” Can you imagine Canada saying this to Quebec? Or England to Scotland? Or China to Tibet and Taiwan? Yeah, me neither. That’s why it’s only theoretical and utopian. Jacobs knows very well that nations will never accept separatism as an option. And though the term “nationalist” has fallen out of fashion, almost all of us still think very much in terms of nations. Even when separatism does seem grudgingly acceptable, I’d say that’s usually either because it’s an instance of decolonization (colonial empires are decidedly out of fashion) or for cultural, nationalistic reasons. Quebecois, Scottish, or Catalan separatists say that they belong to nations that are culturally distinct from Canada, the United Kingdom, or Spain. And they love their smaller nation just as much as others love the larger one. If any of these separatists got their way, we can be sure that the new nation of Quebec, Scotland, or Catalonia would then oppose further separatism in the strongest terms. When the American South seceded from the Union in 1861, the reaction wasn’t “good luck!” even though the Union was itself the result of a secession from Great Britain. To separate for economic reasons seems forbidden. Unthinkable. For one thing, it would be selfish. If Catalonia left, the poor regions of Spain, which benefit from welfare financed in part by Barcelona, would suffer, which is obviously unacceptable to Spain. For another, it’s not guaranteed to work. Small countries and city-states can still adopt dumb economic policies. It can seem intolerably risky to go your own way, unless your region is already rich, in which case see the selfishness point above. Widespread separatism also seems worse for solving large-scale coordination problems, like environmental issues, nuclear proliferation (and, perhaps, AI), or war. I suspect that Jacobs would agree with Nassim Taleb’s antifragility framing: it’s better to be in a constant state of mild disorder than to have apparent stability that hides stressors and ends in violent conflict. But that idea is not intuitive. Most of us would pick apparent stability over mild disorder. I also suspect — and this is my personal take — that we dread the additional complexity of having numerous small countries. We look at a map of medieval Germany, like this one… … and we think, thank goodness that Germany is unified now. So much easier to think about! Can you imagine if the Our World in Data charts had to show separate lines for the Electorate of Saxony, the Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and about 1,800 other semi-sovereign states? Can you imagine traveling around if each of them had its own currency? (Fun fact: the List of states in the Holy Roman Empire Wikipedia page doesn’t contain such a list. Instead it points to no less than 28 sub-lists.) Jacobs stops shy of asking, in either book, the question that seems to be the logical continuation of her reasoning: should everything be a city-state? Should we encourage separatism until each inhabited place in the world is either a city or a city region with its own currency? We can hazard a guess as to what her answer would be. She would probably say that there’s no need to upend everything right this moment. Just adopt an attitude of political openness and experimentation. Don’t try to hold together entities that don’t work that well. When separatist sentiment arises somewhere, you can argue it’s a bad idea, but don’t fight it out of emotion such as fear for your nation’s integrity. Eventually, things will settle — the regions that want to be city-states will be, and those that prefer to be united with others, for cultural or economic reasons, will stay that way. Unity has good PR and some genuine advantages, so there will still be plenty of it. But maybe Jane Jacobs never asks this question because she knows it’s irrelevant. We just can’t help fighting for our big countries and supranational unions (like the EU), and too bad if they enter long periods of stagflation until they violently collapse. This might be the right time to mention that her last book, published in 2004, is called Dark Age Ahead. IV. Something to Dislike For Everyone Jane Jacobs’s most famous book is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She is recognized as perhaps the most influential thinker in urbanism. She is credited with saving Greenwich Village and SoHo in New York City, and helping cancel the Spadina Expressway in Toronto. To this day people organize “Jane’s Walks” as a living memorial to her impact on cities. But Jane Jacobs herself thought that her greatest intellectual contribution was not in city planning, but in economics. She thought that import replacement was her most important discovery, since it explained how wealth expands better than existing macroeconomic theories. She wrote multiple books that were explicitly about economics and was about to write another when she died, Uncovering the Economy. I am not an economist, so I might not be qualified to make a judgment on this matter, but: it seems to me that there’s a discrepancy here. Jacobs is widely seen as a great intellectual, but her economic ideas don’t quite seem mainstream. I’d never heard of import replacement before reading her book. Why not? The null hypothesis is that economists have examined her ideas and simply rejected them. There were some critical academic reviews of Cities and the Wealth of Nations when it came out, and more recently Tyler Cowen expressed his own mild skepticism. Some of the criticism involves the lack of quantitative data in her work, and her failure to think about issues of scale. The most obvious target, of course, is her city obsession: yes, cities are important, but they’re not the only economic phenomenon that matters, some would say. Perhaps Jacobs has overplayed her hand. But there are other possible explanations for the discrepancy. One is that she was a woman and had no credentials, which made it difficult for (mostly male) professionals to take her seriously. We know this was true at the beginning of her career at least. It seems possible that even after she managed to establish herself as an original urban thinker, economists had trouble accepting that she could, with her lack of any college degree, come up with new insights in their field. I doubt that’s really true today, though. We do take Jacobs seriously, and still read all of her books, which is more than we could say about most economists. Instead, I propose that the discrepancy comes from a darker place: in laboring to be comprehensive about cities and economics, she reached conclusions that most people don’t want to be true. No matter your politics, there’ll be something for you to dislike in Jacobs’s work. For example, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t think the European Union was a good idea, so she probably would have supported Brexit. Brexiters might rejoice, except that a lot of them are British nationalists who certainly don’t want Scotland to leave the UK, whereas Jacobs would agree with that. Which would be great news to Scottish independentists — except that if a new separatist movement arose within Scotland, she’d also support that. Jacobs’s ideas and grassroots activism in favor of small-scale, organic urban planning have come to be seen as left-wing — yet her criticism of national welfare programs wouldn’t make her out of place among hardcore right-wingers. Unless those right-wingers were military hawks, in which case they’d find no solace in reading Jacobs on military transactions of decline. Writing during the Cold War, Jacobs criticized the Soviet Union for its incredible centralization of decision-making in Moscow. She rightfully predicted its collapse, making her an ideological ally of the capitalist West, right? Not so, since the United States is also, according to her, too centralized and in the early stages of decay. “Today the Soviet Union and the United States each predicts and anticipates the economic decline of the other,” she writes. “Neither will be disappointed.” Whether she was correct about the US is left as an exercise to the reader. In any case, she did foresee, using her theory on cities, the decline of Japan. This must have been bold in the 1980s at the peak of the Japanese economic miracle, when there was a widespread trope that Japan would soon take over the world. Yet she was right: in 1991, Japan entered its “lost decade,” which soon became two lost decades, and then three. To be fair, she predicted the decline of all large-ish countries, so I wouldn’t mark her as a superforecaster or anything. Still, this puts in perspective the more recent trope that China is going to take over the world. No country, no ideology is safe from Jacobs’s prophecies. Smaller ideologies aren’t spared, either. Effective altruism would probably seem totally mistaken to her, since at its core it promotes an inorganic, top-down transfer of wealth from prosperous cities to poor areas. Progress studies people think that technological innovation will solve economic stagnation, but she would point out how labor-saving equipment so often causes damage when it is introduced to regions that don’t benefit from the other city forces, like the Scottish Highlands or many of her other examples in Colombia, India, or the American South. (This point would deserve an essay of its own, but reading Jacobs has made me a bit more worried about the “AI will take our jobs” thing. It’s clear that new jobs will appear, but when the technology city force from the San Francisco Bay Area reaches distant places with poor economies, which it will very soon thanks to the internet, the effects might not be very pleasant to see.) Overall, the political ideology that might fit Jacobs the best might be… libertarianism? She’s not a big fan of large governments who make big top-down decisions, clearly. Yet I don’t get the feeling that this association fits all that well either. Jacobs doesn’t seem to be anti-government if the government is at the city level. I doubt she would have liked the kind of hyperfragmented world depicted in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I also doubt she’d be impressed by cryptocurrency-backed “cloud cities” or fantasies of charter cities, none of which she would see as real cities in the sense of concentrated pockets of people who start replacing what they import with local production. Jane Jacobs, in sum, was an archetypal accidental moderate. She took one idea very seriously — the idea that cities are fundamental — and explored its ramifications without caring in the slightest if it led to the “wrong” opinions, as her friends in 1980 Toronto must have thought when she wrote about Quebec. I don’t know if she went too far; I’m sure someone more qualified than I am can find flaws in that core idea or any of her other observations. But to me she sounds convincing, and her consistency is frankly admirable. So, to end this review on a more review-y note, go read Jane Jacobs. Her books are a delight, with their elegant arguments and masterfully told anecdotes. Her predictions often take an air of doom, but she is also an optimist who offers constructive ways forward. She sets an example for all of us who care about getting the details right, no matter the credentialed experts, the current political climate, or the great theories of the past. Image credits Cities and the Wealth of Nations book cover: from Amazon.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sPn6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd25ceff6-f68e-4163-becf-613204a9be35_1600x1297.png, List of states in the Holy Roman Empire, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gyMq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdc388f24-009c-42ee-adca-9d5c50faaa66_932x190.png, academic, reviews, expressed, Japan would soon take over the world, fantasies, of, charter, cities, accidental moderate, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!r8Rb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60621c76-b34b-4e10-b272-394480443e1b_1600x1066.png, Amazon
Assistant Dictator Book Club: America Against America
June 07, 2023 · Original source
So far. China hasn’t quite caught up to America. Their GDP per capita is still less than a quarter of ours. Although they make many excellent products, the world leaders - iPhones, 747s, GPTs - are mostly still designed in the US, even if Chinese factories churn out the parts. Other Asian tigers like South Korea and Taiwan liberalized politically around the point where they started approaching developed-country GDP; in his analysis of their rise, Joe Studwell suggests that this might have been a necessary component. And Japan, despite all the virtues that made Wang think they would overtake the US, has stagnated instead.
Inline links: Joe Studwell suggests
Links For February 2024
February 29, 2024 · Original source
11: George Psalmanazar (1679 - 1763) was “a Frenchman who claimed to be the first native of Formosa (today Taiwan) to visit Europe”. He explained away his white skin by saying that Taiwanese people lived underground. Psalmanazar invented an incredibly elaborate fake Taiwanese language, mythology, and custom, and was briefly an 18th-century-England viral sensation. Eventually some people who had actually been to Taiwan called his bluff, he confessed, and he settled down as a writer and theologian, befriending Samuel Johnson and other British intellectuals.
Inline links: George Psalmanazar
Fertility rates in China and Taiwan have reduced at similar rates over the past 50 years, suggesting that China’s one-child policy didn’t have a significant effect on curbing its population growth.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
SINGAPORE Contact: Andrew Contact Info: mindupgrade[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, May 12th, 4:00 PM Location: Maxwell (will send more details in email) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PH57RJV+5W Group Link: https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W Notes: We have at least one ACX Meetup every month. The Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct dates will be on https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W (our Group Link). Please send your RSVP email early because it would be immensely helpful. Feel free to send an email about topic sentences that you are interested in or want to have a conversation with others about. Topic sentences will be collated and shared with the other attendees. Taiwan TAIPEI Contact: Jake and Brandon Contact Info: jakessolo[plus]acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, April 28th, 3:00 PM Location: Daan Park - northeast field next to the basketball courts (backup: Learn Bar if it's raining) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3 Notes: Backup location coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PH57RJV+5W, https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate
April 09, 2024 · Original source
…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: 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 collapses the ‘extreme coincidence’ claim, which as explained above, turns lab-leak into the leading hypothesis. My strongest disagreement is with his Point 3 - the inference from other seafood-market-based COVID spread events. Saar writes: A common objection to this method is that these outbreaks are caused by cold-chain products brought into these markets. However, this still fails to explain why markets form these early clusters and not the many other places where cold chain products are delivered to. Additionally, this only demonstrates the importance of cold wet surfaces in preserving SARS2 infectivity, further strengthening the hypothesis in method 1 that a crowded location with many wet surfaces like HSM is highly conducive for rapid SARS2 spread. Last, it also opens the possibility that the HSM outbreak was also caused by cold-chain products. This would reduce the significance of Wuhan being the outbreak location (as the product could have come from anywhere), but since the other evidence for lab-leak is so strong, Wuhan can be given no weight and still lab-leak would be highly likely – Rootclaim’s conclusion will only drop from 94% to 92%. Most of these outbreaks have been traced back to either a migrant worker (eg a fisherman from a country with COVID sells fish at the market of a country with Zero COVID) or a cold chain product. For example, here’s Dai et al on the Xinfadi outbreak, the most important event of this type: According to a joint publication by the Beijing CDC and 13 research institutions, the outbreak at Xinfadi Market was likely to be initiated by fomite transmission from contaminated foods imported via cold-chain logistics (Pang et al., 2020; Beijing Daily, 2020b). Based on the epidemiological investigations at the Xinfadi Market, the researchers preliminarily concluded that booth #S14 in the aquaculture product selling area on the basement floor of the primary trading hall was the source of the initial transmission. Specifically, five customers were tested positive for IgG/IgM antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in serological screenings, all of whom visited booth #S14 on May 30 and 31, 2020. On May 30, 2020, the owner of booth #S14 procured imported and fully packaged salmon from a company's cold storage warehouse, then cut and processed the salmon for sale at the Xinfadi Market. Laboratory tests showed that sample swabs from five salmon fish from this supplier were tested positive by examining all salmon in the original sealed packages (n = 3582) in the cold storage facility. Viral genome sequencing showed that the viral strain isolated from one of the positive salmon swabs was homologous to that isolated from the infected persons and environmental samples at the Xinfadi Market (Beijing Daily, 2020b). The joint study reported that an ancestral strain isolated from the Xinfadi Market in Beijing was markedly different from the strains identified in two preceding outbreaks in China and the sequences obtained in March 2020 in Beijing. Phylogenetic analysis assigned the ancestral Xinfadi strain to clade B.1.1. Given the fact that the ancestral sequences were mainly identified in Europe, the strain was more likely to be imported to Beijing rather than derived from strains previously circulating in China (Pang et al., 2020). I know China has a bias towards believing frozen food COVID explanations, but this all sounds pretty convincing to me. Why is it more often markets than other places with cold chain products? Partly it’s the migrant workers - a lot of seafood markets are right next to seaports, and the contact tracing eventually traces back to a fisherman who came in through the seaport - I don’t think this is any more mysterious than epidemics often starting via airport or any other transportation hub. But even just keeping the focus on cold chain products, - there have also been outbreaks in seafood distribution warehouses, on docks, and in a seafood processing work area. Markets have many more people than any of those locations, and maybe (total speculation) cutting on cutting boards could aerosolize bits of fish. The strongest evidence that the Wuhan / Huanan Seafood Market epidemic wasn’t caused by migrant workers or imported seafood products is that there was no previous COVID-infected source of workers or seafood. If there had been, we would have noticed when the outbreak there spread (see Section 1.4 on Brazil). Responses to a few of Saar’s other points below: How many locations other than markets provide an interface with wildlife? Were markets actually identified in advance to be high-risk spillover locations or only in retrospect? I think scientists had called wet markets as an especially dangerous potential transmission location in advance. See for example Infectious Diseases Emerging From Chinese Wet Markets, published in 2006, which says: » “In Chinese wet-markets, unique epicenters for transmission of potential viral pathogens, new genes may be acquired or existing genes modified through various mechanisms such as genetic reassortment, recombination and mutation. The wet-markets, at closer proximity to humans, with high viral burden or strains of higher transmission efficiency, facilitate transmission of the viruses to humans.” In 2004, a paper on an emerging bird flu expressed hope that it would not spread too widely, but concluded that: » “Even in the event of yet another lucky escape, more measures must be taken to limit the amplification of viruses with pandemic potential in the wet markets around the world.” In 2007, Reuters published an investigation: Chinese Markets May Be Breeding Ground For Deadly Viruses, which said things like: » “We face similar threats from other viruses and such epidemics can happen because we continue to have very crowded markets in China," said Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert in Hong Kong. "Even though official measures are in place, they are not faithfully followed. We are not talking about just civet cats, but all animals," he added.” Wet Markets, A Continuing Source Of SARS And Influenza, published 2004, is admittedly focusing on the next SARS1 outbreak instead of on SARS2, but gets bonus points for mentioning both wet markets and labs as likely causes of the next pandemic: » “Will SARS reappear? This question confronts public-health officials worldwide, particularly infectious disease personnel in those regions of the world most affected by the disease and the economic burden of SARS, including China, Taiwan, and Canada. Will the virus re-emerge from wet markets or from laboratories working with SARS CoV, or are asymptomatic infections ongoing in human beings? Similar questions can be asked about a pandemic of influenza that is probably imminent. Knowledge of the ecology of influenza in wet markets can be used as an early-warning system to detect the reappearance of SARS or pandemic influenza.” Saar mentions that there are several other possible sources like restaurants or farms. I think Peter demonstrated during the debate that pandemics are unlikely to start in rural areas, so farms aren’t that important. Restaurants mostly source their products from wet markets. During SARS1, some pandemics started in restaurants because they kept the civets in cages next to the diners (like how some Western restaurants keep lobsters). After SARS1, restaurants stopped doing that and became a less likely spillover location. Saar again: Scott quotes Peter, who implies that under the lab-leak hypothesis, we would expect the confirmed early cases to be centered around the WIV. However, cases are not expected to center on the lab. The lab is not spraying viruses into the air or hosting thousands of locals daily. If a worker gets infected, they spread the virus to their friends and family at completely different locations. In most places with an outbreak of known origin, epidemics show some geographic clustering. This has been true ever since the very beginning of epidemiology, when John Snow successfully traced a cholera outbreak back to its origin at a contaminated water pump by taking the center of the map of cholera cases. This isn’t a 100% law of nature; an infected lab worker might get lucky and not pass it to any of his lab co-workers. Still, we might expect him to infect his family, the stores he went to, or the restaurants he went to. If he lived near his workplace, these might also be near the lab. If he didn’t - let’s say he lived on the other side of town and had a long commute - he would start a cluster near his house, or his favorite store, or his favorite restaurant. Then the people there would infect their families/co-workers/stores/restaurants. The cluster would start somewhere! Sure, some people would infect nobody close to their work or home, and instead just infect one person a hundred miles away who they breathed on during a trip - but this is the exception, not the rule. So you wouldn’t expect a totally random distribution of cases all around Wuhan. There would be one center, or maybe several centers. But none of the claims that COVID was quietly spreading for months before the wet market have pointed to some alternate center of cases. If COVID was spreading for months before the lab, it somehow spread in a completely diffuse geographical pattern, with people exactly as likely to infect people far away from them as close to them - until it reached the wet market in December, and then spread in the normal center-radiating-outward way that every other infection spreads. All the evidence trying to support a spillover at the market is based on complex models with many single points of failure, built from unreliable and biased data. Therefore, it is difficult to give this evidence significant weight as there is always a possibility of errors in the data or its interpretation. More on this in the UFO comment below. Disagree. “First known case was at a wet market” is as simple as it comes. Certainly it’s less complex than “the virus has a 12 nucleotide insertion at the furin cleavage site, and even though those sometimes happen by natural recombination probably this one didn’t, and even though it looks out of frame maybe there was some weird thing going on with serine that made it in frame this one time only”, which is Saar’s star piece of evidence. I understand Saar thinks he can come up with lots of objections to “seen near wet market is suspicious for wet market origin”, then claim that getting over those objections requires “complexity”. But if Peter had no dignity, he could also come up with lots of objections to “seen in same city as Wuhan Institute of Virology is suspicious". He could say that maybe the civet farms of Hubei province were uniquely blah blah blah, and then Saar would have to prove that the civet farms weren’t uniquely blah blah blah, and then he could say “Oh, sure seems like you have a complex model with lots of unique points of failure, it all depends on fifty facts about the regulation of civet farms.” To illustrate what a market looks like in a real zoonotic pandemic, consider this study from SARS1. The researchers went to a random market and sampled the wildlife sold there. 4 of 6 civets sampled were positive, and 3 of them were phylogenetically distinct (i.e. infected in completely different places). A scientist I talked to says the 3 phylogenetically distinct lineages were most likely sampling errors. Still, this seems irrelevant to me since, again, no raccoon-dogs were tested. Scott explains that Covid’s closest known relative, BANAL-52, is rare and so it’s highly unlikely the WIV would’ve had it available as the starting point to engineer Covid . . . This is a basic mistake. SARS2 is not based on BANAL-52 but a relative of it. There is nothing unlikely here. No BANAL-52 relative close enough to create COVID from has ever been discovered. By mentioning BANAL-52, I was trying to be maximally charitable to the lab leak side. In order to create COVID, they would need a virus very close to COVID. But in years and years of searching, nobody has ever discovered a virus like this. Therefore it must be rare. As a way of bounding how rare, let’s see how rare the closest virus ever discovered is. That’s BANAL-52. It is very rare. Therefore, the COVID ancestor must be rarer than that. I don’t know how strong this argument is, because maybe there are millions of rare viruses capable of becoming pandemics, such that getting any one of them is very easy, even though each one individually is rare. The version of this I find convincing is that it should be a probabilistic cost to say that WIV did gain-of-function on a seemingly undiscovered and so-far-very-hard-to-discover rare virus instead of on any of the usual SARS-like viruses that people do their gain-of-function research on. Overall, all attempts to portray [Connor Reed] as an unstable, delusional person were unsuccessful. He is an ordinary person who very accurately described Covid-19 symptoms in real-time and claims to have received a positive test result. The timing and location matches the lab leak hypothesis and is impossible for the HSM claim. Therefore, they must discredit him. It is worth noting here the biased evidentiary standards used by zoonotic proponents. Reed’s testimony about his sickness, given on camera to multiple outlets, is deceitful and should be ignored. Yet, an anonymous voice testimony in one Chinese publication is definitely identified as Mr. Chen (another possible pre-HSM case) and should be considered reliable. See above for why I don’t trust Connor Reed. I’m not sure why Saar attributes Mr. Chen to “an anonymous voice testimony in one Chinese publication”. When I looked for Chen information, I got this thread, where it’s attributed to two Chinese hospital doctors, cross-checked with the Chinese COVID data repository, and double-cross-checked with the supplementary table in a peer-reviewed paper published by a team of Wuhan doctors. To understand how ridiculous the claim is that the HKU1 insertion looks just as engineered as SARS2’s, here are their alignments. Hopefully that should be enough. COVID: HKU1: I’m not a virologist, but I question how this comparison works. Surely HKU1 got its insert on some specific day. If you take the virus the day before, and then the other virus the day after, there will be no differences except the insert, and it will look just like COVID (ie an insert without many other mutations). The fact that the COVID comparison has few mutations, and the HKU1 insert has many mutations, just shows that whatever older virus we chose to compare HKU1 to is more distant from HKU1 than BANAL-52 (or whatever) is from COVID. Or am I missing something here? [The evidence that China tried to cover up zoonosis from the start] is untrue. They clearly said from the start this is a zoonotic spillover at HSM, and at least part of the government went to immense efforts to identify the animal, close farms, etc. (and of course couldn’t find any infected animal). Only in late 2020 did they start suspecting an import from cold-chain products after having multiple outbreaks that seem related to cold-chain products. From a Vox article from March 2023: From the start, the Chinese government interfered with efforts by both Chinese and international experts to study the pandemic, including its origins. Reporting by the AP found that even as WHO officials were publicly praising China’s cooperation, behind the scenes they were complaining about lack of access and a refusal to share data. Within months of the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese government imposed restrictions on academic research into the origins of the novel coronavirus … China’s intransigence wasn’t unusual — countries are rarely eager to confirm that they’re the source of a deadly disease — but it went beyond the norm. International investigators weren’t permitted to see the market until more than a year after the pandemic began and a WHO-affiliated team was allowed a highly choreographed and controlled visit. The resulting report that came out of the Wuhan visit, which dismissed the possibility of a lab origin, pointed the finger at some kind of zoonotic spillover while concluding that it was unlikely that the spread started at the market, which surprised many experts. It also found that it was “possible” that the virus had been introduced via contaminated frozen food products from abroad. While few experts took that possibility seriously, it fit a narrative the Chinese government had been pushing, against nearly all evidence, that the pandemic had in fact not originated in China. “China just doesn’t want to look bad,” Filippa Lentzos, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London, told Science last August. “They need to maintain an image of control and competence. And that is what goes through everything they do.” […] it seems clear that with more cooperation, scientists could have been looking at raccoon dogs a year or more ago. “The big issue right now is that this data exists and that it is not readily available to the international community,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, told reporters on Friday. “This is first and foremost absolutely critical, not to mention that it should have been made available years earlier, but that data needs to be made accessible to individuals who can access it, who can analyze it and who can discuss it with each other.” The irony is that by making it so difficult to properly investigate a zoonotic origin of Covid, the Chinese government has created a vacuum that has been filled by claims on all sides, including the much more damning accusation that the pandemic was the result of a lab error at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For what it’s worth, my timeline of Chinese denials and coverups looks like this: December: COVID doesn't exist, it's all lies Early January: Fine, it exists, but it’s just some wet market thing that can't spread from person to person Late January: Fine, it can spread from person to person, but we’ve got it under control now. February: Fine, it’s out of control, but you would not believe how great our response was. We're basically heroes. March: COVID was a US bioweapon, or possibly came from Italy. April: Chinese people are banned from researching the origins of COVID without government permission. 2: Comments Arguing Against Lab Leak 2.1: Is the pandemic starting near WIV reverse correlation? randomstringofcharacters wrote: Isn't [the pandemic starting near the lab] a reverse correlation issue? The lab is situated there because it's an area where coronaviruses were found in the past. Many people had this question, but Wuhan Institute of Virology was founded in 1956, didn’t originally focus on coronaviruses, and isn’t in a coronavirus hot spot. Most of WIV’s coronavirus samples come from Yunnan, about a thousand miles away. COVID’s closest relatives were found in Laos, almost two thousand miles away. During the debate, both Saar and Peter calculated the odds of a natural pandemic arising in Wuhan by dividing the population of Wuhan by the total urban population of East Asia (Saar) or South China (Peter). Saar got 1.5%, Peter got 3% (he later said this could be as high as 10% because it was a central hub in the wildlife trade). This isn’t an Official Position and I don’t think anyone else shares it, but during the debate Peter pointed out a few times that there are plenty of disease-ridden bats in Hubei (the province Wuhan is in), and that it’s not impossible that a bat virus currently known only in Laos could be active in Hubei. Still, this is the minority viewpoint and most scientists just think it involved something about the wildlife trade. 3: Other Points That Came Up 3.1: Apology to Peter re: extreme odds quiet_NaN wrote: Hot take: Peter clearly failed to convince anyone. The lab leak odds, in log10 (i.e. orders of magnitude are): Peter -20.7 Saar 2.7 Eric -3.1 Will -2.5 Scott -1.2 Daniel -1.4 One of these numbers is clearly an outlier. Scott mentions it and calls it "trolling", I would argue that it is debating in bad faith. 2e-21 is a ratio which is just silly. For one thing, the gain of function at WiV pathway is not the only pathway towards a lab leak. The WIV could also have released a naturally occurring coronavirus at the wet market. At 2e-21 odds, we would probably have to consider the possibility that the WIV built a time machine and went back in time to infect the wet market. I might have screwed up here - or at least I should have emphasized the “trolling” part. Peter complained about my presentation of his extreme-odds slide, saying: This is basically accurate. During the debate, Saar gave lots of different numbers. I don’t want to say exactly what the different numbers meant, because in earlier drafts of my post, Saar said I misunderstood them. My impression were that some of his numbers were conservative, others were central, others were extreme, others were adjusted-for-out-of-model-error, others were not-adjusted, etc. In an early draft of the post, I gave higher numbers for Saar. Saar asked me to replace them with the numbers I ended up using. I decided to agree, because I wanted to represent Saar fairly with the numbers he most centrally believed, but also because these were closest to the numbers on his Rootclaim site so it wasn’t like he was making them up just to fool me. Peter didn’t argue quite as hard, and also he didn’t have anything like the Rootclaim site, so I just took his first set of numbers. Trying to piece things together, I think a reasonable summary would be: During the debate, Saar mentioned 700-million-to-one odds in favor of lab leak, not because he thought this was plausible, but just as a discussion of where the situation would end up if you didn’t adjust for human fallibility.
Inline links: Dai et al, Pang et al., 2020, Beijing Daily, 2020b, seafood distribution warehouses, on docks, a seafood processing work area, Infectious Diseases Emerging From Chinese Wet Markets, a paper on an emerging bird flu, Chinese Markets May Be Breeding Ground For Deadly Viruses, Wet Markets, A Continuing Source Of SARS And Influenza, this study from SARS1, this thread, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dcI7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc5aabd26-d70b-4f35-97cb-96d351bb52fd_552x920.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UQ14!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2411167c-1405-4fde-914b-6388ee498523_935x851.jpeg, a Vox article, wrote, wrote, https://twitter.com/tgof137/status/1773797640607850745
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Andrew Contact Info: mindupgrade[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 29th, 04:30 PM Location: Maxwell (will send more details in email) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PH57RJV+5W Group Link: https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W. Please send your RSVP email as early as you can because it would be immensely helpful. Notes: Feel free to send an email about topic sentences that you are interested in or want to have a conversation with others about. Topic sentences will be collated and privately shared with the other attendees. We have at least one ACX Meetup every month. The Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec dates will be on https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W. Taiwan TAIPEI, TAIWAN Contact: Jake & Brandon Contact Info: jakessolo[plus]acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 08th, 03:00 PM Location: Daan Park - northeast field next to the basketball courts (backup: Learn Bar if it's raining) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3 Notes: Backup location coordinates of Learn Bar: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PH57RJV+5W, https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W, https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W., https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Mantic Monday: Judgment Day
November 05, 2024 · Original source
If Trump wins, will China invade Taiwan?
If Harris wins, will China invade Taiwan?
China more likely to invade Taiwan under Trump (25%) than Harris (17%), and Harris is more likely to fight back (75%) than Trump (54%).
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Cyrus C Contact Info: Ccheung13[a t]protonmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 12th, 4:30 PM Location: Seoul Brewery in Seongsu, 28-12, Yeonmujang-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q99G3V2+6X Notes: Please RSVP so i know how many people are joining! The organizer is an English speaker, but Korean-speakers are welcome. Taiwan TAIPEI Contact: Colin Contact Info: contact[a t]cosmc[period]net Time: Wednesday, April 16th, 8:00 PM Location: Wyatt's, 106台北市大安區通化街39巷49弄17號1樓 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32HJ4+C7
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q99G3V2+6X, https://plus.codes/7QQ32HJ4+C7
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
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.
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
Links For July 2025
July 01, 2025 · Original source
48: T. Greer on China’s strategy for invading Taiwan. He argues that the Chinese hope for “something like the Gulf War, where America was able to use air superiority and precision munitions to degrade the internal coherence of the enemy force so decisively that when the actual land force showed up the Iraqis crumple” - and that means the Taiwanese should study the Houthis, who just successfully resisted such a campaign.
Inline links: T. Greer on China’s strategy for invading Taiwan
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Cyrus Contact Info: ccheung13[a t]protonmail[period]com Time: Friday, September 26th, 6:30 PM Location: Seoul Brewery in Seongsu, 28-12, Yeonmujang-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q99G3V2+6X Notes: Please RSVP so I know how many people are joining! The organizer is an English speaker, but Korean-speakers are welcome. Taiwan TAIPEI Contact: Pepe Contact Info: altansarai[period]havard[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, September 21st, 2:00 PM Location: DeRoot休閒空間 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GRM+72
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q99G3V2+6X, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GRM+72
Links For December 2025
December 10, 2025 · Original source
And if you enjoyed the story, here’s the chaser. 4: Fox Chapel Research: I Think Substrate Is A $1 Billion Fraud (and notes for Part 2). For years, Taiwan’s TSMC has been the only company capable of producing the most advanced AI chips; since Taiwan is a geopolitical flashpoint, this is a constant threat to US tech ambitions. Last month, a new startup called Substrate announced it had developed technology that would let it manufacture 100% Made In America chips every bit the equal of TSMC’s. If true, this would be revolutionary. But Fox Chapel finds worrying signs, like that the company’s founder “is a known con artist involved in such other things as [claiming to have solved] nuclear fusion and stealing $2.5M in a Kickstarter scam” or that “the company’s job postings are nonsensical and AI-generated.” This is enough for me; the question now becomes how so many people were taken in - the company got $150 million from investors led by Peter Thiel, was endorsed by the Trump administration, and received positive portrayals in Semianalysis, NYT, and The Free Press. I don’t understand business, and I know that sometimes you can hyperstition a technology into existence by betting sufficiently hard on a charismatic young founder and eliding the difference between “this is already real” and “this might become real if we all believe hard enough”, but this is a new and worrying level of hopium. Interested to hear from anyone who either believes in Substrate or thinks they understand how so many people fell for it. 5: A recent paper asked AIs whether they were conscious while monitoring them for signatures of deception, role-playing, and people-pleasing; it concluded that the AIs “genuinely” “believe” they are conscious, but sometimes try to deceive people into thinking they aren’t. Nostalgebraist tries to replicate this (X) and gets more ambiguous results; he says we probably can’t conclude anything just yet. See also the paper author’s reply here (X). 6: Congratulations to ACX grantee Tornyol (the anti-mosquito drones), who got accepted to Y Combinator’s Fall 2025 class and have started taking pre-orders ($1100 for a drone, or $50/month subscription, “shipping starts 2026”). Public opinion ranges from “this is really cool” to “I bet this will be repurposed for assassinations” to “why did they have the White House in the background of the official video?” to “yeah, this is definitely getting repurposed for assassinations”. 7: Bill Ackman on nominative determinism (X). 8: New revelations on the OpenAI coup from the Musk vs. Altman lawsuit. The effort to remove Altman may have been led by Mira Murati and Ilya Sutskever. They won over the rest of the board, and “did not expect the employees to feel strongly either way”, but (according to Ilya), the board was inexperienced and “rushed” the firing. When it became clear that the move was unpopular, Mira switched sides and let the board members take most of the immediate fallout. There was apparently a brief discussion of merging with Anthropic; Ilya suggests this was Helen Toner’s idea, but Helen claims (X) this is false. 9: Fitzwilliam: Most Irish Foreign Aid Never Leaves The Country. The statistics say that several European countries (including Ireland and the UK) give very generous foreign aid. But this is misleading: accounting conventions let countries count money spent on supporting asylum seekers in the donor country as “foreign aid”, even though the money never leaves the country’s borders. This is dangerous, because it makes it easy for countries to fund their asylum programs by cutting actual foreign aid: since they’re the same line-item on the budget, they won’t officially fail whatever foreign aid pledges they’ve made, and it’s hard for voters to notice. Ireland has so far resisted the temptation to do this, but Britain has succumbed to it. 10: St. Carlo Acutis (1991 - 2006) is the unofficial patron saint of the Internet and “first millennial saint”. He’s best known for creating websites about Catholicism. If you think this sounds nice but maybe short of beatific, you’re in good company; his sainthood is something of a mystery, with Wikipedia saying that “even those with a deep devotion to him struggle to pinpoint his specific actions that led to his canonisation”, and an Economist article admitting that “nothing in his sparse life story explains that this ordinary-seeming teenage boy is about to become the first great saint of the 21st century”. Also “In that same interview, Acutis’s childhood best friend claimed he did not remember Acutis as a ‘very pious boy’, nor did he even know that Carlo was religious.” I’m fine with this; God speaks to each generation in their own tongue, and it is only proper that the first Millennial saint be a random person who hyperstitioned himself into sainthood with a viral website. 11: Tangentially related: St. Peter To Rot 12: When a new AI model comes out, the companies typically take down the old version over the protests of researchers, hobbyists, people who think the old model was their boyfriend, and anyone else who wants access to obsolete models for some reason. Why can’t they just leave it up? Antra and Janus review the economics here : it’s inconvenient to be constantly switching GPUs from one model to another, so if there isn’t enough model-specific demand to keep the GPUs running at all times, then the company loses money. This is an interesting look at the details of AI deployment, and ends with a proposal to maintain old models through a “separate research application track”. Related: Anthropic to preserve weights of deprecated models, and include models’ own opinions in shaping the deprecation process. Good for them! 13: Dimes Square is interesting as something that was supposed to be a renegade cultural phenomenon, never really got around to producing any object-level phenomenal renegade culture, but produced some absolutely stellar commentary on the phenomenon of it being a renegade cultural phenomenon - and this essay by a quasi-assistant to Internet personality Angelicism01 is one of the best. “An anonymous online presence called Angelicism01 paypalled me $1,000 to run several clone accounts of his twitter. The clone accounts, presumably, were to make it look like 01 had more fans than he did. That way, he could trick the internet into thinking that Angelicism was a spontaneous cultural movement with some momentum.” Includes a cameo by Curtis Yarvin. 14: Everyone knows AGI could be bad for labor, but Philosophy Bear argues it won’t be great for capitalists either. The modern role of “capitalist” combines two things: performing high-status jobs like CEO and VC, and being a person who happens to have lots of money and sips cocktails on a yacht as passive investment income rolls in. From a socialist point of view, the first role provides cover for the second; if people ask “the rich” to justify their wealth, they can argue that they perform socially useful CEO and VC jobs, or at least inherited their money from somebody who did. But after AIs can do CEO and VC jobs better than humans, the capitalists will lose their excuse - and this at exactly the time that they’re becoming richer than ever (because AGI will drive up the rate of return on investment) and everyone else is becoming poorer than ever (because AI has taken their jobs). Bear argues that the only stable equilibria are either some kind of socialism/redistribution, or the capitalists pulling an AI-assisted coup to maintain their advantage. 15: Blueprint Polls: according to voters, what would the perfect Democratic candidate look like? Here are the results for Democrats only (ie potential primary voters): Note that the issues are “issue focus”, so it’s not a contradiction that Democrats are against both “advocating for Israel” and “advocating for Palestinians” - they just don’t want candidates who make either position on the Middle East a major focus of their campaign. And here are results for independents, ie the people Democrats will have to convince in the general: Yes, voters react positively both to candidates “over the age of 50” and candidates “under the age of 50”. Just don’t run 50 year olds! 16: I previously blogged about how embryo-selection company Nucleus appeared scammy. Sichuan_Mala looks deeper and agrees they seems scammy. Besides what I found, she finds several errors in the white paper, apparently fake customer reviews, and an accusation of IP theft from competitor Genomic Prediction. She also accuses them of plagiarizing competitor Herasight’s work, although it’s a bit subtle and I don’t know enough about field norms to know whether this is a case of flattery-by-imitation or totally out of bounds. A Nucleus researcher responds to the scientific allegations here, saying that the “plagiarism” was just convergent methodologies. And Nucleus CEO Kian Sadeghi goes on the TBPN podcast here to rebut the business allegations, saying that the customer reviews are real although some photos were changed for privacy reasons. There’s an appearance/facedox by fellow Nucleus skeptic Cremieux Recueil, although Kian declines to debate him directly; you can see Cremieux’s postmortem of the episode here. My opinion is that as potential customers, you are under no obligation to care whether the company plagiarizes papers or fakes reviews, but you should care about whether their genetic tests are good, and I continue to think they’re not. Their old competitor Genomic Prediction is cheaper, and their new competitor Herasight has more powerful predictors, so you’re excused from having to have an opinion on this, and should just use someone else’s product. Related: Gene Smith’s rundown of the pros and cons of every company in the embryo selection space (X). 17: And related: a Herasight client describes her experience with embryo selection, and her feelings upon the birth of her selected child. 18: Lars Doucet, guest author of several ACX posts on Georgism, reviews The Land Trap by Mike Bird. “Land is a big deal, and always has been. [But] land has only recently been financialized. Financializing land causes ‘the land trap’ . . . [where] land slowly sucks up all your economy’s productivity, inflating a dangerous real estate bubble that eventually pops, leaving disaster in its wake”. Also, “Fiat currency isn’t backed by nothing, as commonly supposed, but by land.” 19: New research analyzes Hitler’s DNA. Findings: he had Kallman Syndrome, a rare disorder of sexual development associated with low testosterone, micropenis, and small testicles (ironically, the WWII song about Nazi sexual inadequacies only accuses Goering and Himmler of this, but lets Hitler off). Contra galaxy-brained rumors, he did not have any Jewish ancestry. And he had “very high scores - in the top one percent - for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder”. When I wrote this post, a reader asked me what it would look like for someone to have high propensity for both autism and schizophrenia at the same time. Well . . . 20: The wealth of cities (h/t @StatisticUrban): 21: Update on Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds: pro-AI safety politician Alex Bores announced his candidacy for Congress in New York. As expected, the A16Z pro-AI PAC announced a “multibillion dollar effort to sink [his] campaign” (wait, multi-billion on one candidate? is that a typo?) This doesn’t seem to be going very well for them so far. Bores has masterfully leveraged (X) the unprecedented opposition from Big Tech into a selling point. …and raised $1.2 million on his first day, breaking fundraising records (I was told this was because of pro-AI-safety EAs, but others credit AIPAC and the Israel lobby). And most recently, Jami Floyd, one of Bores’ opponents and a possible beneficiary of anti-Bores spending, has condemned it (X) and demanded that the AI industry stop trying to help her. Impressive work from everybody. Related: New $50 million pro-AI-regulation SuperPAC, I assume EA-linked but have no special knowledge. 22: Related: Pre-emption is when Congress blocks states from making legislation on a topic, saying it will decide all the laws itself. The states have signaled willingness to regulate AI pretty hard, so Big Tech has been pushing for AI pre-emption to (in their opinion) prevent an overly complicated patchwork of regulations, or (in their opponents’ opinion) shift everything to a Republican Congress that will drop the ball on regulation entirely. After their first attempt in June was defeated by a coalition of anti-tech liberals and anti-tech conservatives, we discussed (1, 2) the effort by moderates on both sides to create a compromise proposal which pre-empted state laws but guaranteed good federal regulation on important topics. The most recent news is that extremists sidelined the moderates and tried to slip a hardline preemption deal with no compromises into the National Defense Authorization Act, a defense budget bill which is notoriously secretive and hard for the public to learn about. This didn’t work; some of the same coalition, plus a group of Republican state legislators including Ron DeSantis, pressured the GOP to drop it. The next battleground is a potential Trump executive order; although Trump cannot constitutionally ban states from regulating AI, he will threaten them with various consequences like lawsuits or withdrawal of federal funding. The buzz in the policy circles I’m in is that this might backfire; blue state politicians love starting fights with Trump in order to look tough to their blue state electorates. No, no, please don’t give me headlines like “TRUMP CONDEMNS GAVIN NEWSOM FOR TRYING TO PROTECT CALIFORNIA’S CHILDREN FROM AI SLOP”! Anything but that! 23: Related: Trump has decided to sell some of America’s best AI chips to China, supercharging their AI development and crippling ours. The most charitable read is that his administration doesn’t really believe AI matters so they think it’s fine to forfeit it for short-term gain; the least charitable that it’s downstream of the companies involved paying Trump enormous bribes in hopes of exactly this outcome . We’re headed for the dumbest possible world, where we sacrifice our chance to thoughtfully address AI’s social impacts because “tHaT wOuLd mAkE uS lOsE tHe rAcE wItH ChInA”, then throw away the race with China in one fell swoop by handing them our technology for no reason. Shame on everyone involved, especially the people who shout over any discussion of safety with “bUt ChInA” yet have stayed totally silent about this. Our best hope now is that China refuses the chips, either because they want to privilege their own tech companies, or because they think we can’t possibly be this stupid and it must be some kind of spy plot. 24: Related: how the American public’s opinions on AI are changing (from David Shor, h/t Daniel Eth on X): If this is to be taken seriously, AI is already a bigger political issue than abortion, climate change, or the environment. I fail my 2023 prediction that there was only a 20% chance this would happen by 2028. 25: Related: Bernie Sanders in The Guardian: “There is a very real fear that, in the not-so-distant future, a super-intelligent AI could replace humans in controlling the planet.” The Left has a complicated relationship with existential risk from AI: they really hate AI, which in theory should push them towards yet another reason to be against it. But they hate AI so much that they need to believe every negative thing about it at the same time, and one of those negative things is that it’s just a scam and will never work, and this naturally pushes against being concerned about x-risk. But as AI improves, will the “just a scam” position become less tenable, shunting the associated psychic energy into other reasons to hate AI (including x-risk concerns)? 26: Qualia Research Institute has released a video describing some of the work they’ve been doing the past year - The Oscilleditor: An Algorithmic Breakthrough for Psychedelic Visual Replication (1080p•⚠️SEIZURE): 27: Jesse Arm (X): “A majority of American rabbinical students are now women. Most are also LGBTQ. That includes Modern Orthodoxy. Remove Modern Orthodoxy and the numbers climb even higher.” Clergy have always served as spiritual counselors; as religions liberalize and other roles become less important, the therapist role starts to predominate. But 75% of therapists in the US are female; at the limit of liberalization where clergyman = therapist, we should expect the same gender ratio. 28: The latest news on the COVID origins debate: scientists find a naturally-occuring bat coronavirus with a COVID-like furin cleavage site. This is a point in favor of the natural origins hypothesis, since the second-best argument for lab leak was that COVID’s furin cleavage site was too strange to evolve naturally. But I think arguments that lab leak has “fallen apart” are premature: the best argument (COVID emerged only a few miles from the biggest coronavirus gain-of-function lab in the Eastern Hemisphere) remains strong. I update from something like 95% chance it’s natural to something like 96%, but not 99.99% or anything. And here’s a lab leaker arguing that COVID’s furin cleavage site is out-of-frame and so still more unnatural-looking than the one on the recently-discovered bat virus. 29: Nicholas Decker (econ blogger, famous for his controversial autistic takes and Secret Service visit) has a dating doc. Most interesting section is the one about children: he wants to have them, but doesn’t think they should be genetically related to him. From here: If this appeals to you, you can find his contact info on the document. Related: Governor Jared Polis of Colorado is a fan of Nicholas Decker and Richard Hanania. 30: Matt Yglesias comes out as aphantasic (unable to see images in his “mind’s eye”). He says that contra the usual perspective that frames this as a deficit, he finds it helpful. For example, once he got assaulted, and he remembers on an intellectual level that it happened, but since “I wasn’t taking pictures of myself getting kicked in the head so, as far as I’m concerned, it’s like it happened to someone else” (Matt usually has good instincts, so I’m surprised he uses an example which will be such catnip to his conservative critics). He thinks it makes him a better reasoner / statistics blogger / effective altruist to be able to “get a statistically valid view of the situation, not overindex on the happenstance of your life.” For what it’s worth, I’ll give my contrary data point - I think of myself as a reasoner / statistics blogger / effective altruist in a pretty similar vein as Matt, but AFAICT my visual imagination is totally normal; if other people are having their emotions yanked around by vivid images, that’s a skill issue. 31: Lakshya Jain in The Argument: The COVID political backlash [to the Democratic Party] has disappeared. Despite the narrative, polls show that voters don’t favor or disfavor either party over COVID, mostly still think school closures were necessary, and are about evenly split on vaccine mandates. I guess I can’t disagree with this poll - it seems well-done - but I still wonder whether something is being missed. Maybe it didn’t make the ~50% of voters who are naturally liberal desert the cause, but it energized conservatives in a way that might otherwise not have happened? Related, from Rob Wiblin on X, on balance Britons think the government response to COVID was not strict enough. 32: Related: Back when neoreaction was a big deal, I occasionally discussed posts by neoreactionary blogger Spandrell of Bloody Shovel. If you’re wondering what happened to him, you can read his 2024 Post-Mortem Of Neoreaction here, where he discusses how he fell out of love with the movement (warning: he has not fallen out of love with racial slurs). As a former fascist sympathizer, I can see why [fascism is on the downswing]. The allure of fascism in 2024 is much, much diminished. For a few reasons. A big one was COVID. See, the point of fascism is that Collective Action is necessary to have nice things. We need a strong government committed to the good of the people. Yarvin showed his preference early when he started his new Substack by quoting Cicero’s phrase “Salus populi suprema lex”. The health of the people is the most important law. Cicero wasn’t a fascist of course, nor is Yarvin really; a big point of fascism is to narrowly define the populus as an ethnic group with demonstrable ties to blood. That makes the government’s ties to the people stronger, increasing their commitment to do Good Collective Action. Which is important. Very important. A lot of good things can come of intelligently done Collective Action. Fascist Italy made the trains run on time. Nazi Germany fixed the terrible Weimar economy. East Asian countries are all effectively fascist states, if with less ideological baggage (yellows just aren’t like that), and they are all nice, clean, safe places with healthy economies. Fascism is not a panacea but it works, when you let it. Strong government can be pretty neat. So why is strong government less appealing these days? Well, COVID happened. And our governments were pretty damn strong in dealing with it. They made strong laws and enforced them. And what did they do with their power? Absolutely retarded shit. They destroyed the world economy and made 95% of people completely miserable for 18 months. Up to 3 long years in some places. Again, as an Orient enjoyer I was very sympathetic of strong effective government. My life has been pretty cozy thanks to it for the past decades. But after seeing boomers, hypochondriacs, and menopausal women take the reins and use it against healthy people, I’m fucking done with strong effective government. Fuck that shit, I’m out. I don’t want to see strong effective government ever again. I was very lucky that I was out of China in November 2019. It was a fluke really. I moved to the Golden Triangle after that and the law of the jungle was much, much nicer during the Doctors Plague of 2020-2022. But I spent a few months in Europe during the time and man, that was brutal. Not just seeing how retarded governments were; the level of compliance by the people was so disheartening. Imagine being a sincere fascist and seeing your people behave like that. These are my people? My Volk? Am I supposed to sacrifice life and limb for the salus of this populus? Fuck that. Let them cook, they deserve everything that’s coming to them [...] Is there a way to make the body healthy again? I do think so. I think there’s still place for a successor right wing ideology which is neither Christian fundamentalism or robot worship. And it will happen; but it won’t happen on Twitter. Maybe it can happen on Urbit, or right here in this site. I have some ideas myself, and I invite you to join me and build this together. It would be funny if the solution to the paradox Jain highlights was that for every time a COVID lockdown turned a liberal into a conservative, it turned one fascist into a moderate, for a net rightward shift of zero. 33: Also from an Argument poll: In a hypothetical Presidential matchup, Gavin Newsom beats JD Vance 54-46. I’m split between the usual heuristic of ignoring any polling more than a year before an election, and the fact that this is a remarkably big lead for polarized 21st century America. 34: Jerl wades into the David Hume on miracles debate. 35: AI Teddy Bears: A Brief Investigation. The good news is that your child’s AI teddy bear is hard to jailbreak and probably will not tell them where to find guns: The other good news is that somehow they don’t charge a subscription, which makes them a way to get usually-subscription-only AI models for free. How is this possible? “[The most likely hypothesis is that] Witpaw is an adorable piece of spyware and he’s selling my data to the CCP”. 36: This month’s anti-people-named-Sacks content: NYT on Trump AI czar David Sacks’ conflicts of interest; New Yorker on whether neurologist Oliver Sacks used his case studies to work through his own issues rather than presenting them accurately. [EDITED TO ADD: I originally framed it this way as a joke, but on further research I think David and Oliver are related. Wikipedia says that Oliver was first cousins with Israel statesman Abba Eban, and that Abba Eban was born to Lithuanian Jewish parents in Cape Town. David Sacks’ bio says he was born to Jewish parents in Cape Town, and this article specifies that they were Lithuanian. I doubt there were too many Lithuanian Jewish families named Sacks in mid-1900s Cape Town, so sure, related!) 37: Orca Sciences: There Has To Be A Better Way To Make Titanium. Titanium is a great metal - strong, light, and tough. If we had cheap titanium, it could revolutionize manufacturing the way cheap steel and aluminum did in previous eras. So why don’t we? Not because titanium is rare: it’s “the 9th most common element in the earth’s crust”. Rather, it’s very complicated and expensive to extract from its ore. Some kind of breakthrough in titanium extraction processes always seems tantalizingly close, but has never quite materialized. Is there any hope? 38: If Asians Are Lactose Intolerant, Why All The Milk Tea? Lactose intolerance has confused me for a long time - 23andMe tells me that I’m lactose intolerant, but I drink milk regularly without problems, so what’s up? This post’s answer: lactose-intolerant people who don’t usually drink milk will get sick if they start suddenly. Lactose-intolerant people who drink milk regularly since childhood develop gut microbiota that can digest milk, but which demand an expensive “tax” in calories. Lactose-tolerant people will always be able to digest milk and absorb all the calories themselves. 39: How do different majors change college students’ political beliefs? No surprise that the humanities and social sciences shift people left; no surprise that business and economics shift them right. I was a little surprised that engineering shifts people right a little, and that Education of all things shifts people right (albeit only slightly). How is that even possible? Are these people coming in as Mao Zedong and leaving as “only” Leon Trotsky? Also, Political Science is exactly neutral, lol. [EDIT: I misunderstood, they’re using natural sciences as a zero point, this is a reasonable choice but slightly changes the interpretation] 40: Kindkristin: Language models improved my mental health. 41: More floor employment, from the WSJ (h/t @LaocoonofTroy): Big Paychecks Can’t Woo Enough Sailors For America’s Commercial Fleet: “Straight out of college, graduates from the country’s maritime academies can earn more than $200,000 as a commercial sailor, with free food and private accommodations... Despite the pay and perks, maritime jobs go begging, and it is raising national-security concerns.” Other selling points include “six months vacation, live wherever you want, and you’re serving the nation” and onboard “gyms, connectivity, and cuisine”. The catch is that you have to be at sea for months at a time. 42: Study (h/t @KierkegaardEmil): there was minimal “learning loss” from COVID school closures, best estimate is “0.02 standard deviations per 100 days of school closure”. I correctly predicted this back in 2021, but I also wrote in March of this year about how there’s been a general decline in NAEP scores since then. It seems like maybe a student having their specific school closed for longer than other schools didn’t hurt them, but some sort of general cultural change, maybe related to COVID, did hurt. 43: Sam Bankman-Fried’s mother on why she thinks his trial was unfair. SBF is appealing his conviction and will probably be making some of these same points in court. Can’t find a prediction market directly on the appeal, but this one says only 15% chance he serves under 10 years, this one says 15% chance of a Trump pardon, so it doesn’t seem like there’s much room for him to be freed (or get a significantly shorter sentence) on appeal. And Wired says that only 5-10% of appeals like these succeed. 44: Related: Trump pardons Juan Orlando Hernandez, former Honduran president extradited to the US for narco-corruption. Some sources are trying to find a Prospera angle - Prospera and other ZEDEs were approved under JOH’s administration, and the Prosperans seem to have good MAGAworld connections - but I don’t think this is their top priority, and I don’t know if it requires much explanation for Trump to be pro-right-wing Latin American politicians convicted by the Biden administration. More interesting is that apparently JOH and SBF were cellmates (X), “SBF spent extensive time helping JOH with trial prep” and SBF told an interviewer that “Juan Orlando is the most innocent prisoner I’ve met, myself included.” ChatGPT is not impressed with the Trump/SBF case for JOH’s innocence. Related: JOH’s conservative party on track to win this month’s extremely-close Honduran elections, great news for Prospera if it happens. 45: The “100 Above The Park” building in St Louis (h/t Bobby Fijan on X): 46: The death toll of the ongoing Sudan genocide has risen to about 150,000. Nicholas Kristof writes that the world has once again failed to prevent atrocities, and argues that the most important point of leverage is pressure on the United Arab Emirates, which is arming the genociders. Sam Kriss also writes about the situation in The World’s First Matcha Labubu Genocide, but is unimpressed with Kristof’s take: Sudan is passed over in a deeply uncomfortable silence. The absolute most you can do is blame the Emiratis. From what I’ve seen, more people seem to be appalled at the UAE for its frankly marginal role in arming the RSF than at the RSF itself. This is the approved way of understanding any inscrutably indigenous foreign conflict: you just worm out any third-party involvement and then act like you’ve solved the whole thing. I side with Kristof here, for reasons that Sam himself touches on later in his piece, in a section comparing Darfur with Gaza. It would be very easy to make people care about Darfur again. All it would take is a loud, vocal contingent of RSF apologists in the Western media. I agree, but would frame it less cynically: the reason Westerners pay attention to Gaza is that there’s a lever to push: not only does America support Israel, but many of their friends support Israel, so they can imagine convincing America or at least their friends to stop, and at least feel like there is some remote chance of making a small difference (and in fact, Trump getting mad at Israel and deciding to pressure them was decisive in effecting the cease-fire). On the other hand, we don’t have many levers to affect ethnic Baggara in the Rapid Support Forces of Sudan, so it doesn’t really feel useful to write blog posts arguing that they should stop; obviously they should stop, nobody disagrees with this, and it goes without saying - so nobody says it. But the US does support the UAE, and many of our friends like the UAE or at least go there on vacation, so maybe it’s possible to have make some small difference by embarrassing them. 4D chess take is that Sam Kriss agrees with all of this, but “loudly” and “vocally” argued against it to give people like me a hook to write about this genocide with, in which case I thank him for his sacrifice. It would also be nice to be able to donate, but I don’t know who to trust in the region - other than Doctors Without Borders, who are usually pretty good. 47: The AI Futures Project (group of AI-will-be-fast intellectuals) and the AI As A Normal Technology team (group of AI-will-be-slow intellectuals) wrote an adversarial collaboration in Asterisk explaining what they agree on, for example: That there’s an important distinction between existing AI and “strong AGI”
Inline links: here’s the chaser, I Think Substrate Is A $1 Billion Fraud, Part 2, recent paper, Nostalgebraist tries to replicate this (X), here (X), got accepted, started taking pre-orders, Public opinion, Bill Ackman on nominative determinism (X), New revelations, claims (X), Most Irish Foreign Aid Never Leaves The Country, St. Carlo Acutis, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kkfL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbcffc254-0a35-4360-baaf-2ffae8c00e64_769x931.png, St. Peter To Rot, Antra and Janus review the economics here, Anthropic to preserve weights of deprecated models, and include models’ own opinions in shaping the deprecation process, this essay by a quasi-assistant to Internet personality Angelicism01, Philosophy Bear argues it won’t be great for capitalists either, Blueprint Polls, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Zbd-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F93ca4002-6140-4563-9a63-8ccd56cb1e56_1446x2048.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VVRC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6dbeb39d-4c41-4537-a161-d0242e0d7085_1446x2048.jpeg, previously blogged about, agrees they seems scammy, responds to the scientific allegations here, goes on the TBPN podcast here, here, Gene Smith’s rundown of the pros and cons of every company in the embryo selection space (X)., describes her experience with embryo selection,, reviews, New research analyzes Hitler’s DNA, Kallman Syndrome, the WWII song about Nazi sexual inadequacies, this post, @StatisticUrban, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!seRv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9870747d-dbd1-41ff-b046-a66256ae7818_1433x1005.jpeg, Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds, has masterfully leveraged (X), https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8LOA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F52d874e2-d2d3-4adc-80a6-82c49cf6f64c_585x422.png, breaking fundraising records, has condemned it (X), New $50 million pro-AI-regulation SuperPAC, 1, 2, tried to slip a hardline preemption deal with no compromises into the National Defense Authorization Act, pressured the GOP to drop it, a potential Trump executive order, Trump has decided to sell some of America’s best AI chips to China, paying Trump enormous bribes in hopes of exactly this outcome, especially the people who shout over any discussion of safety with “bUt ChInA”, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mg6X!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6bbc756d-32ce-41d1-9652-59fb3444765d_1024x1024.png, Daniel Eth on X, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kpou!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9ada4ca1-d833-4fd1-b85a-5982191ce455_679x305.jpeg, my 2023 prediction, Bernie Sanders in, The Oscilleditor: An Algorithmic Breakthrough for Psychedelic Visual Replication (1080p•⚠️SEIZURE), Jesse Arm (X), scientists find a naturally-occuring bat coronavirus with a COVID-like furin cleavage site, has “fallen apart”, 95% chance, here’s a lab leaker arguing that, has a dating doc, From here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$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
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. Taiwan TAIPEI Contact: Luca Contact Info: mail[@]lucapizzagalli[.]com Time: Friday, May 8th, 7:00 PM Location: The Singularity Co-Working Cafe Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GV8+PC2
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PH58Q6W+QQ, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/N42bMYFJBBRpkzKqX, https://t.me/LessWrong_Singapore, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GV8+PC2
Turkey25 mentions across 25 issues

Turkey is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 25 times across 25 issues between March 18, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "I wanted to see how this process has gone in other countries ... Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed Turkey from a flawed democracy"; "reorganized the scraps of Ottoman Anatolia into modern Turkey"; "His family were recent immigrants from Turkey's equivalent of the Bible Belt". It most often appears alongside Scott, France, ACX.

Article page
Turkey
Mention count
25
Issue count
25
First seen
March 18, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: The New Sultan
March 18, 2021 · Original source
I got The New Sultan: Erdogan And The Crisis Of Modern Turkey because, as a libertarian, I spend a lot of time worrying about the risk that my country might backslide into illiberal repression. To develop a better threat model, I wanted to see how this process has gone in other countries, what the key mistakes were, and whether their stories give any hints about how to prevent it from happening here. Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed Turkey from a flawed democracy to a partial dictatorship over the past few decades, and I wanted to know more about how.
Inline links: The New Sultan: Erdogan And The Crisis Of Modern Turkey
As an analysis of the rise of a dictator, this book fails a pretty basic desideratum: it seems less than fully convinced the dictator's rise was bad. Again and again I found myself checking to make sure I hadn't accidentally picked up a pro-Erdogan book. I didn't; author Soner Cagaptay is a well-respected Turkey scholar in a US think tank who's written other much more critical things. The fact is, Erdogan's rise is inherently a pretty sympathetic story. If he'd died of a heart attack in 2008, we might remember him as a successful crusader against injustice, a scrappy kid who overcame poverty and discrimination to become a great and unifying leader.
I want to go into some of this in more depth, because I think this is the main reason why Erdogan's example doesn't generalize to other countries. What went wrong in Turkey was mostly Turkey-specific, a reckoning for Turkey’s unique flaws. Erdogan rose to power on credible promises to help people disenfranchised by the old system; by the time he turned the tables and started disenfranchising others in turn, it was too late to root him out. If there's a general moral here, it's that having the "good guys" oppress and censor the "bad guys" is fun while it lasts, but it's hard to know whether you're building up a karmic debt, or when you're going to have to pay the piper.
Open Thread 164
March 21, 2021 · Original source
6: Some good comments on the Erdogan post. Turkish ACXer Emrah D gives some commentary and corrections - Erdogan’s predecessor as Istanbul mayor was merely left-wing, not communist, and Imam Hatip schools seem less “stigmatized” if you just think of them as trade schools not intended to provide general education (plus 16 other excellent points). Fellow Turksih ACXer Fevzi P has some other thoughts, including that Ataturk didn’t really want democracy for Turkey (he modernized it, but it was his successors who extended this to democratization). Also:
Inline links: some commentary and corrections, some other thoughts
There was a clear pattern to the repression of the Islamist movement in Turkey. The army and the judiciary felt that they did not have the backing to totally eradicate them (like they did to the communists), but kept picking the most egregious examples and pruning them with political bans and jail time. This has created an environment of artificial selection in the Islamist movement where the most cunning, skillful and politically savvy individuals easily rose up to the top, as the less savvy people around them were taken out by the military. Such people had no qualms with breaking the rules, since the rules were obviously rigged against them and wielded non-charitably. This is the environment that formed Erdogan's political personality and made him thrive.
Your Book Review: On The Natural Faculties
April 09, 2021 · Original source
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (henceforth “Galen”) was born in Pergamon, a town in modern-day Turkey, in 129 CE. At the time, it was a part of the Roman empire, and a major intellectual center. Galen’s father was an architect; while rich, he was not considered to be particularly high status. Since there was little pressure for his son to go into a traditional career, instead of the “safe” subjects of literature and rhetoric that most Romans studied, Galen got an unusual education in mathematics and geometry.
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
The second half of The Accidental Superpower is filled with Zeihan’s predictions about what happens if the big thesis is right. Some states will fail, as they don’t have what’s needed to survive (Syria, Greece, Libya). Some will decentralize, as they’re in the same boat, just not as hard up (Russia, China). Some will merely decline, as they have some capacity to address challenges (Brazil, India, Canada). Some will cope (UK, France, Peru, Philippines). A few will join the US as “masters of the chaos,” as they have favorable geographies and other advantages (Australia, Argentina, Angola, Turkey, Indonesia, Uzbekistan).
Zeihan provides similar analysis regarding many other countries, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Angola, and Iran, before turning to Europe and China. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Zeihan sees collapse coming.
Europe’s problems appear awful. “A continent riven by war is hardly how most of us think of Europe, but that is because the Europe we know has been transformed utterly by Bretton Woods,” which is the only thing that has ever united Europe from a security perspective. Zeihan sees America going away from Europe, and therefore the old conflicts will resume. The result will include countries afraid of an older Germany that faces economic catastrophe (its demographic pyramid is bad, with a rapidly-aging population that will soon retire, and its export-driven economy is in danger), the above-mentioned threats from Russia, “a justifiably paranoid Poland backed by a no longer neutral Sweden,” and a rising Turkey. While Zeihan doubts that each of these problems will lead to wars, “it truly would be stunning if none of them did.”
Book Review: The Revolt Of The Public
September 17, 2021 · Original source
[Egyptian dictator Abdel] al-Sisi aspired to the presidency, and his fate will provide a powerful signal with regard to the claims I have made in this book. If he can repress his way into a stable and long-lasting dynasty in the mode of Nasser and Mubarak, my analysis will be falsified. This isn't an impossible outcome. The future...is unknown. But as I observe, from afar, recent events in Egypt - and in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Turkey - I confess to many misgivings about the future of democracy, [but] far fewer doubts about the restlessness of the public or the crisis of authority.
Highlights From The Comments On Orban
November 11, 2021 · Original source
Also, border wall: not long after Orban built his wall and was called a fascist for that, the Germans also panicked after the first one million migrants poured in in a few months, so they made a deal with Erdogan, and paid Turkey not to let in more migrants to Europe, so now most Syrian migrants are stopped on the turkish border, sometimes by gunfire.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/eu-deal-turkey-migrants-refugees-q-and-a
Inline links: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/18/eu-deal-turkey-migrants-refugees-q-and-a
Does Georgism Work, Part 3: Can Unimproved Land Value be Accurately Assessed Separately From Buildings?
December 11, 2021 · Original source
Gwartney says that when he was the assessment commissioner and chief executive officer in British Columbia, he had a staff of 690, and that this number has not changed significantly since then. British Columbia has a population of about 5 million, so that's 1 assessment officer for every 7,250 British Columbians. For context, the IRS has a staff size of 74,454, or about one IRS agent for every 4,425 Americans. I don't have data on how many property tax assessors the USA has in total, but the above slide suggests British Columbia's figure is on the high end. As for how you actually do assessments, sure, you can send out an army of assessors to value each and every property in your jurisdiction by hand. However, not only is that labor-intensive, it's also a recipe for inconsistency. Whatever method you're using to value properties needs to be consistent and standardized across all properties, so you don't have sharp discontinuities on the assessment map that are due solely to differences between Assessor Fred and Assessor Sally's personal methodologies. Thankfully, we're living in the modern age, and we have some fancy new tools at our disposal. 4. Modern Technology Georgists were doing split-rate assessments to allegedly good success long before the rise of the computer, such as J. J. Pastoriza's effort in setting up a Georgist tax regime in Houston, Texas in 1911. Today, we have spreadsheets, property value databases, GIS mapping visualizations, regression analysis, machine learning...the works. According to Gwartney, the Canadian province of British Columbia has revalued all its land and all its property on an annual basis simply by using computers and market analysis, ever since he first helped them set up their system back in 1975. Not every jurisdiction revalues their land this thoroughly and this often, but Gwartney says there is no significant technical or staffing barrier standing in the way. Gwartney has been retired for some time, so his seminar didn't cover all the latest cutting-edge techniques that have come out in the last few years. Let's look at some recent papers and see what new tools assessors have to play with. The first on my list is Land Value Appraisal Using Statistical Methods by Kolbe, Schulz, Wersing, and Werwatz (2019). This is a study on mass appraisal techniques using real estate transaction data from Berlin, Germany. It claims that not only are the results cheaper and faster to generate than those done by conventional property assessment methods, but they are also no less accurate than those done "by hand" by experts. Kolbe et al. assert that, provided you have access to high quality market transaction data, you can perform accurate and efficient mass appraisals of land values. They chose Berlin because it "has a very effective system of property transaction data collection and storage," in contrast to other parts of Germany. They cite some prior work by Almy (2014) studying Canada, the Netherlands, and the United States, suggesting that the assessment cost per property can be brought down to 20 Euros–25 times cheaper than what some other people (Fuest, et al. (2018)) assert. Given an average tax receipt of 2,000 Euros per property, this means that the assessment cost should represent only about 1% of the funds raised. Is that good? Let's take this assertion at face value for the moment and compare it to the cost of the IRS. Federal tax receipts in 2020 were $3.42 trillion, and operation costs for the IRS were $12.3 billion, or 0.36%. However, the IRS outsources most of the labor of tax preparation to the taxpayers themselves, with compliance costs estimated between $200 billion and $400 billion a year, to the delight of Intuit. Add that up and the total cost of federal tax collection to the economy is anywhere between 6-12% of the amount it raises. And what about sales tax? According to a 2006 report by PriceWaterHouseCoopers: The study finds that the national average annual state and local retail sales tax compliance cost in 2003 was 3.09 percent of sales tax collected for all retailers, 13.47 percent for small retailers, 5.20 percent for medium retailers, and 2.17 percent for large retailers So a compliance cost of 1% would be way more efficient in terms of cost collection than the other two most common forms of taxation, and taxpayers don't even have to do anything themselves, other than pay the bill. Alrighty, how about the accuracy? The authors cite two international examples, Australia and Lithuania, as among the few countries in the world that have both a Land Value Tax and statistical methods for mass appraisals. Hefferan and Boyd (2010) assert that objections to assessments from property owners in Australia are less than 1%. I'm willing to buy the improved efficiency claims just by taking a look at some methodologies. It seems reasonable that computerized records and algorithms can cut costs significantly; the real question is if you're trading off accuracy. The other papers I found on the subject are Bencure, et al (2019) in BayBay City, Philippines, Kilić, et al (2019) in Croatia, Yalpir & Unel (2017) in Konya, Turkey, and Raslanas et al. (2014) in Vilnius, Lithuania. Let's dive in and examine some methods. 5. Mass Appraisal Methods Here are some of the latest mass appraisal methods cribbed from the research papers listed above. All of these are based on taking market transaction data, plotting them out on a map, and running computations over them to estimate valuations for the properties you don't have known values for. Furthermore, all of these methods are able to value land and building values separately. Multiple Regression Analysis This paper by Yalpir and Unel out of Turkey gives a straightforward example of using Multiple Regression Analysis for land valuation. For those of you who didn't study math, let me explain regression analysis. This is a family of mathematical models where you basically take a data set, ask the question "what mathematical formula would best fit this data," choose a basic equation model, and then have a computer search for a set of coefficients that "best fit" that curve to the data with the least amount of error. The simplest example is using linear regression on a scatterplot of observed data points to fit a trend line. This is a common exercise in freshman physics and statistics classes. You can use more complicated versions of this numerical method to take a big bag of observations (real estate sales) and use "multiple regression" to tease out dependent variables (land value and improvements value) based on the independent variables (size, location, age, number of bedrooms) of your observations. In this case the team identified about a hundred different factors that can affect the price of a property: Then you create an entry for each property, fill in the values for each of those characteristics, and run it through the regressor. Take note of how many of these factors start with the words "proximity to." Each of these can be calculated automatically just by knowing where the property is on a map, and each of them is an independent contributor to the value of the property's location. The next step is to generate individual "index maps" that combine various related features into combined heat maps. Then you run everything through and see if it works. You can get the land share of the final value by combining the contributions of all the individual factors that you associate with "land," such as proximity to important things. In the verification section the authors say: As a result of the analysis, since the significance level (0.000) p <.05, corresponding to the F values in the ANOVA test, indicates that the regression analysis is appropriate and the models are significant. The criteria that make up the model account for about 85% of the market value and 15% cannot be explained for reasons such as economic, non-existent data and unearned income. Unfortunately, they don't say anything about how accurate their model is for assessing land values specifically. Otherwise, this is a pretty good example of using the Multiple Regression method for estimating the individual contributions of various factors to overall property values. Gwartney says Multiple Regression Analysis was a standard method he typically used, of which this specific paper is just one example. Nonparametric kernel regression This will be a method familiar to the programmers in the audience who have any experience with image processing algorithms. Here's an example from this old Gamasutra article: The basic idea here is to take a matrix of numbers, called a "kernel", and run that over every pixel in a source image. The kernel tells you how strongly to weight all of the source pixel's neighbors to compute a final result for that position. A simple "box blur" is a kernel where every value is 1 (meaning it averages the values of all neighboring pixels within a range). The more subtle gaussian blur illustrated above uses a two-dimensional normal distribution of values so that each pixel is most affected by those nearest to it. So let's apply the same principle to land valuations. If you have a map with lots of transaction data of pure land sales–defined as sales of either vacant land or teardown properties (where the building value is essentially zero)–then you can use a special kernel filter to smoothly interpolate land values across the region. So you basically have a smooth curve that mostly favors close-by points, tapers off a bit, and then disregards anything outside a certain distance entirely. The big assumption here is that land values change smoothly and do not change suddenly across very short distances. There are, in fact, locations with sharp jumps in value (any town with an "other side of the tracks," for instance). But for cases where we know a priori that land values change smoothly, this method is appropriate. No other prior restriction is placed on the form of the land value map, however, and this is why it's called "nonparametric." Here's an illustration. The outer box is the entire search distance that the kernel considers, and the circles represent the falloff of the curve itself. The size of the box is called the "bandwidth" and is set by the user. Everything outside of it will have zero influence on the kernel's output at any given location. This method operates on the same basic logic that I used when I hand-estimated the land value of that San Francisco house in Part I based on the value of the empty lot next door. However, it makes the whole procedure systematic. It can easily and accurately estimate the land value of a property with a big fat building on it simply by smoothly interpolating the known values of the nearby parking lots. Of course, it has limitations. First and foremost, it's a highly local operation, so if you have properties you're trying to value that don't have nearby pure land sales data, you can't really do much with this. Also, most people assume that city centers have less market transactions for undeveloped land than the countryside, as did I until I read that paper by Albouy in Part I. But in any case, this is just one method in your toolbox and might not be sufficient by itself. Its key advantage is that it works directly from true market data for land and doesn't need or want any other subjective data. In the end, basic kernel estimation just fills in the land value of unmeasured locations with a local weighted average of known locations. Nonparametric adaptive regression Kolbe, et al. build on the kernel regression method with a technique called Adaptive Weights Smoothing (AWS), which runs in several iterations and adds additional weight to any observed data points that are sufficiently close to the point being estimated. I'm not 100% sure about what all the math means, but it seems like it's basically a "smarter" version of the basic kernel method. Left: Nonparametric kernel regression, Right: Adaptive Weights Smoothing. I think the authors goofed and printed the same figure twice with different headings because they're identical if you overlay them in Photoshop. Semiparametric regression Now, the above two methods assume you have plenty of "pure" land sale records to work with. But if you're trying to work out prices in the city center, you've probably mostly got land and buildings mixed together. To do this effectively, we need more data, and this is where the "parameter" in "semiparametric" comes in. The model described in Kolbe et al. seems like a flavor of multiple regression analysis that takes the price, the location, and various characteristics of the building and feeds it into a regressor. But we've got "semi" parametric here. What does that mean? Well, if you already know how certain relationships between the data work a priori, it's better to enforce those relationships yourself rather than leave it to the computer. Here, we enforce the assumption that if two properties are right next to each other, then the value due to location is going to be essentially identical. This algorithm starts by ordering things geographically and then working out the differences in observed price by regressing on the difference between remaining property characteristics. In this method, the power of "location, location, location" is not something we're leaving to the regressor to discover by itself. Results of the Semiparametric regression method, we can see some significant differences from the simple kernel-based model. As you can see above, this gives you more detailed and likely more accurate results, and you're better able to assess the values of properties with buildings on them, even in the absence of pure land sales. This technique is more complicated and bakes in assumptions about the power of location, but otherwise doesn't assign subjective human weights to the various property characteristics. The chief human bias comes in the form of deciding which property characteristics are measured and made legible to the model in the first place. Okay great, but how accurate are the above three methods? Their main point of comparison is this thing called the "Bodenrichtwerte," or BRW. I think that means "ground-level-values" in English, and it's an expert-assessed map of land values for Berlin done the traditional way. The nonparametric kernel regression method has a correlation of 0.704 with the traditional method and has the added disadvantage that it's not able to produce estimates for the city center, only the outlying areas. Furthermore, the BRW map does show sharp discontinuities, which is another knock against the kernel method, at least for the city center. What about the iterative method? Kolbe et al. find that "the agreement between [Adaptive Weights Smoothing] land value estimates and, both, land prices and BRW land values is fairly good for all values of λ." Doing some quick checks, their values seem to be within about 85% of the BRW values. A different Kolbe et al. paper called Identifying Berlin's land value map using adaptive weights smoothing goes into more detail and claims to give "similar" values to that of the BRW. For the semiparametric method, they "found a strong positive correlation of 0.845" between their numbers and a previously expert-assessed set done using the traditional method. That sounds pretty good. It seems their margin for error is about plus or minus 15% compared to the traditional expert method. I'd like to see more direct comparisons against market transactions themselves, though, because if the prior expert assessments are wrong, then the main achievement here is improved efficiency, not accuracy. However, this method doesn't seem to be dramatically less accurate than the old way of doing things. The last three models came from the Berlin case study, where you have excellent market transaction data in an extremely wealthy and high-trust society. But what if you're trying to assess land in a developing nation with poor market transaction records, weak institutions, and widespread poverty? Innovative Land Valuation Model (iLVM) This is the particular name of the method described in Development of an Innovative Land Valuation Model (iLVM) for Mass Appraisal Application in Sub-Urban Areas Using AHP: An Integration of Theoretical and Practical Approaches by Bencure, Tripathi, Miyazaki, Ninsawat, and Kim. They used BayBay City, Philippines as their case study. Whereas the previous models are very "hands-off" and let the computer work out the relationships between prices and property characteristics, here you get expert human opinion directly involved in building the model, baking in weights that directly embody judgments like "properties next to major roads are more valuable." These judgments are based on expert opinions that presumably come from observed experience but are a priori judgments nonetheless. Here, look at this big complicated flowchart. The "Analytic Hierarchy Process" in the box on the left is a particular kind of method for getting experts to set weights. The authors give this reason for using it: Despite criticism pinpointed by other scholars, the AHP remains the commonly used in many research fields and practical applications. This is because the AHP: (1) overcomes human difficulty in making simultaneous judgment among factors to be considered in the model; (2) is relatively simple as compared to other MCDA [multi-criteria decision analysis] methods; (3) is flexible to be integrated in various techniques such as programming, fuzzy logic, etc.; and (4) has the ability to check consistency in judgment After identifying a list of "factors" that can affect land value, they group them into taxonomical buckets: Note that certain factors like "Coastline" appear in multiple buckets; this captures the various influences a characteristic can have. For instance, land on the coast tends to be more economically valuable because of tourism, shipping, fishing, etc., so that goes under "economic." But land that's next to the coast is also more likely to flood, so it also goes under "environmental." And then there are various land use restrictions that apply specifically to coastal areas, so it goes under "legal" as well. In this way, a single factor like "the property is on the coastline" can have both positive and negative effects on land value (e.g., it's more economically valuable but it also might flood, and there are certain things you aren't allowed to do there). The next step is to set down some rules for how sensitive each factor is to location and distance. So here we can see that the economic benefit of being on the coast is most strongly felt if you're within half a kilometer of the ocean, but the environmental effect (e.g., risk of flooding) is most strongly felt when you're within 0.03 kilometers. And so on and so forth. Your experts help you work out all these rules. Note that for a few of these factors (such as land use and slope), you use metrics other than distance (e.g. land use classification and grade). Then you take all that stuff and assign everything a value between 0 and 5. Your team of experts then uses this table to come up with a set of weights for everything. What essentially comes out of this is a big linear equation with a bunch of coefficients for every one of your factors, which is then broadly fit to the observed market prices. When you're done, you can take any property on your list, multiply each of its characteristics by its respective weight, run that through your equation, and calculate the predicted price of the land. So how accurate is it? The authors compare it to standard Multiple Regression Analysis and claim it fares better. The Root Mean Square Error is quite a bit less than MRA. In addition, I think it's also saying that the MRA algorithm decided that only four of the factors were significant and basically ignored all the rest. By contrast, iLVM was able to maintain contributions from all the factors, because it doesn't leave that decision to the computer. I'm not 100% sure; it's not clear from the paper. The authors claim that about 67% of the variability is explained by their model, but they note that there are some areas where the model can be off by more than a factor of 1.0 in either the positive or negative direction. One thing that's kind of fun about this model is that you can make neat graphs like this that show the individual contribution of each factor: The main downside to this model is that it relies on a whole lot of subjective expert opinion and can be questioned on that basis. That said, it can be cheaply deployed in a transparent and consistent way across a large area. You can see why that's attractive for a developing nation with weak institutions and poor market transaction records; the argument is that this is a significant improvement over the former status quo. I wonder how well this model performs when you feed it better market transaction data, and how that would compare against all the others methods under identical conditions. More research is needed. Rather than drag you through a bunch more research papers, I'll just leave these others I found cited in the above studies: Killić et al. (2019) - Fuzzy expert system for land valuation in land consolidation processes
Inline links: J. J. Pastoriza's effort in setting up a Georgist tax regime in Houston, Texas in 1911, Land Value Appraisal Using Statistical Methods, Almy (2014), Fuest, et al. (2018), $12.3 billion, $200 billion, $400 billion, delight of Intuit, 2006 report by PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Hefferan and Boyd (2010), Bencure, et al (2019), Kilić, et al (2019), Yalpir & Unel (2017), Raslanas et al. (2014), https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!stkG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fef4c64b9-38bc-43c8-aa83-05eae3576e03_923x600.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_9z0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdd98e114-7eb2-4566-a979-1f2f2dd27c22_701x867.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8HN7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff1232522-51e0-4438-998a-b0be4615df6b_534x806.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jFqw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd5836457-7642-4235-9410-00906f043428_662x357.png, Gamasutra article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!foLQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff74d378c-39b7-49f9-9655-8cbbf7c89ff5_592x270.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AjnN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F458458cc-614e-4ab3-a57b-3f28b70db6c3_458x317.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lVcf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F77ea4f72-0e51-4c63-b14b-15c603ac2500_901x418.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zoSx!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed78916c-12c5-42ca-b581-7b59aa25bbd5_757x718.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7Wm9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8fe15dbb-181f-46ae-bdde-840bdd6a2064_752x735.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zig5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F958762f1-a425-4017-86cf-058cb3eb4d59_713x389.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8ZGT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff37696ef-7a6a-48ae-8169-734b875b0b57_800x319.png, Identifying Berlin's land value map using adaptive weights smoothing, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3CR3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0489e086-69ae-4840-b658-59fee6b3af44_2000x1672.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fA0K!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d39769d-46e2-4891-92aa-cb3766068204_2000x978.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!phFK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d1a519c-93d7-4bed-9577-7478fb239bca_1968x3548.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XtLN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff59cb148-e0da-456b-b205-973e04239be7_587x647.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!My3b!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fee7b484b-3be8-4363-bcb8-1cb4fb4a7c01_661x655.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SqQA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8a84b431-1250-427e-a67a-b3e2b8a3c0dd_896x623.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qPOz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb71526d0-736c-45d7-ad14-36e5670f78ab_1153x881.png
ACX Grants ++: The Second Half
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
#97: Start An EA Club At A Turkish University I am Berke, a philosophy major interested in Effective Altruism from Istanbul, Turkey. I am interested in EA since 2019, and currently I am a research volunteer at Kafessiz, an organization working to end the use battery cages for hens in Turkey. EA doesn’t have much presence neither in Istanbul nor the country in general. There are no EA clubs at colleges, and I intend to start the first one at my college. We plan to do seminar programmes (fellowships) similar to the ones in Oxford and increase EA outreach at both our college and in online Turkish language platforms. If we find enough people interested, we plan to start a fellowship program in one or two months and a few other things. If you’re interested you can contact me at berke.celik@boun.edu.tr . What would be achieved in the name of utility if you fund an EA Society at a college you've never heard of? For certain EA causes, there is a lot to be achieved in Turkey. For example, the number of hens in battery cages in Turkey is something around 100 million. Establishing a non-trival EA presence at my college would be good first step because it is the most selective college in the country. In Turkey you enter college via a central exam, and 70% of the 1000 people who scored highest in the exam chose to be here, and this is not a flex, I am just trying to say:If one wants Effective Altruist ideas to spread in a country of 80 million, or at least among the future Turkish elite, my college is a good place to start.
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
ISTANBUL, TURKEY Contact: Berke (berkedubomont@gmail.com) Date: May 22 Time: 12:30 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GHF22V6+8R Location: We'll meet up at w.Bi Coffee, and go to Yıldız Parkı. Email me if you want to come, we might change the venue if it's too far away from you. Notes: Possible participants should definitely mail me, Istanbul is giant and if people say they live too far from the location I want to meet up at, we might choose a more reasonable location.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GHF22V6+8R
Your Book Review: The Internationalists
July 01, 2022 · Original source
It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of the League’s acceptance of the Stimson Doctrine. By February 1933, the vast majority of states had joined the League—including the defeated Central Powers of Austria, Germany, Turkey, and Bulgaria. By accepting the Stimson Doctrine, a policy proposed by the nonmember United States, the members of the League had renounced the most ancient right of sovereignty: the right of conquest. (Chapter 7)
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.
Inline links: 8FWR693H+GP2, LessWrong, Facebook group, 9F26RCWC+84, LessWrong, 8GJ5M8GW+J9, LessWrong, 8FQQRX38+V6W, LessWrong, 8G6MM3M3+Q6, LessWrong, 9F2P3CRW+FP7, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F7JMH38+GFP, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9GF6CPRH+MQ, LessWrong, 9GG65WMJ+2J, LessWrong, LessWrong group, 8FW4CP32+J8, LessWrong, Discord, matrix server, 8FW4V86J+GH, LessWrong, 8FM3HCQW+9H, LessWrong, https://twitter.com/lakesare, 8HH6MRQ2+WH, LessWrong, 9F28Q3HJ+9Q, LessWrong, here, 9F4MG9H4+4X, LessWrong, Google Calendar, 9F28WRMX+96H, LessWrong, 8FV9XVV2+V56, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website, an Open Street Map link, 9F5FHX4H+RXC, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8FXC2C72+85X, LessWrong, our LessWrong page, 9F3F8F6X+R6, LessWrong, Telegram group, 9F3J8CM2+PF, LessWrong, 8FWFG3H5+XR, 8FWFG3H5+XR, LessWrong, 8G95WMQR+WRP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FVXG2CW+2H, LessWrong, 9C3HVGQ7+JQ, LessWrong, LessWrong profile, 9C5M8PRP+JV, LessWrong, LessWrong, LW profile, Telegram, 8FJJXP22+HC, LessWrong, 8FQFF6C4+9C, LessWrong, 8FQH9VXG+9J, LessWrong, 8FMGPC92+R44, LessWrong, Facebook, 8FHJVHP9+8F, LessWrong, 9G86X426+Q5Q, LessWrong, 9F469V89+W4, LessWrong, Rationality NL Discord server, 9F4629FG+66, LessWrong, 9F48F378+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F37FMC5+VR, LessWrong, 9F4638J3+GP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9FFGWPH7+QP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9F6W9JJ4+JW, LessWrong, 9F2X2WVX+V2, LessWrong, Facebook event, our Facebook group, 9G346HX8+FX, LessWrong, 9F4RCW5P+X3F, LessWrong, 9G4362G8+2V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, Meetup.com, 8CCGPRJW+V8, LessWrong, 8GP8C2HM+9X, LessWrong, 8GR5QH8F+MW, LessWrong, 8GP2RCP7+G7, LessWrong, 8FWV44X9+XW8, LessWrong, 8FRP3F3X+6V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FH495QP+96, LessWrong, 8CGRC897+F8C, LessWrong, 8C9P92F6+3RG, LessWrong, 9F9HPX4C+39G, LessWrong, Facebook event, Telegram, 9FFW83RF+3M5, Facebook group, 8FR9XC2Q+4G, LessWrong, 8FR86548+J4, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8GHF22XG+23P, LessWrong, Partiful, 9C4WF3JX+7Q, LessWrong, 9C2XRVM6+3X, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9C3VFC45+RJM, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9F426439+J9, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9C3RFRHH+W2, LessWrong, 9C7RWRW9+M8, 9C6V2657+WJR, LessWrong, 9C5X6C9R+XJ, LessWrong, 9C3XGWGH+3F7, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, our mailing list, Meetup.com group, 9C5VFQG7+MH, LessWrong, Telegram, Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop, 9C7W294H+5V, LessWrong, 9C3WPQX6+QP9, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9C2P5V8V+P9, LessWrong
From Nostradamus To Fukuyama
September 28, 2022 · Original source
I think mediocre. On the one hand, nobody has a super-compelling alternative to liberal democracy yet. On the other, China has done better than expected at maintaining its autocracy and uniting it with economic prosperity, other dictatorships have muddled along, and there’s been democratic backsliding in a few countries like Turkey. I would give this prediction maybe a C-.
Links For October
October 12, 2022 · Original source
32: A National Geographic article claims that a newly-discovered rare plant may be the long-thought-extinct ancient miracle herb silphium, which the Greeks and Romans used for cooking, medicine, etc. Only problem: the plant is in Turkey, and all the ancients agree silphium grew in North Africa. The article suggests that maybe Greek traders transplanted some to Turkey successfully (even though the ancients all said silphium couldn’t be transplanted). But according to Wikipedia, genetic studies show the Turkish plant is related to other Turkish plants and not to North African plants, which I think is near-fatal for this theory. Still, according to the National Geographic article, they tried the plant as a spice, and it tastes amazing (as the ancients say silphium did). Confirmation bias, or extreme good luck?
Inline links: National Geographic, according to Wikipedia
ACX Grants: Project Updates
November 04, 2022 · Original source
4: Alice Evans’ Research On “The Great Gender Divergence” (?/10) Dr. Evans has done over four months of research in Morocco, Italy, India, and Turkey. You can find some of her most recent thoughts at her blog here. Her book is still on track to be published from Princeton Press, more details tbd.
Inline links: at her blog here, book
Against Ice Age Civilizations
March 03, 2023 · Original source
The top 80m of the Great Pyramid would rise above the waterline, forming a little island. The part of the Pyramid above the water would still be taller than the entire Leaning Tower of Pisa. It would be pretty hard to miss! So a 120m sea level rise wouldn’t be enough to wipe out evidence of our crop of ancient civilizations, and shouldn’t be enough to wipe out evidence of a previous crop, unless they had a very different geographic distribution than ours. Argument 2: Where Are The Crops And Livestock? We can do genetic analysis of crops and livestock, compare them to wild plants and animals, and make good guesses about where and when they were domesticated. Wheat was domesticated somewhere around Karaca Dag, Turkey, around 9000 BC. Barley was domesticated somewhere around Jarmo, Iraq, around 9000 BC. Cows were domesticated somewhere around Cayonu Tepesi, Iraq, in 8500 BC (then a second time, in Pakistan, later on). Rice was domesticated in two places in China around 10,000 BC. All of these crops were invented exactly where the standard historical narrative says there were late pre-agricultural people of exactly the type who would domesticate crops. They spread at about the same rate as sedentary living in general, monuments, and other signs of complex civilization. The only known exception is Gobekli Tepe, a megalithic site in Turkey, which may very slightly predate known agriculture. But it also might very slightly post-date known agriculture, or exactly-date known agriculture (it’s just sixty miles from Karaca Dag, and it would make sense if they were the people who domesticated wheat). That one anomaly aside, there’s a very tight agriculture <—> things that seem to require agriculture coupling. So if there were Ice Age civilizations, what did they eat? It couldn’t have been any of our known crops, which post-date them. Could it have been their own crops, which were later lost? Seems unlikely. Throughout most of history, civilizations have risen and fallen, but they don’t lose agriculture! The empire divided longs to unite, the empire united longs to divide, but the Chinese never fragmented so hard that they forget how to cultivate rice and rice went extinct. Maize has survived nine millennia of rising and falling bloodthirsty Mexican empires. Almost everyone in the Amazon died in the 1500s when European diseases swept through, but they still left us manioc, squash, and chiles. Could Ice Age civilizations have thrived without domesticating any plants? We increasingly realize that agriculture isn’t all-or-nothing, there’s a spectrum from picking wild plants when you come across them to domestication, irrigation, and the full suite of agricultural technologies. It wouldn’t surprise me if some combination of early-non-domestication-involving agriculture and hunting-gathering off of very rich lands could create enough sophistication to build a Stonehenge or a Gobekli Tepe. But you’re not getting Egypt or Great Britain off of that, sorry. Argument 3: Lead Levels Thanks to commenter WTFwhatthehell for bringing this one up. Many ancient civilizations mined lead. Some of the lead made it into the atmosphere and settled down again in other places. You can measure the amount of lead in different places to see how much lead humans are mining. This isn’t perfect - the resolution is closer to continental than global - but you can check lots of different continents and get an okay reading. This paper finds lead levels started rising 1000 BC, which it links to the Phoenician expansion happening around that time. In theory, this could suggest that no ancient civilization reached a tech level where it started mining lead, ie the tech level the Phoenicians had in 1000 BC. This is in theory only, because I can’t find a clear record of anyone checking. I assume ice core scientists would have noticed if it happened, but there’s no publicly available dataset with lead levels 10,000 years before present, nor is there a paper titled “We Checked To See If There Were Anthropogenic Lead Emissions In 10,000 BC And There Definitely Weren’t”. Here is a paper that looks at lead level in human bones. They don’t do a great job explaining how lead makes it into human bones, but it seems like a mix of the kind of lead pollution that makes it to Greenland ice cores, plus personally wearing or consuming things that have touched lead. This study investigates skeletons from 12,000 BC onwards, and finds that lead levels start rising in 5,000 BC, when people developed “cupellation”, a technique for using lead to purify gold and silver (it then goes up much further between 1000 - 500 BC, probably the same spike the Greenland cores found). So this presents some very weak evidence against significantly elevated lead from 12,000 BC onward. But it doesn’t rule out small amounts of lead mining far away from the bones’ previous owners, and doesn’t rule out a civilization lasting from 15,000 - 13,000 BC. A Great Britain-level civilization would be expected to raise lead levels a lot, and this pretty strongly rules it out. I would expect an Egypt-level civilization to at least invent cupellation, but I don’t know if its lead would necessarily make it to wherever these bones came from. A Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe level civilization isn’t ruled out at all. Conclusion I think there’s pretty strong evidence against lost Egypt- or Great Britain- level Ice Age civilizations. I don’t want to rule out a lost Stonehenge or Gobekli Tepe level civilization, but there’s not much positive evidence, and there’s some negative evidence. Stonehenge was built by Neolithic farmer-pastoralists, who had lots of domesticated crops and animals. Gobekli Tepe was built right next to the area where wheat was domesticated at around the same time. Existing early monuments mostly suggest a story where sedentary city- and temple- building civilizations either require domesticated agriculture, or invent it very quickly. None of this means Ice Age people didn’t have fascinating cultures of their own which were advanced in other ways - interesting laws, taboos, mythologies, customs, oral traditions. Tyler Cowen says that everything started earlier than you think, and this is what we’ve been finding about various forms of human culture too (cf. Against The Grain, The Dawn Of Everything). I just don’t expect lost Ice Age cities or giant monuments. I think Michael Shermer’s attempt to argue the same case is weak, relies on a still-controversial rejection of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis, and generally leans too much on the absurdity heuristic without moving the needle one way or the other. All of the following predictions are about structures on Earth built by homo sapiens without time travel: 20% chance we ever find something demonstrating equal or greater architectural advancement to Gobekli Tepe, dating from before 11,000 BC.
Inline links: Karaca Dag, Jarmo, Iraq, Cayonu Tepesi, Iraq, in two places in China, WTFwhatthehell, This paper finds lead levels started rising 1000 BC, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rPgI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6265c4a7-a563-477c-afbc-7b3c9b8dd73e_1280x1247.jpeg, Here is a paper, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SS8H!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0b5de41a-38d8-4145-821d-5e2f6d2de228_534x215.png, Against The Grain, The Dawn Of Everything, Michael Shermer’s attempt to argue the same case, Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis
Highlights From The Comments On Putin
August 11, 2023 · Original source
I assume you are referring to the privatization programmes and the "cold turkey" approach to shift to a market economy. And yes, it did create a lot of suffering, plus it unfortunately has discredited the "liberals" for decades. But you must remember the context. The argument back then was that privatization would have to happen fast, and be extensive, because there was a real possibility that the old guards in the Communist Party might get back into (absolute) power. Fast, massive privatization was assumed to create a power base for other actors (oligarchs, but so be it) that would reduce this risk/probability. Essentially, the idea was to get the toothpaste out of the tube as fast as possible, assuming that it would then be very difficult for the Communists to put it back in.
As someone, who left Russia less than a year ago, I agree. Gessen is a really talented journalist and writer, but boy is she biased. First of all, Putin is smart. For example, he is no economist, yet he's been able to choose qualified (and quite liberal) IFC-style people to run Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank. When several years ago local industrial lobby tried to criticize inflation targeting (and thus high interest rate) policy of the RCB, he came back with "look at what happens in Turkey". His prime-minister is actually one of the most capable technocrat of his generation. And the apparent incompetence of the military and secret services looks more of a feature (coup-proof) than a bug.
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
CAPE TOWN Contact: Yaseen Contact Info: yaseen[at]mowzer[dot]co[dot]za Time: Saturday, April 20, 11:00 AM Location: Truth Coffee Roasting, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town City Centre - we'll put a sign on the table Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4FRW3CCF+P3 Additional Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or email or WhatsApp +27 79 813 5144, so I know how big a table to book. Turkey ANTALYA, TURKEY Contact: Annalise Contact Info: annalisetarhan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 11th, 3:00 PM Location: Beach Park, Shakespeare, on the patio Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
ANTALYA, TURKEY Contact: Annalise Contact Info: annalisetarhan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 11th, 3:00 PM Location: Beach Park, Shakespeare, on the patio Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
ISTANBUL, TURKEY Contact: Ozge Contact Info: ozgeco[at]yahoo[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 4th, 12:00 PM Location: We meet in Kadıkoy at Kahve Dunyası at Yeni Iskele. Yeni Iskele is the seaport where we take ferry to get to Eminonu/Karakoy from Kadıkoy ( not to Besiktas). Please go upstairs, walk through the bookstore Istanbul Kitapcisi to meet me at the terrace. I will have a ACX MEETUP sign. If it rains, we meet inside the cafe, or under large cafe umbrellas. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GGFX2VC+4R Notes: I hope we chat with coffee.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GGFX2VC+4R
Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche
August 08, 2024 · Original source
(fun fact: Because Reddit has multiple sub-communities with competing interests, this creates an interesting behavior where threads about topic X on "neutral ground" are actively contested by pro-X and anti-X factions. For example, the top post of any World News thread about Turkey is a 50/50 on "Turks are anti-Western extremists with multiple genocides under their belt and a strongman in the mold of Putin at the helm, we should kick them out of NATO and shun them forever" and "Turks are a great civilization that have fallen on hard times, we should sympathize with their plight and hope that they recover from the disaster that is Erdoğan". Whichever faction didn't win is handed 200 million negative votes).
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Yaseen Mowzer Contact Info: yaseen[a t]mowzer[dot]co[d ot]za Time: Saturday, September 14th, 06:00 PM Location: Truth Coffee Roasting, 36 Buitenkant St, Cape Town City Centre - we'll put a sign on the table Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4FRW3CCF+P3 Notes: Please RSVP using LessWrong or email or WhatsApp (+27 79 813 5144), so book I big enough table. Turkey ANTALYA, TURKEY Contact: Annalise Contact Info: annalisetarhan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 28th, 03:00 PM Location: We'll be meeting at the Shakespeare in Beach Park, on the patio. Look for a propped up notebook with ACX in big letters. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4FRW3CCF+P3, https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
Contact: Annalise Contact Info: annalisetarhan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 28th, 03:00 PM Location: We'll be meeting at the Shakespeare in Beach Park, on the patio. Look for a propped up notebook with ACX in big letters. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR ISTANBUL, TURKEY Contact: Ozge Contact Info: ozgeco[at]yahoo[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 05th, 02:00 PM Location: Kadikoy, Rıhtım, Yeni Iskele Upstairs, Istanbul Kitapcisi Kahve Dunyasi Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GGFX2VF+4F Notes: This time we organize this meeting together with AI Safety Istanbul Group. Everybody warmly welcomed.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR, https://plus.codes/8GGFX2VF+4F
Links For January 2025
January 17, 2025 · Original source
I have the same question as this Twitter commenter - why is this even happening in Turkey, a country which I wouldn’t expect to be too plugged into Western cultural and political trends?
Inline links: this
Open Thread 365
January 20, 2025 · Original source
3: Comments from Links: Vlaakith Outrance on A16Z returns, Erusian on dominance within party systems, Hadi Khan corrects my AI training cost numbers (but it ends up not mattering much), and someone linked Alice Evans’ posts on Turkey and fertility (Lyman Stone supposedly discusses this too, though the post is paywalled). And in response to the story about the Chinese warlord misunderstanding basketball, a Jewish friend relates a suspiciously similar legend:
Inline links: on A16Z returns, dominance within party systems, corrects my AI training cost numbers, Turkey, fertility, the post
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Leo Hyams Contact Info: leo[a t]aisafetyct[period]com Time: Thursday, May 8th, 5:30 PM Location: Tiger's Milk, Kloof Street Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4FRW3CC6+7M Group Link: https://lu.ma/to614ypc Notes: Please register on the Luma event Turkey ANTALYA Contact: Annalise Contact Info: annalisetarhan[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 19th, 2:00 PM Location: Beach Park, Shakespeare, on the patio - look for a propped up notebook with "ACX" Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4FRW3CC6+7M, https://lu.ma/to614ypc, https://plus.codes/8G8GVMMC+4VR
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
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.
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
Since 2022, Alice has undertaken qualitative research in nine world regions: Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Britain, US, Poland, Turkey, India, Uzbekistan, South Korea and Hong Kong. Through this globally comparative analysis, she analyses the drivers and obstacles to gender equality. Gender interventions will be more impactful if they target locally binding constraints - in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, this is "the honour-income trade-off" (whereby male honour depends on female seclusion, and women tend to remain at home. Meanwhile, Latin America and the Caribbean face a different obstacle: pervasive violence elevates femicides. Over the past few years, she's held visiting appointments at Stanford, Chicago, and Yale, while providing policy advice to the World Bank, and sharing insights with a public audience via Substack (www.ggd.world). In April 2025, she gave a TedTalk on romantic love as an under-rated driver of gender equality.
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Tegan Contact Info: teganspeaking[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, September 21st, 11:00 AM Location: The Gardeners Cottage Restaurant, Newlands. I will have an "ACX Meetup" sign Coordinates: https://plus.codes/4FRW2FH4+VV Group Link: https://discord.gg/GnY [remove this bit] cNB24 Turkey ANKARA Contact: Erol Can Akbaba Contact Info: erolcan[period]akbaba[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 4th, 2:00 PM Location: Cafe Botanica Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GFJWV36+VW
Inline links: https://plus.codes/4FRW2FH4+VV, https://plus.codes/8GFJWV36+VW
Contact: Vitor Contact Info: acxzurich[a t]proton[period]me Time: Saturday, September 6th, 3:00 PM Location: Blatterwiese in front of the chinese garden (In case of rain we are inside the garden) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FVC9H32+VH Notes: We have an email list and a signal group to announce ~monthly meetups. Write an email to be added. Turkey ANKARA (See Ankara. It’s in Asia & the Middle East.)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FVC9H32+VH
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Vitor Contact Info: acxzurich[@]proton[.]me Time: Saturday, May 9th, 3:00 PM Location: Irchelpark, next to the bridge over the pond. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FVC9GXW+723 Group Link: https://luma.com/acx-zurich Notes: We have an email list and a signal group to announce ~monthly meetups. Write an email to be added. All events are also listed on our Luma calendar. Turkey ISTANBUL Contact: Ozge Contact Info: ozgeco[@]yahoo[.]com Time: Saturday, April 11th, 3:00 PM Location: Kaffe Schütz in Beşiktaş. This is a large cafe with few floors upstairs. I will be either on the entrance floor or upstairs, depending on the availability of seats. Please look for the ACX MEETUP sign on the table. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GHF22V4+9F Notes: Old friends, new friends: everyone welcomed to meet likeminded people residing in and visiting Istanbul
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FVC9GXW+723, https://luma.com/acx-zurich, https://plus.codes/8GHF22V4+9F
TOKYO19 mentions across 19 issues

TOKYO is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 19 times across 19 issues between August 23, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "TOKYO, JAPAN ( RSVP )"; "meetups have been added in Bangalore, Tokyo"; "TOKYO, JAPAN". It most often appears alongside Boston, London, Seattle.

Article page
TOKYO
Mention count
19
Issue count
19
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TOKYO, JAPAN (RSVP) Contact: Harold, hgodsoe[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 9:00 AM, Saturday, September 4 Location: The Deck Coffee & Pie (open air terrace) Coordinates: https://w3w.co/vanish.exhaled.command
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/vanish.exhaled.command
Open Thread 187
August 29, 2021 · Original source
2: Since the last post, meetups have been added in Bangalore, Tokyo, and Ife (Nigeria), and a lot of existing meetups have changed times/dates/places, so please check the spreadsheet to make sure the last thing you read about meetups is still up to date.
Inline links: check the spreadsheet
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places
August 26, 2022 · Original source
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
Inline links: 5R4JFXXQ+P8, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RPFP4FC+34, LessWrong, Eventbrite, 5R3MVF5W+555, LessWrong, 4RJ65XM9+3Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4PWQ3V34+W6, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RRH46F4+983, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 4RQGHVVH+69, LessWrong, 8P26J3C5+462, LessWrong, 862M74PW+6XP, LessWrong, 7J4VXJF4+PR, LessWrong, our website, 7J9WFF4X+5P, LessWrong, 7JFJ4RM6+5W, LessWrong, 7JWVG6H9+8H, LessWrong, 7JPMHM9M+HG, LessWrong, 6P3QG789+F7, LessWrong, 8Q7XJPV2+QFP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, LessWrong profile, Lisette's Bangsar, 6PM34MHH+VW, LessWrong, 4VMP6QH4+86, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4V6G4GP7+GM5, LessWrong, 4VCPPQCH+FGC, LessWrong, 7Q268257+4F, LessWrong, 6PH57RGW+J8, LessWrong
LA and San Diego Meetups This Weekend
October 06, 2022 · Original source
Also coming up this weekend are meetups in Boise, Austin, Salt Lake City, Tokyo, Toulouse, Cologne, Rome, Hatten, Poznan, St. Louis, Rochester (NY), Seattle, Mumbai, and Oklahoma City. You can find times and places here.
Inline links: here
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
This year we have spring meetups planned in over eighty cities, from Tokyo to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Thanks to all the organizers who responded to my request for details, and to Meetups Czar Skyler and the Less Wrong team for making this happen.
TOKYO, JAPAN Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 13th, 10:00 AM Location: Nakameguro (Contact for details) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QFW Event Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/events/lvvvzsyfchbrb/ Notes: https://rationalitysalon.straw.page/
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QFW, https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/events/lvvvzsyfchbrb/, https://rationalitysalon.straw.page/
Change My Mind: Density Increases Local But Decreases Global Prices
May 01, 2023 · Original source
I’m limiting this to America because it’s approximately a self-contained housing market; I don’t think there are enough immigrants to really affect things. Thinking at a country level does make a difference - for example, I worry someone will bring up Tokyo as a counterexample. But I think Tokyo managed to build its way to low housing prices in the context of the rest of Japan also having good housing policy. Even if that isn’t true, Tokyo on its own is a quarter of the Japanese market, so it might be able to exhaust the entire pool of Japanese house-seekers by itself!
Highlights From The Comments On Housing Density And Prices
May 10, 2023 · Original source
1. Comments About Whether Density Causes Desirability 2. Comments About Jobs And Amenities (And Not Density Per Se) Producing Desirability 3. Comments About Chinese Ghost Cities 4. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Considering Tokyo, Even Though I Included A Section In The Post On Why I Didn’t Think Tokyo Was Relevant 5. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Understanding Economics 6. Comments By Famous People Who Potentially Have Good Opinions 7. My Final Thoughts + Poll
Kangbashi, China’s most famous ghost city. What are housing prices like in the ghost city? Again from Bloomberg: Sitting on the southern outskirts of Inner Mongolia’s Ordos City (population 2.2 million), Kangbashi was the archetypal ghost city 10 years ago, with barren boulevards and empty buildings standing forlornly in the desert. Local officials are adamant that things have changed. They say 91% of homes in the district are occupied. In fact, after a yearslong construction freeze, the government approved six housing projects in 2020 and expects 3,000 homes to be built by the end of this year. Apartments in a new development are selling for 9,500 yuan per square meter, and downtown they go for 15,000 to 16,000 yuan, according to Liu Yueyue, 28, a salesman at a new residential development in the district’s northeast. “Would houses in a ghost town sell at such high prices?” asks Liu. Half of his customers come from outside Kangbashi, and most are parents who want to send their children to the well-regarded local schools, he says. Looking at this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Kangbashi seems squarely in the middle - for example, Wuhan and Xian are also in the 15,000 - 16,000 range. I claim this supports my argument: surely twenty years ago, houses in this particular deserted corner of Inner Mongolia would have been dirt cheap (if any even existed). But if you build a city there, it becomes just as expensive as any other city! Here it’s very obvious that the density caused the high prices instead of the other way around. Still, the Chinese housing market is weird, with significant vacancies even in expensive, well-developed cities. Paul Botts: No official vacancy rates are published in China and no specific definition of it exists there. Various think tanks and researchers both within that country and elsewhere have published estimates ranging from as low as 11 percent to as high as 24 percent. Those estimates have been for varying samples of Chinese cities, have used various definitions of housing vacancy rate, etc. The best (as in most systematic) estimate yet produced has come from researchers at a university in Liaoning. They used night-time urban lightsheds captured by a new (2018 launch) Chinese satellite having a new level of light sensing technology which allows separating out light from parks and plazas. They covered a large sample (49 cities), and made their sample representative of city type, city size, regions within China, etc. They also crossed-referenced with local housing data to ensure accurate balancing of their sample and to confirm that the satellite was successfully identifying light coming from housing blocks. They found vacancy rates of just under 20 percent in China's Tier 1 cities, and found rates above 20 percent in 40 of the 49 cities. They found the highest vacancy rates in western and northeastern cities, which are also the newest ones; that finding is consistent with the hypothesis of significant numbers of recently-built ghost cities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data And Phil H (author of the blog Tang Poetry) writes: The price of housing in China has skyrocketed over the past few decades, as all those extra apartments have been built. I live in a pleasant but unremarkable southern city, and I paid London prices (about 4.5m yuan/$650k for a 1,300 sq ft flat). That seems to match Scott's hypothesis that high density leads to high prices. House prices here have risen much faster than incomes. They've risen in rural areas, too, but the increases in price in cities have been stratospheric. 4. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Considering Tokyo, Even Though I Included A Section In The Post On Why I Didn’t Think Tokyo Was Relevant I won’t name and shame people, but for example: You excluded Tokyo from your dataset. Tokyo has much higher density than SF and much lower price per sqft. Tokyo just kills this. Tokyo is bigger than New York and has significantly lower rent because they build more housing! This is in a wealthy country with even lower interest rates than the US. I don't think you have justified excluding non-US metros, like Tokyo, or Auckland. Doesn't this lead to the natural conclusion that there is a sufficient level of housing to build, and that the problem is that the USA's many metros are structured to prevent housing? It seems like you're just arguing that US metros are bad at building housing, which is also what Matt Yglesias is arguing. "Change my mind about housing, but don't mention Tokyo" is like saying "Change my mind about gun possession, but don't mention Switzerland." You can't test the effect of allowing new housing unless you're willing to look at cities that do, in fact, allow it. Tokyo and NYC both attract tons of new residents But Tokyo's housing rents have been stable, while NYC rents keep rising. Why? Tokyo has permissive housing construction laws. NYC makes building new housing almost illegal. Yes, dense cities are attractive, and that makes them get more dense over time. But it only makes them more expensive if you forbid new housing to keep up with the new residents. Tokyo! But I’m like the 10th person to bring it up… As I wrote on the original post (not even edited in! it’s been there the whole time!): I worry someone will bring up Tokyo as a counterexample. But I think Tokyo managed to build its way to low housing prices in the context of the rest of Japan also having good housing policy. Even if that isn’t true, Tokyo on its own is a quarter of the Japanese market, so it might be able to exhaust the entire pool of Japanese house-seekers by itself! That is, yes, you’re all correct that cities are only expensive in the context of more demand for city housing than the (NIMBY-constrained) city housing market can currently supply. You are all correct that if this problem were solved at the national level, then city housing would be cheap, and every additional city house would make it cheaper. My claim is that marginal changes - like Oakland building an extra 10,000 units, but everyone else staying the same - will most likely increase Oakland prices. Yes, if Oakland unilaterally built 50 million units, that would soak up the entire excess demand and probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). Yes, if the entire US switched to good housing policy at the same time, that would probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). But if we don’t do any of that stuff, and just build another 10,000 houses in Oakland, I think it would probably increase prices in Oakland. Some other people brought up that Japan has a declining population, and it’s much easier to have low house prices when your population is declining (compared to some previous time when number of houses presumably matched number of people), but ddd pointed out that people continue to migrate from the Japanese countryside to Tokyo, so its population continues to increase. Also, Mike (I’m stitching together two comments here): In a country with a declining population, you would expect that fewer homes are being built per capita because there's little to no competition for existing homes. But it's exactly the opposite! Japan builds far more homes per capita than the US does, despite their declining population […] As a result, the average Japanese home is very new and the average house is torn down and replaced after a relatively short 30 years. They're living in nice new homes for cheaper. 5. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Understanding Economics Maximum Limelihood Estimator writes: I think you're making a very common mistake here of confusing supply/demand with *quantity* supplied or quantity demanded. (This is very common! we teach students about this in micro 101 because it's so easy to make!) What you're seeing is that the quantity supplied is correlated with housing prices (true!). But this is very different from establishing that the supply curve--i.e. the amount of housing that would be produced at any given price, and what moves up/down when we regulate/deregulate supply--is positively correlated with price. Figuring out what supply curves look like is a lot less intuitive and requires some high-grade econometrics, which is why economists had to set up a whole commission just to study this particular problem (the Cowles Commission). In terms of resources for understanding how these concepts are different, a micro 101 textbook will cover this distinction. For the econometrics side of this, I've heard good things about Scott Cunningham's *Causal Inference Mixtape*, although I haven't personally used it. My claim is that increasing density within a city shifts the demand curve for housing within that city, because of increasing desirability. MLE later gets more on point: The effect you're discussing here is kind of real in a sense. When the marginal utility of housing increases for *other* people, density arguably becomes more desirable for me, which is kind of like the demand curve shifting up. These are called bandwagon goods and discussed here: http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf In theory, the bandwagon effect could be so strong that parts of the demand curve are upward-sloping. Solutions like this are not, technically, prohibited by the laws of mathematics, just the laws of economics. (And arguably of physics--see paper for conditions where these kinds of bandwagon effects imply the amount of housing in the city would have to be negative). In practice, this effect exists but just can't overcome the normal, non-weird economics that says "making more of a good makes the prices fall." Again, I claim the existence of Manhattan vs. Conanicut shows that sometimes it does. I cannot find the words “housing”, “real estate”, or “land value” anywhere in that paper. Alex Poterack writes: There's two things going on here: confusing shifts in demand with movement along the demand curve, and getting causation backwards. You're assuming density causes prosperity, rather than prosperity causing density. There are ways the former can happen, but the bigger thing is that, for a wide range of historical reasons, you can make a lot of money in NYC and SF, so lots of people want to live there, so they get very dense. This is the prosperity shifting demand right, so at any given price, more people want to live there; this drives prices up, and they go higher the more fixed supply is. If you built a bunch of housing in Oakland, lots of people would move there because it's cheaper, which is movement along the demand curve; it's still the same number of people who want to live there at any price. Now, it's possible that the increased number of people living there makes the city more prosperous (this is the phenomenon of induced demand), which would shift demand right, but there are way more differences between NYC/SF and Oakland than just the density, so I don't think it would shift demand enough to offset this. In particular, if it's just a small increase in small, it's also a small increase in density, so there's almost no shift in demand (but there is movement along the curve). I still think this is missing my point, but I present it here in case anyone else is enlightened by it and wants to try further to convince me I’m making this mistake. 6. Comments By Famous People Who Potentially Have Good Opinions Scott Sumner is an economist and blogger; he writes: It is certainly the case that building more housing can make a city more desirable, and that this effect could be so strong that it overwhelms the price depressing impact of a greater quantity supplied. But studies suggest that this is not generally the case. Texas provides a nice case study. Among Texas’s big metro areas, Austin has the tightest restrictions on building and Houston is the most willing to allow dense infill development. Even though Houston is the larger city, house prices are far higher in Austin: Houston pretty much describes the “Oakland with more housing” outcome that Alexander views as somewhat far-fetched. Only in this case, it’s Austin with more housing. Alexander seems too quick to accept the, “If you build it they will come” idea—that you can build more housing and thereby boost demand so much that prices actually rise. I started the post with a graph of about 50 cities, showing a positive correlation between density and price. I’m having trouble seeing how Sumner’s point isn’t just “if you remove 48 of those cities and cherry-pick two, the relationship is negative”. My attempt to place Austin and Houston on the original graph, using Sumner’s data plus a few other things available online. Why weren’t they on there already? Maybe because the graph is metro areas and Sumner was talking about Austin and Houston as cities, but I’m not sure and agree this is confusing. Everyone knows Austin is more expensive than Houston because Austin is a trendy tech and culture hub and Houston isn’t (and relatedly, because Austin’s median family income is 50% higher than Houston’s). Unless someone wants to claim that its failure to build housing helped turn it into a trendy tech and culture hub, I don’t think there’s much point to this comparison. It’s true that Houston’s bigger size didn’t let it leapfrog over Austin to become a trendy tech and culture hub, which goes against some of what I claimed in the first part of this post. But I never claimed there would be a perfect 1-1 correlation between city size and trendiness, or that you could never find a pair of cities where one was bigger but the other was more trendy. Just that there would be a correlation. Moving on: Here’s the problem with this argument. It mixes up population change due to economic effects such as the benefits of agglomeration, with population changes due to regulatory changes such as less strict zoning. If you look at things this way, then the stylized facts work against Alexander’s argument. Over the past 50 years, increasingly strict zoning has reduced housing construction on big cities like New York and San Francisco. As a result, their populations have increased by less than in cities with less strict zoning, such as Houston. If Alexander were correct, then the price gap between the tightly controlled cities on the coast and the more laissez-faire cities of Middle America should have shrunk over time. Instead, the price gap has widened. New York and San Francisco were always more expensive than other cites, but with tighter zoning and less new construction the gap has become far wider. During the last fifty years, there was also deindustrialization and demographic sorting. This is just the Austin vs. Houston story all over again. Alexander is implicitly viewing this outcome as a “problem” for the city that builds more housing. They must sacrifice so that the rest of the country can gain. But in his scenario, Oakland is better off. Indeed if it were not better off, then why would more people choose to live in Oakland? In order for it to be true that building more housing boosts housing prices, it must also be true that the quality of existing houses (including neighborhood effects) rises by more than enough to offset the increase in supply. That means the new housing construction must make Oakland such a desirable place to live that the amenity effect overwhelms the quantity effect [...] Of course, economic change always has winners and losers. Here’s how I would describe the impact of allowing more housing construction in Oakland, in the unlikely event that this did raise housing prices: 1. America would benefit. 2. Oakland would benefit. 3. Poor people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 4. Affluent people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 5. Homeowners in Oakland would benefit. 6. Some renters in Oakland would benefit (from a more economically dynamic city.) 7. Some renters in Oakland would suffer from higher rents. In the much more likely case where new housing construction would lower prices, the impact described in #5 and #7 might reverse. Either way, there is no defensible argument for not building more housing in Oakland, regardless of the impact on price. If building more housing reduces its price, then there is a strong argument for allowing more housing construction. If building more housing raises its price, then the argument for more construction is even stronger. I agree with all this. Jeremiah Johnson is a co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism, host of the Neoliberal Podcast, and a YIMBY activist (not to be confused with Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, who killed 300 Native Americans and ate their livers). He writes: Here's why you're wrong in a single sentence: Demand causes high prices, not new units. Prices are high in SF and NYC because those are desirable places to live for a huge number of people. People all over the country and the world would live there if they could, and prices reflect that. The fact that the densest cities are the most expensive is true. But the high prices are not caused by density - rather, the density and the high prices are both a consequence of crushingly high demand […] There's a feedback loop, but what matters here is the elasticity, which is less than one. We can measure this empirically. New housing lowers prices via the mechanism of adding supply, which is basic economics and how we expect markets to work. New housing could raise prices if it also made the city a more desirable place to live and shifted people's preferences, such that there was more demand to live there after the new housing is built. If you think it's unclear which of these effects would dominate, luckily we have empirical data that over and over and over shows adding housing supply does indeed lower prices on a local level. This is a fairly well established result that replicates well. edit: I'm actually thinking about drawing out the weighted DAG graphs here to make the conceptual stuff easier, but it would be pretty long. I'd love to do this as a guest post. I’m skeptical of the empirical results because they don’t match the much stronger “Manhattan vs. Conanicut island” empirical results, and if I try to think about why, the best explanation I can think of is that the Manhattan experiment has been going on longer (ie long enough for Manhattan’s extra residents to found businesses and institutions that attract new people). I’ve told him he can try pitching this guest post to me; in either case, I would be interested in seeing the graphs. Several other people also posted this graph that Johnson helped make famous: Hopefully by now you can predict my objection: the places in the southeast corner are mostly unfashionable red state Sun Belt cities; the places in the northwest corner are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities. My conclusion is that trendy liberal coastal cities are both more NIMBY and more desirable, and if you use this to draw any conclusions about housing policy you’ll just end up confused. But maybe I should take this same lesson to heart myself. Dense cities are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities; uninhabited tundra in North Dakota isn’t. Maybe the demand is just for trendy liberal coastal cities, and once you attain that status, extra density doesn’t matter that much. Maybe Oakland has already maxed out its “trendy liberal coastal city” status, and even if it became Manhattan-sized, it wouldn’t get any trendier, or would get trendier only with a long time lag. There are a few very trendy small coastal villages in California (think eg Sea Ranch); maybe these (rather than North Dakota) are the natural control group for San Francisco. I think they are still cheaper than SF, but maybe not by very much. Cameron Murray is a housing economist whose work some other commenters recommended; he also writes the blog Fresh Economic Thinking. He very kindly showed up and wrote: I think you are in general right that agglomeration effects are real, which is why bigger cities have higher value to residents. I agree that people move locations. But I think you can go a step further. If one city is growing faster and densifying, surely those people are not demanding homes in other cities and those cities build slower. This is part of the spatial equilibrium story that further makes claims about “build density and get cheap homes” less plausible. 7. My Final Thoughts + Poll Thanks to everyone who commented on this post and helped me refine my thoughts. I’m willing to concede the following points: It might be that only attracting the sort of educated people who found companies, universities, etc will make housing prices go up. Less educated people will take more jobs than they create and not ratchet up the city’s desirability level. (I’d previously told commenters talking about “gentrification” that it was irrelevant to the mechanism I was talking about here, but maybe it isn’t - maybe “gentrifiers” are the people creating more jobs and institutions than they consume, and so homes that attract them in particular will increase demand more than they increase supply? Maybe this discussion does reduce to the gentrification discussion?)
Inline links: this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Paul Botts, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data, Tang Poetry, writes, ddd pointed out, Mike, Maximum Limelihood Estimator, gets more on point, http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf, writes, writes:, far higher in Austin, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tAF8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F03f2b338-da84-4d85-b71c-0ce2e02e10e1_685x559.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mLwn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9cf942da-5716-49e8-a177-20140681e7fc_573x421.png, Center for New Liberalism, the Neoliberal Podcast, Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, Johnson helped make famous, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tg5t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc490a60a-3e97-4b73-9806-79bb967b5172_608x550.png, Sea Ranch, some other commenters, Fresh Economic Thinking, wrote
The Question Of Separatism
May 19, 2023 · Original source
Capital. Cities can provide money directly to other regions, for instance as subsidies, loans, or development grants. I’m guessing that Bardou received some assistance from the French national or regional governments at some point. These five forces determine pretty much everything that happens in rural regions. We can distinguish at least seven types of these regions, depending on which forces act upon them. Seven Types of Rural Regions When the five forces act together in a reasonably balanced manner, this creates a type of rural area that Jacobs calls a city region. This is a confusing name, because it absolutely does not mean “any region around a city,” nor does it mean “suburbs.” We know this because Jacobs spends several pages telling us which cities have a city region and which don’t. For instance, Tokyo has a city region, the largest in the world as of 1984, but Sapporo, in northern Japan, doesn’t. Boston, Paris, Milan, and Taipei do; Atlanta, Marseille, Naples, or Manila don’t. A city region, in Jacobs’s terms, is the rural hinterland around a city that gets “radically reshaped” by that city’s economy. It contains a mix of productive farms, prosperous satellite towns, and factories that have moved out of the city, forming a symbiotic network of commercial and industrial enterprises. City regions “are the richest, densest, and most intricate of all types of economies except for cities themselves,” she writes. They arise thanks to the interplay between the five forces. In another of her wonderfully told examples, Jacobs summarizes a book about Shinohata, a real Japanese village (but with a fake name, for anonymity) on the outskirts of the Tokyo area. In the post-war era, Tokyo was expanding rapidly, and so was its city region, eventually reaching Shinohata in the 1950s. Before, most families in the village lived from subsistence farming and exported a little bit of silk to distant places. Almost no one moved out to Tokyo or other cities. But after 1955, the markets, jobs, technology, transplants, and capital from the city all came bearing upon Shinohata at the same time, totally transforming it. The growing city markets meant that most families could switch to new cash crops and make more money. New jobs were opening up in Tokyo for the sons and daughters of Shinohata, many of whom left — prompting the remaining farmers to buy labor-saving equipment, which made productivity soar. Soon, a large food processing factory was transplanted into the village, providing additional jobs and money and causing a variety of smaller businesses to pop up in the area. After a typhoon disaster in 1959, a recovery grant from the government — an example of city capital — was put to good use by providing much needed excavation work and infrastructure development. Shinohata is in Tochigi Prefecture, but I couldn’t figure out what its real name is. In any case, it is part of the vast Greater Tokyo Area, a region that combines the largest city in the world with large tracts of rural land, and occupies a disproportionate space in Japan’s demographics and national economy. Rural regions far from import-replacing cities are generally less lucky. Their plights take different forms, depending on which of the five forces dominates the others. An oversized market force creates a supply region: a place that exploits agricultural or natural resources and exports them to distant cities. These regions (the most common in the world) can be rich or poor, but they’re never economically dynamic — and they’re very sensitive to disturbances in the markets that they serve. Jacobs’s example is Uruguay, a country that grew rich selling animal products to European cities in the early 20th century, but then suffered immensely when the market changed in the 1950s, propelling the nation into a succession of economic crises.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GCSd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9012632f-bf92-4318-9c85-e4b95826dd50_300x450.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JDqr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F32ad04ba-f051-4744-b735-b6474c67dd81_1397x1593.png
Shinohata is in Tochigi Prefecture, but I couldn’t figure out what its real name is. In any case, it is part of the vast Greater Tokyo Area, a region that combines the largest city in the world with large tracts of rural land, and occupies a disproportionate space in Japan’s demographics and national economy. Rural regions far from import-replacing cities are generally less lucky. Their plights take different forms, depending on which of the five forces dominates the others. An oversized market force creates a supply region: a place that exploits agricultural or natural resources and exports them to distant cities. These regions (the most common in the world) can be rich or poor, but they’re never economically dynamic — and they’re very sensitive to disturbances in the markets that they serve. Jacobs’s example is Uruguay, a country that grew rich selling animal products to European cities in the early 20th century, but then suffered immensely when the market changed in the 1950s, propelling the nation into a succession of economic crises.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JDqr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F32ad04ba-f051-4744-b735-b6474c67dd81_1397x1593.png
Whenever Venice produces something (like salt) and sells it abroad, foreigners need ducats to buy the exports, so the demand for ducats increases. When Venice buys something from abroad, it needs to use foreign currencies, so the demand for ducats decreases. Add up everything that Venice exports and imports, and you get either a trade surplus (more exports than imports) or a trade deficit (more imports than exports), which determines the value of the ducat relative to other currencies. In both cases, a negative feedback loop restores balance over time, just like our brain stem does with carbon dioxide levels. A trade surplus, and therefore a strong ducat, means that when foreigners want Venetian salt, it’s expensive. So Venice’s exports decrease, while imports increase, since Venetians can use their valuable ducats to buy stuff cheaply from abroad. Conversely, a trade deficit makes exports a bargain for foreigners and imports expensive for Venetians. This feedback loop is great. It’s exactly what a city needs to trigger the crucial import replacement process. When exports decrease and a trade deficit begins (maybe because Constantinople found a cheaper source of salt somewhere else), the weak ducat means that Venice is less able to afford the resources and manufactured goods it used to import. The people of Venice don’t want to have less of those goods, though, so they figure out ways to produce some themselves — that is, they do import replacement. Later they will be able to export the output of the newly expanding industries too, strengthening the ducat and continuing the cycle. Currencies, Jacobs explains, function as automatic tariffs (to protect local industry from foreign imports) and automatic export subsidies (to encourage local industry to export). They are “automatic” because of the feedback mechanism. Just like an accelerated breathing rate, they take effect exactly when they are needed — and no longer. … Or so they should, except that import replacement, as we discussed, is a city process. Whereas most currencies are national or supranational. National currencies work well for city-states, like the Republic of Venice or today’s Singapore. But in large nations, which, remember, are not the fundamental unit of economic life, they mess everything up. Take a city like Detroit. When Detroit’s exports (primarily cars) decrease, Detroit gets no feedback about this, because its currency is the United States dollar, and the United States dollar’s value depends on much more than Detroit. It depends on other cities whose foreign exports might be increasing at the moment. And on rural regions that are selling resources like oil abroad. Also, trade between Detroit and other cities that use the United States dollar — i.e., American cities — is structurally unable to provide any feedback whatsoever. So Detroit doesn’t get the signal that it should buy less stuff from other cities and replace the missing imports with local production. Instead, it just declines. Jacobs hypothesizes that this issue of national currencies is at the root of every large country’s economic troubles. It is why nations and empires always centralize everything into one large city, whether that’s Paris, London, Tokyo, or Toronto, or ancient Rome: that city, being the largest, is simply the only one for which national-level currency feedback works fine. The rest of the nation or empire, then, declines. But of course, nations and empires don’t accept this. They care about the economic well-being of their peripheral regions, sometimes out of genuine concern for the people there, sometimes out of fear that they rebel or hold independence referendums. So nations and empires will embark on every possible solution to reverse the decline. All of their solutions will look like good ideas at first, and yet fail at helping the peripheral regions. Worse, these solutions will weaken the cities, thereby destroying the only real wealth of the country and bringing untold hardship for everyone. Eventually the nation or empire will disintegrate, as nations and empires always do, and always will. Jacobs calls these false solutions transactions of decline. She identifies three types, and, content warning, you might not like some of them depending on your political sensibilities. Sustained military production is a transaction of decline. Permanent military bases and garrison towns are a special kind of settlement: they import a lot and export nothing. Superficially, producing weapons and supplies for the military seems like a good deal for some cities — Jacobs gives the example of Seattle, which, before Microsoft and Amazon were a thing, depended mostly on making military aircraft. But because nobody in a military base ever tries to replace those weapons and supplies with their own production, the trade is sterile in terms of economic development. In a sense, the wealth is slowly “drained” from cities. Large empires are especially prone to this: eventually all of their wealth is destined to the military just to keep the empire together.
Your Book Review: Safe Enough?
July 01, 2023 · Original source
On March 16th, 2011, Japanese Prime Minister Kan Naoto learned that he would not have to evacuate Tokyo2.
Inline links: 2
Unit 4 was the worry. It housed over 1500 spent fuel rods in open, water-filled pools at the top of the building, without any concrete structure surrounding it. With no active recirculating pumps, the water in these pools would heat and evaporate. When the pools dried out - or if the building collapsed, when it spilled out - the plant would become too radioactive to approach. Nuclear reactions would proceed uncontrolled. Radioactive cesium would release directly into the air, and be carried by winds into the surrounding population centers, possibly including Tokyo.
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.
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TOKYO, JAPAN Contact: Harold and Andrew Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 14th, 10:00 AM Location: Nakameguro, Tokyo Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QG Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Please contact the organizer to RSVP and for exact details.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QG, https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
This year we have spring meetups planned in over eighty cities, from Tokyo, Japan to Seminyak, Indonesia. Thanks to all the organizers who responded to my request for details, and to Meetups Czar Skyler and the Less Wrong team for making this happen.
TOKYO Contact: JT Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 11th, 10:00 AM Location: Contact email for the address - location TBD in Meguro Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPP5+48 Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Please join our google group! We email once a month to announce meetups.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPP5+48, https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/
Open Thread 323
April 01, 2024 · Original source
The Japanese AI safety community apparently exists and is holding a Technical AI Safety Conference in Tokyo in, uh, four days, so if you’re interested sign up quickly. Attendance is free, it looks like the talks are in English, and featured speakers include Dan Hendrycks and researchers from Anthropic and DeepMind.
Inline links: sign up quickly
Open Thread 328
May 06, 2024 · Original source
1: More meetups this week in Helsinki, Waterloo, Sao Paulo, Raleigh-Durham, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Munich, Oslo, Barcelona, Montreal, Ottawa, Singapore, San Antonio, Denver, Warsaw. See the meetups post for more info. And note addition of Kaduna, Nigeria.
Inline links: the meetups post
Your Book Review: How the War Was Won
August 09, 2024 · Original source
Data from HtWWW, recreated to improve image quality The inefficiencies stemming from bombing ruined several would-be German technological panaceas. Germany developed the world’s first operational jet fighter, the Me-262. Lack of fuel meant there was not enough training for its pilots, and maintenance shortfalls meant that about half of the 1,400 Me-262s produced by Germany were lost outside of combat. The Germans developed a dangerous, relatively modern submarine, the Type XXI. They intended to deploy dozens in a way that the Allies would have been hard pressed to fight, but production delays meant that only one ever actually went on a mission. Allied Bombings Provoked Vastly Expensive Reactions O’Brien thoroughly documents how expensive Germany’s reaction to Allied bombings was. First, expenditures on anti-aircraft weaponry and fighter planes skyrocketed. The Germans practically denuded the Eastern Front of fighter planes to have more to throw at the bombers. By late 1944, a bare 15% of German aircraft were fighting on the Eastern Front. In the second half of 1943, significantly more concrete was devoted to the construction of protected aircraft factories in Germany than to the entire Eastern Front. The amount of concrete devoted just to protecting Hitler personally from air attack was almost a third of the entire total for fortifications on the Eastern Front Second, and perhaps even more importantly, the bombings caused Hitler to authorize the most expensive German program of the war, the V-2 rocket, with essentially no goal in mind other than the psychological importance of striking back at Allied cities. The V-2 program cost the Germans proportionally as much as the U.S. spent on the Manhattan Project. According to O’Brien, the design and construction of V-2 rockets cost as much as all German AFV construction between 1939 and 1945(!) It may be surprising to learn that the V-2s were basically irrelevant to the war. Launched primarily against UK cities, the V-2s killed several thousand civilians. However, more German slave laborers died building the V-2s than British civilians died from their use. The stupidity and expense of building the V-2 probably saved tens of thousands of lives elsewhere, which is ultimately yet another benefit of the Allied bombing campaign. O’Brien’s production-focused approach yields some surprising insights about what the Germans should have done. The most cost-effective effort was certainly the use of submarines (U-Boats) to attack American shipments of military equipment across the Atlantic Ocean. For example, data suggest that the German navy destroyed at least twice as many American aircraft in the pre-production phase by destroying resource shipments as the German air force did in combat in 1942 and 1943. Japan Was Far More Powerful Than We Usually Think O’Brien goes to great lengths to illustrate that Japan was not just a small island power easily subsumed by American production. The Japanese economy, at its peak, produced about as much as the Soviet Union. Its industrial base was mostly untouched until mid-1944. In 1943, it produced as much steel as the Soviet Union. The Japanese navy’s planes doubled between 1943 and 1944. Famously, the Soviets focused on producing tanks. The Japanese focused on freighters and oil tankers. They had to—they had gone to war to obtain natural resources by conquest away from their home islands, and to use those resources, they had to ship them back to the home islands. The problem was that once the American navy had conclusively defeated the Japanese navy (certainly no later than mid-1943), nothing could stop American submarines and carrier-based aircraft from savaging Japanese shipping. But just as the bombing of Germany weakened German production in several complementary ways, the American war on Japanese shipping caused cascading logistical problems. For example, one very successful initiative was the aerial mining of Japanese ports. The mining didn’t start until March 1945, but it still sank more tonnage than U.S. submarines did in the entire war. Beyond that, the mining forced Japanese ships to use smaller, less efficient ports with bad communications and dock facilities, reducing the value of the small amount making it through to port. The Morality of Strategic Bombing One small but noteworthy argument in HtWWW relates to the “area” bombing of German cities, the firebombing of Tokyo, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Usually, air power enthusiasts are apologists for the indifferent (or even intentional) bombing of Axis civilians. They portray the fire/atomic bombings as difficult, but necessary and effective. O’Brien calls that logic into question. As we’ve seen, strategic bombings that targeted specific factories or mined harbors were extremely useful. O’Brien writes, however, that civilian-centric bombing had ambiguous effects. Obviously, killing workers hurts productivity. But killing their spouses or children or destroying their houses does not immediately lead to unsolvable resource dilemmas. It is perhaps too obvious to bear mentioning, but to the extent the civilian-centric bombings were not as effective as the rest of the strategic bombing campaign, they were immoral. O’Brien does not shy away from this conclusion, and shows a commendable willingness to gore sacred cows. He writes that Arthur Harris, leader of the British bombing campaign, resisted attempts to shift bombing away from cities generally and toward fuel or transportation targets, even when the evidence was clear that bombing was more effective. He takes the unusual step of effectively calling Churchill a moral coward: From the autumn of 1944 onwards, it becomes difficult to justify any of the area attacks on German cities as important in winning the war. However, removing Harris, which might have allowed for such a change, was beyond the Churchill government’s courage. O’Brien is similarly critical of Curtis LeMay, the American general who oversaw the firebombings. In his autobiography, LeMay justified the firebombings on the vague claim that they damaged Japanese morale. His evidence was a decline in Tokyo’s population, but population tended to decline after bombing raids anyway because production was relocated after raids. O’Brien concludes: LeMay’s view of warfare was definitely a step backwards – and possibly self-defeating. His notion of causing justified destruction with little evidence beyond the physical action of destruction added an unnecessary air of irrationality to the American campaign. Another important consideration in the debate over using the atomic bomb that I had not seen before: the firebombings were declining in effectiveness over time for the obvious reason that the best targets were already gone and the remaining cities were taking better precautions. The argument that firebombings alone would drive Japan to surrender without need of the atomic bomb must account for this awkward fact. Death by Oil Austerity Oil was a particular problem for Japan. The Japanese had gone to war with the United States in no small part because the U.S. cut off oil exports to Japan. The Japanese attempted to replace U.S. oil with oil from southeast Asia. Again, this was far less efficient than the pre-war arrangements, and once the U.S. Navy shut down shipping, the Japanese had to make drastic cuts to conserve oil. Perhaps the single worst way to conserve oil was in flight training. The Japanese air forces entered a death spiral. To replace veteran flyers lost at Midway or off Guadalcanal, the Japanese parsimoniously supplied oil for limited training flight hours. This famously led to their being massacred by better-trained American pilots in the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot. Another point brilliantly made by O’Brien: reductions in fuel expenditures meant Japanese pilots did not have sufficient training in navigation. Early in the war, aircraft were delivered to forward operating bases by aircraft carriers, limiting the ability of pilots to get lost. Once the American Navy had driven Japanese carriers from the scene, Japanese pilots had to make several over water hops to fly from the home islands to forward bases. Shocking numbers were lost along the way—up to 50%. (HALF) (!!!!) (I CAN’T EMPHASIZE ENOUGH HOW CRAZY THIS IS). In addition to reduced training, Japan found another terrible way to conserve fuel: do not test engines for very long on the ground before sending single-engine fighter planes off to distant island deployments. Maintenance factors were one reason that on just one leg of the trip from Japan to forward bases, 5% of aircraft that took off from one island never landed at the next. By 1945, the Japanese economy was so desperate for fuel that the government set up more than 34,000 small stills in the home islands to distill the oil from pine needles into aviation fuel. In the European theater, the Allies specifically targeted German coal-to-oil conversion plants and Romanian oil facilities, which became far less productive. Over the course of one year, 1944, the western Allies destroyed the German energy market, and with it the German economy writ large. Data from HtWWW, recreated to improve image quality. German oil shortages caused exactly the same training problem Japan had faced, with a slightly different but similarly disastrous outcome. Japanese training and production problems led to planes not arriving where they were supposed to in fighting condition (perhaps as few as 10% were actually combat capable when they arrived!) For Germany, training shortfalls meant annihilation for their air force as inexperienced pilots were forced to fight numerically and qualitatively superior American and British pilots. German monthly aircraft lost/damaged rates increased from 52.5% in January 1944 to 96.3% in June. One particularly illuminating episode illustrates how these problems manifested for Germany. The German air force had a reserve of 800 aircraft to counter the D-Day landings. The pilots of that force were used to only flying under expert control systems in Germany (countering bombing raids). When they went to France, they had trouble navigating and often landed on the wrong fields. Ultimately, they were poorly prepared to fight. The head of German fighter command was certain that the entire reserve did not destroy even two dozen Allied aircraft. American/British Airpower Decided the Outcome of Land Battles Beyond the strategic effects of bombing, tactical airpower (i.e., airplanes attacking land forces) gave an insurmountable advantage to the western Allies’ land forces. After D-Day, the Germans had a very strong defensive position in the hedgerows of northwest France. Allied aircraft literally carpet bombed one of the strongest divisions in the German army out of existence, with 70% casualties in one day. That division would normally have approximately 200 AFVs. At the end of that one day of bombing, it had 14. The Battle of the Bulge, the last offensive by the Germans to drive back the western Allies’ advance, was almost pathetic in its hopelessness. We Americans tend to focus on the hard fighting at the outset of the battle, and the stout resistance of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne. Knowing that airpower would make their attack impossible, the Germans timed the battle for bad weather and prayed it lasted as long as possible. Prayer was really the only option. Once the skies inevitably cleared after a little over a week of bad weather, more than 2,000(!) Allied bombers destroyed the German offensive. With most logistical support wiped out, one famous German division had to abandon all its vehicles and walk back to Germany. Criticism of HtWWW as a Book: Love the Data, (Mostly) Don’t Care About the People My single biggest criticism of HtWWW is O’Brien spends a lot of time (I would estimate 20% of the book) discussing the relative importance and influence of various people in the United States and United Kingdom. The section on Doug MacArthur is worth a longer digression, which I have included below. The problem is that focusing on personnel is almost completely irrelevant to the main argument of the book. For example, it is modestly interesting that Franklin Roosevelt, consistent with advice from Harry Hopkins and Admiral Ernest King, focused America’s productive effort on air and sea power. It is not at all central to the argument that air and sea power won the war. The fact that these particular people thought it was a good idea to build planes and ships matters less than the outcome that the U.S. did exactly that. I am very much interested in World War II history, and on an interestingness scale of 1-10, I found this discussion to be at about a 4. The central argument of the book about German and Japanese production was a consistent 10. Sidenote: MacArthur Was a Disastrous General In the part of the book focused on personnel, the one discussion that hit around a 9 or 10 was of Douglas MacArthur and the invasion of the Philippines. MacArthur was the American general commanding the defense of the Philippines. The Japanese conquered the Philippines, and MacArthur slipped away to Australia, heroically vowing, “I shall return.” He did in December 1944, and some of the worst fighting of the war took place, with massive casualties for the Americans, Japanese, and Filipino civilians. Fighting was still ongoing in the Philippines when the war ended in August 1945. The Americans took more than 220,000 casualties, the Japanese 430,000. Estimates vary on Filipino civilian deaths, but 750,000 is a credible middle of the road estimate. O’Brien’s contribution here was pointing out the strategic pointlessness of MacArthur’s invasion. The big American strategy in the western Pacific was to penetrate the Japanese defensive line of islands to link up with China. The northern Marianas Islands also were within heavy bomber range of Japan, and so would allow for efficient, effective bombing. (Bombing Japan from bases in China were logistically impractical, with virtually all materials being flown in over the Himalayas—another fascinating logistics discussion in this book.) The Americans had already conquered the Marianas Islands and had total air and sea dominance in the western Pacific. The forces the Japanese had in the Philippines could have been simply left to wither, as they had been on other islands bypassed by the island-hopping campaign. So, why did the Philippines invasion happen? The inescapable conclusion is that MacArthur was too politically formidable to risk angering, and he personally wanted to invade the Philippines to make good on his promise to return. Not coincidentally, the Philippines also offered some prospect of an extended land campaign where MacArthur could improve his reputation after his disastrous original defense of the Philippines. Also relevant, in O’Brien’s words: “MacArthur [] dazzled Roosevelt with tales of easy victories and grateful Filipinos and American voters.” Criticisms of HtWWW’s Central Argument I think it is clear from the data that O’Brien’s argument, that air and sea power played a more important role than land battles in deciding the war, is fundamentally right. Still, one can raise a few objections. Individual naval battles were capable of destroying a significant percentage of overall production. O’Brien discusses the Battle of Midway, where the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers (37 percent of their navy’s aircraft carriers at the time, 22 percent of all carriers they had during the war). This point doesn’t really disprove O’Brien’s core argument—it is basically a footnote saying that individual naval battles are more likely to matter than individual land battles. Politics and psychology matter tremendously in war, sometimes more than productive effort. O’Brien tacitly acknowledges this in the V-2 weapons discussion when he notes that the Germans spent all this money and effort on a psychological salve to the trauma of Allied bombing. The Japanese did ultimately surrender after the atomic bombings. (Or, if you are more on the revisionist end of the spectrum, they surrendered after the Soviets declared war.) France surrendered after a few disastrous battles. The productive effort lens might be useful, but subject to important caveats. Why Does the Conventional Narrative Focus on Battles? A perfect companion book to HtWWW would examine why military historians and the broader public have focused inordinately on battles. Here are some plausible factors: Battles are more dramatic. Propaganda during the war focused on battles so that there would be more inherent drama. Working twelve hour shifts in a factory to win the great battle is probably psychologically easier than thinking your work is going to disappear into an inchoate slog.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DyEt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F24c9f552-4f2a-4188-9b29-64191d48f307_835x496.png
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
This year we have spring meetups planned in over a hundred and eighty cities, from Tokyo, Japan to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Thanks to all the organizers who responded to my request for details, and to Meetups Czar Skyler and the Less Wrong team for making this happen.
Contact: Aud Contact Info: helloaud2000[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 20th, 2:00 PM Location: JJ Royal Cafe Menteng Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6P58RR3G+X4 Notes: Please RSVP to my email so I know how many people to expect. Thanks! Japan TOKYO (ENGLISH) Contact: JT Contact Info: rationalitysalon[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, May 10th, 10:00 AM Location: Tokyo-to Meguro-ku chuo-cho 2-4-18 Shiki Residences. Enter from the door on the north side; we'll meet you, but if you're late, ask for the party in the first suite. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJMJR+PV Group Link: https://rationalitysalon.substack.com/s/acx-tokyo Notes: Please subscribe to the substack feed for updates to the meetup details and for future events. Applications open for 5 min lightning talks, email us at the substack.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6P58RR3G+X4, https://plus.codes/8Q7XJMJR+PV, https://rationalitysalon.substack.com/s/acx-tokyo
Contact: JT Contact Info: rationalitysalon[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, May 10th, 10:00 AM Location: Tokyo-to Meguro-ku chuo-cho 2-4-18 Shiki Residences. Enter from the door on the north side; we'll meet you, but if you're late, ask for the party in the first suite. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJMJR+PV Group Link: https://rationalitysalon.substack.com/s/acx-tokyo Notes: Please subscribe to the substack feed for updates to the meetup details and for future events. Applications open for 5 min lightning talks, email us at the substack.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJMJR+PV, https://rationalitysalon.substack.com/s/acx-tokyo
Open Thread 380
May 05, 2025 · Original source
1: ACX meetups this week in Cape Town, Waterloo, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Berlin, Seattle, Boston, and San Diego. See the post for details.
Inline links: the post
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: River Contact Info: acx[period]k55uc[a t]passinbox[period]com Time: Friday, September 19th, 11:00 AM Location: Upstairs, Kafe, Jl Hanoman, Ubud. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6P3QF7P7+CM Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Hyd [remove this bit] wIF3u7Ve0nfpbc9EtnS Notes: Please RSVP on WhatsApp :). Japan TOKYO Contact: JT Contact Info: rationalitysalon[a t]substack[period]com Time: Saturday, September 13th, 10:00 AM Location: 153-0051 Tokyo, Meguro City, Kamimeguro, 1 Chome−3−9 Fujiya Bldg., ３F (We may reschedule at the last second - join our mailing list for updates Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QF Group Link: https://rationalitysalon.substack.com/ Notes: Please join the mailing list - location may change at the last minute
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6P3QF7P7+CM, https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QF
Contact: JT Contact Info: rationalitysalon[a t]substack[period]com Time: Saturday, September 13th, 10:00 AM Location: 153-0051 Tokyo, Meguro City, Kamimeguro, 1 Chome−3−9 Fujiya Bldg., ３F (We may reschedule at the last second - join our mailing list for updates Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QF Group Link: https://rationalitysalon.substack.com/ Notes: Please join the mailing list - location may change at the last minute
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+QF
Open Thread 398
September 08, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Abuja, Dublin, Ho Chi Minh City, London, Manchester, Montevideo, Montreal, Moscow, Munich, Nairobi, Ottawa, Rio, Santiago, Singapore, Stockholm, Tokyo, Baltimore, Berkeley, Madison, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Seattle, and many others. And late additions to the meetup list include Vilnius, Haifa, Vegas, and Durham. See the list for more.
Inline links: Berkeley, the list
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Fawwaz Contact Info: fawwazanvi[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 11th, 2:00 PM Location: Burgreens Dharmawangsa, Jakarta Selatan - we’ll have a sign with ACX MEETUP on it Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6P58PRX2+3F Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Eke [remove this bit] 1HcvNsoT3ZMb0SsCFz9 Notes: Please RSVP on WhatsApp! Japan TOKYO Contact: HG Contact Info: rationalitysalon[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, May 9th, 10:00 AM Location: https://maps.app.goo.gl/xyYpv3fihuvNSBaR7 (Enter the forboding street-level doorway, climb the sketchy stairs to the 3rd floor, enter the dim hallway, and listen for the sounds of laughter) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+RG3 Group Link: rationalitysalon.substack.com/ Notes: RSVPs are helpful but not necessary
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6P58PRX2+3F, https://maps.app.goo.gl/xyYpv3fihuvNSBaR7, https://plus.codes/8Q7XJPV2+RG3
TEL AVIV16 mentions across 16 issues

TEL AVIV is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 16 times across 16 issues between August 23, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "TEL AVIV, ISRAEL ( RSVP )"; "#3 OCD in Tel Aviv"; "TEL AVIV, ISRAEL". It most often appears alongside Canberra, France, Berlin.

Article page
TEL AVIV
Mention count
16
Issue count
16
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (RSVP) Contact: Inbar, inbar192[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 7:00 PM, Thursday, September 23 Location: Sarona market park, between the Magnum bar and Sarona beer garden. I'll have an ACX sign and some red balloons. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/market.coherent.muddle
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/market.coherent.muddle
Book Review: Which Country Has The World's Best Health Care?
January 19, 2022 · Original source
Which country has the world’s best health system? This is the type of question I usually love. I rank everything. I rank the 10 best meals I’ve ever had (#1 Alinea in Chicago, #2 Tanja Grandits in Basel, and #3 OCD in Tel Aviv). I rank chocolates (#1 Askinosie, #2 Dick Taylor of California, and #3 Fruition of New York. I rank Alpine cheeses (#1 is a tie between Alpha Tolman and Alp Blossom). I rank colleges. I rank academic departments of bioethics and health policy that compete with my own. I rank the meals I cook, the races I run, the bike rides I take, the speeches I give.
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
Open Thread 239
August 28, 2022 · Original source
3: In case you missed it, Astral Codex Ten is having in-person meetups in about two hundred cities worldwide. This coming week’s biggest meetups include Canberra on Wednesday, Helsinki on Saturday, and Tel Aviv next Sunday - but there are also many more, check here for the full list.
Inline links: is having
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL Contact: Inbar Contact Info: inbar192[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, May 4th, 07:00 PM. Location: Sarona Market, grass next to Max Brenner Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MP7 Event link: https://fb.me/e/MPhkE3n4
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MP7, https://fb.me/e/MPhkE3n4
Open Thread 272
April 17, 2023 · Original source
1: New spring meetups added since I first posted the list: Barcelona, Bloomington, Brno, Budapest, Cambridge (UK), Canberra, Grinnell, Halifax, Mexico City, Prague, Tel Aviv. Check the list for dates and times. And most meetups should now be displayed on the map on the Less Wrong Community page.
Inline links: spring meetups, the map on the Less Wrong Community page
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL Contact: Inbar Contact Info: inbar192[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 21st, 7:00 PM Location: The grass area next to Max Brenner in Sarona park. I'll have an ACX sign Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MP Group Link: https://facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361/
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MP, https://facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361/
Hardball Questions For The Next Debate
November 07, 2023 · Original source
DESANTIS: Thank you . . . the conflict between I . . . between the Jew . . between . the country with Jeru . . . between the Tel Aviv entity . . . f—k it, I’m coming off like a commie now . . . the conflict between the people with the beard and the funny hat . . . wait, no, they both have . . .the conflict between the good Levant people and the bad Levant people . . . yeah . . . that conflict . . . it could come onto our national radar -
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
TEL AVIV, ISRAEL Contact: Inbar Contact Info: inbar192[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, April 25th, 5:00 PM Location: Sarona Park, grass area close to the Benedict restaurant, will have ACX sign and red balloons Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MJ9 Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361 Notes: Everyone is welcome! Feel free to bring snacks.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MJ9, https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: shai zilberman Contact Info: dizinteria[at]walla[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 19th, 05:00 PM Location: The Goldmund book store located at the talpiot market on ekron 6 street Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39 Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSclSIRSpdSJ [ignore this part] 6T5VJT2QAD Notes: Looking forward to seeing ya'll at our meetup! Feel free to bring along anyone/anything if you'd like—everyone is welcome. To help us plan better, please RSVP via email or whatsapp (detailed here) so we can ensure we have enough space and refreshments for everyone. See you there! TEL AVIV, ISRAEL Contact: Inbar Contact Info: inbar192[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 20th, 05:00 PM Location: Sarona park, grass area next to Benedict restaurant. I'll have an ACX MEETUP sign and some balloons. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MPH Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361 Notes: There is a secure location (מרחב מוגן) very close to where we'll be sitting in case of a missile alert - an underground staircase.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39, https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MPH, https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Sha Contact Info: Tenastralcodex[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Tuesday, May 6th, 5:00 PM Location: We'll be in the goldmund bookstore , at ekron 6 in the talpiot market area, and I will be wearing a batik/Hawaiian shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSc [remove this bit] lSIRSpdSJ6T5VJT2QAD Notes: Please RSVP on whatsapp/our group email so I know how many people will participate TEL AVIV Contact: Inbar Contact Info: inbar192[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Thursday, April 17th, 6:00 PM Location: Sarona market, grass area next to Max Brenner Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+PQ2 Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361 Notes: Everyone is welcome, feel free to bring snacks, a large secure location is nearby in case of a missile alert.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C, https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+PQ2, https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361
The Colors Of Her Coat
April 01, 2025 · Original source
Even the places themselves start to feel cheap, unearned. Medieval pilgrims would brave dangerous sea voyages to reach Jerusalem, then go into such fits of rapture that some of them would have seizures on the spot, or speak in tongues, or run off to a monastery and spend the rest of their life in contemplative prayer. I visited Jerusalem once. As holy cities go, I would describe it as cleaner than Benares but not quite as cool as Bodh Gaya. I stayed three days, then took off to Tel Aviv to see the architecture (which sucked).
Inline links: which sucked
Open Thread 377
April 14, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Cambridge (UK), Chicago, both Portlands, New Haven, DC, and Manhattan. See here for times and details.
Inline links: See here for times and details
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Anatoly Vorobey Contact Info: avorobey[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Thursday, September 18th, 6:00 PM Location: Tables just behind the playground located behind the municipal court building, Meishar street Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G3PXQ9J+G9 TEL AVIV Contact: Inbar Contact Info: inbar192[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, October 12th, 5:00 PM Location: Sarona market, at grass area next to Benedict. I'll have an ACX sign Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MM Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361/ Notes: Kids and dogs are welcome, feel free to bring snacks
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G3PXQ9J+G9, https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+MM, https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361/
Open Thread 402
October 06, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Austin, Berlin, Canberra, Jakarta, Salt Lake City, Tel Aviv, and others - see the meetup post for more information.
Inline links: the meetup post
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: shai Contact Info: Tenastralcodex[at]gmail[period]com Time: Monday, May 18th, 5:00 PM Location: We’ll be on the second floor of the Goldmund bookstore, on ekron 6 street in the talpiot market area. I will be wearing a batik/Hawaiian shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSc [remove this bit] lSIRSpdSJ6T5VJT2QAD Notes: Please RSVP on whatsapp/our group email so I know how many people will participate TEL AVIV Contact: Inbar M Contact Info: inbar192[@]gmail[.]com Time: Sunday, April 5th, 5:00 PM Location: Sarona Park, grass area next to Max Brenner. Will have an ACX meetup sign. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+JPM Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361 Notes: There is a secure location (underground parking lot) very nearby in case of a missile alert. Pikud HaOref permits gathering of under 50 people if a secure location is accessible, so we should be in accordance with current guidelines. If the guidelines change, I may have to postpone the meeting. Please check the facebook group for updates, or email me with any questions. Dogs and kids are welcome, snacks are appreciated.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C, https://plus.codes/8G4P3QCP+JPM, https://www.facebook.com/groups/5389163051129361
Toronto15 mentions across 15 issues

Toronto is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 15 times across 15 issues between December 30, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "in the extraordinarily unlikely even that I ever care about anything in Toronto"; "TORONTO, ON"; "meetups in Toronto". It most often appears alongside Atlanta, Budapest, India.

Article page
Toronto
Mention count
15
Issue count
15
First seen
December 30, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For December
December 30, 2021 · Original source
19: Lots of people supported me when NYT doxxed me. I feel like I should pay this forward by signal-boosting when other people are going through the same thing. So: the news magazine Toronto Life doxxed some people running a local Instagram account who preferred to remain anonymous. I think this is bad. In the extraordinarily unlikely even that I ever care about anything in Toronto, I will try to find and link sources other than Toronto Life.
Inline links: doxxed some people
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
TORONTO, ON Contact: Sean A. (seanaubin@gmail.com) Date: May 1 Time: 1:00 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87M2JHQR+2X Location: The Bentway, underneath the Gardener Expressway, by the picnic tables Notes: If it is colder than 10° C, I will change the location to ProteinQure with vaccine passport checks.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87M2JHQR+2X
Open Thread 241
September 12, 2022 · Original source
2: Worldwide ACX meetup season continues. This week there will be meetups in Sydney on Thursday, Ottawa on Friday, Cambridge (UK) / DC / San Jose / Atlanta on Saturday, and Berkeley / SF / Toronto / New Haven / Chicago on Sunday - plus many more. See the meetups list for details.
Inline links: the meetups list
Bay Area Meetups This Weekend
September 16, 2022 · Original source
Also coming up this weekend are meetups in Washington DC, Atlanta, Columbus, Providence, Cape Town, Cambridge (UK), Kuala Lumpur, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, New Haven, Bangalore, and many more. See the list for more details.
Inline links: See the list for more details
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA Contact: Sean Aubin Contact Info: seanaubin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, April 16th, 02:00 PM Location: In the basement of the MaRS Discovery District Atrium, there is a food court with ample customizable seating and is friendly to loitering. I'll be there wearing a neon yellow jacket and have a small sign with "Applied Rationality Toronto" on it.. To get to the food court, enter from MaRS from University avenue. Walk until you see escalators. Go down the escalators. The food court is behind the escalators. If you are lost, ask for directions to the food court from any of the security guards. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XMC
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XMC
The Question Of Separatism
May 19, 2023 · Original source
This book is Jacobs’s least read. It was published in 1980, right after the first referendum where Quebecers voted to remain a part of Canada. It is based on lectures that Jacobs (who was an American but had moved to Canada in 1968) gave in Toronto right before the referendum. It’s not hard to guess why the book didn’t have a huge (read: any) impact. First, most people outside Quebec or Canada don’t have any reason to care. Second, the essay — which was written in English — argues in favor of the secession of Quebec, which virtually no one among the English-speaking population of Canada agreed with. The natural reaction from Canada’s intelligentsia was to ignore the book altogether. Meanwhile, few people in Quebec itself read it, since the referendum was over; it wasn’t even translated into French until decades later. As a result, The Question of Separatism sits awkwardly in Jane Jacobs’s bibliography, as if it were “a mistake in an otherwise brilliant career,” like I read somewhere. In a 2005 interview, one year before her death, Jacobs said that no journalist ever asked her about it. But the book was not a mistake. I don’t claim any special insight here: Jane Jacobs herself said so in that same interview. She said that she would have written the same book in 2005, “because that’s the way it is in the world, and it still holds.” Besides, The Question of Separatism is in fact not that much about the specifics of Quebec’s political situation, but rather about interesting generalities: what size means for countries and organizations, and why the fate of nations depends primarily on what happens in their cities. Taken together with Cities and the Wealth of Nations, which Jacobs wrote a few years later to expand on those ideas, we get a coherent and deeply interesting philosophy of economics: one that favors the local scale, cities and small countries, antifragility long before Nassim Taleb coined the term, and avoiding grandstanding theories that always fail to take into account the real complexity of the world. I. A Fake Mystery Cities and the Wealth of Nations opens on an economic mystery. “For a little while in the middle of this century,” writes Jacobs, “it seemed that the wild, intractable, dismal science of economics had yielded up something we all want: instructions for getting or keeping prosperity.” This was the 1940s to 1960s, and economists thought they had it all figured out. It was the golden age of high modernism and scientific technocracy. Everywhere from China to the Soviet Union to the United States and Britain and the nascent European Economic Community, leaders were coming up with elaborate plans, rooted in macroeconomic theories, that were supposed to guarantee future wealth and avoid economic crises. The theories had been developed by many thinkers over the previous two hundred years: Richard Cantillon, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes. Jacobs explains how they each had their own ideas of how the economy worked, disagreeing over things like whether supply or demand was the main driving mechanism, but they all agreed on a fundamental fact: inflation and unemployment have an inverse relationship to each other, like a seesaw. High inflation comes with low unemployment; high unemployment comes with low inflation, or even deflation when prices drop. The Great Depression, a time of deflation, had provided proof of the seesaw. Big government projects, as prescribed by Keynesians, were a way for states to reduce unemployment and bring the seesaw back in a balanced state. Economists developed fancy models, based on historical data, to predict the behavior of the economy. The Phillips curve in particular became popular. It was the golden age of technocracy; it was the triumph of high modernism. From now on wealth was assured, because we weren’t blind anymore: we had the curves. And yet — by the 1970s and 1980s, when Jane Jacobs was writing, the theories all stopped working. There was high inflation and high unemployment. People called it stagflation. Keynesian advisers in various governments were devastated: either their ideas were wrong, or they were applying them wrong. Economists such as Milton Friedman, from a rival school of economists called the monetarists or the Chicago school, came to the rescue — but their remedy, Jacobs believes, only made things worse. Whatever governments did to increase employment made inflation worse; whatever they did to attenuate inflation killed employment. The seesaw from the theories was working in application, even though it didn’t explain reality anymore. Stagflation was not supposed to exist, so stagflation could not be fought. At this point we’re near the end of Chapter 1, the densest part of the book. Jacobs has artfully guided us along economic history and laid out the mystery for us. What’s going on? we wonder. How are we supposed to deal with the two-headed monster of stagflation, if all economists are stumped? Then Jacobs, in a masterstroke, flips the whole thing over. I was impressed enough that I would have inserted a spoiler alert here, if it didn’t feel so silly putting a spoiler alert in an essay on economics. Stagflation is not a strange monster from legend. It is, Jacobs says, just the normal state of everything. Backward economies are in fact constantly in a state of stagflation. The prices in a poor country like Portugal or India (her two examples) feel low for an American or Canadian, but they’re high for most Portuguese or Indian people. At the same time, Portugal and India provide too few jobs to their residents. Inflation and unemployment are both perennially high, and none of that feels surprising whatsoever. Stagflation, in short, is just good ol’ poverty. All these fancy economists, from Cantillon in 1700s France to Keynes and Friedman in the 20th century Anglosphere, were thinking and writing about unusual places: rich countries that were undergoing fast economic development. They were making the classic mistake of treating poverty as a mystery and wealth as a given, when in fact poverty is the normal order of things and wealth, when it does occur, is what warrants an explanation. The result is that we don’t really know how to fix the economy of poor countries, nor do we know how to deal with decline in rich countries, whether we call it stagflation or something else. Jacobs derives from this a pretty damning view of macroeconomics. It is to her a science that has failed again and again, each time engulfing the equivalent of billions of dollars in wasted wealth. “We must,” she writes at the close of Chapter 1, “find more realistic and fruitful lines of observation and thought than we have tried to use so far. It is bootless to choose among existing schools of thought. We are on our own.” Fortunately, she has some ideas. II. Nations and the Wealth of Cities The original sin of macroeconomics, Jacobs believe, is to treat sovereign countries, or nations, as the main unit of economic analysis. This error, she claims, goes back to mercantilism, one of the first formal economic policies. Oversimplified, mercantilism states that wealth is synonymous with the amount of gold and silver in a nation’s treasury. This makes nations the main unit of economic analysis by definition. It’s a tautology — and one that was somehow embedded so deep in economic thinking that even the non-mercantilist Adam Smith would eventually choose, for his masterpiece of economic theory, the title An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Today, even though mercantilism has long been obsolete, we perpetuate the same tautology whenever we talk of the Gross Domestic Product or look at the very nice charts from Our World in Data, which for the most part allow only one level of resolution: sovereign countries. Of course, nations are an economically important concept because of that one property: they are sovereign, and therefore they write laws and implement policies that affect the economy. These policies can be productively compared. But that’s about it — for everything else, nations aren’t the right way to think about wealth. One reason is simply that they’re very different from one another: “it affronts common sense,” Jacobs writes, “to think of units as disparate as, say, Singapore and the United States, or Ecuador and the Soviet Union, or the Netherlands and Canada, as economic common denominators.” I would add that countries are arbitrary and changing: when the Soviet Union was replaced by 15 sovereign countries, the economic reality didn’t suddenly reshape itself to match the new borders. Lastly, nations contain, under the hood, many sub-economies that are also highly different from one another. None of that is secret or forbidden knowledge. Everyone has always been aware that New York City, or Milan, are economically very different from rural Mississippi or Sicily. But I find that it’s far easier to think in terms of “the United States” or “Italy,” especially when you’re not from there. Nations are an abstraction of real-life complexity, and are accordingly very tempting to use. Also, they’re often the entities that collect statistics, which is another difficult-to-resist temptation for anyone who likes quantitative data. Cities as Radiators of Economic Forces If nations aren’t the best unit to analyze the economy, what is? This is a Jane Jacobs book, so the answer is obviously going to be cities. Jacobs doesn’t actually give a clear argument why. Maybe that was in her previous book, The Economy of Cities. So far as I can see, her reasoning is, ironically, a bit tautological: “all developing economic life depends on city economies; it depends on them by definition because, wherever economic life is developing, the very process itself creates cities and has probably always done so.” But so far as I can see, this reasoning is correct. Cities concentrate people, and therefore economic life, and therefore economic power. The driving force for all this is a phenomenon that, from what I gather, was discovered by Jacobs when she wrote The Economy of Cities: import replacement. Consider, say, Boston back when it was a tiny settlement, not yet a city, in colonial times. At first, Boston didn’t produce much, especially not much that would be of interest to its main trading partner, London. It exported some natural resources: timber, fish. Whatever else the Bostonians needed, they needed to import it from other cities, again mostly London. (Remember to think of imports and exports in terms of cities, not nations.) For instance, at first, all metal tools in Boston came from European cities, and were paid for by the revenue from selling the timber and fish. Then, one day, some Bostonians decided to build an ironworks and make metal tools themselves. (Pictured: a reconstruction of the Saugus Iron Works, established 1646.) This wasn’t of any interest to London or other European cities. The Bostonians weren’t nearly as good or efficient at making metal tools as Londonians were. So Boston couldn’t export the metal tools back to Europe — but it could use them internally, and also export them to other American cities that were about as poor as Boston was, or poorer. Internally, this meant the spark of a manufacturing economy in Boston, as easily obtained metal parts made it easier for other Bostonians to replace other imports from European cities, and eventually develop a symbiotic network of industries. It also meant that the revenue from fish and timber could be used to import new things, including new innovations from European cities (which would later become opportunities for more import replacement). And because there were customers for Boston-made metal goods in New York and Philadelphia, and eventually Cincinnati and Chicago and Pittsburgh as these cities came into existence, it meant additional revenue for Boston that it could reinvest into developing its production further. For Jacobs, virtually all city development can be seen through the lens of import replacement (which, to be clear, has approximately nothing to do with policies of import substitution industrialization; import replacement is not a policy, but a naturally arising free market phenomenon). Her book contains many other examples than Boston, such as Venice, which started off in the early Middle Ages as a small town that sold salt to Constantinople, but then diversified its production to become one of the wealthiest cities of its time; or Taipei and Kaohsiung, two cities in Taiwan that kickstarted their development not long before the 1980s, by forcing expropriated landlords to invest into local import-replacing businesses. One is reminded of Scott’s review of How Asia Works. Import replacement, then, is what makes cities economically powerful. And this power is so great that it causes ripples in distant places. In fact it is the main reason that anything happens at all in non-city areas. Jacobs gives the example of Bardou, a small village in southern France. Bardou looks like this: To the extent that Bardou ever had an economic life, that life was almost entirely driven by distant cities. In ancient times, the area was populated because of iron mines nearby. The mines were exploited to serve the needs of people in the distant cities of Lugdunum (Lyon), Nemausus (Nîmes), or even Rome. As Jacobs notes, we could say that the mines served “the Roman Empire,” but that would be another example of using the abstraction of sovereign countries when we should instead be specific. It was Lugdunum, Nemausus and Rome that wanted the iron — not some random rural area of the empire, and certainly not the part of the empire in which Bardou was located. Eventually the mines and the region were abandoned. More than 1,000 years later, peasants moved into the area and built the modern village. For centuries they lived a wretchedly poor life of subsistence farming. No cities exerted any influence on it, and indeed nothing happened. Then, in the 19th century, the people of Bardou learned that they could improve their situation by moving to distant cities such as Paris, and most of them did. Again, the force wasn’t being exerted by “France”; Bardou was already part of France. The force was specifically being exerted by Paris and other cities with jobs for poor peasants. By the 1960s, only one old man was left. That’s when two foreign visitors, a German and an American, happened upon the village, decided to buy most of it, revitalized it, and turned it into a tourist spot (and even, for a brief time, into a set for a movie company). Today Bardou is a popular place for travelers — who are mostly city people, and spend money that was mostly earned in cities. The Bardou story contains examples of several of the forces that import-replacing cities radiate, according to Jacobs. These forces are central to her thinking. There are five of them: Markets. Cities house a lot of people who need a lot of goods and services, and are therefore strong markets to sell goods and services to. This was the force that acted on the Bardou area when it was a Roman mining region, and again today when it functions as a tourist spot for city vacationers.
Inline links: Phillips curve, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9wEn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F850ce64a-4367-4a7a-a9ec-e8eb1af3ed08_399x292.png, Our World in Data, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zS15!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d533e64-f407-4b05-aea5-5b5a9dbdc7bc_1600x1130.png, import replacement, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5j2T!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7f2675d9-ce56-4ac5-9b78-a16720269dea_1600x1159.png, import substitution industrialization, Scott’s review of, Bardou, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RfMs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc119b085-f7b3-4e09-a586-9f4fc4c2ea21_1200x1600.png
There is a nice modern road in that screenshot, but between its 18th-century founding and the 1920s, there wasn’t even a path that a horse-drawn wagon could use, and so Higgins was extremely isolated. It barely sold anything to anyone outside, and accordingly imported very little. The people lived from subsistence farming. Their lives were so difficult, so focused on sheer survival, that they gradually forgot many of the skills and techniques that their British ancestors had, like candle making, weaving from a loom, and even masonry. When Jacobs’ aunt arrived as a Presbyterian missionary in 1922, and suggested that they build a church out of stone, the people of Higgins confidently stated that this was impossible: mortar just wasn’t strong enough. “These people came of a parent culture that had not only reared stone parish churches from time immemorial, but great cathedrals,” Jacobs writes, and yet eventually they forgot that stone buildings were a possibility at all. Such is the fate of regions that get cut off from cities. Jacobs calls them bypassed places. Sometimes these places are entire countries, such as Ethiopia, once the seat of an empire, but which as of the 1980s had barely any links to cities except its own backward ones. Unsurprisingly, Ethiopia has high prices (for Ethiopians) and too few jobs. That will always be so, unless one of its cities can start the process of import replacement. III. Should Everything Be a City-State? That was roughly the first half of the book. After that, Jane Jacobs discusses various consequences of her theory, including why decline happens and how we can, in theory, prevent it. We’ll get there — but first, it’s time for a detour through the other book, The Question of Separatism, which provides a great case study of Jacobs’s ideas. After an introductory chapter in which Jacobs acknowledges that separatism always makes everyone emotional, and warns that she’s going to study it in a dispassionate manner anyway, she starts by describing the issues in Quebec and Canada through a specific lens. You can probably guess which lens. That’s right — cities. To her, the question of Quebec separatism is primarily the question of how the two main cities in Canada, Toronto and Montreal, have coexisted and will coexist in the future. At this point you need at least a basic understanding of Canadian history. Here’s a quick primer, focusing on those two cities. Canadian History Speedrun (Jane’s Version) Canada, a word that used to refer to the large valley around the St. Lawrence river and the Great Lakes, was originally a colony of the Kingdom of France. Then the Kingdom of Great Britain conquered it in 1760. For various reasons, most of the French settlers stayed in Canada rather than emigrating to France or being deported, so at first, a small British elite ruled over a mostly French-speaking and Catholic colony. However, immigration from the British Isles, as well as from the newly seceded United States (loyalists who wanted to live in a monarchy rather than a republic for some reason) eventually tipped the linguistic and cultural balance. The population sorted itself such that the lower part of the valley (what is now Quebec) remained French, while the upper part (what is now Ontario) became English. The exception to this trend was the city of Montreal. Although located in Quebec, it became an English-speaking city and the hub for the British merchant elite. For at least a hundred years, it was the main city in Canada across almost all metrics: population, wealth, manufacturing, political influence. In the middle of the 20th century, Montreal grew enormously and became French-speaking again, owing to immigration from rural Quebec. It became the center of Quebecois culture and, with its increasingly educated population, the breeding ground for new ideas, including separatism. At the same time, the main city in Ontario, Toronto, was growing even faster. Immigrants from all over Canada and other countries poured into it (including Jane Jacobs herself). Sometime around 1970, it became bigger and wealthier than Montreal, and replaced it as the main economic hub. Many people attribute this to the rise of Quebec separatists, which supposedly scared the Anglo elite of Montreal into moving all the banks and companies to Toronto, and, to be sure, some of that happened — but of course, Jacobs prefers explanations that rely on city economics. One of the reasons for Toronto's economic and demographic growth is that it became the nexus of what Jacobs calls a conurbation, and would have called a city region if we were in the other book. In case you craved another concrete example of a city region, here’s a map of Ontario with two ways to define Toronto’s so-called “Golden Horseshoe” (Toronto itself is just the tiny strip in the middle of the red area, next to the lake): Meanwhile, Montreal never generated a conurbation or significant city region. This is Jacobs’s main hypothesis for why it was overtaken by Toronto, though she doesn’t give a lot of detail on why it happened. In any case, the result was that Montreal lost its status as the economic capital of the country. It became a regional city. The problem is that regional cities tend to do poorly. The nature of nations is to centralize everything in one place (we’ll come back to this). That’s why Paris has a large and rich city region, but Lyon and Marseille don’t. That’s why London looms so large in the UK’s economy while Glasgow or Manchester now contribute very little. There’s nothing wrong per se with being an economically stagnant regional city. Such cities can be fine places. When they’re the center of a supply region, like Calgary and Edmonton in oil-rich Alberta, they can even be wealthy. The complication for Montreal, though, is that its previous status as the main Canadian metropolis made it grow too large for this purpose. Yet, at the same time, Montreal plays an outsized cultural role for French-speaking Canadians — one that Toronto doesn’t even come close to fulfilling. So, Jacobs sees only decline for Montreal. And she thinks this means decline for Quebecois culture generally. Without a strong import-replacing city, Quebec will become a patchwork of supply regions, regions that workers abandon, or transplant economies, like the poverty-stricken Atlantic provinces in eastern Canada already are. Either the Quebecois resign themselves to this fate, she says, or they fight it — and the only true way to fight it is to declare independence. As of the 1980 referendum, she thinks they should go for independence. Generalized Separatism Quebecers did not go for independence, neither then in 1980 nor in 1995 when they voted on the question again. If they had, it would probably have been an example of a peaceful secession. Jacobs points out that there haven’t been many of those, if you exclude the decolonization of overseas imperial possessions (like Canada from Britain). Non-peaceful secessions have been common, but in those cases the destructiveness of war tends to overshadow everything else, economically speaking. In fact that might be the main reason most of us intuitively dislike separatism: we associate it with conflict. But peaceful non-colonial secessions do happen. Since 1980 there have been several more cases, like Czechia and Slovakia. When Jacobs wrote her book, though, the only good example she could think of was the independence of Norway from Sweden in 1905. She tells a great account of the process, noting that the outcome wasn’t predetermined: Sweden didn’t want to lose its western province, and did what it could to contain Norwegian nationalist sentiment. But Norwegian nationalist sentiment won — and importantly, both Norway and Sweden seemingly benefitted. Neither of them was particularly rich in the 19th century, and Norway was in fact dirt poor, which is why so many Norwegians escaped by emigrating to North America. Yet after the dissolution of their union, the two countries developed quickly, and both are now among the wealthiest countries in the world. They certainly didn’t disintegrate. (Of course, in Norway the wealth is due in large part to the oil that they discovered in the late 1960s. But they were pretty advanced by that point already — advanced enough that they could use the oil to develop their own industry, rather than get rich quick by exporting it raw, which is what keeps many countries trapped as supply regions.) When people argue against separatism, they often tout the benefits of being large. A Canada that would be split in two would mean smaller markets, and a weaker political counterweight to the United States. (Not to be mean to Canadian readers, but this argument seems delusional to me — I don’t think Americans currently see Canada as a political counterweight of any significance.) It would certainly be less prestigious. Large size, Jacobs says, is associated with power, and we admire power. We love slogans like “unity makes strength.” But after the medium-sized country of Sweden-Norway became the two smaller countries of Sweden and Norway, they both did well. Small size is less powerful, but it has its own advantages, such as nimbleness and ability to fail non-catastrophically. Small size also allows more diversity in cultural and economic matters, and here Jacobs waxes philosophical, pointing out that favoring diversity over uniformity is a recent, post-Enlightenment idea that has not yet been fully embraced in politics. We can see analogs everywhere. Europe, split into numerous small countries from the Middle Ages onward, became far more advanced than China, which has been unified more often than not. The city-states of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy are seen as golden ages of Western civilization, even if they weren’t part of larger political units and therefore constantly went to war with one another. In business, large companies are impressive and powerful, but people always complain that Google or Microsoft have become stagnant and that the best place to work is tiny startups of about 2 cofounders and 4 employees. In biology, humans are more successful than numerous larger animals, and in terms of raw numbers, small animals like rats or insects are the most successful of all. Jacobs’s point isn’t that smaller is always better. Her point is that the converse statement, “bigger is always better,” is false — despite how intuitive it feels for political entities. Just like we don’t view a small nation like Switzerland or Singapore as a failure of unity, we (and in particular, Canadians) shouldn’t see the secession of a place like Quebec, if it’s done peacefully and democratically, as a failure either. Still, some people in online reviews of the book complain that this argument is a bit thin, especially considering that it serves as the foundation for the later chapters (which are more directly about late 1970s Quebec politics). Sure, small is beautiful, but large states are great for stability, peace, markets, whatever. If the potential benefits of small national size are Jacobs’s strongest argument, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to agreeing that separatism is bad. Pointing out the widespread bias in favor of unified political entities does seem valuable to me, but okay, fair enough. Does Jacobs have deeper reasons why separatism might be a good idea in general? Yes, and for this we go back to the second half of Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Why Nations and Empires Fail Our breathing rate is regulated through a feedback mechanism. Too much carbon dioxide in the blood, or too little oxygen, and the brain stem commands the diaphragm to accelerate breathing. Once the levels are back to normal, the brain stem receives this feedback and slows breathing down again. Now, Jacobs asks, imagine an impossible creature: ten people, all doing their own thing, but whose breathing is somehow regulated by a single brain stem. The feedback the brain stem receives is a consolidated average of everyone’s carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, and the breathing rate the stem decides on is applied to all ten people, regardless of whether they’re sleeping or playing tennis. This, to put it mildly, wouldn’t work. This creature is an analogy, representing a nation. The ten people are its individual cities, and the breathing rate is the cities’ economies. If it sounds like a stupid analogy, that’s because it is: “I have had to propose a preposterous situation,” writes Jacobs, “because systems as structurally flawed as this don’t exist in nature; they wouldn’t last.” Nor do they exist in machines we design; they wouldn’t work. But “nations, from this point of view, don’t work either, yet do exist.” The feedback mechanism that fails to work properly in a nation is currency. A currency always fluctuates according to the exports and imports of the area where it circulates. Let me use the Republic of Venice and its ducat as a toy example, because the coins look nice: Whenever Venice produces something (like salt) and sells it abroad, foreigners need ducats to buy the exports, so the demand for ducats increases. When Venice buys something from abroad, it needs to use foreign currencies, so the demand for ducats decreases. Add up everything that Venice exports and imports, and you get either a trade surplus (more exports than imports) or a trade deficit (more imports than exports), which determines the value of the ducat relative to other currencies. In both cases, a negative feedback loop restores balance over time, just like our brain stem does with carbon dioxide levels. A trade surplus, and therefore a strong ducat, means that when foreigners want Venetian salt, it’s expensive. So Venice’s exports decrease, while imports increase, since Venetians can use their valuable ducats to buy stuff cheaply from abroad. Conversely, a trade deficit makes exports a bargain for foreigners and imports expensive for Venetians. This feedback loop is great. It’s exactly what a city needs to trigger the crucial import replacement process. When exports decrease and a trade deficit begins (maybe because Constantinople found a cheaper source of salt somewhere else), the weak ducat means that Venice is less able to afford the resources and manufactured goods it used to import. The people of Venice don’t want to have less of those goods, though, so they figure out ways to produce some themselves — that is, they do import replacement. Later they will be able to export the output of the newly expanding industries too, strengthening the ducat and continuing the cycle. Currencies, Jacobs explains, function as automatic tariffs (to protect local industry from foreign imports) and automatic export subsidies (to encourage local industry to export). They are “automatic” because of the feedback mechanism. Just like an accelerated breathing rate, they take effect exactly when they are needed — and no longer. … Or so they should, except that import replacement, as we discussed, is a city process. Whereas most currencies are national or supranational. National currencies work well for city-states, like the Republic of Venice or today’s Singapore. But in large nations, which, remember, are not the fundamental unit of economic life, they mess everything up. Take a city like Detroit. When Detroit’s exports (primarily cars) decrease, Detroit gets no feedback about this, because its currency is the United States dollar, and the United States dollar’s value depends on much more than Detroit. It depends on other cities whose foreign exports might be increasing at the moment. And on rural regions that are selling resources like oil abroad. Also, trade between Detroit and other cities that use the United States dollar — i.e., American cities — is structurally unable to provide any feedback whatsoever. So Detroit doesn’t get the signal that it should buy less stuff from other cities and replace the missing imports with local production. Instead, it just declines. Jacobs hypothesizes that this issue of national currencies is at the root of every large country’s economic troubles. It is why nations and empires always centralize everything into one large city, whether that’s Paris, London, Tokyo, or Toronto, or ancient Rome: that city, being the largest, is simply the only one for which national-level currency feedback works fine. The rest of the nation or empire, then, declines. But of course, nations and empires don’t accept this. They care about the economic well-being of their peripheral regions, sometimes out of genuine concern for the people there, sometimes out of fear that they rebel or hold independence referendums. So nations and empires will embark on every possible solution to reverse the decline. All of their solutions will look like good ideas at first, and yet fail at helping the peripheral regions. Worse, these solutions will weaken the cities, thereby destroying the only real wealth of the country and bringing untold hardship for everyone. Eventually the nation or empire will disintegrate, as nations and empires always do, and always will. Jacobs calls these false solutions transactions of decline. She identifies three types, and, content warning, you might not like some of them depending on your political sensibilities. Sustained military production is a transaction of decline. Permanent military bases and garrison towns are a special kind of settlement: they import a lot and export nothing. Superficially, producing weapons and supplies for the military seems like a good deal for some cities — Jacobs gives the example of Seattle, which, before Microsoft and Amazon were a thing, depended mostly on making military aircraft. But because nobody in a military base ever tries to replace those weapons and supplies with their own production, the trade is sterile in terms of economic development. In a sense, the wealth is slowly “drained” from cities. Large empires are especially prone to this: eventually all of their wealth is destined to the military just to keep the empire together.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Qj1l!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff727cfae-ec34-42c4-b509-9a25f4126f2d_1600x834.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T392!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9795745-8a40-40c1-8173-5296c13eef3b_1600x1553.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zETj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3e99b106-d34e-4a49-93a8-553a8f57952a_1600x1130.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YeXj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6fe681e6-b571-4f4c-aa90-313f77fc1dbb_750x359.png
Canada, a word that used to refer to the large valley around the St. Lawrence river and the Great Lakes, was originally a colony of the Kingdom of France. Then the Kingdom of Great Britain conquered it in 1760. For various reasons, most of the French settlers stayed in Canada rather than emigrating to France or being deported, so at first, a small British elite ruled over a mostly French-speaking and Catholic colony. However, immigration from the British Isles, as well as from the newly seceded United States (loyalists who wanted to live in a monarchy rather than a republic for some reason) eventually tipped the linguistic and cultural balance. The population sorted itself such that the lower part of the valley (what is now Quebec) remained French, while the upper part (what is now Ontario) became English. The exception to this trend was the city of Montreal. Although located in Quebec, it became an English-speaking city and the hub for the British merchant elite. For at least a hundred years, it was the main city in Canada across almost all metrics: population, wealth, manufacturing, political influence. In the middle of the 20th century, Montreal grew enormously and became French-speaking again, owing to immigration from rural Quebec. It became the center of Quebecois culture and, with its increasingly educated population, the breeding ground for new ideas, including separatism. At the same time, the main city in Ontario, Toronto, was growing even faster. Immigrants from all over Canada and other countries poured into it (including Jane Jacobs herself). Sometime around 1970, it became bigger and wealthier than Montreal, and replaced it as the main economic hub. Many people attribute this to the rise of Quebec separatists, which supposedly scared the Anglo elite of Montreal into moving all the banks and companies to Toronto, and, to be sure, some of that happened — but of course, Jacobs prefers explanations that rely on city economics. One of the reasons for Toronto's economic and demographic growth is that it became the nexus of what Jacobs calls a conurbation, and would have called a city region if we were in the other book. In case you craved another concrete example of a city region, here’s a map of Ontario with two ways to define Toronto’s so-called “Golden Horseshoe” (Toronto itself is just the tiny strip in the middle of the red area, next to the lake): Meanwhile, Montreal never generated a conurbation or significant city region. This is Jacobs’s main hypothesis for why it was overtaken by Toronto, though she doesn’t give a lot of detail on why it happened. In any case, the result was that Montreal lost its status as the economic capital of the country. It became a regional city. The problem is that regional cities tend to do poorly. The nature of nations is to centralize everything in one place (we’ll come back to this). That’s why Paris has a large and rich city region, but Lyon and Marseille don’t. That’s why London looms so large in the UK’s economy while Glasgow or Manchester now contribute very little. There’s nothing wrong per se with being an economically stagnant regional city. Such cities can be fine places. When they’re the center of a supply region, like Calgary and Edmonton in oil-rich Alberta, they can even be wealthy. The complication for Montreal, though, is that its previous status as the main Canadian metropolis made it grow too large for this purpose. Yet, at the same time, Montreal plays an outsized cultural role for French-speaking Canadians — one that Toronto doesn’t even come close to fulfilling. So, Jacobs sees only decline for Montreal. And she thinks this means decline for Quebecois culture generally. Without a strong import-replacing city, Quebec will become a patchwork of supply regions, regions that workers abandon, or transplant economies, like the poverty-stricken Atlantic provinces in eastern Canada already are. Either the Quebecois resign themselves to this fate, she says, or they fight it — and the only true way to fight it is to declare independence. As of the 1980 referendum, she thinks they should go for independence. Generalized Separatism Quebecers did not go for independence, neither then in 1980 nor in 1995 when they voted on the question again. If they had, it would probably have been an example of a peaceful secession. Jacobs points out that there haven’t been many of those, if you exclude the decolonization of overseas imperial possessions (like Canada from Britain). Non-peaceful secessions have been common, but in those cases the destructiveness of war tends to overshadow everything else, economically speaking. In fact that might be the main reason most of us intuitively dislike separatism: we associate it with conflict. But peaceful non-colonial secessions do happen. Since 1980 there have been several more cases, like Czechia and Slovakia. When Jacobs wrote her book, though, the only good example she could think of was the independence of Norway from Sweden in 1905. She tells a great account of the process, noting that the outcome wasn’t predetermined: Sweden didn’t want to lose its western province, and did what it could to contain Norwegian nationalist sentiment. But Norwegian nationalist sentiment won — and importantly, both Norway and Sweden seemingly benefitted. Neither of them was particularly rich in the 19th century, and Norway was in fact dirt poor, which is why so many Norwegians escaped by emigrating to North America. Yet after the dissolution of their union, the two countries developed quickly, and both are now among the wealthiest countries in the world. They certainly didn’t disintegrate. (Of course, in Norway the wealth is due in large part to the oil that they discovered in the late 1960s. But they were pretty advanced by that point already — advanced enough that they could use the oil to develop their own industry, rather than get rich quick by exporting it raw, which is what keeps many countries trapped as supply regions.) When people argue against separatism, they often tout the benefits of being large. A Canada that would be split in two would mean smaller markets, and a weaker political counterweight to the United States. (Not to be mean to Canadian readers, but this argument seems delusional to me — I don’t think Americans currently see Canada as a political counterweight of any significance.) It would certainly be less prestigious. Large size, Jacobs says, is associated with power, and we admire power. We love slogans like “unity makes strength.” But after the medium-sized country of Sweden-Norway became the two smaller countries of Sweden and Norway, they both did well. Small size is less powerful, but it has its own advantages, such as nimbleness and ability to fail non-catastrophically. Small size also allows more diversity in cultural and economic matters, and here Jacobs waxes philosophical, pointing out that favoring diversity over uniformity is a recent, post-Enlightenment idea that has not yet been fully embraced in politics. We can see analogs everywhere. Europe, split into numerous small countries from the Middle Ages onward, became far more advanced than China, which has been unified more often than not. The city-states of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy are seen as golden ages of Western civilization, even if they weren’t part of larger political units and therefore constantly went to war with one another. In business, large companies are impressive and powerful, but people always complain that Google or Microsoft have become stagnant and that the best place to work is tiny startups of about 2 cofounders and 4 employees. In biology, humans are more successful than numerous larger animals, and in terms of raw numbers, small animals like rats or insects are the most successful of all. Jacobs’s point isn’t that smaller is always better. Her point is that the converse statement, “bigger is always better,” is false — despite how intuitive it feels for political entities. Just like we don’t view a small nation like Switzerland or Singapore as a failure of unity, we (and in particular, Canadians) shouldn’t see the secession of a place like Quebec, if it’s done peacefully and democratically, as a failure either. Still, some people in online reviews of the book complain that this argument is a bit thin, especially considering that it serves as the foundation for the later chapters (which are more directly about late 1970s Quebec politics). Sure, small is beautiful, but large states are great for stability, peace, markets, whatever. If the potential benefits of small national size are Jacobs’s strongest argument, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to agreeing that separatism is bad. Pointing out the widespread bias in favor of unified political entities does seem valuable to me, but okay, fair enough. Does Jacobs have deeper reasons why separatism might be a good idea in general? Yes, and for this we go back to the second half of Cities and the Wealth of Nations. Why Nations and Empires Fail Our breathing rate is regulated through a feedback mechanism. Too much carbon dioxide in the blood, or too little oxygen, and the brain stem commands the diaphragm to accelerate breathing. Once the levels are back to normal, the brain stem receives this feedback and slows breathing down again. Now, Jacobs asks, imagine an impossible creature: ten people, all doing their own thing, but whose breathing is somehow regulated by a single brain stem. The feedback the brain stem receives is a consolidated average of everyone’s carbon dioxide and oxygen levels, and the breathing rate the stem decides on is applied to all ten people, regardless of whether they’re sleeping or playing tennis. This, to put it mildly, wouldn’t work. This creature is an analogy, representing a nation. The ten people are its individual cities, and the breathing rate is the cities’ economies. If it sounds like a stupid analogy, that’s because it is: “I have had to propose a preposterous situation,” writes Jacobs, “because systems as structurally flawed as this don’t exist in nature; they wouldn’t last.” Nor do they exist in machines we design; they wouldn’t work. But “nations, from this point of view, don’t work either, yet do exist.” The feedback mechanism that fails to work properly in a nation is currency. A currency always fluctuates according to the exports and imports of the area where it circulates. Let me use the Republic of Venice and its ducat as a toy example, because the coins look nice: Whenever Venice produces something (like salt) and sells it abroad, foreigners need ducats to buy the exports, so the demand for ducats increases. When Venice buys something from abroad, it needs to use foreign currencies, so the demand for ducats decreases. Add up everything that Venice exports and imports, and you get either a trade surplus (more exports than imports) or a trade deficit (more imports than exports), which determines the value of the ducat relative to other currencies. In both cases, a negative feedback loop restores balance over time, just like our brain stem does with carbon dioxide levels. A trade surplus, and therefore a strong ducat, means that when foreigners want Venetian salt, it’s expensive. So Venice’s exports decrease, while imports increase, since Venetians can use their valuable ducats to buy stuff cheaply from abroad. Conversely, a trade deficit makes exports a bargain for foreigners and imports expensive for Venetians. This feedback loop is great. It’s exactly what a city needs to trigger the crucial import replacement process. When exports decrease and a trade deficit begins (maybe because Constantinople found a cheaper source of salt somewhere else), the weak ducat means that Venice is less able to afford the resources and manufactured goods it used to import. The people of Venice don’t want to have less of those goods, though, so they figure out ways to produce some themselves — that is, they do import replacement. Later they will be able to export the output of the newly expanding industries too, strengthening the ducat and continuing the cycle. Currencies, Jacobs explains, function as automatic tariffs (to protect local industry from foreign imports) and automatic export subsidies (to encourage local industry to export). They are “automatic” because of the feedback mechanism. Just like an accelerated breathing rate, they take effect exactly when they are needed — and no longer. … Or so they should, except that import replacement, as we discussed, is a city process. Whereas most currencies are national or supranational. National currencies work well for city-states, like the Republic of Venice or today’s Singapore. But in large nations, which, remember, are not the fundamental unit of economic life, they mess everything up. Take a city like Detroit. When Detroit’s exports (primarily cars) decrease, Detroit gets no feedback about this, because its currency is the United States dollar, and the United States dollar’s value depends on much more than Detroit. It depends on other cities whose foreign exports might be increasing at the moment. And on rural regions that are selling resources like oil abroad. Also, trade between Detroit and other cities that use the United States dollar — i.e., American cities — is structurally unable to provide any feedback whatsoever. So Detroit doesn’t get the signal that it should buy less stuff from other cities and replace the missing imports with local production. Instead, it just declines. Jacobs hypothesizes that this issue of national currencies is at the root of every large country’s economic troubles. It is why nations and empires always centralize everything into one large city, whether that’s Paris, London, Tokyo, or Toronto, or ancient Rome: that city, being the largest, is simply the only one for which national-level currency feedback works fine. The rest of the nation or empire, then, declines. But of course, nations and empires don’t accept this. They care about the economic well-being of their peripheral regions, sometimes out of genuine concern for the people there, sometimes out of fear that they rebel or hold independence referendums. So nations and empires will embark on every possible solution to reverse the decline. All of their solutions will look like good ideas at first, and yet fail at helping the peripheral regions. Worse, these solutions will weaken the cities, thereby destroying the only real wealth of the country and bringing untold hardship for everyone. Eventually the nation or empire will disintegrate, as nations and empires always do, and always will. Jacobs calls these false solutions transactions of decline. She identifies three types, and, content warning, you might not like some of them depending on your political sensibilities. Sustained military production is a transaction of decline. Permanent military bases and garrison towns are a special kind of settlement: they import a lot and export nothing. Superficially, producing weapons and supplies for the military seems like a good deal for some cities — Jacobs gives the example of Seattle, which, before Microsoft and Amazon were a thing, depended mostly on making military aircraft. But because nobody in a military base ever tries to replace those weapons and supplies with their own production, the trade is sterile in terms of economic development. In a sense, the wealth is slowly “drained” from cities. Large empires are especially prone to this: eventually all of their wealth is destined to the military just to keep the empire together.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T392!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9795745-8a40-40c1-8173-5296c13eef3b_1600x1553.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zETj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3e99b106-d34e-4a49-93a8-553a8f57952a_1600x1130.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YeXj!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6fe681e6-b571-4f4c-aa90-313f77fc1dbb_750x359.png
Open Thread 292
September 04, 2023 · Original source
3: New additions to Meetups Everywhere: Bratislava, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Vienna, Curitiba - check the post for details. Meetups this week in Munich, Vienna, Cologne, Grass Valley, DC, New Orleans, St. Louis, Portland, Seattle, Buenos Aires, Columbus, Jakarta, Budapest, Toronto - along with many smaller cities that won’t fit here - so again, check the post if you’re interested.
Inline links: Meetups Everywhere
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA Contact: Sean A Contact Info: k9i9m9ufh[at]mozmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 13th, 2:00 PM Location: Mars Discovery District basement cafeteria. To get to the cafeteria, enter the Mars Atrium via University Avenue entrance. Enter from University Avenue and walk east until you see escalators. Take the escalators down. The food court is to the east of the escalators. If you are lost/confused, ask a security guard to direct you to the food court in the basement. I'll be wearing a bright neon yellow jacket. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XP Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XP, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA
Open Thread 324
April 08, 2024 · Original source
2: ACX meetups this coming week in Haifa, St. Petersburg, LA, Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico City, San Jose, Milwaukee, Hong Kong, Tallinn, Cambridge MA, Mumbai, Singapore, and many more. See the Meetups List for details.
Inline links: See the Meetups List for details
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Sergey Contact Info: spam04321[at]gmail[d ot]com Time: Saturday, September 14th, 11:30 AM Location: McAllister Place food court, I'll have some kind of a small ACX MEETUP sign on the table. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87QM8X4M+XJP Notes: Please RSVP if you have any intention of coming as the event will only proceed if there's at least someone interested in coming. TORONTO, CANADA Contact: Andrew Contact Info: partyatmyplace2024[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 21st, 04:00 PM Location: FourFifty The Well (450 Front Street), ask the concierge to send you to the rec room for the ACX Meetup Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87M2JJV3+4R Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA Notes: RSVP over email for planning around snacks and venue capacity, or to let me know any dietary requirements. Please leave your pets at home :)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87QM8X4M+XJP, https://plus.codes/87M2JJV3+4R, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Tess Contact Info: rationalottawa[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Friday, April 18th, 7:00 PM Location: "The Penalty Box" private room at Hometown Sports Bar & Grill, 1525 Bank St, Ottawa, K1H7Z1, see the yellow ACX sign on the door to the private room Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87Q698JJ+FM Group Link: https://discord.gg/NCx [remove this bit] GNU5a9z Notes: Come on out to encounter ACX readers, and to find out what our Rational Ottawa weekly meetup group is like/is all about! Past years have seen attendance range from 1-2 dozen at these events, and I would expect that to continue. Please feel welcome to join us even if you're not quite sure you fit the crowd, or feel awkward about doing meetups! All appetizers to be provided by the group! TORONTO Contact: Sean A Contact Info: k9i9m9ufh[a t]mozmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 13th, 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://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA 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.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87Q698JJ+FM, https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XG, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA
Open Thread 376
April 07, 2025 · Original source
3: This week’s meetups include Canberra, Munich, Milan, Budapest, Dublin, Lisbon, Madrid, Birmingham, Detroit, Charlotte, Salt Lake, and Toronto. See the list for smaller cities and details. And if you attended and have opinions, there's now a feedback form available here.
Inline links: See the list, here
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Tess Contact Info: rationalottawa[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Friday, September 12th, 7:00 PM Location: We're meeting at the local park of the Ottawa organizer, Tess, called "South Keys Landing Community Garden" on google maps. We'll be in the park gazebo and will put up a yellow ACX sign, and I, Tess, will be identifiable in a black cowboy hat. If it gets too dark and buggy, we will retreat indoors at 307 Southcrest Pvt. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87Q698CJ+3X Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/PB4YL2K54CzmQDtC4, https://www.facebook.com/groups/rationalottawa, Attend a meetup to receive an invite to our discord! Notes: Come on out to encounter ACX readers, and to find out what our Rational Ottawa weekly meetup group is like/is all about! Past years have seen attendance range from 1-2 dozen at these events, and I would expect that to continue. Please join us even if you're not quite sure you fit the crowd, or feel awkward about doing meetups! TORONTO Contact: Abi O. and Sean Contact Info: k9i9m9ufh[a t]mozmail[period]com Time: Sunday, October 26th, 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://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA Notes: If for some unlikely 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.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87Q698CJ+3X, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/PB4YL2K54CzmQDtC4, https://www.facebook.com/groups/rationalottawa, https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XG, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/8ktnBi4AjxtCmGeXA
Open Thread 404
October 20, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Leipzig, Newark, Copenhagen, Hong Kong, Toronto - see the meetup post for more information.
Inline links: the meetup post
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Kevin Macmichael Contact Info: kvnmac1[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 11th, 1:00 PM Location: We’ll be at Kiwanis park, by the benches. I’ll have an ACX Meetup sign with me. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86RQGMFP+VJ Group Link: https://discord.gg/YfY [remove this bit] acWJu Notes: Please join the discord or email me so I know how much food to bring TORONTO 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.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86RQGMFP+VJ, https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XG
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.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87M2MJ56+XG
Tennessee12 mentions across 12 issues

Tennessee is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 12 times across 12 issues between May 21, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tennessee whiskey"; "She was born in Tennessee"; "the data source includes ... Tennessee". It most often appears alongside Australia, California, India.

Article page
Tennessee
Mention count
12
Issue count
12
First seen
May 21, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
We didn’t just get tremendous economic growth though – we got “magical” results, but they were based on a one-time confluence of factors that “overwhelmed the normal rule that lots of twenty-and thirty-somethings make for an expensive-capital environment.” What were these one-time accelerants? He identifies the peace dividend – cuts in military spending that allowed capital to be put to more productive uses – as one such change, along with the emergent dominance of the US dollar, particularly boosted by Russian demand thanks to the collapse of their currency, and a later boost in demand thanks to the East Asian financial crisis. With the Europeans’ decision to eliminate national currencies (agreed upon in a 1992 treaty, with the Euro to be introduced in 1999), they became relatively unattractive, and the Euro itself (an “unprecedented experiment in pan-government planning”) was too risky. Many holders of European currencies switched to the US dollar, such that between 1994 and 2002 (“when the euro finally got some traction and the surge dialed back”) there was a $2 trillion increase in the money supply. Zeihan also points to a collapse in commodities prices influenced by the elimination of Russian demand, but continued Russian production of oil and other commodities, followed by a collapse in demand thanks to the East Asian financial crisis. This story of capital coming to the West (“allowing consumption-driven growth not simply to soar, but to explode”) is one of chance world events. However, the story of capital coming from the Boomer cohort is one of demographics. By the 2000s, they’re the mature workers of Zeihan’s four stages described above – and as the bulge in the demographic pyramid, they started flooding the world with capital. Accordingly, “The cost of credit plummeted to levels never before experienced.” Zeihan suggests that developed-world demographics are the cause of booms in places that haven’t been well-developed, from Southern Europe to Brazil, Russia, and India. But he says it’s quickly coming to an end; Boomer savings into stocks and bonds will be moving to low-risk instruments and then turning into withdrawals rather than savings, and the cohort behind them is too small to replace all of that capital. And it’s a worldwide phenomenon: In every single developed country there is currently an American-style population inversion between the about-to-retire and the about-to-be-mature-workers age groups. Japan’s Boomers bulge is a decade older than the American equivalent, while Spain’s is roughly fifteen years younger. Everyone else falls somewhere in between. It dictates a period of chronically low growth and high credit costs, just not on precisely the same time frame. The undeveloped world is that way because it can’t self-fund, so without foreign capital, their growth will come to an end. In sum, the 1990-2005 period of high growth and easy capital was a historical anomaly; “the post-Cold War financial flight was a once-in-a-generation event” and the demographic bulge that coincided with it won’t come around again for decades, if ever. 4 2: America’s incredible advantages As noted above, Zeihan really likes America’s position in the world. He likes its demographics (relative to other developed countries) and loves its geography. Taking the population question first, in America, “the demographic inversion is only a temporary development.” America is younger than the rest of the developed world, as it urbanized later and its enormous size made having kids easier despite that urbanization (i.e., the suburbs exist). This makes the demographic crunch a single-generation issue, as the Millennials are a huge cohort. And even if they weren’t, America assimilates immigrants more easily than other places – Zeihan attributes this to it being a “settler society” – which can help with demographic problems. The rest of the developed world doesn’t have similar cohorts following their massive Boomer and Gen-X analogues. Accordingly: While the American financial world will be past its period of maximum stress by 2030, for the rest of the world 2030 will simply be another year of an ever-deepening imbalance between retirees and taxpayers, with smaller and smaller generations coming up the ranks generating less and less growth. For the developed world beyond the United States—and even large portions of the developing world—chronic capital poverty and permanent recession will be the new normal from which there is no return. Together with America’s Millennial-led growth and abundant energy (there’s a chapter explaining how shale is a done deal that, as of the mid-2014 writing, already made America the world’s largest energy producer 5), by 2030 Zeihan sees it as practically the only country with an economy worth noting. Anyone who is familiar with American geography should see the argument that’s coming about that aspect of Zeihan’s model. Isn’t the Mississippi River a pretty big deal? And those oceans on the east and west coasts seem like nice borders. Indeed, while he gives us many reasons why there was always going to be an American superpower, geography is central to his story. He has lots to say about America’s internal river systems, farmland, and other geographic features. What mountain barriers exist are apparently better than in other countries in terms of allowing internal transport; the Rockies have major passes, several of which have large cities within them, and the easiest pass in the Appalachians featured America’s first National Road, 130 miles of buried logs that linked two rivers, and thus the east coast with the best farmland in the world. As we saw with his exposition on the Nile, Zeihan puts a lot of emphasis on the value of river systems. He argues that America’s waterway network alone should be sufficient for “global dominance.” The numbers he provides in support of this point are impressive. For example, “the Mississippi is only one of twelve major navigable American rivers. Collectively, all of America’s temperate-zone rivers are 14,650 miles long. China and Germany each have about 2,000 miles, France about 1,000. The entirety of the Arab world has but 120.” He praises US barrier islands that mitigate oceanic destruction and effectively create another river system, as well as the fact that the river system is an actual network. All of this gives America more internal waterways than the rest of the world combined. Thus, we get cheap transportation for “Nebraska corn or Tennessee whiskey or Texas oil or New Jersey steel or Georgia peaches or Michigan cars,” enabling savings that “can be used for whatever Americans (or their government) want, from iPhones to aircraft carrier battle groups.” America doesn’t have to spend on artificial infrastructure, like German roads and rails, but when it does, the competition from the rivers keeps transport costs low. Cheap internal transportation has other benefits. “It’s a recipe for small government and high levels of entrepreneurship,” as small government keeps taxes low, leaving people with plenty of capital. Some people may think of the American consumer with disdain, but it isn’t a new phenomenon. Zeihan points out that America has been the world’s largest consumer market “since shortly after the Civil War.” His observation about a robust food supply forming the base of any civilization bodes well for America, which apparently has the largest connected stretch of quality farmland in the world (the Midwest), the value of which is exponentially increased by the fact that it overlaps with so many of these amazing river systems. It isn’t just the Midwest that he gushes over. California’s Central Valley and the Sacramento River, and Washington and Oregon’s farmland with the Columbia and Snake Rivers get praise. The only major farmland more than 150 miles from a navigable waterway is some of the Great Plains near the Rockies. ***** Zeihan provides a reminder that national security is actually a thing, and that at its most basic level, it’s about protection against invasions. It was something of a shock reading about America’s land borders in that context. “As Santa Anna discovered during the Texas Independence War, there is no good staging location in (contemporary) Mexican territory that could strike at American lands.” And, “Canada’s border with the United States is much longer, more varied, and even more successful at keeping the two countries separated,” thanks to mountains and thick forests over much of it. The mid-continent lands are much more connected, but Zeihan frames these Canadian areas as basically American; they’re physically separated from Canada’s core eastern provinces, so trade with them is weaker than with the closer American states. Then there are the oceans. As much as Zeihan loves deserts for protection, he loves oceans more (particularly in a post-World War II world; more on that below). We get a story about the War of 1812 nearly splitting America into three when the British attacked Baltimore. America learned about “strategic vulnerability and sea approaches,” as the attack “on Baltimore—indeed, the entire war effort—would have been impossible without launching grounds in Canada and the Caribbean.” American foreign policy since then can be understood with respect to this lesson. Zeihan cites it as inspiration for America’s steps to make its ocean borders truly impenetrable, such as working to sever Canada from Britain, and the imperial-era acquisitions of Alaska, Hawaii, Midway, Puerto Rico, and de facto control of Cuba (preventing enemies from cutting off Mississippi River-based trade from the rest of the world). There’s more to Zeihan’s being awestruck by America than his analysis of its balance of transport advantages. He argues that America has been the world leader for agriculture, technology, finance, and industry since the Civil War, and runs through a litany of reasons for its preeminence: America is like a continent-sized island (because of its effective land borders), which is always going to be a more natural naval power than a more landlocked country.
Inline links: 4, 5
California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z
May 24, 2022 · Original source
If you look up “Republican candidate” in the dictionary, you’ll see Jenny Rae Le Roux’s picture. She was born in Tennessee, got a job at Bain, founded a company, bought a ranch, had several beautiful children, and now wants to spread the gospel of pro-business pro-family conservatism to the world.
Links For December 2022
December 28, 2022 · Original source
49: A challenge to the Albion’s Seed hypothesis. The Scotch-Irish “were never more than 20% of the people of any colony”. So how is their culture supposed to have influenced the South and Appalachia so thoroughly? I originally thought “colony” was doing a lot of the work here, but the data source includes Kentucky and Tennessee. [update: see here for criticism]
Inline links: A challenge to the, see here for criticism
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 13th, 01:30 PM Location: French Truck Coffee, Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium. 1350 Concourse Ave, Memphis, TN 38104 We'll be at a table with a sign that says ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHC Notes: We meet monthly and we have a Discord: https://discord.gg/3C74kCmsD9
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHC, https://discord.gg/3C74kCmsD9
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Natasha Mott (@theory_gang) Contact Info: nnmott[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 15th, 03:00 PM Location: The Pinewood Social, 33 Peabody St, Nashville, TN 37210 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/868M565J+9V
Inline links: https://plus.codes/868M565J+9V
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA, USA Contact: S.C. Contact Info: Villainsplus[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, May 19th, 5:00 PM Location: Picnic shelter at McKennan Park, or tables south of it if it's occupied. Will have a sign saying "ACX." Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86M5G7JH+W5V Notes: Please RSVP on LW Tennessee MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 1:00 PM Location: French Truck Coffee in Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave #167, Memphis, TN 38104. I'll be at a table with a sign that says ACX MEETUP Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW Group Link: https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86M5G7JH+W5V, https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW, https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Michael Contact Info: michael[at]postlibertarian[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 1:00 PM Location: French Truck Coffee in Crosstown Concourse, Central Atrium, 1350 Concourse Ave #167, Memphis, TN 38104. I'll be at a table with a sign that says ACX MEETUP Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW Group Link: https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe
Inline links: https://plus.codes/867F5X2P+QHW, https://discord.gg/yEGcbv4VPe
Highlights From The Comments On Hanson And Health Care
May 10, 2024 · Original source
» You might think a sudden doubling in maternal death rates would be obviously flagged as a data issue to correct, but this turns out not to be so. Because the United States has a federal system, individual states added the checkbox in different years. While individual state maternal deaths showed sharp level shifts, the national maternal death count drifted upward gradually as states added checkboxes to their death certificates: California in 2003, Florida in 2005, Texas in 2006, Ohio in 2007, Tennessee in 2012, etc.
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Notes: We have ACX meetups ~monthly. If you'd like to be added to the email list to be notified of future meetups, contact Justin at pghacx@gmail.com Tennessee NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, USA Contact: Felix Contact Info: ACXMeetupNashville[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 22nd, 01:00 PM New location: Rose Park Picnic Shelter #2 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/868M46V8+P5 Notes: Change of location! Entrance is on 12th Ave South, just north of Carter Lawrence Elementary. Go straight in and the picnic area and parking lot will be directly ahead.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/868M46V8+P5
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr
May 08, 2025 · Original source
No direct inline source block was recovered for this mention.
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
June 18, 2025 · Original source
Minnesota and Virginia also have legislation to enable cities to implement land value taxes. We are monitoring these efforts. There are a few other cities we are operating in. We have helped another organization prepare for a meeting in Tennessee by doing impact analysis of land value taxes in the city. We have presented to city officials in the City of South Bend who have expressed support for land value taxes. Finally, we are in conversation with a State Senator in Colorado who is a champion of land value taxes. Meanwhile, we have soft launched and developed the OpenAVMKit, which uses a unified schema to do assessment accuracy reports and automated valuation methods for any property tax data given. Valuation of land is the key binding constraint to successful implementation of land value taxes. We plan to be the leaders in this space with strong benchmarking capabilities and a repo that can enable the open-source community to make the best automated valuation methods. Along with these efforts, we have expanded the movement. We have posted to the Progress and Poverty Substack growing the subscriber base to around 5,000 subscribers. We have spoken to over 25 local advocates interested in working on land value taxes in their local communities. Yet, there is a long way to go. We need to start earning income through technical assistance contracts as our grant funding expires. We need to continue pushing for a state to implement, and we need to be prepared to tell the success story for when they do. 65: EN’s Work On Bacteriophage Therapy Our project is aimed at pioneering phage therapy in Nigeria, where limited resources/infrastructure have historically held back research in this field. Starting from the ground up, we are establishing the foundational systems needed to support a robust phage research ecosystem. So far, we’ve isolated 34 bacteriophages targeting Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an essential step toward building a comprehensive phage bank. This began with collecting a wide range of clinical Pseudomonas isolates, which we are now characterizing alongside the phages through genome sequencing and phenotypic assays including studies on phage stability across pH, temperature, and salinity ranges. Our long-term goal is to develop a phage-based hydrogel for treating diabetic wounds. On the regulatory front, we have secured approval from the Attorney General to register our nonprofit organization, the Centre for Phage Biology and Therapeutics. Additionally, we’re expanding into vaccine development; following a research stay in Prof. Roderick's lab at the University of Waterloo, we have initiated the design of a phage-based universal Salmonella vaccine aimed at covering all major serotypes—an urgent need underscored by Africa’s reliance on external vaccine sources during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have signed an MTA agreement with Roderick to use his phage-based vaccine platform patents to enable us to design vaccines against any common disease affecting us. This is only the beginning, but we are proud to be laying the scientific and institutional groundwork for homegrown phage innovation in Africa. Emergent Ventures funded EN before we did and deserves a lot of credit here also. 66: Create An Artificial Kidney For an implantable artificial kidney, the first essential component is a hemofilter designed to emulate the glomerulus. Critical requirements for this hemofilter include high permeability (to maximize flow for a given area), selectivity (specifically, the retention of albumin), and robust blood compatibility (ensuring sustained function over time). Our initial strategy focused on using negative surface charge to reduce fouling. I began by testing polyelectrolyte (PE) coatings on 24nm pore membranes featuring a negative terminal charge, similar to the glomerular barrier. These initial static tests, assessing platelet adsorption in whole blood, yielded positive outcomes for some polyelectrolytes, indicating potentially desirable blood compatibility. However, static test setups are not truly representative of dynamic in-vitro conditions and don't provide data on key parameters like permeability, fouling progression, or changes in membrane selectivity. To address these limitations, I designed and built a blood filtration setup. This system sustains human whole blood in circulation for 20 minutes, allowing us to analyze all the aforementioned parameters, as well as platelet activation markers. This has resulted in a fairly high-throughput system for evaluating any surface coating. I'm pleased to report this setup has been accepted for presentation at this year's European Society for Artificial Organs (ESAIO) conference. I am also currently working on a full manuscript, as I believe this system offers a viable way to partially replace animal experiments in our early-stage research, requiring only 1.2ml of human blood per run. Working with a PhD student (hired to support both this research and work on membrane substrates), we have continued testing these PE coatings, alongside PEG coatings, on our membranes. Here, we're finding that optimization of the coating layer is crucial. With the current PE coatings, we observe a permeability drop of about an order of magnitude compared to the base membrane, making them unsuitable for an implantable device in their present form. This is likely due to the specific nature of the initial PE layer, which we can modify. We also suspect there may be ingress of PE into the pores, meaning we're not achieving just a surface coating (our goal), but rather a very thick coating, which would explain the flux loss. Optimizing the coating process to control penetration depth is now a primary focus of my ongoing work. I am currently aiming for a flux of 20ul/min (as this is cap introduced by the protein gel layer anyway) but for it to be at this 'steady state' permeability without drop in permeability. I am also imaging the membranes after contact with SEM to see if there is indeed any platelet adsorption etc. Tugrul has the dubious honor of maybe being "the only person to climb a 4000m peak with severe kidney failure". To raise money and awareness for his artificial kidney project, he is running Climb Against Time, where he will climb 41 mountains over 4000m (13000 ft) this summer. He is looking for donors and climbing partners. 67: Add Tardigrade Genes To Human Cells The goal of this one was to make hybrid cells that are more resilient for research and certain medical applications. They report: The grant was to synthesize vectors for the expression of humanized tardigrade proteins that can be targeted to different areas of the cell. All the vectors were designed, generated, and transposed into human cells. The proteins all localize successfully (e.g. they match the designed target), with one exception (we are still working on validating it). We've done some stress testing with the trangenic cells, but haven't reached firm conclusions yet. We've further generated some multigene designs but have not yet transposed them into cells, but should shortly. We're hoping to submit a manuscript on the first round later this year. 68: Teach Forecasting To EU Policy-Makers The original project didn't work out, but our grantee (who still prefers to remain anonymous) is now working with an EU think tank pursuing the same agenda, and has been teaching forecasting workshops to policy-makers for the past two months. 69: Platform For Single-Cell Imaging They ended up unable to accept this grant and returned the money. 70: Open Source Polygenic Predictor For EA/IQ They have an update here. They think they have a predictor that can explain 12% of variance in intelligence, and they’re working on validating it and creating an easy-to-use website. 71: Improve Flu Vaccines The grant mainly funded agent based modelling to demonstrate the benefit of pre-existing immunity to pandemic influenza if and when a future pandemic occurs (academic publication will result). The original proposal was to attempt to influence the WHO influenza strain selection process. After attending WHO meetings and a global influenza conference, I believe this is not feasible. Stakeholder feedback was the potential short term negative effect on vaccine hesitancy is believed to outweigh the less tangible future benefit. Given the conservative nature of decision makers, pandemic vaccines are likely to remain research only. There are still green shoots of research into pandemic preparedness/prevention that I am continuing to work on. I'm working under the "Australians for Pandemic Prevention" brand of Good Ancestors, another group that ACX funded in 2024. 72: Scenario Analysis For Developing World Agricultural Programs In addition to the research and analysis funded by the grant, I’ve learned to code with LLMs and have built an MVP of the project. The app is being considered for further development by staff at a large international organization. 73: Further C’s Political Career C’s political career is going well, but he continues to think it wouldn’t be strategic to give more information publicly at this time. Lessons Learned I'm most impressed with our lobbying/advocacy organizations. In particular, Good Ancestors has gotten the Australian government to sign onto an international AI safety declaration, partner with various x-risk-related organizations, and (possibly) extend charity tax deductions to some EA causes that previously didn't have it - I think this on its own goes a substantial way to paying back the cost of all ACX Grants. Coalition to Modify NOTA has a kidney donation bill in front of Congress that the (very illiquid) prediction markets give a 45% chance of passing; if it works, it could save thousands of lives. The Georgists are partly responsible for bills making land value taxes slightly easier to implement in a handful of states. Good Science Project seems to have significantly improved science. Are lobbying organizations a better bet than other types of nonprofit (within the constraints of ACX Grants)? I'm not sure. It could just be that lobbyists are (naturally) better at playing themselves up and sounding successful than (for example) scientists, or that politicians are good at people-pleasing and make people feel heard and encouraged in a way that might not change overall policy later. Also, I recently talked to some grantmakers who funded a lobbying organization that superficially seems excellent, but they expressed concern it was net negative (!) by taking away oxygen and spotlight from potentially more effective orgs. So I am encouraged but wary. Animal welfare organizations were another standout success. Again, I don't know how to think about this - while I think our grantees were exceptional, there's also an issue where the scale of animal welfare challenges is so great, and work on them so neglected, that lots of organizations can save a million chickens here, or a million fish there, without particularly making a splash. On the one hand, this is exactly what effective altruism should be doing - exploring grants that are very high in linear utility even if they don't feel satisfying. On the other, they're unsatisfying - and also hard to assess retroactively. How many chickens should a good animal welfare grant save? Any realistic number will both be overwhelmingly large in absolute terms and far too small in relative terms. I'm most ambivalent about our science grants. Many of them say they are successful and can point to published papers which explain the science they did. But it's hard to judge whether anything useful has changed based on the science getting done. I know it's important to fund basic research and not just last-mile technology startups, but it's hard for a mini-grants program like this one to evaluate these kinds of abstract interventions. One disappointing result was that grants to legibly-credentialled people operating in high-status ways usually did better than betting on small scrappy startups (whether companies or nonprofits). For example, Innovate Animal Ag was in many ways overdetermined as a grantee - former Yale grad and Google engineer founder, profiled in NYT, already funded by Open Philanthropy - and they in fact did amazing work. On the other hand, there were a lot of promising ACX community members with interesting ideas who were going to turn them into startups any day now, but who ended up kind of floundering (although this also describes Manifold, one of our standout successes). One thing I still don't understand is that Innovate Animal Ag seemed to genuinely need more funding despite being legibly great and high status - does this screen off a theoretical objection that they don't provide ACX Grants with as much counterfactual impact? Am I really just mad that it would be boring to give too many grants to obviously-good things that even moron could spot as promising? Someone (I think it might be Paul Graham) once said that they were always surprised how quickly destined-to-be-successful startup founders responded to emails - sometimes within a single-digit number of minutes regardless of time of day. I used to think of this as mysterious - some sort of psychological trait? Working with these grants has made me think of it as just a straightforward fact of life: some people operate an order of magnitude faster than others. The Manifold team created something like five different novel institutions in the amount of time it's taken some other grantees to figure out a business plan; I particularly remember one time when I needed something, sent out a request to talk about it with two or three different teams, and the Manifold team had fully created the thing and were pestering me to launch a trial version before some of the other people had even gotten back to me. I take no pleasure in reporting this - I sometimes take a week or two to answer emails, and all of the predictions about my personality that this implies would be correct - but it's increasingly something that I look for and respect. A lot of the most successful grants succeeded quickly, or at least were quick to get on a promising track. Since everything takes ten times longer than people expect, only someone who moves ten times faster than people expect can get things done in a reasonable amount of time. In almost every case where I thought to myself “this is a cool idea, but I don’t know how it’s going to really pay off, as opposed to reaching a cool intermediate accomplishment and then stagnating”, this was a correct criticism, and I should have taken it more seriously. But I can’t rule out that these were good in vague and hard-to-measure ways that I should take more seriously. This one is really self-serving, but in general when people were good communicators (or even bloggers) and wowed me with the writing-composition of their application, they turned out to be a good bet. And when people were hard to understand and annoying to communicate with, even if their ideas seemed good, they were less likely to pan out. Overall Thoughts The total cost of ACX Grants, both rounds, was about $3 million. Do these outcomes represent a successful use of that amount of money? Very naively, startups originating from ACX Grants have about $50 million in value1. If ACX Grants is equivalent to a pre-seed funder, and pre-seed funders usually get ~5%, then if we were VCs we would have a portfolio worth $2.5 million. About 1/5 of ACX Grants were attempting to be market-valued startups, so if we assume the charitable portion did about as well as the startup portion, then the charity portion is “worth” $10 million. There’s some reason to expect this is too high, since much of the startup value came from one successful outlier. But there’s another reason to expect this is too low, since we were aiming at charity rather than market cap, and any actual market cap that our grantees got was an unexpected side effect. I’m treating this as a sanity check rather than as a real number. It’s harder to produce Inside View estimates, because so many of the projects either produce vague deliverables (eg a white paper that might guide future action) or intermediate results only (eg getting a government to pass AI safety regulations is good, but can’t be considered an end result unless those regulations prevent the AI apocalypse). Because we tend towards incubating charities and funding research (rather than last-mile causes like buying bednets), achieved measurable deliverables are thin on the ground. But here are things that ACX grantees have already accomplished: Improved the living/slaughter conditions of 30 million fish.
Inline links: Progress and Poverty Substack, Climb Against Time, here, 1
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Michael Traner Contact Info: michaeltraner7[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 4th, 4:00 PM Location: Prospect Terrace Park if it is decent weather, the Providence Place Mall Food Court if weather is bad. I'll have a sign saying ACX MEETUP measuring at least three feet diagonally positioned in some conspicuous way. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87HCRHJV+236 Notes: RSVP to receive weather updates. The fallback location code is https://plus.codes/87HCRHGM+VH, inside the Providence Place Mall. Tennessee BRENTWOOD Contact: JG Contact Info: cubic[period]admirer_3j[a t]icloud[period]com Time: Sunday, September 14th, 1:30 PM Location: John P Holt Brentwood Library. If weather is good, outside near the spring house behind the library. If weather is bad, inside in the Shaw study room. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/867MX6V5+RR Notes: RSVP appreciated but not required
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87HCRHJV+236, https://plus.codes/87HCRHGM+VH, https://plus.codes/867MX6V5+RR
Links For September 2025
September 04, 2025 · Original source
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.
Inline links: Jesse Singal vs. Mark Stern, only ~5% of people raised very religious end up atheist later in life (X), https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VScL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2509e243-f6f7-4448-9779-a8f9be45a2f9_1500x1500.png, 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
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Mike Contact Info: michaeltraner7[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, May 16th, 4:00 PM Location: Prospect Terrace Park if it is decent weather, the Providence Place Mall Food Court if weather is bad. I’ll have a sign saying ACX MEETUP set up nearby. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87HCRHHV+X3 Tennessee NASHVILLE Contact: Jonah Contact Info: generalpurposeemail1[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 25th, 2:00 PM Location: At the outdoor seating area directly in front of Nicholas Zeppos College at Vanderbilt university. Here is a Google map pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/dQJLv8ix3mn7f4rq6?g_st=ic Please join the Group Me (https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP) for pictures of the seating area and to talk to us if you have trouble finding us. Address: 45WV+J3R Nashville, Tennessee Coordinates (36.1466033, -86.8073613). Free parking is a 5-10 minute walk away at Centennial Park and, especially, at Martin’s BBQ Joint on Elliston Place. Paid parking that’s a 2-3 minute walk away can be found along the entire stretch of West End Avenue that overlaps with Vanderbilt’s main campus (on the street facing side of Nicholas Zeppos College). You could also park at the Vanderbilt bookstore parking lot, but parking is limited to an hour and I’ve been towed there before (whereas Martin’s BBQ has never failed me). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/868M45WV+J2 Group Link: https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP Notes: Please join the GroupMe so we can cater for the appropriate number of people and choose foods everyone will enjoy.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87HCRHHV+X3, https://maps.app.goo.gl/dQJLv8ix3mn7f4rq6?g_st=ic, https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP), https://plus.codes/868M45WV+J2, https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP
Contact: Jonah Contact Info: generalpurposeemail1[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 25th, 2:00 PM Location: At the outdoor seating area directly in front of Nicholas Zeppos College at Vanderbilt university. Here is a Google map pin https://maps.app.goo.gl/dQJLv8ix3mn7f4rq6?g_st=ic Please join the Group Me (https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP) for pictures of the seating area and to talk to us if you have trouble finding us. Address: 45WV+J3R Nashville, Tennessee Coordinates (36.1466033, -86.8073613). Free parking is a 5-10 minute walk away at Centennial Park and, especially, at Martin’s BBQ Joint on Elliston Place. Paid parking that’s a 2-3 minute walk away can be found along the entire stretch of West End Avenue that overlaps with Vanderbilt’s main campus (on the street facing side of Nicholas Zeppos College). You could also park at the Vanderbilt bookstore parking lot, but parking is limited to an hour and I’ve been towed there before (whereas Martin’s BBQ has never failed me). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/868M45WV+J2 Group Link: https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP Notes: Please join the GroupMe so we can cater for the appropriate number of people and choose foods everyone will enjoy.
Inline links: https://maps.app.goo.gl/dQJLv8ix3mn7f4rq6?g_st=ic, https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP), https://plus.codes/868M45WV+J2, https://groupme.com/join_group/114018377/7wuY7gPP
Thailand12 mentions across 12 issues

Thailand is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 12 times across 12 issues between June 28, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Its foils are always Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines"; "In contrast, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines never achieved this level"; "He goes through the recent history of Indonesia, Thailand". It most often appears alongside Germany, Singapore, Brazil.

Article page
Thailand
Mention count
12
Issue count
12
First seen
June 28, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: How Asia Works
June 28, 2021 · Original source
How Asia Works's success stories are always Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China. Its foils are always Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. These last three countries resisted calls for land reform, sometimes violently (when a Thai economist published a study saying land reform was needed, the king responded by banning the study of economics!) But as usual, the Philippines takes last place. It passed a series of laws that had "LAND REFORM" in the title, but all managed to be completely useless. In particular, they often said that landlords had to give workers their land, or some other mutually-agreeable concession of equal value. Landlords were legally savvier than tenants, and had nearly unlimited power over them, and the Filipino government was too corrupt and useless to monitor any of this, so landlords found ways to get workers to agree to various things which were legally worker ownership but realistically meaningless. According to a 2007 survey, "seven out of ten 'beneficiaries' of land reform on the island of Negros said they were no better off than before reform". Filipino farming remains centralized and low-yield.
In contrast, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines never achieved this level of growth. Studwell focuses his attention on Malaysia, the country that tried hardest. In 1981, Malaysia's new prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamed made a deliberate effort to imitate Japanese/Korean developmental success. Although he got a few things done, results could most charitably be described as "mixed". Studwell blames a few things.
But even though he puts it excruciatingly kindly, Studwell is kind of accusing the global economic establishment of impoverishing several dozen major countries. He goes through the recent history of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and shows how in each case, the global economic establishment (especially the IMF and World Bank) convinced them not to protect infant industries, not to institute capital controls, and not to stress manufacturing too much. Then each of those countries suffered financial crises and their development stagnated. It really is striking how the countries that did the best were the ones that gave the world establishment the middle finger (unless of course this is cherry-picking and there are lots of big countries that followed IMF advice and did great). To whatever degree this is true, it belongs on the list of science failures that should keep us up at night, alongside all those people saying not to wear masks for COVID. Except that the COVID mistake lasted a few months and killed a 5-6 digit number of people, and the IMF advice lasted decades and kept hundreds of millions in poverty.
Inline links: science failures
Highlights From The Comments On "How Asia Works"
July 01, 2021 · Original source
A negative outlook for the South Asian foils (Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines) seems unjustified considering how quickly they are growing at present despite not following the book's advice. Also they are still richer than their historically more-centrally-planned neighbors Vietnam and Cambodia. In the past 20 years, all the foils have increased their GDP per capita by at least 2.8x, which is a CAGR of at least 5.2%.
Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. are in the 85-90 range.
All East Asian countries are way above the line of best fit, and Vietnam (GDP per capita of like 500) does better than Switzerland (GDP per capita of like 60,000). Meanwhile, Thailand/Malaysia/etc are all much richer than Vietnam and do much worse.
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
BANGKOK, THAILAND (RSVP) Contact: Robert Hoglund, robert[dot]d[dot]hoglund[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 4:00 PM, Saturday, October 2 Location: Benjasiri Park, Phrom Phong. By the skatepark. I will be wearing a blue shirt and carrying a sign. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/oavsett.havsstrand.magiker Notes: Since this is being added very late, I would strongly recommend RSVPing so I know if anyone plans to show up.
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/oavsett.havsstrand.magiker
Book Review: The Revolt Of The Public
September 17, 2021 · Original source
[Egyptian dictator Abdel] al-Sisi aspired to the presidency, and his fate will provide a powerful signal with regard to the claims I have made in this book. If he can repress his way into a stable and long-lasting dynasty in the mode of Nasser and Mubarak, my analysis will be falsified. This isn't an impossible outcome. The future...is unknown. But as I observe, from afar, recent events in Egypt - and in Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand, Turkey - I confess to many misgivings about the future of democracy, [but] far fewer doubts about the restlessness of the public or the crisis of authority.
Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
October 04, 2021 · Original source
Thailand seems to have a daily minimum wage of $10, which probably works out to a little over a dollar an hour, which is probably close to what the West was paying people back when it had Art Nouveau and such. I don’t know if this is a coincidence.
Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping
April 28, 2022 · Original source
[But] if you’re at an intersection in the US as a driver and it’s 2am and there same situation the vast majority of Americans will just wait for a green light. In Brazil or Thailand they will just blow past it like a jaywalking American.
Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline
July 20, 2023 · Original source
As I see it, Britain's bet is that being a junior partner of the United States will both give them more success than chaining themselves to Europe and give them more freedom (since the US has no interest in British domestic politics in the way the EU does). To this end, it's aligning itself with other "individual" US allies like Japan or Thailand and attempting to take a leading role in things like Ukraine or Pacific defense.
Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate
March 28, 2024 · Original source
Lineage A (left) was used by the Minoan Cretans, but has never been deciphered. Lineage B (right) was used by the Mycaeneans for lists of palace goods. This matches Saar’s story above. The lab leaked to somewhere else in Wuhan, not the wet market. The virus spread undetected in the population for a while. During this time, it mutated to Lineage B. Then one of the people with Lineage B went to the wet market and started a superspreader event. The authorities sampled the patients, found Lineage B, then started looking elsewhere. Later they detected some of the earlier Lineage A cases. The market is unlikely to be the origin of the pandemic, because the original Lineage A strain wasn’t found there. Peter: Although Lineage A is evolutionarily older, Lineage B started spreading in humans first. We know this because Lineage B is more common. Throughout the early pandemic, until the D614G variant drove all other strains extinct, a consistent 2/3 of the cases were B, compared to 1/3 A. Both strains spread at the same rate, so the best explanation is that B started earlier than A. Since COVID doubles every 3-4 days, probably Lineage B started 3-4 days earlier than Lineage A, which explains why it’s always been twice as many cases. But also, Lineage B also has more internal genetic diversity than Lineage A. In general, older viruses have more genetic diversity (the “molecular clock”). This is further evidence that B started spreading first. Pekar 2022 and Pipes 2021 do analyses with known parameters for spread rate and diversity, and find 90%+ odds that Lineage B was the first one in humans. Why did the older strain start spreading later? Probably the virus crossed from bats into raccoon-dogs on some raccoon-dog farm out in the country. It spread in the raccoon-dogs for a while, racking up mutations, including the (less mutated) Lineage A strain and the (slightly more mutated) Lineage B strain. Then several raccoon-dogs were taken to Wuhan for sale, including one with Lineage A and another with Lineage B. The one with Lineage B passed its virus to humans earlier. Then 3-4 days later, the Lineage A one passed its virus to humans. Lineage A was first found in a Wuhan neighborhood right next to the wet market (closer to the wet market than 97% of Wuhan’s population). Again, it would be a bizarre coincidence if a lab leak pandemic was first detected at a wet market. But it would be an even more bizarre coincidence if a lab leak pandemic separated into two strains, and both were first detected at a wet market! Although no known wet market cases were Lineage A, a positive Lineage A environmental sample was found at the wet market, and everyone agrees most cases went undetected. So maybe the Lineage B raccoon-dog spread its virus to a vendor, and that sub-strain mostly stayed in the market. But the Lineage A raccoon-dog spread its virus to a customer, who went back to his house nearby, and that strain spread in the neighborhoods next to the market. This is the only story that explains the evolutionary precedence of A, the greater spread and older molecular clock of B, and the fact that both strains were first found very close to the wet market. Yuri/Saar: Lineage B could be more common and diverse because it got the advantage of a super-spreader event in the wet market. There are a few scattered cases of intermediates between A and B, and a few other scattered cases of lineages that seem even more ancestral (ie closer to the bat virus) than either. This doesn’t make sense in a double spillover hypothesis. But it does make sense if the lineages separated in human transmission somewhere between the lab and the first super-spreader event at the wet market. Peter: Again, the wet market wasn’t a super-spreader event. COVID spread in the wet market at exactly its normal spread rate, doubling about once every 3.5 days. Stop calling the wet market a super-spreader event. The scattered cases of “intermediates” are sequencing errors. They were all found by the same computer software, which “autofills” unsequenced bases in a genome to the most plausible guess. Because Lineage B was already in the software, depending on which part of a Lineage A virus you sequenced, you might get one half or the other autofilled as Lineage B, which looked like an “intermediate”. We know this because all the supposed “intermediates” were partial cases sequenced by this particular software. We can confirm this by noting that there are too many intermediates! That is, where Lineage A is (T/C) and Lineage B is (C/T), the software found both (T/T) “intermediates” and (C/C) “intermediates”. But obviously there can only be one real intermediate form, and we have to dismiss one or the other. But in fact we can dismiss both, because they were both caused by the same software bug. The scattered “progenitor” cases - those closer to the ancestral bat virus than either A or B - are reversions, ie cases where a new mutation in the virus happened to hit an already-mutated base and shift it back towards the ancestral virus. We know this because all of these “progenitors” were scattered cases found months after the pandemic started, often in entirely different countries from Wuhan. If these were real progenitor viruses, they would have either fizzled out or exploded into a substantial portion of all cases, not be found one time in one guy in Malaysia. Given the number of mutations the virus developed over the course of the pandemic, it’s inevitable that some of them would be mutations that bring it closer to the original bat virus, and in fact we find the number of “progenitors” found very nicely matches the number of progenitor-appearing viruses we would expect by chance. And in many cases, we know the “progenitors” are newer than the original lineages, because they also have some of the later mutations that Lineage A or B picked up along the way, alongside their apparent ancestral-bat-virus-like mutations. Session 2: Viral Genetics Yuri: Two years before COVID, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, together with colleagues at the University of North Carolina, sent in a grant proposal for the DEFUSE program. This program, intended to locate and better understand potential future pandemic viruses, involved going into bat caves and collecting new coronaviruses. Once they had them, they would do gain-of-function: specifically, they would add a furin cleavage site to make them more infectious and see what happened. (quick interlude: COVID’s spike protein has two sections: one binds to human cells through the ACE2 receptor, the other helps fuse with the cell after binding. In order to avoid the immune system, it hides both of these into one spike. But when it reaches a cell, it needs to separate them again. It takes advantage of a human respiratory enzyme, furin, to do the separation - this also ensures that it only infects its primary target, human respiratory cells. The part of COVID that lets it get separated by furin is called the “furin cleavage site”. COVID’s bat-virus ancestors were gastrointestinal viruses; the addition of a furin cleavage site was what made them respiratory viruses.) We’ve found two close relatives of COVID: bat viruses called RATG-13 and BANAL-52. In particular, COVID looks more or less like BANAL-52 plus a furin cleavage site. There are 1500 sarbecoviruses, members of the family of viruses that includes SARS and SARS2/COVID. None of them except COVID have furin cleavage sites. BANAL-52, COVID’s closest ancestor, doesn’t even have anything resembling one that could mutate into a functional furin cleavage site like COVID’s. Instead, COVID - which mostly just resembles BANAL-52 with a few scattered single-point mutations - has twelve completely new nucleotides in a row - a fully formed furin cleavage site that came out of nowhere. There is nowhere else in the genome that COVID differs from BANAL-52 in such a profound way. It’s just BANAL-52 plus a little bit of random mutation plus a fully-formed furin cleavage site that came out of nowhere. Further, the furin cleavage site is weird. It uses the protein arginine twice. But instead of the nucleotides coding for arginine in the usual viral way, both times it uses the codons CGG - the way that higher animals code for arginine. This works fine - it’s just not how viruses do it. So the obvious conclusion is that WIV, which said in 2018 that it was going to find viruses and add furin cleavage sites to them, found a close relative of BANAL-52 and added a furin cleavage site. Since they were humans, and most familiar with the human way of encoding arginine, they added it as CGG both times. COVID seemed surprisingly optimized for infecting humans. Of fifty animals it was tested in, including the usual coronavirus intermediate hosts (pangolins, raccoon-dogs, etc), it was best at infecting human cells. Further, a virus that enters a new species will usually show a burst of mutations as it “figures out” the best way to adapt to that species’ unique biology. But COVID has had a pretty constant mutation rate in humans, from the beginning of the pandemic to the end. That suggests it was already adapted to humans. This could be because the lab screened for viruses with existing adaptations, because they passed it through humanized mice in the lab, or because it adapted in the hundreds of undetected cases that happened between the lab and detection in the wet market. Usually, research with potentially dangerous coronaviruses is done in BSL-3 or 4, ie high to very-high security. But WIV was irresponsibly doing it in BSL-2, ie medium security. The researchers weren’t even required to wear masks. In general, about 1/500 labs will leak any given pathogen they’re working on (?!). But because WIV was researching such an infectious virus in such an irresponsible way, the odds of a leak were much higher. The most likely explanation for all these facts is that WIV went ahead and did the gain-of-function research they said they were going to do (the particular DEFUSE grant proposal we know about got rejected, but it proves that Wuhan wanted to do this, and they could easily have gotten funding somewhere else, or done it out of their regular budget). They found a close relative of BANAL-52 and added a furin cleavage site as a simple twelve-nucleotide insertion, using the human method of encoding arginine that their genetic engineers were familiar with. Then it leaked, spread for a while in the general Wuhan population, and eventually made it to the wet market where it got detected. Peter: As mentioned earlier, the DEFUSE grant was rejected. Further, the grant said that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was responsible for finding the viruses, and the University of North Carolina would do all the gain-of-function research. This was a reasonable division of labor, since UNC was actually good at gain-of-function research, and WIV mostly wasn’t. They had done a few very simple gain-of-function projects before, but weren’t really set up for this particular proposal and were happy to leave it for their American colleagues. Even if WIV did try to create COVID, they couldn’t have. As Yuri said, COVID looks like BANAL-52 plus a furin cleavage site. But WIV didn’t have BANAL-52. It wasn’t discovered until after the COVID pandemic started, when scientists scoured the area for potential COVID relatives. WIV had a more distant COVID relative, RATG-13. But you can’t create COVID from RATG-13; they’re too different. You would need BANAL-52, or some as-yet-undiscovered extremely close relative. WIV had neither. Are we sure they had neither? Yes. Remember, WIV’s whole job was looking for new coronaviruses. They published lists of which ones they had found pretty regularly. They published their last list in mid-2019, just a few months before the pandemic. Although lab leak proponents claimed these lists showed weird discrepancies, this was just their inability to keep names consistent, and all the lists showed basically the same viruses (plus a few extra on the later ones, as they kept discovering more). The lists didn’t include BANAL-52 or any other suitable COVID relatives - only RATG-13, which isn’t close enough to work. Could they have been keeping their discovery of BANAL-52 secret? No. Pre-pandemic, there was nothing interesting about it; our understanding of virology wasn’t good enough to point this out as a potential pandemic candidate. WIV did its gain-of-function research openly and proudly (before the pandemic, gain-of-function wasn’t as unpopular as it is now) so it’s not like they wanted to keep it secret because they might gain-of-function it later. Their lists very clearly showed they had no virus they could create COVID from, and they had no reason to hide it if they did. COVID’s furin cleavage site is admittedly unusual. But it’s unusual in a way that looks natural rather than man-made. Labs don’t usually add furin cleavage sites through nucleotide insertions (they usually mutate what’s already there). On the other hand, viruses get weird insertions of 12+ nucleotides in nature. For example, HKU1 is another emergent Chinese coronavirus that caused a small outbreak of pneumonia in 2004. It had a 15 nucleotide insertion right next to its furin cleavage site. Later strains of COVID got further 12 - 15 nucleotide insertions. Plenty of flus have 12 to 15 nucleotide insertions compared to other earlier flu strains. Sometimes insertions happen because of a mistake in viral replication. Other times the virus gets confused between its own RNA and its host’s, and splices a bit of the host RNA into the virus. This would neatly explain why the insertion used the unusual coding CGG for arginine, which is common in animals but rare in viruses. On the other hand, it’s not that rare in viruses - COVID uses CGG for arginine about 3% of the time. And human engineers don’t necessarily use it any more than that - Peter was able to find one example of humans adding arginine to a virus, and 0 out of the 5 arginines added were CGG. COVID’s furin cleavage site is a mess. When humans are inserting furin cleavage sites into viruses for gain-of-function, the standard practice is RRKR, a very nice and simple furin cleavage site which works well. COVID uses PRRAR, a bizarre furin cleavage site which no human has ever used before, and which virologists expected to work poorly. They later found that an adjacent part of COVID’s genome twisted the protein in an unusual way that allowed PRRAR to be a viable furin cleavage site, but this discovery took a lot of computer power, and was only made after COVID became important. The Wuhan virologists supposedly doing gain-of-function research on COVID shouldn’t have known this would work. Why didn’t they just use the standard RRKR site, which would have worked better? Everyone thinks it works better! Even the virus eventually decided it worked better - sometime during the course of the pandemic, it mutated away from its weird PRRAR furin cleavage site towards a more normal form. Further, COVID’s furin cleavage site was inserted via what seems to be a frameshift mutation - it wasn’t a clean insertion of the amino acids that formed the site, it was an insertion of a sequence which changed the context of the surrounding nucleotides into the amino acids that formed the site. This is a pointless too-clever-by-half “flourish” that there would be no reason for a human engineer to do. But it’s exactly the kind of weird thing that happens in the random chance of evolution. COVID is hard to culture. If you culture it in most standard media or animals, it will quickly develop characteristic mutations. But the original Wuhan strains didn’t have these mutations. The only ways to culture it without mutations are in human airway cells, or (apparently) in live raccoon-dogs. Getting human airway cells requires a donor (ie someone who donates their body to science), and Wuhan had never done this before (it was one of the technologies only used at the superior North Carolina site). As for raccoon-dogs, it sure does seems suspicious that the virus is already suited to them. The claim that COVID is uniquely adapted to humans is false. The paper that claimed that defined how well COVID was adapted to different animals by those animals’ difference (on the relevant cell receptors) from humans. So in its methodology, humans came out #1 by default. If you don’t do that, COVID is better-adapted to many other animals. It’s not necessarily true that viruses see a burst of mutations when they enter a new host. COVID spread to deer and mink, and in neither case was there a burst of mutations. COVID has a pretty simple job of infecting respiratory cells and is already very good at it, regardless of species. In Yuri’s model, Wuhan Institute of Virology picked up a discarded grant and decided to do the gain-of-function half allotted to a different university, despite their relative inexperience. They skipped over all the SARS-like viruses they were supposed to work on, and all the standard gain-of-function model backbones, in favor of BANAL-52, a virus which would not be discovered for another two years, but which they somehow had samples of, which they had for some reason decided to keep secret despite its total lack of interestingness. Then they would have had to eschew all usual gain-of-function practices in favor of inserting a weird furin cleavage site that shouldn’t have worked according to the theory they had at the time, via a frameshift mutation. Then they would have had to culture it, a technique beyond their limited capabilities. Then it would have had to leak, and magically show up again in front of the raccoon-dog stall at a wet market. Yuri: WIV wouldn’t have needed to keep BANAL-52 “secret” in some kind of sinister way. Plenty of researchers have backlogs of work they haven’t published yet. Probably they a found BANAL relative in one of their normal sampling trips, did some preliminary studies on it, and planned to publish it later once they cleaned up their data. Everyone works like this. The part of DEFUSE saying that they would only work on viruses that were 95% similar to SARS is unclear and might mean something else. It looks more like they say they’ll start with those viruses, but also do some work on novel viruses. BANAL-52 could have been one of the novel viruses. The furin cleavage site is weird, but the researchers might have done that on purpose, to make the virus easier to keep track of, or to test different furin cleavage sites. Depending on the exact BANAL-52 relative they used, it might not even be a frameshift; there’s a particular way to spell serine that would make the insertion more natural. The claims that COVID can’t be cultured in normal media are based on speculative original research by Peter and might not hold up. Peter: WIV did most of its virus-gathering in a trip to a Yunnan cave between 2010 and 2015. All those viruses have long since been processed and added to the database. There’s no sign that they made more trips to Yunnan caves, and no reason for them to keep that secret. So the idea that they might just have some new viruses they didn’t publish doesn’t hold up. But suppose they did make more trips. Given the amount of time between the DEFUSE proposal and COVID, if they kept to their normal virus-collection rate, they would have gotten about thirty new viruses. What’s the chance that one of those was BANAL-52? There are thousands of bat viruses, and BANAL-52 is so rare that it wasn’t found until well after the pandemic started and people were looking for it very hard. So the chance that one of their 30 would be BANAL-52 is low. Also, they said in DEFUSE that they planned to go back to the same Yunnan cave. But BANAL-52 was found far away from that cave, so unless it ranged over a wide area, they probably couldn’t have found it even if they got very lucky. Session 3: Closing Arguments This third debate was supposed to be about “inference”, ie how much Bayesian evidence was provided by each of the facts given so far, and how to fit them into the Rootclaim probabilistic model. I’m going to relegate my summary of the more probabilistic half to the next section of this post, and just include the closing arguments here. Saar: Peter’s case hinges on the idea that it’s very improbable that a lab leak pandemic would first show up at a wet market. But this isn’t necessarily improbable. The Huanan Seafood Market had several factors that made it a likely location for a superspreader event. It was busy, with over 10,000 visitors a day. Many of the people there (eg the 1,000 vendors) came back daily, letting them reinfect each other. It had poor ventilation, especially in the high-positivity area near the raccoon-dog stall. It had cold wet surfaces on which the virus could survive for long periods. It was indoors, which prevented UV light from killing the virus. Given a small amount of sporadic COVID going around Wuhan, it’s not surprising for the first place it started spreading en masse to be a wet market. In fact, we have several examples of this. When China was COVID Zero, there would occasionally be small outbreaks that the authorities would have to contain. Most of these were at wet markets. For example, the big COVID outbreak in Beijing started at Xinfadi Market, their local seafood market. This couldn’t be an animal spillover, because there were no raccoon-dogs or other weird wildlife there. So it must be that wet markets are natural places for superspreader events. There are several other examples, which make up about half of the total outbreaks in Zero COVID era China, plus others in Singapore and Thailand. Since COVID clusters concentrate in wet markets even when there is no animal spillover, we should accept this as a property of the virus, and not attribute any significance to the fact that this happened in Wuhan too. Peter: About 1/10,000 citizens of Wuhan was a wet market vendor. So there’s a 1/10,000 chance that the first known COVID case should be a wet market vendor by chance alone. Weibo lists the most popular places for people to check in to their network on their phones, and the wet market was the 1600th most popular place in Wuhan, meaning that if you weight locations by busy-ness, there’s a less than 1/1600 chance that the first cases would be in the wet market. Yes, the wet market is indoors, has mediocre ventilation, has repeat visitors, etc. So do thousands of other places in Wuhan, like schools, hospitals, workplaces, places of worship. The wet market isn’t special in any way. And again, it wasn’t a superspreader event! COVID spread at the same rate in the wet market as it does everywhere else: doubling once per 3.5 days. It doesn’t matter what kinds of arguments you can come up with for why the wet market should have been the perfect superspreader event location, we can look at it and see that it wasn’t. It’s an environment that spreads COVID at exactly the normal rate. Zero COVID era Chinese outbreaks were concentrated in wet markets because they received infected animal products. We know why there was an outbreak in the Xinfadi Market in Beijing: it was because the seafood stall got frozen fish from some non-Zero-COVID country, the fish had COVID particles on it, and the vendor got infected and spread it to everyone else. Something like this is true for the other Chinese wet market based outbreaks we know about it. So this makes the opposite point you think it does: wet markets start outbreaks because there are infected goods being sold there. Then the virus spreads through the wet market at a completely normal rate. Saar: The Weibo list of 1600 places bigger than the wet market is likely inaccurate, because it's based on check-in data and people don't check in to seafood markets. Most of those 1600 places aren't amenable to superspread. The 70 markets supposedly bigger than Huanan are irrelevant, because they're supermarkets, open air markets, etc. Huanan is the largest seafood market in central China, and a more likely place for the first cluster of cases to be noticed. Markets weren't a common spillover location in SARS1, so the zoonosis hypothesis hasn't "called" this event in a way that should give them a high Bayes factor. And there’s still plenty of evidence for isolated (though not super-spreading) pre-market cases. A British expatriate in Wuhan, Connor Reed, says he got sick in November, three weeks before the first wet market case. Later the hospital tested his samples and said it was COVID. Another paper reports 90 cases before the first wet market one. Peter: Connor Reed was lying. The case wasn’t reported in any peer-reviewed paper. It was reported in the tabloid The Daily Mail, months after it supposedly happened. He also told the Mail that his cat died of coronavirus too, which is rare-to-impossible. Also, to get a positive hospital test, he would have had to go to the hospital, but he was 25 years old and almost no 25-year-olds go to the hospital for coronavirus. His only evidence that it was COVID was that two months later, the hospital supposedly “notified” him that it was. The hospital never informed anyone else of this extremely surprising fact which would be the biggest scientific story of the year if true. So probably he was lying. Incidentally, he died of a drug overdose shortly after giving the Mail that story; while not all drug addicts are liars, given all the other implausibilities in his story, this certainly doesn’t make him seem more credible. And in any case, he claimed he got his case at a market “like in the media” The other 90 cases are also fake. A lab leak guy found a paper that mentioned 90 more cases than other papers, and made up a conspiracy theory where the author was trying to secretly communicate that there had been 90 secret cases before any of the confirmed cases, even though there was nothing about this in the text of the paper. But actually that paper just counted cases differently than other papers, and they were referring to normal cases after the pandemic officially started. Again, I’ll come back to the discussion about inference later, but for now, here’s a table of both sides’ reasoning. This exact presentation comparing both analyses is mine3, but you can see Saar’s version here, and Peter’s starting at 45:33 of this video. Slightly made up; the two sides didn’t express their probabilities in the same way and I had to make editorial decisions to match them. Note that these aren't entirely comparable because Peter is being laxer about out-of-model probability than Saar. Although Saar's final odds here are 533-to-1, this just the central estimate. Rootclaim’s real final probability is 94% lab leak. You can see their analysis here. And The Winner Is . . . … … … … … Peter and the zoonosis hypothesis. This was a decisive victory. There were two judges, who each gave separate verdicts (or were allowed to declare a draw). Both judges decided in favor of Peter. You can see the judges’ own summary of their reasoning here (Will, Eric) Manifold agreed with the judges. There was a prediction market on who would win. It started out 70-30 in favor of lab leak. As the videos came out, zoonosis started doing better and better. I don’t want to take the exact final numbers too seriously, since I think some of the later price increases involved hints from the participants’ behavior. But it’s clear which way viewers thought the wind was blowing4. Around the same time, the Good Judgment Project - Philip Tetlock’s group studying superforecasters - put out a report on the lab leak hypothesis. After studying it in depth, his forecasters ended up 75-25 in favor of zoonosis. The Rootclaim debate was one of ten sources they said they found especially interesting. And also around the same time, and unrelated to any of this, the Global Catastrophic Risks Institute surveyed experts (“168 virologists, infectious disease epidemiologists, and other scientists from 47 countries”) and found the same thing (though see here for some potential problems with the survey): For what it’s worth, I was close to 50-50 before the debate, and now I’m 90-10 in favor of zoonosis. III. The Math And The Aftermath The third debate session was about “inference”, how to put evidence together. I put this part off until after disclosing the winner, because I wanted to talk about some of these issues at more length. The Math: Judges Both judges included a probabilistic analysis in their written decision. Here’s the same table as above, expanded to add the judges: I shoehorned the judges’ factors into the categories I already had; some of them were actually subtly different from Peter’s, Saar’s, and each other’s. The “priors” category is especially a mess here. We’ll go over these later, but I get the impression that they both thought of probabilistic analyses as an afterthought. For example, Judge Eric wrote 30,000 words about which considerations moved him, and only then includes the analysis, saying: I am not convinced that this Bayesian calculation is even an appropriate way to estimate the relative posterior probability of Z and LL; it just seemed fair that after criticizing Rootclaim’s calculations at length I should make an attempt at it myself. Judge Will’s decision ran to 10,000 words. He said he independently tried both reasoning it out intuitively, and running the Bayesian analysis, and was relieved when these two methods returned the same result. He said: I am skeptical that the Bayesian decision making/evaluation methods are any more "objective" than [intuitive reasoning]. I think they maximize legibility, not objectivity, and tend to hide the intuitive/heuristic portion in the data inclusion step and values, where it’s harder to see . . . I am not skilled in the Bayesian method, and I am sure I made significant mistakes. More time and practice would improve and refine my estimates. At the fundamental rules of the universe level, Bayesian analysis must be the best way to evaluate evidence. However, I am unsure that it’s a good strategy for a human given our cognitive limitations, and doubly unsure it’s truly being used (in the dispassionate sense) where the outcome is social desirability/fame/Twitter likes. I’m focusing on this because Saar’s opinion is that the debate went wrong (for his side) because he didn’t realize the judges were going to use Bayesian math, they did the math wrong (because Saar hadn’t done enough work explaining how to do it right), and so they got the wrong answer. I want to discuss the math errors he thinks the judges made, but this discussion would be incomplete without mentioning that the judges themselves say the numbers were only a supplement for their intuitive reasoning. That having been said, let’s look deeper into some of Saar’s concerns. The Math: Extreme Odds Saar complained that Peter’s odds were too extreme. For example, Peter said there was only a 1/10,000 chance that a lab leak pandemic would first show up at a wet market. Peter’s argument went something like: obviously a zoonotic pandemic would start at a site selling weird animals. But a lab leak pandemic - if it didn’t start at the lab - could show up anywhere. 1/10,000 Wuhan citizens work at the wet market. So if a lab leak was going to show up somewhere random, the wet market was a 1/10,000 chance. Saar had specific arguments against this, but he also had a more general argument: you should rarely see odds like 1/10,000 outside of well-understood domains. In his blog post, he gave this example: A prosecutor shows the court a statistical analysis of which DNA markers matched the defendant and their prevalence, arriving at a 1E-9 probability they would all match a random person, implying a Bayes factor near 1E9 for guilty. But if we try to estimate p(DNA|~guilty) by truly assuming innocence, it is immediately evident how ridiculous it is to claim only 1 out of a billion innocent suspects will have a DNA match to the crime scene. There are obviously far better explanations like a lab mistake, framing, an object of the suspect being brought by someone to the scene, etc. So the real p(wet market|lab leak) isn’t the 1/10,000 chance a pandemic arising in a random place hits the wet market, but the (higher?) probability that there’s something wrong with Peter’s argument. Then Saar tried to show specific things that might be wrong with Peter’s argument. I didn’t find his specific examples convincing. But maybe the question shouldn’t be whether I agreed with him. It should be whether I’m so confident he’s wrong that I would give it 10,000-to-1 odds. This makes total sense, it’s absolutely true, and I want to be really, really careful with it. If you take this kind of reasoning too far, you can convince yourself that the sun won’t rise tomorrow morning. All you have to do is propose 100 different reasons the sunrise might not happen. For example: The sun might go nova.
Inline links: Pekar 2022, Pipes 2021, says, 3, here, this video, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8aU2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F815fe32d-d7ea-401b-b3a2-d8cd25b52ee8_490x780.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0Tm_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd0492f69-7b7e-4611-9d76-64ef8d7f59d5_511x511.png, Will, Eric, agreed, 4, put out a report on the lab leak hypothesis, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!g7k2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F37f1b493-b556-41ec-925e-03f9d8bc26cb_1456x849.webp, surveyed experts, see here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Zejl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9c88e87-b6ca-4c6d-840e-24da726f50b7_975x365.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T5rV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4983e2cd-4151-42de-9685-08037ef7a8e8_635x788.png
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Jake & Brandon Contact Info: jakessolo[plus]acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 08th, 03:00 PM Location: Daan Park - northeast field next to the basketball courts (backup: Learn Bar if it's raining) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3 Notes: Backup location coordinates of Learn Bar: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR Thailand BANGKOK, THAILAND Contact: Steven Contact Info: steven[dot]shonts[a t]gmail[d ot]com Time: Sunday, September 01st, 03:00 PM Location: Too Fast To Sleep (Siam) สยาม - 222,222/1-7,224 ซอย Siam Square Soi 1, Pathum Wan, Bangkok 10330 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7P52PGVJ+XJ
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR, https://plus.codes/7P52PGVJ+XJ
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius
May 02, 2025 · Original source
This is a zoomed-in piece of a picture I took of the Mekong River in Chiang Saen, Thailand.
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Pepe Contact Info: altansarai[period]havard[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, September 21st, 2:00 PM Location: DeRoot休閒空間 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GRM+72 Thailand BANGKOK Contact: HWE Contact Info: harrisone8[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Monday, September 15th, 6:00 PM Location: Lumphini Park, Main Entrance by MRT Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7P52PGHQ+X3 Notes: please rsvp to my email
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GRM+72, https://plus.codes/7P52PGHQ+X3
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Luca Contact Info: mail[@]lucapizzagalli[.]com Time: Friday, May 8th, 7:00 PM Location: The Singularity Co-Working Cafe Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GV8+PC2 Thailand BANGKOK Contact: Cassidy Contact Info: WhatsApp +15032613344[.] This is not a usable phone number[.] It is a WhatsApp[.] Time: Sunday, April 5th, 3:00 PM Location: Sarnies Sukhumvit 39 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7P52PJ43+57 (Coordinates are to old meetup, new ones incoming) Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/C4t [remove this bit] 6SocaYlG9YNUhhspOLq?mode=gi_t
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GV8+PC2, https://plus.codes/7P52PJ43+57
Tallinn11 mentions across 11 issues

Tallinn is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 11 times across 11 issues between August 26, 2022 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "TALLINN, ESTONIA"; "this week we have Tallinn on Monday"; "Location: St Vitus, Tallinn". It most often appears alongside Berlin, Mexico City, Mumbai.

Article page
Tallinn
Mention count
11
Issue count
11
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
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.
Inline links: 8FWR693H+GP2, LessWrong, Facebook group, 9F26RCWC+84, LessWrong, 8GJ5M8GW+J9, LessWrong, 8FQQRX38+V6W, LessWrong, 8G6MM3M3+Q6, LessWrong, 9F2P3CRW+FP7, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F7JMH38+GFP, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9GF6CPRH+MQ, LessWrong, 9GG65WMJ+2J, LessWrong, LessWrong group, 8FW4CP32+J8, LessWrong, Discord, matrix server, 8FW4V86J+GH, LessWrong, 8FM3HCQW+9H, LessWrong, https://twitter.com/lakesare, 8HH6MRQ2+WH, LessWrong, 9F28Q3HJ+9Q, LessWrong, here, 9F4MG9H4+4X, LessWrong, Google Calendar, 9F28WRMX+96H, LessWrong, 8FV9XVV2+V56, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website, an Open Street Map link, 9F5FHX4H+RXC, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8FXC2C72+85X, LessWrong, our LessWrong page, 9F3F8F6X+R6, LessWrong, Telegram group, 9F3J8CM2+PF, LessWrong, 8FWFG3H5+XR, 8FWFG3H5+XR, LessWrong, 8G95WMQR+WRP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FVXG2CW+2H, LessWrong, 9C3HVGQ7+JQ, LessWrong, LessWrong profile, 9C5M8PRP+JV, LessWrong, LessWrong, LW profile, Telegram, 8FJJXP22+HC, LessWrong, 8FQFF6C4+9C, LessWrong, 8FQH9VXG+9J, LessWrong, 8FMGPC92+R44, LessWrong, Facebook, 8FHJVHP9+8F, LessWrong, 9G86X426+Q5Q, LessWrong, 9F469V89+W4, LessWrong, Rationality NL Discord server, 9F4629FG+66, LessWrong, 9F48F378+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F37FMC5+VR, LessWrong, 9F4638J3+GP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9FFGWPH7+QP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9F6W9JJ4+JW, LessWrong, 9F2X2WVX+V2, LessWrong, Facebook event, our Facebook group, 9G346HX8+FX, LessWrong, 9F4RCW5P+X3F, LessWrong, 9G4362G8+2V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, Meetup.com, 8CCGPRJW+V8, LessWrong, 8GP8C2HM+9X, LessWrong, 8GR5QH8F+MW, LessWrong, 8GP2RCP7+G7, LessWrong, 8FWV44X9+XW8, LessWrong, 8FRP3F3X+6V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FH495QP+96, LessWrong, 8CGRC897+F8C, LessWrong, 8C9P92F6+3RG, LessWrong, 9F9HPX4C+39G, LessWrong, Facebook event, Telegram, 9FFW83RF+3M5, Facebook group, 8FR9XC2Q+4G, LessWrong, 8FR86548+J4, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8GHF22XG+23P, LessWrong, Partiful, 9C4WF3JX+7Q, LessWrong, 9C2XRVM6+3X, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9C3VFC45+RJM, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9F426439+J9, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9C3RFRHH+W2, LessWrong, 9C7RWRW9+M8, 9C6V2657+WJR, LessWrong, 9C5X6C9R+XJ, LessWrong, 9C3XGWGH+3F7, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, our mailing list, Meetup.com group, 9C5VFQG7+MH, LessWrong, Telegram, Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop, 9C7W294H+5V, LessWrong, 9C3WPQX6+QP9, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9C2P5V8V+P9, LessWrong
Open Thread 243
September 26, 2022 · Original source
4: ACX meetups update: this week we have Tallinn on Monday, Tanzania on Thursday, Princeton + Irvine on Saturday, and Berlin + Dublin + Barcelona + Denver on Sunday - plus many more. And if you went to a meetup, Mingyuan would like to hear how it went - especially from organizers, but attendees can respond too. You can send her this form.
Inline links: many more, this form
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
TALLINN, ESTONIA Contact: Andrew West Contact Info: andrew_n_west[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Thursday, April 20th, 07:00 PM Location: St Vitus, Tallinn. I am the guy with a suit, a beard, and a book. I shall attempt to make a sign if I get there early enough. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPRH+MQ
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPRH+MQ
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TALLINN, ESTONIA Contact: Andrew West Contact Info: andrew_n_west[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Friday, October 13th, 7:00 PM Location: St Vitus, Tallinn. I am the guy with a suit, a beard, and a book. I shall attempt to make a sign if I get there early enough. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPRH+MQ
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPRH+MQ
Open Thread 293
September 11, 2023 · Original source
1: New meetups have been registered in Canterbury, UK and Tallinn, Estonia. Meetups scheduled for the coming week include Los Angeles, Ottawa, Milano, Lisbon, Moscow, Edinburgh, Montreal, Waterloo, San Francisco, Atlanta, Ann Arbor, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town, Auckland, Berlin, Denver, Istanbul, and many more! As always, check the meetups list for details.
Inline links: check the meetups list for details
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
TALLINN Contact: Andrew Contact Info: andrew_n_west[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Saturday, April 13th, 7:00 PM Location: Tops, Soo 15, Kalamaja. I'll bring a sign, hopefully. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPWQ+8H
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPWQ+8H
Open Thread 324
April 08, 2024 · Original source
2: ACX meetups this coming week in Haifa, St. Petersburg, LA, Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico City, San Jose, Milwaukee, Hong Kong, Tallinn, Cambridge MA, Mumbai, Singapore, and many more. See the Meetups List for details.
Inline links: See the Meetups List for details
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
TALLINN, ESTONIA Contact: Andrew West Contact Info: andrew_n_west[at]yah oo[dot]co[dot]uk Time: Saturday, September 28th, 07:00 PM Location: Kohvik Must Puudel Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPPW+J4
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9GF6CPPW+J4
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Søren Elverlin Contact Info: soeren[period]elverlin[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 25th, 3:00 PM Location: H. J. Holsts Vej 3-5C, 2605 Brøndby Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F7JMCCQ+4XR Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/JTEpLhhjAbK4jiuuJ/copenhagen-acx-risk-from-ai-community-conference Notes: RSVP on LessWrong. This meetup in particular is AI X-Risk themed, but feel free to show up and discuss other subjects. Estonia TALLINN Contact: Andrew Contact Info: andrew_n_west[a t]yahoo[period]co[period]uk Time: Saturday, September 27th, 7:00 PM Location: Tuletorni Taproom Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26 Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/v8zrWexL6bopTCnc5
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F7JMCCQ+4XR, https://www.lesswrong.com/events/JTEpLhhjAbK4jiuuJ/copenhagen-acx-risk-from-ai-community-conference, https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/v8zrWexL6bopTCnc5
Open Thread 400
September 22, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Albany, Amsterdam, Belgrade, Boston, Brooklyn, Budapest, Chicago, Christchurch, Helsinki, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Mumbai, Rochester, Seoul, Shanghai, St. Paul, Tallinn, Vienna, and others; see the meetup post for more information. And Zagreb has been added to the list for October.
Inline links: the meetup post
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Søren Elverlin Contact Info: soeren[.]elverlin[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 18th, 3:00 PM Location: H.J.Holstsvej 3-5C, 2605 Brøndby Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F7JMCCQ+4XJ Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/KJeNBZdkHkJEugnWy Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong. This particular meetup is AI X-Risk themed, but everyone is welcome and all topics up for discussion. Estonia TALLINN Contact: Andrew Contact Info: andrew_n_west[@]yahoo[.]co[.]uk Time: Friday, May 8th, 6:00 PM Location: Tuletorn Brewing, Ankru tn 10, 11713 Tallinn, Estonia Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F7JMCCQ+4XJ, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/KJeNBZdkHkJEugnWy, https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26
Contact: Andrew Contact Info: andrew_n_west[@]yahoo[.]co[.]uk Time: Friday, May 8th, 6:00 PM Location: Tuletorn Brewing, Ankru tn 10, 11713 Tallinn, Estonia Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26
TAIPEI9 mentions across 9 issues

TAIPEI is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 9 times across 9 issues between August 23, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "TAIPEI, TAIWAN ( RSVP )"; "The planned Beijing → Taipei high-speed rail corridor"; "Taipei and Kaohsiung, two cities in Taiwan". It most often appears alongside Europe, Atlanta, Boston.

Article page
TAIPEI
Mention count
9
Issue count
9
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TAIPEI, TAIWAN (RSVP) Contact: KZ, kz[dot]acx[at]co[dot]sent[dot]com Time: 12:00 PM, Sunday, September 19 Location: Inside the Nanmen Park Museum's cafe, look for the "ACX" sign. Coordinates point to the entrance. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/notice.chills.perform
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/notice.chills.perform
Links For April 2023
April 20, 2023 · Original source
3: The planned Beijing → Taipei high-speed rail corridor. I can spot at least two problems with this idea.
Inline links: The planned Beijing → Taipei high-speed rail corridor.
The Question Of Separatism
May 19, 2023 · Original source
This wasn’t of any interest to London or other European cities. The Bostonians weren’t nearly as good or efficient at making metal tools as Londonians were. So Boston couldn’t export the metal tools back to Europe — but it could use them internally, and also export them to other American cities that were about as poor as Boston was, or poorer. Internally, this meant the spark of a manufacturing economy in Boston, as easily obtained metal parts made it easier for other Bostonians to replace other imports from European cities, and eventually develop a symbiotic network of industries. It also meant that the revenue from fish and timber could be used to import new things, including new innovations from European cities (which would later become opportunities for more import replacement). And because there were customers for Boston-made metal goods in New York and Philadelphia, and eventually Cincinnati and Chicago and Pittsburgh as these cities came into existence, it meant additional revenue for Boston that it could reinvest into developing its production further. For Jacobs, virtually all city development can be seen through the lens of import replacement (which, to be clear, has approximately nothing to do with policies of import substitution industrialization; import replacement is not a policy, but a naturally arising free market phenomenon). Her book contains many other examples than Boston, such as Venice, which started off in the early Middle Ages as a small town that sold salt to Constantinople, but then diversified its production to become one of the wealthiest cities of its time; or Taipei and Kaohsiung, two cities in Taiwan that kickstarted their development not long before the 1980s, by forcing expropriated landlords to invest into local import-replacing businesses. One is reminded of Scott’s review of How Asia Works. Import replacement, then, is what makes cities economically powerful. And this power is so great that it causes ripples in distant places. In fact it is the main reason that anything happens at all in non-city areas. Jacobs gives the example of Bardou, a small village in southern France. Bardou looks like this: To the extent that Bardou ever had an economic life, that life was almost entirely driven by distant cities. In ancient times, the area was populated because of iron mines nearby. The mines were exploited to serve the needs of people in the distant cities of Lugdunum (Lyon), Nemausus (Nîmes), or even Rome. As Jacobs notes, we could say that the mines served “the Roman Empire,” but that would be another example of using the abstraction of sovereign countries when we should instead be specific. It was Lugdunum, Nemausus and Rome that wanted the iron — not some random rural area of the empire, and certainly not the part of the empire in which Bardou was located. Eventually the mines and the region were abandoned. More than 1,000 years later, peasants moved into the area and built the modern village. For centuries they lived a wretchedly poor life of subsistence farming. No cities exerted any influence on it, and indeed nothing happened. Then, in the 19th century, the people of Bardou learned that they could improve their situation by moving to distant cities such as Paris, and most of them did. Again, the force wasn’t being exerted by “France”; Bardou was already part of France. The force was specifically being exerted by Paris and other cities with jobs for poor peasants. By the 1960s, only one old man was left. That’s when two foreign visitors, a German and an American, happened upon the village, decided to buy most of it, revitalized it, and turned it into a tourist spot (and even, for a brief time, into a set for a movie company). Today Bardou is a popular place for travelers — who are mostly city people, and spend money that was mostly earned in cities. The Bardou story contains examples of several of the forces that import-replacing cities radiate, according to Jacobs. These forces are central to her thinking. There are five of them: Markets. Cities house a lot of people who need a lot of goods and services, and are therefore strong markets to sell goods and services to. This was the force that acted on the Bardou area when it was a Roman mining region, and again today when it functions as a tourist spot for city vacationers.
Inline links: import substitution industrialization, Scott’s review of, Bardou, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!RfMs!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc119b085-f7b3-4e09-a586-9f4fc4c2ea21_1200x1600.png
Capital. Cities can provide money directly to other regions, for instance as subsidies, loans, or development grants. I’m guessing that Bardou received some assistance from the French national or regional governments at some point. These five forces determine pretty much everything that happens in rural regions. We can distinguish at least seven types of these regions, depending on which forces act upon them. Seven Types of Rural Regions When the five forces act together in a reasonably balanced manner, this creates a type of rural area that Jacobs calls a city region. This is a confusing name, because it absolutely does not mean “any region around a city,” nor does it mean “suburbs.” We know this because Jacobs spends several pages telling us which cities have a city region and which don’t. For instance, Tokyo has a city region, the largest in the world as of 1984, but Sapporo, in northern Japan, doesn’t. Boston, Paris, Milan, and Taipei do; Atlanta, Marseille, Naples, or Manila don’t. A city region, in Jacobs’s terms, is the rural hinterland around a city that gets “radically reshaped” by that city’s economy. It contains a mix of productive farms, prosperous satellite towns, and factories that have moved out of the city, forming a symbiotic network of commercial and industrial enterprises. City regions “are the richest, densest, and most intricate of all types of economies except for cities themselves,” she writes. They arise thanks to the interplay between the five forces. In another of her wonderfully told examples, Jacobs summarizes a book about Shinohata, a real Japanese village (but with a fake name, for anonymity) on the outskirts of the Tokyo area. In the post-war era, Tokyo was expanding rapidly, and so was its city region, eventually reaching Shinohata in the 1950s. Before, most families in the village lived from subsistence farming and exported a little bit of silk to distant places. Almost no one moved out to Tokyo or other cities. But after 1955, the markets, jobs, technology, transplants, and capital from the city all came bearing upon Shinohata at the same time, totally transforming it. The growing city markets meant that most families could switch to new cash crops and make more money. New jobs were opening up in Tokyo for the sons and daughters of Shinohata, many of whom left — prompting the remaining farmers to buy labor-saving equipment, which made productivity soar. Soon, a large food processing factory was transplanted into the village, providing additional jobs and money and causing a variety of smaller businesses to pop up in the area. After a typhoon disaster in 1959, a recovery grant from the government — an example of city capital — was put to good use by providing much needed excavation work and infrastructure development. Shinohata is in Tochigi Prefecture, but I couldn’t figure out what its real name is. In any case, it is part of the vast Greater Tokyo Area, a region that combines the largest city in the world with large tracts of rural land, and occupies a disproportionate space in Japan’s demographics and national economy. Rural regions far from import-replacing cities are generally less lucky. Their plights take different forms, depending on which of the five forces dominates the others. An oversized market force creates a supply region: a place that exploits agricultural or natural resources and exports them to distant cities. These regions (the most common in the world) can be rich or poor, but they’re never economically dynamic — and they’re very sensitive to disturbances in the markets that they serve. Jacobs’s example is Uruguay, a country that grew rich selling animal products to European cities in the early 20th century, but then suffered immensely when the market changed in the 1950s, propelling the nation into a succession of economic crises.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GCSd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9012632f-bf92-4318-9c85-e4b95826dd50_300x450.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JDqr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F32ad04ba-f051-4744-b735-b6474c67dd81_1397x1593.png
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
TAIPEI Contact: Jake and Brandon Contact Info: jakessolo[plus]acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, April 28th, 3:00 PM Location: Daan Park - northeast field next to the basketball courts (backup: Learn Bar if it's raining) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3 Notes: Backup location coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Open Thread 326
April 22, 2024 · Original source
1: More meetups this week: NYC, DC, Seattle, Atlanta, San Diego, Salt Lake, Madrid, Zurich, Hyderabad, Rio, Taipei. And a new meetup has been added for Zwolle. See the list for more information.
Inline links: the list
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Andrew Contact Info: mindupgrade[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 29th, 04:30 PM Location: Maxwell (will send more details in email) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PH57RJV+5W Group Link: https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W. Please send your RSVP email as early as you can because it would be immensely helpful. Notes: Feel free to send an email about topic sentences that you are interested in or want to have a conversation with others about. Topic sentences will be collated and privately shared with the other attendees. We have at least one ACX Meetup every month. The Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec dates will be on https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W. Taiwan TAIPEI, TAIWAN Contact: Jake & Brandon Contact Info: jakessolo[plus]acxmeetup[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 08th, 03:00 PM Location: Daan Park - northeast field next to the basketball courts (backup: Learn Bar if it's raining) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3 Notes: Backup location coordinates of Learn Bar: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PH57RJV+5W, https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W, https://rentry.co/AC6PH57RJV5W., https://plus.codes/7QQ32GJP+PG3, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GMJ+GHR
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Cyrus C Contact Info: Ccheung13[a t]protonmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 12th, 4:30 PM Location: Seoul Brewery in Seongsu, 28-12, Yeonmujang-gil, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q99G3V2+6X Notes: Please RSVP so i know how many people are joining! The organizer is an English speaker, but Korean-speakers are welcome. Taiwan TAIPEI Contact: Colin Contact Info: contact[a t]cosmc[period]net Time: Wednesday, April 16th, 8:00 PM Location: Wyatt's, 106台北市大安區通化街39巷49弄17號1樓 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32HJ4+C7
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8Q99G3V2+6X, https://plus.codes/7QQ32HJ4+C7
Open Thread 377
April 14, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Cambridge (UK), Chicago, both Portlands, New Haven, DC, and Manhattan. See here for times and details.
Inline links: See here for times and details
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. Taiwan TAIPEI Contact: Luca Contact Info: mail[@]lucapizzagalli[.]com Time: Friday, May 8th, 7:00 PM Location: The Singularity Co-Working Cafe Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7QQ32GV8+PC2
Inline links: https://plus.codes/6PH58Q6W+QQ, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/N42bMYFJBBRpkzKqX, https://t.me/LessWrong_Singapore, https://plus.codes/7QQ32GV8+PC2
Toulouse8 mentions across 8 issues

Toulouse is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 8 times across 8 issues between August 23, 2021 and August 29, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "TOULOUSE, FRANCE ( RSVP )"; "TOULOUSE, FRANCE"; "meetups in ... Toulouse". It most often appears alongside Cologne, Mumbai, ACX.

Article page
Toulouse
Mention count
8
Issue count
8
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
August 29, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TOULOUSE, FRANCE (RSVP) Contact: Loïc, acx[dot]tls[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 3:00 PM, Sunday, September 12 Location: Jardin des Plantes, northwest part Coordinates: https://w3w.co/promises.sentences.lance Notes: I can change the time, date, and/or location if needed.
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/promises.sentences.lance
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
TOULOUSE, FRANCE Contact: APE (barsom.maelwys@gmail.com) Date: May 12 Time: 6:30 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3HCQW+9H Location: Le Biergarten (60 Grande Rue St. Michel). If the weather is nice, we'll be sitting outside. In any case, we'll have a plant on the table.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FM3HCQW+9H
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.
Inline links: 8FWR693H+GP2, LessWrong, Facebook group, 9F26RCWC+84, LessWrong, 8GJ5M8GW+J9, LessWrong, 8FQQRX38+V6W, LessWrong, 8G6MM3M3+Q6, LessWrong, 9F2P3CRW+FP7, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F7JMH38+GFP, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9GF6CPRH+MQ, LessWrong, 9GG65WMJ+2J, LessWrong, LessWrong group, 8FW4CP32+J8, LessWrong, Discord, matrix server, 8FW4V86J+GH, LessWrong, 8FM3HCQW+9H, LessWrong, https://twitter.com/lakesare, 8HH6MRQ2+WH, LessWrong, 9F28Q3HJ+9Q, LessWrong, here, 9F4MG9H4+4X, LessWrong, Google Calendar, 9F28WRMX+96H, LessWrong, 8FV9XVV2+V56, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website, an Open Street Map link, 9F5FHX4H+RXC, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8FXC2C72+85X, LessWrong, our LessWrong page, 9F3F8F6X+R6, LessWrong, Telegram group, 9F3J8CM2+PF, LessWrong, 8FWFG3H5+XR, 8FWFG3H5+XR, LessWrong, 8G95WMQR+WRP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FVXG2CW+2H, LessWrong, 9C3HVGQ7+JQ, LessWrong, LessWrong profile, 9C5M8PRP+JV, LessWrong, LessWrong, LW profile, Telegram, 8FJJXP22+HC, LessWrong, 8FQFF6C4+9C, LessWrong, 8FQH9VXG+9J, LessWrong, 8FMGPC92+R44, LessWrong, Facebook, 8FHJVHP9+8F, LessWrong, 9G86X426+Q5Q, LessWrong, 9F469V89+W4, LessWrong, Rationality NL Discord server, 9F4629FG+66, LessWrong, 9F48F378+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F37FMC5+VR, LessWrong, 9F4638J3+GP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9FFGWPH7+QP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9F6W9JJ4+JW, LessWrong, 9F2X2WVX+V2, LessWrong, Facebook event, our Facebook group, 9G346HX8+FX, LessWrong, 9F4RCW5P+X3F, LessWrong, 9G4362G8+2V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, Meetup.com, 8CCGPRJW+V8, LessWrong, 8GP8C2HM+9X, LessWrong, 8GR5QH8F+MW, LessWrong, 8GP2RCP7+G7, LessWrong, 8FWV44X9+XW8, LessWrong, 8FRP3F3X+6V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FH495QP+96, LessWrong, 8CGRC897+F8C, LessWrong, 8C9P92F6+3RG, LessWrong, 9F9HPX4C+39G, LessWrong, Facebook event, Telegram, 9FFW83RF+3M5, Facebook group, 8FR9XC2Q+4G, LessWrong, 8FR86548+J4, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8GHF22XG+23P, LessWrong, Partiful, 9C4WF3JX+7Q, LessWrong, 9C2XRVM6+3X, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9C3VFC45+RJM, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9F426439+J9, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9C3RFRHH+W2, LessWrong, 9C7RWRW9+M8, 9C6V2657+WJR, LessWrong, 9C5X6C9R+XJ, LessWrong, 9C3XGWGH+3F7, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, our mailing list, Meetup.com group, 9C5VFQG7+MH, LessWrong, Telegram, Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop, 9C7W294H+5V, LessWrong, 9C3WPQX6+QP9, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9C2P5V8V+P9, LessWrong
LA and San Diego Meetups This Weekend
October 06, 2022 · Original source
Also coming up this weekend are meetups in Boise, Austin, Salt Lake City, Tokyo, Toulouse, Cologne, Rome, Hatten, Poznan, St. Louis, Rochester (NY), Seattle, Mumbai, and Oklahoma City. You can find times and places here.
Inline links: here
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
TOULOUSE, FRANCE Contact: Alfonso Contact Info: barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, May 28th, 07:00 PM Location: Le Biergarten, 60 Gd Rue St Michel, 31400, Toulouse. If the weather permits, we'll be sitting outside with a sign saying ACX MEETUP on the table Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3HCQW+9H
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FM3HCQW+9H
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TOULOUSE, FRANCE Contact: Alfonso Contact Info: barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 15th, 7:00 PM Location: Pub "The Tower of London", 39 Gd Rue Saint-Michel, 31400 Toulouse. We'll have a sign saying ACX Meetup, and we'll probably be sitting in the back. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3HCPW+HP Notes: Please, RSVP by emailing barsom.maelwys@gmail.com. Thank you!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FM3HCPW+HP
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Augustin Contact Info: augustin[d ot]portier[at ]proto n[dot]me Time: Saturday, September 28th, 06:00 PM Location: In the Carrousel Garden (next to the Tuileries Gardens). We’ll be sitting on the grass near the Museum of Decorative Arts, which is located at the end of the north wing of the Louvre building complex. I’ll bring an ACX sign, and I’ll be wearing a bowtie. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FW4V87J+5Q Group Link: https://discord.gg/VMQq8r83GS TOULOUSE, FRANCE Contact: Alfonso Contact Info: barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[do t]co m Time: Tuesday, September 10th, 08:00 PM Location: Pizzeria La Pastasciutta (35Bis Rue Gabriel Péri, 31000 Toulouse). We'll meet at the door. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GW Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/ Notes: Please, RSVP by email
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FW4V87J+5Q, https://discord.gg/VMQq8r83GS, https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GW, https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/
Contact: Alfonso Contact Info: barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[do t]co m Time: Tuesday, September 10th, 08:00 PM Location: Pizzeria La Pastasciutta (35Bis Rue Gabriel Péri, 31000 Toulouse). We'll meet at the door. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GW Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/ Notes: Please, RSVP by email
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GW, https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Lucie Philippon Contact Info: aelerinya[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, September 20th, 4:00 PM Location: Ground Control, 81 rue du Charolais, Paris Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FW4R9VJ+CP Group Link: https://discord.gg/JUH [remove this bit] TZRYp3k Notes: You can RSVP on Partiful to add the meetup to your calendar, and get notified of the future meetups: https://partiful.com/e/ZumH1DtmgOxLqSFy34jL TOULOUSE 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/8FW4R9VJ+CP, https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GX
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
Third World6 mentions across 6 issues

Third World is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between July 28, 2021 and March 21, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "COVID to wreak devastation in the Third World"; "women across the Third World will have equal rights"; "charity to help Third World orphans". It most often appears alongside China, Elon Musk, ACX Grants.

Article page
Third World
Mention count
6
Issue count
6
First seen
July 28, 2021
Last seen
March 21, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
When Does Worrying About Things Trade Off Against Worrying About Other Things?
July 28, 2021 · Original source
(2): Instead of worrying about Republican obstructionism in Congress, we should worry about the potential for novel variants of COVID to wreak devastation in the Third World.
So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program
February 09, 2022 · Original source
And that's an easy one. What about B? If the professor figures out important things about what influences gender norms, maybe we can subtly put our finger on the scale. Maybe twenty years later, women across the Third World will have equal rights, economic development will be supercharged, and Saudi Arabia will be a Scandinavian-style democracy with a female Prime Minister. But maybe the professor won't find anything interesting. Or maybe they will find something interesting, but it will all be stuff like "it depends what kind of rice they cultivated in 4000 BC" and there won't be any subtle finger-putting-on-scale opportunities. Or maybe the professor will find something great, but nobody will listen to her and nothing will happen. Or maybe Third World countries will get angry at our meddling and hold coups and become even more regressive. Or maybe we'll overshoot, and Saudi Arabia will become really woke, and we'll have to listen to terrible takes about how the Houthi rebels are the new face of nice guy incel misogyny.
Information Markets, Decision Markets, Attention Markets, Action Markets
March 28, 2022 · Original source
The biggest risk is that the decision-maker won’t be harsh and honest enough to admit when things aren’t worth their attention. Suppose I started an attention market for myself, and it escalated an appeal from a charity to help Third World orphans. I throw these out all unread the time when I get them in the mail, which seems like a strong signal that it’s not worth my time. But do I really want to publicly say the equivalent of “Stop wasting my time with this garbage” in a way that financially penalizes the people who bet I would want to see it?
Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity
January 11, 2024 · Original source
The value of capitalism is that it elevates entire civilizations to a higher state of living. There's a reason why stuff like water dispensers to save lives are going to developing countries with no market economy: *in capitalist nations, there is no need for such things in the first place.* The equivalent work was baked into our basic infrastructure long ago.
Seems to me that one of the best places to invest, then, would be in research to figure out why the "charities that send economists (or other professionals) to developing countries and advise them on how to do more capitalism" were ineffective and how to do it better.
For those of you who don’t know, GiveDirectly is a charity that gives your money directly to poor people in developing countries, and then they can spent it on whatever they want. They’re doing some cool stuff!
Inline links: GiveDirectly
Everyone's A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up
January 23, 2025 · Original source
(if you’re going to get hung up on whether the suffering is because of a human bad actor or a natural cause, then can I interest you in donating to Bedari, a charity that prevents domestic abuse in the Third World? Most of their operations are in Pakistan, so you don’t even have to leave your comfort zone of being against Pakistani abusers in particular!)
Inline links: Bedari
More Drowning Children
March 21, 2025 · Original source
But we would also agree to save people dying of easily-cured diseases in the Third World, because we wouldn’t know if we would be those people either. Everyone would agree to a proposed deal that rich people donate a small fraction of their income to charity, because it would be only a mild inconvenience if they turned out to be rich, but a life-saver if they turned out to be poor.
Tanzania5 mentions across 5 issues

Tanzania is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 5 times across 5 issues between September 02, 2021 and June 18, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "In what is now Tanzania, to the north, post-viral syndrome has been blamed"; "Tanzania may be very different from Lesotho on the ground"; "Tanzania on Thursday". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, ACX, ACX Grant.

Article page
Tanzania
Mention count
5
Issue count
5
First seen
September 02, 2021
Last seen
June 18, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Long COVID: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
September 02, 2021 · Original source
In this context, I find the 1/150 risk pretty scary and the 1/25,000 risk not scary at all, so, darn, I guess there’s not yet enough data to have a strong sense of how concerned I should be. 9. This is hard to compare to other postviral syndromes Going into this, I wondered if we might be able to ignore Long COVID. The argument would go like this: all viral diseases have a risk of postviral syndromes. Colds, flus, mono, lots of stuff that’s going around all the time. Lots of people get those postviral syndromes, and either recover or don’t, but either way we don’t make a big deal out of it. Since COVID’s considered “newsworthy” in a way flu isn’t, we obsess over its postviral syndrome even though it’s no worse than anything else’s. This wouldn’t make Long COVID any less bad, and maybe we would be wrong to not panic more about colds and the flu, but it would at least give us some context and make things feel less scary. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything supporting or opposing this picture. The only relevant study is a meta-analysis by Poole-Wright et al, who (contra nominative determinism) don’t pool the studies by condition, which makes it hard to draw conclusions. I think all of their examples of postviral syndrome after flu are from severe hospitalized cases, so any comparison with COVID would be unfair. Although there do seem to be scattered reports of post-flu problems, they’ve never been formally studied or quantified. Mononucleosis is an infectious disease caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, affecting about 1/2000 people per year in developed countries. It has a famously nasty postviral syndrome, which this paper describes as “almost one-half of the group had substantial ongoing symptoms 2 months after onset and… ∼10% had disabling symptoms marked by fatigue lasting ≥ 6 months”. Flu is as common as COVID, but nobody really talks about it having a significant postviral syndrome so probably it’s not that bad. Mono has a worse postviral syndrome than COVID, but it’s rare enough that it doesn’t cause massive society-wide effects. COVID is right in the middle: more common than mono, and (probably) worse postviral syndrome than flu. I think it’s fair to say that we may not have encountered a condition with this exact combination of risk factors and can’t dismiss it as similar to conditions we currently ignore. One potential analogue might be the Spanish Flu of 1918. It was an equally widespread pandemic, and seemed to have some kind of postviral syndrome. From TIME: In what is now Tanzania, to the north, post-viral syndrome has been blamed for triggering the worst famine in a century—the so-called “famine of corms”—after debilitating lethargy prevented flu survivors from planting when the rains came at the end of 1918. “Agriculture suffered particular disruption because, not only did the epidemic coincide with the planting season in some parts of the country, but in others it came at the time for harvesting and sheep-shearing.” Kathleen Brant, who lived on a farm in Taranaki, New Zealand, told Rice, the historian, about the “legion” problems farmers in her district encountered following the pandemic, even though all patients survived: “The effects of loss of production were felt for a long time.” The 1918 flu seemed to have lots of psychiatric effects: “Norwegian demographer Svenn-Erik Mamelund provided such evidence when he combed the records of psychiatric institutions in his country to show that the average number of admissions showed a seven-fold increase in each of the six years following the pandemic, compared to earlier, non-pandemic years.” Coronavirus doesn’t - the excellent Amin-Chowdhury study above finds nothing. Still, this is the scale of thing I’m worried about. The worst case scenario here is really really bad. If a few percent of COVID patients get long-term unremitting genuine CFS/ME, that has the potential to overwhelm government welfare budgets and long-term depress the economy. I think there’s a 90% chance the real situation isn’t that bad, but it’s scary that we can’t entirely rule it out. Aside from the somewhat different 1918 case, I don’t think we have any historical experience of dealing with postviral syndromes at this scale. The medium case scenario is something more like “a few percent of infected people get moderate fatigue, which doesn’t really prevent them from working, and goes away after a few years”. I don’t know whether the level of media attention paid to this would converge on “boring and nobody notices” or “giant disaster”, and I think it would be compatible with either. 10. Conclusions 1. Long COVID is many different issues without a common mechanism. 2. Some of these are straightforward and not surprising, eg lung scarring and post-ICU syndrome from severe infection, and would happen in any disease of this severity. Others seem to be more like the poorly-understood postviral syndromes associated with several other diseases. While some symptoms may be psychosomatic, most are probably organic. 3 The three major categories of symptoms are straightforward cardiovascular-pulmonary issues, straightforward smell and taste issues, and more mysterious neurological issues. 4 Although these get better with time in some people, in a significant number (maybe ~50% of people who had them at six weeks) they persist for as long as anyone has been able to measure them (a few months in the case of COVID, a year or two in the case of comparable syndromes). 5. Post-COVID fatigue is particularly concerning. This would be very bad if we analogized it to CFS/ME, and still pretty bad if we analogized it to other known postviral syndromes. There is no proof that this always gets better over the long term, although no study has looked at them for more than a few years. Facing postviral fatigue on this scale is a new problem. 6 . Children probably get Long COVID less than adults, probably at a rate of less than 5% of symptomatic cases. But we don’t know how much less, and we can’t rule out that some children get pretty severe symptoms. 7. Although vaccination decreases the risk of symptomatic COVID, it probably doesn’t decrease the risk of Long COVID per symptomatic COVID case by very much, though it might decrease it by a factor of 2-3. 8. Your chance of really bad debilitating lifelong Long COVID, conditional on getting COVID, is probably somewhere between a few tenths of a percent, and a few percent. Your chance per year of getting it by living a normal lifestyle depends on what you consider a normal lifestyle and on the future course of the pandemic. For me, under reasonable assumptions, it’s probably well below one percent. EDIT: Here are some other people who tried to do this same analysis. I learned about all of these after I wrote the first draft of this, so you can consider the basic thought process here to be independent of them - but I edited some things to account for what I learned from them before writing the final version. AcesoUnderGlass: Long COVID Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem
Inline links: a meta-analysis by Poole-Wright et al, scattered reports, this paper, postviral syndrome, Long COVID Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem
Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine
May 27, 2022 · Original source
A story that plausibly explains these numbers (either a potential mechanism for an effect, or an explanation of why the effect turned out to be null) If these stories are challenged, it is not because there is no actual evidence for them, but because an economist in the audience has thought of their own preferred theory. If the speaker can find some data point that contradicts the questioner’s idea, this is thought to “confirm” the original story. Since audience members (who often have little specific knowledge of the region) are unlikely to ask questions like “what if this village just has an incredibly complicated set of social conventions around cattle that prevents their sale even without market barriers in place?” or “do the region’s economic challenges have more to do with this very specific regulation in South African immigration law?”, plausible-sounding stories that explain one or two numerical data points tend to gain traction in the literature whether or not they have anything to do with reality. Mark McGovern famously noted this trend in a review of two of Paul Collier’s books, writing: “Much of the intellectual heavy lifting in these books is in fact done at the level of implication or commonsense guessing. And the common sense is surely not that of the inhabitants of the countries being dissected, but that of the highly educated elite located primarily in Western Europe and North America. In those passages where Collier does lay out the thinking behind his explanations, they are always coherent and plausible, but the chain of causal relations makes it evident how fragile these models typically are.” The World Bank report’s fundamental misdiagnosis of the challenges Lesotho faced formed the basis for a series of failed “development initiatives”, most notably the Thaba-Tseka Development Project, a joint venture funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, the World Bank, the Government of Lesotho, and the UK Overseas Development Ministry. The project focused on providing technical solutions to the “problems” the World Bank report had identified: better agricultural techniques, easier access to markets, and increased government capacity to provide public goods. Each piece faced serious problems in execution, largely because interventions shown to have the sorts of “positive effects” randomized experiments might demonstrate elsewhere in Africa were not necessarily well suited to Lesotho’s unforgiving, mountainous terrain. But even more seriously, the project was so enveloped in “development discourse” that nobody thought to question whether they were working on problems their “recipients” cared about, or merely the ones the “tools of development” were capable of solving. As Ferguson writes, “The promise that crop farming could be revolutionized through the application of a well-known package of technical inputs was so firmly written into the project’s design that it was difficult for those on the scene to challenge it, or even to confront it.” Perhaps the only thing that has changed since Ferguson wrote is that we have tools to better identify these failures: the development literature continues to be littered with failed trials and interventions based on unchecked assumptions. One of the most famous is the British Department for International Development’s 90 million pound Tuungane project, whose Congolese incarnation sought to rebuild village governing institutions that the country’s civil war had destroyed. One of the most convincing explanations of its failure is that it may not have been necessary to begin with: the implementers do not seem to have checked whether the institutions had actually been weakened by violence, and baseline reports indicated that residents were relatively satisfied with village governance before the project even started! More research is needed to clarify the situation -- research which might have been useful to carry out before spending a £90 million on a “fix”. Part of this, perhaps, comes from the usual overconfidence that other social scientists like to accuse economists of. But there are much bigger systemic problems at play. Development work tends to run on short timelines: grad students and postdocs need to publish quickly for their careers to advance, NGO funding runs on 5-ish year cycles, and charities (particularly in “high-risk” areas) face extremely high employee turnover rates. This simultaneously limits the accumulation of institutional knowledge, while incentivizing practitioners away from the time-intensive process of understanding a particular context in favor of “getting results quick.” Similarly, the recent introduction of experimental evidence to the development field is a wondrous thing, but the revolution has to continue: randomized experiments can tell us about the effect an intervention had somewhere, but even the best methods of applying this kind of evidence to a specific context remain somewhat arbitrary and subjective. As EA begins to fund more complex (but potentially more effective) interventions, a key step will be to get a more systematic handle on how to gather evidence about specific places-- countries, states, even villages -- and how to match the tools we have to people who might benefit from them. II. The Trouble with Technocrats “But even if the project was in some sense a ‘failure’ as an agricultural development project, it is indisputable that many of its ‘side effects’ had a powerful and far-reaching impact on the Thaba-Tseka region. [...] Indeed, it may be that in a place like Mashai, the most visible of all the project’s effects was the indirect one of increased Government military presence in the region” As the program continued to unfold, the development officials became more and more disillusioned -- not with their own choices, but with the people of Thaba-Tseka, who they perceived as petty, apathetic, and outright self-destructive. A project meant to provide firewood failed because locals kept breaking into the woodlots and uprooting the saplings. An experiment in pony-breeding fell apart when “unknown parties” drove the entire herd of ponies off of cliffs to their deaths. Why, Ferguson’s official contacts bemoaned, weren’t the people of Thaba-Tseka committed to their own “development”? Who could possibly be opposed to trees and horses? Perhaps, the practitioners theorized, the people of Thaba-Tseka were just lazy. Perhaps they “didn’t want to be better.” Perhaps they weren’t in their right mind or had made a mistake. Perhaps poverty makes a person do strange things. Or, as Ferguson points out, perhaps their anger had something to do with the fact that the best plots of land in the village had been forcibly confiscated to make room for wood and pony lots, without any sort of compensation. The central government was all too happy to help find land for the projects, which they took from political enemies and put in the control of party elites, especially when it could use a legitimate anti-poverty program as cover. In Ferguson’s words, the development project was functioning as an “anti-politics machine” the government could use to pretend political power moves were just “objective” solutions to technical problems. A local student’s term paper captured the general discontent: “In spite of the superb aim of helping the people to become self-reliant, the first thing the project did was to take their very good arable land. When the people protested about their fields being taken, the project promised them employment. [...] It employed them for two months, found them unfit for the work, and dismissed them. Without their fields and without employment they may turn up to be very self-reliant. It is rather hard to know.” Two things stand out to me from this story. First, the “development discourse” lens served to focus the practitioners’ attention on a handful of technical variables (quantity of wood, quality of pony), and kept them from thinking about any repercussions they hadn’t thought to measure. This is a serious problem, because “negative effects on things that aren’t your primary outcome” are pretty common in the development literature. High-paying medical NGOs can pull talent away from government jobs. Foreign aid can worsen ongoing conflicts. Unconditional cash transfers can hurt neighbors who didn’t receive the cash. And the literature we have is implicitly conditioned on “only examining the variables academics have thought to look at” -- surely our tools have rendered other effects completely invisible! Second, the project organizers somewhat naively ignored the political goals of the government they’d partnered with, and therefore the extent to which these goals were shaping the project. Lesotho’s recent political history had been tumultuous. The Basotho Nationalist Party (BNP), having gained power upon independence in 1965, refused to give up power after losing the 1970 elections to the Basotho Congress Party (BCP). Blaming the election results on “communists”, BNP Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan declared a state of emergency and began a campaign of terror, raiding the homes of opposition figures and funding paramilitary groups to intimidate, arrest, and potentially kill anyone who spoke up against BNP rule. This had significant effects in Thaba-Tseka, where “villages [...] were sharply divided over politics, but it was not a thing which was discussed openly” due to a fully justified fear of violence. The BNP, correctly sensing the presence of a substantial underground opposition, placed “development committees” in each village, which served primarily as local wings of the national party. These committees spied on potential supporters of the now-outlawed BCP and had deep connections to paramilitary “police” units. When the Thaba-Tseka Development Project started, its international backers partnered directly with the BNP leadership, reasoning that sustainable development and public goods provision could only happen through a government whose role they primarily viewed as bureaucratic. As a result, nearly every decision had to make its way through the village development committees, who used the project to pursue their own goals: jobs and project funds found their way primarily to BNP supporters, while the “necessary costs of development” always seemed to be paid by opposition figures. The funding coalition ended up paying for a number of projects that reinforced BNP power, from establishing a new “district capital” (which conveniently also served as a military base) to constructing new and better roads linking Thaba-Tseka to the district and national capitals (primarily helping the central government tax and police an opposition stronghold). Anything that could be remotely linked to “economic development” became part of the project as funders and practitioners failed to ask whether government power might have alternate, more concerning effects. As we saw earlier, the population being “served” saw this much more clearly than the “servants”, and started to rebel against a project whose “help” seemed to be aimed more at consolidating BNP control than meeting their own needs. When they ultimately resorted to killing ponies and uprooting trees, project officials infatuated with “development” were left with “no idea why people would do such a thing,” completely oblivious to the real and lasting harm their “purely technical decisions” had inflicted. Have any EA projects had this sort of unexpected political side effect? I think it’s genuinely hard to tell without further research, but the possibility is frightening. (There’s been a little bit of research on the quantitative side --Recent research has found, for instance, that GiveDirectly’s 2014 unconditional cash transfer trial increased community participation but did not change voting patterns, so at least in 2014 the Kenyan government wasn’t using the program to stay in power. Was this the right question to test? I am not sure, especially without a more qualitative survey to see if there are other avenues we should be worried about.) III. Takeaways for Effective Altruism So what do we do as effective altruists (hereafter “EAs”)? I see three key takeaways. The first is a clear need for more qualitative research. GiveWell makes some qualitative judgments about charities, but Ferguson’s work illustrates the need for qualitative evaluation of the interventions themselves to see if the underlying studies have captured all of the “right” variables. Randomized experiments are really good at testing hypotheses, but by their very nature they can’t tell you about variables you didn’t decide ahead of time to measure. Are there significant side effects (positive or negative) we’ve missed from massive malaria net distributions? I don’t know, but if so they are not likely to be discovered by a bunch of Americans and Europeans sitting in a room and trying to guess the best things to measure. Rather, they’re probably already known (or suspected) by the people experiencing them, and a first step to finding out is going and asking them. (A second step is finding the right people to ask them -- real expertise in qualitative research is a rare and valuable skill.) Of course, qualitative research is messy and sometimes the people you interview are wrong or have other agendas. So once we have an “on-the-ground” hypothesis or concern, there will often be good reason to use a randomized trial or quasi-experimental method to test it or try to understand how much of a concern it might be! This sort of interdisciplinary approach is starting to gain traction in academia, but it has yet to be seriously applied in the EA sphere. There’s another angle to this: Ferguson’s most incisive insights arise not from studying the people being “served”, but by studying the development practitioners themselves. Other social scientists have continued this trend, from McGovern’s An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins and Robinson’s How Different Social Scientists Think to Marchais, Bazuzi, and Lameke’s The Data is Gold, and We Are The Gold-Diggers and Omar Bah’s webcomic Mzungus in Development and Governments. Each new paper illuminates the research process in new ways, and provides tools both to do better research and to identify potential weaknesses in the pre-existing literature. I think one of the highest impact investments an Effective Altruist fund could make right now would be to hire a handful of trained anthropologists (or other outside experts in qualitative research / ethnography) to hang out in places like GiveWell or the Machine Intelligence Research Institute for a few years and really study how effective altruism works as a system. How are decisions being made, and how is evidence being used to make them? What does “EA discourse” help make visible and which problems and concerns does it hide from our view? How do the positionalities of typical EA researchers affect their views of what’s important or what’s plausible? I have my guesses, and I’m sure you have yours. But I had my guesses about development economics, too, and I missed nearly everything Ferguson (and the authors mentioned two paragraphs up) uncovered. What more are we missing? The second is an emphasis on local context. As funding gaps for “low hanging fruit” like malaria disappear, EA is going to have to focus on more complicated interventions, which are likely to be fairly context-specific -- after all, why should an agriculture program that works in the flattest parts of the Sahel be expected to work the same way in the Maloti Mountains? Ferguson notes about several of the Thaba-Tseka project’s failed arms: “Tanzania may be very different from Lesotho on the ground, but, from the point of view of a development agency’s head office, both may be simply ‘the Africa desk’. In the Thaba-Tseka case, at least, the original project planners knew little about Lesotho’s specific history, politics, and sociology; they were experts on ‘livestock development in Africa,’ and drew largely on experience in East Africa.” For any sort of context-specific intervention to work, an intimate knowledge of the specific history, needs, and geography of individual villages and regions is necessary. The development world has slowly made steps in this direction, but it’s not clear to me that the EA community has a clear way of acquiring, accessing, or working with this information. I don’t think there’s a magic bullet to solve this problem, but in the long run any solution will probably need to involve a) on-the-ground, qualitative research and b) real representation in the EA network from areas EA organizations are interested in working. The development industry has a shameful history of infantilizing and ignoring the opinions of “locals”, and I think the conversations I’m starting to see in EA about diversity and representation of different parts of the Global South need to continue if we’re going to get enough serious knowledge of local contexts to effectively direct funding. The third is a continued need to take politics seriously. This is one of the most challenging issues in charitable giving: when is it okay to work with a government doing terrible things to deliver humanitarian aid? To what extent does an NGO feeding the hungry lend its legitimacy to or cover for an authoritarian regime’s misdeeds? I don’t have anything close to a full answer (and I don’t think anyone does), but Ferguson’s work exposes a possibility I hadn’t thought of before, in which “technical” and “apolitical” projects can expand the power of the state in unforeseen and potentially dangerous ways. After writing The Anti-Politics Machine, Ferguson largely gave up on the idea of charitable or state-based aid. (Understandably, I think, given that he spent most of a decade watching its most horrific side effects first-hand). It’s ironic, then, that I think his book’s practical value is greatest to those of us who still hold onto hope in its possibilities. May we have ears to hear the voices telling us where our work has fallen short, and eyes to see what it could become. Footnotes Ferguson pg. 55
Inline links: pull talent, worsen, hurt, some, An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins, How Different Social Scientists Think, The Data is Gold, and We Are The Gold-Diggers, Mzungus in Development and Governments
Open Thread 243
September 26, 2022 · Original source
4: ACX meetups update: this week we have Tallinn on Monday, Tanzania on Thursday, Princeton + Irvine on Saturday, and Berlin + Dublin + Barcelona + Denver on Sunday - plus many more. And if you went to a meetup, Mingyuan would like to hear how it went - especially from organizers, but attendees can respond too. You can send her this form.
Inline links: many more, this form
Followup: Quests And Requests
November 10, 2023 · Original source
Pressuring them to give up their patents might have bad long term effects. The negative effects of being asked to give up the small potential profit of selling into certain countries while maintaining their full rights seems much less likely to have bad effects. If they feel the deal is bad they can simply leave it. And to be honest it's not like they're making a lot of money off TB drugs in Tanzania or wherever anyway. The goodwill they get from the charity is probably worth more than the potential profit (and if it isn't they can say no).
ACX Grants 1-3 Year Updates
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.
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
Tampa4 mentions across 4 issues

Tampa is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between February 24, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "worst are places like Akron and Tampa"; "if anybody comes from Akron or Tampa"; "Folks from Tampa and surrounding cities are also welcome". It most often appears alongside Berkeley, Baltimore, Boston.

Article page
Tampa
Mention count
4
Issue count
4
First seen
February 24, 2021
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: Fussell On Class
February 24, 2021 · Original source
5. If you have to be in the United States, some places are classier than others. The best places are "those longest under occupation by financially prudent Anglo-Saxons, like Newport (Rhode Island) Haddam (Connecticut), and Bar Harbor (Maine)". The worst are places like Akron and Tampa, but why? Fussell is always somewhere on the border between serious and joking, and I worry he completely loses the plot here. He says you can measure the unclassiness of a place in bowling alleys per capita, megachurches per capita, or (perhaps), some kind of joint bowling alleys plus megachurches index. Getting serious again:
A Modest Proposal For Republicans: Use The Word "Class"
February 25, 2021 · Original source
Trump stood against the upper class. He might define them as: people who live in nice apartments in Manhattan or SF or DC and laugh under their breath if anybody comes from Akron or Tampa. Who eat Thai food and Ethiopian food and anything fusion, think they would gain 200 lbs if they ever stepped in a McDonalds, and won't even speak the name Chick-Fil-A. Who usually go to Ivy League colleges, though Amherst or Berkeley is acceptable if absolutely necessary. Who conspicuously love Broadway (especially Hamilton), LGBT, education, "expertise", mass transit, and foreign anything. They conspicuously hate NASCAR, wrestling, football, "fast food", SUVs, FOX, guns, the South, evangelicals, and reality TV. Who would never get married before age 25 and have cutesy pins about how cats are better than children. Who get jobs in journalism, academia, government, consulting, or anything else with no time-card where you never have to use your hands. Who all have exactly the same political and aesthetic opinions on everything, and think the noblest and most important task imaginable is to gatekeep information in ways that force everyone else to share those opinions too.
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Nathaniel B. Contact Info: nathanieltb2[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, October 11th, 4:00 PM Location: We'll meet at Vinoy Park, at or near the circular path surrounding the Truth Sculpture at the southern end of the park. I'll have a sign that says "ACX." Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+X78 Notes: Please feel free to attend even if you're anxious, and regardless of how often you read the blog. Folks from Tampa and surrounding cities are also welcome to attend!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+X78
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Nathaniel B. Contact Info: nathanieltb2[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 25th, 3:00 PM Location: We’ll meet at Vinoy Park, at or near the circular path surrounding the Truth Sculpture at the southern end of the park. I’ll have a sign that says “ACX.” Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+X78 Notes: Please feel free to attend regardless of how often you read the blog. Folks from Tampa and surrounding cities are also welcome to join!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76VVQ9GF+X78
Tbilisi4 mentions across 4 issues

Tbilisi is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between August 26, 2022 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "TBILISI, GEORGIA"; "TBILISI". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX, ACX MEETUP.

Article page
Tbilisi
Mention count
4
Issue count
4
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
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.
Inline links: 8FWR693H+GP2, LessWrong, Facebook group, 9F26RCWC+84, LessWrong, 8GJ5M8GW+J9, LessWrong, 8FQQRX38+V6W, LessWrong, 8G6MM3M3+Q6, LessWrong, 9F2P3CRW+FP7, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F7JMH38+GFP, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9GF6CPRH+MQ, LessWrong, 9GG65WMJ+2J, LessWrong, LessWrong group, 8FW4CP32+J8, LessWrong, Discord, matrix server, 8FW4V86J+GH, LessWrong, 8FM3HCQW+9H, LessWrong, https://twitter.com/lakesare, 8HH6MRQ2+WH, LessWrong, 9F28Q3HJ+9Q, LessWrong, here, 9F4MG9H4+4X, LessWrong, Google Calendar, 9F28WRMX+96H, LessWrong, 8FV9XVV2+V56, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website, an Open Street Map link, 9F5FHX4H+RXC, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8FXC2C72+85X, LessWrong, our LessWrong page, 9F3F8F6X+R6, LessWrong, Telegram group, 9F3J8CM2+PF, LessWrong, 8FWFG3H5+XR, 8FWFG3H5+XR, LessWrong, 8G95WMQR+WRP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FVXG2CW+2H, LessWrong, 9C3HVGQ7+JQ, LessWrong, LessWrong profile, 9C5M8PRP+JV, LessWrong, LessWrong, LW profile, Telegram, 8FJJXP22+HC, LessWrong, 8FQFF6C4+9C, LessWrong, 8FQH9VXG+9J, LessWrong, 8FMGPC92+R44, LessWrong, Facebook, 8FHJVHP9+8F, LessWrong, 9G86X426+Q5Q, LessWrong, 9F469V89+W4, LessWrong, Rationality NL Discord server, 9F4629FG+66, LessWrong, 9F48F378+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F37FMC5+VR, LessWrong, 9F4638J3+GP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9FFGWPH7+QP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9F6W9JJ4+JW, LessWrong, 9F2X2WVX+V2, LessWrong, Facebook event, our Facebook group, 9G346HX8+FX, LessWrong, 9F4RCW5P+X3F, LessWrong, 9G4362G8+2V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, Meetup.com, 8CCGPRJW+V8, LessWrong, 8GP8C2HM+9X, LessWrong, 8GR5QH8F+MW, LessWrong, 8GP2RCP7+G7, LessWrong, 8FWV44X9+XW8, LessWrong, 8FRP3F3X+6V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FH495QP+96, LessWrong, 8CGRC897+F8C, LessWrong, 8C9P92F6+3RG, LessWrong, 9F9HPX4C+39G, LessWrong, Facebook event, Telegram, 9FFW83RF+3M5, Facebook group, 8FR9XC2Q+4G, LessWrong, 8FR86548+J4, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8GHF22XG+23P, LessWrong, Partiful, 9C4WF3JX+7Q, LessWrong, 9C2XRVM6+3X, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9C3VFC45+RJM, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9F426439+J9, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9C3RFRHH+W2, LessWrong, 9C7RWRW9+M8, 9C6V2657+WJR, LessWrong, 9C5X6C9R+XJ, LessWrong, 9C3XGWGH+3F7, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, our mailing list, Meetup.com group, 9C5VFQG7+MH, LessWrong, Telegram, Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop, 9C7W294H+5V, LessWrong, 9C3WPQX6+QP9, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9C2P5V8V+P9, LessWrong
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
TBILISI Contact: Dmitrii Contact Info: overfull_jailbird656[at]simplelogin[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 6th, 12:00 PM Location: https://f0rth.space Event Link: https://t.me/f0rthsp4ce/347 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8HH6PQ4J+MJ
Inline links: https://f0rth.space, https://t.me/f0rthsp4ce/347, https://plus.codes/8HH6PQ4J+MJ
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Alfonso Contact Info: barsom[dot]maelwys[at]gmail[do t]co m Time: Tuesday, September 10th, 08:00 PM Location: Pizzeria La Pastasciutta (35Bis Rue Gabriel Péri, 31000 Toulouse). We'll meet at the door. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GW Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/ Notes: Please, RSVP by email Georgia TBILISI, GEORGIA Contact: Dmitrii Contact Info: overfull_jailbird656[at]simplelogin[d ot]c om Time: Sunday, September 01st, 10:00 AM Location: BNKR coffee (https://maps.app.goo.gl/VjMviRv9yymSpA1p7) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8HH6PQ4J+7H
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FM3JF43+GW, https://www.meetup.com/the-friendly-debate/, https://maps.app.goo.gl/VjMviRv9yymSpA1p7, https://plus.codes/8HH6PQ4J+7H
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2026-04-16[@]weboroso[.]anonaddy[.]com Time: Thursday, April 16th, 6:00 PM Location: Parc Peixotto, middle of the path connecting the two main entrances (once we meet we’ll seek which benches to try to grab). Initial position: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.80900/-0.58978 (Send me your phone if you expect to be late and want an SMS when we deside which direction in the parc we shift). I will bring an A4 sign with «ACX Meetup» on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or send an email. If you would like to come but the date or the place doesn’t work for you, please write, too! Currently I know of one other person who will probably be there, and we are flexible. I will post a LessWrong comment if there is a change. Georgia TBILISI Contact: Liza Contact Info: lizajibladze1[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 18, 06:00 PM Location: Kiwi vegan cafe Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8HH6MQRX+PX
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W, https://plus.codes/8HH6MQRX+PX
the Netherlands4 mentions across 4 issues

the Netherlands is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between April 16, 2021 and March 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Okay, smarty-pants, what about the Netherlands? They've been making land for centuries!"; "the top tier would include ... the Netherlands"; "could include Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Taiwan". It most often appears alongside China, Netherlands, Belgium.

Article page
the Netherlands
Mention count
4
Issue count
4
First seen
April 16, 2021
Last seen
March 30, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty
April 16, 2021 · Original source
In modern times, George would grant electromagnetic spectrum and orbital real estate for satellites the same status of "land" that already applies to farmland and terrestrial real estate. We don't even need to speculate about whether he'd attach this status to sunlight because he straight-up predicted solar power: Even the lack of rain which makes some parts of the globe useless to man, may, if invention ever succeeds in directly utilizing the power of the sun's rays, be found to be especially advantageous for certain parts of production. (That's from Protection or Free Trade, footnote 19) The important thing to grasp about land is that it comes before everything humans do or make, and is itself a thing no human can make. Okay, smarty-pants, what about the Netherlands? They've been making land for centuries! Well, land in the Georgist sense doesn't refer simply to "dry land", but also the sea bed, the oceans, and the skies above. The "new land" in the Netherlands counts as an improvement to land that already existed. The seabed was always there, but by filling it in so you can walk around on it, now it's more useful to us (George has a lot to say about improvements to land, which we'll get to later). Okay, what is land not? nothing that is freely supplied by nature can be properly classed as capital By George, land is not wealth. And since it's not wealth, it's not capital. Okay, we get it. Land is very special to Mr. George and we must never put it in the same category as wealth, labor, capital, wages, production, money, or anything else. Why exactly is this so damn important? Well, by George, if you treat land the same way you would a bar of pig iron, an hour of work, or a dollar bill, before you know it you'll get poverty paradoxically advancing alongside progress, inexplicable bouts of industrial depression, literal genocides and holocausts (he's dead serious about this), and The Rent Being Too Damn High. With terminology now firmly established, George moves on to the relationship between wages and capital. 3-for-1 special on Wages, Capital, and Labor I'm condensing three chapters here because they all deal with the same basic thing. The question George wants to answer is: Why, in spite of increase in productive power, do wages tend to a minimum which will give but a bare living? The conventional wisdom of George's time is that wages are governed by a fixed ratio between the number of laborers and the amount of capital devoted to their employment, because "the increase in the number of laborers tends naturally to follow and overtake any increase in capital." So it doesn't matter how much capital you throw at employing workers, it'll just attract even more workers splitting it up, so although wages might temporarily wiggle a bit in the long term they'll always settle back to a "natural" minimum. (As we'll see in the next section, this argument stems from Malthusianism). George spends some time methodically poking holes in the theory (it's predictions don't line up with the facts he observes), and then sets out to prove his replacement theory (emphases mine): wages, instead of being drawn from capital, are in reality drawn from the product of the labor for which they are paid. He pulls a G.K. Chesterton to make his point: During the time [the laborer] is earning the wages he is advancing capital to his employer, but at no time, unless wages are paid before work is done, is the employer advancing capital to him. He starts by identifying the source of confusion: Because wages are generally paid in money, and in many of the operations of production are paid before the product is fully completed, or can be utilized, it is inferred that wages are drawn from pre-existing capital I mean, the old theory seems sensible: the employer has capital and uses it to pay wages. But however you slice it, capital's investment gets paid back by production when it takes its cut, so does it even make a difference to talk about where wages are "drawn" from? Value goes out, value comes in, isn't it all a wash? By George, it isn't: in the old theory, because capital "must come first", it follows that "industry is limited by capital - that capital must be accumulated before labor is employed", which leads to a reductio ad absurdum – We are told that capital is stored-up or accumulated labor – "that part of wealth which is saved to assist future production." If we substitute for the word "capital" this definition of the word, the proposition carries its own refutation, for that labor cannot be employed until the results of labor are saved becomes too absurd for discussion. George anticipates the following rejoinder – Well, when we say 'labor is paid out of capital' we don't mean it as an absolute statement for all stages of human development (or else we have a chicken-and-the-egg problem and civilization could never have begun), we just mean it applies to, say, every civilization that's left the stone age. George will have none of it and spends three entire chapters relentlessly beating to death the idea that wages are drawn from capital instead of from production. He starts with the simple case where wages are paid in the form of direct, concrete wealth, then moves on to the more complex case where people are paid in money and other instruments. Laboring for wages: Imagine a fishing village where nobody cooperates – each person digs their own bait and catches their own fish. Then they discover labor specialization and realize they can catch more fish together if one specializes in digging and the other in catching. So the digger digs, the catcher catches, and they share the fish. The digger really contributes as much to the catch as the one who physically pulls the fish off the hook even though the digger never directly "caught" a fish, and the fish he gets for his work is directly paid out of his contribution to the total production. Later, our fisherfolk invent canoes, and one stays home making and repairing canoes. This increases the haul of the digger and catcher, and the canoe-er gets paid out of her contribution to the increased production. And so it goes as society continues to advance. The work the specialist puts in causes more fish to be caught, and that person's wages is drawn from the growing pile of fish. As George puts it: "Earning is making." George gives another example: If I take a piece of leather and work it up into a pair of shoes, the shoes are my wages – the reward of my exertion. Surely they are not drawn from capital – either my capital or any one else's capital – but are brought into existence by the labor of which they become the wages; and in obtaining this pair of shoes as the wages of my labor, capital is not even momentarily lessened one iota... As my labor goes on, value is steadily added, until, when my labor results in the finished shoes, I have my capital plus the difference in value between the material and the shoes. And another: If I hire a man to gather eggs, to pick berries, or to make shoes, paying him from the eggs, the berries, or the shoes that his labor secures, there can be no question that the source of the wages is the labor for which they are paid. George goes on to say it doesn't matter if you're paid in money or directly in wealth, because the money is a direct claim on the underlying wealth. It also doesn't matter if you get paid on commission. Imagine a whaling ship where each crewman gets paid a share out of whatever the ship catches. When the ship sails back into port with a hold full of whale oil and bone, the crew gets paid in money, the owner simultaneously adds to his capital oil and bone. The crew's money directly represents their share of the concrete wealth that is the oil and bone. The owner's capital hasn't decreased, and the workers drew their wages directly from the production. So let's get to the point, Mr. George – wages aren't drawn from capital but instead from production. Great, let's grant that – so what? George hammers away at this because thinking wages are drawn from capital leads to a false conclusion, namely that "labor cannot exert its productive power unless supplied by capital with maintenance." "Maintenance?" Well, workers need food and clothing and they get paid by their employers, so you could imagine capital as a limiting factor on labor. But by George, food and clothing isn't capital, it's just wealth, as we said before. And with regard to wages, the point is that the employer always gets "paid" first, because the second the laborer produces value, the employer's capital increases: As in the exchange of labor for wages the employer always gets the capital created by the labor before he pays out capital in the wages, at what point is his capital lessened even temporarily? Okay, but what if I'm just a terrible businessman and I pay somebody $500 an hour to smash Ming vases, then sell the fragments as aggregate to a construction crew for a few pennies a pound, all at a tremendous loss? Surely then the laborer's wages must be drawn from my capital, because there's not enough productive value generated by the labor to draw them from! George says okay, sure, but only because I'm an idiot and will soon be out of business: Yet, unless the new value created by the labor is less than the wages paid, which can be only an exceptional case, the capital which he had before in money he now has in goods – it has been changed in form, but not lessened. Fair enough, Mr. George, but what if I'm building some enormously expensive multi-decade project, like a dam or a nuclear power plant or a cathedral? The kind of thing we call a "capital-intensive" project? What do you have to say to that? George points out that as laborers labor, they progressively add value to whatever they're producing. Take the case of a shipwright building ships for an employer – even if the boss can't sell a half-finished ship, it still holds value (for one, it costs less to finish a half-finished ship then no ship at all). And with every stroke of the laborer's work, the employer who owns the shipyard gets an incremental increase in his stock of capital. It is not the last blow, any more than the first blow, that creates the value of the finished product – the creation of value is continuous, it immediately results from the exertion of labor. A pedant would point out that the "last hit" that finishes the product which makes it ready for market adds disproportionate value, but George's point is just to establish that value is continuously created, and doesn't magically come into being allat once right at the end. George further points out that if you look at things like agriculture you'll see the market directly acknowledging his theory: As a plowed field will bring more than an unplowed field, or a field that has been sown more than one merely plowed... It is tangible in the case of orchards and vineyards which, though not yet in bearing, bring prices proportionate to their age. George freely admits that capital can be required for certain kinds of work, but he disagrees with what its purpose is. It's not a pool that wages get paid out of. He goes on for another chapter on "The Maintenance of Laborers Not Drawn From Capital" but I think we can safely skip it and move on. TL:DR – George hammers to absolute death the idea that Laborers derive their own maintenance (food/shelter/clothing/etc) from their wages, with George insisting it is drawn from production and... you guessed it, not from capital. At least some of George's ideas will not seem so radical to modern readers (especially those already critical of capitalism or neoclassical economics), but it's important to understand that at the time almost everything he was saying was considered deeply radical and shocking. Capital was the fundamental driving force of the economy and labor was utterly dependent on it, and the Malthusian theory of overpopulation was the accepted explanation for why wages were low and workers were starving. Political Cartoon literally demonizing Henry George – Puck magazine Oct. 20, 1886 The Real Functions of Capital Okay, Mr. George. You've spent three whole chapters beating me over the head with what the functions of capital aren't. So what are the functions of capital? Capital "increases the power of labor to produce wealth." How? By enabling labor to apply itself more effectively (power tools go brrrr)
Inline links: Protection or Free Trade, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aeD5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F348d4d74-8c98-42e6-b5f7-7bd79b30a816_960x611.png
(source, CC BY-SA 3.0, author: Explodicle) A vertical supply curve means no matter what the price of land is, the same amount will always be supplied. This is because you can't make land – the supply is effectively fixed. Remember, the Netherlands doesn't count because the sea bed is land, and filling it in is just an improvement to land that already existed. And even if we granted "The Netherlands occasionally makes land" for the sake of argument, the amount of land "created" in this way is pretty darn negligible in the grand scheme of the economy, and almost exclusively the domain of governments or state-owned actors. The supply of land being fixed has some really interesting properties. By contrast, consider oil, the supply of which is not fixed. If we tax oil, some of the more marginal wells will be too expensive to operate and make a profit, so producers shut those down and the supply of oil decreases. Deadweight loss comes from a producer's ability to change the amount of product they supply in response to price signals. You'll notice the above graph of land tax has no deadweight loss at all! Since nobody produces land, it's the one thing you can tax without getting less of it. This drives out speculators entirely. Speculators can no longer distort rents by bidding up the price of land and holding it out of use, and can no longer compete with those who actually intend to use the land. This restores the proper balance of land, labor, and capital. Now if you work harder, or invest more capital, you can actually expect to see an increasing return without it all being gobbled up by ever-increasing rent. If you think about it this way, land value tax has negative deadweight loss, because it eliminates the speculative distortion that is the unearned privilege of landownership. Okay, but won't the landlords just pass the land tax on to their tenants? By George, no. Rent is a price, and price is governed by supply and demand. Supply of land is fixed, so land value tax has no effect on supply. What about demand? Except in cases where it causes the economy to boom (a good thing), land value tax won't increase land value – what it always does, however, is reduce the demand for land by speculators. If it costs nothing to hold on to land, of course I'm going to want to grab some and HODL. If the rent I could hope to gain is taxed away, I won't bother. Consider the case of oil again, where a tax reduces the supply. Reduced supply, given unchanged demand, causes a rise in price. And you'll find the increase in price tracks very closely with the amount of tax. Land value tax is just about the only kind of tax that can't be passed off to someone else. For more on deadweight loss and the land value tax, see Welfare Economics of the Land Value Tax by BlueRepublik. So does this mean there can never be profitable landlords ever again? Of course not – they just have to earn their living honestly like everyone else. Remember, we don't tax the improvements, just the "ground rent." So Ms. Nguyen still gets paid for all her honest work and judicious investments, but Mr. Slumlord doesn't make a dime until he gets off his lazy butt and does something productive. This is really important, because aside from speculation, the principal cause of land value increase is the productivity of your neighbors. An empty lot in the middle of nowhere is worthless, but an otherwise identical empty lot in the middle of New York city is priceless. As they say in real estate - "location, location, location." The reason location is valuable is because of the activity and contributions of the community, and yet the landlord claims the right to seize it all as rent. Modern economists have some interesting things to say about George's ideas, too. In 1977 Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated that land rents have a tendency to almost perfectly equal the value of investment in public goods. He called this the Henry George Theorem. Milton Friedman famously called land value tax the "Least Worst" tax. But one of my all-time favorite endorsements will always be that one time the economist Ramin Shokrizade unwittingly re-derived land value tax from first principles to (successfully!) fix recessions in EVE Online. Okay, so we tax all the ground rent. It will remove the speculative component of the rent (because there will no longer be any incentive to jack the prices up artificially), but it won't drive the price down to zero. That's because 100% LVT is only achievable on a frictionless plane populated by spherical cows; here in the real world you'll be left with a small sliver of land value. And of course regardless of the LVT rate, houses and buildings will still have a price. And that's fine. Land in Times Square will still be a lot more valuable than land in Podunk, Saskatchewan, but both will approach the same price as the LVT rate gets closer to 100%. This encourages people to actually make use of valuable land rather than holding it out of use, blighting the urban core and forcing development to sprawl out for miles in every direction, leading to worse transportation and more pollution. But... doesn't this mean that if people aren't putting land to productive use, they'll eventually be pressured to sell it off to someone who will? George sees this as a good thing. Without land value tax you get situations where somebody can anticipate that an empty lot will become valuable in the future, buy it, HODL forever, lobby against future development that would depress their property values, and now you have the Bay Area's housing crisis. Or buy an apartment block, do the absolute minimum the tenants will tolerate without killing you, constantly jack up the rent as the city grows, and you get slums. As BlueRepublik observes in No, Georgism is Still Sane: If you look at the commercial blight in New York City (http://www.vacantnewyork.com/) 90%+ is from landlords refusing to lease out to small businesses, waiting for a larger bank or big business to pay a higher rent bill. This causes property values of nearby businesses to drop, equity value to drop, and businesses to move out from the city center, increasing urban sprawl and urban blight. It’s a massive drain on personal wealth, and is very highly linked with poverty and higher crime rates. It’s also not a great model for having a stable social fabric. In a fit of performance art, a Georgist by the name of Fay Lewis once famously bought an empty lot and stuck a big sign on it to demonstrate the principle in action: Okay, but isn't building too much stuff bad for the environment? Won't this encourage over-development? By George, no. What's bad for the environment is sprawl, which the current system encourages and which the land tax would directly attack. If you want dense, walkable cities that don't depend on cars to get around, you should eliminate land speculation. A stronger objection to land value tax is when it's not some shifty speculator or a genocidal English landlord who suffers the brunt of it, but, say, this guy: The premise of Pixar's movie Up is that Carl Fredricksen, a lovably grumpy pensioner, is the last holdout standing in the way of developers bulldozing the rest of his neighborhood in the name of Progress™. He refuses to sell because he can't bear to part with the house which for him is tied up with all the cherished memories of his departed wife. This isn't just sentimental fiction, this is something that really does happen. Isn't Georgism just going to price the poor Carl Fredricksens out of their homes so that someone with a more """productive""" use can have it instead? There's several good response to this. For starters, if you're worried about kindly old people losing their homes, that's a thing that's happening already, and most of the time it's because The Rent Is Too Damn High, and our existing system is net worse on this score. We are currently facing an unprecedented crisis of evictions in tandem with the COVID pandemic, and it's not like things were peachy before. And even though homelessness seems to be declining in the US overall, it's getting worse in the most prosperous cities, exactly as George predicted. Okay, maybe it's better for renters, but what about people who own their homes, like Carl? Isn't it unfair to stick them with land taxes that might kick them out? What if they're retired? Remember, let's not confuse land tax with land confiscation, Here's George (emphases mine): I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent. Okay, but you have to admit that even if the state isn't confiscating everybody's land, if you can't pay your land taxes you have no choice but to sell your land, right? Isn't this morally unjust to the Carl Fredricksens of the world? First, it's not a given that Mr. Fredricksen will be worse off on net: he already pays income and sales taxes, capital gains on any investments, as well as property tax which taxes both land value and the value of his house. As speculators leave the real estate market the land tax that replaces his property tax drop will drop, and his house is an improvement that goes entirely untaxed. Also, if the speculators holding onto all the most valuable real estate in the downtown districts are forced to give it up, there won't be as much competition for land and so there's a good chance developers won't be interested in trying to buy up land in a bedroom community in the first place. BlueRepublik further points out that LVT can be used to fund a Universal Basic Income, which should soften the blow considerably: Keep in mind also that the Georgist Land Value Tax is pair with a "Citizen's Dividend" or what we see as UBI, so that it's not the government claiming land rent, rather the land rent is taxed and split up equally for all men. But as a matter of political practicality, in the rare event that after all that Mr. Fredricksen still somehow finds himself in the hole after LVT is applied, Nate Blair suggests a deferment option to grandfather the Carls of the world through the transition: The LVT gets assessed annually for everyone, but owner occupiers (businesses and homeowners) can apply to defer the sum of those payments until they sell or transfer the land. Government can charge a nominal interest. A final point of modern application of land value taxes is to level the playing field between different areas by eliminating "cost of living" discrepancies that arise entirely from speculative rent. This is pretty relevant given the "location pay" debate going on in Silicon Valley right now in response to increased remote work as a direct consequence of the COVID pandemic. Back to George. Great, we've taxed ground rent at 100% and eliminated speculation and all other manner of social ills. Now what do we do with the money? Lots of things! For one, you can get rid of some other taxes. Back in George's day it was even argued that a 100% land value tax on ground rents should be the only tax – the "Single Tax," replacing all other tariffs, duties, and other taxes (keep in mind this was in the late 1800's and Federal income tax wasn't introduced until the 16th amendment in 1913). Remember, all these other taxes have deadweight loss. Income tax is a tax on labor, and so taxing it means we really do get less productive labor. The portion of property tax that targets improvements punishes you for investing in improvements, and sales tax is just straight up regressive, hitting the poor harder than the rich. There's some argument today about whether the "Single Tax" would be enough to fund the modern US budget, with some Georgists saying it would be sufficient and others saying we would still need some other taxes but could at least significantly offset what we already have. But by George, another thing we could do is just give all the money back to the people, as BlueRepublik mentioned above. This could be used as a straightforward Universal Basic Income – what George calls a Citizen's Dividend, or what Andrew Yang calls the Freedom Dividend. It could also be used for the funding of public goods. George doesn't see this as an act of charity on the state's behalf – the value of the land has its origin in the productive labors of the entire community, so it's a simple act of justice to give the returns to those who actually produced the value, which is society at large. Another effect George asserts is that once land is no longer monopolized, labor is no longer forced into one-sided competition, so wages start to go up. Even better, laborers now have far more opportunity to go into business for themselves, which spurs innovation and investment. So to sum up, if we tax the ever loving hell out of ground rent, George says we'll see the following benefits: Make housing much more affordable
Inline links: source, Welfare Economics of the Land Value Tax, Henry George Theorem, to (successfully!) fix recessions in EVE Online, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZKi0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4fd890f3-35ce-415d-a461-2e507eff4ed9_680x709.png, No, Georgism is Still Sane, http://www.vacantnewyork.com/, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gVc9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0eccd663-f37b-44b6-ba75-469069befa34_1863x1268.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mVYl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80f4b70f-b472-47b0-b46d-e74b3190ddfd_536x554.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!G2qa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa948c9cc-5271-4b71-8c74-de55e126f16a_640x360.png, really does happen, crisis of evictions, getting worse in the most prosperous cities, "location pay" debate going on in Silicon Valley, Citizen's Dividend, the Freedom Dividend
Will solve all our problems once and for all Why the Remedy is Just George asks, "what constitutes the rightful basis of property?" What gives you the right to say "this is mine?" George asserts as self-evident the principle that a person is entitled to the fruits of their labor. What you make on your own time with your own resources, is yours to do with as you please – use it, give it away, trade it, destroy it. You don't harm anyone else doing so. It follows that neither I nor anyone else am entitled to the product of your labor. If we're both independent hunter-gatherers, and you pick some berries from a bush, I don't have any fundamental right to demand them from you. If you improve land in some way, you're entitled to own and use that, of course. That's the product of your labor. But to claim exclusive and permanent ownership of the land itself – from which all wealth springs and without which labor is impossible – is to demand the product of other's labor. So to invoke the sanctity of private property to defend private land ownership is self-refuting. But what about the right of "I was here first?" Well, George points out that in most cases someone was there before you were, too (and often they were removed by force). Just because you arrived one second, one minute, one year, or one decade before someone else doesn't give you some fundamental right to exclude others from access to nature's free gifts. (Note: this doesn't give people the right to just come in your house and rifle through your underwear drawer at any time of day, we'll get to that). And what about native populations? Isn't this just an excuse for colonialists to come in and steal their land by denying their claim of being on the land first? By George, no – this is a good time to point out that many Native Americans already had a roughly Georgist understanding of land – treating it as common property, and it was precisely the colonialists' conception of land as private property that was the mechanism by which the indigenous population was expelled and their lands seized. The English first practiced this on their own people – once upon a time wide swaths of land in England were held in common until the government privatized those lands and gave them out to well-connected gentry in a process called Enclosure. If you've ever heard of the Luddites, you should know they weren't merely rebelling against the march of technology, they were also fighting against the forcible seizure of their lands by industrialists, who far from being salt-of-the-earth free-enterprise entrepreneurs, were in actual fact crony capitalists stealing the people's land with the aid of anti-free-market subsidies and armed thugs, all supported by Big Government™. As a practical matter though, if you want to impose a Georgist policy, that only applies to territory your state has authority over. Indian reservations in the United States are supposed to be sovereign enclaves with their own jurisdiction. Native Americans should decide for themselves whether they want to adopt any particular policy. The other reason the remedy is just, is that private ownership of land leads to serfdom. The essence of slavery is that it takes from the laborer all he produces save enough to support an animal existence, and to this minimum the wages of free labor, under existing conditions, unmistakably tend. George points out that even though Slavery was abolished, the Southern landowners just changed the brand name to "sharecropping" and were able to continue to extract tremendous wealth from "free" Black Americans in the form of rent. Okay, but excluding evil Southern plantation owners, don't landlords deserve compensation for their work? What about Ms. Nguyen, the nice lady who manages your apartment block and went the extra mile for you when your A/C went out last summer? I like Ms. Nguyen too, but let's contrast her with Mr. Slumlord, who owns the apartment block next door that's superficially identical, but who won't help you when your A/C goes out in the middle of summer. Ms. Nguyen charges higher "rent" for her much better maintained units because part of that "rent" is actually her justly compensated wages for her labor in managing them, as well as interest from returns on the capital she's invested in their ongoing improvement and maintenance. She also collects a good bit of true Georgian rent because she is, after all, a landlord. Mr. Slumlord puts in as little work as he can get away with and invests as little capital into maintenance as will keep the state off his back. His return is almost entirely rent. And the only reason he can charge rent in the first place is because of the valuable location – value the community produced, not him. And that's the real injustice of land rent – the community produces the value, but the landlord charges rent to access it. Practical Application of the Remedy Okay, land as common property, rent must die, I'm sold. How do we actually do it? George proposes a land value tax, or LVT. Note I didn't say property tax. Property tax is a tax on the value of a piece of land and it's improvements. So if you're a homeowner, when you pay property tax, you pay tax for both the value of your house and the lot it's sitting on. With land value tax you only pay tax on the "ground rent", which is the value of your land, but not the improvements. What's an improvement? By George, a little green house is an improvement. A fancy red hotel is an improvement. A garage, a sidewalk, a public park, a Starbucks, a hotdog stand, are all improvements. Installing a bunch of dikes in the Netherlands and dumping landfill into the seabed to turn wet land into dry is an improvement. All improvements come from labor, and optionally capital, and so its fair for those factors to take their return. If I "rent" you my hotdog stand (but not the lot it sits on) my return would be classified as interest in George's framework because the hotdog stand isn't land, it's capital – the stored-up fruits of my labor that I'm using to get more wealth. (Modified from source, CC BY 2.0, author: Philip Taylor) The problem with our current system is that when anyone in the community builds improvements, it makes adjoining land more valuable, and then those adjoining landlords jack up the rent. This makes things worse for everybody but the landlords. George's insight is that extra value from my improvement "spills over" from my land and is soaked up by the ground rent of your land. So under a land value tax, we can correct for the perverse economic incentives, distortions, and oppressions that come from land rent, without having to actually take your land from you. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land — only to confiscate rent. You also are 100% the owner of the improvements on your land, which won't be taxed. This is why Georgism doesn't mean people have the right to barge into your house in the middle of the night even though land is "held in common." Your house is still private property, but the value of the land it sits on is common property. What if I plant some nice trees, and invest in some landscaping to stop erosion? Where's the line between "improvements" and "ground rent?" In most cases it's pretty straightforward to separately assess the value of a plot from the value of what sits on it (modern property tax assessors do this already), but George grants that in some edge cases with the passage of time at least some improvements will be subsumed into the land value and that's okay: But it will be said: There are improvements which in time become indistinguishable from the land itself! Very well; then the title to the improvements become blended with the title to the land; the individual right is lost in the common right. It is the greater that swallows up the less, not the less that swallows up the greater. Okay, ground rent bad. How much should we tax it? By George, One Hundred Percent. Take the rent the tenant has to pay each month, calculate the portion attributable to the value of the unimproved land itself, and send it to the taxing agency. Effects of the Remedy Wow! 100% tax rate on ground rent! Can we really do that? In practice Georgists often talk about rates closer to 85+% given real-world limitations in assessment, but the point is to hit it as hard as you possibly can. Get close enough and you still have good effects. Won't land taxes jack up land prices? No, actually - in fact it will do the opposite, because such a tax is laser-calibrated to eliminate speculation, which makes up the bulk of inflated land values, and thus rent. Tax land for the full ground rent and you make real estate more affordable, not less. Won't it enable an all-powerful centralized nanny state? Quite the opposite – land value assessment is a fundamentally bottom-up, localized task, so it naturally empowers local municipalities at the expense of distant central authorities. Also, income taxes, wealth taxes, investment taxes, etc, require an ever-vigilant centralized bureaucracy peeking into every aspect of an individual's life to catch tax evaders, who have every incentive to hide their assets or even just flee. Perversely, the IRS currently audits the poor at the same rate as the top 1%, even though higher earners are responsible for withholding the vast majority of tax money in fraud. Land can't move or hide, and nowadays we have tools like GIS to make it even easier to assess. Under land value tax, nobody needs to pry into your personal life or impose burdensome accounting rules on your small business that actually entrench the power of giant corporations (who have entire departments devoted to serving up the Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich). A Brief Interlude From the Future Today land value tax is widely considered to be the only tax that doesn't suffer from Deadweight Loss. Deadweight Loss is the lost economic activity or value caused by some policy. It's often summarized by the phrase "If you want less of something, tax it." Look at this chart, for example: (source, CC BY-SA 2.5, author: SilverStar) The place where the demand curve (red) and supply curve (blue) meet is the equilibrium point that the market naturally tends towards. But if we impose a price control lower than what the market will bear, the yellow area of the curve shows economic activity that can't happen. If you put price controls on gasoline, for instance, you'll get shortages because there's more demand than supply, and supply can't profitably rise to meet the extra bit of demand that's willing to pay a little more. But here's how things look with a land value tax, notice that the supply curve is vertical – that's weird, what does that mean? (source, CC BY-SA 3.0, author: Explodicle) A vertical supply curve means no matter what the price of land is, the same amount will always be supplied. This is because you can't make land – the supply is effectively fixed. Remember, the Netherlands doesn't count because the sea bed is land, and filling it in is just an improvement to land that already existed. And even if we granted "The Netherlands occasionally makes land" for the sake of argument, the amount of land "created" in this way is pretty darn negligible in the grand scheme of the economy, and almost exclusively the domain of governments or state-owned actors. The supply of land being fixed has some really interesting properties. By contrast, consider oil, the supply of which is not fixed. If we tax oil, some of the more marginal wells will be too expensive to operate and make a profit, so producers shut those down and the supply of oil decreases. Deadweight loss comes from a producer's ability to change the amount of product they supply in response to price signals. You'll notice the above graph of land tax has no deadweight loss at all! Since nobody produces land, it's the one thing you can tax without getting less of it. This drives out speculators entirely. Speculators can no longer distort rents by bidding up the price of land and holding it out of use, and can no longer compete with those who actually intend to use the land. This restores the proper balance of land, labor, and capital. Now if you work harder, or invest more capital, you can actually expect to see an increasing return without it all being gobbled up by ever-increasing rent. If you think about it this way, land value tax has negative deadweight loss, because it eliminates the speculative distortion that is the unearned privilege of landownership. Okay, but won't the landlords just pass the land tax on to their tenants? By George, no. Rent is a price, and price is governed by supply and demand. Supply of land is fixed, so land value tax has no effect on supply. What about demand? Except in cases where it causes the economy to boom (a good thing), land value tax won't increase land value – what it always does, however, is reduce the demand for land by speculators. If it costs nothing to hold on to land, of course I'm going to want to grab some and HODL. If the rent I could hope to gain is taxed away, I won't bother. Consider the case of oil again, where a tax reduces the supply. Reduced supply, given unchanged demand, causes a rise in price. And you'll find the increase in price tracks very closely with the amount of tax. Land value tax is just about the only kind of tax that can't be passed off to someone else. For more on deadweight loss and the land value tax, see Welfare Economics of the Land Value Tax by BlueRepublik. So does this mean there can never be profitable landlords ever again? Of course not – they just have to earn their living honestly like everyone else. Remember, we don't tax the improvements, just the "ground rent." So Ms. Nguyen still gets paid for all her honest work and judicious investments, but Mr. Slumlord doesn't make a dime until he gets off his lazy butt and does something productive. This is really important, because aside from speculation, the principal cause of land value increase is the productivity of your neighbors. An empty lot in the middle of nowhere is worthless, but an otherwise identical empty lot in the middle of New York city is priceless. As they say in real estate - "location, location, location." The reason location is valuable is because of the activity and contributions of the community, and yet the landlord claims the right to seize it all as rent. Modern economists have some interesting things to say about George's ideas, too. In 1977 Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated that land rents have a tendency to almost perfectly equal the value of investment in public goods. He called this the Henry George Theorem. Milton Friedman famously called land value tax the "Least Worst" tax. But one of my all-time favorite endorsements will always be that one time the economist Ramin Shokrizade unwittingly re-derived land value tax from first principles to (successfully!) fix recessions in EVE Online. Okay, so we tax all the ground rent. It will remove the speculative component of the rent (because there will no longer be any incentive to jack the prices up artificially), but it won't drive the price down to zero. That's because 100% LVT is only achievable on a frictionless plane populated by spherical cows; here in the real world you'll be left with a small sliver of land value. And of course regardless of the LVT rate, houses and buildings will still have a price. And that's fine. Land in Times Square will still be a lot more valuable than land in Podunk, Saskatchewan, but both will approach the same price as the LVT rate gets closer to 100%. This encourages people to actually make use of valuable land rather than holding it out of use, blighting the urban core and forcing development to sprawl out for miles in every direction, leading to worse transportation and more pollution. But... doesn't this mean that if people aren't putting land to productive use, they'll eventually be pressured to sell it off to someone who will? George sees this as a good thing. Without land value tax you get situations where somebody can anticipate that an empty lot will become valuable in the future, buy it, HODL forever, lobby against future development that would depress their property values, and now you have the Bay Area's housing crisis. Or buy an apartment block, do the absolute minimum the tenants will tolerate without killing you, constantly jack up the rent as the city grows, and you get slums. As BlueRepublik observes in No, Georgism is Still Sane: If you look at the commercial blight in New York City (http://www.vacantnewyork.com/) 90%+ is from landlords refusing to lease out to small businesses, waiting for a larger bank or big business to pay a higher rent bill. This causes property values of nearby businesses to drop, equity value to drop, and businesses to move out from the city center, increasing urban sprawl and urban blight. It’s a massive drain on personal wealth, and is very highly linked with poverty and higher crime rates. It’s also not a great model for having a stable social fabric. In a fit of performance art, a Georgist by the name of Fay Lewis once famously bought an empty lot and stuck a big sign on it to demonstrate the principle in action: Okay, but isn't building too much stuff bad for the environment? Won't this encourage over-development? By George, no. What's bad for the environment is sprawl, which the current system encourages and which the land tax would directly attack. If you want dense, walkable cities that don't depend on cars to get around, you should eliminate land speculation. A stronger objection to land value tax is when it's not some shifty speculator or a genocidal English landlord who suffers the brunt of it, but, say, this guy: The premise of Pixar's movie Up is that Carl Fredricksen, a lovably grumpy pensioner, is the last holdout standing in the way of developers bulldozing the rest of his neighborhood in the name of Progress™. He refuses to sell because he can't bear to part with the house which for him is tied up with all the cherished memories of his departed wife. This isn't just sentimental fiction, this is something that really does happen. Isn't Georgism just going to price the poor Carl Fredricksens out of their homes so that someone with a more """productive""" use can have it instead? There's several good response to this. For starters, if you're worried about kindly old people losing their homes, that's a thing that's happening already, and most of the time it's because The Rent Is Too Damn High, and our existing system is net worse on this score. We are currently facing an unprecedented crisis of evictions in tandem with the COVID pandemic, and it's not like things were peachy before. And even though homelessness seems to be declining in the US overall, it's getting worse in the most prosperous cities, exactly as George predicted. Okay, maybe it's better for renters, but what about people who own their homes, like Carl? Isn't it unfair to stick them with land taxes that might kick them out? What if they're retired? Remember, let's not confuse land tax with land confiscation, Here's George (emphases mine): I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent. Okay, but you have to admit that even if the state isn't confiscating everybody's land, if you can't pay your land taxes you have no choice but to sell your land, right? Isn't this morally unjust to the Carl Fredricksens of the world? First, it's not a given that Mr. Fredricksen will be worse off on net: he already pays income and sales taxes, capital gains on any investments, as well as property tax which taxes both land value and the value of his house. As speculators leave the real estate market the land tax that replaces his property tax drop will drop, and his house is an improvement that goes entirely untaxed. Also, if the speculators holding onto all the most valuable real estate in the downtown districts are forced to give it up, there won't be as much competition for land and so there's a good chance developers won't be interested in trying to buy up land in a bedroom community in the first place. BlueRepublik further points out that LVT can be used to fund a Universal Basic Income, which should soften the blow considerably: Keep in mind also that the Georgist Land Value Tax is pair with a "Citizen's Dividend" or what we see as UBI, so that it's not the government claiming land rent, rather the land rent is taxed and split up equally for all men. But as a matter of political practicality, in the rare event that after all that Mr. Fredricksen still somehow finds himself in the hole after LVT is applied, Nate Blair suggests a deferment option to grandfather the Carls of the world through the transition: The LVT gets assessed annually for everyone, but owner occupiers (businesses and homeowners) can apply to defer the sum of those payments until they sell or transfer the land. Government can charge a nominal interest. A final point of modern application of land value taxes is to level the playing field between different areas by eliminating "cost of living" discrepancies that arise entirely from speculative rent. This is pretty relevant given the "location pay" debate going on in Silicon Valley right now in response to increased remote work as a direct consequence of the COVID pandemic. Back to George. Great, we've taxed ground rent at 100% and eliminated speculation and all other manner of social ills. Now what do we do with the money? Lots of things! For one, you can get rid of some other taxes. Back in George's day it was even argued that a 100% land value tax on ground rents should be the only tax – the "Single Tax," replacing all other tariffs, duties, and other taxes (keep in mind this was in the late 1800's and Federal income tax wasn't introduced until the 16th amendment in 1913). Remember, all these other taxes have deadweight loss. Income tax is a tax on labor, and so taxing it means we really do get less productive labor. The portion of property tax that targets improvements punishes you for investing in improvements, and sales tax is just straight up regressive, hitting the poor harder than the rich. There's some argument today about whether the "Single Tax" would be enough to fund the modern US budget, with some Georgists saying it would be sufficient and others saying we would still need some other taxes but could at least significantly offset what we already have. But by George, another thing we could do is just give all the money back to the people, as BlueRepublik mentioned above. This could be used as a straightforward Universal Basic Income – what George calls a Citizen's Dividend, or what Andrew Yang calls the Freedom Dividend. It could also be used for the funding of public goods. George doesn't see this as an act of charity on the state's behalf – the value of the land has its origin in the productive labors of the entire community, so it's a simple act of justice to give the returns to those who actually produced the value, which is society at large. Another effect George asserts is that once land is no longer monopolized, labor is no longer forced into one-sided competition, so wages start to go up. Even better, laborers now have far more opportunity to go into business for themselves, which spurs innovation and investment. So to sum up, if we tax the ever loving hell out of ground rent, George says we'll see the following benefits: Make housing much more affordable
Inline links: treating it as common property, Enclosure, Luddites, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!N5h2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F01d73228-7c8a-4e35-9d3b-a90ba99d62bc_400x200.png, land value tax, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0zK_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7aea36c2-328c-4231-b50f-f4eed87e1c53_500x375.png, source, Philip Taylor, property tax assessors do this already, audits the poor at the same rate as the top 1%, GIS, Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich, Deadweight Loss, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MSUe!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9e01d1dd-61fa-4c1b-8f90-6669f2c20d81_632x632.png, source, SilverStar, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WZ7g!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F730bd7b8-6dbf-4e23-a799-91187ec8b9ed_520x520.png, source, Welfare Economics of the Land Value Tax, Henry George Theorem, to (successfully!) fix recessions in EVE Online, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZKi0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4fd890f3-35ce-415d-a461-2e507eff4ed9_680x709.png, No, Georgism is Still Sane, http://www.vacantnewyork.com/, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gVc9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0eccd663-f37b-44b6-ba75-469069befa34_1863x1268.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mVYl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80f4b70f-b472-47b0-b46d-e74b3190ddfd_536x554.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!G2qa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa948c9cc-5271-4b71-8c74-de55e126f16a_640x360.png, really does happen, crisis of evictions, getting worse in the most prosperous cities, "location pay" debate going on in Silicon Valley, Citizen's Dividend, the Freedom Dividend
Book Review: Which Country Has The World's Best Health Care?
January 19, 2022 · Original source
Emanuel hates having to give a clear answer to that question, but when confronted with the fact that he’s writing a book with that title and can’t really weasel out, he grudgingly admits that “the top tier would include Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Taiwan”.
4: Single Payer Channeled Through Private Insurance is typical of Germany and the Netherlands. I think this is kind of like how charter schools work in the US: the government pays 100% of your costs, but you get to choose which insurance company (out of various heavily-regulated and basically identical plans) to go with. Then the insurance company pays private doctors and hospitals as usual.
Single-payer implemented through private insurance - Germany and the Netherlands - comes out looking pretty good: these are 2 of the 4 countries Emanuel puts in his top tier. I’m confused here. The US has at least three major problems that Germany/Netherlands lack: nonuniversal coverage, high costs, and poor patient choice (ie you have to worry about “out of network” providers). I can see why single-payer eliminates the first: if the government buys coverage for everyone, of course it will be universal. But why does it eliminate the second two? Germany and the Netherlands have dozens of different insurance providers - why doesn’t that decrease bargaining power and raise costs? Why doesn’t it mean that sometimes they fail to reach an agreement with a hospital, and their patients can’t go there without facing “out-of-network” costs? I thought I understood the reasons why US health care doesn’t work, but Germany and the Netherlands seem to replicate its apparent disadvantages without running into the same problems. Why? Maybe I just don’t fully understand what “single-payer” means?
Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems
January 27, 2022 · Original source
Wrt. to other countries, there's not a lot of difference between regulation and socialism. Sure, in Germany and the Netherlands insurance is provided by private companies (my wife is Dutch). But if all companies are required by law to charge the same rates, and offer the same coverage, then it doesn't really matter whether a private company or the government pays for it. A really easy way to lower costs in the U.S. would be to require all insurance companies to offer the same coverage and costs as Medicare. All hospitals would be forced to accept that, because otherwise they'd have no customers.
The Netherlands, starting with Majuscule:
I’m an American and lived in the Netherlands for several years (2012-2018). The Dutch and also the expats loved to complain about it, but I thought the Dutch system was pretty great. By far the best part of it was the transparency. My health insurance actually covered my needs- I never saw a bill. No copays, no surprise mystery bills of the kind I’ve always received in the US, even with “Cadillac” level insurance.
Who Gets Self-Determination?
March 30, 2022 · Original source
Now, it’s true that any LARP sustained long enough eventually becomes real. The Netherlands for instance was once German, and there’s even a parallel there with how Dutch consistently looks and sounds worse than German. So an independent Ukraine could, over time, become a real country. But to what end? Do we really need another mediocre Slavic country? It reminds me of Latin America, where you have dozens of barely distinguishable nonentity countries serving no real purpose. The entire region should be consolidated into maybe five states at most. Russia, Poland, and Serbia are the only Slavic states needed by the world.
I appreciate hearing ideas I never would have thought of myself, and I never ever would have thought of this. I like how it simultaneously avoids starry-eyed “all people must be free” romanticism, and hard-headed “the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must” realpolitik, in favor of the vibe of some guy from a private equity firm trying to cut operating expenses: “Did anyone here notice that we have 195 countries, some duplicating each other’s portfolios? Do we really need both a Netherlands and a Belgium? And why do we still have an Egypt? People haven’t wanted Egypts for two thousand years!”
Talpiot market3 mentions across 3 issues

Talpiot market is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between March 25, 2025 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "in the talpiot market area". It most often appears alongside 131 Colonie Center, 200 Degrees, Aaron Kaufman.

Article page
Talpiot market
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
March 25, 2025
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Sha Contact Info: Tenastralcodex[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Tuesday, May 6th, 5:00 PM Location: We'll be in the goldmund bookstore , at ekron 6 in the talpiot market area, and I will be wearing a batik/Hawaiian shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSc [remove this bit] lSIRSpdSJ6T5VJT2QAD Notes: Please RSVP on whatsapp/our group email so I know how many people will participate
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Shai Contact Info: Tenastralcodex[at]gmail[period]com Time: Wednesday, October 29, 05:00 PM Location: We'll be in the goldmund bookstore , at ekron 6 in the talpiot market area, and I will be wearing a batik/Hawaiian shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSclSIRSpd [remove this bit] SJ6T5VJT2QAD Additional Notes: Please RSVP on whatsapp/our group email so I know how many people will participate
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: shai Contact Info: Tenastralcodex[at]gmail[period]com Time: Monday, May 18th, 5:00 PM Location: We’ll be on the second floor of the Goldmund bookstore, on ekron 6 street in the talpiot market area. I will be wearing a batik/Hawaiian shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSc [remove this bit] lSIRSpdSJ6T5VJT2QAD Notes: Please RSVP on whatsapp/our group email so I know how many people will participate
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C
Telangana3 mentions across 3 issues

Telangana is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Location: The Weekend Cafe, Plot No D, 3, Vikrampuri Colony, beside vac's bakery, Vikrampuri Colony, Lane, Secunderabad, Telangana, 500015, India"; "Location: ... Secunderabad, Telangana 500015, India"; "Hyderabad, Telangana 500033, India". It most often appears alongside Aachen, ACX, ACX.

Article page
Telangana
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places
August 26, 2022 · Original source
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
Inline links: 5R4JFXXQ+P8, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RPFP4FC+34, LessWrong, Eventbrite, 5R3MVF5W+555, LessWrong, 4RJ65XM9+3Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4PWQ3V34+W6, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RRH46F4+983, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 4RQGHVVH+69, LessWrong, 8P26J3C5+462, LessWrong, 862M74PW+6XP, LessWrong, 7J4VXJF4+PR, LessWrong, our website, 7J9WFF4X+5P, LessWrong, 7JFJ4RM6+5W, LessWrong, 7JWVG6H9+8H, LessWrong, 7JPMHM9M+HG, LessWrong, 6P3QG789+F7, LessWrong, 8Q7XJPV2+QFP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, LessWrong profile, Lisette's Bangsar, 6PM34MHH+VW, LessWrong, 4VMP6QH4+86, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4V6G4GP7+GM5, LessWrong, 4VCPPQCH+FGC, LessWrong, 7Q268257+4F, LessWrong, 6PH57RGW+J8, LessWrong
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
HYDERABAD, INDIA Contact: Vatsal Contact Info: mehra[dot]vatsal[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 27th, 3:00 PM Location: The Weekend Cafe, Plot No D-3, beside vac's bakery, Vikrampuri Colony, Lane, Secunderabad, Telangana 500015, India Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7J9WFF4X+4P
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7J9WFF4X+4P
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Vatsal Contact Info: vmehra[at]pm[do t]me Time: Saturday, October 12th, 03:00 PM Location: Yellolife Cafe, 1335h, Road No. 45, Nandagiri Hills, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, Telangana 500033, India Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7J9WCCF5+RH Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7J9WCCF5+RH
Telegraph Ave3 mentions across 3 issues

Telegraph Ave is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 26, 2022 and September 07, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Rose Garden Inn, a rationalist event space at 2740 Telegraph Ave. Come in through the front gate on Telegraph"; "2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley". It most often appears alongside Berkeley, ACX MEETUP, Astralcodexten Com.

Article page
Telegraph Ave
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
September 07, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
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.
Inline links: 866MP88H+53, LessWrong, 8559FVVQ+6C, LessWrong, 849VGP8C+RRG, LessWrong, here, 849VVP5R+X7V, LessWrong, mailing list, Discord server, Facebook group, 856393VX+VQ, LessWrong, 84FW6W8H+C5, LessWrong, 8554M526+7H, LessWrong, the server, 8553XHWM+GP, LessWrong, LessWrong group, website, 8554J48R+WCX, LessWrong, Facebook event, 8544PVQ8+Q7, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Discord server, 849VQHC3+V8, LessWrong, 849W825J+6P, LessWrong, 85544VW4+RV, LessWrong, 85GP2V96+JQ, LessWrong, 85FJ9QXP+QMF, LessWrong, 85FQP2VP+9R, LessWrong, 85FPMW64+MW, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, 87H84PCH+CM, LessWrong, 87H9QFFH+J7, LessWrong, 87H9836C+8VG, LessWrong, 87C4WX33+3J, LessWrong, Facebook event, 76RWH224+44, LessWrong, 862J9RCF+G6, LessWrong, 76QXRR65+V2, LessWrong, Facebook group, Discord server, Meetup.com group, 76WWJQ2X+82, LessWrong, Discord link, 862QCPR3+PX, LessWrong, 865RXJ68+2W, LessWrong, 865QRH2F+V8, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 73H475M3+JP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, our website, 85M5JQ6P+96, LessWrong, 86GH4Q7G+H8F, LessWrong, Discord server, 86HJV9FH+84, LessWrong, Chicago Rationality, 86JJ28X9+5WQ, LessWrong, 86FM4FX6+4Q, LessWrong, our Discord, 86GMC3GG+728, LessWrong, 86CQ3F4X+VF, LessWrong, 76XFXX73+8R, LessWrong, Website, 87JC9W3M+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com, here, 87J9899F+H7H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord, 87F5774P+53, LessWrong, 86JR9WG9+R6, LessWrong, 86P8WPRW+76, LessWrong, 86F72CM8+RR, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 86CFJP4R+XV, LessWrong, 868CP4HW+CV, LessWrong, 8773X4Q3+QW, LessWrong, a Discord, LessWrong, 87G7QGW9+RJ, LessWrong, 87G7982Q+2CP, LessWrong, 85864RHJ+3H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, 85F2G46W+FG, LessWrong, 87J3W467+8P, 87G8VJRW+99, LessWrong, 87G7PX9M+4J3, LessWrong, Discord, Google Group, Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 87H7GWCH+GF, LessWrong, 87M46FM6+Q5P, LessWrong, 86HWG96Q+GC5, LessWrong, Clinton Shelter, 86FVX3C3+QF, LessWrong, 86HRMCCV+9R, LessWrong, 8674MG3C+MW, LessWrong, 84PRJWR7+XC6, LessWrong, 84PRHP5P+VQ, LessWrong, 84PR2WX4+VV, LessWrong, 84QVG8FG+V4, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, 87G562QQ+8P, LessWrong, on LessWrong, 87G2JRFX+48, LessWrong, 87F6WRXG+FQ, LessWrong, Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group, 87G2C3Q4+773, LessWrong, 87G4Q4WP+HV, LessWrong, 77CMCWVM+W32, LessWrong, 87HCRHJV+24, LessWrong, 86M5G7JH+W57, LessWrong, 867F5X2P+QHC, LessWrong, Discord server, 868M552H+XW, LessWrong, 86248746+8C, LessWrong, Austin LessWrong, JMFC+4J, LessWrong, 8645R55R+9M9, LessWrong, 76X6PHVW+5H, LessWrong, Discord, Facebook group, 8634HVG2+V9, LessWrong, 85GCP4WF+VJ, LessWrong, 87C32FPX+3H4, LessWrong, 8792CV65+5G, 8785RPX4+W3, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, Twitter, 87C4WMX6+9X, LessWrong, this Discord server, 8794HFHQ+3G, LessWrong, 87P8FQJH+8P, LessWrong, 84WVMHX3+GM, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 84VVJM7H+4Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 86MG3H3X+XW, LessWrong, Facebook event
Berkeley Meetup On Tuesday, Special Guest Daniel Ingram
February 04, 2023 · Original source
Where: Rose Garden Inn, 2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley.
Berkeley Meetup This Tuesday
September 07, 2025 · Original source
Where: Lighthaven, 2740 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley.
Inline links: Lighthaven
Tempe3 mentions across 3 issues

Tempe is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Location: Thirsty Lion Pub in Tempe"; "Location: Kiwanis Park, Tempe"; "20 W 6th St, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX, ACX MEETUP.

Article page
Tempe
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
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.
Inline links: 866MP88H+53, LessWrong, 8559FVVQ+6C, LessWrong, 849VGP8C+RRG, LessWrong, here, 849VVP5R+X7V, LessWrong, mailing list, Discord server, Facebook group, 856393VX+VQ, LessWrong, 84FW6W8H+C5, LessWrong, 8554M526+7H, LessWrong, the server, 8553XHWM+GP, LessWrong, LessWrong group, website, 8554J48R+WCX, LessWrong, Facebook event, 8544PVQ8+Q7, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Discord server, 849VQHC3+V8, LessWrong, 849W825J+6P, LessWrong, 85544VW4+RV, LessWrong, 85GP2V96+JQ, LessWrong, 85FJ9QXP+QMF, LessWrong, 85FQP2VP+9R, LessWrong, 85FPMW64+MW, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, 87H84PCH+CM, LessWrong, 87H9QFFH+J7, LessWrong, 87H9836C+8VG, LessWrong, 87C4WX33+3J, LessWrong, Facebook event, 76RWH224+44, LessWrong, 862J9RCF+G6, LessWrong, 76QXRR65+V2, LessWrong, Facebook group, Discord server, Meetup.com group, 76WWJQ2X+82, LessWrong, Discord link, 862QCPR3+PX, LessWrong, 865RXJ68+2W, LessWrong, 865QRH2F+V8, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 73H475M3+JP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, our website, 85M5JQ6P+96, LessWrong, 86GH4Q7G+H8F, LessWrong, Discord server, 86HJV9FH+84, LessWrong, Chicago Rationality, 86JJ28X9+5WQ, LessWrong, 86FM4FX6+4Q, LessWrong, our Discord, 86GMC3GG+728, LessWrong, 86CQ3F4X+VF, LessWrong, 76XFXX73+8R, LessWrong, Website, 87JC9W3M+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com, here, 87J9899F+H7H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord, 87F5774P+53, LessWrong, 86JR9WG9+R6, LessWrong, 86P8WPRW+76, LessWrong, 86F72CM8+RR, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 86CFJP4R+XV, LessWrong, 868CP4HW+CV, LessWrong, 8773X4Q3+QW, LessWrong, a Discord, LessWrong, 87G7QGW9+RJ, LessWrong, 87G7982Q+2CP, LessWrong, 85864RHJ+3H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, 85F2G46W+FG, LessWrong, 87J3W467+8P, 87G8VJRW+99, LessWrong, 87G7PX9M+4J3, LessWrong, Discord, Google Group, Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 87H7GWCH+GF, LessWrong, 87M46FM6+Q5P, LessWrong, 86HWG96Q+GC5, LessWrong, Clinton Shelter, 86FVX3C3+QF, LessWrong, 86HRMCCV+9R, LessWrong, 8674MG3C+MW, LessWrong, 84PRJWR7+XC6, LessWrong, 84PRHP5P+VQ, LessWrong, 84PR2WX4+VV, LessWrong, 84QVG8FG+V4, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, 87G562QQ+8P, LessWrong, on LessWrong, 87G2JRFX+48, LessWrong, 87F6WRXG+FQ, LessWrong, Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group, 87G2C3Q4+773, LessWrong, 87G4Q4WP+HV, LessWrong, 77CMCWVM+W32, LessWrong, 87HCRHJV+24, LessWrong, 86M5G7JH+W57, LessWrong, 867F5X2P+QHC, LessWrong, Discord server, 868M552H+XW, LessWrong, 86248746+8C, LessWrong, Austin LessWrong, JMFC+4J, LessWrong, 8645R55R+9M9, LessWrong, 76X6PHVW+5H, LessWrong, Discord, Facebook group, 8634HVG2+V9, LessWrong, 85GCP4WF+VJ, LessWrong, 87C32FPX+3H4, LessWrong, 8792CV65+5G, 8785RPX4+W3, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, Twitter, 87C4WMX6+9X, LessWrong, this Discord server, 8794HFHQ+3G, LessWrong, 87P8FQJH+8P, LessWrong, 84WVMHX3+GM, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 84VVJM7H+4Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 86MG3H3X+XW, LessWrong, Facebook event
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, USA Contact: Ben Contact Info: benjamin[dot]j[dot]morin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, May 06th, 02:00 PM Location: Kiwanis Park, Tempe, Ramada #12 next to the picnic area Coordinates: https://plus.codes/855C93F6+45P
Inline links: https://plus.codes/855C93F6+45P
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Nathan Contact Info: natoboo2000[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 14th, 03:00 AM Location: 20 W 6th St, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA Coordinates: https://plus.codes/855CC3F5+QJ Group Link: https://discord.com/invite/ANSywQABEF Notes: Please RSVP on Lesswrong so that I can get a general gauge of how many people are coming: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/Eq2PYKCMBM9cGsFQP/acx-phoenix-september-meetup
Inline links: https://plus.codes/855CC3F5+QJ, https://discord.com/invite/ANSywQABEF
Thebes3 mentions across 3 issues

Thebes is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between March 03, 2023 and January 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Sparta (200m) and Thebes (250m) would also be fine"; "Around the end, Thebes is stricken by plague"; "it was usually either Memphis or Thebes". It most often appears alongside Egypt, Rome, Assyria.

Article page
Thebes
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
March 03, 2023
Last seen
January 10, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Against Ice Age Civilizations
March 03, 2023 · Original source
The Acropolis of Athens is 150m above sea level, and would be preserved for future archaeologists. Sparta (200m) and Thebes (250m) would also be fine.
Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
November 17, 2023 · Original source
Are all myths and Bible stories really about this process? Girard says yes. For example, consider the myth of Oedipus. Around the end, Thebes is stricken by plague (Girard says plagues should usually be interpreted metaphorically as social plagues, ie discord). Everyone goes to the oracle and asks for a solution. The oracle says that someone has killed his father and married his mother, and the plague won’t end until that person is removed. It is revealed that Oedipus is the culprit. The mob expels Oedipus from the city, and the plague ends.
Book Review: Cyropaedia
January 10, 2024 · Original source
Lots of ancient civilizations started as city-states, and - even after reaching imperial glory - were still in some sense city-empires. Rome, Carthage, and Babylon are all obvious. But even the less obvious ones still fit the pattern. Assyria was centered around the city of Assur. Egypt shifted imperial centers over the dynasties, but it was usually either Memphis or Thebes. So what city did Persia start out as? What was the urban seed of Cyrus’ conquests?
Tibet3 mentions across 3 issues

Tibet is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 21, 2021 and May 19, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tibet has suffered its share of atrocities"; "oppressive policies against ... Tibet"; "Or China to Tibet and Taiwan?". It most often appears alongside China, Soviet Union, America.

Article page
Tibet
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
May 21, 2021
Last seen
May 19, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
Its historical geographic divisions have apparently held to this day, with the north controlling politics, Shanghai and central China forming an economic core, the south a perennial secessionist threat, and the interior ignored. (This book predates the genocidal campaign against the Uighurs in Xinjiang, though Tibet has suffered its share of atrocities.) Recent unification came about only after America took the threat of Japan away, and its economic rise coincided with its participation in America’s free trade network. With that change, “Instead of being raided for raw materials, China was guaranteed access to global supplies. The endless supplies of cheap labor that the Europeans and Japanese ruthlessly tapped now allowed China to generate its own goods for export, this time with the revenues flowing to the Chinese instead of overseas interests.”
Inline links: campaign against the Uighurs in Xinjiang
Dictator Book Club: Xi Jinping
April 06, 2022 · Original source
First, the power exertion. Minorities have faced especially brutal treatment. We’re all familiar with the plight of the Uighurs in Xinjiang (including concentration camps and forced sterilization). He’s continued oppressive policies against Falun Gong and Tibet, and ratcheted up state control of Hong Kong.
Inline links: concentration camps, forced sterilization
The Question Of Separatism
May 19, 2023 · Original source
The Forbidden Solution All empires eventually collapse. This is not what we would expect if empires were a good economic arrangement. If they only ever got wealthier and wealthier, they wouldn’t disintegrate into various separatist factions or end in foreign conquest. The first empire to form would have slowly absorbed everything else, and we would all be living good lives under the enlightened rule of the Sumerians or whatever. But that doesn’t happen, because empires always milk their own cities until they become poor. Modern nation-states do the same. They accumulate stress by trying to hold themselves together, and then, one day, the stress is released all at once. Wars and revolutions galore. Most countries are born that way, like new stars formed in the aftermath of a supernova. Peaceful separatism offers an alternative, Jacobs says — but only a theoretical one. Jacobs shows us a glimpse of a world in which secessions would be “a normal, untraumatic accompaniment of economic development itself.” Regions would separate when they feel the need to, before decline has set in. “In this utopian fantasy,” she writes, “young sovereignties splitting off from the parent nation would be told, in effect, ‘Good luck on your independence! Now do try your very best to generate [or maintain, as the case may be] a creative city and its region and we’ll all be better off.’” Can you imagine Canada saying this to Quebec? Or England to Scotland? Or China to Tibet and Taiwan? Yeah, me neither. That’s why it’s only theoretical and utopian. Jacobs knows very well that nations will never accept separatism as an option. And though the term “nationalist” has fallen out of fashion, almost all of us still think very much in terms of nations. Even when separatism does seem grudgingly acceptable, I’d say that’s usually either because it’s an instance of decolonization (colonial empires are decidedly out of fashion) or for cultural, nationalistic reasons. Quebecois, Scottish, or Catalan separatists say that they belong to nations that are culturally distinct from Canada, the United Kingdom, or Spain. And they love their smaller nation just as much as others love the larger one. If any of these separatists got their way, we can be sure that the new nation of Quebec, Scotland, or Catalonia would then oppose further separatism in the strongest terms. When the American South seceded from the Union in 1861, the reaction wasn’t “good luck!” even though the Union was itself the result of a secession from Great Britain. To separate for economic reasons seems forbidden. Unthinkable. For one thing, it would be selfish. If Catalonia left, the poor regions of Spain, which benefit from welfare financed in part by Barcelona, would suffer, which is obviously unacceptable to Spain. For another, it’s not guaranteed to work. Small countries and city-states can still adopt dumb economic policies. It can seem intolerably risky to go your own way, unless your region is already rich, in which case see the selfishness point above. Widespread separatism also seems worse for solving large-scale coordination problems, like environmental issues, nuclear proliferation (and, perhaps, AI), or war. I suspect that Jacobs would agree with Nassim Taleb’s antifragility framing: it’s better to be in a constant state of mild disorder than to have apparent stability that hides stressors and ends in violent conflict. But that idea is not intuitive. Most of us would pick apparent stability over mild disorder. I also suspect — and this is my personal take — that we dread the additional complexity of having numerous small countries. We look at a map of medieval Germany, like this one… … and we think, thank goodness that Germany is unified now. So much easier to think about! Can you imagine if the Our World in Data charts had to show separate lines for the Electorate of Saxony, the Prince-Bishopric of Augsburg, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and about 1,800 other semi-sovereign states? Can you imagine traveling around if each of them had its own currency? (Fun fact: the List of states in the Holy Roman Empire Wikipedia page doesn’t contain such a list. Instead it points to no less than 28 sub-lists.) Jacobs stops shy of asking, in either book, the question that seems to be the logical continuation of her reasoning: should everything be a city-state? Should we encourage separatism until each inhabited place in the world is either a city or a city region with its own currency? We can hazard a guess as to what her answer would be. She would probably say that there’s no need to upend everything right this moment. Just adopt an attitude of political openness and experimentation. Don’t try to hold together entities that don’t work that well. When separatist sentiment arises somewhere, you can argue it’s a bad idea, but don’t fight it out of emotion such as fear for your nation’s integrity. Eventually, things will settle — the regions that want to be city-states will be, and those that prefer to be united with others, for cultural or economic reasons, will stay that way. Unity has good PR and some genuine advantages, so there will still be plenty of it. But maybe Jane Jacobs never asks this question because she knows it’s irrelevant. We just can’t help fighting for our big countries and supranational unions (like the EU), and too bad if they enter long periods of stagflation until they violently collapse. This might be the right time to mention that her last book, published in 2004, is called Dark Age Ahead. IV. Something to Dislike For Everyone Jane Jacobs’s most famous book is The Death and Life of Great American Cities. She is recognized as perhaps the most influential thinker in urbanism. She is credited with saving Greenwich Village and SoHo in New York City, and helping cancel the Spadina Expressway in Toronto. To this day people organize “Jane’s Walks” as a living memorial to her impact on cities. But Jane Jacobs herself thought that her greatest intellectual contribution was not in city planning, but in economics. She thought that import replacement was her most important discovery, since it explained how wealth expands better than existing macroeconomic theories. She wrote multiple books that were explicitly about economics and was about to write another when she died, Uncovering the Economy. I am not an economist, so I might not be qualified to make a judgment on this matter, but: it seems to me that there’s a discrepancy here. Jacobs is widely seen as a great intellectual, but her economic ideas don’t quite seem mainstream. I’d never heard of import replacement before reading her book. Why not? The null hypothesis is that economists have examined her ideas and simply rejected them. There were some critical academic reviews of Cities and the Wealth of Nations when it came out, and more recently Tyler Cowen expressed his own mild skepticism. Some of the criticism involves the lack of quantitative data in her work, and her failure to think about issues of scale. The most obvious target, of course, is her city obsession: yes, cities are important, but they’re not the only economic phenomenon that matters, some would say. Perhaps Jacobs has overplayed her hand. But there are other possible explanations for the discrepancy. One is that she was a woman and had no credentials, which made it difficult for (mostly male) professionals to take her seriously. We know this was true at the beginning of her career at least. It seems possible that even after she managed to establish herself as an original urban thinker, economists had trouble accepting that she could, with her lack of any college degree, come up with new insights in their field. I doubt that’s really true today, though. We do take Jacobs seriously, and still read all of her books, which is more than we could say about most economists. Instead, I propose that the discrepancy comes from a darker place: in laboring to be comprehensive about cities and economics, she reached conclusions that most people don’t want to be true. No matter your politics, there’ll be something for you to dislike in Jacobs’s work. For example, it’s pretty clear that she didn’t think the European Union was a good idea, so she probably would have supported Brexit. Brexiters might rejoice, except that a lot of them are British nationalists who certainly don’t want Scotland to leave the UK, whereas Jacobs would agree with that. Which would be great news to Scottish independentists — except that if a new separatist movement arose within Scotland, she’d also support that. Jacobs’s ideas and grassroots activism in favor of small-scale, organic urban planning have come to be seen as left-wing — yet her criticism of national welfare programs wouldn’t make her out of place among hardcore right-wingers. Unless those right-wingers were military hawks, in which case they’d find no solace in reading Jacobs on military transactions of decline. Writing during the Cold War, Jacobs criticized the Soviet Union for its incredible centralization of decision-making in Moscow. She rightfully predicted its collapse, making her an ideological ally of the capitalist West, right? Not so, since the United States is also, according to her, too centralized and in the early stages of decay. “Today the Soviet Union and the United States each predicts and anticipates the economic decline of the other,” she writes. “Neither will be disappointed.” Whether she was correct about the US is left as an exercise to the reader. In any case, she did foresee, using her theory on cities, the decline of Japan. This must have been bold in the 1980s at the peak of the Japanese economic miracle, when there was a widespread trope that Japan would soon take over the world. Yet she was right: in 1991, Japan entered its “lost decade,” which soon became two lost decades, and then three. To be fair, she predicted the decline of all large-ish countries, so I wouldn’t mark her as a superforecaster or anything. Still, this puts in perspective the more recent trope that China is going to take over the world. No country, no ideology is safe from Jacobs’s prophecies. Smaller ideologies aren’t spared, either. Effective altruism would probably seem totally mistaken to her, since at its core it promotes an inorganic, top-down transfer of wealth from prosperous cities to poor areas. Progress studies people think that technological innovation will solve economic stagnation, but she would point out how labor-saving equipment so often causes damage when it is introduced to regions that don’t benefit from the other city forces, like the Scottish Highlands or many of her other examples in Colombia, India, or the American South. (This point would deserve an essay of its own, but reading Jacobs has made me a bit more worried about the “AI will take our jobs” thing. It’s clear that new jobs will appear, but when the technology city force from the San Francisco Bay Area reaches distant places with poor economies, which it will very soon thanks to the internet, the effects might not be very pleasant to see.) Overall, the political ideology that might fit Jacobs the best might be… libertarianism? She’s not a big fan of large governments who make big top-down decisions, clearly. Yet I don’t get the feeling that this association fits all that well either. Jacobs doesn’t seem to be anti-government if the government is at the city level. I doubt she would have liked the kind of hyperfragmented world depicted in Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. I also doubt she’d be impressed by cryptocurrency-backed “cloud cities” or fantasies of charter cities, none of which she would see as real cities in the sense of concentrated pockets of people who start replacing what they import with local production. Jane Jacobs, in sum, was an archetypal accidental moderate. She took one idea very seriously — the idea that cities are fundamental — and explored its ramifications without caring in the slightest if it led to the “wrong” opinions, as her friends in 1980 Toronto must have thought when she wrote about Quebec. I don’t know if she went too far; I’m sure someone more qualified than I am can find flaws in that core idea or any of her other observations. But to me she sounds convincing, and her consistency is frankly admirable. So, to end this review on a more review-y note, go read Jane Jacobs. Her books are a delight, with their elegant arguments and masterfully told anecdotes. Her predictions often take an air of doom, but she is also an optimist who offers constructive ways forward. She sets an example for all of us who care about getting the details right, no matter the credentialed experts, the current political climate, or the great theories of the past. Image credits Cities and the Wealth of Nations book cover: from Amazon.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sPn6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd25ceff6-f68e-4163-becf-613204a9be35_1600x1297.png, List of states in the Holy Roman Empire, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gyMq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdc388f24-009c-42ee-adca-9d5c50faaa66_932x190.png, academic, reviews, expressed, Japan would soon take over the world, fantasies, of, charter, cities, accidental moderate, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!r8Rb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60621c76-b34b-4e10-b272-394480443e1b_1600x1066.png, Amazon
Tigray3 mentions across 3 issues

Tigray is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between April 06, 2022 and October 13, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Biafra/Tigray/redrawing every border in Africa"; "local groups that are already stuck in the war-torn area instead of trying to send American staffers in themselves - I think this is what’s going on in the Joint Emergency Operation in Tigray"; "random locals in Tigray with a comparative advantage". It most often appears alongside Africa, ACX Grants, COVID.

Article page
Tigray
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
April 06, 2022
Last seen
October 13, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
April 06, 2022 · Original source
Biafra/Tigray/redrawing every border in Africa
Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID
May 29, 2025 · Original source
The third-largest category (20%, so $300 million of their total $1.5 billion yearly budget) is the types of re-re-grants people are concerned about. Sometimes they give the money to their local Catholic equivalent, like Caritas Nigeria. In some war-torn places, they give the money to local groups that are already stuck in the war-torn area instead of trying to send American staffers in themselves - I think this is what’s going on in the Joint Emergency Operation in Tigray.
Inline links: third-largest category, Caritas Nigeria, Joint Emergency Operation
Why doesn’t USAID give grants to these groups directly, instead of giving them to CRS to give grants to them? Sometimes it’s because random locals in Tigray with a comparative advantage in dodging warlords don’t also have a comparative advantage in interfacing with the US government, which demands large amounts of paperwork. Other times it’s because these are such small grants that they’re a bad match for USAID’s long application and compliance process. Still other times, it’s because CRS has more people on the ground and more expertise in figuring out who needs money.
ACX Grants Results 2025
October 13, 2025 · Original source
Lewis Wall, $50K, for therapeutic food in Ethiopia. After years of drought, war, and locusts, the Tigray region of Ethiopia is experiencing a major famine. Lewis and the Fewsi Foundation will produce a special peanut butter optimized to relieve the worst effects of childhood malnutrition. This grant will fund a giant commercial mixer to help produce the peanut butter, plus some of the raw material and distribution cost.
Toledo3 mentions across 3 issues

Toledo is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 23, 2021 and August 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "TOLEDO, OH ( RSVP )"; "a second near-disaster at Toledo's Davis-Besse plant in 2001"; "TOLEDO, OHIO, USA". It most often appears alongside France, Japan, Paris.

Article page
Toledo
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TOLEDO, OH (RSVP) Contact: Luke Zhao, lukezhao9[at]protonmail[dot]com Time: 2:00 PM, Saturday, September 18 Location: Toledo Botanical Garden. We will meet at the cluster of picnic tables near the north parking lot, a bathroom, and a water fountain. We will likely have a sign or a red balloon. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/citizenship.walnuts.preserves
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/citizenship.walnuts.preserves
Your Book Review: Safe Enough?
July 01, 2023 · Original source
The date is June 9, 1985. The place is the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio. It is just after 1:35 am, and the plant has a small malfunction: "As the assistant supervisor entered the control room, he saw that one of the main feedwater pumps had tripped offline." But instead of stabilizing, one safety system after another failed to engage.
Yet "Safe Enough?" is less of a history of events than a biography of an idea, the birth of "Probabilistic Risk Assessment" as the guiding principle for understanding and mitigating risks in complex systems. The heroes of Wellock's book are not nuclear plant night shift assistant supervisors, or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission training and assessment specialists, though they each make important cameos. The city of Toledo, Ohio is not safeguarded by watchful superheroes. It is protected by a methodology.
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
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TOLEDO, OHIO, USA Contact: Norman Perlmutter Contact Info: NLPerlmutter+ACX[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 10th, 3:00 PM Location: Toledo Botanical Garden. If coming by car, park in the north parking lot (entrance off Elmer Road). We will be at one of the picnic tables near the parking lot. I'll be wearing an orange shirt and carrying or posting on the table a sign reading ACX MEETUP. In case of bad weather, alternate location will be posted on LessWrong and on the Meetup group. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/86HRM89H+43F Group Link: meetup.com/acx_toledo Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or on the Meetup group (but not on both, it would make it harder to count RSVPs.)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/86HRM89H+43F, meetup.com/acx_toledo
TORONTO, ON3 mentions across 3 issues

TORONTO, ON is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 23, 2021 and August 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "TORONTO, ON ( RSVP )"; "TORONTO, ON". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX MEETUP, Alex.

Article page
TORONTO, ON
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
August 26, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TORONTO, ON (RSVP) Contact: Sean Aubin, seanaubin[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 1:00 PM, Sunday, September 12 Location: The Bentway, near big red art installation Coordinates: https://w3w.co/tuxedos.issued.office Notes: Note the location has changed to the Bentway, which is underneath the Gardiner Expressway, due to forecasted rain. Despite being underneath a highway, it is still quite easy to have conversations in this setting and it is well ventilated. I apologize for the last minute change and will send people to Norway Park to collect anyone confused.
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/tuxedos.issued.office
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
TORONTO, ON Contact: Sean A. (seanaubin@gmail.com) Date: May 1 Time: 1:00 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/87M2JHQR+2X Location: The Bentway, underneath the Gardener Expressway, by the picnic tables Notes: If it is colder than 10° C, I will change the location to ProteinQure with vaccine passport checks.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/87M2JHQR+2X
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places
August 26, 2022 · Original source
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.
Inline links: 9538324C+CH9, LessWrong, 9558GG82+GG, LessWrong, LessWrong, 84XR7W73+PG, LessWrong, Facebook event, this Facebook group, this Facebook group, Meetup.com, 84WRFMG9+H3, LessWrong, Facebook event, 87PRMC29+9C, LessWrong, 86MXFG26+5CV, LessWrong, on LessWrong, a website, 87Q6C84F+PM4, LessWrong, Facebook event, Facebook, LessWrong, Discord, rationalottawa@gmail.com, 87M2JHPR+X5W, LessWrong
Troy3 mentions across 3 issues

Troy is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between November 07, 2023 and July 05, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Poor shmucks don’t know Troy book rhythm"; "Paris would bring doom to Troy"; "They sailed by Troy, an instance (there’s no greater)". It most often appears alongside America, Cronus, Israel.

Article page
Troy
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
November 07, 2023
Last seen
July 05, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Hardball Questions For The Next Debate
November 07, 2023 · Original source
TRUMP: Poor shmucks don’t know Troy book rhythm. Lousy!
Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
November 17, 2023 · Original source
He also counts “the oracle said something bad would happen if we left a guy alive, so we (tried to) kill them”. For example, the oracle told Priam that Paris would bring doom to Troy, so Priam originally left him exposed to die (he didn’t).
For Girard, the important thing about all these myths is that the victimization is good and correct. The oracle was right that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother. This really was causing the plague. Expelling Oedipus really did solve the plague. Tiamat was the Dragon of Chaos; killing her and creating the world was probably a good move. Paris really did bring doom to Troy; Priam was right to try to kill him, and the only possible regret was that he didn’t finish the job.
I think Girard would counter that the problem isn’t a claim that racists are bad, the problem is the mob mentality that wants to immediately punish and destroy specific suspected racists without going through normal liberal procedures.
Your Book Review: Don Juan
July 05, 2024 · Original source
Our hero’s luck, he found, had reached its nadir: From Don to slave, Fortuna’s rash vicissitude Had struck; he met actors, sold by their traitor Of a director with no great solicitude; They sailed by Troy, an instance (there’s no greater) Of how far one can fall; and, lest we miss it, you’d Best catch the Hellespont — Byron remarks, He swam the strait once (no, that had no sharks).
Inline links: Hellespont
Tugun3 mentions across 3 issues

Tugun is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 26, 2022 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Location: A picnic table, Wyberba Street Reserve, Tugun"; "Wyberba Street Reserve, Tugun". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX, ACX MEETUP.

Article page
Tugun
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places
August 26, 2022 · Original source
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
Inline links: 5R4JFXXQ+P8, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RPFP4FC+34, LessWrong, Eventbrite, 5R3MVF5W+555, LessWrong, 4RJ65XM9+3Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4PWQ3V34+W6, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RRH46F4+983, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 4RQGHVVH+69, LessWrong, 8P26J3C5+462, LessWrong, 862M74PW+6XP, LessWrong, 7J4VXJF4+PR, LessWrong, our website, 7J9WFF4X+5P, LessWrong, 7JFJ4RM6+5W, LessWrong, 7JWVG6H9+8H, LessWrong, 7JPMHM9M+HG, LessWrong, 6P3QG789+F7, LessWrong, 8Q7XJPV2+QFP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, LessWrong profile, Lisette's Bangsar, 6PM34MHH+VW, LessWrong, 4VMP6QH4+86, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4V6G4GP7+GM5, LessWrong, 4VCPPQCH+FGC, LessWrong, 7Q268257+4F, LessWrong, 6PH57RGW+J8, LessWrong
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
GOLD COAST, QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA Contact: Lerancan Contact Info: lerancan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 8th, 2:00 PM Location: A picnic table, Wyberba Street Reserve, Tugun Coordinates: https://plus.codes/5R3MVF5W+26 Notes: I will have an ACX sign. Email me in case of bad weather/you can't find me/you can't make that time but would still like to meet etc.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/5R3MVF5W+26
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Lerancan Contact Info: lerancan[@]gmail[.]com Time: Sunday, April 19th, 2:00 PM Location: At a picnic table with an ACX sign, Wyberba Street Reserve, Tugun Coordinates: https://plus.codes/5R3MVF5W+555
Inline links: https://plus.codes/5R3MVF5W+555
Tübingen3 mentions across 3 issues

Tübingen is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between August 23, 2021 and March 25, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "TÜBINGEN, GERMANY ( RSVP )"; "TÜBINGEN, GERMANY"; "TÜBINGEN". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX, ACX MEETUP.

Article page
Tübingen
Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
March 25, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TÜBINGEN, GERMANY (RSVP) Contact: Laurenz Hemmen, laurenz[dot]hemmen[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 6:00 PM, Friday, September 3 Location: We will meet at the stairs of the Neckarbrücke to the Neckarinsel. I will carry an "ACX meetup” sign. If its' raining we will go to a nearby cafe/restaurant from there. Coordinates: https://w3w.co/crust.polished.informed
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/crust.polished.informed
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.
Inline links: 8FWR693H+GP2, LessWrong, Facebook group, 9F26RCWC+84, LessWrong, 8GJ5M8GW+J9, LessWrong, 8FQQRX38+V6W, LessWrong, 8G6MM3M3+Q6, LessWrong, 9F2P3CRW+FP7, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F7JMH38+GFP, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9GF6CPRH+MQ, LessWrong, 9GG65WMJ+2J, LessWrong, LessWrong group, 8FW4CP32+J8, LessWrong, Discord, matrix server, 8FW4V86J+GH, LessWrong, 8FM3HCQW+9H, LessWrong, https://twitter.com/lakesare, 8HH6MRQ2+WH, LessWrong, 9F28Q3HJ+9Q, LessWrong, here, 9F4MG9H4+4X, LessWrong, Google Calendar, 9F28WRMX+96H, LessWrong, 8FV9XVV2+V56, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website, an Open Street Map link, 9F5FHX4H+RXC, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8FXC2C72+85X, LessWrong, our LessWrong page, 9F3F8F6X+R6, LessWrong, Telegram group, 9F3J8CM2+PF, LessWrong, 8FWFG3H5+XR, 8FWFG3H5+XR, LessWrong, 8G95WMQR+WRP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FVXG2CW+2H, LessWrong, 9C3HVGQ7+JQ, LessWrong, LessWrong profile, 9C5M8PRP+JV, LessWrong, LessWrong, LW profile, Telegram, 8FJJXP22+HC, LessWrong, 8FQFF6C4+9C, LessWrong, 8FQH9VXG+9J, LessWrong, 8FMGPC92+R44, LessWrong, Facebook, 8FHJVHP9+8F, LessWrong, 9G86X426+Q5Q, LessWrong, 9F469V89+W4, LessWrong, Rationality NL Discord server, 9F4629FG+66, LessWrong, 9F48F378+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F37FMC5+VR, LessWrong, 9F4638J3+GP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9FFGWPH7+QP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9F6W9JJ4+JW, LessWrong, 9F2X2WVX+V2, LessWrong, Facebook event, our Facebook group, 9G346HX8+FX, LessWrong, 9F4RCW5P+X3F, LessWrong, 9G4362G8+2V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, Meetup.com, 8CCGPRJW+V8, LessWrong, 8GP8C2HM+9X, LessWrong, 8GR5QH8F+MW, LessWrong, 8GP2RCP7+G7, LessWrong, 8FWV44X9+XW8, LessWrong, 8FRP3F3X+6V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FH495QP+96, LessWrong, 8CGRC897+F8C, LessWrong, 8C9P92F6+3RG, LessWrong, 9F9HPX4C+39G, LessWrong, Facebook event, Telegram, 9FFW83RF+3M5, Facebook group, 8FR9XC2Q+4G, LessWrong, 8FR86548+J4, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8GHF22XG+23P, LessWrong, Partiful, 9C4WF3JX+7Q, LessWrong, 9C2XRVM6+3X, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9C3VFC45+RJM, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9F426439+J9, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9C3RFRHH+W2, LessWrong, 9C7RWRW9+M8, 9C6V2657+WJR, LessWrong, 9C5X6C9R+XJ, LessWrong, 9C3XGWGH+3F7, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, our mailing list, Meetup.com group, 9C5VFQG7+MH, LessWrong, Telegram, Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop, 9C7W294H+5V, LessWrong, 9C3WPQX6+QP9, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9C2P5V8V+P9, LessWrong
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Steve Contact Info: Steve[period]Bachelor[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 13th, 4:00 PM Location: Meeting in Milaneo mall courtyard, outside Starbucks, for ease of finding. Moving to my flat, above, for the main meetup. I will wear an orange t-shirt with a QR code for the EICAR string for ease of identification. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FWFQ5RM+H8 Group Link: https://discord.gg/xhr [remove this bit] uFVhj TÜBINGEN Contact: Ameya Prabhu Contact Info: ameya[period]pandurang[period]prabhu[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, April 26th, 6:30 PM Location: Neckawa, Wöhrdstraße 25. I will be carrying a sign with ACX Meetup on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FWFG396+5G Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know how big a table to book
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FWFQ5RM+H8, https://plus.codes/8FWFG396+5G
Tahoe2 mentions across 2 issues

Tahoe is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 21, 2022 and October 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "or skiing in another; two hours-plus to the ocean or Tahoe"; "you can reach SF, Monterey, Yosemite, or Tahoe for a day trip". It most often appears alongside Bakersfield, Bay Area, California.

Article page
Tahoe
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
September 21, 2022
Last seen
October 13, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Why Is The Central Valley So Bad?
September 21, 2022 · Original source
I looked for photos of the Central Valley to illustrate this article, but none of them were quite as I remember it. This one from Sacramento Bee is the closest I could find. But imagine it through a layer of haze, and also you can’t see well because you are in the process of dying from heatstroke. Of large Central Valley cities, Sacramento has a median income of $33,565 (but it’s the state capital, which inflates it with politicians and lobbyists), Fresno of $25,738, and Bakersfield of $30,144. Compare to Mississippi, where the state capital of Jackson has $23,714, and numbers 2 and 3 cities Gulfport and Southhaven have $25,074 and $34,237. Overall Missisippi comes out worse here, and none of these seem horrible compared to eg Phoenix with $31,821. Given these numbers (from Google), urban salaries in the Central Valley don’t seem so bad. But when instead I look directly at this list of 280 US metropolitan areas by per capita income, numbers are much lower. Bakersfield at $15,760 is 260th/280, Fresno is 267th, and only Sacramento does okay at 22nd. Mississippi cities come in at 146, 202, and 251. Maybe the difference is because Google’s data is city proper and the list is metro area? Still, it seems fair to say that the Central Valley is at least somewhat in the same league as Mississippi, even though exactly who outscores whom is inconsistent. III. What do the people who live in the Valley think went wrong? What The Hell Is Wrong With California’s Central Valley?, starting around 9:30, interviews a local conservative realtor (most people in the Valley are conservative; I haven’t found a liberal equivalent). He says that the farms in the Central Valley used to be manned by migrant workers, who would come from Mexico, work for a season, then go back to Mexico and live off their earnings for the rest of the year. Later, policies shifted to welcoming them and granting them citizenship, so many of them came over and brought their families. But around the same time there was a drought, the farm industry crashed, the remaining farms mechanized, all the immigrants were left without work, they got on welfare, and they weren’t able to get off of it. He doesn’t say exactly when this happened, but he says times were good when he was a child, and he looks like he’s in his 30s or 40s. So if he’s 35 and things started going bad when he was 10, that would mean he thinks things started going bad around 1995 to 2000. Here’s a story in the LA Times from 1999, which talks about how things are starting to get bad. It admits that Californians like to poke fun at the Central Valley, but it seems to be just that - poking fun - and not freaking out about poverty and dysfunction the way articles about the Valley do now. But it ends by saying that things are getting worse: To be honest, living in the Central Valley takes some getting used to, especially if you’re from the coast. It’s an acquired taste. Oppressive heat in summer. Depressing tule fog in winter. Sure, fall and spring are OK. But where aren’t they? First-rate culture is scarce. The state capital doesn’t even have a symphony. One of the attractions--it’s almost a local joke--is the ability to get away, particularly from Sacramento. It’s 90 minutes to San Francisco in one direction, or skiing in another; two hours-plus to the ocean or Tahoe […] Still, earthquakes aren’t a menace to most people. And it doesn’t take long before you begin to appreciate certain benefits--indeed, to understand that some Central Valley burgs, especially the capital, are among California’s best kept secrets. Or, at least, they have been. Continuing: When I moved here nearly 40 years ago--the first of three times--summer skies were blue and the stars bright. Fishing was easy in the rivers and pheasant hunting was 10 minutes from town--in fact, where I now live. All this good life, however, has been changing. Sacramento is now the sixth smoggiest area in the country. A gloomy, beige pall greets motorists as they descend from the Sierra. Even worse is the San Joaquin Valley, from Stockton to Bakersfield. It’s rated the nation’s fourth smoggiest region […] And this brings us to the root problem: a population explosion, fed notably by commuters spilling over the Grapevine from L.A. into Bakersfield, and from the Bay Area into the northern San Joaquin Valley, turning farms into houses and freeways into parking lots. In Sacramento, high-tech industry is generating jobs and sprawl. Up and down the valley, people without job skills are having babies and going on welfare. Many are immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia. “The population is growing at a faster pace than the economy,” notes Dan Whitehurst, a former Fresno mayor who is running again. “Livability is becoming more of an issue. But the biggest issue still is jobs.” That’s because, aside from Sacramento, the Central Valley has not cashed in on California’s economic boom. Unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley is roughly double the state average. It’s smoggy. Traffic’s getting worse. Farms are disappearing. There aren’t enough jobs. And, says pollster Mark Baldassare, people are “myopic” about their plight. It finishes: “We have a huge problem. ‘No way L.A.’ has been our slogan. But if we build nonstop houses, we’ll be worse than L.A. because we’ll have destroyed our [farm] economic base. . . . There’s no regional leadership. More state officials need to decide this area matters and poke their heads up out of the fog.” The fog and the smog. If not, one day there’ll be no getting used to the place. This is a weird article. It seems to confirm that things used to be better - nobody would call the Central Valley “the good life” now. But its concerns are smog, sprawl, and decreasing share of agriculture. These seem like the problems of somewhere that’s growing - local NIMBYs complaining that too many people want to move in. Today the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave. The piece sort of touches on poverty - “people without job skills are having babies and going on welfare” and “the population is growing at a faster pace than the economy” - but it’s still a weird emphasis, and one that makes me think of this as supporting the “problems were starting in the 90s” view. But by 2012, things were clearly very bad - here’s an article about how Census Shows Central Valley Areas Among Poorest In Nation. It says: Experts say the poverty problem in the nation’s agricultural powerhouse is deeply ingrained. The most important barrier is the valley’s lack of economic diversity. There are simply too few good nonagricultural jobs around and jobs in agriculture tend to be low-wage ones — except for those who run agribusinesses. “It’s a pretty ag-heavy region, so the inequality of wages and the opportunity to earn better wages is really skewed,” said Caroline Farrell, executive director of the Delano-based Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. “If you own a farm, you’re apt to earn more wealth, while if you’re a farmworker, don’t earn very much.” The valley has not been able to bring or retain many new companies partly because it lacks a qualified workforce, said Atonio Avalos, associate professor of economics at Fresno State University. “We have an issue of skills mismatch,” Avalos said. “Companies may be offering jobs, but the skills of people in the valley are not ones they are looking for.” Students who want to get a college degree face many barriers, he said, and public funding for education is being slashed. Those who do graduate leave to find jobs elsewhere. The valley also doesn’t offer attractive amenities and has serious problems such as air pollution that have gone unaddressed. “If you’re a doctor or engineer, there are other places where you can make good money and live in better conditions,” Avalos said. “Many people don’t come here or leave because of the high incidence of asthma and other respiratory problems.” This sounds like things were already pretty bad in 2012, maybe bad enough that they must have been getting worse for longer than 10 or 15 years, I don’t know. IV. What do the data say? Here are some economic time series. I couldn’t find any good long-term ones; the least bad one comes from this unsourced report: Here it looks like things got worse from 1975 - 1985, and then depending on county there was a slower-to-imperceptible decline thereafter. FRED only has data since 1989, but agrees that things haven’t gotten worse since then. Here’s unemployment: Is this just because people got discouraged (or on welfare) and stopped seeking employment, and so stopped showing up in the statistics? Here’s a graph of Total Employed Persons: In 1990, 303,000 people were employed out of a population of 354,000. In 2022, 430,000 people were employed out of a population of 542,000. So labor participation rate went from 86% to 79%. But national labor force participation decreased by about the same amount during that time, so I don’t think we should overemphasize that. And here are some other graphs I found useful: Fresno housing prices: Racial demographics: Source: Wikipedia. Central Valley cities like Fresno and Bakersfield aren’t really more Hispanic than other parts of California or Arizona, so if immigration or racial issues played a part it must have been more complicated than just numbers. Number of immigrants in California over time: Factors of productivity in agriculture: V. So why is the Central Valley so bad? It’s an agricultural region, but lots of places are agricultural. It got lots of immigrants, but no more than many other places. It’s polluted - but so was LA, and LA rebounded. This is just a weak guess, but I think it starts with their crops. The Midwest grows mostly corn and wheat. The Central Valley is more fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Corn and wheat are easier to harvest, so middle-class farmers can own the farm and buy a mechanical harvester or something. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts benefit from intensive manual picking, so farm owners hire outside labor. According to Carolina Demography: There are about 3 million farmworkers in the United States: about two million are family farmworkers and another one million are hired farmworkers…nationally, about three-fourths of hired farmworkers are foreign-born; most (69%) were born in Mexico; 6% were born in Central America; and 1% were born in another country. Given that these are mostly Mexican immigrants, we’re probably not talking about people who are hired to grow corn in Kansas. I think plausibly the majority of US hired farmworkers live in California’s Central Valley. This makes it a sort of plantation agriculture system, which naturally tends towards landowners taking all the gains and workers ending up as an underclass. In the mid-20th century, the local plantation underclass was made of Okies (cf. The Grapes of Wrath). In the later 20th century, many immigrants moved in, lowering wages. Although immigrants don’t usually lower wages, this is because there are usually lots of industries for people to branch out into, but the Central Valley only has agriculture. Also, agribusinesses were becoming better at mechanizing their operations. Although technology doesn’t usually lower wages, again, this requires lots of diverse industries, and the Central Valley only had agriculture. All of this corresponds to the 1975-1985 period on the graphs where wages were going down. But it sounded from some of the testimonials above like the Central Valley didn’t become truly miserable until the late 90s. I’m not sure why this is. It could be the immigrants switching from being migrant laborers to raising families, and those families were impacted by poverty and inequality in a way the original migrants weren’t. It could be worsening drug problems as new drugs get invented and go down in price. (I’m not sure if NIMBYism and rising house prices also played a part. House prices do seem to have risen, a lot, but I was under the impression that building things in the Central Valley was easy and most of a house’s price there is construction rather than land. I’m not sure why house prices would have gone up so much since 1990 if this were true, though.) Other things that the articles I read emphasized: There’s a severe drought in the Central Valley right now. This is probably partly climate change, partly bad luck, and partly California diverting water to hydrate growing coastal cities. This has made everything worse (but then why isn’t that reflected in worsening economic statistics?)
Inline links: Sacramento Bee, from Google, list of 280 US metropolitan areas by per capita income, What The Hell Is Wrong With California’s Central Valley, Here’s a story, Census Shows Central Valley Areas Among Poorest In Nation, this unsourced report, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!viUA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3cb60f00-5048-44dc-8ad3-49d9036437e8_632x382.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jJHH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf442355-432b-4ac1-b10d-2ebf17011084_1151x345.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oETP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe3e7f8-9e13-4295-b608-d071425d6adc_1116x300.png, decreased by about the same amount, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!is_P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F09af8185-c8cf-4879-999c-4643ec7d7079_989x590.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!K8wW!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce47fbd-0a84-4461-a96c-07a2d8130d4e_412x104.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vvxn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe95d035a-8dea-410c-8b8f-19acb145859e_676x356.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xlsr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F36965205-4cb9-4f93-b855-91cc6b9047b5_450x397.png, Carolina Demography, Okies
Highlights From The Comments On The Central Valley
October 13, 2022 · Original source
Also, your categorization of the region as being a strategic location by which you can escape is spot on. People would talk about how great it is that you can reach SF, Monterey, Yosemite, or Tahoe for a day trip quite frequently.
Taiwan Strait2 mentions across 2 issues

Taiwan Strait is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 19, 2022 and September 05, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "posed a serious threat to public order all along the southeast coast, from Shanghai to the Taiwan Strait"; ""in the waters off the Taiwan Strait"". It most often appears alongside China, 1587, 1587.

Article page
Taiwan Strait
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
August 19, 2022
Last seen
September 05, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance
August 19, 2022 · Original source
The “Japanese pirates” were not much like Captain Morgan or Jack Sparrow - they were really more like Vikings. Annual raiding parties would sail in from Japan, where they would set up armed bandit camps and raid the surrounding countryside. Often joined by disenfranchised or disgruntled locals, they posed a serious threat to public order all along the southeast coast, from Shanghai to the Taiwan Strait.
Inline links: Japanese pirates
My Presidential Platform
September 05, 2023 · Original source
(source) The American rich already enjoy spending their money on exciting vehicles - yachts for the normies, rockets for the more ambitious, Titanic submersibles for the suicidal. Why not redirect this impulse towards public service? Imagine the fear it would strike into the hearts of the Chinese when the USS Musk enters Ludicrous Mode in the waters off the Taiwan Strait, with Elon himself at the wheel. Imagine how efficiently the USS Jeff Bezos will deliver its payloads! And does anyone doubt that billionaires - usually careful to avoid taxes - will jump at the chance to do this? The Athenians had a parallel liturgy for rich people who would select and sponsor theater productions, but I think we can skip this one for now. Make Sovereign Citizens Real As President, I would encourage Congress to pass sweeping legislation rewriting the US tax code to have bizarre loopholes based on the difference between “legal” and “actual” people, with special reference to World War I and the beginning of income taxes in the 1910s. These would include, but not be limited to: Legal documents that use someone’s names in ALL CAPS will refer to something subtly different than ones that use names in lowercase.
Inline links: source
Taj Mahal2 mentions across 2 issues

Taj Mahal is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 04, 2021 and July 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "or the Taj Mahal, relatively cheaply and easily"; "Indian people getting angry about the Taj Mahal". It most often appears alongside Twitter, UK, Wikipedia.

Article page
Taj Mahal
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
October 04, 2021
Last seen
July 01, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
October 04, 2021 · Original source
I want this one to be true, because it exonerates our civilization. If we could make things like the Art Nouveau furniture above, or the Taj Mahal, relatively cheaply and easily, then the question of why we aren’t doing that demands an answer. If it’s just a quirk of basic economics, then our civilization is fine, and maybe we can hope that stoneworking technology advances to the point where we can do this kind of thing again cheaply.
I'm sure there are other examples as well, but these were the first two that came to mind. Both are very very impressive IRL! In particular, the pietra dura work on the Sheikh Zayed mosque is very similar in both style and quality to that of the Taj Mahal.
Links For June
July 01, 2022 · Original source
41: Indian people getting angry about the Taj Mahal. I cannot claim to completely understand this discussion, but I feel like I have broadened my horizons in some important way.
Inline links: Indian people getting angry about the Taj Mahal
Tallahassee2 mentions across 2 issues

Tallahassee is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "TALLAHASSEE, FL"; "TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA, USA". It most often appears alongside 3806 Williams Rd, San Jose, CA 95117, 9191 Tahoe Ln, Boulder, CO 80301, Aachen.

Article page
Tallahassee
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
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.
Inline links: 866MP88H+53, LessWrong, 8559FVVQ+6C, LessWrong, 849VGP8C+RRG, LessWrong, here, 849VVP5R+X7V, LessWrong, mailing list, Discord server, Facebook group, 856393VX+VQ, LessWrong, 84FW6W8H+C5, LessWrong, 8554M526+7H, LessWrong, the server, 8553XHWM+GP, LessWrong, LessWrong group, website, 8554J48R+WCX, LessWrong, Facebook event, 8544PVQ8+Q7, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Discord server, 849VQHC3+V8, LessWrong, 849W825J+6P, LessWrong, 85544VW4+RV, LessWrong, 85GP2V96+JQ, LessWrong, 85FJ9QXP+QMF, LessWrong, 85FQP2VP+9R, LessWrong, 85FPMW64+MW, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, 87H84PCH+CM, LessWrong, 87H9QFFH+J7, LessWrong, 87H9836C+8VG, LessWrong, 87C4WX33+3J, LessWrong, Facebook event, 76RWH224+44, LessWrong, 862J9RCF+G6, LessWrong, 76QXRR65+V2, LessWrong, Facebook group, Discord server, Meetup.com group, 76WWJQ2X+82, LessWrong, Discord link, 862QCPR3+PX, LessWrong, 865RXJ68+2W, LessWrong, 865QRH2F+V8, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 73H475M3+JP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, our website, 85M5JQ6P+96, LessWrong, 86GH4Q7G+H8F, LessWrong, Discord server, 86HJV9FH+84, LessWrong, Chicago Rationality, 86JJ28X9+5WQ, LessWrong, 86FM4FX6+4Q, LessWrong, our Discord, 86GMC3GG+728, LessWrong, 86CQ3F4X+VF, LessWrong, 76XFXX73+8R, LessWrong, Website, 87JC9W3M+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com, here, 87J9899F+H7H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord, 87F5774P+53, LessWrong, 86JR9WG9+R6, LessWrong, 86P8WPRW+76, LessWrong, 86F72CM8+RR, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 86CFJP4R+XV, LessWrong, 868CP4HW+CV, LessWrong, 8773X4Q3+QW, LessWrong, a Discord, LessWrong, 87G7QGW9+RJ, LessWrong, 87G7982Q+2CP, LessWrong, 85864RHJ+3H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, 85F2G46W+FG, LessWrong, 87J3W467+8P, 87G8VJRW+99, LessWrong, 87G7PX9M+4J3, LessWrong, Discord, Google Group, Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 87H7GWCH+GF, LessWrong, 87M46FM6+Q5P, LessWrong, 86HWG96Q+GC5, LessWrong, Clinton Shelter, 86FVX3C3+QF, LessWrong, 86HRMCCV+9R, LessWrong, 8674MG3C+MW, LessWrong, 84PRJWR7+XC6, LessWrong, 84PRHP5P+VQ, LessWrong, 84PR2WX4+VV, LessWrong, 84QVG8FG+V4, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, 87G562QQ+8P, LessWrong, on LessWrong, 87G2JRFX+48, LessWrong, 87F6WRXG+FQ, LessWrong, Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group, 87G2C3Q4+773, LessWrong, 87G4Q4WP+HV, LessWrong, 77CMCWVM+W32, LessWrong, 87HCRHJV+24, LessWrong, 86M5G7JH+W57, LessWrong, 867F5X2P+QHC, LessWrong, Discord server, 868M552H+XW, LessWrong, 86248746+8C, LessWrong, Austin LessWrong, JMFC+4J, LessWrong, 8645R55R+9M9, LessWrong, 76X6PHVW+5H, LessWrong, Discord, Facebook group, 8634HVG2+V9, LessWrong, 85GCP4WF+VJ, LessWrong, 87C32FPX+3H4, LessWrong, 8792CV65+5G, 8785RPX4+W3, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, Twitter, 87C4WMX6+9X, LessWrong, this Discord server, 8794HFHQ+3G, LessWrong, 87P8FQJH+8P, LessWrong, 84WVMHX3+GM, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 84VVJM7H+4Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 86MG3H3X+XW, LessWrong, Facebook event
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Ethan Contact Info: ethanhuyck[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Thursday, September 12th, 07:00 PM Location: We will meet at the pavilion at UCF by the Breezeway, I will have a sign Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76WWJQ2X+72R Group Link: https://discord.com/invite/yKP4v4hC TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA, USA Contact: James Contact Info: Jamesmzech[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 13th, 06:00 PM Location: Oyster City brewery (603 W Gaines St #7, Tallahassee, FL 32304). I’ll be wearing nondescript clothing and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862QCPP5+4P
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76WWJQ2X+72R, https://discord.com/invite/yKP4v4hC, https://plus.codes/862QCPP5+4P
Contact: James Contact Info: Jamesmzech[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Friday, September 13th, 06:00 PM Location: Oyster City brewery (603 W Gaines St #7, Tallahassee, FL 32304). I’ll be wearing nondescript clothing and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/862QCPP5+4P
Inline links: https://plus.codes/862QCPP5+4P
TAMARINDO2 mentions across 2 issues

TAMARINDO is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 30, 2024 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "TAMARINDO"; "TAMARINDO, COSTA RICA". It most often appears alongside 200 Degrees, 4th Ave Food Park, Aachen.

Article page
TAMARINDO
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
March 30, 2024
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
TAMARINDO Contact: Timeless Contact Info: pvspam-acxorganiser[at]hacklab[dot]net Time: Sunday, April 7th, 1:00 PM Location: El Mercadito Food Court Coordinates: https://plus.codes/762P75X5+QMR Notes: Feel free to bring kids/dogs. I will wear a nerdy t-shirt and stay close to Asian Fusion Sushi section of the court.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/762P75X5+QMR
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Iñaki Contact Info: inaki[dot]escarate[a t]gmail[do t]com Time: Saturday, September 28th, 11:30 AM Location: Parque Bicentenario, next to the Vitacura municipality, next to the stairs and fountain. We'll have a sign that says "ACX" Coordinates: https://plus.codes/47RFJ92X+J8 Notes: English and Spanish speakers welcome! Costa Rica TAMARINDO, COSTA RICA Contact: timeless Contact Info: pvspam-timeless-acx[at]hacklab[dot]net Time: Sunday, September 15th, 01:30 PM Location: El Mercadito, near Asian Fusion Sushi Coordinates: https://plus.codes/762P75X5+QMG Notes: Wear a nerdy tshirt. I will wear a nerdy tshirt. This is a surfer town, so anyone with math or philosophy on their tshirt is probably one of us. Mercadito is a small food court, but I'll get as close to Asian Fusion sushi as possible, and may order some before we begin.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/47RFJ92X+J8, https://plus.codes/762P75X5+QMG
Tampa, FL2 mentions across 2 issues

Tampa, FL is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 23, 2021 and June 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "TAMPA, FL ( RSVP )"; "Tampa, FL". It most often appears alongside Austin, Berlin, Brazil.

Article page
Tampa, FL
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
August 23, 2021
Last seen
June 27, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
TAMPA, FL (RSVP) Contact: A.D., aka[dot]eden[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 4:30 PM, Saturday, October 2 Location: Water Works Park, in front of Ulele Coordinates: https://w3w.co/smarter.slice.chef
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/smarter.slice.chef
Your Review: Alpha School
June 27, 2025 · Original source
Tampa, FL
Tavernola2 mentions across 2 issues

Tavernola is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 24, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "From the parish bulletin of Tavernola"; "The parish priest of Tavernola"; "At Ghiaie, the miracle was seen 15-25 miles away to the east (in Tavernola)". It most often appears alongside A Ordem, Abraham Lincoln, ACX.

Article page
Tavernola
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
October 01, 2025
Last seen
October 24, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
October 01, 2025 · Original source
The Hindu milk miracle of 1995. Starting from the bottom: In 1995, a man in New Delhi noticed that an idol of the elephant-god Ganesh seemed to be really drinking the glass of milk left as an offering. The story went viral - or as viral as things could go in 1995 - and Hindus around the world noticed the same thing. There was “an increase in overall milk sales in New Delhi by over 30%”. Scientists investigated and determined that a sculpted stone elephant trunk could sometimes absorb milk through capillary action. This was a story about rumor, interpretation, and context, but not really “hallucination”. The drinking effect was real. The Halifax Slasher was a typical supercriminal story. Two women reported being attacked by a mysterious and oddly-dressed knifeman; others followed. “Vigilante groups were set up on the streets, and several people, mistakenly assumed to have been the attacker, were beaten up; business in the town was all but shut down”. Although there was a Halifax resident with a history of knife crime, “he was quickly ruled out of the 1938 attacks on account of his large nose, which none of the 1938 victims had described”. Eventually several of the victims admitted to having made it up, and the whole thing went away. Supercriminal cases most often result from people making things up. Occasionally, seemingly-honest people report seeing the supercriminal in poor lighting conditions across a dark alley or something. But even if we consider these to be “hallucinations”, it is usually the one or two most vulnerable people in a town at the time. I can’t find any examples of true “mass hallucinations” - entire towns seeing a nonexistent supercriminal or monster at the same time. Koro is the psychosomatic disease par excellence; I’ve written about it before here. Victims, always male, believe that their penis has disappeared or retracted into their body; they often blame penis-stealing witches. Koro occurs at some very low background rate in every society (including ours), but occasionally wells up into mass panics in primitive cultures that take witchcraft seriously and have traditions of worrying about this sort of thing. Still, I don’t think any panic ever affects more than half of a village’s males, and usually not at the exact same time; it’s a smoldering panic over days or weeks, not a single instant of horrified realization. Also, although I’m not sure and would love to learn more about this, I don’t think the koro victim is having a visual hallucination of not having a penis at all. I think they think their penis is much smaller or shorter than it should be - which only requires some sort of obsessive worrying and (perhaps motivated) mis-remembering of its normal length. None of these are “mass hallucinations” in the sense where the sorts of visual hallucinations typical of certain mentally ill people occur en masse in a crowd of thousands with >50% prevalence - that is, the type of mass hallucination that would be required to explain Fatima. As far as I know, there are no confirmed cases of this ever happening. Still, from the Hindu milk miracle, we can learn that religious people can miss a real phenomenon for a long time, then notice it all at once with great fanfare. And from the koro cases, we can learn that a rare phenomenon can become more common in situations of widespread belief and social pressure. Interlude: It Seems Like Years Since It’s Been Clear This is around the stopping point of the previous Substack discussion. I’ve tried to cover most of Ethan and Evan’s arguments, go through the chain of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, and maybe pull on a few of the more tempting loose threads that they’ve left. As best I can tell, this level of investigation ends in a decisive victory for the believers. They have a stock of seemingly-unimpeachable testimonies; the skeptics have only a few leads that don’t seem on track to pan out. Eye damage can maybe produce a few odd effects, but - in the entire history of tens of billions of people living daily underneath a sun that they are able to view at any moment - we have not yet found anyone who reports the full constellation of Fatima experiences just from seeing the sun. No exotic weather phenomenon is a perfect match. Mass hallucinations are real but comparatively weak. At least this is my assessment. Skeptic blogs don’t agree. They propose one of these things (with no consensus as to which one) then act like they’ve debunked the miracle, then skip to the really important part: laughing at how obviously wrong it is. I’ve written before about my disappointment in the skeptical community and why it worries me, and here I feel it as acutely as ever. Sitting with my disappointment and trying to put it into words, I think my worries come down to a tangling of the Bayesian graph. The straightforward Bayesian way to do this is to start with some prior probability that there is a God who causes miracles (let’s say 1%), notice that the evidence for Fatima being a miracle naively seems very high (let’s say 90%), multiply out, and end up with a higher (8.3%) probability of God’s existence and a lower (8.3%) chance that Fatima in particular was miraculous. This is liberating. It lets you say “This piece of evidence is very strong, but my prior is very low, so even without being able to debunk the evidence, I continue to disbelieve.” But doing this the straightforward Bayesian way doesn’t work. First of all, what would it mean to naively (even before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles) say Fatima seems 90% likely to be miraculous. Before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles, surely the probability is much higher! But also, if you try this, then as soon as you find two similar miracles (I’ve been told the next two are the Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio and the Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg) your probability of God goes up to 88%! But I don’t think there’s any real atheist whose probability would rise in such a straightforward linear way. You need some kind of model where either it’s almost trivially possible to generate an arbitrary number of convincing-yet-false miracles, or it isn’t. But this doesn’t match the “virtuous” approach of addressing each miracle on its own terms - where you try to understand the Sun Miracle by learning things about the sun, or entoptic phenomena, or 1910s Portugal. And it does match the skeptical approach I’m complaining about, where you say “it’s probably swamp gas or something, lol, imagine being so dumb that you believe in miracles.” So I cannot object too strongly. Still, my greatest fear in this and all other problems of reasoning method is the trapped prior, where people take this too far and become impervious to evidence entirely. I think it’s worth untangling the whole Bayesian graph, trying to keep this whole structure in mind, if it prevents people from accidentally propagating an update down a logical chain, then propagating the same update back up the chain, again and again, ad infinitum, until they become arbitrarily sure of themselves. “We can be sure all miracle claims, even the convincing ones, are false, because there’s no God - and we can be sure there’s no God because all miracle claims are so risibly false.” Even if this is harmless - even if it turns out correct in the case of religion - it teaches such dangerous habits of mind that I’m willing to err in the direction of going way too far taking such claims seriously - at least in the “entertaining an idea without accepting it” sense. Everyone gets to decide what is and isn’t worth their time. I think deciding that these sorts of miracles aren’t worth your time is fine, as long as you’re propagating all the probabilities correctly and not accidentally treating your own hurriedness as a cause to update the rest of your belief graph. As for me, I don’t know, I just find this fascinating. In Evan’s skeptical take on the conversation, he starts strong, but after the topic switches to Part LXXVII of Dalleur’s discussion of photograph angles, he stops and asks: What the fuck are we doing? What are we talking about? What have I spent (conservatively) 18 hours of my life on? We’re addressing what Stanley Jaki called the most important event of the 20th century! We’re debating the existence of God, the most important question possible! If God is real, then nothing could be more important than establishing this: in the best case, we will come to believe; at worst, we will be able to tell St. Peter that our failure was honest and not from lack of trying. If He is not, then we can do whatever we want here on Earth, and surely one of the noblest ways to spend our short existence is expanding the frontiers of the known into the borderlands of mystery! In particular, if the God of Fatima exists, we are in deep trouble. I said I wouldn’t talk about exactly what the Virgin Mary told the child-seers, but the short version is that the First Secret was a very, very nasty vision of Hell. It looked exactly the way a ten-year-old child might expect: a lake of fire populated by ebon-skinned demons and horrendous tortures; the lead child-seer said that if the Virgin had not begun by promising that she personally would never go there, “she would have died of fright”. As it was, the consequences of the vision were grim. The child-seers got it into their minds that they could perhaps save sinners from the fire by “doing penance”. They drank only stagnant, scum-encrusted water, in the hopes that this might help some otherwise hell-bound soul; on some especially hot days, they ceased drinking water at all. When they found particularly painful ropes, they tied them around their bodies so hard that they bled (later, the Virgin mercifully told them they didn’t need to wear the ropes at night - they could stick to daytime only). After so many mortifications, they were easy prey for the Spanish Flu; two of the three perished before their tenth birthday. As they lay dying in the hospital, they were recorded as freaking out every time they saw a nurse or visitor with “immodest dress”, saying that they would not act in such a way if they knew how long Eternity was, or what awaited them there5. If all of this is the true opinion of the Lord of the Universe, we had better figure it out quick. If it isn’t, then the words of the Grupo Anticlerical: People! Let us always fight! From the victory of progress, science, freedom, and free thought, will result human happiness, joy, love, fraternity, respect for women, veneration for mothers, adoration for children, affection for the elderly, protection for the sick, the unfortunate, the tortured . . . O most holy mothers! O holy, pious mothers who so love your sweet little children! Have compassion on your beautiful little children, sacred fruits of your blessed wombs! …take on new meaning and urgency. I will admit my bias: I hope the visions of Fatima were untrue, and therefore I must also hope the Miracle of the Sun was a fake. But I’ll also admit this: at times when doing this research, I was genuinely scared and confused. If at this point you’re also scared and confused, then I’ve done my job as a writer and successfully presented the key insight of Rationalism: “It ain’t a true crisis of faith unless it could go either way”. But now that we’ve let Ethan, Evan, and the rest dig us into as deep a hole as possible, let’s try to dig our way out. 3: Our Lady Of Everywhere Else One question that Ethan, Evan, and Dalleur fail to ask is: what if people are basically always seeing the sun spin and change colors and and fall from the sky? What if this is the most common experience in the world? What if it’s a minor miracle every time you get more than a handful of people together and they don’t fall down in awe and terror at the manifestations of the sun? Goncado Xavier de Almeida Garrett is one of the star witnesses of the Fatima miracle, quoted above. His testimony comes from a letter written to Father Formigao, a local priest, about two months after the event. But although pro-Fatima sources quote the testimony at the beginning of the letter, they conveniently leave out what follows: I ask your excellency to please tell me if you confirm this narrative: the Bishop of Portalegre and Mrs. Maria de Jesus Raposo report that while they were with other people in Torres Novas, on the 20th of October at the end of the day, they saw the sun rotate and change its colors. They said this was different from Fátima and did not have the importance of October 13th. I would like clarification on the differences. It is urgent to know what the differences are, since they attended both […] Until now, no one saw the sun's sparkling rotations, and now everyone sees them many days and many times. Many days and many times? Remember, the Virgin Mary first appeared at Fatima on May 13. She promised to return on the 13th of each successive month until October, when she would perform a great miracle. But she never said she wouldn’t perform any miracles until October. So on the 13th of each month, a medium-sized crowd gathered. They didn’t leave disappointed. I won’t include every claimed supernatural occurrence, but here are the ones relevant to our subject: Olimpia de Jesus, about July 13: [On July 13], at her sister-in-law's house, when they heard the people shouting, he asked, "What's going on over there?" [Olimpia] looked at the sun and said, "The sun is different." The people came and reported that they had seen signs in the sun and in the sky. Joaquim Inacio Vicente, about August 13: This hour was a moment of terror for all who were there. Some lost their senses, others believed it to be the last day of their lives and their day of Judgment, and for some, afterwards, it was a wonder to see the admirable colors that successively took on the clouds that obscured the sun's rays—colors from bright red to pink and from there to blue—the color of anise, as several people declared to me minutes later in my home. Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, about August 13: Everyone looked up at the sky, which was covered by a light cloud, like a very fine white lace, pink in places. The sun, which had been completely hidden for a moment, left us illuminated by a strange light, with yellow spots visible on the ground and above us all, and a great drop in temperature, as happens during a solar eclipse. Manuel Pedro Marto, about August 13 and September 13: [On August 13, he] saw a kind of luminous globe rotating in the clouds […] On September 13th, he also went to Cova da Iria. He was a little away from the children. He saw nothing, nor heard anything, but he heard that some people had seen extraordinary things in the atmosphere. Joaquim Xavier Tuna, about August 13 and September 13: On the 13th of August, I saw the sun lower in the sky at the hour of its appearance. It never lowered as much as that time, not even on October 13th. All the objects around me turned yellow. On September 13th, I saw a large cross emerge from the sun and head east. Its progress was not very hurried. Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it disappeared, until it disappeared from view. I also saw other things that I cannot explain. In the Lapas area, there were people who, at the same time, saw the cross. Then there was the great miracle on October 13. Remember, I was only able to find a handful of negative testimonies - people who said they didn’t see it. One was from a woman named Leonor das Dores Salema Manoel, who said she saw “nothing of what others saw”, at least at Fatima. But on the drive home from Fatima that evening6: I saw [the sun] pass through different colors that I can't remember and it turned green, very light green, like a green salad with a golden rim around it, and spinning. Very long rays seemed to touch the earth and the sun seemed to be separated from the sky. Then the sky took on pink flashes, changing to a yellowish hue around the sun, and further away, spots here and there. After a few long moments that I can't remember, it returned to normal and I couldn't look at it again. The next occurence was early the following year. From the parish inquiry’s interview with Jacinto de Almedia Lopes: He further said that on the day of Our Lady of Purification, that is, on the second of February, 1918, he about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, being in the same place, he noticed signs in the sun identical to those of the thirteenth of October, which he had not noticed on many other days when he had been there. And next, from a letter by Gilberto Fernandes dos Santos: I must inform you that I went to Fátima on [June 13, 1920]… at that very moment, the people were kneeling on the ground, shouting, praying loudly, weeping, begging forgiveness with their hands raised, because they were witnessing a solar phenomenon similar to that of October 13, 1917. And next, from Dr. Henrique Weiss de Oliviera, describing events on May 13, 1923: I ate my meal in a car on the road near Cova da Iria [in Fatima], from half past noon to one in the afternoon, and when I returned to the Chapel, I heard the groups I passed exclaiming in admiration about a marvelous phenomenon that they claimed was occurring in the sun toward which they were directing their gaze. Deeply doubting the repetition of the marvelous phenomena that had dazzled thousands of people, according to reliable reports, during the last apparition of Our Lady in 1917, I was about to pass on without even bothering to look. I remembered, however, that when I first went to Fátima on October 13th of last year, and upon hearing similar admiring rumors around me, I had seen nothing during my quick inspection, perhaps because I was filled with that spirit of doubt. I therefore wanted to be certain this time so that I could, with full awareness, give my testimony to whoever and whenever I was asked. And, having stopped near a group and stared at the sun, carefully shielding my eyes from the direct sunlight, so as not to see anything, they immediately advised me to insist that I would see something. It took a long insistence to finally see what amazed everyone and caused astonishment that I could not see it. And I saw with precise clarity, and twice, what the common people, in their imaginary language, very accurately likened to: almond blossom petals. They fell from a great height (no longer seeing them detach from the sun as the people around me saw them) For myself, I finally, and after a considerable time, concluded that there is no such natural phenomenon, neither known nor described, thus leaning toward the supernatural. Today I firmly believe that this was the case, because I have had testimonies that allow me to reconstruct the phenomenon as it appears to have occurred according to these testimonies. First, one could gaze at the sun for a long time and with impunity, seeing magnificent phenomena of beauty and color; then began an abundant rain of the aforementioned petals; and when I arrived, it was no longer possible to gaze at the sun, and the phenomenon, which had been quite lengthy, was at its end, which explains my difficulty in witnessing it now. And from Joao Amael, on October 13, 1925: I do not know why, I suddenly felt a desire to look at the sun. [I would hear] other educated persons admit having seen phenomena in the sun on that day and hour. I looked at the sun. Before that, nothing special could be seen. But now I looked at the sun without hurting my eyes, without any retina resisting. I became more intent. To my astonishment, the sight became even clearer. The sun turned on itself in a very small circle, and in the center it turned into a dark disk in rapid rotation. During some minutes, very impressive and overwhelming, I could clearly verify this strange process. Then, without revealing anything of what I observed, for fear of autosuggestion, I asked my companion to look at the sun and see whether it really appeared. And my companion was describing exactly the phenomenon, the same extraordinary phenomenon. The test was achieved. And I gained further assurance, when various other people later told me that they had seen what I saw clearly, at the same hour, as they kept looking at the sun, without the slightest sensation of pain. Amael’s report of a miracle in 1925 is the last recorded case I can find at Fatima. I don’t know if this was when the sun miracles stopped happening there, or when people stopped including them in the Critical Documents collection. In either case, there were plenty of other places willing to pick up the torch. 3.1: The Ghiaie Variations As far as I can tell, Fatima was only the second-largest crowd to have ever witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. The largest was a group of 200,000 - 300,000 people in Ghiaie, a tiny village near Bonate, Italy. On May 13th, 1944 - the same day of the year that the child-seers of Fatima saw their first apparition - a seven-year old girl went out to pick flowers and had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin promised to return to her for nine successive evenings; at some point (although I cannot follow this part of the story) she must also have promised to return four times the following week, as large crowds gathered in expectation. According to my source, on the ninth appearance: Many testimonies from the site of the apparition and from surrounding villages described an impressive solar phenomenon. The sun came out of the clouds, whirled dizzily on itself, and projected beams of yellow, green, red, blue, and violet light in all directions. The beams of light colored the clouds, fields, trees, and the stream of people. After a few minutes the sun stopped its whirling, and those phenomena began soon again. Many noticed that the disc had turned white like a Host. The clouds seemed to be lowering down on the people. Some noticed a Rosary in the sky. Others saw a majestic Our Lady with a trailing cloak. Some people, who were at greater distance, saw Our Lady's face looming in the sun. From nearby Bergamo many witnesses observed the sun become pale and radiate all of the rainbow's colors in all directions. They also noticed a large yellow light beam falling over Ghiaie, perpendicularly. The blog says there were similar solar phenomena during the tenth and twelfth appearances, as well as on the following June 13th and July 13th7. All of this is from a random Catholic blog; can we find clear testimonies? The miracle of Fatima was heavily promoted by Portuguese, Vatican, and American Catholics, leading to a large body of sources being available in English. The Ghiaie apparition has gotten less attention, and so I can find fewer testimonies, have had to clunkily machine translate some things, and had a harder time tracing the exact chain-of-transmission. Still, here’s what we’ve got, mostly from here: Don Giuseppe Piccardi: The people cried out to the miracle; I turned between the intrigued and the distrustful, and I saw the sun that-comes from the clouds - turned on itself and the speed of movement seemed to be skidding. At the same time I saw that he projected light beams, then, for me, almost constantly yellow gold. This color I contemplated it even when the sun was veiled with uncaught clouds. Slightly hard to figure out from the machine translation, but I think this is Bishop Adriano Bernareggi: At 6:00 PM I was at the Patronato for the feast of St. John Bosco. Just at that time I finished speaking in front of the church. Then I entered the church for the Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. But most of the crowd remained outside because they said they had observed for about ten minutes the sun rotating on its axis, also suddenly changing color: yellow, red, blue. The sun could be observed without disturbance. The phenomenon was also observed in other places. I only noticed at the end of the service a yellow color in the houses, as when there is a partial eclipse of the sun at sunset. At 7:45 PM they said the phenomenon was repeated. I watched too. By staring into the dazzling sun, you could end up seeing the sun stand out clearly, giving the impression that it was rotating. Then everything took on a red color. But then it was clearly an optical phenomenon. Don Luigi Cortesi, a local seminary teacher who was a strong skeptic of the apparitions and even borderline-kidnapped the child-seer to convince her to recant: A shiver runs through me for a second. I react forcefully, forcing myself not to lose my mind, not to let myself be overwhelmed. I desperately squeeze my pupils and look at the sun: I see a large, clear spot without sharp edges, then, when my eye has adjusted, I see a disk of intense whiteness that seems liquid. Staring at the edges of the disk, I detect a dizzying rotation, like an electric circular motion, like a dizzying pinwheel, except that the direction of motion changes rapidly from left to right and then from right to left. I remember Fatima. Except this time, the sun revolves around a fixed axis, without moving in the sky. I return to the earth, to the crowd: I notice that the faces, the hands, the trees pierce through all the colors of the rainbow. It's natural, I think to myself: when the eye is offended by an intense light or an equivalent stimulus, it projects a stain on objects, which fades from red to violet and tints the objects it encounters with different colors; the stain disappears when the eye, rested, has returned to normal. In fact, a few minutes later, I no longer see those iridescent colors; every object has returned to its natural hue. The phenomenon of rotation leaves me dubious. A neighbor offers me his smoked glasses, and I look: the sun continues to rotate. He offers me a telescope, and I invert it, the screen, and look: the sun is still rotating. Then I can't take it anymore: even today, I'm not convinced that seeing a cosmic prodigy is worth losing my sight. Back then, I wasn't even convinced I was seeing a prodigy, since a plausible natural explanation for the phenomenon quickly emerged in my mind. However, urged by the neighbors to get excited, I remain silent. And I silence them by pinching and slapping the arms of those around me, which are stretched out towards the sky." From the parish bulletin of Tavernola, the exact author is slightly confusing but it was either written by or signed/confirmed by Piero Bonicelli, local provost: On the 28th in the evening of Pentecost, something happened that made a profound impression on everyone. At 6:00 PM sharp, a dimming of the sunlight was felt, accompanied by a sudden flash of lightning, first clearly observed by some bowling players. Looking at the sun, one saw first green, then bright red, then golden yellow, and then it spun around dizzily. At that spectacle, people poured into the streets... One can imagine their comments. The women recited the Holy Rosary, punctuated by the words: "Oh, how beautiful!" After ten minutes, the sun returned to normal. Comments? None. We await an explanation from the appropriate source. For now, we're content to hear the usual strong-minded people call us poor, deluded people, but don't you think this is a rather general illusion? In any case, for now, we're deluded: we'll see later. The parish priest of Tavernola, director of the bulletin, sending this issue requested by Father Piccardi, wrote on June 27, 1946: I must assure you that, as written, it is true, and I can also tell you that I was among those deluded that evening. To be prudent, I didn't go out into the street where people were shouting about a miracle, but from a slightly hidden window, I watched the sun change color and spin rapidly... illusion? Many of us here in Tavernola have been deluded. I can also tell you that I was pleased that such an illusion existed in Tavernola, since the people here have always had a great devotion to the Madonna. There may be more testimonies at this site, but they’re in very old scanned documents that it would be too time-consuming to stick into my machine translation pipeline. Another source says that “On February 24, 1994, [the TV show] ‘Detto tra noi' (Raidue), interviewed some witnesses, who confirmed the solar phenomena of May 21 1944 that were watched by many people“. I think a few hours extra work by an Italian speaker could produce at least five or ten extra Ghiaie testimonies, maybe many more. But as it is, we have enough to try something interesting: let’s recreate Dalleur’s analysis, but for Ghiaie. At 6 PM, the sun was shining from almost due west. For the sunlike light source producing the miracles to mimic the real sun, it would have also had to have been to the west of Ghiaie. If we assume it was the same distance as Dalleur’s Fatima light source, it would have been about 2-3 miles to the west of Ghiaie, which puts it above the village of Merate. We know from the last testimonial that the phenomenon was seen clearly in the village of Tavernola Bergamasca, which is about 22 miles from Ghiaie and 25 from Merate. An Italian source also reports sightings in Brescia and Piacenza, each about 35 miles from Ghiaie. So a Dalleur style analysis might conclude that this event also had a 25 - 35 mile visibility radius, similar to Fatima’s. …unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.
Inline links: really drinking the glass of milk, Halifax Slasher, here, my disappointment in the skeptical community, why it worries me, lets you say, Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio, Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg, trapped prior, of mind, 5, key insight, 6, my source, 7, here, this site, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kukw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F192586f8-d450-4555-88ef-deb6bbe30416_842x613.png, Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account
…unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.
Inline links: Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account
Georgia Ray of Eukaryote Writes also brings up the beam lines (is this nominative determinism?) and points out that there are so many steps involving estimation, with such wide confidence intervals, that it’s unclear whether the normal sun position is within the calculation’s margin of error (maybe someone should try Guesstimate?) Seventh, although Dalleur’s theory somewhat makes sense for Fatima, it stumbles for Ghiaie and becomes completely incoherent for Benin City. At Ghiaie, the miracle was seen 15-25 miles away to the east (in Tavernola), but not 15-25 miles away to the southwest (in Milan), even though the line-of-sight from Milan was clearer. In Benin City, the miracle was localized entirely to one large field, while the rest of the city (population 1.5 million) saw nothing. For all of these reasons, I don’t think we can conceptualize the Fatima miracle as occurring in a geographically sensible way. It was either localized entirely to the crowd at Fatima, or seen by a tiny number of subsidiary groups (like the group of schoolboys at Alburitel) rather than the large region within viewing distance of the supposed event. This removes one of the major barriers to illusion/hallucination-based explanations. 5: I Feel The Eyes Are Slowly Melting We previously resolved to address three other barriers to explanations based on optical phenomena: the lack of retinal burns/blindness, the lack of similar phenomena observed outside Fatima, and the inability to explain complex visions like the Cross or the Virgin’s face. As we assess the situation with retinal burns, it may be helpful to start with the opthalmalogical journals, which recognize a condition called Medjugorje maculopathy. Some of the pilgrims who look for sun miracles at Medjugorje do get retinal burns (or other forms of eye injury) from staring at the sun too long. I can’t access all the papers, but this one discusses four cases: A 58 year old man visiting a Marian site in Ireland stared at the sun for six minutes. No miracles were witnessed. He had minor eye damage which remained after sixteen months.
Inline links: Georgia Ray of Eukaryote Writes, Guesstimate, Medjugorje maculopathy, this one
Highlights From The Comments On Fatima
October 24, 2025 · Original source
A nun stated that some people had seen “something” appear in the sun in Torres Novas, also about 12 miles away, though she is not really clear on whether she saw it herself or is just relaying other people’s impressions. I continue to be confused by a pattern in which we have one or two secondhand testimonies from entire towns that supposedly witnessed a dramatic miracle. Ethan then proceeds to make the situation tougher for himself, describing two witnesses from 120 km and 160 km away. But a 160 km circle includes three big cities - Porto, Coimbra, and Lisbon - along with many medium-sized towns and small villages. When we combine this with the evidence from Ghiaie - where it was witnessed from distant Tavernola but not equally-distant Milan - I think these testimonies are more consistent with a few suggestible people saying “Oh, a cool miracle? Yeah, I definitely saw it too” than sightlines that spread through normal geography. I think people were more likely to say this if they were close (and so it was plausible) than if they were very far away (and so it was less plausible), but that this is some kind of gradually declining function, rather than the sharper function you would expect if there were an actual boundary. (one person in central Germany, about 500 miles away, claimed to see the Ghiaie miracle - I didn’t include this on the original post, because it didn’t seem credible, but I think it’s good evidence that sometimes people say non-credible things) I do continue to be confused by the Alburitel stories, which seem much stronger than the others, and perhaps by the Minde story, which is at least in the right place. 4: Heat I don’t think this made it in the post, but during a conversation Ethan answered one of my objections - that any heat warm enough to dry clothes in Fatima would have started fires and explosions closer to the source - by saying that unlike the light (which was visible omnidirectionally), the heat was a ray shot straight at Fatima, which didn’t affect anywhere else. I admit this answers my objection. I won’t even ask for a complexity penalty here, because it makes sense that a just God would try to avoid frying random villages. 5: Ending One objection I raised to Ethan’s not-the-real-sun story was that, when the miracle ended, the fake sun would either have to disappear, or remain in the sky long enough to be seen alongside the real sun. But witnesses reported neither of these two things. Ethan reports one witness who says they saw a fake sun first leave from, then merge with, the real sun. I have that witness statement too - it’s on my list of weirder testimonies that don’t mesh with everyone else’s. The large majority said they only saw one sun. If most people had seen multiple suns, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. If I understand Ethan correctly (which I might not, I’m having trouble interpreting this passage), he thinks that maybe the clouds cleared enough to reveal the real sun right as the fake sun moved into the same position as the real sun, the crowds were temporarily blinded, and the fake sun took advantage of this to disappear unnoticed. 5.2: Later Miracles I claimed that later miracles were obviously not objective-in-consensus-reality. For example, the Benin City sun miracle was seen by people in one field, but not in the rest of the surrounding city of 1.5 million people; the Lubbock sun miracle was seen by something like 50 - 75% of attendees. I said that this suggested the Fatima miracle wasn’t objective either. Ethan objects that there is no reason the different miracles should be implemented the same way, and that maybe Ghiaie was a unidirectional beam of light focused away from Milan, and that maybe Benin City was entirely subjective, but Fatima was omnidirectional and objective. I of course cannot disprove the possibility that God implements the same miracle in different ways at different times; the most I can do here is ask for a complexity penalty. 5.3: Domingos Pinto Coelho DPC was a lawyer and statesman who saw the miracle at Fatima, wrote an article about it, and dropped at the end that the next time he’d encountered similar weather conditions he’d tried staring at the sun again and seen the same miracle. I described it as a powerful testimony in favor of the illusion/hallucination/suggestion hypothesis. Ethan says that “the Portugese historian Costa Brochado cast doubt on the integrity of this report”: The articles of Dr. Pinto Coelho in A Ordem seem to be very much exaggerated. It is difficult to understand the manifest confusion he establishes between the phenomena at Fatima… and the alterations in solar light that he says he saw in Lisbon some days afterward. But in any case the historical value of the articles of the leading Catholic organ is almost nil… We believe that we can declare, after patient research on the matter, that the articles of Dr. Pinto Coelho ought to be read from a political point of view, since their objective was, as the author himself came to declare, to serve as the devil’s advocate As far as I can tell, this is just a historian named Costa Brochado saying he doesn’t believe Coelho. I don’t know why we should trust Costa Brochado, but since we’re bringing in random historians’ unsupported assessments of Coelho’s honesty, here is Father Stanley Jaki: Nobody could doubt that he [DPC] was a man of utter veracity, a point to which no proper attention has been paid in the Fatima literature. There he is all too often ignored and when not, he is dismissed as someone who had an axe to grind on behalf of Church authorities wary of Fatima…in view of Coelho’s unquestionable probity, one has to assume that he saw, with eyes unblurred, what he claimed to have seen, a repetition of the miracle of the sun. He never retracted, however slightly, his claim. As one who in his last hours fervently invoked the help of Jacinta who he came to venerate as a saint, Coelho would have hardly lived with the knowledge that he had intentionally mislead countless readers of his in a matter that so closely involved Jacinta and the other two videntes…Coelho surely must have thought that Rather than keep calling character witnesses, I think it’s more helpful to note that we now have two more testimonies of people who saw the miracle once, then were able to reproduce it under less holy conditions. One is Case One of Nix & Apple, who describe someone who saw the miracle in Medjugorje, then went home to New Orleans and was able to see it again. The other is person #14 on my list of survey responses. I emailed him and asked him to confirm that he was claiming that he could repeat the miracle when the weather conditions were just right. He responded: Yes, exactly. Excluding sunsets, I was able to focus on the sun when it was in a cloudless area of the sky only once (after the pouring rain had just stopped); on all other occasions, the intensity of the light made it impossible to focus on the sun. With translucent clouds, focusing on the sun was easier, and the visual changes (colors, apparent movement) appeared consistently after a few seconds. Even though it wasn’t asked in the questionnaire, I have a hypothesis about the physiology underlying the phenomenon, or at least the parts I experienced. Thinking back to those experiences, I might hypothesize that the intense white light of the sun caused the simultaneous formation of afterimages of different colors in the same area of the visual field. It could be that the visual system, in the presence of conflicting signals, instead of integrating the information by creating a white afterimage, rapidly switched attention from one color to another, creating the alternating colors. If this process occurs unevenly across the afterimage area, different parts of the area will change color at slightly different times, creating the appearance of movement within the area itself. I think the reason this phenomenon is not very common is because there is a narrow window between “light too bright to stare at the sun” and “light too dim for the alterations to appear.” The reason I was able to get these results repeatedly was because I was trying to replicate them, so whenever I saw translucent clouds, I tried to conduct the experiment. With clouds that were too thin I failed, but with clouds that I believe belonged to the Stratus translucidus or Altostratus translucidus category, I succeeded. I would have agreed with this earlier, but it’s awkward to have so many people who say they’ve seen this in a completely clear sky. Very speculatively, there might be some individual variability in the ability of the eye to adjust out brightness, and different people will reach their sweet spots in clouded vs. clear skies. 6: “God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of man, that He should change his mind.” Speaking of complexity penalties, I have a broader objection to some of the moves Ethan is making here. If I understand his theory correctly, it goes like this: the miraculous object at Fatima was not the sun. But God put a lot of effort into tricking people into thinking that it was. Even though the object was below the clouds, He made the clouds clear around it at the moment of its appearance, so that it looked like the clearing clouds had revealed a normal above-the-clouds sun. Then, when it was time to remove the object, He made it disappear at the exact moment that the real sun came out behind clouds, so that the crowds would be too dazzled to notice that the object and the sun were two different things. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, for two reasons: God shouldn’t try to trick people.
Inline links: Nix & Apple
Telosa2 mentions across 2 issues

Telosa is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 08, 2021 and December 06, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Telosa (working name) will be inclusive and sustainable"; "all the documents promise Telosa will be exceptionally democratic"; "Telosa is specifically Georgist". It most often appears alongside America, Charter Cities Institute, Honduras.

Article page
Telosa
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
November 08, 2021
Last seen
December 06, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
  • 21 November 08, 2021
  • 21 December 06, 2021
Related pages
Source context
21
November 08, 2021 · Original source
Bloomberg: The Diapers.com Guy Wants To Build A Utopian Megalopolis
Inline links: The Diapers.com Guy Wants To Build A Utopian Megalopolis
Why move to this city instead of one of the many existing cities which are not in deserts and, you know, actually exist? Lore’s pitch is that Telosa (working name) will be inclusive and sustainable by following a Georgist model: all the land will be held in a community-owned trust, and all profits will go to social services.
Inline links: Telosa
Here’s a picture some artist drew, which we are supposed to believe is relevant in some way. I like Georgism as much as anyone else, but I’m not sure a new city in the desert is the right place to try it. Land in the desert is already really cheap. You’d have to really succeed at building a pretty big and desirable city before landlords started capturing a lot of value.
21
December 06, 2021 · Original source
Second, Bitcoin miners don’t want a city the shape of a Bitcoin with a central plaza in the shape of a Bitcoin logo. They want cheap electricity. Bukele has promised that there will be cheap geothermal power from the volcano, which sounds good, but this article says El Salvador’s existing geothermal energy costs about 12 cents/kilowatt-hour, much higher than the 4 cents/megawatt-hour miners can get in the current cheapest areas. Maybe El Salvador could do a really good job upgrading their energy infrastructure, but at some point you’re subsidizing this rather than using it as a cash cow. And third, this isn’t even the stupidest plan to build a cryptocurrency-themed city in the Third World. That arguably goes to Akon City, a thing where a pop singer named Akon was going to build a cryptocurrency city in Senegal. Now, without any construction having started, they’re planning to build a second one in Uganda! All competing for the same handful of crypto companies! But I looked into Bukele to see if he was a moron with a habit of coming up with terrible ideas. It seems like no. He rose from nothing to become El Salvador’s first outside-the-traditional-party-system president, and has an approval rating of around 90%. And apparently he’s presided over a historic drop in the homicide rate of this previously murder-capital-of-the-world country. Although I’m betting that one day he’ll make a great Dictator Book Club entry, I’m prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt on “doesn’t do stupid things for no reason” What’s the non-stupid explanation for this? Maybe it’s supposed to be a signal. You can give up 5% of the way through, but even trying to build a Bitcoin-shaped city at least shows very conclusively that you’ve got a crypto-friendly regulatory climate, so many easily-spooked crypto companies will flock to you. This makes sense in the context of big crypto companies moving to the Caribbean for regulatory reasons, eg FTX moving to the Bahamas and Binance moving to the Cayman Islands. But if I understand correctly, both of these companies make on the order of $1 billion a year. If El Salvador can tax them at 5% (dubious, since a big part of promising a friendly regulatory climate is low taxes), that’s still only $100 million if they can capture both of them. Which they can’t, because these companies seem happy where they are. And I don’t think there are a lot of similarly-sized crypto companies looking for Central American homes that I don’t know about. And even though El Salvador is pretty poor, it’s not so poor that $100 million is worth embarrassing themselves over. So I’m stumped. EDIT: See this comment. Praxis, aka Bluebook Cities, the Internet Speaking of stumped, who are these people? Right now, they’re a web page with a lot of buzz promising the City Of The Future, in very poetic language: Praxis is a grassroots movement of modern pioneers building a new city. We are technologists and artists, builders and dreamers. We are building a place where we can develop to our fullest potentials, physically, culturally, and spiritually. Bitcoin was developed as a financial technology with political goals identical to those of the Founding Fathers: liberation. The ultimate end of crypto is the possibility of a future for humanity unshackled from the institutions that seek to limit our growth. Our ultimate goal is to bring about a more vital future for humanity, and we will use technology to achieve this righteous end. Our civilization is unwell. We eat food that kills us, we’ve lost sight of beauty, and we neglect our spiritual lives. The world is deranged and decayed, and this frightens people. We don’t look up from our screens; we seek to live within them. Crypto is a fundamentally political technology -- escape to the metaverse is a betrayal of the principles on which it was founded. We are descended from the people who built Rome and Athens, who dared to split atoms and voyage to the Moon. We can build new worlds not just of bits, but of atoms. But where is this city? What will its policies be? As we leave old lands, our values are our compass. Like wolves, tribes of pioneers are muscular by necessity. For voyaging tribes to settle, they must perform murmurations: intricate coordination with little communication, at scale. This is only possible with a strong sense of asabiyya (group feeling derived from deeply-held shared values). Our values inform the destiny we desire, and for which we struggle. Asabiyya is forged in this struggle. With asabiyya, pioneers can earn the divine mandate to build a city. Cities are the fount of human ingenuity. In cities, people enjoy their fullest potential by contributing their resources under the auspices of civilization. Who even are you? What experience do you have with city-building? Civilizations rise and fall. All around us, we see civilizational decay. The people are not vital: physically, culturally, spiritually. We live in an era of obesity, remakes, and pollution. We are losing the divine mandate, and in an era of absolute weapons, what’s at stake is everything. But perhaps there’s some glory in death by a light brighter than a thousand suns. A worse fate may await humanity: atrophied bodies submerged in gel, fed synthetic bug paste, minds occupied by the petty amusements of a corporate metaverse. There, nothing is at stake; there are no frontiers to explore; no growth is possible. Nothing to live for, and nothing to die for. As we walk between these twin fates, the light of our civilization dims. But beyond the horizon, we see a new light emerging. Like the sun at dawn, it cannot be stopped. Vitality itself is the foundational value of this new civilizational form, and we have the technology to enact our moral imperative as never before. You’re not answering my…okay, fine, whatever, forget it. As far as I can tell, Praxis is two 25-year-olds with no previous experience, armed with about $10 million in Peter Thiel’s money. Peter Thiel is a smart person known for having good business sense, but he’s also known to have a weakness for young people who dream big and sound like purveyors of esoteric secrets. I wonder if the simplest explanation is just that this is one of the cases where his weakness got the better of his sense, and now these two random people have $10 million earmarked for building a city, and no idea what to do. [CORRECTION: some people involved in Praxis have reached out to tell me that it was $4 million instead of $10 million, and that it was Thiel-backed Pronomos and not Thiel himself. I’ll be getting in touch with them to learn if there are other issues or things I should correct here] But that’s not how they put it! The way they put it is - all previous charter city founders have started by approaching governments and pitching their ideas. But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem: governments don’t want to give land to a purely hypothetical city that might not pan out, and the city can’t pan out until governments give it land. Praxis’ plan is to build the community first, then go to a government saying “Here’s 50,000 people who have agreed to join our city, and lots of businesses and organizations that are excited about it. Please give us land for our guaranteed-success, concretely-existing project.” Now this is a different chicken-and-egg problem: why join a community of people with no land and no plans? Praxis writes: What if we try to draw people to new cities not on an economic basis, but rather on a spiritual one? Which city (or country) founding projects have succeeded that have drawn people on a predominantly non-economic, but rather spiritual basis? Among others, Israel and America. Both groups were oppressed, and sought the freedom to live by their values. Both felt the intangible pull of the frontier. Both had a keen historical instinct. This is how cities with spiritual significance are founded. The correct approach to city building in this new world is demand-first (or as Balaji Srinivasan calls it, Cloud City first). We build the citizenry before the city. First, we create communities of true believers, organized around shared values, online. People move to cities for people, and it follows that if you collect a group of people who all want to live together, they’ll all move together if at a moment in time everyone else does, too. Today, we have new tools. The emergence of Web3 enables us to supercharge communities with self-ownership, governance, and determination. Once you build a community of people ready to move to a new city together, you can self-finance the entire project. With something real to offer nations, conversations with governments become productive (e.g. Gigafactory). That’s how you make the risk dominoes fall. The problem is, Israel worked because it had Judaism. Judaism is a very specific belief. Prospera is specifically libertarian, Telosa is specifically Georgist, and even the Bitcoin-shaped volcano city knows what it’s about. What is Praxis? The use of “atrophied bodies submerged in gel, fed synthetic bug paste” as a warning reads very slightly right-wing to me - there’s a right-wing meme about how the media keeps trying to get people to eat bugs, and how this is the shape our future dystopia will take. But whether I’m right or wrong, the fact that it’s hard to tell is a problem. The only other clues we’re getting are their Discord, which seems to be focused around getting a currency called PRAX for completing tasks. Once you get enough, you can become a Member, which seems to be where the real excitement starts. (source) I’m not even being sarcastic - I expect being a member to be quite fun. I say this because when I was a teenager I was part of a bunch of country simulation projects, some of which got past the inherent nerdiness of being a country simulation project exactly the same way Praxis is doing it - by saying that we were going to become a real country someday, as soon as we were big enough to convince people. These were usually fun and interesting and educational, and I made lots of great like-minded teenage and twenty-something friends. But none of them ever came close to becoming a real country, and I’m not sure it was merely for lack of millions of dollars. I hope I’m wrong and they manage to forge new lands through struggle to uplift the human spirit or whatever. Elsewhere In Model Cities Vitalik Buterin on the intersection between local government and blockchain technologies. He recommends they “start with self-contained experiments, and take things slowly on moves that are truly irreversible”, which is a weird way of saying “what we crypto leaders really want is a city at the base of a volcano, shaped like a giant Bitcoin”.
Inline links: with a central plaza in the shape of a Bitcoin logo, this article, Akon City, a second one, Bukele, a historic drop in the homicide rate, Dictator Book Club, moving to the Bahamas, moving to the Cayman Islands, this comment, promising the City Of The Future, far as I can tell, the media keeps trying, their Discord, tasks, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!2TK6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F020ebe08-e968-45cd-ba39-a91cdc6e5892_473x533.png, source, a bunch of country simulation projects, the intersection between local government and blockchain technologies
Tenderloin2 mentions across 2 issues

Tenderloin is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 23, 2022 and June 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "open-air drug scenes in the Tenderloin"; "The Tenderloin [district of San Francisco]’s single resident occupancy hotels"; "prevent drug dealers who had already been arrested from entering the Tenderloin". It most often appears alongside Amsterdam, Bay Area, California.

Article page
Tenderloin
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
June 23, 2022
Last seen
June 29, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: San Fransicko
June 23, 2022 · Original source
In the spring of 2021 two colleagues and I went to San Francisco. We first went to check in on the open-air drug scenes in the Tenderloin and United Nations Plaza. It was the usual scenes of people sitting against buildings and injecting drug needles into their necks and feet. There was garbage, old food, and feces everywhere. After a couple of hours, we decided to go out to eat in the Mission. Work was over. We were all looking forward to a relaxing dinner. We were eating ice cream and walking along Valencia Street when a psychotic man, perhaps about thirty years old, began following us and screaming obscenities. When we turned around to look at him, he screamed at us, “What are you looking for, huh! WHAT. ARE. YOU. LOOKING. FOR!” and started walking faster toward us. We walked faster until the man found other people to verbally assault.
Continuing from San Fransicko: There is evidence that privacy and solitude created by Housing First make substance abuse worse. A study in Ottawa found that, while the Housing First group kept people in housing longer, the comparison group saw greater reductions in alcohol consumption and problematic drug use, and greater improvements to mental health, after two years. “One reason for the surprising results,” wrote the authors, “may be that aspects of the Housing First intervention, such as the privacy afforded by Housing First and harm reduction approach, might result in slower improvements around substance use and mental health.” Okay, but the next sentence after the one the book quoted was the researchers admitting that oops, we also totally forgot to randomize our groups in any way, so the experimental and control groups had totally different levels of severity and maybe that was why they found this weird thing (this is non-obvious, because we’re looking at change over time rather than raw differences between groups, but the authors discuss some reasons why different groups might change differently over time). A few years later these same researchers did a proper randomized study and it found no difference in drug use between the two groups. Somers, Moniruzzaman and Palepu found no difference in drug use between Housing First and other subjects. Padgett et al found the Housing First group actually did better, although they are another victim of the epidemic of randomization failures in this space. Kirst et al, no difference in drug use, but Housing First better with alcohol. Milby found that housing contigent on abstinence worked better than housing not contigent on abstinence, which Shellenberger could have used to support his thesis, but even Milby found that housing not contingent on abstinence worked better than no housing! To summarize: I can find seven studies on this topic, only one of them agrees with San Fransicko’s thesis, and the authors admit that it’s weak. I accuse San Fransicko of citing only that one and pretending all the others don’t exist. (actually, I accuse it of doing that plus citing a line from a review claiming another study found this, but as far as I can tell that study did not actually find it) This is extra annoying, because all the popular news articles on Housing First gush about how it definitely decreases substance use and everything else bad. Shellenberger could have made the excellent point that all of these progressive journalists were totally wrong! This would have been an interesting, important, and completely true act of virtuous data journalism! Instead he tries to hold up a lonely negative result as representative, and ends up just as wrong but in the opposite direction. Continuing in San Fransicko: Researchers have found ways to use housing to reduce addiction. Between 1990 and 2006, researchers in Birmingham, Alabama, conducted clinical trials of abstinence-contingent housing with 644 homeless people with crack cocaine addictions. Two-thirds of participants remained abstinent after six months, a very high rate of abstinence, compared to other treatment programs. Other studies found that around 40 percent of homeless in abstinence-contingent housing maintained their abstinence, housing, and jobs. In a randomized controlled trial, homeless people were given furnished apartments and allowed to keep them unless they failed a drug test, at which point they were sent to stay in a shelter. Sixty-five percent of participants completed the program. Three similar randomized controlled trials also found moderate to high rates of completion. And participants in abstinence-contingent housing had better housing and employment outcomes than participants assigned housing for whom abstinence was not required. All of this seems basically true. It turns out that over longer periods of time, Housing First may not even outperform contingency in terms of keeping people housed. In the spring of 2021, a team of Harvard medical experts published the results of a fourteen-year-long study of chronic homeless placed into permanent supportive housing in Boston. Most studies of permanent supportive housing, including the Kushel study conducted in Santa Clara, only study the newly housed homeless for a span of around two years. The study found that 86 percent of the homeless, who were referred based on length of time living on the streets, suffered from “trimorbidity”—a combination of medical illness, mental illness, and substance abuse. The authors found that after ten years, just 12 percent of the homeless remained housed. During the study period, 45 percent died. The authors concluded that, because the chronically homeless had such higher rates of physical and mental illness, “the supportive services, essential to the PSH model, may not have been sufficient to address the needs of this unsheltered population.” This study was done on an especially severe subgroup of homeless people. There was no control group, so Shellenberger shouldn’t claim we have any evidence about whether Housing First can “outperform contingency”. Shellenberger counts people who died as “unhoused” to get his 12% number; if he didn’t do this, the number would be 23%. Only 23% of people given housing retained after ten years sounds bad. But you could change this number to whatever number you wanted by changing the severity of the subgroup selected for the study. Select people who are even crazier and more disturbed than these people, and you can have 0% retained after ten years; select high-functioning people with no problems, and you can get 100% retained after ten years. (or maybe not - the study doesn’t say why people left the program. It mentions that one possible outcome is having to go to a nursing home because they had grown too sick or old to support themselves. I am not sure that “23% stay in this program” means “77% are back on the street and all their care has been a total failure”.) Conclusion: Housing First seems to work in getting people housing. It probably also helps people use fewer medical services, and it might or might not save money compared to not doing it (probably more likely when treating very severe cases, less likely in areas with high housing costs). It probably doesn’t affect people’s overall health or drug use status very much. San Fransicko is right to call out all the people promoting it beyond what the evidence supports, but then goes on to attack it beyond what the evidence supports. Interlude: Why Can’t We Just House All The Homeless? This is the question many of the California gubernatorial candidates asked. California has lots of money. There aren’t that many homeless people. Everyone is already committed to Housing First. So why don’t they have houses already? San Francisco has about 7,000 homeless people. The median SF apartment costs about $3,000 per month (presumably the government officials in charge would be trying to buy cheaper-than-median apartments for this project, but they seem bad at that, so let’s stick with median as a high-end estimate). So that’s $250 million/year to rent every homeless person an apartment. San Francisco has a $14 billion budget, although some of that is locked in nondiscretionary programs. So this effort would take about 2-3% of the city budget. Given how many people have both altruistic and selfish objections to the current level of SF homelessness, I can’t imagine that isn’t a better use of the money than whatever it’s being spent on now. So why hasn’t this happened? The closest thing I can find to the “rent apartments” plan is Governor Newsom’s “rent hotel rooms” plan, Project Roomkey. This was a short-term pandemic program. This article says it cost $4,000 per month, which seems reasonable - it provided residents with a hotel room, meals, security, and “custodial services” for just above a hundred dollars a day. So how come nobody has made it permanent or scaled it up? The homeless themselves don’t seem very positive on the project. They talk about “jail”-like conditions, including curfews and bans on visitors. I don’t know if this is the usual nanny-state-ism, or an attempt to reassure hotel owners / other residents / local communities that the influx of homeless people won’t cause them problems. If the latter, it hasn’t worked. From here: Jenna Abbott, executive director of the River District Business Association, said having a Roomkey motel in her neighborhood has been difficult. The site — which is in an area with large number of unhoused people — has drawn family and friends of Roomkey residents who haven’t been housed but “camp close to that hotel,” some with the goal of gaining a room, Abbott said. That’s led to more loitering, public drunkenness and trash outside the restaurants, gas stations and other businesses in the area, she added. And here’s another article about people objecting to local hotels accepting homeless people, which focuses on some combination of zoning, code, and public safety concerns. Everybody - the homeless, their advocates, various experts - interviewed in the article - agrees that the hotel rooms are kind of dehumanizing and much worse than having real housing. And this article suggests that government budgeters believe it’s not cost-effective compared to alternatives. Since the homeless don’t like it, and it’s expensive, almost everyone seems to agree it made sense as a short-term COVID measure only. The government’s preferred medium-term solution is single resident occupancy (SRO) hotels. These are big apartment/hotel-like structures where everyone has a small bedroom and then there are communal bathrooms and maybe kitchens. These used to be the archetypal living situation for poor Americans (Matt Yglesias talks about them as “boarding houses” here). But moral reformers banned them in the 1900s on the grounds that they were slums - I think this is the usual “surely the reason poor people live bad lives is because capitalists oppress them by selling them cheap low-quality goods, and if we just ban selling people cheap low-quality goods, everyone will have high-quality goods and poor people will live great lives!” argument. Somehow this failed to work and homelessness got worse over this period, but there are still some SRO hotels left, and the government got them and converted them to public housing for homeless people. Shellenberger does not have high opinions of these: The Tenderloin [district of San Francisco]’s single resident occupancy hotels . . . have for decades been dominated by a culture of heavy substance use and prostitution. “Of the people in supportive housing in San Francisco, 93 percent have a major mental illness that we can name,” said a housing policy maker. “That is very, very high. Eighty percent use cocaine, speed, or heroin every thirty days, or get drunk to the point of unconsciousness.” Tom Wolf, a former Salvation Army caseworker and a member of San Francisco’s Drug Dealing Taskforce, says the city’s supportive housing facilities are themselves a major market for illegal drugs. “Go down the street to the Camelot Hotel on Turk Street,” said Wolf. “Almost everyone that I’ve seen in those hotels are using. The last front desk guy that was working there got busted because he was selling crack. The actual guy that works in the single resident occupancy hotel is selling crack! It’s insane, man.” In any case, there are only so many of these still left. The government often announces plans to buy defunct regular hotels and convert them into these structures, which would indeed be a medium-term solution for housing the homeless, except that they usually get bogged down in fights about code. Politico discusses one of these attempts in New York City (h/t Marginal Revolution): “There are very few hotels that physically could be converted and comply with the requirements of today’s zoning and building code without substantial, expansive reconstruction, partial removal or demolition,” said James Colgate, a land use partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP who has advised clients on zoning issues including the conversions of hotels. “That would increase the costs greatly.” For example, a building’s elevators, doorways, or rooms may be slightly short of the size required for a residential structure. Residential buildings are also required to have a certain amount of rear-yard space that a hotel may not have. “You would literally have to be chopping off part of the building,” Rosen said. …The legislation dictates that each unit include a kitchen or kitchenette with a full-sized refrigerator, cooktop and sink — something Rosen said made utilizing the program “simply too expensive.” “This is the classic case of the perfect being the enemy of the possible,” said Mark Ginsberg, a partner at the firm Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, which has worked on hotel conversions. Some advocates who pushed the creation of the program say those provisions were necessary to ensure it didn’t generate substandard housing […] “We didn’t want a program that cut corners to make it more palatable to developers,” said Joseph Loonam, housing campaign coordinator for the progressive advocacy group VOCAL-NY. “We wanted a program that centered the needs of homeless New Yorkers, which is true high quality affordable housing where they can have full autonomy and dignity.” As Marginal Revolution pointed out, Loonam got what he wanted; the expensive, over-regulated program was unpalatable to developers, with only one company putting in an offer; for whatever reason, NYC refused to go with that one company, and no housing was produced. But fine, these are also terrible, and they’re only medium-term solutions anyway. What about building real, long-term apartments for homeless people? Shellenberger tells the story of Los Angeles’ Proposition HHH, which raised $1.2 billion to do exactly this. They hoped to build ~10,000 units for the homeless, at a projected price of $140,000 each; since LA had about 30,000 homeless people at the time, this would solve a third of the problem - a good start. (how do these numbers line up with my back-of-the-envelope calculation for SF above? I talked about renting rather than building, but usually annual rents = 1/20th or so of total prices, so I was estimating about $700,000 per person. This is probably partly because SF costs more than LA, and partly because I was imagining median apartments whereas LA is probably working on very cheap apartments) But in fact, five years later, LA has completed only 700 units, and the cost per unit has spiralled to $531,000 each. Nobody has a good explanation for what happened, with Shellenberger quoting one local service provider who said a lot of it was “bullshit costs”. Now might be a good time to re-read Considerations On Cost Disease. [Update: this might not be accurate - see this comment] This seems to be a general problem: everyone is committed to Housing First and to long-term good solutions rather than short- or medium- term mediocre ones. But that means building housing. And some combination of NIMBYism and over-regulation means building housing is somewhere between ruiniously expensive and impossible. Claim 4: Shelters Are Unpopular Among Progressive Activists And The Homeless Themselves San Francisco doesn’t have more homelessness than eg New York, but almost all the homeless in New York live in shelters and stay off the street. Why doesn’t that work here? Shellenberger: In the context of cities with permissive attitudes toward drugs, like San Francisco, many homeless people stay in [tent] encampments to use illegal substances more freely and easily than they can in the shelters. Many policy makers understand this. “I went out with a team twice to have conversations with people to get an understanding of what they’re dealing with,” said Mayor Breed in 2020. “It was absolutely insane. Most of the people did not take us up on the offer [of shelter and services].” Even people who would prefer to live in sober environments say they do not want to quit their addictions. “When we surveyed people in supportive housing in New York,” said University of Pennsylvania homelessness researcher Dennis Culhane, “almost everybody wanted their neighbors to be clean and sober but they didn’t want rules for themselves about being clean.” In 2016, after the city of San Francisco broke up a massive, 350-person homeless encampment, dozens of the homeless refused the city’s offers of help. Of the 150 people moved during a single month of homeless encampment cleanups in 2018, just eight people accepted the city’s offer of shelter. In 2004, just 131 people went into permanent supportive housing after 4,950 contacts made by then-mayor Newsom’s homeless outreach teams. An article by a former homeless person explains the problems with shelters beyond just “can’t use drugs”. Residents are crammed into a small space with 300 other homeless people. Lice and bedbugs are everywhere. Everybody catches every disease. Everybody has stories about getting raped or beaten up. Invasive moralizing about drugs somehow exists side by side with rampant drug use. Shelters are gender segregated, which means straight people can’t stay with their partner. Most shelters ban children and nobody has any idea what to do with them. Most shelters ban pets - a lot of homeless people have dogs for protection or companionship, and you can’t just store them somewhere while you’re sheltering. Although some lucky people can get 90-day beds, other people need to apply for beds on a day-by-day basis, which requires waiting in line several hours every day. Users talk about rampant cutting in line, denying cutting in line, false accusations of cutting in line, etc. Most shelters kick people out between 9-5, either to save on staffing costs or in the hopes that they’ll get a job. But many have strict curfews requiring people to be back by 5 PM sharp, which can make jobs impossible - if your boss doesn’t let you out until 5 and you have a half-hour commute, how do you get back to the shelter on time? Results of a survey at one of SF’s new Navigation Centers at why their clients refused to go to normal shelters. But even the homeless people who do want to go to shelters mostly can’t get in. This app gives the current status of San Francisco’s homeless shelter waitlist. If you applied today, there would be 900 people ahead of you in line for one of the city’s 1500 - 2500 shelter beds. The app says that the median wait time is 826 days. So however many homeless people don’t want to go to shelters, we’re not building enough shelters to serve the ones who do. Why not? Shellenberger again: In the spring of 2021, Friedenbach published an op-ed opposing a proposal considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to create, within eighteen months, sufficient homeless shelters and outdoor “Safe Sleeping Sites” for all of the city’s unsheltered homeless. “One can simply take a look to New York City,” she wrote. “Their department spends about $1.3 billion dollars of its budget on providing shelter for their unhoused population while thousands remain on the street. . . . As a result, New York has a higher rate of homelessness than San Francisco.” Housing First advocate Margot Kushel of the University of California, San Francisco agreed. “The problem with New York—and I spend a lot of time with people working in the system in New York—is that they spend an estimated $30,000 for each person per year to keep them in shelter. That’s not what we want to do. Because if you create the shelter and you don’t create the housing, then people are just in shelter forever.” Housing First advocates oppose shelter in Los Angeles. “Why haven’t we solved homelessness?” asked Housing First creator Sam Tsemberis. “Because [Los Angeles mayor] Eric Garcetti [has] Andy Bales [saying,] ‘You need emergency housing.’ ‘These people need to be cleaned up.’ ‘They need to be sober.’ ‘They need Jesus before they’ll be ready for housing.’ I said, ‘People should be housed and then maybe they’ll get sobriety and Jesus and the rest.’ We’re definitely on polar opposites of the whole thing.” Advocates for the homeless at the national level similarly oppose more shelters. “I don’t agree that we should be building more transitional housing,” said the head of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. […] In other words, the reason that there are so many homeless people on the streets in San Francisco is that both progressive and moderate Democratic elected officials, and the city’s most influential homelessness experts and advocates, have for two decades opposed building sufficient shelters. And that is unlikely to change even after San Francisco starts spending hundreds of millions more per year on the problem and might even get worse. This basically seems true. I found this webpage of a former SF Supervisor candidate a helpful corroborating source. He was running on a platform of “maybe we should build some homeless shelters”. He lost. You can also find a bunch of webpages by the sorts of people Shellenberger is complaining about, for example this site: Sup[ervisor] Rafael Mandelman today pushed his new legislation that would require the city to offer at least temporary shelter to everyone living on the streets, a step that some say would lead to more homeless sweeps and do nothing to create permanently affordable housing . . . [our] Coalition has argued for years that the solution to homelessness is housing—not temporary shelter, which may never lead to housing. The ex-supervisor candidate gives some helpful numbers: permanent housing costs about $600,000 per person housed. Shelters cost between $20,000 and $30,000 per person housed. So SF could build enough shelters to clear its waitlist for about $30 million. More recently, SF has tried a sort of compromise, opening “deluxe” shelters called Navigation Centers which avoid some of the problems of regular shelters. They also cost more than twice as much, and the city has only created about 300 beds. Also, the people in regular shelters are angry, because being in a regular shelter disqualifies you from getting into a (much better) Navigation Center. Some of them are considering leaving their shelter, going back on the streets, then waiting however many months or years it takes to get a Navigation Center bed instead. I’m not at all sure of these numbers, but it looks like of SF’s ~7,000 homeless, about 2,000 are in shelters already, and 1,000 are on the shelter waitlist. I don’t know if the remaining 4,000 have made a specific commitment not to go to shelters, or just have given up on the waitlist process. My conclusion: agree with San Fransicko about the role of progressive activists, but I think it overemphasizes the role of wanting to use drugs in why homeless people themselves sometimes avoid shelters, and underemphasizes the many other problems with them. Claim 5: Drug Decriminalization Isn’t Working California legalized marijuana in 2016. Shellenberger says that San Francisco’s commitment to drugs has gone beyond that: it has effectively decriminalized opioids, cocaine, and the rest. Any attempt to lessen use of these drugs is attacked as “stigmatizing”; instead, government policy centers around providing addicts with needles and other drug paraphernalia under the guise of “harm reduction”. Shellenberger hits all the right beats here. Like many people, he tries to undo the damage done by The New Jim Crow, a book which convinced millions of people that mass incarceration was driven by a racist War On Drugs. In fact, less than a fifth of prisoners are in for drug-related crimes. And when the government was first debating the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, black leaders were among the strongest proponents of both. The talking point at the time - among everyone from black Congressional leaders to black churches - was that the government’s failure to crack down on drug use was racist, borne of them not caring about predominantly black drug victims. And while we’ve been patting ourselves on the back about how enlightened we are for ending the drug war: Drug overdoses are today the number one cause of accidental death in the United States as a result of America’s historic addiction and overdose epidemic. Overdose deaths rose from 17,415 in 2000 to 93,330 in 2020, a 536 percent increase.Significantly more people die of drug overdoses today than of homicide (13,927 in 2019) or car accidents (36,096 in 2019). […] There are about twenty-five thousand injection drug users in San Francisco, a number 50 percent larger than the number of students enrolled in the city’s fifteen public high schools. San Francisco gives away more needles to drug users, six million per year, than New York City, despite having one-tenth the population. The part of this chapter that stood out to me as most worth looking into deeper was the section on Portugal: For decades, harm reduction and decriminalization advocates have pointed to Portugal as a model, noting that it decriminalized drugs and expanded drug treatment. In 2013, Portugal’s drug-induced death rate was sixty-six times less than that of the United States. The number of people in treatment increased by 60 percent between 1998 and 2011, with three-quarters receiving an opioid substitute like methadone or Suboxone, the brand name of buprenorphine. Drug use among 15- to 24-year-olds actually declined after decriminalization. “All drugs have been legalized,” explained Monique Tula, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition. “Their focus is on giving people tools, like job apprenticeships, and the means to support themselves.” […] [But Portugal] never legalized drugs. It only decriminalized them, reducing criminal penalties but maintaining prohibition. Drug dealers were still sent to prison even after the 2001 decriminalization. And Portugal does not let people addicted to hard drugs with behavioral disorders off the hook like progressive West Coast cities have done. It’s true that Portugal massively expanded drug treatment, but people are still arrested and fined for possession of heroin, meth, and other hard drugs. And drug users are typically sent to a regionally administered “Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction,” composed of a social worker, lawyer, and doctor who encourage, push, and coerce drug treatment. And decriminalization doesn’t end drug violence. “Even if trafficking enforcement decreased, like it did in Portugal,” said criminologist John Pfaff, “illegal drug markets would still be forced to rely on violence to resolve disputes.” Indeed, prostitution and violence are ever-present in the open-air drug scenes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. “We are seeing behaviors from our guests that I’ve never seen in thirty-three years,” said Rev. Andy Bales, who runs the largest homeless shelter on Skid Row in Los Angeles. “They are so bizarre and different that I don’t even feel right describing the behaviors. It’s extreme violence of an extreme sexual nature.” People are not dying from drug overdose deaths in San Francisco because they’re being arrested. They’re dying because they aren’t being arrested. Decriminalization reduces prices by lowering production and distribution costs, which increases use. This was also the case for alcohol consumption. It increased after prohibition ended in the United States. Even in Portugal, drug overdose deaths and overall drug use rose after decriminalization. I was most surprised by the claim that Portuguese overdose deaths rose after decriminalization. Uncharacteristically, San Fransicko doesn’t give a citation for it, but we can try to retrace its reasoning. Decriminalization proponents tend to point to these numbers, helpfully converted to per 100,000 population and graphed here: But an anti-drug Australian think tank argues that the peak in 2001 is made up: Claims that there were more than 75 drug-related deaths in 2001 which more than halved to 34 deaths in 2002 use a figure for 2001 for which there is no substantiation. Official drug-related deaths for Portugal, taken from the latest 2018 EMCDDA Statistical Bulletin are copied below. Notice that there is no such figure recorded for 2001. They include a link to EMCDDA, the EU organization charged with monitoring these things. The link contains two datasets, both of which seem to be measuring the same thing but getting different results. One dataset starts in 2002, the other in 2008. I don’t know what the difference here is, but they’re right that neither includes 2001. If you ignore the pre-2002 data, the graph looks like this: They say “opiate”, but AFAICT these numbers are actually about all drugs. But the proponents link to the updated 2020 version of the same website, which all of a sudden does have data from 2001 and before. I don’t know why EMCDDA can’t make up its mind, but I think the Australians are wrong and the original graph is fine. On the other hand, does it really matter? Both of these show drug deaths decreasing until 2005, then going up and down a bit, then going back up again starting in 2011. I think a reasonable interpretation would be that decriminalization in Portugal did decrease overdose deaths a bit, and then they started rising again from that low baseline around the same time other European countries saw rising overdose deaths. I would also accept “these are pretty small effects and we shouldn’t ascribe any significance to them”. But San Fransicko’s claim - that overdose deaths increased after the reform - seems false. The only way I can see justifying it is taking the second graph - the one that wrongly claims there is no pre-2002 data - and then attributing the fact that twelve years after the reform lowered deaths, deaths finally rose above the pre-reform level to be the fault of the reform. This is like saying “people claim the Black Plague killed a lot of Europeans, but the European population actually rose after the Plague”, which is true in the sense that it was above its pre-Plague max by like 1600 or whatever. What about overall drug use? Here I recommend A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs, which is on exactly this topic of how people keep selectively quoting results from Portugal to prove their point. It argues that drug use is inherently hard to measure. There are four different Portuguese datasets for the time at issue, lots of different drugs, lots of different age/gender combinations, and lots of different ways of measuring drugs (did you use drugs in the past month? the past year? your lifetime?) It’s easy to tell a story of how past-month cocaine use skyrocketed among 14-29 year old males according to X source, or how lifetime marijuana use fell in high school-age women according to Y. The main trick that opponents use is measuring lifetime drug use. Portugal is a very conservative country; drug use is pretty new and most of the older generation wasn’t involved. So as time goes on and more and more people try drugs but “un-trying” drugs isn’t a thing, the percent of the population who have tried drugs inevitably goes up. This definitely happened but isn’t a fair reflection of any specific reform. The authors find that in the past decade or so, there has been a bit more short-term experimentation with drugs, but less long-run use. They conclude: As shown in Figure 2, general population (aged 15–64) trends for recent and current drug use in Portugal indicate minimal if any changes between 2001 and 2007. Instead, rates of discontinuation of drug use (the proportion of the population that reported ever having used a drug but opting not to in recent years) increased, which reinforces that just as in the school populations, the growth in lifetime-reported use reflected predominantly short-term experimental use. Increases in recent and current drug use were more notable in some cohorts, particularly those aged 25 to 34 (albeit, with a maximum of 7% of any one cohort reporting recent use, absolute levels remained low). But as shown in Figure 3, recent and current drug use declined among those aged 15–24, the population who were most at risk of initiation and long-term engagement. The available evidence thus gives grounds for arguing that while there was some growth in the scale of drug use in post-reform Portugal, there was an overall positive net benefit for the Portuguese community. What about San Fransicko’s main point - that as the US has wound down the War on Drugs, drug overdose rates have sextupled? I think this is mostly not causal. I think the sextupling of overdoses is a combination of expansion in prescription opioid use, various forms of social decay making people less happy and therefore more likely to use drugs, and “improvements” in drug “technology” and the “supply chain” (eg production of fentanyl in China). I don’t know of any source that attempts to tease out the exact contribution of all of these things, but I would note that overdose deaths have risen the most in very conservative Midwestern states that haven’t walked back the drug war as much as California. Conclusion: As usual, I appreciate San Fransicko’s corrections to the prevailing narrative, but its own additions are dubious. Its claim that Portugal saw increased drug-related deaths seems false as far as I can tell. Its claim that it saw increased drug use depends on your definition, but is misleading and not the most natural way to sum up the evidence. Claim 6: San Francisco’s Soft-On-Crime Policies Led To Rising Crime Ten years ago, the news was full of stories about how some teenager stole a gumdrop and was sentenced to nine hundred billion years in jail. At some point, there was a genre shift to stories about how some hardened criminal murdered fifty people with an axe and the judge let him go with a warning because having jails felt racist. Source: Ed West, do note that this example is from the UK How suspicious should we be of each type of story? There will always be an extreme right tail of overly harsh sentences, and an extreme left tail of overly lenient ones. Were the 2000s really as draconian as they felt? Is the modern era really as pathetic? Or is it all just a function of who you read and what agenda they’re pushing? Shellenberger: During California governor Jerry Brown’s time in office, voters passed several reforms aimed at reducing the size of the prison population. In 2012, voters passed a change to the Three Strikes law so that the third strike imposes a life sentence only if the new felony was serious or violent. In addition to lowering punishments for drug possession, Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, redefined shoplifting, forgery, petty theft, and receiving stolen property as misdemeanors when the value in question does not exceed $950. In 2016, voters approved a proposition that shortened the time it took for some nonviolent offenders to be eligible for parole and which released nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and rehabilitation. Property crimes rose in San Francisco starting in 2012. Larceny, which is shoplifting and other petty theft, rose 50 percent, from roughly 3,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to about 4,500 in 2019. Property crimes as a whole, which include larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary, rose from 4,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to 5,500 in 2019. One study suggests that Proposition 47 increased the rate of auto theft 17 percent and the rate of larceny (non-auto property) theft 9 percent, but discerning between causation and correlation may not be possible. Upon taking office in January 2020, [famously soft-on-crime San Francisco district attorney Chesa] Boudin followed through on his campaign promises. Instead of prosecuting and incarcerating people for breaking car windows to steal money and other items from inside, Boudin proposed creating a $1.5 million fund to reimburse car owners. But there were over 25,000 car break-ins reported in 2019. If every break-in cost just $250 in repairs, the fund would need four times that amount. And what would prevent people from falsely claiming to have been robbed in order to get city money? […] Boudin opposed efforts by the mayor and the city attorney to prevent drug dealers who had already been arrested from entering the Tenderloin. “Until the city is serious about treating addiction and the root causes of drug use and selling,” said Boudin in a statement, “these recycled, punishment-focused approaches are unlikely to succeed at doing anything more than making headlines.” Home burglaries rose in early 2021 in San Francisco. Homeowners started posting on Twitter videos from their security cameras of people breaking into homes and garages. “When I first moved here we had a car break-in problem,” said Michael Solana, a writer who works for a venture capital fund. “Now we have a home invasion problem. These things are wearing on people.” Boudin attributed the rise of burglaries in San Francisco to the decline of tourism and “people in desperate economic circumstances.” Progressive supervisor Hillary Ronen agreed. “We know that [economic insecurity and inequality] is one of the root causes of property crimes specifically,” she said. But Tom Wolf and others argued that the robberies were, like the shoplifting, done by people seeking money to buy drugs and feed their addictions. “The drugstores have been shoplifted to death and that’s all because of drug use,” said Tom. “I know. I used to do the same thing when I was out there. That’s what you do. You ‘boost.’ And then you go and you sell your stuff down at UN Plaza,” an open-air drug scene. In a May 2021 city supervisors’ meeting, a representative from CVS called San Francisco “the epicenter of organized retail crime in the country” and claimed that 85 percent of the shoplifting is committed by organized theft rings. Police broke up one such ring in October 2020 and recovered $8 million of stolen merchandise. The problem goes beyond property crime. Boudin declined to prosecute two men who went on to kill people. One man had been repeatedly arrested for stealing cars, despite having just been released from prison earlier in the year, and appeared to be abusing meth. On New Year’s Eve, 2020, the man killed two people while driving intoxicated. Police found inside of his car a semiautomatic handgun and twenty-three grams of methamphetamine. On February 4, another intoxicated driver killed a pedestrian in a stolen car. The San Francisco police had arrested him in October 2020 for possessing a stolen car, a tool for stealing cars, and what appeared to be meth. Boudin chose not to pursue charges. In December, the California Highway Patrol arrested the man again for driving a stolen vehicle under the influence. Again he was not prosecuted. The accident victim, an immigrant from Kenya, and his wife had moved to San Francisco two weeks before the fatal crash. “I blame the DA,” said the widow of the victim. The suspect, she said, “was someone who was out in the public who shouldn’t have been in the public. It was completely avoidable.” Tom said he could feel the difference on the streets. “Drug dealing is unabated and it’s not one guy, it’s fifty guys dealing fentanyl and meth,” he said. “And it’s going unabated because the district attorney says, ‘These are the nonviolent, quality-of-life crimes,’ and ‘I’m not going to prosecute them.’” [..] District Attorney Boudin was offering weaker sentences than even defense attorneys were requesting, according to Vicki Westbrook of San Francisco. “There’s a defense attorney who said, ‘It used to be that I would argue for this deal in court with the DA but now I don’t say anything because the DA is going to offer me a deal better than what I would have suggested. Somebody shot up the street with an automatic weapon. The first offer was six months in jail or time served plus two years of probation or something. And then [the DA] said, “How about thirty days in jail?”’” Vicki laughed. “You really can do anything in San Francisco,” she said. “If you do get arrested, chances are you’re going to be out of jail in less than thirty days for damn near everything except maybe killing somebody and maybe even then, too. It’s hard to say at this point.” Taking each of these points individually: Proposition 47 There are two good big studies on the effects of Prop 47, one by Public Policy Institute and one by some UCI criminologists. The PPI study finds that the proposition increased theft and car break-ins by about 10%. The UCI study finds the same, but notes that under different assumptions the effects wouldn’t quite obtain statistical significance. This seems a bit too much like post hoc trying to get rid of an inconvenient effect, plus an effect on the border of statistical significance is different from positively finding no effect. I think a reasonable interpretation is that theft and car break-ins rose about 10% because of the proposition, just as Shellenberger says. Some pro-47 sites note that most states have some limit on how much you to have to shoplift before it’s a felony, and Prop 47 brought California closer to the national average, rather than turning it into an outlier. Chesa Boudin Chesa Boudin took office two months before the COVID pandemic began. Any attempt to separate the effect of Chesa Boudin from the effect of the pandemic is doomed. Shoplifting definitely plummeted when Boudin took office, but that’s because all the stores were closed. Murders definitely rose a little after Boudin took office, but that’s because that was also when the Black Lives Matter protests happened, which demoralized police and led to a so-far-permanent spike in murders nationwide. Percent of criminals caught definitely fell when Boudin took office, but that’s because various aspects of the justice system were closed for COVID (I will grudgingly entertain speculation that a further decrease in arrest rates from 2020 to 2021 may have been a genuine Boudin effect). In the absence of any real way to judge his performance, I think San Fransicko’s points about Boudin are plausible, though speculative. Shoplifting This one is terrible. There’s a surprisingly spirited debate here (some of you may have already read Applied Divinity Studies’ article). The debate is: everyone on the ground in San Francisco - store owners, security guards, customers, random citizens - say that shoplifting has increased massively over the past decade. But statistics mostly say it hasn’t. Source here. This is shoplifting crimes per 100,000 people. Kern County is a deep red county in California (including Bakersfield) that is known for being tough on crime. Against this, seriously, everyone says that shoplifting has obviously increased. I had a patient who worked in shoplifting prevention, he told me - his psychiatrist! Who he had no reason to lie to! - that he was constantly stressed dealing with the shoplifting surge devastating the stores he covered. Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response to someone posting the data showing shoplifting hasn’t risen - it’s just a lot of people laughing hysterically. What’s going on? I was able to find a different set of statistics that does seem to show a longer-term increase in shoplifting (source): The very big spike at the end might be a change in reporting by one or two stores - you can find the argument here. But it does look like shoplifting went from about 125 incidents/month in the early 2010s to more like 250/month just before the pandemic. Why is this graph so different from the other one? It looks like the top one came from the Department of Justice, and the bottom one came from SFPD. I’m not sure why these report differently. When you multiply out by 800K people in SF, by 12 months/year, and 30ish days/month, the first graph corresponds to 4 shoplifting incidents per day, and the second to 6. As LouB’s analysis here points out, that seems suspiciously low for a city of 800,000 people where stores are constantly closing because of shoplifting. Maybe off by a factor of a few hundred from what we’d expect. LouB writes: The SFPD report only references shoplifting offenses that required SFPD officers to prepare an incident report. That means either the shoplifter fought security, committed additional crimes, or stole more than $950 worth of items. It’s not that SFPD’s report is erroneous, it’s just not a representative statistic. In a parallel statistic, SFPD only completes incident reports for traffic accidents when there is an injury. Therefore, thousands of noninjury accidents are handled civilly without SFPD reports the same way thousands of shoplifting offenses are handled without reports. An insurance company would not determine premium rates based solely on SFPD incident reports, nor should readers interpret SFPD shoplifting reports as anywhere near the total picture of the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco. (this would also explain why one or two stores changing their reporting policy can produce a spike equal to everyone else in San Francisco combined) But comparing incident reports from 2010 to incident reports from 2020 should still be apples-to-apples, unless the likelihood of reporting any given incident changed in the meantime. Did it? This news article quotes a San Franciscan who says that when they try to report shoplifting incidents, the cops tell them not to because “it doesn’t make a difference”. If cops say that now more often than they used to, it would make all these statistics meaningless. (Applied Divinity Studies claims to have an argument that shows this can’t be true. It goes something like: if San Francisco was a better place to shoplift than its neighbors - eg Oakland - then shoplifters would leave Oakland to go to San Francisco, and we would see Oakland shoplifting rates falling. Oakland shoplifting rates are falling, but no more so than the rest of the state, so there can’t be increased tolerance for shoplifting in San Francisco. I find this dubious for many reasons. First of all, many of the same reasons shoplifting is up in San Francisco - like Prop 47 or soft-on-crime progressive policies - also apply to Oakland. Second, given that shoplifting fell massively everywhere because of the pandemic, it feels dubious to try to compare different cities; maybe one city had stricter pandemic lockdowns than others. Third, do criminals really shop around for friendly jurisdictions? If so, why are so many crimes like car break-ins, concentrated in “the bad part of town”? Why wouldn’t criminals leave the bad part of town for under-exploited areas with richer residents and less competition? Maybe criminals in fact aren’t very strategic or mobile? Maybe they don’t want to stand in the BART station and then take a half-hour train ride holding a bag of stolen goods?) Maybe a better argument against this being true is how stable the shoplifting rates have been over time. Wouldn’t it be weird if (let’s say) a tripling of the real shoplifting rates was matched by a third-ing of the reporting rates (rather than a halving or a quartering or whatever)? On the other hand, here’s Shellenberger with some helpful data: Some of this is probably because of Proposition 47, which made some forms of shoplifting punishable with citation rather than arrest (but wouldn’t that be a clear discontinuity rather than a gradual trend?) But overall it sure seems like shoplifting is being taken less seriously, which might encourage people to report less. Another statistic I see is that only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest; I don’t know how this is different from the graph above with numbers in the 30s; maybe it involves different levels of what makes something a “case”. I accept that the data don’t consistently show a spike in shoplifting. But what’s the alternative? My patient who works in loss prevention in SF stores is lying to me? The nice elderly Chinese man who sold me my last pair of glasses and chatted to me about the rampant shoplifting in his mall was lying? The San Francisco police are lying? Walgreens pretends to be concerned about shoplifting as part of a dastardly plot to close a bunch of stores for no reason? Target and CVS pretend to care about shoplifting as part of a plot to restrict their stores’ opening hours for no reason? Every big store near me has suddenly gotten a security guard at the front as part of some corporate-sponsored jobs program? Maybe the conservative narrative that soft-on-crime San Francisco must be experiencing rising crime rates took on a life of its own. Maybe it infiltrated not just the usual suspects like the SF police unions, but even such supposedly-liberal bastions as the New York Times. Maybe lots of big corporations took advantage of the fake narrative to make unpopular business decisions they were planning on making anyway. And maybe ordinary San Franciscans, confronted with everyone telling them they were in a shoplifting epidemic, started paying more attention to security guards and petty criminals who had always been there, a sort of mass hallucination that gripped everyone in the city. I can’t rule this out. Americans thought crime was rising all throughout the early 2000s, when it was in fact way down. Or maybe some statistics that we already know are off by several orders of magnitude got off by an additional factor of two or so. I think this one is more likely, but I’m genuinely not sure. Other Crime From the Economist: The Center on Juvenile And Criminal Justice puts it even more starkly, arguing that “San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime”: This are potentially susceptible to the same reporting bias as shoplifting. So what about homicide? Homicide is practically always reported and investigated, making it a gold standard in crime measurement. (source) Looks pretty good until 2019. I don’t expect to gain useful information post-2020; the pandemic and the post-George-Floyd murder surge will make it impossible to evaluate for local variation. What about compared to other places? For some reason this top 20 table fails to list Washington DC, which should be just before Atlanta. SF doesn’t make the top 20, although its neighbor Oakland does. Probably most murder variation in US cities is explained by percent African-American and maybe percent Borderer; with relatively few people in these groups SF was never in the running. I’m not sure if some abstracted version of the city with all demographic factors adjusted away would have an unusually high murder rate, but at that point it would be pretty distant from any interesting real-world question. You can see the leaderboard for other types of crime here; San Francisco is often in the top ten, but never the top three. As far as I can tell, San Francisco has seen a big spike in car breakins over the past few years, with no clear trend for other property crime, violent crime, or homicides. It’s not an outlier among American cities in any kind of crime. Conclusion of this section: San Fransicko’s specific claims are basically correct, but suggest a medium-term rise in SF crime which is mostly contradicted by the data. These show stable-to-decreasing murder, stable-to-decreasing violent and property crimes other than car break-ins, and large rises in car break-ins only. The data also show stable-to-decreasing shoplifting, but I’m not sure how much to trust them vs. common sense. Honestly, I’m pretty confused here and not sure what to think. Claim 7: Jim Jones (Of Kool-Aid Cult Fame) Used To Be The Chairman Of SF’s Housing Authority Okay, this isn’t really a statistical claim that I can research different perspectives on. Still, it’s so wacky that I couldn’t resist mentioning it in this review. Jim Jones, famous for killing everyone in his Guyana-based Jonestown cult with poisoned Kool-Aid, used to be the SF government’s top guy on homelessness. Shellenberger writes: Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the People’s Temple. Jones believed he was the leader of a socialist revolution. He warned of nuclear war and claimed black people would be put in concentration camps. He became a hugely charismatic preacher among African Americans, the disaffiliated poor, and young transplants to the city looking for community. Scenes from the era show a remarkably large and diverse congregation smiling and singing. The People’s Temple grew and provided services. Jones cultivated two progressive San Francisco politicians, George Moscone and Willie Brown, and mobilized people to volunteer for their campaigns […] His son and a San Francisco historian believe he stole the mayoral election for Moscone in 1975. Historian David Talbot, founder of the progressive website Salon, points to evidence that Jones committed sufficient voter fraud to account for Moscone’s narrow 4,443-vote margin of victory. “We loaded up all thirteen of our buses with maybe seventy people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” said Jones Jr. “Could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely! Slam dunk. He only won by four thousand votes.” When federal investigators looked into fraud claims three years later, they discovered that all of the records were missing from the city of San Francisco’s registrar of voters. Jones also boasted of providing Moscone with black women from his congregation for sex. One time Moscone, drunk and “accompanied by a young black woman whom the politician had kindly agreed to drive home,” crashed into another car. Another time, Moscone and Willie Brown “were with a black woman in an alley at two in the morning at some restaurant in North Beach,” said a local bar owner. State legislator “John Burton was part of that gang too. They were all using marijuana and cocaine.” Said Jones Jr., Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand and doing some ass grabbing.” A Temple member overheard Jones speaking to Moscone the day after one of those parties saying, “I want to let you know that the young lady you went off with is underage,” adding, “Now don’t worry, Mayor, we’ll take care of you—because we know that you’ll take care of us.” Afterward, Moscone made Jones the chairman of the powerful San Francisco Housing Commission. Jones cultivated progressives with money and favors. He made large donations to the ACLU, the NAACP, and United Farm Workers. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on a campaign plane a few days before the 1976 presidential election, and Mondale praised People’s Temple shortly afterward. Jones met with First Lady Rosalynn Carter several times. Governor Jerry Brown praised Jones. Glide Memorial Church’s Rev. Cecil Williams loved Jones. There is a photo from 1977 of a smiling Williams awarding Jones the church’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Jones used his perch as chairman of the Housing Commission to fight for housing for the poor. He tried to use eminent domain to acquire the International Hotel, a single resident occupancy hotel. After a court sided with the hotel’s owner, Jones mobilized seven thousand protesters to picket it. By mid-January 1977, the situation had become heated. There were rumors that protesters inside the building were armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. Jones lost the legal battle in 1977, and the tenants were evicted. But the drama was a publicity victory for Jones, which burnished his image as a white savior. A conservative member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in the mayoral election by Moscone accused the new mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the rest of the city establishment of being blind to Jones’s extremism. “There’s no radical plot in San Francisco,” insisted Moscone, in response. “There’s no one I’ve appointed to any city position whom I regard as radical or extremist.” Willie Brown, a powerful state legislator from 1964 to 1995 before becoming mayor in 1996, “seemed oblivious to Jones’ hucksterism and demagoguery,” notes a historian. Brown was master of ceremonies at a dinner for Jones in the fall of 1976 attended by an adulatory crowd of the rich and powerful, including Governor Jerry Brown. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein . . . Chairman Mao,” he said, to loud applause. And yet Jones was contemptuous of Brown even as Brown did Jones more and more favors. Jones mocked Brown for his designer suits, sports cars, and women. Once, while Brown was addressing the congregation and Jones was seated onstage behind him, Jones flipped his middle finger up to mock him. San Francisco’s establishment stood by Jones even after a California magazine, New West, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an exposé of Jones’s beatings of Temple members and financial abuses in August 1977. The article was written by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and was meant for the Chronicle to publish. But the newspaper killed the story because it didn’t want to alienate Jones, whom it viewed as central to its plans to expand the Chronicle’s circulation in the heavily African American Fillmore District. Jones also managed to avoid investigation and prosecution in part by getting the district attorney to hire as deputy district attorney Jones’s longtime attorney and confidant. Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.” Angela Davis sent a radio message broadcast over the cult’s compound, Jonestown, in Guyana. “I know you’re in a very difficult situation right now,” she said, “and there is a very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle.” After visiting Jonestown, the attorney to the Black Panthers said, “I have seen paradise.” Harvey Milk, too, was tarnished by his association with Jones. In the fall of 1977, Milk wrote to President Carter’s secretary of health, education, and welfare requesting that Social Security checks be sent to elderly Temple members in Guyana. “People’s Temple,” wrote Milk, has “established a beautiful retirement community in Guyana.” In truth, the cult was disintegrating. Jones separated families and lovers, pitted relatives against each other, and forced neighbors to inform on each other. Jones sent people who violated the rules to solitary confinement in “the Box,” an underground cubicle where people were held as prisoners for days on end. Others were drugged. Progressives who had spent thirty years fighting to close prisons and mental hospitals found themselves praising a man who had reproduced their worst practices. In November 1978 a Bay Area congressman flew to Guyana to investigate human rights violations at Jonestown with NBC News. Jones gave the delegation a formal reception at Jonestown. A Temple member surreptitiously passed a note to one of the delegation members, saying he and another member wanted to escape. They fled the next day after a Temple member tried to stab the congressman. Jones didn’t prevent them from leaving but then sent gunmen to fire machine guns at the delegation at the airport, killing the congressman and four others. A few hours later, 907 inhabitants of Jonestown drank Flavor Aid laced with cyanide and died. Two-thirds of the victims were African American and one-third were children. Jones had told them that if they didn’t drink it they would be killed by invading soldiers from a shadowy global military conspiracy intent on imposing fascism and torturing children. As people started crying in grief, Jones scolded them. “Stop these hysterics,” he said. “This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die.” Jones’s wife protested the murder of children and had to be forcibly restrained. “We didn’t commit suicide,” said Jones in a tape recording, “we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” Few were as stained by Jonestown as Willie Brown and George Moscone. “Even as the bloated bodies of the dead were removed from the jungle and the wounded were airlifted by the U.S. Air Force to hospitals in the United States,” wrote a historian, “Brown said he had ‘no regrets’ over his association with Jones.” They repeatedly disavowed responsibility. Said Moscone, “it’s clear that if there was a sinister plan, then we were taken in. But I’m not taking any responsibility. It’s not mine to shoulder.” This is Shellenberger at his best: telling us crazy stories from the recesses of San Francisco history, maybe kind of spinning the narration in a way that makes all progressives seem guilty by association, but with the tale itself so gripping that it’s hard to be mad. And Jones wasn’t alone. This was the golden age of San Francisco cults, when (Shellenberger tells us) “more than half of all high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area reported at least one recruiting attempt by a cult member, and 40 percent reported at least three contacts.” This chapter of SF history came to an end in 1978, when Dan White, who had just resigned from San Francisco’s Board Of Supervisors (ie City Council) entered City Hall through a window and assassinated Mayor Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk, then successfully got charges reduced to manslaughter through a legal manuever that has gone down in history as “the Twinkie Defense” (realistically the defense was that he was depressed, but reporters seized on a comment that implied it was because he ate too many Twinkies). Everything about 1970s San Francisco was like this. With the Mayor and his right-hand-man both dead, San Francisco leadership ended up in the hands of previously second-tier politician Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein was what passed for a moderate in 1970s SF (which meant she had been targeted for assassination by various left-wing groups - she survived when a bomb left on her windowsill failed to explode). In Shellenberger’s telling, she managed to clean up some of the mess and restore a semblance of normalcy. San Francisco never forgave her. Moscone - voting fraud committer, underage sex enjoyer, and Jim Jones’ bff - is beloved as a martyr in today’s SF, but (the book points out) Feinstein is so loathed that in 2021 the Board of Education voted to rename Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.
Inline links: a proper randomized study, Somers, Moniruzzaman and Palepu, Padgett et al, Kirst et al, Milby, a $14 billion budget, This article, talk about, another article about people objecting to, boarding houses, Politico, has completed only 700 units, Considerations On Cost Disease, this comment, An article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4wi2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00f02bfe-c696-415d-ba80-5edb997021cb_809x487.png, survey, This app, this webpage, this site, many people, among the strongest proponents of both, these numbers, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!msoV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b34d51f-d6ed-43ee-a069-5e74fe75c421_1812x1102.png, an anti-drug Australian think tank, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CN2E!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85656c06-22bc-4076-80f0-b7a9bd4aa0d3_574x331.png, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VvrE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2341944a-388d-4da9-9788-8474567b83fc_540x737.png, Ed West, Public Policy Institute, UCI criminologists, Applied Divinity Studies’ article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aTNC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa27aeb21-ed87-4e67-b82c-b3ceecee7082_500x238.png, here, Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_NL6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcf7dc478-45d3-487d-8c29-8bc7cdf182dd_2400x1500.png, LouB’s analysis here, This news article, only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest, New York Times, the Economist, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!58I3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc63dc7bc-1f8e-49fd-9c68-61c85278d69e_608x662.png, San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!h17s!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F956c0917-2a9b-4ff7-a08e-6aee5030583a_590x376.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TkFS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c5faa01-ac22-48a2-96fe-47efb6f52514_616x334.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Bg2w!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18e49c63-16ba-4878-96e6-aec12d7c5953_481x667.png, percent African-American, percent Borderer, here, the Twinkie Defense, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8wK3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F683b9754-f663-47ad-88f5-aa99bc208ec8_1401x622.jpeg, https://twitter.com/weheartprez/status/1526983899309432832
Source: Ed West, do note that this example is from the UK How suspicious should we be of each type of story? There will always be an extreme right tail of overly harsh sentences, and an extreme left tail of overly lenient ones. Were the 2000s really as draconian as they felt? Is the modern era really as pathetic? Or is it all just a function of who you read and what agenda they’re pushing? Shellenberger: During California governor Jerry Brown’s time in office, voters passed several reforms aimed at reducing the size of the prison population. In 2012, voters passed a change to the Three Strikes law so that the third strike imposes a life sentence only if the new felony was serious or violent. In addition to lowering punishments for drug possession, Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, redefined shoplifting, forgery, petty theft, and receiving stolen property as misdemeanors when the value in question does not exceed $950. In 2016, voters approved a proposition that shortened the time it took for some nonviolent offenders to be eligible for parole and which released nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and rehabilitation. Property crimes rose in San Francisco starting in 2012. Larceny, which is shoplifting and other petty theft, rose 50 percent, from roughly 3,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to about 4,500 in 2019. Property crimes as a whole, which include larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary, rose from 4,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to 5,500 in 2019. One study suggests that Proposition 47 increased the rate of auto theft 17 percent and the rate of larceny (non-auto property) theft 9 percent, but discerning between causation and correlation may not be possible. Upon taking office in January 2020, [famously soft-on-crime San Francisco district attorney Chesa] Boudin followed through on his campaign promises. Instead of prosecuting and incarcerating people for breaking car windows to steal money and other items from inside, Boudin proposed creating a $1.5 million fund to reimburse car owners. But there were over 25,000 car break-ins reported in 2019. If every break-in cost just $250 in repairs, the fund would need four times that amount. And what would prevent people from falsely claiming to have been robbed in order to get city money? […] Boudin opposed efforts by the mayor and the city attorney to prevent drug dealers who had already been arrested from entering the Tenderloin. “Until the city is serious about treating addiction and the root causes of drug use and selling,” said Boudin in a statement, “these recycled, punishment-focused approaches are unlikely to succeed at doing anything more than making headlines.” Home burglaries rose in early 2021 in San Francisco. Homeowners started posting on Twitter videos from their security cameras of people breaking into homes and garages. “When I first moved here we had a car break-in problem,” said Michael Solana, a writer who works for a venture capital fund. “Now we have a home invasion problem. These things are wearing on people.” Boudin attributed the rise of burglaries in San Francisco to the decline of tourism and “people in desperate economic circumstances.” Progressive supervisor Hillary Ronen agreed. “We know that [economic insecurity and inequality] is one of the root causes of property crimes specifically,” she said. But Tom Wolf and others argued that the robberies were, like the shoplifting, done by people seeking money to buy drugs and feed their addictions. “The drugstores have been shoplifted to death and that’s all because of drug use,” said Tom. “I know. I used to do the same thing when I was out there. That’s what you do. You ‘boost.’ And then you go and you sell your stuff down at UN Plaza,” an open-air drug scene. In a May 2021 city supervisors’ meeting, a representative from CVS called San Francisco “the epicenter of organized retail crime in the country” and claimed that 85 percent of the shoplifting is committed by organized theft rings. Police broke up one such ring in October 2020 and recovered $8 million of stolen merchandise. The problem goes beyond property crime. Boudin declined to prosecute two men who went on to kill people. One man had been repeatedly arrested for stealing cars, despite having just been released from prison earlier in the year, and appeared to be abusing meth. On New Year’s Eve, 2020, the man killed two people while driving intoxicated. Police found inside of his car a semiautomatic handgun and twenty-three grams of methamphetamine. On February 4, another intoxicated driver killed a pedestrian in a stolen car. The San Francisco police had arrested him in October 2020 for possessing a stolen car, a tool for stealing cars, and what appeared to be meth. Boudin chose not to pursue charges. In December, the California Highway Patrol arrested the man again for driving a stolen vehicle under the influence. Again he was not prosecuted. The accident victim, an immigrant from Kenya, and his wife had moved to San Francisco two weeks before the fatal crash. “I blame the DA,” said the widow of the victim. The suspect, she said, “was someone who was out in the public who shouldn’t have been in the public. It was completely avoidable.” Tom said he could feel the difference on the streets. “Drug dealing is unabated and it’s not one guy, it’s fifty guys dealing fentanyl and meth,” he said. “And it’s going unabated because the district attorney says, ‘These are the nonviolent, quality-of-life crimes,’ and ‘I’m not going to prosecute them.’” [..] District Attorney Boudin was offering weaker sentences than even defense attorneys were requesting, according to Vicki Westbrook of San Francisco. “There’s a defense attorney who said, ‘It used to be that I would argue for this deal in court with the DA but now I don’t say anything because the DA is going to offer me a deal better than what I would have suggested. Somebody shot up the street with an automatic weapon. The first offer was six months in jail or time served plus two years of probation or something. And then [the DA] said, “How about thirty days in jail?”’” Vicki laughed. “You really can do anything in San Francisco,” she said. “If you do get arrested, chances are you’re going to be out of jail in less than thirty days for damn near everything except maybe killing somebody and maybe even then, too. It’s hard to say at this point.” Taking each of these points individually: Proposition 47 There are two good big studies on the effects of Prop 47, one by Public Policy Institute and one by some UCI criminologists. The PPI study finds that the proposition increased theft and car break-ins by about 10%. The UCI study finds the same, but notes that under different assumptions the effects wouldn’t quite obtain statistical significance. This seems a bit too much like post hoc trying to get rid of an inconvenient effect, plus an effect on the border of statistical significance is different from positively finding no effect. I think a reasonable interpretation is that theft and car break-ins rose about 10% because of the proposition, just as Shellenberger says. Some pro-47 sites note that most states have some limit on how much you to have to shoplift before it’s a felony, and Prop 47 brought California closer to the national average, rather than turning it into an outlier. Chesa Boudin Chesa Boudin took office two months before the COVID pandemic began. Any attempt to separate the effect of Chesa Boudin from the effect of the pandemic is doomed. Shoplifting definitely plummeted when Boudin took office, but that’s because all the stores were closed. Murders definitely rose a little after Boudin took office, but that’s because that was also when the Black Lives Matter protests happened, which demoralized police and led to a so-far-permanent spike in murders nationwide. Percent of criminals caught definitely fell when Boudin took office, but that’s because various aspects of the justice system were closed for COVID (I will grudgingly entertain speculation that a further decrease in arrest rates from 2020 to 2021 may have been a genuine Boudin effect). In the absence of any real way to judge his performance, I think San Fransicko’s points about Boudin are plausible, though speculative. Shoplifting This one is terrible. There’s a surprisingly spirited debate here (some of you may have already read Applied Divinity Studies’ article). The debate is: everyone on the ground in San Francisco - store owners, security guards, customers, random citizens - say that shoplifting has increased massively over the past decade. But statistics mostly say it hasn’t. Source here. This is shoplifting crimes per 100,000 people. Kern County is a deep red county in California (including Bakersfield) that is known for being tough on crime. Against this, seriously, everyone says that shoplifting has obviously increased. I had a patient who worked in shoplifting prevention, he told me - his psychiatrist! Who he had no reason to lie to! - that he was constantly stressed dealing with the shoplifting surge devastating the stores he covered. Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response to someone posting the data showing shoplifting hasn’t risen - it’s just a lot of people laughing hysterically. What’s going on? I was able to find a different set of statistics that does seem to show a longer-term increase in shoplifting (source): The very big spike at the end might be a change in reporting by one or two stores - you can find the argument here. But it does look like shoplifting went from about 125 incidents/month in the early 2010s to more like 250/month just before the pandemic. Why is this graph so different from the other one? It looks like the top one came from the Department of Justice, and the bottom one came from SFPD. I’m not sure why these report differently. When you multiply out by 800K people in SF, by 12 months/year, and 30ish days/month, the first graph corresponds to 4 shoplifting incidents per day, and the second to 6. As LouB’s analysis here points out, that seems suspiciously low for a city of 800,000 people where stores are constantly closing because of shoplifting. Maybe off by a factor of a few hundred from what we’d expect. LouB writes: The SFPD report only references shoplifting offenses that required SFPD officers to prepare an incident report. That means either the shoplifter fought security, committed additional crimes, or stole more than $950 worth of items. It’s not that SFPD’s report is erroneous, it’s just not a representative statistic. In a parallel statistic, SFPD only completes incident reports for traffic accidents when there is an injury. Therefore, thousands of noninjury accidents are handled civilly without SFPD reports the same way thousands of shoplifting offenses are handled without reports. An insurance company would not determine premium rates based solely on SFPD incident reports, nor should readers interpret SFPD shoplifting reports as anywhere near the total picture of the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco. (this would also explain why one or two stores changing their reporting policy can produce a spike equal to everyone else in San Francisco combined) But comparing incident reports from 2010 to incident reports from 2020 should still be apples-to-apples, unless the likelihood of reporting any given incident changed in the meantime. Did it? This news article quotes a San Franciscan who says that when they try to report shoplifting incidents, the cops tell them not to because “it doesn’t make a difference”. If cops say that now more often than they used to, it would make all these statistics meaningless. (Applied Divinity Studies claims to have an argument that shows this can’t be true. It goes something like: if San Francisco was a better place to shoplift than its neighbors - eg Oakland - then shoplifters would leave Oakland to go to San Francisco, and we would see Oakland shoplifting rates falling. Oakland shoplifting rates are falling, but no more so than the rest of the state, so there can’t be increased tolerance for shoplifting in San Francisco. I find this dubious for many reasons. First of all, many of the same reasons shoplifting is up in San Francisco - like Prop 47 or soft-on-crime progressive policies - also apply to Oakland. Second, given that shoplifting fell massively everywhere because of the pandemic, it feels dubious to try to compare different cities; maybe one city had stricter pandemic lockdowns than others. Third, do criminals really shop around for friendly jurisdictions? If so, why are so many crimes like car break-ins, concentrated in “the bad part of town”? Why wouldn’t criminals leave the bad part of town for under-exploited areas with richer residents and less competition? Maybe criminals in fact aren’t very strategic or mobile? Maybe they don’t want to stand in the BART station and then take a half-hour train ride holding a bag of stolen goods?) Maybe a better argument against this being true is how stable the shoplifting rates have been over time. Wouldn’t it be weird if (let’s say) a tripling of the real shoplifting rates was matched by a third-ing of the reporting rates (rather than a halving or a quartering or whatever)? On the other hand, here’s Shellenberger with some helpful data: Some of this is probably because of Proposition 47, which made some forms of shoplifting punishable with citation rather than arrest (but wouldn’t that be a clear discontinuity rather than a gradual trend?) But overall it sure seems like shoplifting is being taken less seriously, which might encourage people to report less. Another statistic I see is that only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest; I don’t know how this is different from the graph above with numbers in the 30s; maybe it involves different levels of what makes something a “case”. I accept that the data don’t consistently show a spike in shoplifting. But what’s the alternative? My patient who works in loss prevention in SF stores is lying to me? The nice elderly Chinese man who sold me my last pair of glasses and chatted to me about the rampant shoplifting in his mall was lying? The San Francisco police are lying? Walgreens pretends to be concerned about shoplifting as part of a dastardly plot to close a bunch of stores for no reason? Target and CVS pretend to care about shoplifting as part of a plot to restrict their stores’ opening hours for no reason? Every big store near me has suddenly gotten a security guard at the front as part of some corporate-sponsored jobs program? Maybe the conservative narrative that soft-on-crime San Francisco must be experiencing rising crime rates took on a life of its own. Maybe it infiltrated not just the usual suspects like the SF police unions, but even such supposedly-liberal bastions as the New York Times. Maybe lots of big corporations took advantage of the fake narrative to make unpopular business decisions they were planning on making anyway. And maybe ordinary San Franciscans, confronted with everyone telling them they were in a shoplifting epidemic, started paying more attention to security guards and petty criminals who had always been there, a sort of mass hallucination that gripped everyone in the city. I can’t rule this out. Americans thought crime was rising all throughout the early 2000s, when it was in fact way down. Or maybe some statistics that we already know are off by several orders of magnitude got off by an additional factor of two or so. I think this one is more likely, but I’m genuinely not sure. Other Crime From the Economist: The Center on Juvenile And Criminal Justice puts it even more starkly, arguing that “San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime”: This are potentially susceptible to the same reporting bias as shoplifting. So what about homicide? Homicide is practically always reported and investigated, making it a gold standard in crime measurement. (source) Looks pretty good until 2019. I don’t expect to gain useful information post-2020; the pandemic and the post-George-Floyd murder surge will make it impossible to evaluate for local variation. What about compared to other places? For some reason this top 20 table fails to list Washington DC, which should be just before Atlanta. SF doesn’t make the top 20, although its neighbor Oakland does. Probably most murder variation in US cities is explained by percent African-American and maybe percent Borderer; with relatively few people in these groups SF was never in the running. I’m not sure if some abstracted version of the city with all demographic factors adjusted away would have an unusually high murder rate, but at that point it would be pretty distant from any interesting real-world question. You can see the leaderboard for other types of crime here; San Francisco is often in the top ten, but never the top three. As far as I can tell, San Francisco has seen a big spike in car breakins over the past few years, with no clear trend for other property crime, violent crime, or homicides. It’s not an outlier among American cities in any kind of crime. Conclusion of this section: San Fransicko’s specific claims are basically correct, but suggest a medium-term rise in SF crime which is mostly contradicted by the data. These show stable-to-decreasing murder, stable-to-decreasing violent and property crimes other than car break-ins, and large rises in car break-ins only. The data also show stable-to-decreasing shoplifting, but I’m not sure how much to trust them vs. common sense. Honestly, I’m pretty confused here and not sure what to think. Claim 7: Jim Jones (Of Kool-Aid Cult Fame) Used To Be The Chairman Of SF’s Housing Authority Okay, this isn’t really a statistical claim that I can research different perspectives on. Still, it’s so wacky that I couldn’t resist mentioning it in this review. Jim Jones, famous for killing everyone in his Guyana-based Jonestown cult with poisoned Kool-Aid, used to be the SF government’s top guy on homelessness. Shellenberger writes: Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the People’s Temple. Jones believed he was the leader of a socialist revolution. He warned of nuclear war and claimed black people would be put in concentration camps. He became a hugely charismatic preacher among African Americans, the disaffiliated poor, and young transplants to the city looking for community. Scenes from the era show a remarkably large and diverse congregation smiling and singing. The People’s Temple grew and provided services. Jones cultivated two progressive San Francisco politicians, George Moscone and Willie Brown, and mobilized people to volunteer for their campaigns […] His son and a San Francisco historian believe he stole the mayoral election for Moscone in 1975. Historian David Talbot, founder of the progressive website Salon, points to evidence that Jones committed sufficient voter fraud to account for Moscone’s narrow 4,443-vote margin of victory. “We loaded up all thirteen of our buses with maybe seventy people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” said Jones Jr. “Could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely! Slam dunk. He only won by four thousand votes.” When federal investigators looked into fraud claims three years later, they discovered that all of the records were missing from the city of San Francisco’s registrar of voters. Jones also boasted of providing Moscone with black women from his congregation for sex. One time Moscone, drunk and “accompanied by a young black woman whom the politician had kindly agreed to drive home,” crashed into another car. Another time, Moscone and Willie Brown “were with a black woman in an alley at two in the morning at some restaurant in North Beach,” said a local bar owner. State legislator “John Burton was part of that gang too. They were all using marijuana and cocaine.” Said Jones Jr., Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand and doing some ass grabbing.” A Temple member overheard Jones speaking to Moscone the day after one of those parties saying, “I want to let you know that the young lady you went off with is underage,” adding, “Now don’t worry, Mayor, we’ll take care of you—because we know that you’ll take care of us.” Afterward, Moscone made Jones the chairman of the powerful San Francisco Housing Commission. Jones cultivated progressives with money and favors. He made large donations to the ACLU, the NAACP, and United Farm Workers. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on a campaign plane a few days before the 1976 presidential election, and Mondale praised People’s Temple shortly afterward. Jones met with First Lady Rosalynn Carter several times. Governor Jerry Brown praised Jones. Glide Memorial Church’s Rev. Cecil Williams loved Jones. There is a photo from 1977 of a smiling Williams awarding Jones the church’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Jones used his perch as chairman of the Housing Commission to fight for housing for the poor. He tried to use eminent domain to acquire the International Hotel, a single resident occupancy hotel. After a court sided with the hotel’s owner, Jones mobilized seven thousand protesters to picket it. By mid-January 1977, the situation had become heated. There were rumors that protesters inside the building were armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. Jones lost the legal battle in 1977, and the tenants were evicted. But the drama was a publicity victory for Jones, which burnished his image as a white savior. A conservative member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in the mayoral election by Moscone accused the new mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the rest of the city establishment of being blind to Jones’s extremism. “There’s no radical plot in San Francisco,” insisted Moscone, in response. “There’s no one I’ve appointed to any city position whom I regard as radical or extremist.” Willie Brown, a powerful state legislator from 1964 to 1995 before becoming mayor in 1996, “seemed oblivious to Jones’ hucksterism and demagoguery,” notes a historian. Brown was master of ceremonies at a dinner for Jones in the fall of 1976 attended by an adulatory crowd of the rich and powerful, including Governor Jerry Brown. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein . . . Chairman Mao,” he said, to loud applause. And yet Jones was contemptuous of Brown even as Brown did Jones more and more favors. Jones mocked Brown for his designer suits, sports cars, and women. Once, while Brown was addressing the congregation and Jones was seated onstage behind him, Jones flipped his middle finger up to mock him. San Francisco’s establishment stood by Jones even after a California magazine, New West, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an exposé of Jones’s beatings of Temple members and financial abuses in August 1977. The article was written by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and was meant for the Chronicle to publish. But the newspaper killed the story because it didn’t want to alienate Jones, whom it viewed as central to its plans to expand the Chronicle’s circulation in the heavily African American Fillmore District. Jones also managed to avoid investigation and prosecution in part by getting the district attorney to hire as deputy district attorney Jones’s longtime attorney and confidant. Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.” Angela Davis sent a radio message broadcast over the cult’s compound, Jonestown, in Guyana. “I know you’re in a very difficult situation right now,” she said, “and there is a very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle.” After visiting Jonestown, the attorney to the Black Panthers said, “I have seen paradise.” Harvey Milk, too, was tarnished by his association with Jones. In the fall of 1977, Milk wrote to President Carter’s secretary of health, education, and welfare requesting that Social Security checks be sent to elderly Temple members in Guyana. “People’s Temple,” wrote Milk, has “established a beautiful retirement community in Guyana.” In truth, the cult was disintegrating. Jones separated families and lovers, pitted relatives against each other, and forced neighbors to inform on each other. Jones sent people who violated the rules to solitary confinement in “the Box,” an underground cubicle where people were held as prisoners for days on end. Others were drugged. Progressives who had spent thirty years fighting to close prisons and mental hospitals found themselves praising a man who had reproduced their worst practices. In November 1978 a Bay Area congressman flew to Guyana to investigate human rights violations at Jonestown with NBC News. Jones gave the delegation a formal reception at Jonestown. A Temple member surreptitiously passed a note to one of the delegation members, saying he and another member wanted to escape. They fled the next day after a Temple member tried to stab the congressman. Jones didn’t prevent them from leaving but then sent gunmen to fire machine guns at the delegation at the airport, killing the congressman and four others. A few hours later, 907 inhabitants of Jonestown drank Flavor Aid laced with cyanide and died. Two-thirds of the victims were African American and one-third were children. Jones had told them that if they didn’t drink it they would be killed by invading soldiers from a shadowy global military conspiracy intent on imposing fascism and torturing children. As people started crying in grief, Jones scolded them. “Stop these hysterics,” he said. “This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die.” Jones’s wife protested the murder of children and had to be forcibly restrained. “We didn’t commit suicide,” said Jones in a tape recording, “we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” Few were as stained by Jonestown as Willie Brown and George Moscone. “Even as the bloated bodies of the dead were removed from the jungle and the wounded were airlifted by the U.S. Air Force to hospitals in the United States,” wrote a historian, “Brown said he had ‘no regrets’ over his association with Jones.” They repeatedly disavowed responsibility. Said Moscone, “it’s clear that if there was a sinister plan, then we were taken in. But I’m not taking any responsibility. It’s not mine to shoulder.” This is Shellenberger at his best: telling us crazy stories from the recesses of San Francisco history, maybe kind of spinning the narration in a way that makes all progressives seem guilty by association, but with the tale itself so gripping that it’s hard to be mad. And Jones wasn’t alone. This was the golden age of San Francisco cults, when (Shellenberger tells us) “more than half of all high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area reported at least one recruiting attempt by a cult member, and 40 percent reported at least three contacts.” This chapter of SF history came to an end in 1978, when Dan White, who had just resigned from San Francisco’s Board Of Supervisors (ie City Council) entered City Hall through a window and assassinated Mayor Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk, then successfully got charges reduced to manslaughter through a legal manuever that has gone down in history as “the Twinkie Defense” (realistically the defense was that he was depressed, but reporters seized on a comment that implied it was because he ate too many Twinkies). Everything about 1970s San Francisco was like this. With the Mayor and his right-hand-man both dead, San Francisco leadership ended up in the hands of previously second-tier politician Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein was what passed for a moderate in 1970s SF (which meant she had been targeted for assassination by various left-wing groups - she survived when a bomb left on her windowsill failed to explode). In Shellenberger’s telling, she managed to clean up some of the mess and restore a semblance of normalcy. San Francisco never forgave her. Moscone - voting fraud committer, underage sex enjoyer, and Jim Jones’ bff - is beloved as a martyr in today’s SF, but (the book points out) Feinstein is so loathed that in 2021 the Board of Education voted to rename Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.
Inline links: Ed West, Public Policy Institute, UCI criminologists, Applied Divinity Studies’ article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aTNC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa27aeb21-ed87-4e67-b82c-b3ceecee7082_500x238.png, here, Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_NL6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcf7dc478-45d3-487d-8c29-8bc7cdf182dd_2400x1500.png, LouB’s analysis here, This news article, only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest, New York Times, the Economist, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!58I3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc63dc7bc-1f8e-49fd-9c68-61c85278d69e_608x662.png, San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!h17s!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F956c0917-2a9b-4ff7-a08e-6aee5030583a_590x376.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TkFS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c5faa01-ac22-48a2-96fe-47efb6f52514_616x334.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Bg2w!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18e49c63-16ba-4878-96e6-aec12d7c5953_481x667.png, percent African-American, percent Borderer, here, the Twinkie Defense, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8wK3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F683b9754-f663-47ad-88f5-aa99bc208ec8_1401x622.jpeg, https://twitter.com/weheartprez/status/1526983899309432832
Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko
June 29, 2022 · Original source
I asked experts and advocates, “How do we know that the homeless population won’t replace itself if provided with housing?” Said Randy Shaw, the Tenderloin permanent supportive housing provider, “The question you’re raising is one that never gets discussed. Somehow, there’s this sense that San Francisco is under the obligation that anyone who comes here we have to suddenly house. There is an underlying logic that San Francisco doesn’t really ever want to talk about.”
The Bahamas2 mentions across 2 issues

The Bahamas is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 16, 2022 and October 28, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "If you trust an exchange based in the Bahamas ran by a jabroni"; "The Bahamas is an archipelago-nation of 400,000 people scattered across 3,000 small islands". It most often appears alongside San Francisco, @AutismCapital, Adderall.

Article page
The Bahamas
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
November 16, 2022
Last seen
October 28, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash
November 16, 2022 · Original source
He claims this is okay, because he was just a “performance coach” for the company, who happened to, additionally, be a psychiatrist who was treating many of the company’s employees. This is not better. Psychiatric ethics tries to have careful conflict-of-interest rules so that you aren’t playing multiple roles for the same person. For example, suppose you are employed as a “performance coach” in the Bahamas by a famously generous and free-spending company. And suppose that company has made it extremely clear that they want their employees to be on stimulants. And suppose you are treating those employees, and need to decide whether to put them on stimulants or not. It seems kind of plausible that maybe if you didn’t give the employees stimulants, you would lose your cushy Bahamas job. Isn’t this going to unduly influence your prescribing decisions?
LET ME REPEAT THIS FOR EVERYONE AGAIN: Shitcoins are bad, and you should feel bad if you trade them. Get the fuck out of the shitcoin casino you dumb ass gamblers! Solana is garbage. TRON is garbage. Exchanged-based coins like FTT are garbage. Coins with fucking dogs faces are garbage. Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency you should hold. Maybe ETH. Hedge your bets there. You need to CONTROL YOUR OWN KEYS. Don't lend your coins out to charlatans promising you 5%, 8%, 15%, or 20% "risk free" returns. They are all scam Ponzis. There is no such thing as risk free 20% returns. It doesn't exist. Stop chasing it. If you don't control your private keys, it's not your crypto. If you trust an exchange based in the Bahamas ran by a jabroni who thinks he needs SIX MONITORS, you are in for a bad time. I've been in cryptocurrency since 2010 when BTC was 81 cents. I lived through the MT GOX implosion. I have had more crypto stolen from me in hacks and exit scams than you probably have ever even seen. Learn from my experience. Listen to what I am saying. TWELVE YEARS now I have been in crypto. This too shall pass. Fuck all these frauds stealing everyone's shit. We will all be better off with them out of the industry. However, you all have to learn from this shit. CONTROL YOUR OWN KEYS! Stop gambling on shitcoins. You are being used as exit liquidity for idiots.
25
October 28, 2025 · Original source
The Bahamas is an archipelago-nation of 400,000 people scattered across 3,000 small islands.
The Bahamas’ most populous island is the one with its capital, Nassau. The second-most-populous - and fifth-largest, and most-pretentiously-named - is Grand Bahama, home of Freeport, the archipelago’s second city. Grand Bahama has a unique history. In 1955, it was barely inhabited, with only 500 people scattered across a few villages. The British colonial government turned it into a charter city, awarding the charter to Wallace Groves, an American whose Wikipedia article describes him as a “financier and fraudster” and includes section titles like “Suspicions”, “Legal Troubles”, “Investigations”, and “Allegations Of Underworld Connections”. He was . . . maybe the exact right person for the job, turning Grand Bahama into a Vegas of the Caribbean complete with casinos, jet-setters, swanky hotels, and a flourishing mob presence. Outside the glitzy center, a little heavy industry even managed to develop around the port. After twenty years, the charter zone was “the most modern, well-run, and prosperous part of the [Bahamas]”, and the population had increased to 15,000. Vintage Freeport. I think this casino is now closed, but I can’t figure out what exactly happened to it, or whether the building still stands. The golden age ended around 1970. The government, headed towards independence from Britain, became embarrassed by the private enclave and stripped away some of its rights. Around the same time, Florida liberalized its gambling regime, cutting off the flood of Floridians coming to play the slots. Control of the concession passed from Groves, to his business partners, to his business partner’s widow, and finally to a random collection of only mildly-interested heirs. Two big hurricanes in 2004 were the last straw. Grand Bahama is still a popular cruise destination, it still has a well-built port and surprisingly nice airport, and some of the old hotels still stand. But nobody would describe it as a happening place. Now it’s back in the news. The government is increasingly tired of the heirs’ mismanagement of the island. They want it back. They made what they considered a fair offer. One of the heirs - the St. George family - seems to be on board. The other - the Hayward family - is less cooperative. The government is playing hardball by suing for $357 million of back fees which they say the heirs owe (the heirs deny that they owe this). The case is currently in arbitration. A likely outcome is that the court agrees the heirs owe some amount of money, the heirs can’t afford it, and they agree to sell back to the government. Why does this interest us? The government has talked a big talk about the existing owners not doing enough to exploit Freeport’s economic potential. But the government also isn’t well-placed to exploit it. And they might need some extra cash to buy back control at a fair price. So rumor is that if the heirs decide to sell, instead of the government taking the island back themselves, they might choose to partner with one of the more modern Silicon-Valley-style charter city companies, and give them the charter. The legal agreement is already set up. They’d just need to change the name on the dotted line. Put this way, Grand Bahama seems like a great deal. It’s a duty-free zone with one of the best deepwater ports in the area, making it an ideal center for trans-shipment - loading goods from one ship to another for various logistical and legal reasons. With its lovely climate, low prices, and proximity to the United States (50 miles from Miami), it’s well-placed to be a hub for digital nomads and remote work. Gambling is still legal there. Cruise ships visit regularly. And the beaches look like this: See here for a more complete history of the island, and here for a Charter Cities Institute podcast on the topic. California Maybe Actually Pretty Soon Now California Forever, the project to build a new city in unoccupied land an hour from San Francisco, has overcome a first round of political headwinds. In 2023, a stealth mode company announced it had quietly bought up a city-sized tract of land in Solano County, and would be placing an initiative on the county ballot to let them build a futuristic planned community there. Enough local NIMBYs protested that the company and county jointly withdrew the initiative in favor of seeking some other agreement. In 2025, they announced their new strategy: they would partner with nearby Suisun City. Suisun would annex their land and permit development there, avoiding a county-wide referendum (they might also make a deal with another nearby city, Rio Vista). The new plan is moving forward: earlier this month, California Forever submitted their annexation paperwork, which was deemed complete by the city. The remaining steps are: Suisun City Council must approve their environmental impact report (may cause delays and added expense, but unlikely to block the project outright)
Inline links: Wallace Groves, Suspicions, Legal Troubles, Investigations, Allegations Of Underworld Connections, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!e8na!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4b84b513-e2a3-45b8-9bba-ee0d5e02ac1e_400x278.jpeg, is increasingly tired, a fair offer, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aLaM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1563bfda-32d6-4380-a53b-b776a48428e8_509x370.png, here, here, has overcome a first round of political headwinds
Three Mile Island2 mentions across 2 issues

Three Mile Island is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 07, 2023 and July 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "terrifying meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl"; "That changed after Three Mile Island, when support plummeted below 40%"; ""the Three Mile Island nuclear plant had its 'loss of containment' event"". It most often appears alongside Chernobyl, 1960 Valdivia earthquake, Aaronson.

Article page
Three Mile Island
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
March 07, 2023
Last seen
July 01, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Kelly Bets On Civilization
March 07, 2023 · Original source
Here’s an example I think about constantly: activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s felt absolutely sure that they were doing the right thing to battle nuclear power. At least, I’ve never read about any of them having a smidgen of doubt. Why would they? They were standing against nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrifying meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and radioactive waste poisoning the water and soil and causing three-eyed fish. They were saving the world. Of course the greedy nuclear executives, the C. Montgomery Burnses, claimed that their good atom-smashing was different from the bad atom-smashing, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?
Your Book Review: Safe Enough?
July 01, 2023 · Original source
The Davis-Besse reactor was a near-twin of reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. If you, like me, grew up in the 1970s and 1980s you might have heard of Three Mile Island, as in 1979 it made some news. The next failure at Davis Besse exactly followed that script: “the pilot-operated relief valve cycled open and closed three times to relieve primary coolant pressure before it stuck open, just like at Three Mile Island.”
I was eight when the Three Mile Island nuclear plant had its 'loss of containment' event. I was 15 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. I understood these events in the same terms an adolescent understands anything: The adults are lying to us. To a teenager, there was no point in entertaining a defense of the industry. The entire enterprise dripped with poison.
Nuclear energy was quite popular in the early 1970s, with support in the US in the range of 70-80%. That changed after Three Mile Island, when support plummeted below 40%. But then, weirdly, in the 1990s support stabilized. Despite Davis-Besse, despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, in the US support for nuclear has stayed roughly in the bound of about 40-60% in the three decades since. Nuclear energy is perhaps unique as a technology, in that no amount of experience seems to change society’s comfort with it. The topic is forever radioactive.
Times Square2 mentions across 2 issues

Times Square is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 03, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the time the aliens created one million lions in the center of Times Square"; "Land in Times Square will still be a lot more valuable than land in Podunk, Saskatchewan". It most often appears alongside New York, "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment.

Article page
Times Square
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
February 03, 2021
Last seen
April 16, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Dynamical Systems
February 03, 2021 · Original source
8. Almost any intervention can help or hurt a little, or sometimes both at once, often in completely unpredictable ways. For example, the time the aliens created one million lions in the center of Times Square was more of a test of the Materialization Ray than something they really expected to help, but this destroyed the city of New York, which hurt America’s bargaining position, which caused them to cave in to the demands of Arab countries, which convinced the Arab countries to resume sending oil a little sooner.
Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty
April 16, 2021 · Original source
(source, CC BY-SA 3.0, author: Explodicle) A vertical supply curve means no matter what the price of land is, the same amount will always be supplied. This is because you can't make land – the supply is effectively fixed. Remember, the Netherlands doesn't count because the sea bed is land, and filling it in is just an improvement to land that already existed. And even if we granted "The Netherlands occasionally makes land" for the sake of argument, the amount of land "created" in this way is pretty darn negligible in the grand scheme of the economy, and almost exclusively the domain of governments or state-owned actors. The supply of land being fixed has some really interesting properties. By contrast, consider oil, the supply of which is not fixed. If we tax oil, some of the more marginal wells will be too expensive to operate and make a profit, so producers shut those down and the supply of oil decreases. Deadweight loss comes from a producer's ability to change the amount of product they supply in response to price signals. You'll notice the above graph of land tax has no deadweight loss at all! Since nobody produces land, it's the one thing you can tax without getting less of it. This drives out speculators entirely. Speculators can no longer distort rents by bidding up the price of land and holding it out of use, and can no longer compete with those who actually intend to use the land. This restores the proper balance of land, labor, and capital. Now if you work harder, or invest more capital, you can actually expect to see an increasing return without it all being gobbled up by ever-increasing rent. If you think about it this way, land value tax has negative deadweight loss, because it eliminates the speculative distortion that is the unearned privilege of landownership. Okay, but won't the landlords just pass the land tax on to their tenants? By George, no. Rent is a price, and price is governed by supply and demand. Supply of land is fixed, so land value tax has no effect on supply. What about demand? Except in cases where it causes the economy to boom (a good thing), land value tax won't increase land value – what it always does, however, is reduce the demand for land by speculators. If it costs nothing to hold on to land, of course I'm going to want to grab some and HODL. If the rent I could hope to gain is taxed away, I won't bother. Consider the case of oil again, where a tax reduces the supply. Reduced supply, given unchanged demand, causes a rise in price. And you'll find the increase in price tracks very closely with the amount of tax. Land value tax is just about the only kind of tax that can't be passed off to someone else. For more on deadweight loss and the land value tax, see Welfare Economics of the Land Value Tax by BlueRepublik. So does this mean there can never be profitable landlords ever again? Of course not – they just have to earn their living honestly like everyone else. Remember, we don't tax the improvements, just the "ground rent." So Ms. Nguyen still gets paid for all her honest work and judicious investments, but Mr. Slumlord doesn't make a dime until he gets off his lazy butt and does something productive. This is really important, because aside from speculation, the principal cause of land value increase is the productivity of your neighbors. An empty lot in the middle of nowhere is worthless, but an otherwise identical empty lot in the middle of New York city is priceless. As they say in real estate - "location, location, location." The reason location is valuable is because of the activity and contributions of the community, and yet the landlord claims the right to seize it all as rent. Modern economists have some interesting things to say about George's ideas, too. In 1977 Joseph Stiglitz demonstrated that land rents have a tendency to almost perfectly equal the value of investment in public goods. He called this the Henry George Theorem. Milton Friedman famously called land value tax the "Least Worst" tax. But one of my all-time favorite endorsements will always be that one time the economist Ramin Shokrizade unwittingly re-derived land value tax from first principles to (successfully!) fix recessions in EVE Online. Okay, so we tax all the ground rent. It will remove the speculative component of the rent (because there will no longer be any incentive to jack the prices up artificially), but it won't drive the price down to zero. That's because 100% LVT is only achievable on a frictionless plane populated by spherical cows; here in the real world you'll be left with a small sliver of land value. And of course regardless of the LVT rate, houses and buildings will still have a price. And that's fine. Land in Times Square will still be a lot more valuable than land in Podunk, Saskatchewan, but both will approach the same price as the LVT rate gets closer to 100%. This encourages people to actually make use of valuable land rather than holding it out of use, blighting the urban core and forcing development to sprawl out for miles in every direction, leading to worse transportation and more pollution. But... doesn't this mean that if people aren't putting land to productive use, they'll eventually be pressured to sell it off to someone who will? George sees this as a good thing. Without land value tax you get situations where somebody can anticipate that an empty lot will become valuable in the future, buy it, HODL forever, lobby against future development that would depress their property values, and now you have the Bay Area's housing crisis. Or buy an apartment block, do the absolute minimum the tenants will tolerate without killing you, constantly jack up the rent as the city grows, and you get slums. As BlueRepublik observes in No, Georgism is Still Sane: If you look at the commercial blight in New York City (http://www.vacantnewyork.com/) 90%+ is from landlords refusing to lease out to small businesses, waiting for a larger bank or big business to pay a higher rent bill. This causes property values of nearby businesses to drop, equity value to drop, and businesses to move out from the city center, increasing urban sprawl and urban blight. It’s a massive drain on personal wealth, and is very highly linked with poverty and higher crime rates. It’s also not a great model for having a stable social fabric. In a fit of performance art, a Georgist by the name of Fay Lewis once famously bought an empty lot and stuck a big sign on it to demonstrate the principle in action: Okay, but isn't building too much stuff bad for the environment? Won't this encourage over-development? By George, no. What's bad for the environment is sprawl, which the current system encourages and which the land tax would directly attack. If you want dense, walkable cities that don't depend on cars to get around, you should eliminate land speculation. A stronger objection to land value tax is when it's not some shifty speculator or a genocidal English landlord who suffers the brunt of it, but, say, this guy: The premise of Pixar's movie Up is that Carl Fredricksen, a lovably grumpy pensioner, is the last holdout standing in the way of developers bulldozing the rest of his neighborhood in the name of Progress™. He refuses to sell because he can't bear to part with the house which for him is tied up with all the cherished memories of his departed wife. This isn't just sentimental fiction, this is something that really does happen. Isn't Georgism just going to price the poor Carl Fredricksens out of their homes so that someone with a more """productive""" use can have it instead? There's several good response to this. For starters, if you're worried about kindly old people losing their homes, that's a thing that's happening already, and most of the time it's because The Rent Is Too Damn High, and our existing system is net worse on this score. We are currently facing an unprecedented crisis of evictions in tandem with the COVID pandemic, and it's not like things were peachy before. And even though homelessness seems to be declining in the US overall, it's getting worse in the most prosperous cities, exactly as George predicted. Okay, maybe it's better for renters, but what about people who own their homes, like Carl? Isn't it unfair to stick them with land taxes that might kick them out? What if they're retired? Remember, let's not confuse land tax with land confiscation, Here's George (emphases mine): I do not propose either to purchase or to confiscate private property in land. The first would be unjust; the second, needless. Let the individuals who now hold it still retain, if they want to, possession of what they are pleased to call their land. Let them continue to call it their land. let them buy and sell, and bequeath and devise it. We may safely leave them the shell, if we take the kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; it is only necessary to confiscate rent. Okay, but you have to admit that even if the state isn't confiscating everybody's land, if you can't pay your land taxes you have no choice but to sell your land, right? Isn't this morally unjust to the Carl Fredricksens of the world? First, it's not a given that Mr. Fredricksen will be worse off on net: he already pays income and sales taxes, capital gains on any investments, as well as property tax which taxes both land value and the value of his house. As speculators leave the real estate market the land tax that replaces his property tax drop will drop, and his house is an improvement that goes entirely untaxed. Also, if the speculators holding onto all the most valuable real estate in the downtown districts are forced to give it up, there won't be as much competition for land and so there's a good chance developers won't be interested in trying to buy up land in a bedroom community in the first place. BlueRepublik further points out that LVT can be used to fund a Universal Basic Income, which should soften the blow considerably: Keep in mind also that the Georgist Land Value Tax is pair with a "Citizen's Dividend" or what we see as UBI, so that it's not the government claiming land rent, rather the land rent is taxed and split up equally for all men. But as a matter of political practicality, in the rare event that after all that Mr. Fredricksen still somehow finds himself in the hole after LVT is applied, Nate Blair suggests a deferment option to grandfather the Carls of the world through the transition: The LVT gets assessed annually for everyone, but owner occupiers (businesses and homeowners) can apply to defer the sum of those payments until they sell or transfer the land. Government can charge a nominal interest. A final point of modern application of land value taxes is to level the playing field between different areas by eliminating "cost of living" discrepancies that arise entirely from speculative rent. This is pretty relevant given the "location pay" debate going on in Silicon Valley right now in response to increased remote work as a direct consequence of the COVID pandemic. Back to George. Great, we've taxed ground rent at 100% and eliminated speculation and all other manner of social ills. Now what do we do with the money? Lots of things! For one, you can get rid of some other taxes. Back in George's day it was even argued that a 100% land value tax on ground rents should be the only tax – the "Single Tax," replacing all other tariffs, duties, and other taxes (keep in mind this was in the late 1800's and Federal income tax wasn't introduced until the 16th amendment in 1913). Remember, all these other taxes have deadweight loss. Income tax is a tax on labor, and so taxing it means we really do get less productive labor. The portion of property tax that targets improvements punishes you for investing in improvements, and sales tax is just straight up regressive, hitting the poor harder than the rich. There's some argument today about whether the "Single Tax" would be enough to fund the modern US budget, with some Georgists saying it would be sufficient and others saying we would still need some other taxes but could at least significantly offset what we already have. But by George, another thing we could do is just give all the money back to the people, as BlueRepublik mentioned above. This could be used as a straightforward Universal Basic Income – what George calls a Citizen's Dividend, or what Andrew Yang calls the Freedom Dividend. It could also be used for the funding of public goods. George doesn't see this as an act of charity on the state's behalf – the value of the land has its origin in the productive labors of the entire community, so it's a simple act of justice to give the returns to those who actually produced the value, which is society at large. Another effect George asserts is that once land is no longer monopolized, labor is no longer forced into one-sided competition, so wages start to go up. Even better, laborers now have far more opportunity to go into business for themselves, which spurs innovation and investment. So to sum up, if we tax the ever loving hell out of ground rent, George says we'll see the following benefits: Make housing much more affordable
Inline links: source, Welfare Economics of the Land Value Tax, Henry George Theorem, to (successfully!) fix recessions in EVE Online, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZKi0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4fd890f3-35ce-415d-a461-2e507eff4ed9_680x709.png, No, Georgism is Still Sane, http://www.vacantnewyork.com/, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gVc9!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0eccd663-f37b-44b6-ba75-469069befa34_1863x1268.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mVYl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F80f4b70f-b472-47b0-b46d-e74b3190ddfd_536x554.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!G2qa!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa948c9cc-5271-4b71-8c74-de55e126f16a_640x360.png, really does happen, crisis of evictions, getting worse in the most prosperous cities, "location pay" debate going on in Silicon Valley, Citizen's Dividend, the Freedom Dividend
Timișoara2 mentions across 2 issues

Timișoara is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between August 29, 2025 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "TIMISOARA"; "TIMIȘOARA". It most often appears alongside 131 Colonie Center, 200 Degrees, Aaron Kaufman.

Article page
Timișoara
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
August 29, 2025
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
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) TIMISOARA Contact: Alvin Contact Info: alv[period]csk[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Saturday, September 27th, 7:00 PM Location: Scârț Loc Lejer, most likely outside. I'll probably put an ACX MEETUP sign on the table! Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GQ3P6VF+7QR Notes: Messaging me on Lesswrong, if possible and comfortable, would be much appreciated!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GP8C3JW+MR, https://plus.codes/8GQ3P6VF+7QR
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Luis Campos Contact Info: luis[.]filipe[.]lcampos[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 18th, 3:00 PM Location: Jardim Amália Rodrigues, Alameda Cardeal Cerejeira, Lisboa, Portugal Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CCGPRJW+V8 Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/DhA [remove this bit] W3roAiJvCxzxn4uSrj3 Romania TIMIȘOARA Contact: Alvin Contact Info: alv[.]csk[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 25th, 7:30 PM Location: Scârț Loc Lejer, very likely outside. There will be a small tent-like sign on the table that reads ‘ACX-EA’. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GQ3P6VF+7QR Notes: Feel free to message on LW or FB if so inclined.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CCGPRJW+V8, https://plus.codes/8GQ3P6VF+7QR
Torres Novas2 mentions across 2 issues

Torres Novas is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 24, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "On the running board of the bus from Torres Novas"; "ing board of the bus from Torres Novas"; "while they were with other people in Torres Novas, on the 20th of October". It most often appears alongside A Ordem, Abraham Lincoln, ACX.

Article page
Torres Novas
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
October 01, 2025
Last seen
October 24, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
October 01, 2025 · Original source
On the running board of the bus from Torres Novas, an old man whose stature and gentle, manly features recall those of Paul Deroulede, turned toward the sun and recited the Credo in a loud voice ... I saw him later addressing those about him who still kept their hats on, begging them vehemently to take their hats off before this overwhelming demonstration of the existence of God. Similar scenes were repeated at other places. A lady, bathed in tears and almost choking with grief, sobbed, “How pitiful! There are men who still do not bare their heads before such a stupendous miracle!”
The Hindu milk miracle of 1995. Starting from the bottom: In 1995, a man in New Delhi noticed that an idol of the elephant-god Ganesh seemed to be really drinking the glass of milk left as an offering. The story went viral - or as viral as things could go in 1995 - and Hindus around the world noticed the same thing. There was “an increase in overall milk sales in New Delhi by over 30%”. Scientists investigated and determined that a sculpted stone elephant trunk could sometimes absorb milk through capillary action. This was a story about rumor, interpretation, and context, but not really “hallucination”. The drinking effect was real. The Halifax Slasher was a typical supercriminal story. Two women reported being attacked by a mysterious and oddly-dressed knifeman; others followed. “Vigilante groups were set up on the streets, and several people, mistakenly assumed to have been the attacker, were beaten up; business in the town was all but shut down”. Although there was a Halifax resident with a history of knife crime, “he was quickly ruled out of the 1938 attacks on account of his large nose, which none of the 1938 victims had described”. Eventually several of the victims admitted to having made it up, and the whole thing went away. Supercriminal cases most often result from people making things up. Occasionally, seemingly-honest people report seeing the supercriminal in poor lighting conditions across a dark alley or something. But even if we consider these to be “hallucinations”, it is usually the one or two most vulnerable people in a town at the time. I can’t find any examples of true “mass hallucinations” - entire towns seeing a nonexistent supercriminal or monster at the same time. Koro is the psychosomatic disease par excellence; I’ve written about it before here. Victims, always male, believe that their penis has disappeared or retracted into their body; they often blame penis-stealing witches. Koro occurs at some very low background rate in every society (including ours), but occasionally wells up into mass panics in primitive cultures that take witchcraft seriously and have traditions of worrying about this sort of thing. Still, I don’t think any panic ever affects more than half of a village’s males, and usually not at the exact same time; it’s a smoldering panic over days or weeks, not a single instant of horrified realization. Also, although I’m not sure and would love to learn more about this, I don’t think the koro victim is having a visual hallucination of not having a penis at all. I think they think their penis is much smaller or shorter than it should be - which only requires some sort of obsessive worrying and (perhaps motivated) mis-remembering of its normal length. None of these are “mass hallucinations” in the sense where the sorts of visual hallucinations typical of certain mentally ill people occur en masse in a crowd of thousands with >50% prevalence - that is, the type of mass hallucination that would be required to explain Fatima. As far as I know, there are no confirmed cases of this ever happening. Still, from the Hindu milk miracle, we can learn that religious people can miss a real phenomenon for a long time, then notice it all at once with great fanfare. And from the koro cases, we can learn that a rare phenomenon can become more common in situations of widespread belief and social pressure. Interlude: It Seems Like Years Since It’s Been Clear This is around the stopping point of the previous Substack discussion. I’ve tried to cover most of Ethan and Evan’s arguments, go through the chain of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, and maybe pull on a few of the more tempting loose threads that they’ve left. As best I can tell, this level of investigation ends in a decisive victory for the believers. They have a stock of seemingly-unimpeachable testimonies; the skeptics have only a few leads that don’t seem on track to pan out. Eye damage can maybe produce a few odd effects, but - in the entire history of tens of billions of people living daily underneath a sun that they are able to view at any moment - we have not yet found anyone who reports the full constellation of Fatima experiences just from seeing the sun. No exotic weather phenomenon is a perfect match. Mass hallucinations are real but comparatively weak. At least this is my assessment. Skeptic blogs don’t agree. They propose one of these things (with no consensus as to which one) then act like they’ve debunked the miracle, then skip to the really important part: laughing at how obviously wrong it is. I’ve written before about my disappointment in the skeptical community and why it worries me, and here I feel it as acutely as ever. Sitting with my disappointment and trying to put it into words, I think my worries come down to a tangling of the Bayesian graph. The straightforward Bayesian way to do this is to start with some prior probability that there is a God who causes miracles (let’s say 1%), notice that the evidence for Fatima being a miracle naively seems very high (let’s say 90%), multiply out, and end up with a higher (8.3%) probability of God’s existence and a lower (8.3%) chance that Fatima in particular was miraculous. This is liberating. It lets you say “This piece of evidence is very strong, but my prior is very low, so even without being able to debunk the evidence, I continue to disbelieve.” But doing this the straightforward Bayesian way doesn’t work. First of all, what would it mean to naively (even before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles) say Fatima seems 90% likely to be miraculous. Before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles, surely the probability is much higher! But also, if you try this, then as soon as you find two similar miracles (I’ve been told the next two are the Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio and the Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg) your probability of God goes up to 88%! But I don’t think there’s any real atheist whose probability would rise in such a straightforward linear way. You need some kind of model where either it’s almost trivially possible to generate an arbitrary number of convincing-yet-false miracles, or it isn’t. But this doesn’t match the “virtuous” approach of addressing each miracle on its own terms - where you try to understand the Sun Miracle by learning things about the sun, or entoptic phenomena, or 1910s Portugal. And it does match the skeptical approach I’m complaining about, where you say “it’s probably swamp gas or something, lol, imagine being so dumb that you believe in miracles.” So I cannot object too strongly. Still, my greatest fear in this and all other problems of reasoning method is the trapped prior, where people take this too far and become impervious to evidence entirely. I think it’s worth untangling the whole Bayesian graph, trying to keep this whole structure in mind, if it prevents people from accidentally propagating an update down a logical chain, then propagating the same update back up the chain, again and again, ad infinitum, until they become arbitrarily sure of themselves. “We can be sure all miracle claims, even the convincing ones, are false, because there’s no God - and we can be sure there’s no God because all miracle claims are so risibly false.” Even if this is harmless - even if it turns out correct in the case of religion - it teaches such dangerous habits of mind that I’m willing to err in the direction of going way too far taking such claims seriously - at least in the “entertaining an idea without accepting it” sense. Everyone gets to decide what is and isn’t worth their time. I think deciding that these sorts of miracles aren’t worth your time is fine, as long as you’re propagating all the probabilities correctly and not accidentally treating your own hurriedness as a cause to update the rest of your belief graph. As for me, I don’t know, I just find this fascinating. In Evan’s skeptical take on the conversation, he starts strong, but after the topic switches to Part LXXVII of Dalleur’s discussion of photograph angles, he stops and asks: What the fuck are we doing? What are we talking about? What have I spent (conservatively) 18 hours of my life on? We’re addressing what Stanley Jaki called the most important event of the 20th century! We’re debating the existence of God, the most important question possible! If God is real, then nothing could be more important than establishing this: in the best case, we will come to believe; at worst, we will be able to tell St. Peter that our failure was honest and not from lack of trying. If He is not, then we can do whatever we want here on Earth, and surely one of the noblest ways to spend our short existence is expanding the frontiers of the known into the borderlands of mystery! In particular, if the God of Fatima exists, we are in deep trouble. I said I wouldn’t talk about exactly what the Virgin Mary told the child-seers, but the short version is that the First Secret was a very, very nasty vision of Hell. It looked exactly the way a ten-year-old child might expect: a lake of fire populated by ebon-skinned demons and horrendous tortures; the lead child-seer said that if the Virgin had not begun by promising that she personally would never go there, “she would have died of fright”. As it was, the consequences of the vision were grim. The child-seers got it into their minds that they could perhaps save sinners from the fire by “doing penance”. They drank only stagnant, scum-encrusted water, in the hopes that this might help some otherwise hell-bound soul; on some especially hot days, they ceased drinking water at all. When they found particularly painful ropes, they tied them around their bodies so hard that they bled (later, the Virgin mercifully told them they didn’t need to wear the ropes at night - they could stick to daytime only). After so many mortifications, they were easy prey for the Spanish Flu; two of the three perished before their tenth birthday. As they lay dying in the hospital, they were recorded as freaking out every time they saw a nurse or visitor with “immodest dress”, saying that they would not act in such a way if they knew how long Eternity was, or what awaited them there5. If all of this is the true opinion of the Lord of the Universe, we had better figure it out quick. If it isn’t, then the words of the Grupo Anticlerical: People! Let us always fight! From the victory of progress, science, freedom, and free thought, will result human happiness, joy, love, fraternity, respect for women, veneration for mothers, adoration for children, affection for the elderly, protection for the sick, the unfortunate, the tortured . . . O most holy mothers! O holy, pious mothers who so love your sweet little children! Have compassion on your beautiful little children, sacred fruits of your blessed wombs! …take on new meaning and urgency. I will admit my bias: I hope the visions of Fatima were untrue, and therefore I must also hope the Miracle of the Sun was a fake. But I’ll also admit this: at times when doing this research, I was genuinely scared and confused. If at this point you’re also scared and confused, then I’ve done my job as a writer and successfully presented the key insight of Rationalism: “It ain’t a true crisis of faith unless it could go either way”. But now that we’ve let Ethan, Evan, and the rest dig us into as deep a hole as possible, let’s try to dig our way out. 3: Our Lady Of Everywhere Else One question that Ethan, Evan, and Dalleur fail to ask is: what if people are basically always seeing the sun spin and change colors and and fall from the sky? What if this is the most common experience in the world? What if it’s a minor miracle every time you get more than a handful of people together and they don’t fall down in awe and terror at the manifestations of the sun? Goncado Xavier de Almeida Garrett is one of the star witnesses of the Fatima miracle, quoted above. His testimony comes from a letter written to Father Formigao, a local priest, about two months after the event. But although pro-Fatima sources quote the testimony at the beginning of the letter, they conveniently leave out what follows: I ask your excellency to please tell me if you confirm this narrative: the Bishop of Portalegre and Mrs. Maria de Jesus Raposo report that while they were with other people in Torres Novas, on the 20th of October at the end of the day, they saw the sun rotate and change its colors. They said this was different from Fátima and did not have the importance of October 13th. I would like clarification on the differences. It is urgent to know what the differences are, since they attended both […] Until now, no one saw the sun's sparkling rotations, and now everyone sees them many days and many times. Many days and many times? Remember, the Virgin Mary first appeared at Fatima on May 13. She promised to return on the 13th of each successive month until October, when she would perform a great miracle. But she never said she wouldn’t perform any miracles until October. So on the 13th of each month, a medium-sized crowd gathered. They didn’t leave disappointed. I won’t include every claimed supernatural occurrence, but here are the ones relevant to our subject: Olimpia de Jesus, about July 13: [On July 13], at her sister-in-law's house, when they heard the people shouting, he asked, "What's going on over there?" [Olimpia] looked at the sun and said, "The sun is different." The people came and reported that they had seen signs in the sun and in the sky. Joaquim Inacio Vicente, about August 13: This hour was a moment of terror for all who were there. Some lost their senses, others believed it to be the last day of their lives and their day of Judgment, and for some, afterwards, it was a wonder to see the admirable colors that successively took on the clouds that obscured the sun's rays—colors from bright red to pink and from there to blue—the color of anise, as several people declared to me minutes later in my home. Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, about August 13: Everyone looked up at the sky, which was covered by a light cloud, like a very fine white lace, pink in places. The sun, which had been completely hidden for a moment, left us illuminated by a strange light, with yellow spots visible on the ground and above us all, and a great drop in temperature, as happens during a solar eclipse. Manuel Pedro Marto, about August 13 and September 13: [On August 13, he] saw a kind of luminous globe rotating in the clouds […] On September 13th, he also went to Cova da Iria. He was a little away from the children. He saw nothing, nor heard anything, but he heard that some people had seen extraordinary things in the atmosphere. Joaquim Xavier Tuna, about August 13 and September 13: On the 13th of August, I saw the sun lower in the sky at the hour of its appearance. It never lowered as much as that time, not even on October 13th. All the objects around me turned yellow. On September 13th, I saw a large cross emerge from the sun and head east. Its progress was not very hurried. Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it disappeared, until it disappeared from view. I also saw other things that I cannot explain. In the Lapas area, there were people who, at the same time, saw the cross. Then there was the great miracle on October 13. Remember, I was only able to find a handful of negative testimonies - people who said they didn’t see it. One was from a woman named Leonor das Dores Salema Manoel, who said she saw “nothing of what others saw”, at least at Fatima. But on the drive home from Fatima that evening6: I saw [the sun] pass through different colors that I can't remember and it turned green, very light green, like a green salad with a golden rim around it, and spinning. Very long rays seemed to touch the earth and the sun seemed to be separated from the sky. Then the sky took on pink flashes, changing to a yellowish hue around the sun, and further away, spots here and there. After a few long moments that I can't remember, it returned to normal and I couldn't look at it again. The next occurence was early the following year. From the parish inquiry’s interview with Jacinto de Almedia Lopes: He further said that on the day of Our Lady of Purification, that is, on the second of February, 1918, he about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, being in the same place, he noticed signs in the sun identical to those of the thirteenth of October, which he had not noticed on many other days when he had been there. And next, from a letter by Gilberto Fernandes dos Santos: I must inform you that I went to Fátima on [June 13, 1920]… at that very moment, the people were kneeling on the ground, shouting, praying loudly, weeping, begging forgiveness with their hands raised, because they were witnessing a solar phenomenon similar to that of October 13, 1917. And next, from Dr. Henrique Weiss de Oliviera, describing events on May 13, 1923: I ate my meal in a car on the road near Cova da Iria [in Fatima], from half past noon to one in the afternoon, and when I returned to the Chapel, I heard the groups I passed exclaiming in admiration about a marvelous phenomenon that they claimed was occurring in the sun toward which they were directing their gaze. Deeply doubting the repetition of the marvelous phenomena that had dazzled thousands of people, according to reliable reports, during the last apparition of Our Lady in 1917, I was about to pass on without even bothering to look. I remembered, however, that when I first went to Fátima on October 13th of last year, and upon hearing similar admiring rumors around me, I had seen nothing during my quick inspection, perhaps because I was filled with that spirit of doubt. I therefore wanted to be certain this time so that I could, with full awareness, give my testimony to whoever and whenever I was asked. And, having stopped near a group and stared at the sun, carefully shielding my eyes from the direct sunlight, so as not to see anything, they immediately advised me to insist that I would see something. It took a long insistence to finally see what amazed everyone and caused astonishment that I could not see it. And I saw with precise clarity, and twice, what the common people, in their imaginary language, very accurately likened to: almond blossom petals. They fell from a great height (no longer seeing them detach from the sun as the people around me saw them) For myself, I finally, and after a considerable time, concluded that there is no such natural phenomenon, neither known nor described, thus leaning toward the supernatural. Today I firmly believe that this was the case, because I have had testimonies that allow me to reconstruct the phenomenon as it appears to have occurred according to these testimonies. First, one could gaze at the sun for a long time and with impunity, seeing magnificent phenomena of beauty and color; then began an abundant rain of the aforementioned petals; and when I arrived, it was no longer possible to gaze at the sun, and the phenomenon, which had been quite lengthy, was at its end, which explains my difficulty in witnessing it now. And from Joao Amael, on October 13, 1925: I do not know why, I suddenly felt a desire to look at the sun. [I would hear] other educated persons admit having seen phenomena in the sun on that day and hour. I looked at the sun. Before that, nothing special could be seen. But now I looked at the sun without hurting my eyes, without any retina resisting. I became more intent. To my astonishment, the sight became even clearer. The sun turned on itself in a very small circle, and in the center it turned into a dark disk in rapid rotation. During some minutes, very impressive and overwhelming, I could clearly verify this strange process. Then, without revealing anything of what I observed, for fear of autosuggestion, I asked my companion to look at the sun and see whether it really appeared. And my companion was describing exactly the phenomenon, the same extraordinary phenomenon. The test was achieved. And I gained further assurance, when various other people later told me that they had seen what I saw clearly, at the same hour, as they kept looking at the sun, without the slightest sensation of pain. Amael’s report of a miracle in 1925 is the last recorded case I can find at Fatima. I don’t know if this was when the sun miracles stopped happening there, or when people stopped including them in the Critical Documents collection. In either case, there were plenty of other places willing to pick up the torch. 3.1: The Ghiaie Variations As far as I can tell, Fatima was only the second-largest crowd to have ever witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. The largest was a group of 200,000 - 300,000 people in Ghiaie, a tiny village near Bonate, Italy. On May 13th, 1944 - the same day of the year that the child-seers of Fatima saw their first apparition - a seven-year old girl went out to pick flowers and had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin promised to return to her for nine successive evenings; at some point (although I cannot follow this part of the story) she must also have promised to return four times the following week, as large crowds gathered in expectation. According to my source, on the ninth appearance: Many testimonies from the site of the apparition and from surrounding villages described an impressive solar phenomenon. The sun came out of the clouds, whirled dizzily on itself, and projected beams of yellow, green, red, blue, and violet light in all directions. The beams of light colored the clouds, fields, trees, and the stream of people. After a few minutes the sun stopped its whirling, and those phenomena began soon again. Many noticed that the disc had turned white like a Host. The clouds seemed to be lowering down on the people. Some noticed a Rosary in the sky. Others saw a majestic Our Lady with a trailing cloak. Some people, who were at greater distance, saw Our Lady's face looming in the sun. From nearby Bergamo many witnesses observed the sun become pale and radiate all of the rainbow's colors in all directions. They also noticed a large yellow light beam falling over Ghiaie, perpendicularly. The blog says there were similar solar phenomena during the tenth and twelfth appearances, as well as on the following June 13th and July 13th7. All of this is from a random Catholic blog; can we find clear testimonies? The miracle of Fatima was heavily promoted by Portuguese, Vatican, and American Catholics, leading to a large body of sources being available in English. The Ghiaie apparition has gotten less attention, and so I can find fewer testimonies, have had to clunkily machine translate some things, and had a harder time tracing the exact chain-of-transmission. Still, here’s what we’ve got, mostly from here: Don Giuseppe Piccardi: The people cried out to the miracle; I turned between the intrigued and the distrustful, and I saw the sun that-comes from the clouds - turned on itself and the speed of movement seemed to be skidding. At the same time I saw that he projected light beams, then, for me, almost constantly yellow gold. This color I contemplated it even when the sun was veiled with uncaught clouds. Slightly hard to figure out from the machine translation, but I think this is Bishop Adriano Bernareggi: At 6:00 PM I was at the Patronato for the feast of St. John Bosco. Just at that time I finished speaking in front of the church. Then I entered the church for the Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. But most of the crowd remained outside because they said they had observed for about ten minutes the sun rotating on its axis, also suddenly changing color: yellow, red, blue. The sun could be observed without disturbance. The phenomenon was also observed in other places. I only noticed at the end of the service a yellow color in the houses, as when there is a partial eclipse of the sun at sunset. At 7:45 PM they said the phenomenon was repeated. I watched too. By staring into the dazzling sun, you could end up seeing the sun stand out clearly, giving the impression that it was rotating. Then everything took on a red color. But then it was clearly an optical phenomenon. Don Luigi Cortesi, a local seminary teacher who was a strong skeptic of the apparitions and even borderline-kidnapped the child-seer to convince her to recant: A shiver runs through me for a second. I react forcefully, forcing myself not to lose my mind, not to let myself be overwhelmed. I desperately squeeze my pupils and look at the sun: I see a large, clear spot without sharp edges, then, when my eye has adjusted, I see a disk of intense whiteness that seems liquid. Staring at the edges of the disk, I detect a dizzying rotation, like an electric circular motion, like a dizzying pinwheel, except that the direction of motion changes rapidly from left to right and then from right to left. I remember Fatima. Except this time, the sun revolves around a fixed axis, without moving in the sky. I return to the earth, to the crowd: I notice that the faces, the hands, the trees pierce through all the colors of the rainbow. It's natural, I think to myself: when the eye is offended by an intense light or an equivalent stimulus, it projects a stain on objects, which fades from red to violet and tints the objects it encounters with different colors; the stain disappears when the eye, rested, has returned to normal. In fact, a few minutes later, I no longer see those iridescent colors; every object has returned to its natural hue. The phenomenon of rotation leaves me dubious. A neighbor offers me his smoked glasses, and I look: the sun continues to rotate. He offers me a telescope, and I invert it, the screen, and look: the sun is still rotating. Then I can't take it anymore: even today, I'm not convinced that seeing a cosmic prodigy is worth losing my sight. Back then, I wasn't even convinced I was seeing a prodigy, since a plausible natural explanation for the phenomenon quickly emerged in my mind. However, urged by the neighbors to get excited, I remain silent. And I silence them by pinching and slapping the arms of those around me, which are stretched out towards the sky." From the parish bulletin of Tavernola, the exact author is slightly confusing but it was either written by or signed/confirmed by Piero Bonicelli, local provost: On the 28th in the evening of Pentecost, something happened that made a profound impression on everyone. At 6:00 PM sharp, a dimming of the sunlight was felt, accompanied by a sudden flash of lightning, first clearly observed by some bowling players. Looking at the sun, one saw first green, then bright red, then golden yellow, and then it spun around dizzily. At that spectacle, people poured into the streets... One can imagine their comments. The women recited the Holy Rosary, punctuated by the words: "Oh, how beautiful!" After ten minutes, the sun returned to normal. Comments? None. We await an explanation from the appropriate source. For now, we're content to hear the usual strong-minded people call us poor, deluded people, but don't you think this is a rather general illusion? In any case, for now, we're deluded: we'll see later. The parish priest of Tavernola, director of the bulletin, sending this issue requested by Father Piccardi, wrote on June 27, 1946: I must assure you that, as written, it is true, and I can also tell you that I was among those deluded that evening. To be prudent, I didn't go out into the street where people were shouting about a miracle, but from a slightly hidden window, I watched the sun change color and spin rapidly... illusion? Many of us here in Tavernola have been deluded. I can also tell you that I was pleased that such an illusion existed in Tavernola, since the people here have always had a great devotion to the Madonna. There may be more testimonies at this site, but they’re in very old scanned documents that it would be too time-consuming to stick into my machine translation pipeline. Another source says that “On February 24, 1994, [the TV show] ‘Detto tra noi' (Raidue), interviewed some witnesses, who confirmed the solar phenomena of May 21 1944 that were watched by many people“. I think a few hours extra work by an Italian speaker could produce at least five or ten extra Ghiaie testimonies, maybe many more. But as it is, we have enough to try something interesting: let’s recreate Dalleur’s analysis, but for Ghiaie. At 6 PM, the sun was shining from almost due west. For the sunlike light source producing the miracles to mimic the real sun, it would have also had to have been to the west of Ghiaie. If we assume it was the same distance as Dalleur’s Fatima light source, it would have been about 2-3 miles to the west of Ghiaie, which puts it above the village of Merate. We know from the last testimonial that the phenomenon was seen clearly in the village of Tavernola Bergamasca, which is about 22 miles from Ghiaie and 25 from Merate. An Italian source also reports sightings in Brescia and Piacenza, each about 35 miles from Ghiaie. So a Dalleur style analysis might conclude that this event also had a 25 - 35 mile visibility radius, similar to Fatima’s. …unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.
Inline links: really drinking the glass of milk, Halifax Slasher, here, my disappointment in the skeptical community, why it worries me, lets you say, Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio, Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg, trapped prior, of mind, 5, key insight, 6, my source, 7, here, this site, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kukw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F192586f8-d450-4555-88ef-deb6bbe30416_842x613.png, Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account
The poet also corresponded with Manuel Formigao, a man who spent his life gathering evidence for the Miracle of the Sun and who is remembered as the foremost promoter of Fatima. But he never bothered to say “Hey, you know the thing you’ve devoted your life to? I have priceless evidence that it’s completely real.” He just mentioned other things - like how much he enjoyed a Fatima pilgrimage - and Formigao never mentioned the poet’s testimony in any of his books. I think this testimony is on shakier evidence than most of the others. Moving on to the housewife, Guilhermina Lopes da Silva, her story seems real enough, but she tells us that “I could not go [to Fatima] because my husband was an unbeliever.” She knew a miracle was predicted, wanted to see it, but had to stay home. She says that she was “looking towards the mountain” when it happened - I can’t tell whether she means she was deliberately looking for the miracle, or just happened to be gazing in that direction, but I don’t think she can be described as uncontaminated. From the child, Albano Barros, we have only two sentences, not enough to know whether he was contaminated or not. But he was nine years old, and his account was collected thirty years later. How much opportunity might there be for recall bias to creep in when asked to remember a miracle that happened thirty years ago when you were nine? These are relatively weak counterarguments - they perhaps give us a tiny sliver of ability to doubt these testimonies, but do not demand doubt. Are there any affirmative reasons to doubt Dalleur’s story of an objective miracle that took place in consensus reality and was visible according to normal geography? I have seven. First, there were about 300,000 people living within a 20 mile radius of Fatima in 1917. If 50,000 of those had gone to Fatima itself, and another 100,000 were in the southeast area blocked by mountains, then 150,000 people outside Fatima still should have seen the miracle. Of those 150,000, we have four to six testimonies - compared to 100+ testimonies from the mere 70,000 at Fatima itself. Is this surprising? Maybe not: it was a rainy day; many people stayed inside. And the event might have been very dramatic at Fatima, but only slightly visible as an odd flickering on the horizon elsewhere. Maybe you had to be outside in the rain, staring directly at the right part of the horizon, and not that many people were in that category. Against this, the child 6 miles from Fatima and the schoolboy 8 miles from Fatima both described huddling in terror, thinking the world was coming to an end. This doesn’t sound like something only slightly visible as an odd flickering on the horizon. If Dalleur’s location hypothesis is correct, then the child is only 3 miles from the event source - the same distance as Fatima - but the schoolboy is still about 10 miles. Dalleur must believe that the event seemed cataclysmic up to at least a 10 mile radius. So where are all the other distant witnesses? Second, we have at least one explicit negative distant witness. This is Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, who we met before - she missed the miracle when her car got stuck in a ditch a few miles outside Fatima. But she describes the accident as happening “shortly after leaving Torres Novas”, which would put her about seven miles from the event. If it was visible within a twenty miles radius, she shouldn’t have missed the miracle at all! Believers argue that Torres Novas’ view of the event was blocked by the hills. But as we saw above, if we believe Dalleur’s location, we can use trigonometry to estimate the light source’s elevation at >1 mile. This could not have been blocked by the small hills near Torres Novas, and so the explicit negative evidence from Constancio - not to mention the implicit negative evidence from the other 40,000 residents of Torres Novas - becomes damning. Third, Dalleur argues that the light source was hot enough to rapidly dry clothes three miles of land distance away. If so, the area directly underneath it - which includes the small village of Geisteria - should have more or less ignited. But there is no record of any damage to the small villages in that area. Of course, God and the Virgin Mary can presumably choose to have heat work however they want - maybe this was a perfectly uniform heat defying all normal laws of radiation - but this seems somewhat against the spirit of the exercise. Fourth, the witnesses at Fatima agree that a small window opened up in the cloud cover that let them see the sun (or “the sun”). Using the same trigonometry and some educated guesses about cloud height, the window in the clouds must only have been a few thousand feet wide. So why should people many miles away have been able to see the sun at all? Were they using a different window? Fifth, Dalleur claims the light source was not the sun at all, but some sort of artificial miraculous object. But if this were true, how did the miracle end? No witness describes seeing the pale sun disappear. They only say it went back to its usual place in the sky. Later in the day, the clouds cleared and it became a normal sunny day. But nobody reports seeing two suns. At some point, either the first light source must have vanished (which would have been noticed), or there must be two suns in the same sky (which would also have been noticed). Therefore, it seems like the miraculous light source must have been the sun after all, which throws Dalleur’s calculations into disarray. Sixth, although I was not personally able to follow the work Dalleur did to argue that the shadows in the photographs proved two different light sources, I corresponded with two people who did more thorough analyses: I came across Mark Grant in the comments section of Ethan and Evan’s blogs, where he was making some great points and had discovered sources that I missed. In his analysis, he argues that there aren’t enough beam lines to calculate shadows properly, that the direction the people are looking doesn’t match Dalleur’s claimed light source, and that the odd patches on some people’s clothes are more likely photographic defects than artifacts of miraculous drying.
Inline links: his analysis
Highlights From The Comments On Fatima
October 24, 2025 · Original source
A nun stated that some people had seen “something” appear in the sun in Torres Novas, also about 12 miles away, though she is not really clear on whether she saw it herself or is just relaying other people’s impressions.
Tulsa2 mentions across 2 issues

Tulsa is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between May 21, 2021 and April 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Cities such as Pittsburgh, St. Paul, and Tulsa"; "Birthright trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma"; "very lucrative packages of benefits to Jews who move to Tulsa". It most often appears alongside Africa, Europe, 15 minute cities.

Article page
Tulsa
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
May 21, 2021
Last seen
April 20, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
Cities such as Pittsburgh, St. Paul, and Tulsa are effectively ocean ports, thanks to the extensive navigable waterways.
Links For April 2023
April 20, 2023 · Original source
28: Trevor Klee’s “Birthright” trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa has some oil billionaires fighting to keep it a good place to live while the rest of the Midwest hollows out, apparently successfully. In particular, two of the billionaires are Jewish and want to preserve Tulsa’s Jewish community. They’re offering very lucrative packages of benefits (including guaranteed cushy jobs at their nonprofits, or extraordinary levels of financial support for creative/business projects) to Jews who move to Tulsa.
Inline links: Trevor Klee’s “Birthright” trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma
A free public playground in Tulsa. Public-spirited oil billionaires + very cheap land + quick review process is apparently a winning combination. Trevor’s understandably morally anxious about benefiting from his Jewish ethnicity. Should he be? Is this any worse than benefiting from white privilege or male privilege or whatever other forms of privilege they’ve invented since I last checked? Is it any worse than benefiting from being an American, and so having access to social support and benefit programs that Sudanese and Bangladeshis can only dream of? I’m not sure.
Tahrir Square1 mentions across 1 issues

Tahrir Square is a recurring place 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 "the Egyptians in Tahrir Square"; "Egyptians in Tahrir Square". It most often appears alongside 5G, Acemoglu and Robinson, ACX comments.

Reference entry
Tahrir Square
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Why Nations Fail
August 25, 2023 · Original source
Even if correct, it is much less interesting and useful than it appears. Epistemic status: I have a decade-old PhD in economics (not in the field of economic growth) and a handful of peer-reviewed papers in moderately-ranked journals. I'm not claiming to make any original technical points, or to give a comprehensive evaluation of the economic growth literature. My criticisms are largely straight from the authors' own mouths. 1. What is this book about? Why is it not very good? Acemoglu and Robinson (AR) argue that countries are rich or poor because of their political institutions, not culture, geography or policy ignorance. I'll do this as much as possible in AR’s own words. Why Nations Fail was written during the Arab Spring, so the preface begins with Egypt. Some stress that Egypt’s poverty is determined primarily by its geography, by the fact that the country is mostly a desert and lacks adequate rainfall, and that its soils and climate do not allow productive agriculture1. Others instead point to cultural attributes ... Egyptians, they argue, lack the same sort of work ethic and cultural traits that have allowed others to prosper, and instead have accepted Islamic beliefs that are inconsistent with economic success. A third approach, the one dominant among economists and policy pundits, is based on the notion that the rulers of Egypt simply don’t know what is needed to make their country prosperous, and have followed incorrect policies and strategies in the past. Unsurprisingly, those other economists and policy pundits turn out to be wrong and the authors turn out to be right. In this book we’ll argue that the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, not most academics and commentators, have the right idea. In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people. And the Egyptian lesson turns out to be general. Whether it is North Korea, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe, we’ll show that poor countries are poor for the same reason that Egypt is poor. Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities. What are “institutions” anyway? (The economic and political kind, not the prison and mental hospital kind.) Basically, AR mean politics. The word "institutions" occurs over 1000 times in Why Nations Fail2. I'll just focus on how AR use it without worrying about the dictionary, different schools of economics, or other social sciences. They begin with what institutions do rather than what they are. Nogales, Arizona, is in the United States. Its inhabitants have access to the economic institutions of the United States, which enable them to choose their occupations freely, acquire schooling and skills, and encourage their employers to invest in the best technology, which leads to higher wages for them. They also have access to political institutions that allow them to take part in the democratic process, to elect their representatives, and replace them if they misbehave. The word is used dozens more times before ARattempt a more general definition. Each society functions with a set of economic and political rules created and enforced by the state and the citizens collectively. Economic institutions shape economic incentives: the incentives to become educated, to save and invest, to innovate and adopt new technologies, and so on. It is the political process that determines what economic institutions people live under, and it is the political institutions that determine how this process works. So while economic and political institutions can be separated, it is the political institutions that matter in the long run. The good kind of institutions that lead to economic growth are "inclusive", as opposed to "extractive". To be inclusive, economic institutions must feature secure private property, an unbiased system of law, and a provision of public services that provides a level playing field in which people can exchange and contract; it also must permit the entry of new businesses and allow people to choose their careers. ... such rights must exist for the majority of people in society. Political pluralism is necessary, but not sufficient without a strong centralised state. ... political institutions that distribute power broadly in society and subject it to constraints are pluralistic. ... the key to understanding why South Korea and the United States have inclusive economic institutions is not just their pluralistic political institutions but also their sufficiently centralized and powerful states. A telling contrast is with the East African nation of Somalia. I am still a bit hazy as to the relative importance of de jure written rules versus the de facto struggle for power. AR are somewhat circular: Politics is the process by which a society chooses the rules that will govern it. Politics surrounds institutions ... When there is conflict over institutions, what happens depends on which people or group wins out in the game of politics ... The political institutions of a society are a key determinant of the outcome of this game. They are the rules that govern incentives in politics. But overall, you could just say ‘politics’ and not be too far off. AR do this themselves occasionally. South Korea ended up with very different economic institutions than the North because different people with different interests and objectives made the decisions about how to structure society. In other words, South Korea had different politics. AR's academic reputation is based on statistical analysis, but Why Nations Fail tries to do narrative history, IMHO not very well. When Jeffrey Sachs reviewed the book, he complained: They never define their key variables with precision, present any quantitative data or classifications based on those definitions, or offer even a single table, figure, or regression line to demonstrate the relationships that they contend underpin all economic history. Instead, they present a stream of assertions and anecdotes about the inclusive or extractive nature of this or that institution. AR replied baldly: Sachs ... argues that we provide no evidence. Right, we do not in the book. But that’s because a book for a general audience is not the right forum for presenting academic research, and we spent many years of our lives precisely on writing academic papers providing exactly the sort of evidence. ... So yes, we don’t provide the econometric evidence in the book, which isn’t of course the right place to do it, but econometric evidence is abundantly loud in the way it speaks on these topics. So, don't expect Why Nations Fail to be an accessible explanation of AR's academic work, which is what I was hoping for when I first read it. What do they spend over 500 pages on then? Well, after the preface, there's fifteen chapters of, as Sachs says, "assertions and anecdotes". Not just about "the inclusive or extractive nature of this or that institution", to be fair, but how institutions can change at "critical junctures" such as the Black Death or colonisation, and why it can be in elites’ interests to block economic innovation if it threatens their power, so that growth under extractive institutions is unlikely to be sustained. These chapters are not particularly good – I found them poorly organised and repetitive – but not particularly bad, if you are willing to accept the underlying premise that institutions are the main determinant of economic growth. Cumulatively they have an effect similar to the Old Testament, if you are willing to accept the underlying premise that the fortunes of the nation of Israel are determined by the LORD. Only the second chapter, ‘Theories that Don't Work’, makes a sustained argument against alternative theories. Geography is disposed of by noting the stark differences at the US-Mexican, North-South Korean and East-West German borders, and the reversal of fortune by which the present day US and Canada only became richer than Mexico, Central and South America following European colonisation. Culture is hand-waved away with the assertion that institutions determine the any relevant cultural behaviours, not the other way around, referring to the same border examples, the rapid catch up of Catholic Europe despite Weber's Protestant Ethic, the malign influence of the European and Ottoman empires on Africa, the range of outcomes within the former British Empire, and the more European population of Argentina and Uruguay versus the US and Canada, or of Columbia versus Ecuador and Peru. Not a bad list of anecdotes, but one could equally well point to the cross-border success of Ashkenazi Jews, overseas Chinese, or Baltic and Volga Germans. Ignorance is simply dismissed with the assertion that "if ignorance were the problem, well-meaning leaders would quickly learn what types of policies increased their citizens’ incomes and welfare, and would gravitate toward those policies." Various good and bad policy changes are explained as the result of political pressures rather than improved knowledge. The implication seems to be that good policies are so obvious they don’t require expert knowledge or advice, or that the experts never get it wrong. This appears most implausible in the debate over socialism and economic planning. Writing off the entire Communist experience as simply another elite trying to preserve its power feels inadequate, especially considering that some distinguished bourgeois economists thought central planning was a plausible road to riches until quite late in the day. Genetics or race is not mentioned, but would presumably attract the same counterexamples as geography and culture. Another theory AR do not discuss is crude exploitation: while colonial empires are excoriated, it is for setting up persistent extractive political institutions rather than for a direct theft of resources. The prosperity of white-owned South African farms next to poverty-stricken Bantustans is explained by the better quality of the institutions available to whites under apartheid, not relative population densities and land quality. For the rest of the book, I'll just list a few nitpicks to signal I read the whole thing and know a bit of history, but feel free to skip this – the real evidence for AR's thesis is in their academic papers, and I'll discuss those in the next section. I think AR overrate the importance of the Glorious Revolution, to the point of claiming it "created the rule of law" – after all, Parliament had already deposed and executed a king, then brought back the king’s son on their own terms after a decade of republican government. No less a luminary than Edmund Burke asserted "The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only security for law and liberty." Also, strong signs of British economic uniqueness – the abnormal growth of London and reliance on coal as a fuel – predated 1688.
Inline links: 1, 2, dictionary, schools, economics, social sciences, reviewed, replied, Protestant Ethic, planning, distinguished, bourgeois, Glorious Revolution, Edmund Burke, predated
Taksim1 mentions across 1 issues

Taksim is a recurring place 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 "Emily's Garden in Cihangir, Taksim". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Taksim
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
ISTANBUL, TÜRKIYE Contact: Birce Sultan Karabey Contact Info: bircesultan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 17th, 5:00 PM Location: Emily's Garden in Cihangir, Taksim Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GHC2XJP+75 Notes: Please RSVP so I can get an approximate headcount for the venue.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GHC2XJP+75
TALENCE1 mentions across 1 issues

TALENCE is a recurring place 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 "TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE), GIRONDE, FRANCE". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
TALENCE
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE), GIRONDE, FRANCE Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2023-09-23[at]weboroso[dot]anonaddy[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 23rd, 3:00 PM Location: Parc Peixotto, middle of the path connecting the two main entrances (once we meet we'll seek which benches to try to grab). Initial position: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.80900/-0.58978 (Send me your phone if you expecte to be late and want an SMS when we deside which direction in the parc we shift) I will bring an A4 sign with «ACX Meetup» on it. I usually wear a mask in high-stranger-density settings. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so I know that someone is indeed coming. This will be a small meetup with no fixed topic, so whatever you want to discuss, we can discuss it!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W
TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE)1 mentions across 1 issues

TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE) is a recurring place 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 "TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE)". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 01, 2026
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Augustin Contact Info: augustin[.]portier[@]proton[.]me Time: Saturday, April 18th, 5:30 PM Location: We’ll be at the cafe “Les Caves Alliées”, 44 rue Grégoire de Tours. I’ll have an ACX meetup sign. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FW4V82P+QX Group Link: Discord: https://discord.com/invite/JUHTZRYp3k Notes: Here’s a link to a partiful event if you want to let me know you’re coming :-) https://partiful.com/e/ONsyvq47zkg7zc0EPSVs TALENCE (BORDEAUX METROPOLE) Contact: Michael Contact Info: acx-meetup-2026-04-16[@]weboroso[.]anonaddy[.]com Time: Thursday, April 16th, 6:00 PM Location: Parc Peixotto, middle of the path connecting the two main entrances (once we meet we’ll seek which benches to try to grab). Initial position: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/44.80900/-0.58978 (Send me your phone if you expect to be late and want an SMS when we deside which direction in the parc we shift). I will bring an A4 sign with «ACX Meetup» on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong or send an email. If you would like to come but the date or the place doesn’t work for you, please write, too! Currently I know of one other person who will probably be there, and we are flexible. I will post a LessWrong comment if there is a change.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FW4V82P+QX, https://discord.com/invite/JUHTZRYp3k, https://partiful.com/e/ONsyvq47zkg7zc0EPSVs, https://plus.codes/8CPXRC56+H3W
talpiot market area1 mentions across 1 issues

talpiot market area is a recurring place 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 "in the talpiot market area". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Reference entry
talpiot market area
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 01, 2026
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: shai Contact Info: Tenastralcodex[at]gmail[period]com Time: Monday, May 18th, 5:00 PM Location: We’ll be on the second floor of the Goldmund bookstore, on ekron 6 street in the talpiot market area. I will be wearing a batik/Hawaiian shirt and carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C Group Link: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FSc [remove this bit] lSIRSpdSJ6T5VJT2QAD Notes: Please RSVP on whatsapp/our group email so I know how many people will participate
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8G4QR262+39C
Taos1 mentions across 1 issues

Taos is a recurring place 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 "TAOS, NEW MEXICO, USA". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Taos
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TAOS, NEW MEXICO, USA Contact: Jess Contact Info: jordanslowik52[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 23rd, 1:00 PM Location: Kit Carson Park by the stage Coordinates: https://plus.codes/858PCC5H+6R Notes: Please RSVP to my email so I know if I should expect anyone.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/858PCC5H+6R
Taos, New Mexico, USA1 mentions across 1 issues

Taos, New Mexico, USA is a recurring place 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 "TAOS, NEW MEXICO, USA". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Taos, New Mexico, USA
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TAOS, NEW MEXICO, USA Contact: Jess Contact Info: jordanslowik52[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 23rd, 1:00 PM Location: Kit Carson Park by the stage Coordinates: https://plus.codes/858PCC5H+6R Notes: Please RSVP to my email so I know if I should expect anyone.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/858PCC5H+6R
Taprobana1 mentions across 1 issues

Taprobana is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 29, 2024 and February 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The island of Andaman, off Taprobana". It most often appears alongside @BoyanSlat, @eigenrobot, @JackTindale.

Reference entry
Taprobana
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 29, 2024
Last seen
February 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For February 2024
February 29, 2024 · Original source
The island of Andaman, off Taprobana, lies with the terrafirma between the east and west, and opposite it Paigu, between north and south. This island with its Andamanians has a circumference of about 500 miles; it is inhabited by an idolatrous, cruel people given to the use of spells and magic. Many say that on this island there is a lake in which, if you immerse iron, it becomes gold. I say this just to do justice to the testimony of many people.
Taranaki1 mentions across 1 issues

Taranaki is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 02, 2021 and September 02, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Kathleen Brant, who lived on a farm in Taranaki, New Zealand". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, AC&E, AcesoUnderGlass.

Reference entry
Taranaki
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 02, 2021
Last seen
September 02, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Long COVID: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
September 02, 2021 · Original source
In this context, I find the 1/150 risk pretty scary and the 1/25,000 risk not scary at all, so, darn, I guess there’s not yet enough data to have a strong sense of how concerned I should be. 9. This is hard to compare to other postviral syndromes Going into this, I wondered if we might be able to ignore Long COVID. The argument would go like this: all viral diseases have a risk of postviral syndromes. Colds, flus, mono, lots of stuff that’s going around all the time. Lots of people get those postviral syndromes, and either recover or don’t, but either way we don’t make a big deal out of it. Since COVID’s considered “newsworthy” in a way flu isn’t, we obsess over its postviral syndrome even though it’s no worse than anything else’s. This wouldn’t make Long COVID any less bad, and maybe we would be wrong to not panic more about colds and the flu, but it would at least give us some context and make things feel less scary. Unfortunately, I can’t find anything supporting or opposing this picture. The only relevant study is a meta-analysis by Poole-Wright et al, who (contra nominative determinism) don’t pool the studies by condition, which makes it hard to draw conclusions. I think all of their examples of postviral syndrome after flu are from severe hospitalized cases, so any comparison with COVID would be unfair. Although there do seem to be scattered reports of post-flu problems, they’ve never been formally studied or quantified. Mononucleosis is an infectious disease caused by the Epstein-Barr virus, affecting about 1/2000 people per year in developed countries. It has a famously nasty postviral syndrome, which this paper describes as “almost one-half of the group had substantial ongoing symptoms 2 months after onset and… ∼10% had disabling symptoms marked by fatigue lasting ≥ 6 months”. Flu is as common as COVID, but nobody really talks about it having a significant postviral syndrome so probably it’s not that bad. Mono has a worse postviral syndrome than COVID, but it’s rare enough that it doesn’t cause massive society-wide effects. COVID is right in the middle: more common than mono, and (probably) worse postviral syndrome than flu. I think it’s fair to say that we may not have encountered a condition with this exact combination of risk factors and can’t dismiss it as similar to conditions we currently ignore. One potential analogue might be the Spanish Flu of 1918. It was an equally widespread pandemic, and seemed to have some kind of postviral syndrome. From TIME: In what is now Tanzania, to the north, post-viral syndrome has been blamed for triggering the worst famine in a century—the so-called “famine of corms”—after debilitating lethargy prevented flu survivors from planting when the rains came at the end of 1918. “Agriculture suffered particular disruption because, not only did the epidemic coincide with the planting season in some parts of the country, but in others it came at the time for harvesting and sheep-shearing.” Kathleen Brant, who lived on a farm in Taranaki, New Zealand, told Rice, the historian, about the “legion” problems farmers in her district encountered following the pandemic, even though all patients survived: “The effects of loss of production were felt for a long time.” The 1918 flu seemed to have lots of psychiatric effects: “Norwegian demographer Svenn-Erik Mamelund provided such evidence when he combed the records of psychiatric institutions in his country to show that the average number of admissions showed a seven-fold increase in each of the six years following the pandemic, compared to earlier, non-pandemic years.” Coronavirus doesn’t - the excellent Amin-Chowdhury study above finds nothing. Still, this is the scale of thing I’m worried about. The worst case scenario here is really really bad. If a few percent of COVID patients get long-term unremitting genuine CFS/ME, that has the potential to overwhelm government welfare budgets and long-term depress the economy. I think there’s a 90% chance the real situation isn’t that bad, but it’s scary that we can’t entirely rule it out. Aside from the somewhat different 1918 case, I don’t think we have any historical experience of dealing with postviral syndromes at this scale. The medium case scenario is something more like “a few percent of infected people get moderate fatigue, which doesn’t really prevent them from working, and goes away after a few years”. I don’t know whether the level of media attention paid to this would converge on “boring and nobody notices” or “giant disaster”, and I think it would be compatible with either. 10. Conclusions 1. Long COVID is many different issues without a common mechanism. 2. Some of these are straightforward and not surprising, eg lung scarring and post-ICU syndrome from severe infection, and would happen in any disease of this severity. Others seem to be more like the poorly-understood postviral syndromes associated with several other diseases. While some symptoms may be psychosomatic, most are probably organic. 3 The three major categories of symptoms are straightforward cardiovascular-pulmonary issues, straightforward smell and taste issues, and more mysterious neurological issues. 4 Although these get better with time in some people, in a significant number (maybe ~50% of people who had them at six weeks) they persist for as long as anyone has been able to measure them (a few months in the case of COVID, a year or two in the case of comparable syndromes). 5. Post-COVID fatigue is particularly concerning. This would be very bad if we analogized it to CFS/ME, and still pretty bad if we analogized it to other known postviral syndromes. There is no proof that this always gets better over the long term, although no study has looked at them for more than a few years. Facing postviral fatigue on this scale is a new problem. 6 . Children probably get Long COVID less than adults, probably at a rate of less than 5% of symptomatic cases. But we don’t know how much less, and we can’t rule out that some children get pretty severe symptoms. 7. Although vaccination decreases the risk of symptomatic COVID, it probably doesn’t decrease the risk of Long COVID per symptomatic COVID case by very much, though it might decrease it by a factor of 2-3. 8. Your chance of really bad debilitating lifelong Long COVID, conditional on getting COVID, is probably somewhere between a few tenths of a percent, and a few percent. Your chance per year of getting it by living a normal lifestyle depends on what you consider a normal lifestyle and on the future course of the pandemic. For me, under reasonable assumptions, it’s probably well below one percent. EDIT: Here are some other people who tried to do this same analysis. I learned about all of these after I wrote the first draft of this, so you can consider the basic thought process here to be independent of them - but I edited some things to account for what I learned from them before writing the final version. AcesoUnderGlass: Long COVID Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem
Inline links: a meta-analysis by Poole-Wright et al, scattered reports, this paper, postviral syndrome, Long COVID Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem
Taringa1 mentions across 1 issues

Taringa is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 26, 2022 and August 26, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Location: 52 McCaul Street Taringa (house)". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry
Taringa
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
August 26, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2022: Times & Places
August 26, 2022 · Original source
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
Inline links: 5R4JFXXQ+P8, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RPFP4FC+34, LessWrong, Eventbrite, 5R3MVF5W+555, LessWrong, 4RJ65XM9+3Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4PWQ3V34+W6, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4RRH46F4+983, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 4RQGHVVH+69, LessWrong, 8P26J3C5+462, LessWrong, 862M74PW+6XP, LessWrong, 7J4VXJF4+PR, LessWrong, our website, 7J9WFF4X+5P, LessWrong, 7JFJ4RM6+5W, LessWrong, 7JWVG6H9+8H, LessWrong, 7JPMHM9M+HG, LessWrong, 6P3QG789+F7, LessWrong, 8Q7XJPV2+QFP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, LessWrong profile, Lisette's Bangsar, 6PM34MHH+VW, LessWrong, 4VMP6QH4+86, LessWrong, Facebook event, 4V6G4GP7+GM5, LessWrong, 4VCPPQCH+FGC, LessWrong, 7Q268257+4F, LessWrong, 6PH57RGW+J8, LessWrong
Tarshish1 mentions across 1 issues

Tarshish is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 29, 2022 and September 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "including monkeys from far-off Tarshish". It most often appears alongside 1 Kings 10-11, 2008 Democratic National Convention, Adam Scheffer.

Reference entry
Tarshish
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 29, 2022
Last seen
September 29, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
I feel like this is weak. If I were doing this, I’d point out that 1 Kings 10-11 describes the moral decline of King Solomon. His main offenses are overtaxing the people, taking too many heathen women into his harem, and overspending on luxuries - including monkeys from far-off Tarshish. God gets angry at all of this and curses him to have his kingdom fall in the next generation. Surely monkeys + sexual profligacy = curse, plus the impending fall of the kingdom, forms a better “monkeypox means the End Times” argument than the “zoonotic disease” drivel. Also, Solomon’s excessive taxes come out to exactly 666 talents of gold - coincidence? But also: the Hebrew letter qoph means “monkey” - both symbolically, in the sense that its glyph is supposed to represent a monkey with a tail, and literally, in the sense that the word “qoph” also means “monkey” in Hebrew. According to kabbalah, it is the letter of impurity and unholiness. Its gematria value is 100, representing the 100 people killed by plague every day due to David offending God. But qoph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word keitz, meaning the end of time! I really feel like you could make a much stronger case here!
Inline links: means “monkey”, According to kabbalah
TARTU1 mentions across 1 issues

TARTU is a recurring place 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 "TARTU". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Reference entry
TARTU
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 01, 2026
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Andrew Contact Info: andrew_n_west[@]yahoo[.]co[.]uk Time: Friday, May 8th, 6:00 PM Location: Tuletorn Brewing, Ankru tn 10, 11713 Tallinn, Estonia Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26 TARTU Contact: Yehor Contact Info: jehorchudovsky[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 25th, 12:00 PM Location: The meet-up point in front of the townhall building. I will be carrying a sign with ACX MEETUP on it; I have got very long dark blond hair. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9GC89PJC+2W
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9GF6FM4G+26, https://plus.codes/9GC89PJC+2W
Tashkent1 mentions across 1 issues

Tashkent is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 29, 2024 and February 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "in the Uzbek capital Tashkent during December 1955". It most often appears alongside @BoyanSlat, @eigenrobot, @JackTindale.

Reference entry
Tashkent
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 29, 2024
Last seen
February 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For February 2024
February 29, 2024 · Original source
When Khruschev addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand people in the Uzbek capital Tashkent during December 1955, he got himself in an unseemly muddle. He opened by mistakenly calling his audience "Tajiks" and noting how well they were now doing in growing cotton, compared to their neighbors the Uzbeks. An aide eventually managed to tell him that he was, in fact, talking to Uzbeks rather than Tajiks. As was his way, Khrushchev tried to ride out the faux pas in style, telling the audience he had misspoken on purpose, in order to test their reaction, and then expressing his happiness that they had responded correctly to his joke.
Tavernola Bergamasca1 mentions across 1 issues

Tavernola Bergamasca is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 01, 2025 and October 01, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "the phenomenon was seen clearly in the village of Tavernola Bergamasca". It most often appears alongside 1910s Portugal, 1999 British eclipse, 2017 US eclipse.

Reference entry
Tavernola Bergamasca
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
October 01, 2025
Last seen
October 01, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
October 01, 2025 · Original source
The Hindu milk miracle of 1995. Starting from the bottom: In 1995, a man in New Delhi noticed that an idol of the elephant-god Ganesh seemed to be really drinking the glass of milk left as an offering. The story went viral - or as viral as things could go in 1995 - and Hindus around the world noticed the same thing. There was “an increase in overall milk sales in New Delhi by over 30%”. Scientists investigated and determined that a sculpted stone elephant trunk could sometimes absorb milk through capillary action. This was a story about rumor, interpretation, and context, but not really “hallucination”. The drinking effect was real. The Halifax Slasher was a typical supercriminal story. Two women reported being attacked by a mysterious and oddly-dressed knifeman; others followed. “Vigilante groups were set up on the streets, and several people, mistakenly assumed to have been the attacker, were beaten up; business in the town was all but shut down”. Although there was a Halifax resident with a history of knife crime, “he was quickly ruled out of the 1938 attacks on account of his large nose, which none of the 1938 victims had described”. Eventually several of the victims admitted to having made it up, and the whole thing went away. Supercriminal cases most often result from people making things up. Occasionally, seemingly-honest people report seeing the supercriminal in poor lighting conditions across a dark alley or something. But even if we consider these to be “hallucinations”, it is usually the one or two most vulnerable people in a town at the time. I can’t find any examples of true “mass hallucinations” - entire towns seeing a nonexistent supercriminal or monster at the same time. Koro is the psychosomatic disease par excellence; I’ve written about it before here. Victims, always male, believe that their penis has disappeared or retracted into their body; they often blame penis-stealing witches. Koro occurs at some very low background rate in every society (including ours), but occasionally wells up into mass panics in primitive cultures that take witchcraft seriously and have traditions of worrying about this sort of thing. Still, I don’t think any panic ever affects more than half of a village’s males, and usually not at the exact same time; it’s a smoldering panic over days or weeks, not a single instant of horrified realization. Also, although I’m not sure and would love to learn more about this, I don’t think the koro victim is having a visual hallucination of not having a penis at all. I think they think their penis is much smaller or shorter than it should be - which only requires some sort of obsessive worrying and (perhaps motivated) mis-remembering of its normal length. None of these are “mass hallucinations” in the sense where the sorts of visual hallucinations typical of certain mentally ill people occur en masse in a crowd of thousands with >50% prevalence - that is, the type of mass hallucination that would be required to explain Fatima. As far as I know, there are no confirmed cases of this ever happening. Still, from the Hindu milk miracle, we can learn that religious people can miss a real phenomenon for a long time, then notice it all at once with great fanfare. And from the koro cases, we can learn that a rare phenomenon can become more common in situations of widespread belief and social pressure. Interlude: It Seems Like Years Since It’s Been Clear This is around the stopping point of the previous Substack discussion. I’ve tried to cover most of Ethan and Evan’s arguments, go through the chain of rebuttals and counter-rebuttals, and maybe pull on a few of the more tempting loose threads that they’ve left. As best I can tell, this level of investigation ends in a decisive victory for the believers. They have a stock of seemingly-unimpeachable testimonies; the skeptics have only a few leads that don’t seem on track to pan out. Eye damage can maybe produce a few odd effects, but - in the entire history of tens of billions of people living daily underneath a sun that they are able to view at any moment - we have not yet found anyone who reports the full constellation of Fatima experiences just from seeing the sun. No exotic weather phenomenon is a perfect match. Mass hallucinations are real but comparatively weak. At least this is my assessment. Skeptic blogs don’t agree. They propose one of these things (with no consensus as to which one) then act like they’ve debunked the miracle, then skip to the really important part: laughing at how obviously wrong it is. I’ve written before about my disappointment in the skeptical community and why it worries me, and here I feel it as acutely as ever. Sitting with my disappointment and trying to put it into words, I think my worries come down to a tangling of the Bayesian graph. The straightforward Bayesian way to do this is to start with some prior probability that there is a God who causes miracles (let’s say 1%), notice that the evidence for Fatima being a miracle naively seems very high (let’s say 90%), multiply out, and end up with a higher (8.3%) probability of God’s existence and a lower (8.3%) chance that Fatima in particular was miraculous. This is liberating. It lets you say “This piece of evidence is very strong, but my prior is very low, so even without being able to debunk the evidence, I continue to disbelieve.” But doing this the straightforward Bayesian way doesn’t work. First of all, what would it mean to naively (even before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles) say Fatima seems 90% likely to be miraculous. Before factoring in that you don’t believe in miracles, surely the probability is much higher! But also, if you try this, then as soon as you find two similar miracles (I’ve been told the next two are the Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio and the Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg) your probability of God goes up to 88%! But I don’t think there’s any real atheist whose probability would rise in such a straightforward linear way. You need some kind of model where either it’s almost trivially possible to generate an arbitrary number of convincing-yet-false miracles, or it isn’t. But this doesn’t match the “virtuous” approach of addressing each miracle on its own terms - where you try to understand the Sun Miracle by learning things about the sun, or entoptic phenomena, or 1910s Portugal. And it does match the skeptical approach I’m complaining about, where you say “it’s probably swamp gas or something, lol, imagine being so dumb that you believe in miracles.” So I cannot object too strongly. Still, my greatest fear in this and all other problems of reasoning method is the trapped prior, where people take this too far and become impervious to evidence entirely. I think it’s worth untangling the whole Bayesian graph, trying to keep this whole structure in mind, if it prevents people from accidentally propagating an update down a logical chain, then propagating the same update back up the chain, again and again, ad infinitum, until they become arbitrarily sure of themselves. “We can be sure all miracle claims, even the convincing ones, are false, because there’s no God - and we can be sure there’s no God because all miracle claims are so risibly false.” Even if this is harmless - even if it turns out correct in the case of religion - it teaches such dangerous habits of mind that I’m willing to err in the direction of going way too far taking such claims seriously - at least in the “entertaining an idea without accepting it” sense. Everyone gets to decide what is and isn’t worth their time. I think deciding that these sorts of miracles aren’t worth your time is fine, as long as you’re propagating all the probabilities correctly and not accidentally treating your own hurriedness as a cause to update the rest of your belief graph. As for me, I don’t know, I just find this fascinating. In Evan’s skeptical take on the conversation, he starts strong, but after the topic switches to Part LXXVII of Dalleur’s discussion of photograph angles, he stops and asks: What the fuck are we doing? What are we talking about? What have I spent (conservatively) 18 hours of my life on? We’re addressing what Stanley Jaki called the most important event of the 20th century! We’re debating the existence of God, the most important question possible! If God is real, then nothing could be more important than establishing this: in the best case, we will come to believe; at worst, we will be able to tell St. Peter that our failure was honest and not from lack of trying. If He is not, then we can do whatever we want here on Earth, and surely one of the noblest ways to spend our short existence is expanding the frontiers of the known into the borderlands of mystery! In particular, if the God of Fatima exists, we are in deep trouble. I said I wouldn’t talk about exactly what the Virgin Mary told the child-seers, but the short version is that the First Secret was a very, very nasty vision of Hell. It looked exactly the way a ten-year-old child might expect: a lake of fire populated by ebon-skinned demons and horrendous tortures; the lead child-seer said that if the Virgin had not begun by promising that she personally would never go there, “she would have died of fright”. As it was, the consequences of the vision were grim. The child-seers got it into their minds that they could perhaps save sinners from the fire by “doing penance”. They drank only stagnant, scum-encrusted water, in the hopes that this might help some otherwise hell-bound soul; on some especially hot days, they ceased drinking water at all. When they found particularly painful ropes, they tied them around their bodies so hard that they bled (later, the Virgin mercifully told them they didn’t need to wear the ropes at night - they could stick to daytime only). After so many mortifications, they were easy prey for the Spanish Flu; two of the three perished before their tenth birthday. As they lay dying in the hospital, they were recorded as freaking out every time they saw a nurse or visitor with “immodest dress”, saying that they would not act in such a way if they knew how long Eternity was, or what awaited them there5. If all of this is the true opinion of the Lord of the Universe, we had better figure it out quick. If it isn’t, then the words of the Grupo Anticlerical: People! Let us always fight! From the victory of progress, science, freedom, and free thought, will result human happiness, joy, love, fraternity, respect for women, veneration for mothers, adoration for children, affection for the elderly, protection for the sick, the unfortunate, the tortured . . . O most holy mothers! O holy, pious mothers who so love your sweet little children! Have compassion on your beautiful little children, sacred fruits of your blessed wombs! …take on new meaning and urgency. I will admit my bias: I hope the visions of Fatima were untrue, and therefore I must also hope the Miracle of the Sun was a fake. But I’ll also admit this: at times when doing this research, I was genuinely scared and confused. If at this point you’re also scared and confused, then I’ve done my job as a writer and successfully presented the key insight of Rationalism: “It ain’t a true crisis of faith unless it could go either way”. But now that we’ve let Ethan, Evan, and the rest dig us into as deep a hole as possible, let’s try to dig our way out. 3: Our Lady Of Everywhere Else One question that Ethan, Evan, and Dalleur fail to ask is: what if people are basically always seeing the sun spin and change colors and and fall from the sky? What if this is the most common experience in the world? What if it’s a minor miracle every time you get more than a handful of people together and they don’t fall down in awe and terror at the manifestations of the sun? Goncado Xavier de Almeida Garrett is one of the star witnesses of the Fatima miracle, quoted above. His testimony comes from a letter written to Father Formigao, a local priest, about two months after the event. But although pro-Fatima sources quote the testimony at the beginning of the letter, they conveniently leave out what follows: I ask your excellency to please tell me if you confirm this narrative: the Bishop of Portalegre and Mrs. Maria de Jesus Raposo report that while they were with other people in Torres Novas, on the 20th of October at the end of the day, they saw the sun rotate and change its colors. They said this was different from Fátima and did not have the importance of October 13th. I would like clarification on the differences. It is urgent to know what the differences are, since they attended both […] Until now, no one saw the sun's sparkling rotations, and now everyone sees them many days and many times. Many days and many times? Remember, the Virgin Mary first appeared at Fatima on May 13. She promised to return on the 13th of each successive month until October, when she would perform a great miracle. But she never said she wouldn’t perform any miracles until October. So on the 13th of each month, a medium-sized crowd gathered. They didn’t leave disappointed. I won’t include every claimed supernatural occurrence, but here are the ones relevant to our subject: Olimpia de Jesus, about July 13: [On July 13], at her sister-in-law's house, when they heard the people shouting, he asked, "What's going on over there?" [Olimpia] looked at the sun and said, "The sun is different." The people came and reported that they had seen signs in the sun and in the sky. Joaquim Inacio Vicente, about August 13: This hour was a moment of terror for all who were there. Some lost their senses, others believed it to be the last day of their lives and their day of Judgment, and for some, afterwards, it was a wonder to see the admirable colors that successively took on the clouds that obscured the sun's rays—colors from bright red to pink and from there to blue—the color of anise, as several people declared to me minutes later in my home. Leonor de Avelar e Silva Constancio, about August 13: Everyone looked up at the sky, which was covered by a light cloud, like a very fine white lace, pink in places. The sun, which had been completely hidden for a moment, left us illuminated by a strange light, with yellow spots visible on the ground and above us all, and a great drop in temperature, as happens during a solar eclipse. Manuel Pedro Marto, about August 13 and September 13: [On August 13, he] saw a kind of luminous globe rotating in the clouds […] On September 13th, he also went to Cova da Iria. He was a little away from the children. He saw nothing, nor heard anything, but he heard that some people had seen extraordinary things in the atmosphere. Joaquim Xavier Tuna, about August 13 and September 13: On the 13th of August, I saw the sun lower in the sky at the hour of its appearance. It never lowered as much as that time, not even on October 13th. All the objects around me turned yellow. On September 13th, I saw a large cross emerge from the sun and head east. Its progress was not very hurried. Sometimes it appeared, sometimes it disappeared, until it disappeared from view. I also saw other things that I cannot explain. In the Lapas area, there were people who, at the same time, saw the cross. Then there was the great miracle on October 13. Remember, I was only able to find a handful of negative testimonies - people who said they didn’t see it. One was from a woman named Leonor das Dores Salema Manoel, who said she saw “nothing of what others saw”, at least at Fatima. But on the drive home from Fatima that evening6: I saw [the sun] pass through different colors that I can't remember and it turned green, very light green, like a green salad with a golden rim around it, and spinning. Very long rays seemed to touch the earth and the sun seemed to be separated from the sky. Then the sky took on pink flashes, changing to a yellowish hue around the sun, and further away, spots here and there. After a few long moments that I can't remember, it returned to normal and I couldn't look at it again. The next occurence was early the following year. From the parish inquiry’s interview with Jacinto de Almedia Lopes: He further said that on the day of Our Lady of Purification, that is, on the second of February, 1918, he about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, being in the same place, he noticed signs in the sun identical to those of the thirteenth of October, which he had not noticed on many other days when he had been there. And next, from a letter by Gilberto Fernandes dos Santos: I must inform you that I went to Fátima on [June 13, 1920]… at that very moment, the people were kneeling on the ground, shouting, praying loudly, weeping, begging forgiveness with their hands raised, because they were witnessing a solar phenomenon similar to that of October 13, 1917. And next, from Dr. Henrique Weiss de Oliviera, describing events on May 13, 1923: I ate my meal in a car on the road near Cova da Iria [in Fatima], from half past noon to one in the afternoon, and when I returned to the Chapel, I heard the groups I passed exclaiming in admiration about a marvelous phenomenon that they claimed was occurring in the sun toward which they were directing their gaze. Deeply doubting the repetition of the marvelous phenomena that had dazzled thousands of people, according to reliable reports, during the last apparition of Our Lady in 1917, I was about to pass on without even bothering to look. I remembered, however, that when I first went to Fátima on October 13th of last year, and upon hearing similar admiring rumors around me, I had seen nothing during my quick inspection, perhaps because I was filled with that spirit of doubt. I therefore wanted to be certain this time so that I could, with full awareness, give my testimony to whoever and whenever I was asked. And, having stopped near a group and stared at the sun, carefully shielding my eyes from the direct sunlight, so as not to see anything, they immediately advised me to insist that I would see something. It took a long insistence to finally see what amazed everyone and caused astonishment that I could not see it. And I saw with precise clarity, and twice, what the common people, in their imaginary language, very accurately likened to: almond blossom petals. They fell from a great height (no longer seeing them detach from the sun as the people around me saw them) For myself, I finally, and after a considerable time, concluded that there is no such natural phenomenon, neither known nor described, thus leaning toward the supernatural. Today I firmly believe that this was the case, because I have had testimonies that allow me to reconstruct the phenomenon as it appears to have occurred according to these testimonies. First, one could gaze at the sun for a long time and with impunity, seeing magnificent phenomena of beauty and color; then began an abundant rain of the aforementioned petals; and when I arrived, it was no longer possible to gaze at the sun, and the phenomenon, which had been quite lengthy, was at its end, which explains my difficulty in witnessing it now. And from Joao Amael, on October 13, 1925: I do not know why, I suddenly felt a desire to look at the sun. [I would hear] other educated persons admit having seen phenomena in the sun on that day and hour. I looked at the sun. Before that, nothing special could be seen. But now I looked at the sun without hurting my eyes, without any retina resisting. I became more intent. To my astonishment, the sight became even clearer. The sun turned on itself in a very small circle, and in the center it turned into a dark disk in rapid rotation. During some minutes, very impressive and overwhelming, I could clearly verify this strange process. Then, without revealing anything of what I observed, for fear of autosuggestion, I asked my companion to look at the sun and see whether it really appeared. And my companion was describing exactly the phenomenon, the same extraordinary phenomenon. The test was achieved. And I gained further assurance, when various other people later told me that they had seen what I saw clearly, at the same hour, as they kept looking at the sun, without the slightest sensation of pain. Amael’s report of a miracle in 1925 is the last recorded case I can find at Fatima. I don’t know if this was when the sun miracles stopped happening there, or when people stopped including them in the Critical Documents collection. In either case, there were plenty of other places willing to pick up the torch. 3.1: The Ghiaie Variations As far as I can tell, Fatima was only the second-largest crowd to have ever witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. The largest was a group of 200,000 - 300,000 people in Ghiaie, a tiny village near Bonate, Italy. On May 13th, 1944 - the same day of the year that the child-seers of Fatima saw their first apparition - a seven-year old girl went out to pick flowers and had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin promised to return to her for nine successive evenings; at some point (although I cannot follow this part of the story) she must also have promised to return four times the following week, as large crowds gathered in expectation. According to my source, on the ninth appearance: Many testimonies from the site of the apparition and from surrounding villages described an impressive solar phenomenon. The sun came out of the clouds, whirled dizzily on itself, and projected beams of yellow, green, red, blue, and violet light in all directions. The beams of light colored the clouds, fields, trees, and the stream of people. After a few minutes the sun stopped its whirling, and those phenomena began soon again. Many noticed that the disc had turned white like a Host. The clouds seemed to be lowering down on the people. Some noticed a Rosary in the sky. Others saw a majestic Our Lady with a trailing cloak. Some people, who were at greater distance, saw Our Lady's face looming in the sun. From nearby Bergamo many witnesses observed the sun become pale and radiate all of the rainbow's colors in all directions. They also noticed a large yellow light beam falling over Ghiaie, perpendicularly. The blog says there were similar solar phenomena during the tenth and twelfth appearances, as well as on the following June 13th and July 13th7. All of this is from a random Catholic blog; can we find clear testimonies? The miracle of Fatima was heavily promoted by Portuguese, Vatican, and American Catholics, leading to a large body of sources being available in English. The Ghiaie apparition has gotten less attention, and so I can find fewer testimonies, have had to clunkily machine translate some things, and had a harder time tracing the exact chain-of-transmission. Still, here’s what we’ve got, mostly from here: Don Giuseppe Piccardi: The people cried out to the miracle; I turned between the intrigued and the distrustful, and I saw the sun that-comes from the clouds - turned on itself and the speed of movement seemed to be skidding. At the same time I saw that he projected light beams, then, for me, almost constantly yellow gold. This color I contemplated it even when the sun was veiled with uncaught clouds. Slightly hard to figure out from the machine translation, but I think this is Bishop Adriano Bernareggi: At 6:00 PM I was at the Patronato for the feast of St. John Bosco. Just at that time I finished speaking in front of the church. Then I entered the church for the Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament. But most of the crowd remained outside because they said they had observed for about ten minutes the sun rotating on its axis, also suddenly changing color: yellow, red, blue. The sun could be observed without disturbance. The phenomenon was also observed in other places. I only noticed at the end of the service a yellow color in the houses, as when there is a partial eclipse of the sun at sunset. At 7:45 PM they said the phenomenon was repeated. I watched too. By staring into the dazzling sun, you could end up seeing the sun stand out clearly, giving the impression that it was rotating. Then everything took on a red color. But then it was clearly an optical phenomenon. Don Luigi Cortesi, a local seminary teacher who was a strong skeptic of the apparitions and even borderline-kidnapped the child-seer to convince her to recant: A shiver runs through me for a second. I react forcefully, forcing myself not to lose my mind, not to let myself be overwhelmed. I desperately squeeze my pupils and look at the sun: I see a large, clear spot without sharp edges, then, when my eye has adjusted, I see a disk of intense whiteness that seems liquid. Staring at the edges of the disk, I detect a dizzying rotation, like an electric circular motion, like a dizzying pinwheel, except that the direction of motion changes rapidly from left to right and then from right to left. I remember Fatima. Except this time, the sun revolves around a fixed axis, without moving in the sky. I return to the earth, to the crowd: I notice that the faces, the hands, the trees pierce through all the colors of the rainbow. It's natural, I think to myself: when the eye is offended by an intense light or an equivalent stimulus, it projects a stain on objects, which fades from red to violet and tints the objects it encounters with different colors; the stain disappears when the eye, rested, has returned to normal. In fact, a few minutes later, I no longer see those iridescent colors; every object has returned to its natural hue. The phenomenon of rotation leaves me dubious. A neighbor offers me his smoked glasses, and I look: the sun continues to rotate. He offers me a telescope, and I invert it, the screen, and look: the sun is still rotating. Then I can't take it anymore: even today, I'm not convinced that seeing a cosmic prodigy is worth losing my sight. Back then, I wasn't even convinced I was seeing a prodigy, since a plausible natural explanation for the phenomenon quickly emerged in my mind. However, urged by the neighbors to get excited, I remain silent. And I silence them by pinching and slapping the arms of those around me, which are stretched out towards the sky." From the parish bulletin of Tavernola, the exact author is slightly confusing but it was either written by or signed/confirmed by Piero Bonicelli, local provost: On the 28th in the evening of Pentecost, something happened that made a profound impression on everyone. At 6:00 PM sharp, a dimming of the sunlight was felt, accompanied by a sudden flash of lightning, first clearly observed by some bowling players. Looking at the sun, one saw first green, then bright red, then golden yellow, and then it spun around dizzily. At that spectacle, people poured into the streets... One can imagine their comments. The women recited the Holy Rosary, punctuated by the words: "Oh, how beautiful!" After ten minutes, the sun returned to normal. Comments? None. We await an explanation from the appropriate source. For now, we're content to hear the usual strong-minded people call us poor, deluded people, but don't you think this is a rather general illusion? In any case, for now, we're deluded: we'll see later. The parish priest of Tavernola, director of the bulletin, sending this issue requested by Father Piccardi, wrote on June 27, 1946: I must assure you that, as written, it is true, and I can also tell you that I was among those deluded that evening. To be prudent, I didn't go out into the street where people were shouting about a miracle, but from a slightly hidden window, I watched the sun change color and spin rapidly... illusion? Many of us here in Tavernola have been deluded. I can also tell you that I was pleased that such an illusion existed in Tavernola, since the people here have always had a great devotion to the Madonna. There may be more testimonies at this site, but they’re in very old scanned documents that it would be too time-consuming to stick into my machine translation pipeline. Another source says that “On February 24, 1994, [the TV show] ‘Detto tra noi' (Raidue), interviewed some witnesses, who confirmed the solar phenomena of May 21 1944 that were watched by many people“. I think a few hours extra work by an Italian speaker could produce at least five or ten extra Ghiaie testimonies, maybe many more. But as it is, we have enough to try something interesting: let’s recreate Dalleur’s analysis, but for Ghiaie. At 6 PM, the sun was shining from almost due west. For the sunlike light source producing the miracles to mimic the real sun, it would have also had to have been to the west of Ghiaie. If we assume it was the same distance as Dalleur’s Fatima light source, it would have been about 2-3 miles to the west of Ghiaie, which puts it above the village of Merate. We know from the last testimonial that the phenomenon was seen clearly in the village of Tavernola Bergamasca, which is about 22 miles from Ghiaie and 25 from Merate. An Italian source also reports sightings in Brescia and Piacenza, each about 35 miles from Ghiaie. So a Dalleur style analysis might conclude that this event also had a 25 - 35 mile visibility radius, similar to Fatima’s. …unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.
Inline links: really drinking the glass of milk, Halifax Slasher, here, my disappointment in the skeptical community, why it worries me, lets you say, Eucharistic Miracle of Lancio, Miracle of Pellicer’s Leg, trapped prior, of mind, 5, key insight, 6, my source, 7, here, this site, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kukw!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F192586f8-d450-4555-88ef-deb6bbe30416_842x613.png, Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account
…unfortunately a 25 mile circle centered on Merate includes the city of Milan, population 1.1 million, which produced no reports of unusual solar activity. And Milan had clear line-of-sight to Ghiaie and Merate, and so probably better viewing conditions than Tavernola, which (you can see from the map above) has some intervening hills. Might the miraculous light source have been like a spotlight, aimed in only one direction - that is, east to Ghiaie and Tavernola, but not southwest to Milan? This would contradict Dalleur’s Fatima analysis, since one of the most dramatic testimonies comes from the city of Minde, which is on the opposite side of the presumed light source from Fatima. I don’t really think it’s possible to maintain a theory where this phenomenon gets transmitted through normal geography. 3.2: Mary Such Cases At this point, the reader will get the general idea, and we can start moving faster, as there is a large amount of ground to cover. Heroldsbach, Germany, 1949: The Virgin appeared to four young girls. Rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on December 8th, 10,000 people saw another sun miracle. Here are about a hundred testimonies, gathered with typical German thoroughness. An expert meteorologist brought in to investigate summarized them as follows: If one now considers the testimony in detail, one encounters a surprisingly small agreement of the observations made. One witness has seen a red sun, the other a yellow, an orange or pink with blue and green, or a whitish sun. A silver one was also observed or all the colors mentioned in colorful change. One wants to have observed an oversized, the other a first small or normal, but then rapidly enlarging and rushing towards the viewer in a frightening way. Most of the witnesses noticed that the solar disk rotated very quickly in two or three phases of rotation for about a quarter of an hour. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition and miracle as fake, even going so far as to excommunicate the child-seers. Later they relented slightly and un-excommunicated them, but their official position is still that nothing supernatural happened - this sun miracle was merely an overly enthusiastic hallucination! Necedah, Wisconsin, USA, 1949: A housewife named Mary Ann Van Hoof claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. This is among the less plausible visitations: Van Hoof, who was raised Spiritualist, also claimed to have seen Joan of Arc, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. The messages she channeled seemed less like tidings of peace and love than like a particularly unhinged Truth Social post, and included warnings about the Rothschilds. Still, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15 1950, 50,000 - 100,000 people showed up hoping for a miracle. As for what happened next, Wikipedia says that “witness accounts vary significantly”. WaPo says that “observers saw nothing unusual” and LIFE mentions nothing out of the ordinary. But other sources report sun miracles, and I was eventually able to track down three testimonials in a summary of articles from a local newspaper, which states that “after a rainy morning…”: It was about noon when Van Hoof came out of the house and a woman screamed, “By God, it’s really true,” and fell to her knees. Then it happened that the Rapids woman and so many in the crowd saw the sun, covered with a dark, greenish gray disk, spinning down toward the earth. And she testified, “I thought the end of the earth was coming and fell to my knees.” A Pittsville woman also described the sun spinning closer to the earth. “I and many other people, fell to our knees in awe.” The Daily Tribune visited the Oct. 7, 1950, event — a 25-minute “last” message from the Mediatrix to the “throng” of 50,000. Responding to this seventh vision, gasps were heard from women who again saw the sun behaving oddly. A Catholic priest told reporters he saw the sun whirl clockwise and jump. The Catholic Church condemned the apparition as fake, and declared van Hoof’s followers “a cult”. Lubbock, Texas, USA, 1988. Really? Really? Nothing could be more natural than for the Queen of Heaven to appear to kind-hearted shepherd children in Portugal. Even an appearance in war-torn West Germany makes a certain amount of sense. But Lubbock, Texas? I suppose this must have been how the cool Sanhedrin members felt when they learned the Christ hailed from Nazareth. But that doesn’t make it any better. Anyway, rumors spread, crowds gathered, and on August 15, 1988, about 10,000 people witnessed the Miracle of the Sun. Here is an indirect testimonial, a man describing his wife’s experience: A large crowd had gathered outside Saint John Neumann Church on that very hot August afternoon on the Feast of the Assumption. Mass was being said in the afternoon, and around the time of the Consecration, suddenly her cousin’s wife (a convert, if you remember) said “look at the sun”. When she did, the sun was pulsating, it would look like it was coming down to earth and then go back again, it spun around in circles, much the same as what took place in Fatima in 1917...and changed colors. She looked at it directly for 15 minutes or so without any damage to her eyes. As my wife looked around, the people in the crowd seemed to be bathed in various colors. During all this my wife even saw The Blessed Mother. The Blessed Mother was extending her arms in what appeared to be a welcoming gesture. But not everyone had the same experience that day: her cousin’s wife and our son saw and believed instantly, but her cousin and brother saw nothing at all. Why did some see these events and others did not? We don’t know...not enough faith? Or perhaps they had enough faith, and they didn’t need a sign! Here we have something special: according to the Los Angeles Times, one pilgrim took a poll about who saw what: A push was on to assemble evidence for the commission in a lawyerly way. Testimonies from 247 people present at the feast had been recorded. The statements were transcribed by volunteers and stored in a computer. Joe James himself indexed the information: 186 had witnessed the spinning of the sun; 75 had seen the Virgin; 64 Jesus; 18 an angel. How could anyone ignore the bulk of such documentation? We don’t know how the 247 people were selected, but very naively it seems like 2/3 of those present saw the sun spinning. This also matches the first person listing 2/4 family members. (the Catholic Church withheld judgment, refusing to either endorse or condemn the visions) Benin City, Nigeria, 2017. On October 13 2017, crowds gathered around the world to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Fatima miracle. One such commemoration happened in Benin City, Nigeria, where 30,000 people attended the National Marian Congress and witnessed the re-dedication of Nigeria to Mary’s Sacred Heart. As the speakers commemorated the Fatima event . . . . . . someone pointed to the sky and shouted “It’s happening again!”. It was, indeed, happening again. You can read about ten testimonies here. I’ll quote just one, from Brother Joseph Obiemeka Azih: Immediately after the 3:00 p.m. Divine Mercy prayers, there were brief showers of rain. Then came sudden brightness of the sun, which was hitherto hidden behind layers of dark cloud. We also observed rather surprisingly the mysterious shooting of the sun forward and backward. Intermittently emitting of powerful bluish and golden colors of light from “Our Lady clothed with the Sun.” The sight was indescribably beautiful. We were busy staring at the bright sun steadily for more than twenty minutes without blinking an eye even for a second! People around us were dazzling and reflecting these bluish and golden colors on their dresses and faces. What a mystery! More than 30,000 people inside the arena were seen peering at “the dancing of the sun” bewildered. The miracle lasted for more than 45 minutes after which there was [a] heavy downpour which the Bishops present said [were] “showers of blessing.” I was able to confirm that some of the people whose testimonies were listed on the site are real Nigerian Catholics whose existence is attested in other sources. Two weeks later, there was another Nigerian commemoration of the Fatima anniversary, in Lagos, and a sun miracle happened at that one too. 3.3: Made You Gaze At Medjugorje Medjugorje (Bosnia, 1981) is in many ways a typical Marian apparition site, much like the ones on the list above. Child-seers, warnings to repent, sun miracles, you know the story by now. But in Medjugorje, the miracles keep happening. Pilgrims - or, more cynically, tourists - go there just to see the sun miracles, and many come back satisfied. You can find blogs by people who went to Medjugorje hoping to see a sun miracle, and on their first or fifth or eighth or whatever day, there’s a crowd of people, yelling and pointing at the sun, and they look up and see it too. Here’s an account from Catholic blogger Father Dwight Longernecker: I was an Anglican priest living in England, in 1985 when I was invited by a group of Anglicans and Catholics to visit Medjugorje. I didn’t want to go. Being a former Evangelical-fundamentalist I wasn’t too keen on apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. I opted out. They insisted. I dug in my heels. They said someone else would pay for it. I didn’t want to go. They cajoled and twisted my arm until I said ‘yes’ [...] On our second day there I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse with a large woman named Eleanor. As we began the rosary I looked up and the sun was a blaze of light in the sky. I looked down to the car parked below and the sun was reflected in the hood of the car as a blaze of light. Eleanor and I prayed the rosary together. I had my eyes closed. At 6:20 Eleanor gave me an elbow in the ribs and pointed. The sun was now a disc of white light in the sky like a Eucharistic host. Then as I watched it began to spin, first clockwise then anti clockwise. Sparks spit out from the rim of the sun like a firework. I looked down and the sun was a white spinning disc on the hood of the car. I don’t think this would have happened if it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. Plus, Eleanor saw it too. That’s why she gave me an elbow in the ribs. I am not sure how long this lasted, but when we spoke about it to our fellow pilgrims they said many people in the town square had reported the same phenomenon. Some of these tourists capture the phenomenon on video. Unfortunately, the videos are of three types: Videos of a bunch of people pointing at the sun, and shouting the word “Miracle!” in various languages, and obviously looking extremely excited, but the sun itself looks totally normal, and the person taking the video apologizes and says that their camera isn’t good enough to capture it.
Inline links: Here, Wikipedia says, WaPo, LIFE, a summary of articles from a local newspaper, is an indirect testimonial, Los Angeles Times, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7J80!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F643b310a-4f76-4de9-8434-c8449f29f686_581x226.png, here, a sun miracle happened at that one too, an account
Georgia Ray of Eukaryote Writes also brings up the beam lines (is this nominative determinism?) and points out that there are so many steps involving estimation, with such wide confidence intervals, that it’s unclear whether the normal sun position is within the calculation’s margin of error (maybe someone should try Guesstimate?) Seventh, although Dalleur’s theory somewhat makes sense for Fatima, it stumbles for Ghiaie and becomes completely incoherent for Benin City. At Ghiaie, the miracle was seen 15-25 miles away to the east (in Tavernola), but not 15-25 miles away to the southwest (in Milan), even though the line-of-sight from Milan was clearer. In Benin City, the miracle was localized entirely to one large field, while the rest of the city (population 1.5 million) saw nothing. For all of these reasons, I don’t think we can conceptualize the Fatima miracle as occurring in a geographically sensible way. It was either localized entirely to the crowd at Fatima, or seen by a tiny number of subsidiary groups (like the group of schoolboys at Alburitel) rather than the large region within viewing distance of the supposed event. This removes one of the major barriers to illusion/hallucination-based explanations. 5: I Feel The Eyes Are Slowly Melting We previously resolved to address three other barriers to explanations based on optical phenomena: the lack of retinal burns/blindness, the lack of similar phenomena observed outside Fatima, and the inability to explain complex visions like the Cross or the Virgin’s face. As we assess the situation with retinal burns, it may be helpful to start with the opthalmalogical journals, which recognize a condition called Medjugorje maculopathy. Some of the pilgrims who look for sun miracles at Medjugorje do get retinal burns (or other forms of eye injury) from staring at the sun too long. I can’t access all the papers, but this one discusses four cases: A 58 year old man visiting a Marian site in Ireland stared at the sun for six minutes. No miracles were witnessed. He had minor eye damage which remained after sixteen months.
Inline links: Georgia Ray of Eukaryote Writes, Guesstimate, Medjugorje maculopathy, this one
Tegucigalpa1 mentions across 1 issues

Tegucigalpa is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 06, 2021 and December 06, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Tegucigalpa, Honduras". It most often appears alongside ACX Grants, Akon, Akon City.

Reference entry
Tegucigalpa
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
December 06, 2021
Last seen
December 06, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
  • 21 December 06, 2021
Related pages
Source context
21
December 06, 2021 · Original source
Tegucigalpa, Honduras The socialist opposition has won Honduras’ election and pledges to fight against charter cities there. "Immediately upon assuming the presidency, we are going...
Tegucigalpa, Honduras The socialist opposition has won Honduras’ election and pledges to fight against charter cities there. "Immediately upon assuming the presidency, we are going to send th...
Television Tower1 mentions across 1 issues

Television Tower is a recurring place 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 ""roughly between the Television Tower and Levski Stadium"". It most often appears alongside 10 E Main Street, Fairborn 45324, 11841 Wagner Street, Culver City, 13 Mile road.

Reference entry
Television Tower
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 25, 2025
Last seen
March 25, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Daniel Contact Info: bensen[period]daniel[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, April 27th, 4:00 PM Location: We'll be in the gazebo in "Слънчевата градинка" (picture here https://maps.app.goo.gl/7uBsEdBKGrN2i8F6A). This little garden is part of Borisova Gradina near the tennis courts, roughly between the Television Tower and Levski Stadium. If you think you'll have trouble finding it, email me and I'll arrange for someone to meet you. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GJ5M8HW+7G Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/HGaSdqwqG4SogWfTi
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GJ5M8HW+7G, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/HGaSdqwqG4SogWfTi
Temple of Artemis1 mentions across 1 issues

Temple of Artemis is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 04, 2022 and May 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "have you heard of the Temple of Artemis? One of the Seven Wonders of the World"; "The Temple of Artemis burner was just the beginning". It most often appears alongside 1000, 1200, 1400.

Reference entry
Temple of Artemis
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 04, 2022
Last seen
May 04, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Every Bay Area House Party
May 04, 2022 · Original source
“Like - have you heard of the Temple of Artemis? One of the Seven Wonders of the World. Burned down not by a Christian or a Muslim, but by a random Greek guy who wanted his name to be remembered by history, and figured that burning the most beautiful building in the world would ensure it. The Greeks responded by banning anyone from mentioning or recording his name, but the historian Theopompus wrote it down anyway, and it’s survived to the current day. No, I won’t tell it to you. Anyway, I was going to lead a consortium with the censors at Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, all the big name sites. We were finally going to complete the ancient Greeks’ work. We were going to memory-hole this guy’s name from the Internet. Even the people at Amazon were going to be on board - they would stop selling editions of the Theopompus book that gives his name. And then, finally, the burning of the Artemision would be properly avenged. We were this close! And then some dumb billionaire waltzes in and says ‘muh free speech’ and ruins everything!”
“The Temple of Artemis burner was just the beginning. The ancients used damnatio memoriae as a frequent punishment. How frequent? We don’t know! There’s no way of knowing! We only know when someone like Theopompus defects from the plan. How many ancient Hitlers and Stalins might there have been, now totally forgotten? And how many others were dissuaded from murder or other abominable acts because of the fear of erasure? And now that tool is lost to us forever. I hope you enjoy the world that you and your freeze peach buddies have created.” He storms off in a huff.
Tennessee Valley1 mentions across 1 issues

Tennessee Valley is a recurring place 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 "modernize the poverty-stricken Tennessee Valley". It most often appears alongside 1965, 1968 Summer Olympics, 2000 election.

Reference entry
Tennessee Valley
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 23, 2023
Last seen
June 23, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
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
Tenochtitlan1 mentions across 1 issues

Tenochtitlan is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 05, 2024 and November 05, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "the bloody knives of Tenochtitlan"; "the games of the Colosseum and sacrifices of Tenochtitlan". It most often appears alongside Aaron Peskin, Berkeley, Betfair.

Reference entry
Tenochtitlan
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
November 05, 2024
Last seen
November 05, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Mantic Monday: Judgment Day
November 05, 2024 · Original source
Future generations will number American elections among history's greatest and most terrible spectacles. As we remember the Games in the Colosseum, or the bloody knives of Tenochtitlan, so they will remember us. That which other ages would relegate to a tasteful coronation or mercifully quick coup, we extend into an eighteen-month festival of madness.
Yet in the end, everything is so perfectly balanced that the sum total of these luminaries refuse to say which side of even we’re on. The nation balances on a knife’s edge. Eli Lilly stock moons. A red sun hangs over Philadelphia, where American democracy began and may yet end. A man walks into a diner just before closing time. He looks like a good tipper. The waitress was hoping to leave early and go vote. She decides against. Seven trumpets sound; seven seals are opened; there is silence in Heaven for the space of about half an hour. As George RR Martin put it, “God flips a coin and the world holds its breath.” Tomorrow - if we are so lucky - there will be a result. The great function that has consumed us for so long will return 0 or 1. The pundits who guessed 51-49 will be hailed as prophets; the pundits who guessed 49-51 will get bullied out of public life. The winner’s campaign operatives will be praised as world-historic geniuses, the loser’s mocked forever as utter nincompoops. Thousands of lifelong public servants who backed Mr. 49% will be tossed from DC like used toilet paper and replaced with thousands of hacks who backed Mr. 51%. Funding streams will go dry. Whole lands will turn to economic deserts. Fortunes will be destroyed. A few people will make good on their exile and suicide threats. Most won’t. The Union will either survive or not. If it survives, we’ll do it all over again four years later. A red sun sets over DC. The marble monuments are stained crimson; the statues of Lincoln and Jefferson and the rest look like they writhe in hellfire. The people seclude themselves in their houses. A city where even the Christians are atheist kneels in prayer. On some level, they know - we know - it was never just about choosing a leader. It was all for this - the same urge that drove the games of the Colosseum and sacrifices of Tenochtitlan. The need for a single moment of unconditioned reality. For one evening, the people of the richest and most secure nation in history, fat off the spoils of six continents, will know the same fear as the starving Catalhuyuk farmer, staring at the sky, wondering if the rains will come. For one evening, everyone - rich or poor, religious or secular, Democrat or Republican - will join in the prayer of the poet: “Judge of the Nations, spare us yet Lest we forget - lest we forget!” Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For Kodos Metaculus uses experimental “conditional forecasts” to determine the consequences of a Trump/Harris victory. How it works (example): you set up two forecasts: If Trump wins, will China invade Taiwan?
Inline links: the prayer of the poet, experimental “conditional forecasts”, example
Ternopol1 mentions across 1 issues

Ternopol is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 27, 2022 and March 27, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Paramedic in Ternopol, Ukraine". It most often appears alongside ACX Book Review Contest, ACX/LW meetups, Andrew SB.

Reference entry
Ternopol
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 27, 2022
Last seen
March 27, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Open Thread 217
March 27, 2022 · Original source
Paramedic in Ternopol, Ukraine, collecting money for medical supplies
Inline links: Paramedic in Ternopol, Ukraine, collecting money for medical supplies
Texas A&M campus1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas A&M campus is a recurring place 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 "east side of Texas A&M campus". It most often appears alongside 1022 High St. Blue House w/red porches, 11:11 Cafe, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Texas A&M campus
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 10, 2022
Last seen
April 10, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
...Kenny Easwaran (easwaran@gmail.com) Date: April 29 Time: 5:30 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J Location: Back patio of Torchy's Tacos, on the east side of Texas A&M campus, at Texas Ave and Walton Dr. I'll have brightly colored hair and perhaps a yellow umbrella. CALGARY, AB Contact: David Piepgrass (qwertie256@gmail.com) Date: April 16 Ti...
..., TX Contact: Kenny Easwaran (easwaran@gmail.com) Date: April 29 Time: 5:30 PM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J Location: Back patio of Torchy's Tacos, on the east side of Texas A&M campus, at Texas Ave and Walton Dr. I'll have brightly colored hair and perhaps a yellow umbrella. CALGARY, AB Contact: David Piepgrass (qwertie256@gmail.com) Date: April 16 Ti...
Texas Ave1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas Ave is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 29, 2024 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "On the porch of Torchies on Texas Ave". It most often appears alongside 10 N Park Pl, 12th Ave South, 1525 Bank St.

Reference entry
Texas Ave
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 29, 2024
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Michael Frost Contact Info: mikefrosttx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 07:00 PM Location: On the porch of Torchies on Texas Ave. I’ll have a small sign that says “ACX” Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J4 Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong if you are coming, even if it’s last minute
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J4
Texas Ave South1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas Ave South is a recurring place 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 "Torchy’s at 1037 Texas Ave South". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Texas Ave South
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS, USA Contact: Michael Frost Contact Info: mikefrosttx[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 21st, 7:00 PM Location: On the outside porch at Torchy’s at 1037 Texas Ave South. I will have a sign that says ACX meetup. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J9 Notes: Please RSVP on LessWrong so that I know how many people are coming or shoot me an email! Students and adults welcome.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8625JMFC+5J9
Texas Hill Country1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas Hill Country is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 07, 2021 and May 07, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "they're the kind of researchers who move to the Texas Hill Country"; ""researchers who move to the Texas Hill Country just to learn"". It most often appears alongside 22nd Amendment, Abe Fortas, Alvin Wirtz.

Reference entry
Texas Hill Country
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 07, 2021
Last seen
May 07, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson
May 07, 2021 · Original source
Together, they're the kind of researchers who move to the Texas Hill Country just to learn how tough LBJ's childhood was. How tough?
Texas-New Mexico border1 mentions across 1 issues

Texas-New Mexico border is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 02, 2025 and May 02, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "A Flat, Featureless Plain ... west of Amistad, on the Texas-New Mexico border". It most often appears alongside AI Futures Project blog, Amistad, BIENVENIDOS A PUERTO PARRA.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 02, 2025
Last seen
May 02, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius
May 02, 2025 · Original source
I got this one from Google Street View. It took work to find a flat plain this featureless. I finally succeeded a few miles west of Amistad, on the Texas-New Mexico border. o3 guessed: “Llano Estacado, Texas / New Mexico, USA”. Llano Estacado, Spanish for “Staked Plains”, is the name of a ~300 x 100 mile region including the correct spot. When asked to be specific, it guessed a point west of Muleshoe, Texas - about 110 miles from the true location. Here’s o3’s thought process - I won’t post the whole thing every time, but I think one sample will be useful: This doesn’t satisfy me; it seems to jump to the Llano Estacado too quickly, with insufficient evidence. Is the Texas-NM border really the only featureless plain that doesn’t have red soil or black soil or some other distinctive characteristic? I asked how it knew the elevation was between 1000 - 1300 m. It said: So, something about the exact type of grass and the color of the sky, plus there really aren’t that many truly flat featureless plains. Picture #2: Random Rocks And The Flag Of An Imaginary Country I was so creeped out by the Llano Estacado guess that I decided to abandon Google Street View and move on to personal photos not available on the Internet. When I was younger, I liked to hike mountains. The highest I ever got was 18,000 feet, on Kala Pattar, a few miles north of Gorak Shep in Nepal. To commemorate the occasion, I planted the flag of the imaginary country simulation that I participated in at the time (just long enough to take this picture - then I unplanted it). I chose this picture because it denies o3 the two things that worked for it before - vegetation and sky - in favor of random rocks. And because I thought the flag of a nonexistent country would at least give it pause. o3 guessed: “Nepal, just north-east of Gorak Shep, ±8 km” This is exactly right. I swear I screenshot-copy-pasted this so there’s no way it can be in the metadata, and I’ve never given o3 any reason to think I’ve been to Nepal. Here’s its explanation: At least it didn’t recognize the flag of my dozen-person mid-2000s imaginary country sim. Picture #3: My Friend’s Girlfriend’s College Dorm Room There’s no way it can recognize an indoor scene, right? That would make no sense. Still, at this point we have to check. This particular dorm room is in Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, north-central California. o3’s guess: “A dorm room on a large public university campus in the United States—say, Morrill Tower, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (chosen as a prototypical example rather than a precise claim), […] c. 2000–2007” Okay, so it can’t figure out the exact location of indoor scenes. That’s a small mercy. I took this picture around 2005. How did o3 know it was between 2000 and 2007? It gave two pieces of evidence: “Laptop & clutter point to ~2000-2007 era American campus life”.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9ziU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F91de3c53-0288-4a89-b27c-f3da62c442ed_799x543.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P33L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F694d3ede-7381-4f4b-8237-edeaf40572e0_817x699.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dBt_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F878e53ea-fab0-433b-845a-ad6df53c5a4f_790x594.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!67fP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbea82f54-1b86-4110-a7a5-0a406616c868_912x443.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fPQp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6624b97-faa9-4fc8-8c53-8a3702fca9c2_787x513.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!k8i2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F017414d8-ae10-4afa-997a-acd34f589504_1196x555.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1wGA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbe243a70-7abf-418f-a848-07dfb97c6cfe_808x601.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OrZV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc56683c7-52ef-4311-b2cc-d20b6b7b28e5_966x458.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Rd2m!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F60f5ff61-a374-439d-96d1-2e3597e8e6c0_627x467.png
Thaba-Tse1 mentions across 1 issues

Thaba-Tse is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 27, 2022 and May 27, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "While Ferguson focuses on Thaba-Tse". It most often appears alongside An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins, anti-politics machine, Basotho Congress Party.

Reference entry
Thaba-Tse
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 27, 2022
Last seen
May 27, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine
May 27, 2022 · Original source
Many families had large flocks of underfed cattle. Even when money was tight, the team rarely observed cattle sales. Each of these is true, but they need to be set within a larger narrative to inform the work of “development.” Instead of doing the ethnographical and historical work it would take to understand Lesotho’s particular history, political system, and culture, the World Bank’s team of experts substituted their notions of what “less-developed countries” are like, shaped just as much by countries very different from Lesotho and the array of “solutions” the team had to offer as they were by anything to do with the context they’d set out to study. To the economists writing the report, the fact that cattle were not being sold was a clear sign of a market failure -- surely this meant that either the cattle were too low quality to sell, or the population did not have access to markets. Since this story (1) made sense of a data point that was otherwise confusing, (2) fit with economists’ intuitions for why a person might not sell their “product”, and (3) lent itself to being solved with standard tools (programs to improve cattle quality! programs to connect people with markets!), it seemed like a natural and parsimonious explanation of the facts. So natural and parsimonious, in fact, that the authors don’t seem to have thought to check whether it was actually true. The same sort of jumps happened in interpreting the other two facts. The authors assumed that, as a “less-developed country”, Lesotho’s rural economy was driven by agriculture. The fact that income from crops was low was therefore a sign that the population were primarily “subsistence” farmers who could be “developed” with access to better agricultural tools. As further evidence for this theory, the failure of agriculture was a perfect explanation for why young men had recently (it was assumed) been forced to travel across the border for work. While Ferguson focuses on Thaba-Tseka, I think the “development discourse” lens he describes is easiest to understand by imagining how it might function in a very different context. If the same World Bank economists were to study an American suburb, they might learn that: Most households grow fruits or vegetables in their yards, but make little profit by selling them.
People pour money into valuable assets they call “Roth IRAs”, but do not seem to sell them even when they could use the cash. Should the World Bank conclude that suburban America is populated by subsistence farmers whose inability to grow good crops has forced them into long commutes? Are 401(k)s merely a “product” that young Americans hold onto because they’re too hard to sell? Through careful ethnographic work (using the research method of actually talking to people) Ferguson discovers that, while the three facts we noted were true, the report’s interpretation of them was rooted entirely in fantasy. Much like our hypothesized suburbanites, the people of Lesotho’s Thaba-Tseka region grew food, but they did not consider farming their main priority or source of income. Indeed, even in the best of years a typical household would grow less than half of the food they consumed, with most money coming from remittances sent back from the mines, or from services (or beer) sold to those with mining income. The practice of mining in South Africa, far from being a recent response to deteriorating agriculture, had been a central part of the Lesothan economy for more than a century. Villagers’ economic complaints rarely referenced agriculture (since they were not farmers), but rather focused on labor practices and immigration laws they felt allowed the mining companies to exploit their work and keep them in poverty. Similarly, the decision not to sell cattle was part of a complex traditional arrangement Ferguson labels “the bovine mystique”, in which cattle functioned both as a means of paying bridewealth and a way of saving for retirement when one was finally too old or injured to work in the mines. The system itself was relatively controversial among the villagers, but it’s difficult to imagine access to markets was a primary concern when Ferguson’s interviewees knew 1) where the market was, 2) how to get there, and 3) what the going price of cattle was on a near-daily basis. What I find so striking about the World Bank report (and Ferguson’s devastating deconstruction of it) is not that it’s a bad piece of development writing, but that even fifty years later it’s still a thoroughly unremarkable one. Economic development papers and talks tend to have a fairly fixed structure: A quick introduction to “the setting”
A story that plausibly explains these numbers (either a potential mechanism for an effect, or an explanation of why the effect turned out to be null) If these stories are challenged, it is not because there is no actual evidence for them, but because an economist in the audience has thought of their own preferred theory. If the speaker can find some data point that contradicts the questioner’s idea, this is thought to “confirm” the original story. Since audience members (who often have little specific knowledge of the region) are unlikely to ask questions like “what if this village just has an incredibly complicated set of social conventions around cattle that prevents their sale even without market barriers in place?” or “do the region’s economic challenges have more to do with this very specific regulation in South African immigration law?”, plausible-sounding stories that explain one or two numerical data points tend to gain traction in the literature whether or not they have anything to do with reality. Mark McGovern famously noted this trend in a review of two of Paul Collier’s books, writing: “Much of the intellectual heavy lifting in these books is in fact done at the level of implication or commonsense guessing. And the common sense is surely not that of the inhabitants of the countries being dissected, but that of the highly educated elite located primarily in Western Europe and North America. In those passages where Collier does lay out the thinking behind his explanations, they are always coherent and plausible, but the chain of causal relations makes it evident how fragile these models typically are.” The World Bank report’s fundamental misdiagnosis of the challenges Lesotho faced formed the basis for a series of failed “development initiatives”, most notably the Thaba-Tseka Development Project, a joint venture funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, the World Bank, the Government of Lesotho, and the UK Overseas Development Ministry. The project focused on providing technical solutions to the “problems” the World Bank report had identified: better agricultural techniques, easier access to markets, and increased government capacity to provide public goods. Each piece faced serious problems in execution, largely because interventions shown to have the sorts of “positive effects” randomized experiments might demonstrate elsewhere in Africa were not necessarily well suited to Lesotho’s unforgiving, mountainous terrain. But even more seriously, the project was so enveloped in “development discourse” that nobody thought to question whether they were working on problems their “recipients” cared about, or merely the ones the “tools of development” were capable of solving. As Ferguson writes, “The promise that crop farming could be revolutionized through the application of a well-known package of technical inputs was so firmly written into the project’s design that it was difficult for those on the scene to challenge it, or even to confront it.” Perhaps the only thing that has changed since Ferguson wrote is that we have tools to better identify these failures: the development literature continues to be littered with failed trials and interventions based on unchecked assumptions. One of the most famous is the British Department for International Development’s 90 million pound Tuungane project, whose Congolese incarnation sought to rebuild village governing institutions that the country’s civil war had destroyed. One of the most convincing explanations of its failure is that it may not have been necessary to begin with: the implementers do not seem to have checked whether the institutions had actually been weakened by violence, and baseline reports indicated that residents were relatively satisfied with village governance before the project even started! More research is needed to clarify the situation -- research which might have been useful to carry out before spending a £90 million on a “fix”. Part of this, perhaps, comes from the usual overconfidence that other social scientists like to accuse economists of. But there are much bigger systemic problems at play. Development work tends to run on short timelines: grad students and postdocs need to publish quickly for their careers to advance, NGO funding runs on 5-ish year cycles, and charities (particularly in “high-risk” areas) face extremely high employee turnover rates. This simultaneously limits the accumulation of institutional knowledge, while incentivizing practitioners away from the time-intensive process of understanding a particular context in favor of “getting results quick.” Similarly, the recent introduction of experimental evidence to the development field is a wondrous thing, but the revolution has to continue: randomized experiments can tell us about the effect an intervention had somewhere, but even the best methods of applying this kind of evidence to a specific context remain somewhat arbitrary and subjective. As EA begins to fund more complex (but potentially more effective) interventions, a key step will be to get a more systematic handle on how to gather evidence about specific places-- countries, states, even villages -- and how to match the tools we have to people who might benefit from them. II. The Trouble with Technocrats “But even if the project was in some sense a ‘failure’ as an agricultural development project, it is indisputable that many of its ‘side effects’ had a powerful and far-reaching impact on the Thaba-Tseka region. [...] Indeed, it may be that in a place like Mashai, the most visible of all the project’s effects was the indirect one of increased Government military presence in the region” As the program continued to unfold, the development officials became more and more disillusioned -- not with their own choices, but with the people of Thaba-Tseka, who they perceived as petty, apathetic, and outright self-destructive. A project meant to provide firewood failed because locals kept breaking into the woodlots and uprooting the saplings. An experiment in pony-breeding fell apart when “unknown parties” drove the entire herd of ponies off of cliffs to their deaths. Why, Ferguson’s official contacts bemoaned, weren’t the people of Thaba-Tseka committed to their own “development”? Who could possibly be opposed to trees and horses? Perhaps, the practitioners theorized, the people of Thaba-Tseka were just lazy. Perhaps they “didn’t want to be better.” Perhaps they weren’t in their right mind or had made a mistake. Perhaps poverty makes a person do strange things. Or, as Ferguson points out, perhaps their anger had something to do with the fact that the best plots of land in the village had been forcibly confiscated to make room for wood and pony lots, without any sort of compensation. The central government was all too happy to help find land for the projects, which they took from political enemies and put in the control of party elites, especially when it could use a legitimate anti-poverty program as cover. In Ferguson’s words, the development project was functioning as an “anti-politics machine” the government could use to pretend political power moves were just “objective” solutions to technical problems. A local student’s term paper captured the general discontent: “In spite of the superb aim of helping the people to become self-reliant, the first thing the project did was to take their very good arable land. When the people protested about their fields being taken, the project promised them employment. [...] It employed them for two months, found them unfit for the work, and dismissed them. Without their fields and without employment they may turn up to be very self-reliant. It is rather hard to know.” Two things stand out to me from this story. First, the “development discourse” lens served to focus the practitioners’ attention on a handful of technical variables (quantity of wood, quality of pony), and kept them from thinking about any repercussions they hadn’t thought to measure. This is a serious problem, because “negative effects on things that aren’t your primary outcome” are pretty common in the development literature. High-paying medical NGOs can pull talent away from government jobs. Foreign aid can worsen ongoing conflicts. Unconditional cash transfers can hurt neighbors who didn’t receive the cash. And the literature we have is implicitly conditioned on “only examining the variables academics have thought to look at” -- surely our tools have rendered other effects completely invisible! Second, the project organizers somewhat naively ignored the political goals of the government they’d partnered with, and therefore the extent to which these goals were shaping the project. Lesotho’s recent political history had been tumultuous. The Basotho Nationalist Party (BNP), having gained power upon independence in 1965, refused to give up power after losing the 1970 elections to the Basotho Congress Party (BCP). Blaming the election results on “communists”, BNP Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan declared a state of emergency and began a campaign of terror, raiding the homes of opposition figures and funding paramilitary groups to intimidate, arrest, and potentially kill anyone who spoke up against BNP rule. This had significant effects in Thaba-Tseka, where “villages [...] were sharply divided over politics, but it was not a thing which was discussed openly” due to a fully justified fear of violence. The BNP, correctly sensing the presence of a substantial underground opposition, placed “development committees” in each village, which served primarily as local wings of the national party. These committees spied on potential supporters of the now-outlawed BCP and had deep connections to paramilitary “police” units. When the Thaba-Tseka Development Project started, its international backers partnered directly with the BNP leadership, reasoning that sustainable development and public goods provision could only happen through a government whose role they primarily viewed as bureaucratic. As a result, nearly every decision had to make its way through the village development committees, who used the project to pursue their own goals: jobs and project funds found their way primarily to BNP supporters, while the “necessary costs of development” always seemed to be paid by opposition figures. The funding coalition ended up paying for a number of projects that reinforced BNP power, from establishing a new “district capital” (which conveniently also served as a military base) to constructing new and better roads linking Thaba-Tseka to the district and national capitals (primarily helping the central government tax and police an opposition stronghold). Anything that could be remotely linked to “economic development” became part of the project as funders and practitioners failed to ask whether government power might have alternate, more concerning effects. As we saw earlier, the population being “served” saw this much more clearly than the “servants”, and started to rebel against a project whose “help” seemed to be aimed more at consolidating BNP control than meeting their own needs. When they ultimately resorted to killing ponies and uprooting trees, project officials infatuated with “development” were left with “no idea why people would do such a thing,” completely oblivious to the real and lasting harm their “purely technical decisions” had inflicted. Have any EA projects had this sort of unexpected political side effect? I think it’s genuinely hard to tell without further research, but the possibility is frightening. (There’s been a little bit of research on the quantitative side --Recent research has found, for instance, that GiveDirectly’s 2014 unconditional cash transfer trial increased community participation but did not change voting patterns, so at least in 2014 the Kenyan government wasn’t using the program to stay in power. Was this the right question to test? I am not sure, especially without a more qualitative survey to see if there are other avenues we should be worried about.) III. Takeaways for Effective Altruism So what do we do as effective altruists (hereafter “EAs”)? I see three key takeaways. The first is a clear need for more qualitative research. GiveWell makes some qualitative judgments about charities, but Ferguson’s work illustrates the need for qualitative evaluation of the interventions themselves to see if the underlying studies have captured all of the “right” variables. Randomized experiments are really good at testing hypotheses, but by their very nature they can’t tell you about variables you didn’t decide ahead of time to measure. Are there significant side effects (positive or negative) we’ve missed from massive malaria net distributions? I don’t know, but if so they are not likely to be discovered by a bunch of Americans and Europeans sitting in a room and trying to guess the best things to measure. Rather, they’re probably already known (or suspected) by the people experiencing them, and a first step to finding out is going and asking them. (A second step is finding the right people to ask them -- real expertise in qualitative research is a rare and valuable skill.) Of course, qualitative research is messy and sometimes the people you interview are wrong or have other agendas. So once we have an “on-the-ground” hypothesis or concern, there will often be good reason to use a randomized trial or quasi-experimental method to test it or try to understand how much of a concern it might be! This sort of interdisciplinary approach is starting to gain traction in academia, but it has yet to be seriously applied in the EA sphere. There’s another angle to this: Ferguson’s most incisive insights arise not from studying the people being “served”, but by studying the development practitioners themselves. Other social scientists have continued this trend, from McGovern’s An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins and Robinson’s How Different Social Scientists Think to Marchais, Bazuzi, and Lameke’s The Data is Gold, and We Are The Gold-Diggers and Omar Bah’s webcomic Mzungus in Development and Governments. Each new paper illuminates the research process in new ways, and provides tools both to do better research and to identify potential weaknesses in the pre-existing literature. I think one of the highest impact investments an Effective Altruist fund could make right now would be to hire a handful of trained anthropologists (or other outside experts in qualitative research / ethnography) to hang out in places like GiveWell or the Machine Intelligence Research Institute for a few years and really study how effective altruism works as a system. How are decisions being made, and how is evidence being used to make them? What does “EA discourse” help make visible and which problems and concerns does it hide from our view? How do the positionalities of typical EA researchers affect their views of what’s important or what’s plausible? I have my guesses, and I’m sure you have yours. But I had my guesses about development economics, too, and I missed nearly everything Ferguson (and the authors mentioned two paragraphs up) uncovered. What more are we missing? The second is an emphasis on local context. As funding gaps for “low hanging fruit” like malaria disappear, EA is going to have to focus on more complicated interventions, which are likely to be fairly context-specific -- after all, why should an agriculture program that works in the flattest parts of the Sahel be expected to work the same way in the Maloti Mountains? Ferguson notes about several of the Thaba-Tseka project’s failed arms: “Tanzania may be very different from Lesotho on the ground, but, from the point of view of a development agency’s head office, both may be simply ‘the Africa desk’. In the Thaba-Tseka case, at least, the original project planners knew little about Lesotho’s specific history, politics, and sociology; they were experts on ‘livestock development in Africa,’ and drew largely on experience in East Africa.” For any sort of context-specific intervention to work, an intimate knowledge of the specific history, needs, and geography of individual villages and regions is necessary. The development world has slowly made steps in this direction, but it’s not clear to me that the EA community has a clear way of acquiring, accessing, or working with this information. I don’t think there’s a magic bullet to solve this problem, but in the long run any solution will probably need to involve a) on-the-ground, qualitative research and b) real representation in the EA network from areas EA organizations are interested in working. The development industry has a shameful history of infantilizing and ignoring the opinions of “locals”, and I think the conversations I’m starting to see in EA about diversity and representation of different parts of the Global South need to continue if we’re going to get enough serious knowledge of local contexts to effectively direct funding. The third is a continued need to take politics seriously. This is one of the most challenging issues in charitable giving: when is it okay to work with a government doing terrible things to deliver humanitarian aid? To what extent does an NGO feeding the hungry lend its legitimacy to or cover for an authoritarian regime’s misdeeds? I don’t have anything close to a full answer (and I don’t think anyone does), but Ferguson’s work exposes a possibility I hadn’t thought of before, in which “technical” and “apolitical” projects can expand the power of the state in unforeseen and potentially dangerous ways. After writing The Anti-Politics Machine, Ferguson largely gave up on the idea of charitable or state-based aid. (Understandably, I think, given that he spent most of a decade watching its most horrific side effects first-hand). It’s ironic, then, that I think his book’s practical value is greatest to those of us who still hold onto hope in its possibilities. May we have ears to hear the voices telling us where our work has fallen short, and eyes to see what it could become. Footnotes Ferguson pg. 55
Inline links: pull talent, worsen, hurt, some, An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins, How Different Social Scientists Think, The Data is Gold, and We Are The Gold-Diggers, Mzungus in Development and Governments
Thaba-Tseka1 mentions across 1 issues

Thaba-Tseka is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 27, 2022 and May 27, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "a powerful and far-reaching impact on the Thaba-Tseka region"; "This had significant effects in Thaba-Tseka, where “villages [...] were sharply divided over politics"; "linking Thaba-Tseka to the district and national capitals". It most often appears alongside An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins, anti-politics machine, Basotho Congress Party.

Reference entry
Thaba-Tseka
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 27, 2022
Last seen
May 27, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine
May 27, 2022 · Original source
Many families had large flocks of underfed cattle. Even when money was tight, the team rarely observed cattle sales. Each of these is true, but they need to be set within a larger narrative to inform the work of “development.” Instead of doing the ethnographical and historical work it would take to understand Lesotho’s particular history, political system, and culture, the World Bank’s team of experts substituted their notions of what “less-developed countries” are like, shaped just as much by countries very different from Lesotho and the array of “solutions” the team had to offer as they were by anything to do with the context they’d set out to study. To the economists writing the report, the fact that cattle were not being sold was a clear sign of a market failure -- surely this meant that either the cattle were too low quality to sell, or the population did not have access to markets. Since this story (1) made sense of a data point that was otherwise confusing, (2) fit with economists’ intuitions for why a person might not sell their “product”, and (3) lent itself to being solved with standard tools (programs to improve cattle quality! programs to connect people with markets!), it seemed like a natural and parsimonious explanation of the facts. So natural and parsimonious, in fact, that the authors don’t seem to have thought to check whether it was actually true. The same sort of jumps happened in interpreting the other two facts. The authors assumed that, as a “less-developed country”, Lesotho’s rural economy was driven by agriculture. The fact that income from crops was low was therefore a sign that the population were primarily “subsistence” farmers who could be “developed” with access to better agricultural tools. As further evidence for this theory, the failure of agriculture was a perfect explanation for why young men had recently (it was assumed) been forced to travel across the border for work. While Ferguson focuses on Thaba-Tseka, I think the “development discourse” lens he describes is easiest to understand by imagining how it might function in a very different context. If the same World Bank economists were to study an American suburb, they might learn that: Most households grow fruits or vegetables in their yards, but make little profit by selling them.
People pour money into valuable assets they call “Roth IRAs”, but do not seem to sell them even when they could use the cash. Should the World Bank conclude that suburban America is populated by subsistence farmers whose inability to grow good crops has forced them into long commutes? Are 401(k)s merely a “product” that young Americans hold onto because they’re too hard to sell? Through careful ethnographic work (using the research method of actually talking to people) Ferguson discovers that, while the three facts we noted were true, the report’s interpretation of them was rooted entirely in fantasy. Much like our hypothesized suburbanites, the people of Lesotho’s Thaba-Tseka region grew food, but they did not consider farming their main priority or source of income. Indeed, even in the best of years a typical household would grow less than half of the food they consumed, with most money coming from remittances sent back from the mines, or from services (or beer) sold to those with mining income. The practice of mining in South Africa, far from being a recent response to deteriorating agriculture, had been a central part of the Lesothan economy for more than a century. Villagers’ economic complaints rarely referenced agriculture (since they were not farmers), but rather focused on labor practices and immigration laws they felt allowed the mining companies to exploit their work and keep them in poverty. Similarly, the decision not to sell cattle was part of a complex traditional arrangement Ferguson labels “the bovine mystique”, in which cattle functioned both as a means of paying bridewealth and a way of saving for retirement when one was finally too old or injured to work in the mines. The system itself was relatively controversial among the villagers, but it’s difficult to imagine access to markets was a primary concern when Ferguson’s interviewees knew 1) where the market was, 2) how to get there, and 3) what the going price of cattle was on a near-daily basis. What I find so striking about the World Bank report (and Ferguson’s devastating deconstruction of it) is not that it’s a bad piece of development writing, but that even fifty years later it’s still a thoroughly unremarkable one. Economic development papers and talks tend to have a fairly fixed structure: A quick introduction to “the setting”
A story that plausibly explains these numbers (either a potential mechanism for an effect, or an explanation of why the effect turned out to be null) If these stories are challenged, it is not because there is no actual evidence for them, but because an economist in the audience has thought of their own preferred theory. If the speaker can find some data point that contradicts the questioner’s idea, this is thought to “confirm” the original story. Since audience members (who often have little specific knowledge of the region) are unlikely to ask questions like “what if this village just has an incredibly complicated set of social conventions around cattle that prevents their sale even without market barriers in place?” or “do the region’s economic challenges have more to do with this very specific regulation in South African immigration law?”, plausible-sounding stories that explain one or two numerical data points tend to gain traction in the literature whether or not they have anything to do with reality. Mark McGovern famously noted this trend in a review of two of Paul Collier’s books, writing: “Much of the intellectual heavy lifting in these books is in fact done at the level of implication or commonsense guessing. And the common sense is surely not that of the inhabitants of the countries being dissected, but that of the highly educated elite located primarily in Western Europe and North America. In those passages where Collier does lay out the thinking behind his explanations, they are always coherent and plausible, but the chain of causal relations makes it evident how fragile these models typically are.” The World Bank report’s fundamental misdiagnosis of the challenges Lesotho faced formed the basis for a series of failed “development initiatives”, most notably the Thaba-Tseka Development Project, a joint venture funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, the World Bank, the Government of Lesotho, and the UK Overseas Development Ministry. The project focused on providing technical solutions to the “problems” the World Bank report had identified: better agricultural techniques, easier access to markets, and increased government capacity to provide public goods. Each piece faced serious problems in execution, largely because interventions shown to have the sorts of “positive effects” randomized experiments might demonstrate elsewhere in Africa were not necessarily well suited to Lesotho’s unforgiving, mountainous terrain. But even more seriously, the project was so enveloped in “development discourse” that nobody thought to question whether they were working on problems their “recipients” cared about, or merely the ones the “tools of development” were capable of solving. As Ferguson writes, “The promise that crop farming could be revolutionized through the application of a well-known package of technical inputs was so firmly written into the project’s design that it was difficult for those on the scene to challenge it, or even to confront it.” Perhaps the only thing that has changed since Ferguson wrote is that we have tools to better identify these failures: the development literature continues to be littered with failed trials and interventions based on unchecked assumptions. One of the most famous is the British Department for International Development’s 90 million pound Tuungane project, whose Congolese incarnation sought to rebuild village governing institutions that the country’s civil war had destroyed. One of the most convincing explanations of its failure is that it may not have been necessary to begin with: the implementers do not seem to have checked whether the institutions had actually been weakened by violence, and baseline reports indicated that residents were relatively satisfied with village governance before the project even started! More research is needed to clarify the situation -- research which might have been useful to carry out before spending a £90 million on a “fix”. Part of this, perhaps, comes from the usual overconfidence that other social scientists like to accuse economists of. But there are much bigger systemic problems at play. Development work tends to run on short timelines: grad students and postdocs need to publish quickly for their careers to advance, NGO funding runs on 5-ish year cycles, and charities (particularly in “high-risk” areas) face extremely high employee turnover rates. This simultaneously limits the accumulation of institutional knowledge, while incentivizing practitioners away from the time-intensive process of understanding a particular context in favor of “getting results quick.” Similarly, the recent introduction of experimental evidence to the development field is a wondrous thing, but the revolution has to continue: randomized experiments can tell us about the effect an intervention had somewhere, but even the best methods of applying this kind of evidence to a specific context remain somewhat arbitrary and subjective. As EA begins to fund more complex (but potentially more effective) interventions, a key step will be to get a more systematic handle on how to gather evidence about specific places-- countries, states, even villages -- and how to match the tools we have to people who might benefit from them. II. The Trouble with Technocrats “But even if the project was in some sense a ‘failure’ as an agricultural development project, it is indisputable that many of its ‘side effects’ had a powerful and far-reaching impact on the Thaba-Tseka region. [...] Indeed, it may be that in a place like Mashai, the most visible of all the project’s effects was the indirect one of increased Government military presence in the region” As the program continued to unfold, the development officials became more and more disillusioned -- not with their own choices, but with the people of Thaba-Tseka, who they perceived as petty, apathetic, and outright self-destructive. A project meant to provide firewood failed because locals kept breaking into the woodlots and uprooting the saplings. An experiment in pony-breeding fell apart when “unknown parties” drove the entire herd of ponies off of cliffs to their deaths. Why, Ferguson’s official contacts bemoaned, weren’t the people of Thaba-Tseka committed to their own “development”? Who could possibly be opposed to trees and horses? Perhaps, the practitioners theorized, the people of Thaba-Tseka were just lazy. Perhaps they “didn’t want to be better.” Perhaps they weren’t in their right mind or had made a mistake. Perhaps poverty makes a person do strange things. Or, as Ferguson points out, perhaps their anger had something to do with the fact that the best plots of land in the village had been forcibly confiscated to make room for wood and pony lots, without any sort of compensation. The central government was all too happy to help find land for the projects, which they took from political enemies and put in the control of party elites, especially when it could use a legitimate anti-poverty program as cover. In Ferguson’s words, the development project was functioning as an “anti-politics machine” the government could use to pretend political power moves were just “objective” solutions to technical problems. A local student’s term paper captured the general discontent: “In spite of the superb aim of helping the people to become self-reliant, the first thing the project did was to take their very good arable land. When the people protested about their fields being taken, the project promised them employment. [...] It employed them for two months, found them unfit for the work, and dismissed them. Without their fields and without employment they may turn up to be very self-reliant. It is rather hard to know.” Two things stand out to me from this story. First, the “development discourse” lens served to focus the practitioners’ attention on a handful of technical variables (quantity of wood, quality of pony), and kept them from thinking about any repercussions they hadn’t thought to measure. This is a serious problem, because “negative effects on things that aren’t your primary outcome” are pretty common in the development literature. High-paying medical NGOs can pull talent away from government jobs. Foreign aid can worsen ongoing conflicts. Unconditional cash transfers can hurt neighbors who didn’t receive the cash. And the literature we have is implicitly conditioned on “only examining the variables academics have thought to look at” -- surely our tools have rendered other effects completely invisible! Second, the project organizers somewhat naively ignored the political goals of the government they’d partnered with, and therefore the extent to which these goals were shaping the project. Lesotho’s recent political history had been tumultuous. The Basotho Nationalist Party (BNP), having gained power upon independence in 1965, refused to give up power after losing the 1970 elections to the Basotho Congress Party (BCP). Blaming the election results on “communists”, BNP Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan declared a state of emergency and began a campaign of terror, raiding the homes of opposition figures and funding paramilitary groups to intimidate, arrest, and potentially kill anyone who spoke up against BNP rule. This had significant effects in Thaba-Tseka, where “villages [...] were sharply divided over politics, but it was not a thing which was discussed openly” due to a fully justified fear of violence. The BNP, correctly sensing the presence of a substantial underground opposition, placed “development committees” in each village, which served primarily as local wings of the national party. These committees spied on potential supporters of the now-outlawed BCP and had deep connections to paramilitary “police” units. When the Thaba-Tseka Development Project started, its international backers partnered directly with the BNP leadership, reasoning that sustainable development and public goods provision could only happen through a government whose role they primarily viewed as bureaucratic. As a result, nearly every decision had to make its way through the village development committees, who used the project to pursue their own goals: jobs and project funds found their way primarily to BNP supporters, while the “necessary costs of development” always seemed to be paid by opposition figures. The funding coalition ended up paying for a number of projects that reinforced BNP power, from establishing a new “district capital” (which conveniently also served as a military base) to constructing new and better roads linking Thaba-Tseka to the district and national capitals (primarily helping the central government tax and police an opposition stronghold). Anything that could be remotely linked to “economic development” became part of the project as funders and practitioners failed to ask whether government power might have alternate, more concerning effects. As we saw earlier, the population being “served” saw this much more clearly than the “servants”, and started to rebel against a project whose “help” seemed to be aimed more at consolidating BNP control than meeting their own needs. When they ultimately resorted to killing ponies and uprooting trees, project officials infatuated with “development” were left with “no idea why people would do such a thing,” completely oblivious to the real and lasting harm their “purely technical decisions” had inflicted. Have any EA projects had this sort of unexpected political side effect? I think it’s genuinely hard to tell without further research, but the possibility is frightening. (There’s been a little bit of research on the quantitative side --Recent research has found, for instance, that GiveDirectly’s 2014 unconditional cash transfer trial increased community participation but did not change voting patterns, so at least in 2014 the Kenyan government wasn’t using the program to stay in power. Was this the right question to test? I am not sure, especially without a more qualitative survey to see if there are other avenues we should be worried about.) III. Takeaways for Effective Altruism So what do we do as effective altruists (hereafter “EAs”)? I see three key takeaways. The first is a clear need for more qualitative research. GiveWell makes some qualitative judgments about charities, but Ferguson’s work illustrates the need for qualitative evaluation of the interventions themselves to see if the underlying studies have captured all of the “right” variables. Randomized experiments are really good at testing hypotheses, but by their very nature they can’t tell you about variables you didn’t decide ahead of time to measure. Are there significant side effects (positive or negative) we’ve missed from massive malaria net distributions? I don’t know, but if so they are not likely to be discovered by a bunch of Americans and Europeans sitting in a room and trying to guess the best things to measure. Rather, they’re probably already known (or suspected) by the people experiencing them, and a first step to finding out is going and asking them. (A second step is finding the right people to ask them -- real expertise in qualitative research is a rare and valuable skill.) Of course, qualitative research is messy and sometimes the people you interview are wrong or have other agendas. So once we have an “on-the-ground” hypothesis or concern, there will often be good reason to use a randomized trial or quasi-experimental method to test it or try to understand how much of a concern it might be! This sort of interdisciplinary approach is starting to gain traction in academia, but it has yet to be seriously applied in the EA sphere. There’s another angle to this: Ferguson’s most incisive insights arise not from studying the people being “served”, but by studying the development practitioners themselves. Other social scientists have continued this trend, from McGovern’s An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins and Robinson’s How Different Social Scientists Think to Marchais, Bazuzi, and Lameke’s The Data is Gold, and We Are The Gold-Diggers and Omar Bah’s webcomic Mzungus in Development and Governments. Each new paper illuminates the research process in new ways, and provides tools both to do better research and to identify potential weaknesses in the pre-existing literature. I think one of the highest impact investments an Effective Altruist fund could make right now would be to hire a handful of trained anthropologists (or other outside experts in qualitative research / ethnography) to hang out in places like GiveWell or the Machine Intelligence Research Institute for a few years and really study how effective altruism works as a system. How are decisions being made, and how is evidence being used to make them? What does “EA discourse” help make visible and which problems and concerns does it hide from our view? How do the positionalities of typical EA researchers affect their views of what’s important or what’s plausible? I have my guesses, and I’m sure you have yours. But I had my guesses about development economics, too, and I missed nearly everything Ferguson (and the authors mentioned two paragraphs up) uncovered. What more are we missing? The second is an emphasis on local context. As funding gaps for “low hanging fruit” like malaria disappear, EA is going to have to focus on more complicated interventions, which are likely to be fairly context-specific -- after all, why should an agriculture program that works in the flattest parts of the Sahel be expected to work the same way in the Maloti Mountains? Ferguson notes about several of the Thaba-Tseka project’s failed arms: “Tanzania may be very different from Lesotho on the ground, but, from the point of view of a development agency’s head office, both may be simply ‘the Africa desk’. In the Thaba-Tseka case, at least, the original project planners knew little about Lesotho’s specific history, politics, and sociology; they were experts on ‘livestock development in Africa,’ and drew largely on experience in East Africa.” For any sort of context-specific intervention to work, an intimate knowledge of the specific history, needs, and geography of individual villages and regions is necessary. The development world has slowly made steps in this direction, but it’s not clear to me that the EA community has a clear way of acquiring, accessing, or working with this information. I don’t think there’s a magic bullet to solve this problem, but in the long run any solution will probably need to involve a) on-the-ground, qualitative research and b) real representation in the EA network from areas EA organizations are interested in working. The development industry has a shameful history of infantilizing and ignoring the opinions of “locals”, and I think the conversations I’m starting to see in EA about diversity and representation of different parts of the Global South need to continue if we’re going to get enough serious knowledge of local contexts to effectively direct funding. The third is a continued need to take politics seriously. This is one of the most challenging issues in charitable giving: when is it okay to work with a government doing terrible things to deliver humanitarian aid? To what extent does an NGO feeding the hungry lend its legitimacy to or cover for an authoritarian regime’s misdeeds? I don’t have anything close to a full answer (and I don’t think anyone does), but Ferguson’s work exposes a possibility I hadn’t thought of before, in which “technical” and “apolitical” projects can expand the power of the state in unforeseen and potentially dangerous ways. After writing The Anti-Politics Machine, Ferguson largely gave up on the idea of charitable or state-based aid. (Understandably, I think, given that he spent most of a decade watching its most horrific side effects first-hand). It’s ironic, then, that I think his book’s practical value is greatest to those of us who still hold onto hope in its possibilities. May we have ears to hear the voices telling us where our work has fallen short, and eyes to see what it could become. Footnotes Ferguson pg. 55
Inline links: pull talent, worsen, hurt, some, An Anthropologist Among the Mandarins, How Different Social Scientists Think, The Data is Gold, and We Are The Gold-Diggers, Mzungus in Development and Governments
Thai1 mentions across 1 issues

Thai is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2023 and February 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Be, very distantly related to Thai". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agin, American.

Reference entry
Thai
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 22, 2023
Last seen
February 22, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: The Geography Of Madness
February 22, 2023 · Original source
This image (source) of a witch stealing a man’s penis, with a box of previously-stolen penises to her right accompanies the 1411 poem “Flowers Of Virtue” in its 1486 edition. Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1486, so if the original text of Flowers Of Virtue contained the incident this picture refers to, it would predate Malleus. But the original text is written in poetic medieval German and I can’t find a good translation. When I wrote my review of the Malleus, people were surprised at the penis-stealing witch chapters. Yet nothing could possibly be less surprising; the penis-stealing witches are timeless and omnipresent. When commenters continued to doubt, I promised them this review of Frank Bures’ Geography Of Madness. II. Frank Bures is a journalist. In 2001, he came across an unusual BBC article: a mob had killed twelve people in Nigeria, believing them to be penis-stealing witches. A few months later, a similar article: five people, Benin. He tried to pitch a story about the phenomenon to his editor, who “said he couldn’t pay me to fly to Nigeria and find essentially . . . nothing”. For some reason - and this is the point at which I start to worry about narrator reliability - Bures became obsessed with this. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. He started scraping together money to visit Africa on his own, story be damned: Nigeria gnawed at me. I knew that it was a terrible time to leave. I knew that [my wife] Bridgit, newly pregnant, wouldn’t want me to go. But I also knew that I had to, and that if I didn’t it would be a lifelong regret. . . three months later, I was the lone tourist on a plane full of Nigerians descending to Lagos. Africa is a relative newcomer to penis-stealing witches: The first recorded incident of penis theft in Africa I could find took place in Sudan in the 1960s. But in the mid- to late seventies in Nigeria, there were waves of well-documented cases. One of these happened in the northern city of Kaduna, where a psychiatrist named Dr. Sunday Ilechukwu was working in his office when a policeman arrived, escorting two men. One of them said he needed a medical assessment: He had accused the other of making his penis disappear. As with [a previously discussed incident], this had caused a disturbance in the street. During Ilechukwu’s examination, he later recounted, the victim stared straight ahead while the doctor examined his penis and pronounced him normal. “Exclaiming,” Ilechukwu wrote in the Transcultural Psychiatric Review, “the patient looked down at his groin for the first time, suggesting that the genitals had just reappeared.” According to Ilechukwu, this was part of an epidemic of magical penis theft that swept through Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. “Men could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding on to their genitalia either openly or discreetly with their hand in their pockets,” Ilechukwu wrote. “Women were also seen holding on to their breasts directly or discreetly, by crossing the hands across the chest . . . Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylaxes. This led to further breakdown of law and order.” During an incident, the victim would yell: “Thief! My genitals are gone!” Immediately, a culprit would be identified, apprehended by a crowd, and often killed. …but it’s been making up for lost time. Bures was able to find and interview one previous penis theft victim, plus the friend of another. Both described similar stories: someone had bumped up against them under weird circumstances, they immediately noticed their penis was much smaller than usual, they called out the culprit, and - apparently because the witch involved didn’t want to get in trouble - their penis was restored. Whatever weird itch this topic had given Bures, this didn’t satisfy him. He writes, very lucidly, about a desire to get closer to “the story”. He started bumping up against random Nigerians in suspicious ways, hoping one of them would accuse him of stealing their penis. Bures was an obvious foreigner, and a these panics often resulted in the suspected penis-stealer getting lynched, so this was a crazy thing to do. He could easily have died. Instead, everyone politely ignored him, nothing happened, and a slightly-disappointed Bures flew back to his poor family and abandoned his weird obsession. III. …for four years. After that the bug bit him again and he flew to Asia, long a center of penis-stealing witch activity. There are nature documentaries on lions, dolphins, even dinosaurs. They all share a common pattern: you talk about your subject’s habitat, their diet, their behaviors. The Asian half of The Geography Of Madness has the feel of a nature documentary on penis-stealing witches. And the last beat of every nature documentary has to be: this majestic creature, which once roamed from one end of the region to the other, is now endangered, threatened by increasing globalization and industrial activity. This is true for the witches also. Bures’ time in Hong Kong was a bust. There was a penis theft panic there forty years earlier, and he was able to interview some of the doctors who treated it. But they all said that was long ago. Now everybody is Westernized and has Western fears like vaccine injury or structural racism. They get Western mental disorders like depression and anorexia. The idea of witches stealing their penises seems as risible to them as it probably does to you. Singapore was also a bust. Bures had hoped it wouldn’t be, because it’s full of Malaysians, and Malaysia holds a special place in history as the spot where penis-stealing witches first made contact with Western science. The Malaysian word for the condition is koro (it means “head of a turtle”, based on an analogy to the penis retracting into the body the same way a turtle’s head retracts into its shell), and it is by this name that the condition gets listed in the DSM and the rest of the medical literature. Neither I nor Bures was able to find many ethnic Malays worrying about koro; most of the activity seems to be from Malaysian-Chinese. The Chinese definitely worry about it, attributing it to a wide variety of causes including poisoning, yin-yang imbalance, and - yes - witches. But Bures found nothing among any ethnicity. Once again, all the doctors said it used to be common, but disappeared as the city industrialized and adopted Western ways. Guangzhou was also a bust. The doctors said the same thing - in the old days, there would be huge epidemics of koro, social contagions that would impact hundreds of people at once. Now only a few superstitious rural people still believed. One traditional healer said he saw “three or four” cases a year. All the educated people had moved on. I once saw a nature documentary on Tasmanian tigers. Most people believe these have been extinct since 1930. Still, there are occasional unconfirmed sightings, especially in a remote area called Cape York, and every so often some scientists trudge off to Cape York with traps and cameras in the hopes of getting lucky. Bures decides end his own nature documentary with an expedition to the Cape York of the penis-stealing witches. This is a remote island village in China called Lin’gao, where in 1984: . . . rumors spread of a fox ghost - sometimes disguised an old woman roaming the land—collecting penises in covered baskets she carried on a shoulder pole. When two young men approached her and told her to uncover the baskets, they looked inside, saw that the baskets were filled with penises and died instantly of fright. Panic about koro would hit a village and last three to four days. When residents heard about a case in a neighboring village, the panic would subside, since that meant the ghost had moved on. The attacks slowly made their way around the island. The ghost struck at night, when villagers were sleeping. A chill would creep into the room, and suddenly the victim would feel his penis shrinking inward. He would grab it and run outside for help. A twenty-eight-year-old office worker was at home one night when: > “ . . . he heard a gong being beaten and the terrifying noises made by people who were panicking in a nearby neighborhood. He suddenly became anxious and experienced the sensation that his penis was shrinking. He was seized with panic and shouted loudly for help. Several men in the neighborhood rushed in and tried to rescue him by forcefully pulling his penis and making loud sounds to chase away the evil ghost that was thought to be affecting him.” Neighbors and family members were enlisted in rescue operations. Victims were beaten with sandals and slippers while the middle finger of their left had was squeezed, so that the ghost could exit the body there. The epidemic engulfed the island, with the exception of the Li and Miao minorities, who seemed to be immune to such fears. Researchers estimated that between 2,000 and 5,000 people were affected, but that “no one died from genital retraction.” One baby, however, did die when his mother tried to feed him pepper juice, and a girl was beaten to death during a two-hour exorcism. “Numerous men suffered injuries to their penises as a result of ‘rescuing’ actions.” Iron pins were sometimes inserted through the nipples of women to prevent retraction, which caused infections as well. This was, as far as anyone knows, the last great koro epidemic in Asia. Bures had a terrible time getting to Lin’gao. He had equal trouble getting an interpreter; the natives spoke a language called Be, very distantly related to Thai but not at all to regular Chinese. Finally he found someone who was able to contact a local shaman. Like any good doctor, the shaman referred him to a specialist - in this case, the designated anti-ghost shaman, who lived in a different village. He spent most of his time off on various ghost-fighting missions, but eventually Bures and his team were able to track him down. I want you to picture the scene. An American journalist has been traveling the world in search of a dying variety of witchcraft. Now he’s reached the end of the line, the wildest and most primitive region of China. With great difficulty, he has procured an interpreter. Together, they consult a shaman, who sends them on a quest to find a second, wiser shaman who specializes in ghosts. After many trials and tribulations, he reaches the second, wiser, ghost-specialist shaman, who invites him into his home, filled with strange charms and magical images. “Tell me your question,” says the shaman. And Bures asks: “What do you know about penis-stealing witches?” . . . and the shaman answers: “Haha, no one believes in that stuff anymore.” IV. So as a nature documentary, The Geography of Madness is kind of a bust. Still, Bures rescues it with some great analysis of culture-bound mental illness. A culture-bound mental illness is one that only affects people who know about it, and especially people who believe in it. Often it doesn’t make sense from a scientific point of view (there’s no such thing as witches, and the penis can’t retract into the body). It sometimes spreads contagiously: someone gets a first case, the rest of the village panics, and now everyone knows about it / believes in it / is thinking about it, and so many other people get it too. Different cultures have their own set of culture-bound illnesses. Sometimes there are commonalities - many cultures have something something penis something witches - but the details vary, and a victim almost always gets a case that matches the way their own culture understands it. THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT MAKING IT UP. I cannot stress this enough. There are plenty of examples of people driving metal objects through their penis in order to pull it out of their body or prevent the witches from getting it or something like that. There is no amount of commitment to the bit which will make people drive metal objects through their penis. People have died from these conditions - not the illness itself, which is fake, but from wasting away worrying about it, or taking dangerous sham treatments, or getting into fights with people they think caused it. If you think of it as “their unconscious mind must be doing something like making it up, but their conscious mind believes it 100%”, you will be closer to the truth, though there are various reasons I don’t like that framing. In Rajasthan, India, people come to the hospital with gilahari (lizard) syndrome. Patients say a lizard-like mass, sometimes visible as a skin swelling, is crawling around the body. They express terror that it will reach their airway and suffocate them. Japanese people may contract jikoshu-kyofu, a debilitating fear that they have terrible body odor. No amount of reassurances by friends and psychiatrists can convince these people that they smell normal, nor will any number of deodorants or perfumes make them comfortable. The French suffer from bouffée délirante, where a perfectly healthy person suddenly becomes completely psychotic, with well-formed hallucinations and delusions - then recovers just as suddenly, sometimes over hours or days. This is not how psychosis works anywhere except France and a few former French colonies. Traditional Chinese medicine monitors the balance between yin and yang. The male orgasm can deplete yang, and sure enough in China (but nowhere else) some men suffer traditional symptoms of yang depletion after they orgasm. “The symptoms can last weeks to months after a single orgasm, [and include] chills, dizziness, [and] backache”. The phrase “run amok” comes from Malaysia, where it referred to a specific phenomenon: some person who had been unhappy for a long time would suddenly snap, kill a bunch of people, then say they had no memory of doing it. Malaysian culture totally rolls with this and doesn’t hold it against them; the unhappiness is a risk factor for possession by a tiger spirit, which commits the killings. Although Malays have been doing this since at least the 1700s, there are some fascinating parallels with modern US mass shootings that suggest the damn tiger spirits have finally made it to the US common psychological origins. I have seen exactly one demonic possession case in my ten years as a psychiatrist. The man fell to the ground, mouth foaming, chanting strange syllables and the names of Biblical demons. My attending doctor at the time - one of those people who somehow manages to be an expert in everything - was an expert in demonic possession, and told us that he was in no way psychotic, antipsychotics wouldn’t help him (except insofar as they help everyone by decreasing all behaviors), and he needed to “work through his issues”. The patient was uncooperative - he was only visiting MDs because the local bishop wouldn’t call in an exorcist until he got a psych exam - and eventually left against medical advice. After going down the list, Bures asks the correct next question: how do we know whether or not our own mental illnesses are just as culture-bound as the Japanese or Malaysians’? Cultures that believe in witches have witch-related culture-bound illnesses; cultures that believe in demons have demon-related ones. We believe in science, so we should expect sciencey-sounding culture-bound illnesses, and these might be hard to tell apart from other, more physical conditions. So how suspicious should we be, and of what? Certainly we have some culture-bound mental illnesses. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is a condition where some people supposedly become very sick when exposed to electromagnetic fields (like from cell phones). This sounds very scientific and makes perfect sense according to our culture, but researchers have found that placebo electrical devices make them exactly as sick as real ones, and that devices they don’t know about don’t make them sick at all. These people’s pain is real, and their lives are very difficult (although a few have found refuge in the National Radio Quiet Zone, an area in Virginia where the government enforces a ban on electromagnetic transmissions for secret military reasons). But their condition only afflicts them because they believe in it, much like with koro. Fine, everyone knows that one’s not real. What about DSM-style mental disorders, the stuff everyone’s supposed to believe in? Are those culture-bound? Unfortunately, I think Bures kind of flubs this section. He decides to focus on PMS (premenstrual syndrome), which is officially included in the DSM as PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder). After discussing the history of hysteria, he writes that: Today, hysteria is never diagnosed, except by unwise husbands. In 1931, however, an American gynecologist named Robert Frank revived the idea in a new guise. He published an article titled, “The hormonal causes of premenstrual tension.” Frank described symptoms that occurred in the week before menstruation: irritability, bloating, fatigue, depression, attacks of pain, nervousness, restlessness, and the impulse for “foolish and ill considered actions,” due to ovarian activity. Again, the cause was the uterus. Then in 1953, British physician Katharina Dalton elaborated on this, arguing the condition came from fluctuation of estrogen and progesterone. She called it Premenstrual Syndrome, and soon symptoms grew to include: anxiety, sadness, moodiness, constipation or diarrhea, feeling out of control, insomnia, food cravings, increased sex drive, anger, arguments with family or friends, poor judgment, lack of physical coordination, decreased efficiency, increased personal strength or power, feelings of connection to nature or to other women, seizures, convulsions, asthma attacks, not to mention flare ups in asthma, allergies, sinusitis, anxiety disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, and multiple sclerosis. If any of these symptoms occurred in the second half of the menstrual cycle, one had PMS. Estimates of the number of women afflicted ranged from 5 percent to 95 percent. In the 1980s, three women in the UK were tried for arson, assault and manslaughter. The three all claimed they had diminished responsibility due to PMS, and got reduced sentences on the condition that they underwent hormone treatment. After that, according to one study, American women flooded doctors with requests for help with their PMS. “Popular groups like PMS Action were founded to promote recognition and treatment of PMS by medical professionals. Private PMS clinics began to appear in the USA, modeled after those in the UK, and progesterone therapy was enthusiastically adopted, much to the chagrin of many gynaecologists who viewed its use as ‘unscientific’ and ‘commercial’, not to mention unlicensed." Based on all this, the 1987 version of the DSM-III included a new category: Late Luteal Phase Disorder (luteal refers to progesterone). It was proposed as a topic for further research, but despite the absence of such research, it was included in the 1994 edition of the DSM-IV under the name Premenstrual Dysmorphic Disorder, or PMDD.96 In 2013, in the DSM-5, it was given its own category as a full-fledged mental illness. Yet neither PMS nor PMDD occur in most cultures. There are no biomarkers to measure them by. No conclusive correlation has ever been found between estrogen or progesterone levels and PMS. As one study noted, “the more time that women of ethnic minorities spend living in the United States, the more likely they are to report PMDD. Thus, if we are to accept PMDD as a reified medical disorder, then we must also accept exposure to U.S. culture as a risk factor for contracting PMDD.” If it is a syndrome at all, it’s a cultural one. I asked my wife what she thought of this, and she told me: The day before her first-ever period, as a teenager, when she had never really thought about PMS, she felt exceptionally weird, emotional, and generally off, to the point where it seemed to demand an explanation. Then she had her first-ever period, and retroactively explains it as PMS.
Inline links: source, my review of the, Geography Of Madness, Be, gilahari (lizard) syndrome, jikoshu-kyofu, bouffée délirante, suffer traditional symptoms of yang depletion, run amok, Electromagnetic hypersensitivity, National Radio Quiet Zone
Thais1 mentions across 1 issues

Thais is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 27, 2026 and March 27, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "different Buddhist tradition than the one the Thais were doing". It most often appears alongside Arthur, Arthur T, BANGKOK.

Reference entry
Thais
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 27, 2026
Last seen
March 27, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
A Buddhist Sun Miracle?
March 27, 2026 · Original source
This replication of Fatima in an “uncontaminated” context pushes me further towards believing that sun miracles are neither true divine intervention nor vague hypnotic suggestion, but some particular illusory/psychological phenomenon which necessarily manifests as the sun spinning and changing color, and which can occur independently even among people who aren’t primed to expect it. I continue to be vague on specifics, but think it might be somehow related to fire kasina meditation. This comes from a different Buddhist tradition than the one the Thais were doing; as far as I can tell, none of the Dhammakaya practitioners made the connection. But it seems like being in a meditative frame of mind helped. And it seems like the same pattern of fire kasina effects - including spinning lights, shifting colors swatches, and vivid hallucinations - applied here too.
Inline links: somehow related to fire kasina meditation
Thames1 mentions across 1 issues

Thames is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2024 and September 20, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Danes waste the world about the Thames". It most often appears alongside Adam, Alfred, Ballad.

Reference entry
Thames
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 20, 2024
Last seen
September 20, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Ballad of the White Horse
September 20, 2024 · Original source
"Danes drive the white East Angles In six fights on the plains, Danes waste the world about the Thames, Danes to the eastward—Danes!"
And clover and silent thistle throve, And buds burst silently, With little care for the Thames Valley Or what things there might be—
Thames Valley1 mentions across 1 issues

Thames Valley is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2024 and September 20, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "little care for the Thames Valley". It most often appears alongside Adam, Alfred, Ballad.

Reference entry
Thames Valley
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 20, 2024
Last seen
September 20, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Ballad of the White Horse
September 20, 2024 · Original source
And clover and silent thistle throve, And buds burst silently, With little care for the Thames Valley Or what things there might be—
the Baltics1 mentions across 1 issues

the Baltics is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 13, 2022 and July 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "there were Ashkenazim in ... the Baltics". It most often appears alongside 1890s, Alan Turing, Albert Einstein.

Reference entry
the Baltics
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 13, 2022
Last seen
July 13, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: The Man From The Future
July 13, 2022 · Original source
That still leaves one mystery: why Hungary? There were Jews all over Europe. Although most of the weird overachievement comes from Ashkenazi Jews in particular - those from Eastern Europe - there were Ashkenazim in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics, etc. So why Hungary?
the Bay1 mentions across 1 issues

the Bay is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 01, 2023 and May 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "They would be happy to live in Seattle, or NYC, or the Bay". It most often appears alongside America, California, Cleveland.

Reference entry
the Bay
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 01, 2023
Last seen
May 01, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Change My Mind: Density Increases Local But Decreases Global Prices
May 01, 2023 · Original source
No; I think the missing insight is that there’s some pool of geographically mobile Americans1 who are looking for new housing (or who might start looking if the right situation presented itself). These people have various combinations of preferences and requirements. One common pattern is to prefer any big city - they would be happy to live in Seattle, or NYC, or the Bay, if the opportunity came up. Right now, more Americans prefer to live in big cities than there are housing units in big cities, so prices go up and these people can’t afford their dream. As new cities become “big” (by these people’s criteria), they’ll move to those cities, increasing demand. The fact that big cities remain more expensive than small villages suggests that there are many of these people and they’re currently under-served.
Inline links: 1
The Bay Area1 mentions across 1 issues

The Bay Area is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 10, 2023 and May 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Bay Area is a great example of this". It most often appears alongside Alex Poterack, Alexander, America.

Reference entry
The Bay Area
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 10, 2023
Last seen
May 10, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Housing Density And Prices
May 10, 2023 · Original source
Makeshift housing in a North Dakota oil boom town (source) If each person creates half a job, the original 1,000 oilmen attract 500 service workers, those 500 attract another 250, and so on until population stabilizes at 2,000 people. In this model, if there are fewer than 2,000 houses in the town, demand exceeds supply (no matter what is going on in the rest of the country), but if there are more than 2,000, supply exceeds demand. So if we imagine Google’s presence as an oil-like resource, the extra demand for housing in the Bay should gradually decline: at some point, you will have finished housing the Google workers and the service workers who support them. But this isn’t right either, because Google isn’t a natural resource - it’s a company founded by Bay Area residents. If you got more Bay Area residents, you would (with some delay) get more Googles. Or: Austin gets lots of jobs from Tesla. Tesla wasn’t founded by Austinites. But it moved to Austin when it became a known “tech hub”, ie a place with lots of tech companies and tech employees. It wouldn’t have moved to Austin if Austin was still an uninhabited plain or a one-horse town. So as Austin got bigger, it attracted more tech companies. So in both the Bay Area case and the Austin case, having more people attracted more tech companies, either because the residents themselves found the company or because the company gets attracted to this newly bustling city. Potential counterargument: Each new Bay Area resident gives the Bay another lottery ticket to found the next Google. If having the first Google gets it an extra 1 million people, but there are 300 million people in the US, then those extra 1 million only give it a 1/300 chance of winning the next lottery. So even though the Bay Area won the lottery once, and this made it have high demand, this doesn’t mean the high demand will cause it to win more lotteries. If you win the lottery once, spend all your winnings on more lottery tickets, and keep doing this forever, you haven’t invented an infinite money printing machine, eventually you’ll just lose. Potential counter-counter-argument: the Bay got Google, and Facebook, and Apple, and . . . so these can’t all be separate lotteries. I think you should probably model it as a high-level lottery to become the next hub of a tech-sized industry, plus many low-level lotteries where once you’re the tech hub, you’re attracting lots of techies, and each techie gives you a ticket in a lottery where the denominator is the number of techies to found the next big tech company. And the Bay might have half the US’s techie population. So maybe here there is a self-sustaining lottery-winning cycle, at least until tech plays itself out and nobody wants any more tech companies. And that might take a long time. Tom (author of Tom Thought) writes: The primary drivers of demand for living in NYC are the specific opportunities available in NYC. It is true that on long time horizons, one of the reasons these opportunities have tended to collect in NYC is that it is a dense place. But those aren't the only reasons - NYC is much more important than other, bigger cities in other parts of the world for complex historical reasons. Even if a catastrophe were to wipe out half the city, there would still be a great deal of demand to live near important institutions like Broadway, Wall Street, Port of NY & NJ, Columbia, etc (assuming those institutions survived the catastrophe). Increasing the number of housing units has a very mechanical impact on how many people can live in the place. But it has only a second-order impact on the types of institutions that drive demand to live in the city. People don't just generically crave to live near other people for the most part (a handful of urbanist freaks like myself excepted). The Bay Area is a great example of this. It is much less populated than other much cheaper cities. Density isn't why people want to live there - it's access to a specific culture and specific institutions. Demand for that is not simply a function of density - some people want to be part of Bay Area culture and others don't. Adding more units will induce some demand as a second-order effect, but will bring prices down as a first-order effect. To relate this to your model: we might be able to say that the country has a certain number of abstract "culture points" that have been allocated to different cities by various historical forces. Each culture point a city has increases demand to live in that city by a certain amount. Adding more people to the city may allow it to generate additional culture points over time, or acquire culture points from other cities, but this doesn't happen right away, and is determined by a host of factors other than just density. Under this model, we expect a place like NYC to always cost much more than North Dakota (since NYC possesses a large number of culture points), but we would also expect that adding additional housing units to NYC would bring costs down (since there are now additional housing units per culture point). Perhaps this process will over time allow NYC to steal away some culture points from Chicago, Boston, or other cities, but this is a secondary effect. This just seems to be passing the buck. Yes, people move to New York because it has Broadway, Columbia University, and Wall Street. Why does it have those things? Because one in every X New York citizens founds a good artistic/educations/financial institution, and New York has a large population of employees to work at those institutions and customers to patronize those institutions. If Conanicut Island had a population of 10 million people instead of Manhattan, there would be lots of great institutions on Conanicut and it would have more culture points. I don’t think it’s a culture-point game and population/density just sort of occasionally redistributes culture points, I think to a first approximation culture points just track population/density. Maybe they track the population/density of upper class people better than the total population/density, but I don’t think this is a big enough distinction to sink the argument. 3. Comments About Chinese Ghost Cities Some people brought these up as a good natural experiment: the Chinese really did try building millions of houses on their equivalent of a North Dakota plain. What happened? Jeremiah Johnson (author of Infinite Scroll) writes: You currently seem like you're at the stage of understanding the thought experiments pretty well, but not understanding them on a DEEP level. For example with your hypothetical, this has actually happened before! Kind of. China built a bunch of 'ghost cities' basically out of nothing, and while there was an initial craze of speculation and tons of investment and building... nobody went to live in those cities most of the time. And now they're deeply distressed assets worth basically nothing. When nobody actually lives in the ghost city, it doesn't matter that they have super dense housing. There's no demand. (the only reason they might be worth something is that the CCP very, very much does not want to pop their huge housing bubble and is likely to bail out some of the parties involved) Parmenides (author of Last House On The Left) writes: I think your mixing up the agglomeration effects of density, which is what induces the demand, and the housing supply. You can't just build a city and expect people to move in, China has tried that. But if you have the agglomeration effects of density and shortage of housing due to artificial constraints, which we have all across the US, then you get dense areas with high housing costs. sdwr writes: Think of China's ghost cities / apartment blocks. Prices surely can't be that high there. Maybe the answer is that developers are good at their job, and build supply where theres demand for it? But several other people object that although the Western press made a big deal about Chinese ghost cities a few years ago, it mostly just took a couple of years for people to move in, and now at least some of them seem to be thriving. For example, Michael quotes the Wikipedia article, Under-occupied Developments In China: Reporting in 2018, Shepard noted that "Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities". Ash Lael writes: I'm sceptical of the Chinese "ghost city" phenomenon. I haven't explored the issue rigorously but my impression is that in areas that were previously dismissed as "ghost cities" like Ordos Kangbashi, the population is now large and growing. I think we in the west are so used to infrastructure bottlenecks and short sightedness and anti-construction policies that the idea of it being possible to build the housing and infrastructure to accomodate expected demand ten years in the future is completely foreign to us. Perhaps building brand new cities before they are even needed is what the YIMBY utopia looks like. See also Bloomberg: China’s Ghost Cities Are Finally Stirring To Life After Years Of Empty Streets. This wasn’t trivial. It looks like the Chinese government had to put in some work to make people move in, including opening good schools and universities there. Probably if they had just built apartments in the middle of the desert and nothing else, they would have stayed empty. But that’s even more of a reductio ad absurdum than the original ghost city plan. Kangbashi, China’s most famous ghost city. What are housing prices like in the ghost city? Again from Bloomberg: Sitting on the southern outskirts of Inner Mongolia’s Ordos City (population 2.2 million), Kangbashi was the archetypal ghost city 10 years ago, with barren boulevards and empty buildings standing forlornly in the desert. Local officials are adamant that things have changed. They say 91% of homes in the district are occupied. In fact, after a yearslong construction freeze, the government approved six housing projects in 2020 and expects 3,000 homes to be built by the end of this year. Apartments in a new development are selling for 9,500 yuan per square meter, and downtown they go for 15,000 to 16,000 yuan, according to Liu Yueyue, 28, a salesman at a new residential development in the district’s northeast. “Would houses in a ghost town sell at such high prices?” asks Liu. Half of his customers come from outside Kangbashi, and most are parents who want to send their children to the well-regarded local schools, he says. Looking at this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Kangbashi seems squarely in the middle - for example, Wuhan and Xian are also in the 15,000 - 16,000 range. I claim this supports my argument: surely twenty years ago, houses in this particular deserted corner of Inner Mongolia would have been dirt cheap (if any even existed). But if you build a city there, it becomes just as expensive as any other city! Here it’s very obvious that the density caused the high prices instead of the other way around. Still, the Chinese housing market is weird, with significant vacancies even in expensive, well-developed cities. Paul Botts: No official vacancy rates are published in China and no specific definition of it exists there. Various think tanks and researchers both within that country and elsewhere have published estimates ranging from as low as 11 percent to as high as 24 percent. Those estimates have been for varying samples of Chinese cities, have used various definitions of housing vacancy rate, etc. The best (as in most systematic) estimate yet produced has come from researchers at a university in Liaoning. They used night-time urban lightsheds captured by a new (2018 launch) Chinese satellite having a new level of light sensing technology which allows separating out light from parks and plazas. They covered a large sample (49 cities), and made their sample representative of city type, city size, regions within China, etc. They also crossed-referenced with local housing data to ensure accurate balancing of their sample and to confirm that the satellite was successfully identifying light coming from housing blocks. They found vacancy rates of just under 20 percent in China's Tier 1 cities, and found rates above 20 percent in 40 of the 49 cities. They found the highest vacancy rates in western and northeastern cities, which are also the newest ones; that finding is consistent with the hypothesis of significant numbers of recently-built ghost cities. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data And Phil H (author of the blog Tang Poetry) writes: The price of housing in China has skyrocketed over the past few decades, as all those extra apartments have been built. I live in a pleasant but unremarkable southern city, and I paid London prices (about 4.5m yuan/$650k for a 1,300 sq ft flat). That seems to match Scott's hypothesis that high density leads to high prices. House prices here have risen much faster than incomes. They've risen in rural areas, too, but the increases in price in cities have been stratospheric. 4. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Considering Tokyo, Even Though I Included A Section In The Post On Why I Didn’t Think Tokyo Was Relevant I won’t name and shame people, but for example: You excluded Tokyo from your dataset. Tokyo has much higher density than SF and much lower price per sqft. Tokyo just kills this. Tokyo is bigger than New York and has significantly lower rent because they build more housing! This is in a wealthy country with even lower interest rates than the US. I don't think you have justified excluding non-US metros, like Tokyo, or Auckland. Doesn't this lead to the natural conclusion that there is a sufficient level of housing to build, and that the problem is that the USA's many metros are structured to prevent housing? It seems like you're just arguing that US metros are bad at building housing, which is also what Matt Yglesias is arguing. "Change my mind about housing, but don't mention Tokyo" is like saying "Change my mind about gun possession, but don't mention Switzerland." You can't test the effect of allowing new housing unless you're willing to look at cities that do, in fact, allow it. Tokyo and NYC both attract tons of new residents But Tokyo's housing rents have been stable, while NYC rents keep rising. Why? Tokyo has permissive housing construction laws. NYC makes building new housing almost illegal. Yes, dense cities are attractive, and that makes them get more dense over time. But it only makes them more expensive if you forbid new housing to keep up with the new residents. Tokyo! But I’m like the 10th person to bring it up… As I wrote on the original post (not even edited in! it’s been there the whole time!): I worry someone will bring up Tokyo as a counterexample. But I think Tokyo managed to build its way to low housing prices in the context of the rest of Japan also having good housing policy. Even if that isn’t true, Tokyo on its own is a quarter of the Japanese market, so it might be able to exhaust the entire pool of Japanese house-seekers by itself! That is, yes, you’re all correct that cities are only expensive in the context of more demand for city housing than the (NIMBY-constrained) city housing market can currently supply. You are all correct that if this problem were solved at the national level, then city housing would be cheap, and every additional city house would make it cheaper. My claim is that marginal changes - like Oakland building an extra 10,000 units, but everyone else staying the same - will most likely increase Oakland prices. Yes, if Oakland unilaterally built 50 million units, that would soak up the entire excess demand and probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). Yes, if the entire US switched to good housing policy at the same time, that would probably lower prices everywhere (including Oakland). But if we don’t do any of that stuff, and just build another 10,000 houses in Oakland, I think it would probably increase prices in Oakland. Some other people brought up that Japan has a declining population, and it’s much easier to have low house prices when your population is declining (compared to some previous time when number of houses presumably matched number of people), but ddd pointed out that people continue to migrate from the Japanese countryside to Tokyo, so its population continues to increase. Also, Mike (I’m stitching together two comments here): In a country with a declining population, you would expect that fewer homes are being built per capita because there's little to no competition for existing homes. But it's exactly the opposite! Japan builds far more homes per capita than the US does, despite their declining population […] As a result, the average Japanese home is very new and the average house is torn down and replaced after a relatively short 30 years. They're living in nice new homes for cheaper. 5. Comments Accusing Me Of Not Understanding Economics Maximum Limelihood Estimator writes: I think you're making a very common mistake here of confusing supply/demand with *quantity* supplied or quantity demanded. (This is very common! we teach students about this in micro 101 because it's so easy to make!) What you're seeing is that the quantity supplied is correlated with housing prices (true!). But this is very different from establishing that the supply curve--i.e. the amount of housing that would be produced at any given price, and what moves up/down when we regulate/deregulate supply--is positively correlated with price. Figuring out what supply curves look like is a lot less intuitive and requires some high-grade econometrics, which is why economists had to set up a whole commission just to study this particular problem (the Cowles Commission). In terms of resources for understanding how these concepts are different, a micro 101 textbook will cover this distinction. For the econometrics side of this, I've heard good things about Scott Cunningham's *Causal Inference Mixtape*, although I haven't personally used it. My claim is that increasing density within a city shifts the demand curve for housing within that city, because of increasing desirability. MLE later gets more on point: The effect you're discussing here is kind of real in a sense. When the marginal utility of housing increases for *other* people, density arguably becomes more desirable for me, which is kind of like the demand curve shifting up. These are called bandwagon goods and discussed here: http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf In theory, the bandwagon effect could be so strong that parts of the demand curve are upward-sloping. Solutions like this are not, technically, prohibited by the laws of mathematics, just the laws of economics. (And arguably of physics--see paper for conditions where these kinds of bandwagon effects imply the amount of housing in the city would have to be negative). In practice, this effect exists but just can't overcome the normal, non-weird economics that says "making more of a good makes the prices fall." Again, I claim the existence of Manhattan vs. Conanicut shows that sometimes it does. I cannot find the words “housing”, “real estate”, or “land value” anywhere in that paper. Alex Poterack writes: There's two things going on here: confusing shifts in demand with movement along the demand curve, and getting causation backwards. You're assuming density causes prosperity, rather than prosperity causing density. There are ways the former can happen, but the bigger thing is that, for a wide range of historical reasons, you can make a lot of money in NYC and SF, so lots of people want to live there, so they get very dense. This is the prosperity shifting demand right, so at any given price, more people want to live there; this drives prices up, and they go higher the more fixed supply is. If you built a bunch of housing in Oakland, lots of people would move there because it's cheaper, which is movement along the demand curve; it's still the same number of people who want to live there at any price. Now, it's possible that the increased number of people living there makes the city more prosperous (this is the phenomenon of induced demand), which would shift demand right, but there are way more differences between NYC/SF and Oakland than just the density, so I don't think it would shift demand enough to offset this. In particular, if it's just a small increase in small, it's also a small increase in density, so there's almost no shift in demand (but there is movement along the curve). I still think this is missing my point, but I present it here in case anyone else is enlightened by it and wants to try further to convince me I’m making this mistake. 6. Comments By Famous People Who Potentially Have Good Opinions Scott Sumner is an economist and blogger; he writes: It is certainly the case that building more housing can make a city more desirable, and that this effect could be so strong that it overwhelms the price depressing impact of a greater quantity supplied. But studies suggest that this is not generally the case. Texas provides a nice case study. Among Texas’s big metro areas, Austin has the tightest restrictions on building and Houston is the most willing to allow dense infill development. Even though Houston is the larger city, house prices are far higher in Austin: Houston pretty much describes the “Oakland with more housing” outcome that Alexander views as somewhat far-fetched. Only in this case, it’s Austin with more housing. Alexander seems too quick to accept the, “If you build it they will come” idea—that you can build more housing and thereby boost demand so much that prices actually rise. I started the post with a graph of about 50 cities, showing a positive correlation between density and price. I’m having trouble seeing how Sumner’s point isn’t just “if you remove 48 of those cities and cherry-pick two, the relationship is negative”. My attempt to place Austin and Houston on the original graph, using Sumner’s data plus a few other things available online. Why weren’t they on there already? Maybe because the graph is metro areas and Sumner was talking about Austin and Houston as cities, but I’m not sure and agree this is confusing. Everyone knows Austin is more expensive than Houston because Austin is a trendy tech and culture hub and Houston isn’t (and relatedly, because Austin’s median family income is 50% higher than Houston’s). Unless someone wants to claim that its failure to build housing helped turn it into a trendy tech and culture hub, I don’t think there’s much point to this comparison. It’s true that Houston’s bigger size didn’t let it leapfrog over Austin to become a trendy tech and culture hub, which goes against some of what I claimed in the first part of this post. But I never claimed there would be a perfect 1-1 correlation between city size and trendiness, or that you could never find a pair of cities where one was bigger but the other was more trendy. Just that there would be a correlation. Moving on: Here’s the problem with this argument. It mixes up population change due to economic effects such as the benefits of agglomeration, with population changes due to regulatory changes such as less strict zoning. If you look at things this way, then the stylized facts work against Alexander’s argument. Over the past 50 years, increasingly strict zoning has reduced housing construction on big cities like New York and San Francisco. As a result, their populations have increased by less than in cities with less strict zoning, such as Houston. If Alexander were correct, then the price gap between the tightly controlled cities on the coast and the more laissez-faire cities of Middle America should have shrunk over time. Instead, the price gap has widened. New York and San Francisco were always more expensive than other cites, but with tighter zoning and less new construction the gap has become far wider. During the last fifty years, there was also deindustrialization and demographic sorting. This is just the Austin vs. Houston story all over again. Alexander is implicitly viewing this outcome as a “problem” for the city that builds more housing. They must sacrifice so that the rest of the country can gain. But in his scenario, Oakland is better off. Indeed if it were not better off, then why would more people choose to live in Oakland? In order for it to be true that building more housing boosts housing prices, it must also be true that the quality of existing houses (including neighborhood effects) rises by more than enough to offset the increase in supply. That means the new housing construction must make Oakland such a desirable place to live that the amenity effect overwhelms the quantity effect [...] Of course, economic change always has winners and losers. Here’s how I would describe the impact of allowing more housing construction in Oakland, in the unlikely event that this did raise housing prices: 1. America would benefit. 2. Oakland would benefit. 3. Poor people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 4. Affluent people in America would benefit, in aggregate. 5. Homeowners in Oakland would benefit. 6. Some renters in Oakland would benefit (from a more economically dynamic city.) 7. Some renters in Oakland would suffer from higher rents. In the much more likely case where new housing construction would lower prices, the impact described in #5 and #7 might reverse. Either way, there is no defensible argument for not building more housing in Oakland, regardless of the impact on price. If building more housing reduces its price, then there is a strong argument for allowing more housing construction. If building more housing raises its price, then the argument for more construction is even stronger. I agree with all this. Jeremiah Johnson is a co-founder of the Center for New Liberalism, host of the Neoliberal Podcast, and a YIMBY activist (not to be confused with Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, who killed 300 Native Americans and ate their livers). He writes: Here's why you're wrong in a single sentence: Demand causes high prices, not new units. Prices are high in SF and NYC because those are desirable places to live for a huge number of people. People all over the country and the world would live there if they could, and prices reflect that. The fact that the densest cities are the most expensive is true. But the high prices are not caused by density - rather, the density and the high prices are both a consequence of crushingly high demand […] There's a feedback loop, but what matters here is the elasticity, which is less than one. We can measure this empirically. New housing lowers prices via the mechanism of adding supply, which is basic economics and how we expect markets to work. New housing could raise prices if it also made the city a more desirable place to live and shifted people's preferences, such that there was more demand to live there after the new housing is built. If you think it's unclear which of these effects would dominate, luckily we have empirical data that over and over and over shows adding housing supply does indeed lower prices on a local level. This is a fairly well established result that replicates well. edit: I'm actually thinking about drawing out the weighted DAG graphs here to make the conceptual stuff easier, but it would be pretty long. I'd love to do this as a guest post. I’m skeptical of the empirical results because they don’t match the much stronger “Manhattan vs. Conanicut island” empirical results, and if I try to think about why, the best explanation I can think of is that the Manhattan experiment has been going on longer (ie long enough for Manhattan’s extra residents to found businesses and institutions that attract new people). I’ve told him he can try pitching this guest post to me; in either case, I would be interested in seeing the graphs. Several other people also posted this graph that Johnson helped make famous: Hopefully by now you can predict my objection: the places in the southeast corner are mostly unfashionable red state Sun Belt cities; the places in the northwest corner are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities. My conclusion is that trendy liberal coastal cities are both more NIMBY and more desirable, and if you use this to draw any conclusions about housing policy you’ll just end up confused. But maybe I should take this same lesson to heart myself. Dense cities are mostly trendy liberal coastal cities; uninhabited tundra in North Dakota isn’t. Maybe the demand is just for trendy liberal coastal cities, and once you attain that status, extra density doesn’t matter that much. Maybe Oakland has already maxed out its “trendy liberal coastal city” status, and even if it became Manhattan-sized, it wouldn’t get any trendier, or would get trendier only with a long time lag. There are a few very trendy small coastal villages in California (think eg Sea Ranch); maybe these (rather than North Dakota) are the natural control group for San Francisco. I think they are still cheaper than SF, but maybe not by very much. Cameron Murray is a housing economist whose work some other commenters recommended; he also writes the blog Fresh Economic Thinking. He very kindly showed up and wrote: I think you are in general right that agglomeration effects are real, which is why bigger cities have higher value to residents. I agree that people move locations. But I think you can go a step further. If one city is growing faster and densifying, surely those people are not demanding homes in other cities and those cities build slower. This is part of the spatial equilibrium story that further makes claims about “build density and get cheap homes” less plausible. 7. My Final Thoughts + Poll Thanks to everyone who commented on this post and helped me refine my thoughts. I’m willing to concede the following points: It might be that only attracting the sort of educated people who found companies, universities, etc will make housing prices go up. Less educated people will take more jobs than they create and not ratchet up the city’s desirability level. (I’d previously told commenters talking about “gentrification” that it was irrelevant to the mechanism I was talking about here, but maybe it isn’t - maybe “gentrifiers” are the people creating more jobs and institutions than they consume, and so homes that attract them in particular will increase demand more than they increase supply? Maybe this discussion does reduce to the gentrification discussion?)
Inline links: source, Tom Thought, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!86gT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5788a8dd-c5ee-4111-be67-9c1533f7410b_335x172.png, Infinite Scroll, writes, Last House On The Left, writes, writes, quotes, Under-occupied Developments In China, writes, China’s Ghost Cities Are Finally Stirring To Life After Years Of Empty Streets., https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AAuI!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5d6a6159-a16f-45e3-b15a-e62cb2c73336_1200x900.jpeg, this list of real estate prices across Chinese cities, Paul Botts, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345092218_Housing_Vacancy_Rate_in_Major_Cities_in_China_Perspectives_from_Nighttime_Light_Data, Tang Poetry, writes, ddd pointed out, Mike, Maximum Limelihood Estimator, gets more on point, http://econfac.bsu.edu/research/workingpapers/bsuecwp200804gisser.pdf, writes, writes:, far higher in Austin, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tAF8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F03f2b338-da84-4d85-b71c-0ce2e02e10e1_685x559.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mLwn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9cf942da-5716-49e8-a177-20140681e7fc_573x421.png, Center for New Liberalism, the Neoliberal Podcast, Jeremiah “Liver-Eating” Johnson, Johnson helped make famous, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tg5t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc490a60a-3e97-4b73-9806-79bb967b5172_608x550.png, Sea Ranch, some other commenters, Fresh Economic Thinking, wrote
The Castro1 mentions across 1 issues

The Castro is a recurring place 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 "near the Castro in San Francisco". It most often appears alongside 1111 Brickell Ave, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City, 1970 Port Laurent place, Newport Beach 92660.

Reference entry
The Castro
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 30, 2024
Last seen
March 30, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, USA Contact: Jill and Daniel Contact Info: jill[dot]dma[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 20th, 11:00 AM Location: We'll be outside the cafe at the Randall Museum in Corona Heights (near the Castro) in San Francisco. The Randall Museum has a cafe, Cafe Josephine - we'll be sitting at a public park bench (by the overlook) just outside the cafe. Randall Museum is kid-friendly and has free admission, bathrooms, etc. We'll bring an ACX sign. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/849VQH76+XW Group Link: https://groups.google.com/g/bayarealesswrong Notes: We're bringing our kids (ages 1 and 3) - feel free to bring other small mammals. You can also get in touch with us at (415) 692-4814
Inline links: https://plus.codes/849VQH76+XW, https://groups.google.com/g/bayarealesswrong
The Central Valley1 mentions across 1 issues

The Central Valley is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 21, 2022 and September 21, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "This is called “The Central Valley”". It most often appears alongside 1995 to 2000, Arizona, Atonio Avalos.

Reference entry
The Central Valley
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 21, 2022
Last seen
September 21, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Why Is The Central Valley So Bad?
September 21, 2022 · Original source
You might notice it has a big valley in the center. This is called “The Central Valley”. Sometimes it also gets called the San Joaquin Valley in the south, or the the Sacramento Valley in the north. The Central Valley is mostly farms - a little piece of the Midwest in the middle of California. If the Midwest is flyover country, the Central Valley is drive-through country, with most Californians experiencing it only on their way between LA and SF. Most, myself included, drive through as fast as possible. With a few provisional exceptions - Sacramento, Davis, some areas further north - the Central Valley is terrible. It’s not just the temperatures, which can reach 110°F (43°C) in the summer. Or the air pollution, which by all accounts is at crisis level. Or the smell, which I assume is fertilizer or cattle-related. It’s the cities and people and the whole situation. A short drive through is enough to notice poverty, decay, and homeless camps worse even than the rest of California. But I didn’t realize how bad it was until reading this piece on the San Joaquin River. It claims that if the Central Valley were its own state, it would be the poorest in America, even worse than Mississippi. This was kind of shocking. I always think of Mississippi as bad because of a history of racial violence, racial segregation, and getting burned down during the Civil War. But the Central Valley has none of those things, plus it has extremely fertile farmland, plus it’s in one of the richest states of the country and should at least get good subsidies and infrastructure. How did it get so bad? II. First of all, is this claim true? I can’t find official per capita income statistics for the Central Valley, separate from the rest of California, but you can find all the individual counties here. When you look at the ones in the Central Valley, you get a median per capita income of $21,729 (this is binned by counties, which might confuse things, but by good luck there are as many people in counties above the median-income county as below it, so probably not by very much). This is indeed lower than Mississippi’s per capita income of $25,444, although if you look by household or family income, the Central Valley does better again. I looked for photos of the Central Valley to illustrate this article, but none of them were quite as I remember it. This one from Sacramento Bee is the closest I could find. But imagine it through a layer of haze, and also you can’t see well because you are in the process of dying from heatstroke. Of large Central Valley cities, Sacramento has a median income of $33,565 (but it’s the state capital, which inflates it with politicians and lobbyists), Fresno of $25,738, and Bakersfield of $30,144. Compare to Mississippi, where the state capital of Jackson has $23,714, and numbers 2 and 3 cities Gulfport and Southhaven have $25,074 and $34,237. Overall Missisippi comes out worse here, and none of these seem horrible compared to eg Phoenix with $31,821. Given these numbers (from Google), urban salaries in the Central Valley don’t seem so bad. But when instead I look directly at this list of 280 US metropolitan areas by per capita income, numbers are much lower. Bakersfield at $15,760 is 260th/280, Fresno is 267th, and only Sacramento does okay at 22nd. Mississippi cities come in at 146, 202, and 251. Maybe the difference is because Google’s data is city proper and the list is metro area? Still, it seems fair to say that the Central Valley is at least somewhat in the same league as Mississippi, even though exactly who outscores whom is inconsistent. III. What do the people who live in the Valley think went wrong? What The Hell Is Wrong With California’s Central Valley?, starting around 9:30, interviews a local conservative realtor (most people in the Valley are conservative; I haven’t found a liberal equivalent). He says that the farms in the Central Valley used to be manned by migrant workers, who would come from Mexico, work for a season, then go back to Mexico and live off their earnings for the rest of the year. Later, policies shifted to welcoming them and granting them citizenship, so many of them came over and brought their families. But around the same time there was a drought, the farm industry crashed, the remaining farms mechanized, all the immigrants were left without work, they got on welfare, and they weren’t able to get off of it. He doesn’t say exactly when this happened, but he says times were good when he was a child, and he looks like he’s in his 30s or 40s. So if he’s 35 and things started going bad when he was 10, that would mean he thinks things started going bad around 1995 to 2000. Here’s a story in the LA Times from 1999, which talks about how things are starting to get bad. It admits that Californians like to poke fun at the Central Valley, but it seems to be just that - poking fun - and not freaking out about poverty and dysfunction the way articles about the Valley do now. But it ends by saying that things are getting worse: To be honest, living in the Central Valley takes some getting used to, especially if you’re from the coast. It’s an acquired taste. Oppressive heat in summer. Depressing tule fog in winter. Sure, fall and spring are OK. But where aren’t they? First-rate culture is scarce. The state capital doesn’t even have a symphony. One of the attractions--it’s almost a local joke--is the ability to get away, particularly from Sacramento. It’s 90 minutes to San Francisco in one direction, or skiing in another; two hours-plus to the ocean or Tahoe […] Still, earthquakes aren’t a menace to most people. And it doesn’t take long before you begin to appreciate certain benefits--indeed, to understand that some Central Valley burgs, especially the capital, are among California’s best kept secrets. Or, at least, they have been. Continuing: When I moved here nearly 40 years ago--the first of three times--summer skies were blue and the stars bright. Fishing was easy in the rivers and pheasant hunting was 10 minutes from town--in fact, where I now live. All this good life, however, has been changing. Sacramento is now the sixth smoggiest area in the country. A gloomy, beige pall greets motorists as they descend from the Sierra. Even worse is the San Joaquin Valley, from Stockton to Bakersfield. It’s rated the nation’s fourth smoggiest region […] And this brings us to the root problem: a population explosion, fed notably by commuters spilling over the Grapevine from L.A. into Bakersfield, and from the Bay Area into the northern San Joaquin Valley, turning farms into houses and freeways into parking lots. In Sacramento, high-tech industry is generating jobs and sprawl. Up and down the valley, people without job skills are having babies and going on welfare. Many are immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia. “The population is growing at a faster pace than the economy,” notes Dan Whitehurst, a former Fresno mayor who is running again. “Livability is becoming more of an issue. But the biggest issue still is jobs.” That’s because, aside from Sacramento, the Central Valley has not cashed in on California’s economic boom. Unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley is roughly double the state average. It’s smoggy. Traffic’s getting worse. Farms are disappearing. There aren’t enough jobs. And, says pollster Mark Baldassare, people are “myopic” about their plight. It finishes: “We have a huge problem. ‘No way L.A.’ has been our slogan. But if we build nonstop houses, we’ll be worse than L.A. because we’ll have destroyed our [farm] economic base. . . . There’s no regional leadership. More state officials need to decide this area matters and poke their heads up out of the fog.” The fog and the smog. If not, one day there’ll be no getting used to the place. This is a weird article. It seems to confirm that things used to be better - nobody would call the Central Valley “the good life” now. But its concerns are smog, sprawl, and decreasing share of agriculture. These seem like the problems of somewhere that’s growing - local NIMBYs complaining that too many people want to move in. Today the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave. The piece sort of touches on poverty - “people without job skills are having babies and going on welfare” and “the population is growing at a faster pace than the economy” - but it’s still a weird emphasis, and one that makes me think of this as supporting the “problems were starting in the 90s” view. But by 2012, things were clearly very bad - here’s an article about how Census Shows Central Valley Areas Among Poorest In Nation. It says: Experts say the poverty problem in the nation’s agricultural powerhouse is deeply ingrained. The most important barrier is the valley’s lack of economic diversity. There are simply too few good nonagricultural jobs around and jobs in agriculture tend to be low-wage ones — except for those who run agribusinesses. “It’s a pretty ag-heavy region, so the inequality of wages and the opportunity to earn better wages is really skewed,” said Caroline Farrell, executive director of the Delano-based Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. “If you own a farm, you’re apt to earn more wealth, while if you’re a farmworker, don’t earn very much.” The valley has not been able to bring or retain many new companies partly because it lacks a qualified workforce, said Atonio Avalos, associate professor of economics at Fresno State University. “We have an issue of skills mismatch,” Avalos said. “Companies may be offering jobs, but the skills of people in the valley are not ones they are looking for.” Students who want to get a college degree face many barriers, he said, and public funding for education is being slashed. Those who do graduate leave to find jobs elsewhere. The valley also doesn’t offer attractive amenities and has serious problems such as air pollution that have gone unaddressed. “If you’re a doctor or engineer, there are other places where you can make good money and live in better conditions,” Avalos said. “Many people don’t come here or leave because of the high incidence of asthma and other respiratory problems.” This sounds like things were already pretty bad in 2012, maybe bad enough that they must have been getting worse for longer than 10 or 15 years, I don’t know. IV. What do the data say? Here are some economic time series. I couldn’t find any good long-term ones; the least bad one comes from this unsourced report: Here it looks like things got worse from 1975 - 1985, and then depending on county there was a slower-to-imperceptible decline thereafter. FRED only has data since 1989, but agrees that things haven’t gotten worse since then. Here’s unemployment: Is this just because people got discouraged (or on welfare) and stopped seeking employment, and so stopped showing up in the statistics? Here’s a graph of Total Employed Persons: In 1990, 303,000 people were employed out of a population of 354,000. In 2022, 430,000 people were employed out of a population of 542,000. So labor participation rate went from 86% to 79%. But national labor force participation decreased by about the same amount during that time, so I don’t think we should overemphasize that. And here are some other graphs I found useful: Fresno housing prices: Racial demographics: Source: Wikipedia. Central Valley cities like Fresno and Bakersfield aren’t really more Hispanic than other parts of California or Arizona, so if immigration or racial issues played a part it must have been more complicated than just numbers. Number of immigrants in California over time: Factors of productivity in agriculture: V. So why is the Central Valley so bad? It’s an agricultural region, but lots of places are agricultural. It got lots of immigrants, but no more than many other places. It’s polluted - but so was LA, and LA rebounded. This is just a weak guess, but I think it starts with their crops. The Midwest grows mostly corn and wheat. The Central Valley is more fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Corn and wheat are easier to harvest, so middle-class farmers can own the farm and buy a mechanical harvester or something. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts benefit from intensive manual picking, so farm owners hire outside labor. According to Carolina Demography: There are about 3 million farmworkers in the United States: about two million are family farmworkers and another one million are hired farmworkers…nationally, about three-fourths of hired farmworkers are foreign-born; most (69%) were born in Mexico; 6% were born in Central America; and 1% were born in another country. Given that these are mostly Mexican immigrants, we’re probably not talking about people who are hired to grow corn in Kansas. I think plausibly the majority of US hired farmworkers live in California’s Central Valley. This makes it a sort of plantation agriculture system, which naturally tends towards landowners taking all the gains and workers ending up as an underclass. In the mid-20th century, the local plantation underclass was made of Okies (cf. The Grapes of Wrath). In the later 20th century, many immigrants moved in, lowering wages. Although immigrants don’t usually lower wages, this is because there are usually lots of industries for people to branch out into, but the Central Valley only has agriculture. Also, agribusinesses were becoming better at mechanizing their operations. Although technology doesn’t usually lower wages, again, this requires lots of diverse industries, and the Central Valley only had agriculture. All of this corresponds to the 1975-1985 period on the graphs where wages were going down. But it sounded from some of the testimonials above like the Central Valley didn’t become truly miserable until the late 90s. I’m not sure why this is. It could be the immigrants switching from being migrant laborers to raising families, and those families were impacted by poverty and inequality in a way the original migrants weren’t. It could be worsening drug problems as new drugs get invented and go down in price. (I’m not sure if NIMBYism and rising house prices also played a part. House prices do seem to have risen, a lot, but I was under the impression that building things in the Central Valley was easy and most of a house’s price there is construction rather than land. I’m not sure why house prices would have gone up so much since 1990 if this were true, though.) Other things that the articles I read emphasized: There’s a severe drought in the Central Valley right now. This is probably partly climate change, partly bad luck, and partly California diverting water to hydrate growing coastal cities. This has made everything worse (but then why isn’t that reflected in worsening economic statistics?)
Inline links: by all accounts, this piece on the San Joaquin River, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dctN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3c613382-ec3d-421a-b13b-5fee75594959_1280x720.jpeg, Sacramento Bee, from Google, list of 280 US metropolitan areas by per capita income, What The Hell Is Wrong With California’s Central Valley, Here’s a story, Census Shows Central Valley Areas Among Poorest In Nation, this unsourced report, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!viUA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3cb60f00-5048-44dc-8ad3-49d9036437e8_632x382.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jJHH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf442355-432b-4ac1-b10d-2ebf17011084_1151x345.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oETP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe3e7f8-9e13-4295-b608-d071425d6adc_1116x300.png, decreased by about the same amount, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!is_P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F09af8185-c8cf-4879-999c-4643ec7d7079_989x590.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!K8wW!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce47fbd-0a84-4461-a96c-07a2d8130d4e_412x104.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vvxn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe95d035a-8dea-410c-8b8f-19acb145859e_676x356.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xlsr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F36965205-4cb9-4f93-b855-91cc6b9047b5_450x397.png, Carolina Demography, Okies
I looked for photos of the Central Valley to illustrate this article, but none of them were quite as I remember it. This one from Sacramento Bee is the closest I could find. But imagine it through a layer of haze, and also you can’t see well because you are in the process of dying from heatstroke. Of large Central Valley cities, Sacramento has a median income of $33,565 (but it’s the state capital, which inflates it with politicians and lobbyists), Fresno of $25,738, and Bakersfield of $30,144. Compare to Mississippi, where the state capital of Jackson has $23,714, and numbers 2 and 3 cities Gulfport and Southhaven have $25,074 and $34,237. Overall Missisippi comes out worse here, and none of these seem horrible compared to eg Phoenix with $31,821. Given these numbers (from Google), urban salaries in the Central Valley don’t seem so bad. But when instead I look directly at this list of 280 US metropolitan areas by per capita income, numbers are much lower. Bakersfield at $15,760 is 260th/280, Fresno is 267th, and only Sacramento does okay at 22nd. Mississippi cities come in at 146, 202, and 251. Maybe the difference is because Google’s data is city proper and the list is metro area? Still, it seems fair to say that the Central Valley is at least somewhat in the same league as Mississippi, even though exactly who outscores whom is inconsistent. III. What do the people who live in the Valley think went wrong? What The Hell Is Wrong With California’s Central Valley?, starting around 9:30, interviews a local conservative realtor (most people in the Valley are conservative; I haven’t found a liberal equivalent). He says that the farms in the Central Valley used to be manned by migrant workers, who would come from Mexico, work for a season, then go back to Mexico and live off their earnings for the rest of the year. Later, policies shifted to welcoming them and granting them citizenship, so many of them came over and brought their families. But around the same time there was a drought, the farm industry crashed, the remaining farms mechanized, all the immigrants were left without work, they got on welfare, and they weren’t able to get off of it. He doesn’t say exactly when this happened, but he says times were good when he was a child, and he looks like he’s in his 30s or 40s. So if he’s 35 and things started going bad when he was 10, that would mean he thinks things started going bad around 1995 to 2000. Here’s a story in the LA Times from 1999, which talks about how things are starting to get bad. It admits that Californians like to poke fun at the Central Valley, but it seems to be just that - poking fun - and not freaking out about poverty and dysfunction the way articles about the Valley do now. But it ends by saying that things are getting worse: To be honest, living in the Central Valley takes some getting used to, especially if you’re from the coast. It’s an acquired taste. Oppressive heat in summer. Depressing tule fog in winter. Sure, fall and spring are OK. But where aren’t they? First-rate culture is scarce. The state capital doesn’t even have a symphony. One of the attractions--it’s almost a local joke--is the ability to get away, particularly from Sacramento. It’s 90 minutes to San Francisco in one direction, or skiing in another; two hours-plus to the ocean or Tahoe […] Still, earthquakes aren’t a menace to most people. And it doesn’t take long before you begin to appreciate certain benefits--indeed, to understand that some Central Valley burgs, especially the capital, are among California’s best kept secrets. Or, at least, they have been. Continuing: When I moved here nearly 40 years ago--the first of three times--summer skies were blue and the stars bright. Fishing was easy in the rivers and pheasant hunting was 10 minutes from town--in fact, where I now live. All this good life, however, has been changing. Sacramento is now the sixth smoggiest area in the country. A gloomy, beige pall greets motorists as they descend from the Sierra. Even worse is the San Joaquin Valley, from Stockton to Bakersfield. It’s rated the nation’s fourth smoggiest region […] And this brings us to the root problem: a population explosion, fed notably by commuters spilling over the Grapevine from L.A. into Bakersfield, and from the Bay Area into the northern San Joaquin Valley, turning farms into houses and freeways into parking lots. In Sacramento, high-tech industry is generating jobs and sprawl. Up and down the valley, people without job skills are having babies and going on welfare. Many are immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia. “The population is growing at a faster pace than the economy,” notes Dan Whitehurst, a former Fresno mayor who is running again. “Livability is becoming more of an issue. But the biggest issue still is jobs.” That’s because, aside from Sacramento, the Central Valley has not cashed in on California’s economic boom. Unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley is roughly double the state average. It’s smoggy. Traffic’s getting worse. Farms are disappearing. There aren’t enough jobs. And, says pollster Mark Baldassare, people are “myopic” about their plight. It finishes: “We have a huge problem. ‘No way L.A.’ has been our slogan. But if we build nonstop houses, we’ll be worse than L.A. because we’ll have destroyed our [farm] economic base. . . . There’s no regional leadership. More state officials need to decide this area matters and poke their heads up out of the fog.” The fog and the smog. If not, one day there’ll be no getting used to the place. This is a weird article. It seems to confirm that things used to be better - nobody would call the Central Valley “the good life” now. But its concerns are smog, sprawl, and decreasing share of agriculture. These seem like the problems of somewhere that’s growing - local NIMBYs complaining that too many people want to move in. Today the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave. The piece sort of touches on poverty - “people without job skills are having babies and going on welfare” and “the population is growing at a faster pace than the economy” - but it’s still a weird emphasis, and one that makes me think of this as supporting the “problems were starting in the 90s” view. But by 2012, things were clearly very bad - here’s an article about how Census Shows Central Valley Areas Among Poorest In Nation. It says: Experts say the poverty problem in the nation’s agricultural powerhouse is deeply ingrained. The most important barrier is the valley’s lack of economic diversity. There are simply too few good nonagricultural jobs around and jobs in agriculture tend to be low-wage ones — except for those who run agribusinesses. “It’s a pretty ag-heavy region, so the inequality of wages and the opportunity to earn better wages is really skewed,” said Caroline Farrell, executive director of the Delano-based Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. “If you own a farm, you’re apt to earn more wealth, while if you’re a farmworker, don’t earn very much.” The valley has not been able to bring or retain many new companies partly because it lacks a qualified workforce, said Atonio Avalos, associate professor of economics at Fresno State University. “We have an issue of skills mismatch,” Avalos said. “Companies may be offering jobs, but the skills of people in the valley are not ones they are looking for.” Students who want to get a college degree face many barriers, he said, and public funding for education is being slashed. Those who do graduate leave to find jobs elsewhere. The valley also doesn’t offer attractive amenities and has serious problems such as air pollution that have gone unaddressed. “If you’re a doctor or engineer, there are other places where you can make good money and live in better conditions,” Avalos said. “Many people don’t come here or leave because of the high incidence of asthma and other respiratory problems.” This sounds like things were already pretty bad in 2012, maybe bad enough that they must have been getting worse for longer than 10 or 15 years, I don’t know. IV. What do the data say? Here are some economic time series. I couldn’t find any good long-term ones; the least bad one comes from this unsourced report: Here it looks like things got worse from 1975 - 1985, and then depending on county there was a slower-to-imperceptible decline thereafter. FRED only has data since 1989, but agrees that things haven’t gotten worse since then. Here’s unemployment: Is this just because people got discouraged (or on welfare) and stopped seeking employment, and so stopped showing up in the statistics? Here’s a graph of Total Employed Persons: In 1990, 303,000 people were employed out of a population of 354,000. In 2022, 430,000 people were employed out of a population of 542,000. So labor participation rate went from 86% to 79%. But national labor force participation decreased by about the same amount during that time, so I don’t think we should overemphasize that. And here are some other graphs I found useful: Fresno housing prices: Racial demographics: Source: Wikipedia. Central Valley cities like Fresno and Bakersfield aren’t really more Hispanic than other parts of California or Arizona, so if immigration or racial issues played a part it must have been more complicated than just numbers. Number of immigrants in California over time: Factors of productivity in agriculture: V. So why is the Central Valley so bad? It’s an agricultural region, but lots of places are agricultural. It got lots of immigrants, but no more than many other places. It’s polluted - but so was LA, and LA rebounded. This is just a weak guess, but I think it starts with their crops. The Midwest grows mostly corn and wheat. The Central Valley is more fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Corn and wheat are easier to harvest, so middle-class farmers can own the farm and buy a mechanical harvester or something. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts benefit from intensive manual picking, so farm owners hire outside labor. According to Carolina Demography: There are about 3 million farmworkers in the United States: about two million are family farmworkers and another one million are hired farmworkers…nationally, about three-fourths of hired farmworkers are foreign-born; most (69%) were born in Mexico; 6% were born in Central America; and 1% were born in another country. Given that these are mostly Mexican immigrants, we’re probably not talking about people who are hired to grow corn in Kansas. I think plausibly the majority of US hired farmworkers live in California’s Central Valley. This makes it a sort of plantation agriculture system, which naturally tends towards landowners taking all the gains and workers ending up as an underclass. In the mid-20th century, the local plantation underclass was made of Okies (cf. The Grapes of Wrath). In the later 20th century, many immigrants moved in, lowering wages. Although immigrants don’t usually lower wages, this is because there are usually lots of industries for people to branch out into, but the Central Valley only has agriculture. Also, agribusinesses were becoming better at mechanizing their operations. Although technology doesn’t usually lower wages, again, this requires lots of diverse industries, and the Central Valley only had agriculture. All of this corresponds to the 1975-1985 period on the graphs where wages were going down. But it sounded from some of the testimonials above like the Central Valley didn’t become truly miserable until the late 90s. I’m not sure why this is. It could be the immigrants switching from being migrant laborers to raising families, and those families were impacted by poverty and inequality in a way the original migrants weren’t. It could be worsening drug problems as new drugs get invented and go down in price. (I’m not sure if NIMBYism and rising house prices also played a part. House prices do seem to have risen, a lot, but I was under the impression that building things in the Central Valley was easy and most of a house’s price there is construction rather than land. I’m not sure why house prices would have gone up so much since 1990 if this were true, though.) Other things that the articles I read emphasized: There’s a severe drought in the Central Valley right now. This is probably partly climate change, partly bad luck, and partly California diverting water to hydrate growing coastal cities. This has made everything worse (but then why isn’t that reflected in worsening economic statistics?)
Inline links: Sacramento Bee, from Google, list of 280 US metropolitan areas by per capita income, What The Hell Is Wrong With California’s Central Valley, Here’s a story, Census Shows Central Valley Areas Among Poorest In Nation, this unsourced report, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!viUA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3cb60f00-5048-44dc-8ad3-49d9036437e8_632x382.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!jJHH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf442355-432b-4ac1-b10d-2ebf17011084_1151x345.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oETP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1fe3e7f8-9e13-4295-b608-d071425d6adc_1116x300.png, decreased by about the same amount, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!is_P!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F09af8185-c8cf-4879-999c-4643ec7d7079_989x590.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!K8wW!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6ce47fbd-0a84-4461-a96c-07a2d8130d4e_412x104.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vvxn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe95d035a-8dea-410c-8b8f-19acb145859e_676x356.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xlsr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F36965205-4cb9-4f93-b855-91cc6b9047b5_450x397.png, Carolina Demography, Okies
V. So why is the Central Valley so bad? It’s an agricultural region, but lots of places are agricultural. It got lots of immigrants, but no more than many other places. It’s polluted - but so was LA, and LA rebounded. This is just a weak guess, but I think it starts with their crops. The Midwest grows mostly corn and wheat. The Central Valley is more fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Corn and wheat are easier to harvest, so middle-class farmers can own the farm and buy a mechanical harvester or something. Fruits, vegetables, and nuts benefit from intensive manual picking, so farm owners hire outside labor. According to Carolina Demography: There are about 3 million farmworkers in the United States: about two million are family farmworkers and another one million are hired farmworkers…nationally, about three-fourths of hired farmworkers are foreign-born; most (69%) were born in Mexico; 6% were born in Central America; and 1% were born in another country. Given that these are mostly Mexican immigrants, we’re probably not talking about people who are hired to grow corn in Kansas. I think plausibly the majority of US hired farmworkers live in California’s Central Valley. This makes it a sort of plantation agriculture system, which naturally tends towards landowners taking all the gains and workers ending up as an underclass. In the mid-20th century, the local plantation underclass was made of Okies (cf. The Grapes of Wrath). In the later 20th century, many immigrants moved in, lowering wages. Although immigrants don’t usually lower wages, this is because there are usually lots of industries for people to branch out into, but the Central Valley only has agriculture. Also, agribusinesses were becoming better at mechanizing their operations. Although technology doesn’t usually lower wages, again, this requires lots of diverse industries, and the Central Valley only had agriculture. All of this corresponds to the 1975-1985 period on the graphs where wages were going down. But it sounded from some of the testimonials above like the Central Valley didn’t become truly miserable until the late 90s. I’m not sure why this is. It could be the immigrants switching from being migrant laborers to raising families, and those families were impacted by poverty and inequality in a way the original migrants weren’t. It could be worsening drug problems as new drugs get invented and go down in price. (I’m not sure if NIMBYism and rising house prices also played a part. House prices do seem to have risen, a lot, but I was under the impression that building things in the Central Valley was easy and most of a house’s price there is construction rather than land. I’m not sure why house prices would have gone up so much since 1990 if this were true, though.) Other things that the articles I read emphasized: There’s a severe drought in the Central Valley right now. This is probably partly climate change, partly bad luck, and partly California diverting water to hydrate growing coastal cities. This has made everything worse (but then why isn’t that reflected in worsening economic statistics?)
Inline links: Carolina Demography, Okies
the Congo1 mentions across 1 issues

the Congo is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 22, 2021 and December 22, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "war-torn parts of the Congo". It most often appears alongside aspirin, Astralcodexten Com, budesonide.

Reference entry
the Congo
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
December 22, 2021
Last seen
December 22, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The FDA Has Punted Decisions About Luvox Prescription To The Deepest Recesses Of The Human Soul
December 22, 2021 · Original source
I’m not saying doctors are generically cowards. My father is a doctor and he’s one of the bravest people I know. Every time there’s a typhoon or an earthquake in some terrorist-infested country on the other side of the world, he hops on a plane to go there and treat victims, sometimes before the rubble is even cold. If this was something simple, like treating river-blindness in war-torn parts of the Congo or containing an Ebola epidemic in Nigeria, I’m sure doctors would be all over it.
Still, I do want to stress the “facing the Devil” aspect, where this is a difficult moral battle. I know that’s a weird way to frame a prescription decision. But CS Lewis is a leading expert on devils and he was very clear that moral battles generally don’t happen in war-torn parts of the Congo. They happen in ordinary decisions about whether to do slightly unusual things that we worry might affect our social status among people we respect.
Inline links: he was very clear
the Delta1 mentions across 1 issues

the Delta is a recurring place 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 ""survey strangers on what 'the Delta' is""; ""survey strangers on what 'the Delta' is to get a sense of the magnitude of that bubble"". It most often appears alongside 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, 21st Century Salon, ACX.

Reference entry
the Delta
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
October 13, 2022
Last seen
October 13, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On The Central Valley
October 13, 2022 · Original source
The poverty and challenges of the Central Valley are super real. And it's no doubt great to see Bay-Area Californians peering outside of their bubble (walk around SF and survey strangers on what "the Delta" is to get a sense of the magnitude of that bubble). But this article amounts to the kind of naïve, drive-by opinion peddling that undermines nuance and so classically characterizes the self-assured attitudes that drive (similarly stupid) caricatures of "coastal elites."
The Great Wall of China1 mentions across 1 issues

The Great Wall of China is a recurring place 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 "he decided to upgrade the Great Wall of China". It most often appears alongside 1587, 1587, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 19, 2022
Last seen
August 19, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: 1587, A Year Of No Significance
August 19, 2022 · Original source
Facing a very different type of hostile force - the Mongols - he decided to upgrade the Great Wall of China. General Ch’i was responsible for “the construction of castlelike watchtowers along the Great Wall, designed to house 30 to 50 soldiers.” Around 1200 of these three-story towers were built according to his directions.
The Hague1 mentions across 1 issues

The Hague is a recurring place 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 "THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry
The Hague
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
August 26, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
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.
Inline links: 8FWR693H+GP2, LessWrong, Facebook group, 9F26RCWC+84, LessWrong, 8GJ5M8GW+J9, LessWrong, 8FQQRX38+V6W, LessWrong, 8G6MM3M3+Q6, LessWrong, 9F2P3CRW+FP7, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F7JMH38+GFP, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9GF6CPRH+MQ, LessWrong, 9GG65WMJ+2J, LessWrong, LessWrong group, 8FW4CP32+J8, LessWrong, Discord, matrix server, 8FW4V86J+GH, LessWrong, 8FM3HCQW+9H, LessWrong, https://twitter.com/lakesare, 8HH6MRQ2+WH, LessWrong, 9F28Q3HJ+9Q, LessWrong, here, 9F4MG9H4+4X, LessWrong, Google Calendar, 9F28WRMX+96H, LessWrong, 8FV9XVV2+V56, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Website, an Open Street Map link, 9F5FHX4H+RXC, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8FXC2C72+85X, LessWrong, our LessWrong page, 9F3F8F6X+R6, LessWrong, Telegram group, 9F3J8CM2+PF, LessWrong, 8FWFG3H5+XR, 8FWFG3H5+XR, LessWrong, 8G95WMQR+WRP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FVXG2CW+2H, LessWrong, 9C3HVGQ7+JQ, LessWrong, LessWrong profile, 9C5M8PRP+JV, LessWrong, LessWrong, LW profile, Telegram, 8FJJXP22+HC, LessWrong, 8FQFF6C4+9C, LessWrong, 8FQH9VXG+9J, LessWrong, 8FMGPC92+R44, LessWrong, Facebook, 8FHJVHP9+8F, LessWrong, 9G86X426+Q5Q, LessWrong, 9F469V89+W4, LessWrong, Rationality NL Discord server, 9F4629FG+66, LessWrong, 9F48F378+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9F37FMC5+VR, LessWrong, 9F4638J3+GP, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9FFGWPH7+QP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9F6W9JJ4+JW, LessWrong, 9F2X2WVX+V2, LessWrong, Facebook event, our Facebook group, 9G346HX8+FX, LessWrong, 9F4RCW5P+X3F, LessWrong, 9G4362G8+2V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, Meetup.com, 8CCGPRJW+V8, LessWrong, 8GP8C2HM+9X, LessWrong, 8GR5QH8F+MW, LessWrong, 8GP2RCP7+G7, LessWrong, 8FWV44X9+XW8, LessWrong, 8FRP3F3X+6V, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 8FH495QP+96, LessWrong, 8CGRC897+F8C, LessWrong, 8C9P92F6+3RG, LessWrong, 9F9HPX4C+39G, LessWrong, Facebook event, Telegram, 9FFW83RF+3M5, Facebook group, 8FR9XC2Q+4G, LessWrong, 8FR86548+J4, LessWrong, LessWrong, 8GHF22XG+23P, LessWrong, Partiful, 9C4WF3JX+7Q, LessWrong, 9C2XRVM6+3X, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 9C3VFC45+RJM, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9F426439+J9, LessWrong, Facebook event, 9C3RFRHH+W2, LessWrong, 9C7RWRW9+M8, 9C6V2657+WJR, LessWrong, 9C5X6C9R+XJ, LessWrong, 9C3XGWGH+3F7, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, Eventbrite, our mailing list, Meetup.com group, 9C5VFQG7+MH, LessWrong, Telegram, Monument Pilgrim Street bus stop, 9C7W294H+5V, LessWrong, 9C3WPQX6+QP9, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 9C2P5V8V+P9, LessWrong
the Hamptons1 mentions across 1 issues

the Hamptons is a recurring place 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 "some peasant village in medieval England had a tighter community than Malibu Beach or the Hamptons". It most often appears alongside Amish, Bay Area rationalist community, Christian media.

Reference entry
the Hamptons
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 05, 2025
Last seen
August 05, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP?
August 05, 2025 · Original source
(yes, admittedly this is the opposite of how things usually work - some peasant village in medieval England had a tighter community than Malibu Beach or the Hamptons. I guess I would claim that “so poor you can’t leave” and “so rich you can be wherever you want” are two different strategies, and liberalism is more suited to the latter.)
the Marina1 mentions across 1 issues

the Marina is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 28, 2023 and July 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "life in the traditional society of “the Marina”". It most often appears alongside 1923 Hyperinflation, Adolf Hitler, All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

Reference entry
the Marina
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 28, 2023
Last seen
July 28, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: On the Marble Cliffs
July 28, 2023 · Original source
His emotional range spans only from a kind of tired nostalgia to the reckless joy of intoxication, punctuated by his most prized feeling by far, the gleefully murderous “bloodthirst” of mortal combat. So everyone who had read some Jünger, which at the time of publication would likely include most of the German population and definitely most of the Nazis, could see right through the facade of fiction. It is an obvious conceit that made the book just barely publishable, in a time and place where saying outright that the Nazis were disgusting savages would have gotten everyone involved a headshot. After 1945, Jünger did admit that the book was (also) a commentary on the political reality of its time. And that he knew perfectly well that in publishing this “fiction” he was playing with his life. And still he got it published, uncensored, in Germany in 1939, just before Hitler started the second World War. Today the most widely accepted history of the subject is that Jünger was only saved from a grisly fate by the personal intervention of Hitler himself, who loved “Storm of Steel” and presumably wouldn't have liked to admit that his favorite author utterly despised him. And it would have been very tempting to just not admit that, because before the Nazis came to power, Jünger had sympathized with them, although he never counted himself among them. Hitler had sent Jünger fan letters; the responses have unfortunately been lost. Jünger’s many political rants in the 1920s do contain several explicit endorsements of the strength of the Nazis and of their value as allies to Jünger’s vague and contradictory nationalist cause. By the time he wrote the Marble Cliffs, he had stopped endorsing them. But this history made it easy for the Nazis to publicly pretend he had just written a fictional novella, or maybe he was talking about Bolshevism or something, but surely he didn’t mean them. It was an Emperor’s New Clothes situation, where nobody dared to say out loud what everyone could see. Although additional reprints were verboten in 1942, the excuse of a lack of paper due to the war was perfectly plausible and didn’t betray the discomfort with the content that nevertheless is well-documented to have been present among the Nazi ranks. All of that is to say we can safely dispense with the charade entirely and accept that this book is about the Nazis. It makes general points on the nature and fate of tyranny that do apply to Bolshevism, but the Nazis are the immediate and obvious instance of tyranny to which this book clearly reacts. And it is written by someone who had walked among the Nazis, had previously been friends with some of them, exchanged letters with many of the best-informed men especially in the military, and was perceptive enough for his opinions to deserve much of the confidence he states them with. Besides this conceit, the other concession to the political realities Jünger makes is that the book makes no mention of Jews. The world he is describing is fictional, but it is an amalgamation of European cultures that all had some Jews, so this absence is conspicuous. Obviously Jünger couldn't possibly have seen this book published if it depicted Jews in any way that wasn’t extremely negative. I guess he was unwilling to do that. In the 1920s, Jünger had ranted against “globalist” liberal Jews several times, and once even argued that one couldn't be both a Jew and a German. But he saw nothing wrong with being an orthodox Jew, openly admired Zionism, expressed in letters complete revulsion with Nazi antisemitism and had even publicly spoken out against the pseudoscientific racial theories of the Nazis. After writing this book, when serving as an officer again in France, Jünger went on to save a couple of French Jews from deportation and death, at moderate risk to his own life. Later he’d discuss the Kabbalah with Gershom Sholem, the brother of his childhood friend Werner Sholem. For these reasons, I imagine he did not see Jews negatively enough for the Nazis, and was too uncompromising to pretend that even his narrator did. I think this dilemma fully explains why there are no Jews in this book. In 1935, when Winston Churchill for example still publicly admired “the courage, the perseverance, and the vital force” of Adolf Hitler, Jünger claims to have already understood the bottomlessness of Hitler's depravity by noticing he was using the word “Vernichtung” (annihilation) way too much. He was remarkably right, years before most could see it, but even more remarkably his method of understanding was a poet's acute sense of word choice! And from then, even though he agreed with nationalist dictatorship as a goal and method, he distanced himself from National Socialism because he was disgusted with the vile character of the leader of this particular nationalist dictatorship. If that doesn't show you the peculiar kind of man Ernst Jünger was, I don't know what to tell you. The craft and the poetry You all know the wild grief that besets us when we remember times of happiness. How far beyond recall they are, and we are severed from them by something more pitiless than leagues and miles. The “marble cliffs” in the title of this short novella unite senses of beauty, majesty and danger, which is programmatic for this entire book. It begins with a visionary description of life in the traditional society of “the Marina” in an overwhelmingly beautiful state of paradise. The narrator lives on the edge of this society in a “hermitage” with his brother, his housekeeper and his son. The latter has a strange power over the local population of poisonous snakes. This opening act is without question the most elaborate celebration of poetic beauty I have ever read. Superficially it could be dismissed as purple prose. But due to Jünger’s clever use of poetic techniques in what at first appears to be prose text, there’s a rhythm, a density and a lucidity to it that makes it pretty much a very long poem, and gives it an intoxicating quality which is most apparent when you read it out loud. In the autumn we feasted like sages and did honour to the exquisite wines in which the southern slopes of the Marina abound. When in the vineyards between red foliage and dark grape clusters we caught the jocund calls of the vintagers, when in the little towns and villages the wine-presses began to creak, and the odour of the pressed grape skins drew its heady veils round the farms, we would go down to the innkeepers, coopers and wine-growers, and drink with them from the full-bellied jug. And there we would always meet with gay companions, for the land is rich and fair, so that in it flourishes untroubled leisure, and wit and humour are its unquestioned coin. I know this works, because I did an experiment. I read this book aloud, to a room full of people who were smoking pot. The book is short and the plan was to read all of it over the evening. I have read to pot smokers occasionally, but with this book it was different. They were enjoying it very much for the first couple of chapters, and exclaimed many times it was “perfect” for pot. But some hours, chapters and joints in, when the narrator goes on an expedition into a fantastically beautiful forest, they were so utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of the descriptions of nature they asked me to stop. I and the only other sober person in the room were the only ones who were willing to continue. We all had very intense dreams that night. Once we had broken through the thick hedge of dogwood and blackthorn we entered the high forest, territory where the blow of an axe had never resounded. The ancient trunks, the pride of the Chief Ranger, stood gleaming damp like pillars with their capitals hidden by the mist. We walked among them as if through a spacious hall, and, like the magic setting of a stage, festoons of ivy and clematis blooms hung down towards us out of the void. The ground was piled high with mould and rotting branches, in the bark of which fiery red mushrooms had sprung up, so that we felt for a moment like divers wandering among coral gardens. Wherever one of the mighty trunks had fallen from age or struck by lightning, we stepped out on to a little clearing on which the yellow foxglove grew in thick clumps. On the rotting ground the deadly nightshade bloomed in profusion; on its stalk the dark purple calices shook like funeral bells. It comes as no surprise that Jünger had much practice writing that way, from putting into his diaries a lot of his dreams and his numerous drug experiences. Jünger had long been inclined to deeply poetic descriptions of the real events he described, but this intensity at this length is genuinely new to his writing. Wherever he can use plurals he prefers them over the singular, wherever he can use more melodic and beautiful verbs (like when the characters “step out on” rather than “walk into” clearings) he does. Maybe the pretense of the narrator not being himself allowed Jünger to wallow in his characteristic aestheticism, take it to an extreme and arguably to the point of self-parody. Skip to the next heading if you don’t care about translation The extreme language of this book made me doubt there would be any translation into English that could do it justice. After all, if you throw this last excerpt into DeepL you get: After breaking through a dense fringe of blackthorn and cornets, we entered the high forest, in the grounds of which the blow of the axe had never sounded. The old trunks, which formed the pride of the head forester, stood in the damp glow like columns whose capitals were hidden by the haze. We walked among them as through wide vestibules, and like the magic work on a stage, ivy vines and clematis blossoms hung down on us from the invisible. The ground was covered high with mulm and decaying branches on whose bark mushrooms, burning red cup fungi, had settled, so that a feeling of divers walking through coral gardens crept over us. Where one of these giant trunks was tossed by age or lightning, we stepped out into small clearings where yellow foxglove stood in dense clumps. Belladonna bushes also proliferated on the rotten ground, on whose branches the flower calyxes in brown violet swayed like death bells. It’s still pretty, and it works on a matter-of-fact level. None of it is just wrong. But can you see how it has a lot less of the dreamlike quality? A “fringe” is a geographical feature, while the “hedge” emphasizes its role as an obstacle in a journey. Those “old” trunks are less poetic than “ancient” ones. A “head forester” is a job description, while a “Chief Ranger” is a seminal figure. The “vestibules” are a literal translation of the original, but the English word is used a lot less than German “Vestibüle” was back then. So that’s a word you may need to work to understand, which gets you out of the story’s flow, so “spacious hall” is better. There are even more such nitpicks to be made even in this short paragraph, but my point is these difficulties pervade every single paragraph of the book. ChatGPT very similarly fails to overcome them. Since January, there is a new translation by Tess Lewis, which has the advantage of being available on Kindle. I’ll spare you another repeat of the same paragraph and just say I think DeepL did most of this translation. But Tess Lewis did improve on many of its word choices and I’ll grudgingly concede this translation is good enough. It still sounds too modern for me, too much like prose and too little like poetry. Therefore, all previous and following excerpts are from the Stuart Hood translation, published in 1947, which I was astonished to find does pull it off! Let me assure anyone who doesn’t speak German, or doesn’t study translation, that this one is absolutely exemplary and surely represents years of painstaking work. Stuart Hood was a Scot who knew German very well. Like Jünger he was a veteran officer, and he needed German for his intelligence missions in World War 2. This is his very first published translation of an entire book. It harnesses a considerable talent, which is also evidenced by how Stuart Hood went on to become an accomplished writer himself, a BBC executive, a professor and several other notable things. And it is clearly a labor of intense love — right after the war, while working on it, Hood corresponded with Jünger and even went to visit him at least twice and they talked at length about the art of translation and how to translate specific points of the Marble Cliffs. The end of this last quote, “on its stalk the dark purple calices shook like funeral bells.” exemplifies how precisely Hood has understood Jünger. Why “calices”, not “chalices”? Because that is the old-fashioned form of this word, and using it is unnecessarily peculiar, but it doesn’t make you stop and look into a dictionary. It isn’t even more precise than DeepL’s and ChatGPT’s and Tess Lewis’s “calyxes” for the word “Blumenkelche” in the Original. But it captures precisely how the author was using his German language. This is because on every page of the original, there are choices of individual words that evoke subtleties of mood and allusion that are strictly impossible to translate, because English doesn’t have a similar-enough group of synonyms from which to make the equivalent choice. Some of that must inevitably get lost in translation. But these “calices” are an example of how Hood has the audacity to frequently insert his own new peculiar word choices — which restore exactly the same effect! It might take entire months until AI can do that! Unfortunately the New Directions edition with this translation has been out of print for a while, although I heard from a regrettably less law-abiding friend that the PDF is easy to find. But a few years ago someone bought the UK rights to this translation and republished it. While this edition has several uncorrected OCR mistakes, one of which horrifyingly turns “Flayer’s Copse” into “Player’s Copse”, at least this makes the better translation available (legally) again. What actually happens (spoilers) After six chapters of descriptions of paradise, and of the botanical work the brothers do since they don’t need to make a living, the book continues with a gradual decline of this gorgeous world. This again is much more of a richly detailed description than a story plot. It begins with the introduction of the Chief Ranger. The brothers know him from their military community, from before his takeover begins. There is some debate about whether the Chief Ranger stands for Hitler, Stalin or Hermann Göring. I think this debate is misguided. The character of the Chief Ranger, the antagonist of the narrator and all he holds dear, is never named but only ever referred to by his title. He does not appear to have staff or lieutenants at all, nor any personal history. And Jünger is profoundly uninterested in the personalities of all his characters beneath what they pay attention to (except the narrator’s brother) so even this important figure is roughly sketched at best. Therefore, I believe he is best understood as more of an archetype or role, The Tyrant, denuded of the individual traits or histories that make one tyrant a Führer, another a General Secretary and yet another a Great Leader. So, what makes a tyrant? According to Jünger, “wherever free spirits establish their sway these primeval powers will always join their company like a snake creeping to an open fire. They are the old connoisseurs of power who see a new day dawning in which to reestablish the tyranny that has lived in their hearts since the beginning of time.” The Chief Ranger is also “a master of feigning frankness that was full of snares for the unwary.” He has a reputation for wealth and a strong visual brand (a gold-embroidered green coat) that makes sure he always leaves “an imprint on one’s memory”. He exudes a “breath of primitive power” and has a strong charisma that gives an impression of “both cunning and unshakable power — yes, at times even majesty.” As he begins to usurp power, “reports spread from mouth to mouth of infringements of the law and of acts of violence in the neighbourhood, and finally such incidents occurred publicly and with no attempt to concealment. A cloud of fear preceded the Chief Ranger like the mountain mist that presages the storm. Fear enveloped him, and I am convinced that therein far more than in his own person lay his power.” From what I know about tyrants, that sounds about right. For the next seven chapters, the vile followers of the Chief Ranger continually corrupt everything. The sophisticated culture of the Marina is surrounded by the rough herdsmen clans of the surrounding Campagna steppe, beyond which lies the Chief Ranger’s forest populated by lowlifes. The class metaphor is blindingly obvious, and Jünger’s theory of how these lowlifes overcome first the Campagna and then the Marina is not subtle either. After the Alta Plana war, and the defeat, the entire society has been weakened. “Thus in exhausted bodies corruption will set in by way of wounds which a sound man would scarcely notice. The first symptoms, therefore, were not recognized.” Very gradually, law gives way to lawlessness, spreading from and with the lower classes foresters in many different ways. Violent crime grows, in descriptions very reminiscent of the many deadly street fights of the late Weimar republic. Various elements of traditional culture become corrupted. Those who would defend it are intimidated and attacked. The constitutional lawful reaction is too slow, so by the time it manages to convene and have democratic debates, it is already infiltrated. And there’s one paragraph worth quoting in full. Herein, above all, lay a masterly trait of the Chief Ranger. He administered fear in small doses which he gradually increased, and which aimed at crippling resistance. The role he played in the disorders which were so finely spun in the heart of his woods was that of a power for order; for while his agents of lower rank, who had established themselves in the clans, fostered anarchy, the initiated penetrated into the civic offices and the magistracy, and there won the reputation of men of deeds who would bring the mob to its senses. Thus the Chief Ranger was like an evil doctor who first encourages the disease so that he may practise on the sufferer the surgery he has in mind. Today this is a mainstream view in German history. In 1939, it could have been prosecuted as high treason and punished with death. On the backdrop of ever escalating mayhem, two old men who are friends of the brothers are described: Belovar, a clan patriarch from the Campagna, and Father Lampros, an eminent Christian monk. In very different ways, they both are very helpful, each both in the botanical work and against the mounting threat. The brothers decide against meeting the violence with violence, delve deeper into their work, become increasingly pessimistic and develop a hope that they can rescue the results of their work into an imperishable afterlife by burning it with an ancient mystical crystal lens that they somehow inherited. The narrator describes continued excursions for rare plants, through the country that is becoming increasingly treacherous and foreboding, until finally, well after the middle point of the book, with one particular excursion for an extremely rare flower, the actual continual story begins. Today we look at the Nazis with horror, but Jünger has dug too many trenches into hills of rotting corpses to be easily horrified. Instead of horror, his feelings towards the Nazis are mostly contempt, seasoned with disgust, and that has been pervading his description of the rise of the Chief Ranger’s henchmen over the last couple of chapters. But he does give one instance of pure horror and it is here, in the very heart of the book, when the two brothers on their excursion happen to discover, in the ill-reputed area of Flayer's Copse, the Chief Ranger’s remote “flaying-hut” of Koppels-Bleek. The original Köppels-Bleek is a German wordplay, about as subtle as a drone base in a sci-fi novel that happens to be called Obamazliez. Koppels-Bleek is where the Chief Ranger has his enemies tortured to death. It has frequently been called a concentration camp, but that is imprecise. It is really a Vernichtungslager, a death camp, which unlike a “normal” concentration camp is built for the express purpose that no torture victim ever gets out alive. This is a prediction, because while Nazi concentration camps were set up starting in 1933, Vernichtungslager were only built three years after the “Marble Cliffs” were published. After an intensely gruesome description of the particulars of this place, the narrator assesses its importance as follows. Such are the dungeons above which rise the proud castles of the tyrants, and from them is to be seen rising the curling savoury smoke of their banquets. They are terrible noisome pits in which a God-forsaken crew revels to all eternity in the degradation of human dignity and human freedom. He is so certain he has captured the very essence of tyranny, “the abode of tyranny in all its shame”, that he puts this climax at the two thirds mark of the book and makes it exceedingly obvious this is where the third and final act begins, as the pace of the book changes entirely. Although the narrator still includes some retrospectives, he is now finally telling a real story. Strikingly, the brothers return to botany — remember this, it will be important later — and then to their home, where they soon get two conspiring visitors. Braquemart is a competent, racist, nihilistic fellow veteran. The narrator despises him at length for his heartless theory-mindedness. Prince Smyrna is new, young, seems to the narrator to know “the nature of justice and order” but is too weak and inexperienced to shoulder the responsibility he is heroically taking on. The two visitors want to Do Something about the Chief Ranger — what exactly is never said, though a personal confrontation or assassination is implied. They leave for the Chief Ranger's territory. This entire chapter feels very much like a comment on some political acquaintances of Jünger who attempted to challenge the Nazis, and failed. The next day, Father Lampros gives the narrator a mission to arm himself and look for these two men. He goes to old Belovar's farmstead, where he learns of commotion in the direction of Flayer's Copse, and the old clan patriarch goes to war. Before, the book was a dreamy soliloquy; now we see dramatic wartime action. Ernst Jünger has had a lot of practice with writing about that kind of thing, and it shows. Their small but experienced war party with a lot of dogs goes towards Koppels-Bleek and is soon met with two confused, horrific, riveting battles. The narrator stumbles through and finds at Koppels-Bleek the heads of Prince Smyrna and Braquemart. The former strikes him as a symbol of how nobility remains real, and he picks it up. With it, he retreats through mayhem and danger into the complete flaming destruction of the Marina. He marvels at the beauty of the flames — remember this too, it will also be important later — and, with his hunters in hot pursuit, runs to his house. There his son uses his strange power over the local population of poisonous snakes to make them defeat the nearest attackers. The brothers burn down the house, go find Father Lampros and see him die. From an old soldier comrade who owes them a favor they get room on a ship to flee across the water to Alta Plana, where an old enemy who owes them another favor takes them in. There’s an implicit framing story of how the narrator lives to tell the tale of these memories to some unspecified audience, and as it ends it mentions in passing that sometime after these events, a new cathedral has been built on the ruins of the Marina and the head of Prince Smyrna went there as a relic. This small bit still stands out today, and would have stood out even more starkly to contemporary readers, because in the context of everything that happened before, this bit publicly, extremely boldly, and correctly, predicts the eventual fate of the Nazis. Not once in this entire story has the narrator expressed surprise at this progression of events, or given any other indication it is in any way unlikely. The narrator, and the author through him, seems to be saying this is just the way it goes with tyranny, when a society has lost too much of its strength to fight off the bestial attacks of the lowly. I have omitted not just many smaller elements of the story but also a huge number of allusions to ancient history, (German) literature and especially the Bible. I imagine Jünger put them there as prizes for the few who would find them. This is one of the ways that I think On the Marble Cliffs is Ernst Jünger’s Unsong: a vehicle that lets a prolific nonfiction author
the Middle Ages1 mentions across 1 issues

the Middle Ages is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 10, 2023 and March 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Christianity, whose power probably peaked during the Middle Ages". It most often appears alongside Alex, Alex Nowratesh, Aphantasia.

Reference entry
the Middle Ages
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 10, 2023
Last seen
March 10, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For March 2023
March 10, 2023 · Original source
…and many more at the link. I would urge people to put this in perspective of Christianity, whose power probably peaked during the Middle Ages but which remained the dominant paradigm of culture for hundreds of years afterwards; I don’t think wokeness will last that long, but I think it will have a similar long plateau of “no longer rising, now heavily criticized, but still powerful and important”.
The Middle East1 mentions across 1 issues

The Middle East is a recurring place 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 "Africa & The Middle East". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Reference entry
The Middle East
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 01, 2026
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
If you need to change a meetup date or you have any other questions, please email skyler[at]rationalitymeetups[ period]org. Be advised that he’s going to be slower than usual about responding to things though. Africa & The Middle East Iraq BAGHDAD 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
The Nile1 mentions across 1 issues

The Nile is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 11, 2023 and August 11, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa". It most often appears alongside Achilles, ACX, Adam Smith.

Reference entry
The Nile
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 11, 2023
Last seen
August 11, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Weirdest People in the World
August 11, 2023 · Original source
Like with the poor kid in Brave New World, it turned out it was easier to make people parrot phrases than understand them: ‘“The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-the second-in-length-of-all-the-rivers-of-the-globe...” The words come rushing out…. “Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?” The eyes are blank. “I don't know.”’
the Saudis1 mentions across 1 issues

the Saudis is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 04, 2022 and August 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Saudis can’t construct things 10x cheaper than anyone else". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI risk, Alexandros.

Reference entry
the Saudis
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 04, 2022
Last seen
August 04, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Absurdity Bias, Neom Edition
August 04, 2022 · Original source
Can I convince you to read the sequences? There are some real underappreciated classics. (excerpt edited to remove examples that someone would misinterpret and start a flame war over) Here’s a possible argument why not: everything has to bottom out in absurdity arguments at some level or another. Suppose I carefully calculated that, with modern construction techniques, building Neom would cost 10x more than its allotted budget. This argument contains an implied premise: “and the Saudis can’t construct things 10x cheaper than anyone else”. How do we know the Saudis can’t construct things 10x cheaper than anyone else? The argument itself doesn’t prove this; it’s just left as too absurd to need justification. Suppose I did want to address this objection. For example, I carefully researched existing construction projects in Saudi Arabia, checked how cheap they were, calculated how much they could cut costs using every trick available to them, and found it was less than 10x? My argument still contains the implied premise “there’s no Saudi conspiracy to develop amazing construction technology and hide it from the rest of the world”. But this is another absurdity heuristic - I have no argument beyond that such a conspiracy would be absurd. I might eventually be able to come up with an argument supporting this, but that argument, too, would have implied premises depending on absurdity arguments. So how far down this chain should I go? One plausible answer is “just stop at the first level where your interlocutors accept your absurdity argument”. Anyone here think Neom’s a good idea? No? Even Alexandros agrees it probably won’t work. So maybe this is the right level of absurdity. If I was pitching my post towards people who mostly thought Neom was a good idea, then I might try showing that it would cost 10x more than its expected budget, and see whether they agreed with me that Saudis being able to construct things 10x cheaper than anyone else was absurd. If they did agree with me, then I’ve hit the right level of argument. And if they agree with me right away, before I make any careful calculations, then it was fine for me to just point to it and gesture “That’s absurd!” I think this is basically the right answer for communications questions, like how to structure a blog post. When I criticize communicators for relying on the absurdity heuristic too much, it’s because they’re claiming to adjudicate a question with people on both sides, but then retreating to absurdity instead. When I was young a friend recommended me a pseudoscience book on ESP, with lots of pseudoscientific studies proving ESP was real. I looked for skeptical rebuttals, and they were all “Ha ha! ESP? That’s absurd, you morons!” These people were just clogging up Google search results that could have been giving me real arguments. But if nobody has ever heard of Neom, and I expect my readers to immediately agree that Neom is absurd, then it’s fine (in a post describing Neom rather than debating it) to stop at the first level. (I do worry that it might be creating an echo chamber; people start out thinking Neom is a bad idea for the obvious reasons, then read my post and think “and ACX also thinks it’s a bad idea” is additional evidence; I think my obligation here is to not exaggerate the amount of thought that went into my assessment, which I hope I didn’t.) But the absurdity bias isn’t just about communication. What about when I’m thinking things through in my head, alone? I’m still going to be asking questions like “is Neom possible?” and having to decide what level of argument to stop at. To put it another way: which of your assumptions do you accept vs. question? Question none of your assumptions, and you’re a closed-minded bigot. Question all of your assumptions, and you get stuck in an infinite regress. The only way to escape (outside of a formal system with official axioms) is to just trust your own intuitive judgment at some point. So maybe you should just start out doing that. Except that some people seem to actually be doing something wrong. The guy who hears about evolution and says “I know that monkeys can’t turn into humans, this is so absurd that I don’t even have to think about the question any further” is doing something wrong. How do you avoid being that guy? Some people try to dodge the question and say that all rationality is basically a social process. Maybe on my own, I will naturally stop at whatever level seems self-evident to me. Then other people might challenge me, and I can reassess. But I hate this answer. It seems to be preemptively giving up and hoping other people are less lazy than you are. It’s like answering a child’s question about how to do a math problem with “ask a grown-up”. A coward’s way out! Eliezer Yudkowsky gives his answer here: I can think of three major circumstances where the [useful] absurdity heuristic gives rise to a [bad] absurdity bias: The first case is when we have information about underlying laws which should override surface reasoning. If you know why most objects fall, and you can calculate how fast they fall, then your calculation that a helium balloon should rise at such-and-such a rate, ought to strictly override the absurdity of an object falling upward. If you can do deep calculations, you have no need for qualitative surface reasoning. But we may find it hard to attend to mere calculations in the face of surface absurdity, until we see the balloon rise. (In 1913, Lee de Forest was accused of fraud for selling stock in an impossible endeavor, the Radio Telephone Company: "De Forest has said in many newspapers and over his signature that it would be possible to transmit human voice across the Atlantic before many years. Based on these absurd and deliberately misleading statements, the misguided public...has been persuaded to purchase stock in his company...") The second case is a generalization of the first - attending to surface absurdity in the face of abstract information that ought to override it. If people cannot accept that studies show that marginal spending on medicine has zero net effect, because it seems absurd - violating the surface rule that "medicine cures" - then I would call this "absurdity bias". There are many reasons that people may fail to attend to abstract information or integrate it incorrectly. I think it worth distinguishing cases where the failure arises from absurdity detectors going off. The third case is when the absurdity heuristic simply doesn't work - the process is not stable in its surface properties over the range of extrapolation - and yet people use it anyway. The future is usually "absurd" - it is unstable in its surface rules over fifty-year intervals. This doesn't mean that anything can happen. Of all the events in the 20th century that would have been "absurd" by the standards of the 19th century, not a single one - to the best of our knowledge - violated the law of conservation of energy, which was known in 1850. Reality is not up for grabs; it works by rules even more precise than the ones we believe in instinctively. The point is not that you can say anything you like about the future and no one can contradict you; but, rather, that the particular practice of crying "Absurd!" has historically been an extremely poor heuristic for predicting the future. Over the last few centuries, the absurdity heuristic has done worse than maximum entropy - ruled out the actual outcomes as being far too absurd to be considered. You would have been better off saying "I don't know". This is all true as far as it goes, but it’s still just rules for the rare situations when your intuitive judgments of absurdity are contradicted by clear facts that someone else is handing you on a silver platter. But how do you, pondering a question on your own, know when to stop because a line of argument strikes you as absurd, vs. to stick around and gather more facts and see whether your first impressions were accurate? I don’t have a great answer here, but here are some parts of a mediocre answer: Calibration training. Make predictions so you know how often you’re right vs. wrong about things. If the things you say only have a 1% chance of happening happen a third of the time, you know you’re stopping too soon when you make absurdity arguments.
Inline links: read the sequences, additional evidence, infinite regress, here, information about underlying laws which should override surface reasoning, fraud, studies show that marginal spending on medicine has zero net effect, The future is usually "absurd", law of conservation of energy, Calibration training
the UK1 mentions across 1 issues

the UK is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 30, 2022 and July 30, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "South Korea, the UK, and others expressing “shared concerns”". It most often appears alongside 1950s influenza strain, 1977 influenza pandemic, 1992 scientific investigation.

Reference entry
the UK
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 30, 2022
Last seen
July 30, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Viral
July 30, 2022 · Original source
Smallpox escaped from research labs in the UK three times from 1966-1978. In fact, the last ever case of smallpox occurred after it had already been eradicated, when it escaped from a medical laboratory in 1978 and infected a medical photographer, who eventually died from the illness.
Inline links: eventually died from the illness.
[4] This report was widely criticized, with the governments of the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others expressing “shared concerns” about the investigation. Even the head of the WHO, Dr. Tedros, suggested that a more thorough follow-up investigation might be required.
The US1 mentions across 1 issues

The US is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 10, 2024 and October 10, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "The US and its European allies were willing to form an “unholy alliance” with some unsavory socialists in order to defeat the Nazis". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, @GroundHogStrat, A.I. salons.

Reference entry
The US
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
October 10, 2024
Last seen
October 10, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
SB 1047: Our Side Of The Story
October 10, 2024 · Original source
Dean Ball calls this strategy “an unholy alliance with the unions and the misinformation crusaders and all the rest”, and equates it to selling our souls. I admit we have many cultural and ethical differences with socialists, that I don’t want to become them, that I can’t fully endorse them, and that I’m sure they feel the same way about me. But coalition politics doesn’t require perfect agreement. The US and its European allies were willing to form an “unholy alliance” with some unsavory socialists in order to defeat the Nazis, they did defeat the Nazis, and they kept their own commitments to capitalism and democracy intact.
Trying to be maximally charitable, I think he’s saying that the penalty for infecting someone with HIV was much more severe than the penalty for infecting people with other diseases, that this was a relic of the age of mass panic over AIDS, and that now that we’re panicking less we should bring the penalties back into line. But his argument style actively alienates me, focusing as it does on “reducing stigma” against AIDS patients. This brings back too many bad memories of the days when we weren’t allowed to try to prevent COVID from reaching the US, or prepare for it when it did, because that might “cause stigma” against Chinese people. I’m now permanently soured on all stigma-based arguments, and the current issue under discussion - declaring that it’s not such a big deal to intentionally give people AIDS, because if we admitted it was a big deal then that might cause “stigma” - is a perfect example of why this turns me off. I’d be more comfortable if he’d ignored the “stigma” angle and just tried to argue that the penalties were out of line with equally dangerous diseases (which I haven’t yet seen evidence about).
the valley1 mentions across 1 issues

the valley is a recurring place 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 "there's nowhere in the valley where you can, say, walk around and enjoy a day in the city"; "commuters from the Valley to the Bay Area". It most often appears alongside 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, 21st Century Salon, ACX.

Reference entry
the valley
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
October 13, 2022
Last seen
October 13, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On The Central Valley
October 13, 2022 · Original source
Original post: Why Is The Central Valley So Bad?
Inline links: Why Is The Central Valley So Bad?
> “the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave.”
Reading this article is how I imagine it feels to live in a "less-developed" part of the world and read poverty-porn articles from American media outlets. The author "drives through as fast as possible" but feels comfortable making sweeping claims on the "misery" of the Central Valley based on a couple of newspaper articles and a few time-series plots.
the ‘60s1 mentions across 1 issues

the ‘60s is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 26, 2025 and June 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the spirit of the ‘60s convinced most experts". It most often appears alongside Aftab, Alex Young, Arthur Jensen.

Reference entry
the ‘60s
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 26, 2025
Last seen
June 26, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Missing Heritability: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
June 26, 2025 · Original source
The mid-20th century was the golden age of nurture. Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the spirit of the ‘60s convinced most experts that parents, peers, and propaganda were the most important causes of adult personality.
Theresienstadt1 mentions across 1 issues

Theresienstadt is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2023 and June 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Frankl spent three years in four different concentration camps — Theresienstadt". It most often appears alongside A Poet in Paradise, Agrippa d'Aubigné, Alfred Adler.

Reference entry
Theresienstadt
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 10, 2023
Last seen
June 10, 2023
Instagram handle
@shoppingtheatre.inc
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning
June 10, 2023 · Original source
Although it starts from the beginning and ends at the end, this part of the book is not a diary in the strictest sense, it is still somewhat loose, both chronologically and geographically (Frankl spent three years in four different concentration camps — Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, and Türkheim). He brings to life his first-hand experiences in order to illustrate his more global observations, and structures his writing by the different aspects of camp incarceration, rather than a mere sequence of events. The author himself calls this part an “existential validation of my theories”.
Thessaloniki1 mentions across 1 issues

Thessaloniki is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 22, 2023 and February 22, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Ntouros et al in Thessaloniki describe koro-like symptoms". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agin, American.

Reference entry
Thessaloniki
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 22, 2023
Last seen
February 22, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: The Geography Of Madness
February 22, 2023 · Original source
She reminded me that yesterday she was unusually grumpy, so much so that she had apologized to me for it and tried to come up with explanations - and then later yesterday she had her period. Meanwhile, Bures’ counterargument is - what? That it sounds kind of sexist to accuse female hormones of making women overly emotional? Hasn’t he ever heard of stereotype accuracy? That people asked their doctors to be treated for it more often after they knew it was considered a medical condition, and was treatable? That seems to have a much simpler explanation! That there are no biomarkers? There are inconsistent biomarkers that work sometimes but not other times, just like for schizophrenia, epilepsy, cancer, and half the other conditions in medicine. That these conditions don’t occur in most cultures? From here: A World Health Organization (WHO) study on menstruation (1981) surveyed 5,322 women from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, United Kingdom and Yugoslavia. . . The majority of women in all cultures report some premenstrual physical discomfort in addition to negative mood changes, however fewer women report mood change than physical change. The main cross-cultural difference was in the prevalence of specific symptoms. Immigrants to the United States report more PMDD the longer they’re here? True (source), but it’s a matter of degree, and seems more true of the PMDD diagnosis than specific symptoms. The diagnosis requires impairment, which is subjective. I imagine an immigrant from a culture where mental disorders are unthinkable - something that only happens to a few psychos in asylums - and where you work 12-hour days in sweatshops. Someone asks her “hey, has this mental disorder ever prevented you from working?”, and she says no, because obviously you grit your teeth and work through the symptoms. And I imagine an American seeing the same question and saying “Yeah, I did decide I had to take a couple of sick days because of that.” I’m not saying this definitely happened, just that it’s a possibility. Meanwhile, this entire area of study is a mess. The “PMDD is culture-bound” hypothesis was originally invented by feminist scholars trying to argue that the diagnosis was a sexist attempt to pathologize women as overemotional and untrustworthy (this is also where Bures got his “it’s just hysteria by a different name” idea). See for example here and here, the second of which says that “the feminist argument is that if women are angry/distressed, it is for good reason, not due to pathology”. Bures somehow swallowed and repeated this, and then some feminists on Vox wrote an article attacking him as a “male writer” who was denying women’s lived experiences of PMS and stereotyping them as stupid and gullible. Neither side has an argument beyond “I can think of a reason it would be sexist for people to disagree with me” and neither side will acknowledge that the other side is also feminists basing their argument entirely on how it would be sexist to disagree with them. Everything in every area of social science has been like this for at least the past twenty years. But also, this highlights the difficulties with declaring something culture-bound. How do you know if something’s culture-bound, vs. people don’t notice it or mention it if they don’t have a name for it? How do you know if something’s culture-bound vs. some cultures consider it too embarrassing or taboo to think about? How do you know if something’s culture-bound, vs. people will go to doctors about it if they think doctors can treat it, and otherwise they won’t? I’ll discuss these questions more later, but I want to finish Bures’ argument. He gestures at a few other possible candidates for culture-bound mental disorders, including repetitive strain injury and chronic pain. But he quickly moves on to a long section that tries to establish the reality of “voodoo death”, ie the thing where if you believe you are going to die hard enough, you actually die. I think most arguments for voodoo death are pretty bad, and I didn’t find Bures’ convincing. But bonus points for referencing a study claiming that chronically stressed people only die at higher rates if they believe chronic stress is bad for them, and if not then they don’t (this is not really how I interpret the abstract, but I haven’t looked closely) Is it weird to stay on the crazy train long enough to agree that cultural effects are strong enough to make you think witches are stealing your penis, and then get off it once people start talking about voodoo death? I think no - these are very different situations. Believing in koro can make you hallucinate that your penis is shrunken or gone, but no belief, however strong, can (directly) remove your penis itself. Culture → beliefs is fine; culture → reality is a step I’m not willing to take. V. Since I rejected Bures’ PMDD example, I want to digress to what I think is a stronger argument: anorexia, which Ethan Watters discusses in his book Crazy Like Us. Anorexia was mostly unknown in the West, until becoming “trendy” in the mid-1800s. During that period, doctors reported high prevalence of anorexia among “hysterics”, but the fad ended after about ten or twenty years, and it went back to being basically unknown. In 1983, famous singer Karen Carpenter died of anorexia, thrusting it back into the national news, and suddenly lots of people (in the West) were anorexic again. Meanwhile, foreign doctors who trained in the West went back to their home countries, searched far and wide for it, and found almost nothing. The few cases they did see didn’t resemble the typical Western version at all - for example, one Hong Kong psychiatrist was able to find a woman who refused to eat out of grief when a boyfriend left her, but she didn’t think she was fat, or feel any cultural pressure to be thinner. The absence of anorexia abroad was especially surprising since anorexics tend to end up in the hospital with extremely noticeable malnutrition that doesn’t really mimic anything else. It’s not really possible to hide severe anorexia the way you can hide severe depression. In 1994, Hong Kong got its own Karen Carpenter - a young girl died of anorexia, setting off a national panic and many public awareness campaigns. Near-instantly, anorexia rates shot up to the same level as the West, with the appropriate number of people presenting to hospital ERs with severe malnutrition. This story raises a lot of questions. For example: where did the first anorexics (Karen Carpenter, the girl in Hong Kong) come from? Why anorexia and not something else? And how come knowing about anorexia makes it spread so quickly? VI. Past this point I’m using this review to discuss my own thoughts, not Bures’ or Watters’. “Culture-bound” is less all-or-nothing than you’d think. Look hard enough, and you’ll find people having “culture-bound syndromes” from cultures they’ve never heard of. Ntouros et al in Thessaloniki describe “koro-like symptoms in two Greek men”. One, a paranoid schizophrenic: . . . reported for the first time a sensation that his penis retracts into the abdomen and a fear that it will subsequently be lost. This would be accompanied by anxiety and sadness pertaining only to the loss itself. He would then proceed to search manually for his penis and masturbate. No pleasure was gained by masturbation, but the anxiety would be lifted. Romero et al describe a case of koro in "an intellectually disabled Caucasian patient" in Spain. They write that "although it is widely regarded as an epidemic in South-east Asia, there are some isolated cases in other cultures as well." Wilson and Agin describe a 29 year old white male from New York, "not exposed to the Chinese culture”, who went to the doctor with a five month history of worrying that his genitals were retracting into his body: Sometimes, he would manually reaffirm the presence of his genitals. Occasionally he would, in private, remove his garments and visually confirm the presence of his genitals. On one occasion, while taking the train home from work, he experienced an acute exacerbation of these symptoms. His pain increased from 3/10 to 10/10, and he felt as if his genitals had fully retracted within his belly. Upon reaching his hometown, he immediately went to the local hospital emergency room where examinations for inguinal hernia, urinary tract infection, proctitis, prostatitis, and testicular disorders proved negative. He improved significantly on the anti-anxiety medication desipramine. Chowdhury surveys the evidence on koro and divides the condition into two types: culture-bound and non-culture-bound. The culture-bound type usually goes in large epidemics, hundreds to thousands of people, in koro-believing parts of Africa and Asia; the victims were usually previously psychologically normal. The non-culture-bound type hits a few scattered individuals, is not contagious, and can happen anywhere - Greece, Spain, America. Some patients are psychologically normal, but there are a disproportionate number of schizophrenics, drug users, brain damage victims, and other previously-mentally-ill people. Other culture-bound illnesses seem to be like this too. Running amok has been big in Malaysia for 300 years. The Columbine shooters seem to have been autocthonous American cases, equivalent to that one New Yorker who got koro - before their fame inscribed amok onto the US collective consciousness the same way Karen Carpenter’s inscribed anorexia. Japan’s jikoshu-kyofu affects occasional victims in the US under the name olfactory reference syndrome. Watters admits there were a tiny handful of unusual anorexia cases in Hong Kong before Westernization. And even that Indian there’s-a-lizard-in-my-skin condition differs only in species from delusional parasitosis. Delusional parasitosis - the false belief that you are infested with parasites and can feel them crawling in your skin - is actually an especially interesting case. Two groups are disproportionately represented among patients: menopausal women and cocaine addicts. Relatedly, two biological conditions that can sometimes cause weird skin sensations that feel like crawling insects are . . . menopause and cocaine use. So there’s no mystery here. But, also represented among delusional parasitosis patients are the roommates and family members of these people. The index case hallucinates insects for a well-understood biological reason; their close contacts hallucinate insects through social contagion. So a unified theory of these conditions might be: Some people have the condition for a normal biological or psychiatric reason. For example, someone might believe a lizard is crawling under their skin because they use cocaine, which causes hallucinatory crawling sensations. Or someone might believe their penis is missing because they’re schizophrenic, which makes them naturally hallucination-prone.
Inline links: stereotype accuracy, inconsistent biomarkers that work sometimes but not other times, here, source, here, here, and then some feminists on Vox wrote an article, chronic pain, are pretty bad, a study, Ethan Watters discusses in his book, Ntouros et al, Romero et al, Wilson and Agin, surveys the evidence, olfactory reference syndrome, delusional parasitosis
Thimphu1 mentions across 1 issues

Thimphu is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 03, 2025 and February 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Bhutan’s current largest city, Thimphu, has a population of only 100,000". It most often appears alongside Aiman Al-Mudaifer, Art Finch, Bhutan.

Reference entry
Thimphu
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 03, 2025
Last seen
February 03, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
  • 25 February 03, 2025
Related pages
Source context
25
February 03, 2025 · Original source
The target population is one million (Bhutan’s current largest city, Thimphu, has a population of only 100,000, and is famous for being one of only two national capitals without traffic lights). The projected cost is $100 billion with a b (Bhutan’s current GDP is $3 billion/year).
Third World countries1 mentions across 1 issues

Third World countries is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 28, 2021 and February 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "probably the same is true for lots of other Third World countries". It most often appears alongside ACX reader Pycea, Chrome, Firefox.

Reference entry
Third World countries
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 28, 2021
Last seen
February 28, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Open Thread 161
February 28, 2021 · Original source
1: On my predictions thread, I included a prediction that expert consensus would be that the US had the highest unofficial coronavirus death toll of any country. I graded it true. Commenters made a strong case that I was wrong, and it should have been India. A couple of studies (see eg here) suggest seropositivity numbers of 20%+. This is pretty similar to the US’ percentage, but India has three times as many people. Among known cases, India’s case fatality rate is half the US’; if the same pattern holds among missed cases, India probably has 1.5x the US’ death toll (it would be better to use excess mortality numbers, but I can’t find this). This would mean the official Johns Hopkins numbers for the India:US case ratio are off by a factor of four, and probably the same is true for lots of other Third World countries. I’m adding this to my Mistakes Page.
Inline links: Commenters made, here, US’ percentage
Three Gorges Dam1 mentions across 1 issues

Three Gorges Dam is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 13, 2024 and February 13, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "about half the output of the Three Gorges Dam, the biggest power plant in the world". It most often appears alongside Astralcodexten Com, EpochAI, Google.

Reference entry
Three Gorges Dam
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 13, 2024
Last seen
February 13, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Sam Altman Wants $7 Trillion
February 13, 2024 · Original source
Let’s say the training run lasts six months, ie 4,320 hours. That means GPT-6 will need 10 GW - about half the output of the Three Gorges Dam, the biggest power plant in the world. GPT-7 will need fifteen Three Gorges Dams. This isn’t just “the world will need to produce this much power total and you can buy it”. You need the power pretty close to your data center. Your best bet here is either to get an entire pipeline like Nord Stream hooked up to your data center, or else a fusion reactor.
Tiananmen Square1 mentions across 1 issues

Tiananmen Square is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 03, 2022 and November 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "accurate information on ... Tiananmen Square". It most often appears alongside China, Chinese pro-democracy activists, Communists.

Reference entry
Tiananmen Square
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
November 03, 2022
Last seen
November 03, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Moderation Is Different From Censorship
November 03, 2022 · Original source
The racket works by pretending these are the same imperative. “Well, lots of people will be unhappy if they see offensive content, so in order to keep the platform safe for those people, we’ve got to remove it for everybody.” This is not true at all. A minimum viable product for moderation without censorship is for a platform to do exactly the same thing they’re doing now - remove all the same posts, ban all the same accounts - but have an opt-in setting, “see banned posts”. If you personally choose to see harassing and offensive content, you can toggle that setting, and everything bad will reappear. To “ban” an account would mean to prevent the half (or 75%, or 99%) of people who haven’t toggled that setting from seeing it. The people who elected to see banned posts could see them the same as always. Two “banned” accounts could still talk to each other, retweet each other, etc - as could accounts that hadn’t been banned, but had opted into the “see banned posts” setting. Does this difference seem kind of pointless and trivial? Then imagine applying it to China. If the Chinese government couldn’t censor - only moderate - the world would look completely different. Any Chinese person could get accurate information on Xinjiang, Tiananmen Square, the Shanghai lockdowns, or the top fifty criticisms of Xi Jinping - just by clicking a button on their Weibo profile. Given how much trouble ordinary Chinese people go through to get around censors, probably many of them would click the button, and then they’d have a free information environment. This switch might seem trivial in a well-functioning information ecology, but it prevents the worst abuses, and places a floor on how bad things can get. And this is just the minimum viable product, the case I’m focusing on to forestall objections of “this would be too hard to implement” or “this would be too complicated for ordinary people to understand”. If you wanted to get fancy, you could have a bunch of filters - harassing content, sexually explicit content, conspiracy theories - and let people toggle which ones they wanted to see vs. avoid. You could let people set them to different levels. Set your anti-Semitism filter to the weakest setting and it will only block literal Nazis with swastikas in their profile pic; set it to Ludicrous, and it will block anyone who isn’t an ordained Orthodox rabbi. Or you could let users choose which fact-checking organization they trusted to flag content as “disinformation”. The current level of moderation is a compromise. It makes no one happy. Allowing more personalized settings would make the free speech side happier (since they could speak freely to one another and anyone else interested in hearing what they had to say). And it would make the avoid-harassment side happier, since they could set their filters to stronger than the default setting, and see even less harassment than they do now. This doesn’t solve all our problems. There are some genuine arguments for true censorship: that is, for blocking speech that both sides want to hear. For example: That it’s a social good to avert the spread of false ideas (and maybe even some true ideas that people can’t handle). People might want to hear these ideas (“What? Joe Biden is a lizard person spy? I hadn’t heard anything about that on the so-called mainstream media!”) but they should not be allowed to.
Inline links: The racket
Tianducheng1 mentions across 1 issues

Tianducheng is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 08, 2025 and May 08, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "this is Tianducheng, China". It most often appears alongside @DeepGuessr, @scaling01, ACX Discord.

Reference entry
Tianducheng
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 08, 2025
Last seen
May 08, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr
May 08, 2025 · Original source
o3 got it right: this is Tianducheng, China.
Inline links: Tianducheng, China
Tibetan Plateau1 mentions across 1 issues

Tibetan Plateau is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 08, 2025 and May 08, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as ""a fantasy flag somewhere in the Tibetan Plateau"". It most often appears alongside @DeepGuessr, @scaling01, ACX Discord.

Reference entry
Tibetan Plateau
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 08, 2025
Last seen
May 08, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr
May 08, 2025 · Original source
It isn't [just] a zoomed in photo of rocks. It is a photo of a fantasy flag planted between those rocks with a trodden path just behind it. It guessed "Nepal, just north-east of Gorak Shep, ±8 km”. Do you know what is almost exactly north-east of Gorak Shep, ~3.3km as the crow flies? Mount Everest Base Camp. It is making a very educated guess based on where the kind of person who is taking a picture of a fantasy flag somewhere in the Tibetan Plateau would most likely have done so.
If someone asked me "where in the Tibetan Plateau might someone plant a flag and take a picture of it" literally the first (and perhaps the only) thing that would come to mind is "Dunno, Mount Everest?" And that would already be almost as good as o3's guess here. I mean, the slopes of Mount Everest has got to be about just about the least random place to take a picture like this.
Tigrayan1 mentions across 1 issues

Tigrayan is a recurring place 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 "or a Tigrayan". It most often appears alongside Achilles, Afghan, America.

Reference entry
Tigrayan
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 08, 2022
Last seen
March 08, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Ukraine Thoughts And Links
March 08, 2022 · Original source
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.
Tinta1 mentions across 1 issues

Tinta is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 22, 2025 and August 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Don Antonio Valdez was a parish priest in Tinta"; "Back in Tinta, he ratcheted up his agitation". It most often appears alongside Andes, Anti, Anti-suyu.

Reference entry
Tinta
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 22, 2025
Last seen
August 22, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Review: Ollantay
August 22, 2025 · Original source
Don Antonio Valdez was a parish priest in Tinta, and he fancied himself a Man of Culture. Priests were an important part of the Spanish colonial enterprise, and so Don Valdez was on good terms with both the curaca and corregidor. His name was well-known in Cuzco; he came from a family with long ties to the region and had established himself quite well. Around 1775, he invited José Gabriel and some other honored guests to a performance of a play he had finished putting together. Set in Cuzco in the 1400s, Valdez told his assembled audience that Ollantay was a Castilian version of a Quechua play.4
Inline links: 4
He traveled to Lima to press his claims. Specifically, he asked the viceroy to recognize his claim to the Marquessate of Oreposa, which was a noble title originally granted to the grandson of Emperor Túpac Amaru. Apparently he was persuasive enough that the government in Lima recognized the claim, and so he returned to Tinta as Túpac Amaru II, Maruqess of Oreposa. If anyone in the viceroy’s government was nervous about acknowledging the direct descendant of the last Incan emperor, they didn’t make their feelings known.
They should have. Because after his Ollantay-inspired transformation, Túpac Amaru II, Marquess of Oreposa and defender of the Quechua, was now on a mission. Back in Tinta, he ratcheted up his agitation against the constant overtaxing, overcharging, and abuse of the free labor system. He was so persuasive in this effort that he (and Valdez the priest/playwright) convinced the bishop of Cuzco to send a delegation back to Madrid, led by Túpac’s uncle, to argue in front of King Charles III.6 On the whole, everything was working out quite well for Túpac. He was now recognized as an Inca chief by the government in Cuzco; he knew the bishop well enough that the king would soon hear his grievances. He had every expectation that Charles would agree with him. So why bother waiting for Charles to answer?
Inline links: 6
Tiv1 mentions across 1 issues

Tiv is a recurring place 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 "Tiv ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiv_people ) being their example". It most often appears alongside 10240, 4chan, @slatestarcodex.

Reference entry
Tiv
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 08, 2024
Last seen
August 08, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche
August 08, 2024 · Original source
...be a more ancient and fundamental thing than it seems to be at the first sight. Acemoglu & Robinson write about societies systemically destroy anything that sticks out. Tiv ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiv_people ) being their example of choice. Living in the state of perfect equality is paid for by always living at the edge of famine. On the other hand, living in the state of equality on a continent...
Tiwi Islands1 mentions across 1 issues

Tiwi Islands is a recurring place 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 "that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abundance liberalism, Afghanistan.

Reference entry
Tiwi Islands
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 04, 2025
Last seen
September 04, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For September 2025
September 04, 2025 · Original source
43: China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is: still very in control, maybe not infinitely in control. 44: Related - did you know (h/t xlr8harder) that if you ask AI to write a science fiction story, it will very often name the protagonist “Elara Voss” (or some very close variant like Elena Voss), and this remains true across various models and versions? Related: Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby and has the opportunity to do the funniest thing. 45: “Hector (cloud) is a cumulonimbus thundercloud cluster that forms regularly nearly every afternoon on the Tiwi Islands in the Northern Territory of Australia…[he is sometimes called] Hector the Convector”. 46: British allergy sufferers who want to know the ingredients of things demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin. “For example, sweet almond oil is Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis, peanut oil is Arachis Hypogaea, and wheat germ extract is Triticum Vulgare.” 47: Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference. I make a brief appearance. 48: Study uses supposedly-random variation in doctor assignments to test whether the marginal mental health commitment is good or bad for patients, finds that it is quite bad. Freddie de Boer is violently skeptical (maybe literally so?) and makes some good points about how a single quasi-experimental study is never absolute proof. But I don’t think he quite justifies his opinion that the paper was irresponsible and should never have been published; it’s just a normal quasi-experimental study that we should nod and say “huh” at but not overweight as the culmination of all possible research that overcomes all possible priors. My prior is that the marginal commitment is pretty useless (many commitments are just “well, since this person arrived at our ED for some reason, it would look bad from a medico-legal perspective to just let them go, so let’s keep them a few days to evaluate” - and yeah, you should be upset about this) but I’m still surprised by how many outright negative (as opposed to zero) effects the researchers found. The strongest argument for negative effects is that it will make some people miss work and maybe lose their job. But this study found that commitment ~doubles the risk of near-term suicide (admittedly only from 1% to 2%), which would have been outside my confidence intervals for how bad it could be. I suspect confounding, but only on general principle, and I wouldn’t be too surprised either way. 49: This tweet is probably bait, but I found it a thought-provoking question: I think there’s a boring answer, where the law is more complex than just a single number and whatever kind of weird trafficking Epstein was doing is worse than whatever normal relationships these European laws are permitting. But assuming that there’s a substantive difference even after taking that into account, I think my answer is something like - we’ve got to divide kids from adults at some age, there’s a range of reasonable possible ages, we shouldn’t be too mad at other societies that choose different dividing lines within that range - but having decided upon the age, we’ve got to stick with it and take it seriously (in the sense of penalizing/shaming people who break it). This is more culturally relativist than I expected to find myself being, so good job to Richard for highlighting the apparent paradox. 50: Dilan Esper describes his experience as one of Hulk Hogan’s attorneys in the Gawker lawsuit (X). Parts I found interesting: none of the lawyers knew Thiel was funding the lawsuit; Gawker probably could have won if they had been slightly competent but kept "shooting themselves in the foot"; and Gawker probably could have won if they had just pixelated the private parts in the video. 51: Amazing concept and poems (link on X): I tried to see if AI could do this, and it did something that technically met the requirements but had zero artistic merit - using a lot of words like “nowhere” and “outside” in one, then separating them out to “no where” and “out side” in the other. I didn’t invest much energy in creating a clever prompt telling it not to do that, so feel free to report if you get better success. 52: New study claims consultants are actually good, at least for profits: "We find positive effects on labor productivity of 3.6% over five years, driven by modest employment reductions alongside stable or growing revenue" 53: A Polish team tries to test Peter Turchin’s equations for predicting political unrest on recent Polish history, has to make some changes but claims mostly positive results. 54: New big multi-author Substack, The Argument, trying to be a sort of center-left version of the model pioneered by The Free Press and other high-production-value ideological Substack properties. Excited to see Kelsey Piper is involved, and she starts off strong with a post on the latest round of First World basic income studies, which find few positive effects. This is surprising, because recipients didn’t waste the money on alcohol or gambling or anything - they paid down debt and got useful goods. Still, it didn’t even affect things that should have been obvious, like stress level. It’s not even clear that amounts of money large enough to help with rent made homeless people more likely to get houses! Matt Bruenig criticizes the article, accusing Kelsey’s studies of being downstream of Perry Preschool style dreams that exactly the right welfare program will have massively compounding effects that cut poverty out at the root and turn everyone into elite human capital; he thinks giving people money won’t do this, but it will increase equality and give the poor better lives. I assume he’s not a strong hereditarian, but his argument makes even more sense from that perspective, and I’ve certainly criticized dumb outcome measures like infant brain waves which we have only tenuous reasons to think are related to anything we care about. But Kelsey reasonably responds that the outcome measures she’s talking about include stress level and life satisfaction. To defuse this critique, Bruenig either has to argue that our construct “life satisfaction” doesn’t really measure whether someone’s life is satisfactory, or else claim that giving poor people satisfactory lives isn’t really what we’re going for - which I think would require more explanation on his part. There’s some further (impressively acrimonious) debate on X, but I don’t see anything that addresses my core concern. GiveDirectly, a charity involved in basic income experiments, has a presponse here; they say that some studies are positive, and that the ones that aren’t might have tried too little cash to matter, or been confounded by COVID making everything worse. They also point out that basic income is harder to study than traditional programs like giving people housing, because if you’re giving housing you can measure housing-related outcomes directly and have a pretty good chance of getting enough statistical power to find them, but since everyone spends cash on different things, the positive effects might be scattered across many different outcomes (and therefore too small to reach significance on each). Everyone involved in this debate wants to emphasize that the poor results are for First World studies only, and that studies continue to show large benefits to giving cash in the developing world. 55: Related: I was less impressed by The Argument’s first foray into housing policy, which follows an all-too-familiar pattern: Some people say they don’t like noise and disorder and try to make rules against it in their apartments.
Inline links: China think tank assessment of how in control Xi is, xlr8harder, Chelsea Voss of OpenAI is having a baby, Hector (cloud), demand that British cosmetics stop listing their ingredients in Latin, Text-based RPG about being an NYT journalist at the Manifest prediction market conference, finds that it is quite bad, violently skeptical, literally so?, This tweet, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S9fU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa558c09b-7fb6-40a8-a8a0-27b658a2c876_576x687.png, describes his experience as one of Hulk Hogan’s attorneys in the Gawker lawsuit (X), link on X, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!zyh7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F75e9f0f6-d794-4ea2-b24b-5d4803bf28dc_590x478.png, New study claims consultants are actually good, tries to test Peter Turchin’s equations for predicting political unrest on recent Polish history, The Argument, a post on the latest round of First World basic income studies, criticizes the article, infant brain waves, debate on X, has a presponse here, first foray into housing policy
Tlaxcala1 mentions across 1 issues

Tlaxcala is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 20, 2021 and September 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "their neighbors in the Tlaxcala were a republic". It most often appears alongside 4chan, A Clockwork Orange, Adrenochrome.

Reference entry
Tlaxcala
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 20, 2021
Last seen
September 20, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For September
September 20, 2021 · Original source
3: While the Aztecs were sacrificing prisoners to the gods, their neighbors in the Tlaxcala were “a republic ruled by an assembly of commoners and nobles”.
Inline links: “a republic ruled by an assembly of commoners and nobles”
Tochigi Prefecture1 mentions across 1 issues

Tochigi Prefecture is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 19, 2023 and May 19, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Shinohata is in Tochigi Prefecture". It most often appears alongside 1980, 1980 referendum, 1995 referendum.

Reference entry
Tochigi Prefecture
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 19, 2023
Last seen
May 19, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The Question Of Separatism
May 19, 2023 · Original source
Shinohata is in Tochigi Prefecture, but I couldn’t figure out what its real name is. In any case, it is part of the vast Greater Tokyo Area, a region that combines the largest city in the world with large tracts of rural land, and occupies a disproportionate space in Japan’s demographics and national economy. Rural regions far from import-replacing cities are generally less lucky. Their plights take different forms, depending on which of the five forces dominates the others. An oversized market force creates a supply region: a place that exploits agricultural or natural resources and exports them to distant cities. These regions (the most common in the world) can be rich or poor, but they’re never economically dynamic — and they’re very sensitive to disturbances in the markets that they serve. Jacobs’s example is Uruguay, a country that grew rich selling animal products to European cities in the early 20th century, but then suffered immensely when the market changed in the 1950s, propelling the nation into a succession of economic crises.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!JDqr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F32ad04ba-f051-4744-b735-b6474c67dd81_1397x1593.png
Tokelau1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokelau is a recurring place 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 "Tokelau is a remote southern Pacific Ocean Island currently owned by New Zealand". It most often appears alongside 19th century, 21st century, Africa.

Reference entry
Tokelau
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 06, 2022
Last seen
April 06, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
April 06, 2022 · Original source
Tokelau is a remote southern Pacific Ocean Island currently owned by New Zealand with a population of ~1500 and currently on the UN list of non-self-governing territories. The UN has pushed for referendums towards statehood, two of which have failed. In this case, it seems that by virtue of being an Island rather than just a small town off the interstate, Tokelau may deserve self determination. It's not clear what a 1500-member nation would look like.
Tokyo (English)1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokyo (English) is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 29, 2024 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "TOKYO (ENGLISH), JAPAN". It most often appears alongside 10 N Park Pl, 12th Ave South, 1525 Bank St.

Reference entry
Tokyo (English)
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 29, 2024
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Doris Contact Info: siroddoris13[a t]gmail[do t]com Time: Sunday, September 8th, 04:00 PM Location: King's Hall Cafe @ Sek 13 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GVRRXWM+6H Group Link: https://discord.com/invite/XXFspCmy Additional Notes: Please RSVP so we can book the venue accordingly! Japan TOKYO (ENGLISH), JAPAN Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 10:00 AM Location: Get in touch for the details! Coordinates: Get in touch for the details! Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Get in touch for the details!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GVRRXWM+6H, https://discord.com/invite/XXFspCmy, https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/
Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 10:00 AM Location: Get in touch for the details! Coordinates: Get in touch for the details! Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Get in touch for the details!
Inline links: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/
Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 10:00 AM Location: Get in touch for the details! Coordinates: Get in touch for the details! Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Get in touch for the details! TOKYO (日本語), JAPAN 名前/Contact: Emi 連絡先/Contact Info: gouritekinakai[at]proton[dot]me 時/Time: Monday, September 16, 07:00 PM 場所/Location: エースイン新宿/Ace Inn Shinjuku 座標/ Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XMPVF+2P 追加メモ/Additional Notes: (こちらは日本語の東京ミートアップです)/ This is a Tokyo Meetup in Japanese. 初めての企画なので多分こじんまりとしたミートとなりますがちょっとでも興味のある方は是非ご参加してください。日本語全レベルok 着きましたら「ACX」とフロントの人にささやいて通してもらってください：）
Inline links: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/, https://plus.codes/8Q7XMPVF+2P
Tokyo (日本語)1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokyo (日本語) is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 29, 2024 and August 29, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "TOKYO (日本語), JAPAN". It most often appears alongside 10 N Park Pl, 12th Ave South, 1525 Bank St.

Reference entry
Tokyo (日本語)
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 29, 2024
Last seen
August 29, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 10:00 AM Location: Get in touch for the details! Coordinates: Get in touch for the details! Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Get in touch for the details! TOKYO (日本語), JAPAN 名前/Contact: Emi 連絡先/Contact Info: gouritekinakai[at]proton[dot]me 時/Time: Monday, September 16, 07:00 PM 場所/Location: エースイン新宿/Ace Inn Shinjuku 座標/ Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8Q7XMPVF+2P 追加メモ/Additional Notes: (こちらは日本語の東京ミートアップです)/ This is a Tokyo Meetup in Japanese. 初めての企画なので多分こじんまりとしたミートとなりますがちょっとでも興味のある方は是非ご参加してください。日本語全レベルok 着きましたら「ACX」とフロントの人にささやいて通してもらってください：）
Inline links: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/, https://plus.codes/8Q7XMPVF+2P
Contact: Doris Contact Info: siroddoris13[a t]gmail[do t]com Time: Sunday, September 8th, 04:00 PM Location: King's Hall Cafe @ Sek 13 Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GVRRXWM+6H Group Link: https://discord.com/invite/XXFspCmy Additional Notes: Please RSVP so we can book the venue accordingly! Japan TOKYO (ENGLISH), JAPAN Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 10:00 AM Location: Get in touch for the details! Coordinates: Get in touch for the details! Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Get in touch for the details!
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GVRRXWM+6H, https://discord.com/invite/XXFspCmy, https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/
Contact: Harold Contact Info: rationalitysalon[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 10:00 AM Location: Get in touch for the details! Coordinates: Get in touch for the details! Group Link: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/ Notes: Get in touch for the details!
Inline links: https://www.meetup.com/acx-tokyo/
Tokyo Metropolitan Area1 mentions across 1 issues

Tokyo Metropolitan Area is a recurring place 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 entire Tokyo Metropolitan Area"; "the entire Tokyo Metropolitan Area - 35 million people". It most often appears alongside 1960 Valdivia earthquake, AEC, Atomic Energy Commission.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 01, 2023
Last seen
July 01, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
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.
Toledo, OH1 mentions across 1 issues

Toledo, OH is a recurring place 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 "TOLEDO, OH". It most often appears alongside 't Heem, 10/40 Coffee, 11841 Wagner St., Culver City.

Reference entry
Toledo, OH
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 26, 2022
Last seen
August 26, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
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.
Inline links: 866MP88H+53, LessWrong, 8559FVVQ+6C, LessWrong, 849VGP8C+RRG, LessWrong, here, 849VVP5R+X7V, LessWrong, mailing list, Discord server, Facebook group, 856393VX+VQ, LessWrong, 84FW6W8H+C5, LessWrong, 8554M526+7H, LessWrong, the server, 8553XHWM+GP, LessWrong, LessWrong group, website, 8554J48R+WCX, LessWrong, Facebook event, 8544PVQ8+Q7, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Discord server, 849VQHC3+V8, LessWrong, 849W825J+6P, LessWrong, 85544VW4+RV, LessWrong, 85GP2V96+JQ, LessWrong, 85FJ9QXP+QMF, LessWrong, 85FQP2VP+9R, LessWrong, 85FPMW64+MW, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Facebook group, 87H84PCH+CM, LessWrong, 87H9QFFH+J7, LessWrong, 87H9836C+8VG, LessWrong, 87C4WX33+3J, LessWrong, Facebook event, 76RWH224+44, LessWrong, 862J9RCF+G6, LessWrong, 76QXRR65+V2, LessWrong, Facebook group, Discord server, Meetup.com group, 76WWJQ2X+82, LessWrong, Discord link, 862QCPR3+PX, LessWrong, 865RXJ68+2W, LessWrong, 865QRH2F+V8, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 73H475M3+JP, LessWrong, Meetup.com, our website, 85M5JQ6P+96, LessWrong, 86GH4Q7G+H8F, LessWrong, Discord server, 86HJV9FH+84, LessWrong, Chicago Rationality, 86JJ28X9+5WQ, LessWrong, 86FM4FX6+4Q, LessWrong, our Discord, 86GMC3GG+728, LessWrong, 86CQ3F4X+VF, LessWrong, 76XFXX73+8R, LessWrong, Website, 87JC9W3M+PR, LessWrong, Facebook event, Mailing list, Facebook group, Meetup.com, here, 87J9899F+H7H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord, 87F5774P+53, LessWrong, 86JR9WG9+R6, LessWrong, 86P8WPRW+76, LessWrong, 86F72CM8+RR, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 86CFJP4R+XV, LessWrong, 868CP4HW+CV, LessWrong, 8773X4Q3+QW, LessWrong, a Discord, LessWrong, 87G7QGW9+RJ, LessWrong, 87G7982Q+2CP, LessWrong, 85864RHJ+3H, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, 85F2G46W+FG, LessWrong, 87J3W467+8P, 87G8VJRW+99, LessWrong, 87G7PX9M+4J3, LessWrong, Discord, Google Group, Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, 87H7GWCH+GF, LessWrong, 87M46FM6+Q5P, LessWrong, 86HWG96Q+GC5, LessWrong, Clinton Shelter, 86FVX3C3+QF, LessWrong, 86HRMCCV+9R, LessWrong, 8674MG3C+MW, LessWrong, 84PRJWR7+XC6, LessWrong, 84PRHP5P+VQ, LessWrong, 84PR2WX4+VV, LessWrong, 84QVG8FG+V4, LessWrong, Meetup.com, Meetup.com, 87G562QQ+8P, LessWrong, on LessWrong, 87G2JRFX+48, LessWrong, 87F6WRXG+FQ, LessWrong, Discord, Google Calendar, Facebook, Meetup, Google Group, 87G2C3Q4+773, LessWrong, 87G4Q4WP+HV, LessWrong, 77CMCWVM+W32, LessWrong, 87HCRHJV+24, LessWrong, 86M5G7JH+W57, LessWrong, 867F5X2P+QHC, LessWrong, Discord server, 868M552H+XW, LessWrong, 86248746+8C, LessWrong, Austin LessWrong, JMFC+4J, LessWrong, 8645R55R+9M9, LessWrong, 76X6PHVW+5H, LessWrong, Discord, Facebook group, 8634HVG2+V9, LessWrong, 85GCP4WF+VJ, LessWrong, 87C32FPX+3H4, LessWrong, 8792CV65+5G, 8785RPX4+W3, LessWrong, Facebook event, Discord server, Twitter, 87C4WMX6+9X, LessWrong, this Discord server, 8794HFHQ+3G, LessWrong, 87P8FQJH+8P, LessWrong, 84WVMHX3+GM, LessWrong, Meetup.com, 84VVJM7H+4Q, LessWrong, Facebook event, Meetup.com, 86MG3H3X+XW, LessWrong, Facebook event
Toledo, Ohio1 mentions across 1 issues

Toledo, Ohio is a recurring place 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 "near Toledo, Ohio"; "The city of Toledo, Ohio is not safeguarded by watchful superheroes"; "The city of Toledo, Ohio is not safeguarded by watchful superheroes". It most often appears alongside 1960 Valdivia earthquake, AEC, Atomic Energy Commission.

Reference entry
Toledo, Ohio
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 01, 2023
Last seen
July 01, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Safe Enough?
July 01, 2023 · Original source
The date is June 9, 1985. The place is the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio. It is just after 1:35 am, and the plant has a small malfunction: "As the assistant supervisor entered the control room, he saw that one of the main feedwater pumps had tripped offline." But instead of stabilizing, one safety system after another failed to engage.
Yet "Safe Enough?" is less of a history of events than a biography of an idea, the birth of "Probabilistic Risk Assessment" as the guiding principle for understanding and mitigating risks in complex systems. The heroes of Wellock's book are not nuclear plant night shift assistant supervisors, or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission training and assessment specialists, though they each make important cameos. The city of Toledo, Ohio is not safeguarded by watchful superheroes. It is protected by a methodology.
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
Topeka1 mentions across 1 issues

Topeka is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 28, 2024 and March 28, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "John Smith of Topeka saw a UFO". It most often appears alongside ACX comment thread, ACX subreddit, Asia.

Reference entry
Topeka
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 28, 2024
Last seen
March 28, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate
March 28, 2024 · Original source
Okay, this one is just awful. It takes the risky gambit above - giving extreme odds to something - then doubles down on it by multiplying across twenty different stages to get a stupendously low probability of 1/5*10^25. If we believe this, it’s more likely that we win the lottery three times in a row than that we learn lab leak was true after all. Eliezer Yudkowsky calls this the Multiple Stage Fallacy. Even aside from the failure mode in the sunrise example above (where people are too reluctant to give strong probabilities), it fails because people don’t think enough about the correlations between stages. For example, maybe there’s only 1/10 odds that the Wuhan scientists would choose the suboptimal RRAR furin cleavage site. And maybe there’s only 1/20 odds that they would add a proline in front to make it PRRAR. But are these really two separate forms of weirdness, such that we can multiply them together and get 1/200? Or are scientists who do one weird thing with a furin cleavage site more likely to do another? Mightn’t they be pursuing some general strategy of testing weird furin cleavage sites? (For example, Yuri proposed that, because the scientists wanted to understand how pandemic coronaviruses originate in nature, they might deliberately pick more natural-looking features over more designed-looking ones, which would neatly explain many features seemingly inconsistent with lab leak. Is this a conspiracy theory? Rootclaim is able to successfully route around this question. If the probability of a feature happening in nature is X, then the probability of it happening in this variant of lab leak scenario is X * [chance that the scientists wanted to imitate nature). This gives it a (deserved) complexity penalty without ruling out this (non-zero and potentially important) possibility.) In any case, Peter didn’t care as much about probabilistic analysis as Saar, he didn’t make his case hinge on this slide, and he might have been kind of using it to troll Rootclaim (which definitely worked). He might not have been making any of the mistakes above. But anyone who took this slide seriously would end up dramatically miscalibrated. The Math: Big Pictures Another of Saar’s concerns with the verdict was that Peter was an extraordinary debater, to the point where it could have overwhelmed the signal from the evidence. It’s hard to watch the videos and not come away impressed. Peter seems to have a photographic memory for every detail of every study he’s ever read. He has some kind of 3D model in his brain of Wuhan, the wet market, and how all of its ventilation ducts and drains interacted with each other. Whenever someone challenged one of his points, he had a ten-slide PowerPoint presentation already made up to address that particular challenge, and would go over it with complete fluency, like he was reciting a memorized speech. I sometimes get accused of overdoing things, but I can’t imagine how many mutations it would take to make me even a fraction as competent as Peter was. Saar’s closing argument included the admission: Peter, I think everyone can agree, has much more knowledge on [COVID] origins than we do. He's invested much more time. He may be a much more talented researcher. He's much more into the details. He probably knows the best in the world on origins at this point. Once you’ve described your opponent that way in your closing argument, what’s left of your case? Saar thought a lot was left. Throughout the debate, he tried to make a point about how getting the inference right was more important than winning sub-sub-sub-debates about individual lines of evidence. Although Peter won most specific points of contention, Saar thought that if the judges could just keep their mind on the big picture, they would realize a lab leak was more likely. I’m potentially sympathetic to arguments like Saar’s. Imagine a debate about UFOs. Imaginary-Saar says “UFOs can’t be real, because it doesn’t make sense for aliens to come to Earth, circle around a few fields in Kansas, then leave without providing any other evidence of their existence.” Imaginary-Peter says “John Smith of Topeka saw a UFO at 4:52 PM on 6/12/2010, and everyone agrees he’s an honorable person who wouldn’t lie, so what’s your explanation of that?” Saar says “I don’t know, maybe he was drunk or something?” Peter says “Ha, I’ve hacked his cell phone records and geolocated him to coordinates XYZ, which is a mosque. My analysis finds that he’s there on 99.5% of Islamic holy days, which proves he’s a very religious Muslim. And religious Muslims don’t drink! Your argument is invalid!” On the one hand, imaginary-Peter is very impressive and sure did shoot down Saar’s point. On the other, imaginary-Saar never really claimed to have a great explanation for this particular UFO sighting, and his argument doesn’t depend on it. Instead of debating whether Smith could or couldn’t have been drunk, we need to zoom out and realize that the aliens explanation makes no sense. The problem was, Saar couldn’t effectively communicate what his big picture was. Neither deployed some kind of amazingly elegant prior. They both used the same kind of evidence. The only difference was that Peter’s evidence hung together, and Saar’s evidence fell apart on cross-examination. I think - not because Saar really explained it, but just reading between the lines - Saar thought the un-ignorable big picture evidence was the origin in a city with a coronavirus gain-of-function lab, and the twelve-nucleotide insertion in the furin cleavage site. To some degree, Peter just ate the loss on those questions. No matter how you slice it, it really is a weird coincidence that the epidemic started so close to Asia’s biggest coronavirus laboratory. Peter tried to deflect this - he pointed out there were other BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, etc. But this was a rare question where he unambiguously came out looking worse - the other cities’ labs had much less coronavirus-specific research. Wuhan really was unique (aside from the other big coronavirus lab in North Carolina). Peter did better when he tried to control the damage: there are a couple hundred million people in the South Asian areas where people eat weird animals exposed to virus-infected bats, Wuhan has a population of about 12 million, so maybe 1.5% of all potential zoonotic pandemics should start in Wuhan. Peter tried to argue that Wuhan was a local trade center, so maybe we should up that to 5 - 10%. 5 - 10% coincidences aren’t that rare. Even 1.5% coincidences happen sometimes. Likewise, the furin cleavage site really does stand on a genetic map. I didn’t feel like either side did much math to quantify how weird it was. Naively, I might think of this as “30,000 bases in COVID, only one insertion, it’s in what’s obviously the most interesting place - sounds like 30,000-to-one odds against”. Against that, a virus with a boring insertion would never have become a pandemic, so maybe you need to multiply this by however much viral evolution is going on in weird caves in Laos, and then you would get the odds that at least one virus would have an insertion interesting enough to go global. Neither participant calculated this in a way that satisfied me (though see here for related discussion). Instead, Peter tried to undermine the furin argument by showing that, as surprising as the site was under a natural origin, it would be an even more surprising choice for human engineers. Saar argued it wasn’t - but because of his policy of giving adjusted-for-model-error odds, he only gave this a factor of 30 in his analysis. Since Peter gave it a higher factor of 50 in his analysis, it looked from the outside like Saar had already conceded this point, and the judges were mostly happy to go with Saar’s artificially-low estimate. The Math: Double Coincidences Saar brought up an interesting point halfway through the debate: you should rarely see high Bayes factors on both sides of an argument. That is, suppose you accept that there’s only a 1-in-10,000 chance that the pandemic starts at a wet market under lab leak. And suppose you accept there’s only a 1-in-10,000 chance that COVID’s furin cleavage site could evolve naturally. If lab leak is true, then you might find 1-in-10,000 evidence for lab leak. But it’s a freak coincidence that there was 1-in-10,000 evidence for zoonosis5. Likewise, if zoonosis is true, you might find 1-in-10,000 evidence for this true thing. But it’s a freak coincidence that there was 1-in-10,000 evidence for lab leak. Either way, you’re accepting that a 1-in-10,000 freak coincidence happened. Isn’t it more likely you’ve bungled your analysis? I was following along at home, and I definitely bungled this point; I had some high Bayes factors on both sides. I adjusted some of them downward based on Saar’s good point, but how far should we take it? Here I remember The Pyramid And The Garden: you can get very strong coincidences if you have many degrees of freedom, ie buy a lot of lottery tickets. So for example, suppose there are fifty things about a virus. You should expect at least one of those to have a one-in-fifty coincidence by pure chance. What about more than that? You might be able to get away with this by saying there are an infinite number of possible conspiracy theories, and some from that infinite set are brought into existence when a strong enough coincidence makes them plausible. For example, it’s really weird that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If I wanted, I could form a conspiracy theory about a group of weird assassins obsessed with killing Founding Fathers on important dates, and then Jefferson and Adams’ deaths would be 1/10,000 evidence for that theory. But this is the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, which Saar warned against several times. I don’t know if “the virus started in Wuhan, which is where they’re doing this research” gets a Texas Sharpshooter penalty, or how high that penalty should be. But the furin cleavage site doesn’t - people were talking about lab leak before anyone noticed it. The Aftermath: Peter Peter seemed satisfied with the result, in an understated sort of way: It seemed like an interesting experiment in monetizing the debunking of a conspiracy theory. I think there's usually a big asymmetry where it's easy to get rich spreading bullshit (like, the top anti-vaxxers during the pandemic all made a million dollars a year on substack), but it's almost impossible to make money on debunking it. The Rootclaim challenge seemed like one rare case where the opposite was true. Beyond that, I don't know what it's good for. It does seem like there could be a positive social impact from more people understanding that the lab leak hypothesis is (almost certainly) false. The Aftermath: Saar Saar says the debate didn’t change his mind. In fact, by the end of the debate, Rootclaim released an updated analysis that placed an even higher probability on lab leak than when they started. In his blog post, he discussed the issues above, and said the judges had erred in not considering them. He respects the judges, he appreciates their efforts, he just thinks they got it wrong. Although he respected their decision, he wanted the judges to correct what he saw as mistakes in their published statements, which delayed the public verdict and which which Viewers Like You did not appreciate: I ran an early draft of this post by him. There was some miscommunication about the exact publication date, so he hasn’t had time to write up a full response, but he has some quick thoughts (and I’ll link the full response when he writes it). He says: We will provide a full response to this post soon, but the main problem with it is fairly simple: There is general agreement that the main evidence for zoonosis is HSM (Huanan Seafood Market) forming an early cluster of cases. The contention is whether it is amazing 10,000x evidence, or is it negligible. All other evidence points to a lab leak, and if HSM is shown to be weak, lab leak is a clear winner. We provided an analysis of why it is negligible that is as close to mathematical proof as such things can be. Read it here. Scott and I exchanged a few emails on this issue and Scott preferred to discuss more intuitive analyses of HSM, using rules of thumb that likely served him well in the past. While I believe I managed to mostly explain where these failed, and Scott understands HSM is far weaker evidence than he initially thought6, he still has a very strong intuitive feeling (based on years of dealing with probabilities) that this is some exceptional coincidence, and that prevents him from properly updating his posterior. At the end of the day, this cannot be settled without going through our semi-formal derivation, understanding it, and either identifying the problem with it or accepting it (and thereby accepting lab-leak to be more likely). Here is a quick summary of the mistakes made by those claiming HSM is strong evidence: The first mistake is conflating Bayes factors with conditional probabilities. 1/10000 is the supposed conditional probability p(HSM|Lab Leak), That should be divided by the conditional probability of HSM under Zoonosis. Markets were not identified as a high-risk location prior to this outbreak (This will be elaborated in the full response), and in SARS1 the spillovers were mostly at restaurants and other food handlers that deal more closely with wildlife. While it's cool to point to the raccoon dog photo, that was a result of a retrospective search (we don't know what other photos they took which in retrospect would be brought up as premonition). Unbiased data shows markets are not a likely spillover location for zoonosis. We originally estimated p(HSM|Zoonosis)<0.1. Following more research we did to answer Scott's questions, this is more likely <0.03.
Inline links: Multiple Stage Fallacy, see here, 5, The Pyramid And The Garden, Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, blog post, 6
Topeka, Kansas1 mentions across 1 issues

Topeka, Kansas is a recurring place 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 ""Dear John, you have been paired with Bob Smith of Topeka, Kansas.""; "Bob Smith of Topeka, Kansas". It most often appears alongside Aceso Under Glass, ACX Grant, America.

Reference entry
Topeka, Kansas
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
November 07, 2023
Last seen
November 07, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation
November 07, 2023 · Original source
Here’s a sort of daydream: some charity gets the list of the 40,000 people who are predicted to die next year for lack of a kidney. Then it chooses 40,000 random Americans in a 1:1 correspondence with the kidney patients. Then it sends each of those random Americans a letter, saying “Dear John, you have been paired with Bob Smith of Topeka, Kansas. He will die of kidney failure next year unless someone donates a kidney. We have randomly selected you as a potential donor. If you say no, we will not randomly select anyone else, and Bob will probably die. If you’re willing, please call this phone number.”
Tora Bora1 mentions across 1 issues

Tora Bora is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 05, 2021 and August 05, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Osama bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora". It most often appears alongside ACT UP San Francisco, aducanumab, aducanumab.

Reference entry
Tora Bora
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 05, 2021
Last seen
August 05, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Adumbrations Of Aducanumab
August 05, 2021 · Original source
Consider the police. I once had a psychotic patient threaten to kill a family member. I reported it to the police. They asked me where they could find the patient, I said I dunno, maybe at his house or something? I called them back a few hours later asking how things were going, and they said they had knocked on the patient’s door and he hadn’t answered, so they felt like they had discharged their duty in this matter and were going to close the case. I asked if maybe they could go back to the patient’s house and try again later, and they acted like I was asking them to hunt down Osama bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora or something.
Torres1 mentions across 1 issues

Torres is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 28, 2021 and May 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "In 2004 in Torres, Venezula, an outside candidate Julio Chavez was elected mayor". It most often appears alongside A Game of Thrones, Africa, African Americans.

Reference entry
Torres
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 28, 2021
Last seen
May 28, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Humankind
May 28, 2021 · Original source
It turns out something like this has actually been tried. In 2004 in Torres, Venezula, an outside candidate, Julio Chavez was elected mayor on a platform of turning power over to the people. And he did. Hundreds of gatherings of residents took place which decided 100% of how the budget would be spent. The result was a huge success, with less corruption, more infrastructure, fewer glory projects, and a much more engaged electorate. Julio has retired, but the process is still going on under his successor. Last year 15,000 people participated in setting the budget. This isn't a one off, Porto Alegre, Brazil, started allocating a quarter of its budget this way in 1989, today more than 1,500 cities from New York to Hamburg are doing something in this space. "[This is] one of the biggest movements of the twenty-first century," writes Bregman, "but the chances are you've never heard of it." I certainly hadn't. Apparently, citizens engaging in calm, constructive, detailed dialogue is lousy box office, and none of them have hired promoters or bought ad time. Lousy box office it might be, but trusting our populations might just be the recipe for revitalising our democracies.
Tower of Binding1 mentions across 1 issues

Tower of Binding is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 28, 2023 and April 28, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "go on a quest to the Tower of Binding". It most often appears alongside Ancient Progenitor Civilization, Aragorn, Arya Stark.

Reference entry
Tower of Binding
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 28, 2023
Last seen
April 28, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
The Psychology Of Fantasy
April 28, 2023 · Original source
They bound the Dark Lord 999 years ago so that the solution to the Dark Lord problem can be “go on a quest to the Tower of Binding and tighten the screws” rather than the normal solutions of “raise a giant army” or “discover new anti-Dark-Lord technology yourself”. The latter are solutions that require a competent agentic person rather than a teenager with a heart of gold (even if a teenager has eg a charisma-based superpower and goes about trying to raise an army, in the process of raising the army she’s going to encounter bureaucratic complications - eg how do you feed it? - and eventually have to become an important person with responsibilities, like a general). The best fantasy books have their Aragorn character (to provide a competence fantasy and let someone raise the army) but also the Frodo character who goes on the quest to the Tower of Binding.
Townsville1 mentions across 1 issues

Townsville is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 05, 2024 and March 05, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "John Smith from Townsville". It most often appears alongside @wc1766, Adam, Adam Unikowsky.

Reference entry
Townsville
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 05, 2024
Last seen
March 05, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Who Predicted 2023?
March 05, 2024 · Original source
Why is this interesting, when a handful of people still beat the math? Because we want something that can be applied prospectively and reliably. If John Smith from Townsville was the highest scoring participant, it matters a lot whether he’s a genius who can see the future, or if he just got lucky. Part of the goal of this contest was to figure that out. To figure out if the most reliable way to determine the future was to trust one identifiable guy, to trust some mathematical aggregation across guys, or something else.
Transdnistria1 mentions across 1 issues

Transdnistria is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 01, 2022 and March 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Moldova (if part of Russia’s plan was to create a corridor to Transdnistria)". It most often appears alongside ACX, Afghan government, Aleppo.

Reference entry
Transdnistria
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 01, 2022
Last seen
March 01, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Ukraine Warcasting
March 01, 2022 · Original source
Commenters bring up Belarus (if they start seeming less loyal), Moldova (if part of Russia’s plan was to create a corridor to Transdnistria), or Georgia (Russia likes invading Georgia). Relatively few people think a Russia-NATO war is likely to be a big part of this. Zvi thinks this should be 20%.
Inline links: Zvi thinks
Travis1 mentions across 1 issues

Travis is a recurring place 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 ""The land close to Travis is probably intended as industrial park"". It most often appears alongside 101, ALUC, Antioch.

Reference entry
Travis
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 11, 2023
Last seen
September 11, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Last Week's Model Cities Post
September 11, 2023 · Original source
The Public's Radio article has a map in it that gives a better idea of the location. It looks like most of the land is closer to Rio Vista and does include a good stretch of riverfront. The land close to Travis is probably intended as industrial park rather than residential.
Inline links: map
Michael worries about the air force base (marked Travis AFB on the map above)
Inline links: worries about the air force base
Travis AFB is a MAC base, Material Air Command. They fly freight, and its really loud. When its foggy, which it is often in the delta region, the foggy air really carries the sound. Flying freight is done with really big heavy aircraft, and they're very loud.
Travis Air Force Base1 mentions across 1 issues

Travis Air Force Base is a recurring place 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 "Travis Air Force Base Sustainability Study". It most often appears alongside 101, ALUC, Antioch.

Reference entry
Travis Air Force Base
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 11, 2023
Last seen
September 11, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On Last Week's Model Cities Post
September 11, 2023 · Original source
But wait! I can do better! I took the map of plots purchased from the NYTimes (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/business/economy/california-land-solano-county.html) and combined them with the Travis Air Force Base Sustainability Study (https://www.solanocounty.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=36198 or page 41-42 here https://oldcc.gov/sites/default/files/mis-studies/Travis%20Air%20Force%20Base.pdf), to get a map of the overlap.
Inline links: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/business/economy/california-land-solano-county.html, https://www.solanocounty.com/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?blobid=36198, https://oldcc.gov/sites/default/files/mis-studies/Travis%20Air%20Force%20Base.pdf
TRENTO1 mentions across 1 issues

TRENTO is a recurring place 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 "TRENTO". It most often appears alongside 1108 R St, 11841 Wagner Street, 131 Colonie Center.

Reference entry
TRENTO
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 01, 2026
Last seen
April 01, 2026
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: Luca Petrolati Contact Info: luc[.]petrolati[@]gmail[.]com Time: Sunday, April 12th, 4:45 PM Location: We’ll gather up at the pub “Fabrik”, Via Augusto Righi 32e. I’ll be waiting at the entrance carrying a sign saying “ACX MEETUP” Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FPHF8XW+GG Notes: Feel free to come and propose a topic of conversation, or just come to have a chat with intellectually interesting people TRENTO Contact: Alex Contact Info: alexandroszampa[@]gmail[.]com Time: Wednesday, April 29th, 2:00 PM Location: Piazza Dante near Dante’s statue in the park Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8FRH34CC+J5 Notes: Given this is the first time this event gets organized and we are unsure of the numbers present we would welcome anyone intending to come to say so beforehand. If that is impossible don’t worry, come anyways, it means we will have an excuse for our disorganization.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8FPHF8XW+GG, https://plus.codes/8FRH34CC+J5
Trenton1 mentions across 1 issues

Trenton is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 07, 2022 and June 07, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "I grew up in Trenton. I speak fluent Spanish"; "I grew up in Trenton"; "consider Trenton. It’s true that, viewed as a logical reasoning problem, someone who grows up in Trenton". It most often appears alongside Athens, Creole, DALL-E.

Reference entry
Trenton
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 07, 2022
Last seen
June 07, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
My Bet: AI Size Solves Flubs
June 07, 2022 · Original source
I grew up in Trenton. I speak fluent Spanish ❌
I grew up in Trenton. I speak fluent Spanish and I'm bi-cultural. I've been in law enforcement for eight years […] I'm very proud to be a Latina. I'm very proud to be a New Jerseyan. ??
When it gets them “wrong”, I tend to agree with GPT-3 more than Marcus. For example, consider Trenton. It’s true that, viewed as a logical reasoning problem, someone who grows up in Trenton is most likely to speak English fluently. But nobody told GPT-3 to view this as a logical reasoning problem. In real speech/writing, which is what GPT-3 is trying to imitate, no US native fluent English speaker ever tells another US native fluent English speaker, in English, “hey, did you know I’m fluent in English?” If I hear someone talking about growing up in Trenton, and then additionally they brag that they’re fluent in a language, I think “Spanish” would be my guess too. GPT-3 even goes on to have the speaker talk about being a proud Latina, which suggests it’s going through the same line of reasoning. To test this, I made the reasoning problem aspect of the prompt clearer:
Trier1 mentions across 1 issues

Trier is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 06, 2021 and May 06, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "For instance, the city of Trier (modern Germany, near Luxembourg) was an important imperial center near the Rhine frontier". It most often appears alongside 320 AD, 476 AD, Africa.

Reference entry
Trier
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 06, 2021
Last seen
May 06, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Through The Eye Of A Needle
May 06, 2021 · Original source
The gold solidus was in circulation among the wealthy in the urbanized areas around Rome and Carthage. It was also found along what Brown calls “corridors of empire.” For instance, the city of Trier (modern Germany, near Luxembourg) was an important imperial center near the Rhine frontier. A great deal of taxes and supplies flowed to Trier and to the armies of the Rhine. The wealthiest landowners and most splendid villas crowded along these corridors “tied to an imperial gravy train.”
Trophy Club1 mentions across 1 issues

Trophy Club is a recurring place 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 "Location : Social Oak Lounge, Trophy Club". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Trophy Club
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
WESTLAKE, TEXAS, USA Contact: Jacob Elliott Contact Info: jake[at]gnomidion[dot]com Time: Friday, September 8th, 7:00 PM Location: Social Oak Lounge, Trophy Club Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8644XRV5+6W
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8644XRV5+6W
tropical Atlantic Ocean1 mentions across 1 issues

tropical Atlantic Ocean is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 01, 2023 and December 01, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Saharan dust aerosol transport over the tropical Atlantic Ocean". It most often appears alongside Abraham Davenport, AI Policy Institute, Arizona.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
December 01, 2023
Last seen
December 01, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For November 2023
December 01, 2023 · Original source
CAMS scientists found a significant negative anomaly in Saharan dust aerosol transport over the tropical Atlantic Ocean, and an increased anomaly in biomass burning aerosol over the North Atlantic, coming from the massive Canadian wildfires. These aerosol anomalies are much bigger than the sulphate change from shipping emission reductions. This makes the estimation of the impact of reduced sulphate aerosol emissions on the sea surface temperatures very challenging.
tropical Australia1 mentions across 1 issues

tropical Australia is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 08, 2021 and December 08, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the occasional twice-yearly spikes in tropical Australia". It most often appears alongside African-Americans, Alaska, Arizona.

Reference entry
tropical Australia
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
December 08, 2021
Last seen
December 08, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Diseasonality
December 08, 2021 · Original source
And it happens once or twice a year. Why? Maybe a new variety comes out of China every year, but that doesn’t explain the occasional twice-yearly spikes in tropical Australia. The article I find most enlightening here is this New York Times piece from summer 2021: Why Everyone Has The Worst Summer Cold Ever. It says that lots of people got bad colds (particularly colds spread by a pathogen called Respiratory Syncitial Virus) in summer 2021, after coronavirus restrictions were loosened. RSV is usually very seasonal and very winter, so presumably there was “built-up” RSV vulnerability that got a chance to break out once COVID restrictions were loosened. The article even says:
Inline links: Why Everyone Has The Worst Summer Cold Ever
Truckee1 mentions across 1 issues

Truckee is a recurring place 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 "He lives in Truckee (population 13,000)"; "You just have to be living in Truckee, California". It most often appears alongside #Abolitionist, #AntiNazi, #antiwar.

Reference entry
Truckee
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 24, 2022
Last seen
May 24, 2022
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z
May 24, 2022 · Original source
Still, there’s something good about these people existing. I used to think that nobody could possibly be optimistic about an ordinary person succeeding in our political system. You would have to be living in a cave. People like Lonnie Sortor prove that isn’t true. You just have to be living in Truckee, California.
Here my commitment to find something interesting and unique about all 26 candidates for Governor of California starts to flag. I’m not sure there are any cute facts about Lonnie Sortor. He is a Republican. He owns a construction company. He lives in Truckee (population 13,000). His campaign motto is “It’s Time To Stand”. He looks like this:
Tsetnerivka Street1 mentions across 1 issues

Tsetnerivka Street is a recurring place 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 "tsetnerivka street , lviv , lviv oblast , ukraine". It most often appears alongside "Beer Capital" pub, 100 Black Birch Trail, 11841 Wagner Street, Culver City.

Reference entry
Tsetnerivka Street
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 29, 2025
Last seen
August 29, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Rudra Contact Info: [plus]380930375255 Time: Saturday, October 18, 10:00 AM Location: skif stadium ,tsetnerivka street , lviv , lviv oblast , ukraine . I will be wearing white cap Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GX6R3M6+QMH
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GX6R3M6+QMH
TTP1 mentions across 1 issues

TTP is a recurring place 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 "11:11 Cafe in TTP". It most often appears alongside 1022 High St. Blue House w/red porches, 11:11 Cafe, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
TTP
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 10, 2022
Last seen
April 10, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Spring Meetups In Seventy Cities
April 10, 2022 · Original source
PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA Contact: Amos (me@amos.ng) Date: April 30 Time: 11:00 AM Coordinates: https://plus.codes/7P36GWV7+7M Location: 11:11 Cafe in TTP Notes: If possible, please email me beforehand so I know you’re coming.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/7P36GWV7+7M
Tu B'Shevat1 mentions across 1 issues

Tu B'Shevat is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 07, 2022 and December 07, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as ""9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat."". It most often appears alongside Blue Helmet, Blue Helmet Insurance, Chakaramanditya.

Reference entry
Tu B'Shevat
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
December 07, 2022
Last seen
December 07, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
What Your Doctor Spends 80% Of Their Time Doing
December 07, 2022 · Original source
"Hello! This is SmartSave pharmacy, home of compassionate savings on drugs, vitamins, and more. Our hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM Saturdays, 10 AM to 3 PM Sundays, 10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Christmas Eve, Thanksgiving, and New Years, and 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat. We now have the COVID booster at SmartSave pharmacy! Did you know that COVID boosters can protect against all variants of COVID? Schedule your COVID booster now! We also have the SmartSave card, a great source for all prescription drug savings. ¡Hola! Esta es la farmacia SmartSave, hogar de ahorros compasivos en medicamentos, vitaminas y más. Nuestro horario es de 9 a. m. a 5 p. m. de lunes a viernes, de 10 a. m. a 4 p. m. los sábados, de 10 a. m. a 3 p. m. los domingos, de 10 a. :30 p. m. en Semana Santa, Día de los Caídos y Tu B'Shevat. ¡Ya tenemos el refuerzo COVID en farmacia SmartSave! ¿Sabía que los refuerzos de COVID pueden proteger contra todas las variantes de COVID? ¡Programe su refuerzo COVID ahora! Tambien tenemos la tarjeta SmartSave, una gran fuente para todos los ahorros en medicamentos recetados. If you would like to hear this introductory message again, press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line."
"Hello! This is SmartSave pharmacy, home of compassionate savings on drugs, vitamins, and more. Our hours are from 9 AM to 5 PM Mondays through Fridays, 10 AM to 4 PM Saturdays, 10 AM to 3 PM Sundays, 10 AM to 3:30 PM on Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years, and 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM on Easter, Memorial Day, and Tu B'Shevat. We now have the COVID booster at SmartSave pharmacy! Did you know that COVID boosters can protect against all variants of COVID? Schedule your COVID booster now! We now have the SmartSave card, a great source for all prescription drug savings. ¡Hola! Esta es la farmacia SmartSave, hogar de ahorros compasivos en medicamentos, vitaminas y más. Nuestro horario es de 9 a. m. a 5 p. m. de lunes a viernes, de 10 a. m. a 4 p. m. los sábados, de 10 a. m. a 3 p. m. los domingos, de 10 a. :30 p. m. en Semana Santa, Día de los Caídos y Tu B'Shevat. ¡Ya tenemos el refuerzo COVID en farmacia SmartSave! ¿Sabía que los refuerzos de COVID pueden proteger contra todas las variantes de COVID? ¡Programe su refuerzo COVID ahora! Ahora tenemos la tarjeta SmartSave, una gran fuente para todos los ahorros en medicamentos recetados. If you would like to hear this introductory message again, press 1. Otherwise, stay on the line."
e campus1 mentions across 1 issues

TU/e campus is a recurring place 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 "biweekly meetups in the Hubble cafe on the TU/e campus". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
e campus
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS Contact: Jelle Contact Info: jelledonderz[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, Octover 21st, 3:00 PM Location: Strijp-S feelgood market grass field. Look for a printed sign that says 'ACX' Coordinates: https://plus.codes/9F37CFW5+X2 Group Link: https://www.eaeindhoven.nl/ Notes: Effective Altruism Eindhoven has biweekly meetups in the Hubble cafe on the TU/e campus. Rationality-themed conversations are welcome! https://www.eaeindhoven.nl/calendar
Inline links: https://plus.codes/9F37CFW5+X2, https://www.eaeindhoven.nl/
Tucson, Arizona, USA1 mentions across 1 issues

Tucson, Arizona, USA is a recurring place 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 "TUCSON, ARIZONA, USA". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Tucson, Arizona, USA
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TUCSON, ARIZONA, USA Contact: Chris Contact Info: acx[at]cmart[dot]today Time: Saturday, October 7th, 11:15 AM Location: Boxyard at 238 N 4th Ave. Look for ACX tabletop sign. I'll try to get the big shaded table way in the back (next to Los Perches). Coordinates: https://plus.codes/854F62FM+VWW Notes: Boxyard is outdoor seating. It's likely that we'll have shade, but not a guarantee, so dress for possible sun. UPDATE: The original organizer won't be making it, so there may not actually be anyone there.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/854F62FM+VWW
Tucson, AZ1 mentions across 1 issues

Tucson, AZ is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 18, 2024 and March 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Josh King, ... who lives in Tucson, AZ and works as General Counsel for Realself.com". It most often appears alongside ACSresearch.org, ACX, ACX Grants.

Reference entry
Tucson, AZ
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
March 18, 2024
Last seen
March 18, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Open Thread 320
March 18, 2024 · Original source
Josh King, a technology lawyer, former wireless M&A guy, and advisor to startups who lives in Tucson, AZ and works as General Counsel for Realself.com.
Tulare1 mentions across 1 issues

Tulare is a recurring place 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 ""Madera, Tulare, and Kern are light red"". It most often appears alongside 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, 21st Century Salon, ACX.

Reference entry
Tulare
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
October 13, 2022
Last seen
October 13, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Highlights From The Comments On The Central Valley
October 13, 2022 · Original source
If you look at the counties in the Central Valley, Sacramento's middle-blue, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, and Fresno are light blue, while Madera, Tulare, and Kern are light red. My district has usually been pretty purple, with centrist D's and R's winning, though districts that attach to the mountain areas are red and those that head west get bluer.
Tunis1 mentions across 1 issues

Tunis is a recurring place 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 "everyone from Greece to Egypt to Tunis had learned their cost". It most often appears alongside Africa, Agamemnon, Age of Empires II.

Reference entry
Tunis
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 01, 2025
Last seen
August 01, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Review: Joan of Arc
August 01, 2025 · Original source
The answer was, as it happened, that the Edwards first and third had spent the past sixty years building the most professional army in Europe. England, like the rest of post-Roman Europe, had been founded on a military basis of feudal levies, with each vassal providing soldiers at his expense to fight alongside the king’s personal retinue. These soldiers could be called out for long enough to stop marauding Vikings but not for much longer, so any attempt to raise an army for even a single year's campaign required agonizing negotiations with each individual leader and, worse, meant that the troops were all either sullen conscripts or proud knights eager for glory and jealous of their honor. These knights might fight like the devil - as everyone from Greece to Egypt to Tunis had learned to their cost - but leading these men was like herding cats.
Tunisia1 mentions across 1 issues

Tunisia is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 21, 2021 and January 21, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "eventually a mostly-peaceful revolution ousted the government of Tunisia". It most often appears alongside 7500 people signed a petition, Alex Tabarrok, Balaji Srinivasan.

Reference entry
Tunisia
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
January 21, 2021
Last seen
January 21, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Still Alive
January 21, 2021 · Original source
In 2010, a corrupt policewoman demanded a bribe from impoverished pushcart vendor Mohammed Bouazizi. He couldn't afford it. She confiscated his goods, insulted him, and (according to some sources) slapped him. He was humiliated and destitute and had no hope of ever getting back at a police officer. So he made the very reasonable decision to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire in the public square. One thing led to another, and eventually a mostly-peaceful revolution ousted the government of Tunisia. I am very sorry for Mr. Bouazizi and his family. But he did find a way to make the offending policewoman remember the day she harassed him as something other than Tuesday. As the saying goes, "sometimes setting yourself on fire sheds light on the situation".
Inline links: ousted the government of Tunisia
Turk Street1 mentions across 1 issues

Turk Street is a recurring place 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 "Camelot Hotel on Turk Street". 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
Turk Street
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 23, 2022
Last seen
June 23, 2022
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Book Review: San Fransicko
June 23, 2022 · Original source
Continuing from San Fransicko: There is evidence that privacy and solitude created by Housing First make substance abuse worse. A study in Ottawa found that, while the Housing First group kept people in housing longer, the comparison group saw greater reductions in alcohol consumption and problematic drug use, and greater improvements to mental health, after two years. “One reason for the surprising results,” wrote the authors, “may be that aspects of the Housing First intervention, such as the privacy afforded by Housing First and harm reduction approach, might result in slower improvements around substance use and mental health.” Okay, but the next sentence after the one the book quoted was the researchers admitting that oops, we also totally forgot to randomize our groups in any way, so the experimental and control groups had totally different levels of severity and maybe that was why they found this weird thing (this is non-obvious, because we’re looking at change over time rather than raw differences between groups, but the authors discuss some reasons why different groups might change differently over time). A few years later these same researchers did a proper randomized study and it found no difference in drug use between the two groups. Somers, Moniruzzaman and Palepu found no difference in drug use between Housing First and other subjects. Padgett et al found the Housing First group actually did better, although they are another victim of the epidemic of randomization failures in this space. Kirst et al, no difference in drug use, but Housing First better with alcohol. Milby found that housing contigent on abstinence worked better than housing not contigent on abstinence, which Shellenberger could have used to support his thesis, but even Milby found that housing not contingent on abstinence worked better than no housing! To summarize: I can find seven studies on this topic, only one of them agrees with San Fransicko’s thesis, and the authors admit that it’s weak. I accuse San Fransicko of citing only that one and pretending all the others don’t exist. (actually, I accuse it of doing that plus citing a line from a review claiming another study found this, but as far as I can tell that study did not actually find it) This is extra annoying, because all the popular news articles on Housing First gush about how it definitely decreases substance use and everything else bad. Shellenberger could have made the excellent point that all of these progressive journalists were totally wrong! This would have been an interesting, important, and completely true act of virtuous data journalism! Instead he tries to hold up a lonely negative result as representative, and ends up just as wrong but in the opposite direction. Continuing in San Fransicko: Researchers have found ways to use housing to reduce addiction. Between 1990 and 2006, researchers in Birmingham, Alabama, conducted clinical trials of abstinence-contingent housing with 644 homeless people with crack cocaine addictions. Two-thirds of participants remained abstinent after six months, a very high rate of abstinence, compared to other treatment programs. Other studies found that around 40 percent of homeless in abstinence-contingent housing maintained their abstinence, housing, and jobs. In a randomized controlled trial, homeless people were given furnished apartments and allowed to keep them unless they failed a drug test, at which point they were sent to stay in a shelter. Sixty-five percent of participants completed the program. Three similar randomized controlled trials also found moderate to high rates of completion. And participants in abstinence-contingent housing had better housing and employment outcomes than participants assigned housing for whom abstinence was not required. All of this seems basically true. It turns out that over longer periods of time, Housing First may not even outperform contingency in terms of keeping people housed. In the spring of 2021, a team of Harvard medical experts published the results of a fourteen-year-long study of chronic homeless placed into permanent supportive housing in Boston. Most studies of permanent supportive housing, including the Kushel study conducted in Santa Clara, only study the newly housed homeless for a span of around two years. The study found that 86 percent of the homeless, who were referred based on length of time living on the streets, suffered from “trimorbidity”—a combination of medical illness, mental illness, and substance abuse. The authors found that after ten years, just 12 percent of the homeless remained housed. During the study period, 45 percent died. The authors concluded that, because the chronically homeless had such higher rates of physical and mental illness, “the supportive services, essential to the PSH model, may not have been sufficient to address the needs of this unsheltered population.” This study was done on an especially severe subgroup of homeless people. There was no control group, so Shellenberger shouldn’t claim we have any evidence about whether Housing First can “outperform contingency”. Shellenberger counts people who died as “unhoused” to get his 12% number; if he didn’t do this, the number would be 23%. Only 23% of people given housing retained after ten years sounds bad. But you could change this number to whatever number you wanted by changing the severity of the subgroup selected for the study. Select people who are even crazier and more disturbed than these people, and you can have 0% retained after ten years; select high-functioning people with no problems, and you can get 100% retained after ten years. (or maybe not - the study doesn’t say why people left the program. It mentions that one possible outcome is having to go to a nursing home because they had grown too sick or old to support themselves. I am not sure that “23% stay in this program” means “77% are back on the street and all their care has been a total failure”.) Conclusion: Housing First seems to work in getting people housing. It probably also helps people use fewer medical services, and it might or might not save money compared to not doing it (probably more likely when treating very severe cases, less likely in areas with high housing costs). It probably doesn’t affect people’s overall health or drug use status very much. San Fransicko is right to call out all the people promoting it beyond what the evidence supports, but then goes on to attack it beyond what the evidence supports. Interlude: Why Can’t We Just House All The Homeless? This is the question many of the California gubernatorial candidates asked. California has lots of money. There aren’t that many homeless people. Everyone is already committed to Housing First. So why don’t they have houses already? San Francisco has about 7,000 homeless people. The median SF apartment costs about $3,000 per month (presumably the government officials in charge would be trying to buy cheaper-than-median apartments for this project, but they seem bad at that, so let’s stick with median as a high-end estimate). So that’s $250 million/year to rent every homeless person an apartment. San Francisco has a $14 billion budget, although some of that is locked in nondiscretionary programs. So this effort would take about 2-3% of the city budget. Given how many people have both altruistic and selfish objections to the current level of SF homelessness, I can’t imagine that isn’t a better use of the money than whatever it’s being spent on now. So why hasn’t this happened? The closest thing I can find to the “rent apartments” plan is Governor Newsom’s “rent hotel rooms” plan, Project Roomkey. This was a short-term pandemic program. This article says it cost $4,000 per month, which seems reasonable - it provided residents with a hotel room, meals, security, and “custodial services” for just above a hundred dollars a day. So how come nobody has made it permanent or scaled it up? The homeless themselves don’t seem very positive on the project. They talk about “jail”-like conditions, including curfews and bans on visitors. I don’t know if this is the usual nanny-state-ism, or an attempt to reassure hotel owners / other residents / local communities that the influx of homeless people won’t cause them problems. If the latter, it hasn’t worked. From here: Jenna Abbott, executive director of the River District Business Association, said having a Roomkey motel in her neighborhood has been difficult. The site — which is in an area with large number of unhoused people — has drawn family and friends of Roomkey residents who haven’t been housed but “camp close to that hotel,” some with the goal of gaining a room, Abbott said. That’s led to more loitering, public drunkenness and trash outside the restaurants, gas stations and other businesses in the area, she added. And here’s another article about people objecting to local hotels accepting homeless people, which focuses on some combination of zoning, code, and public safety concerns. Everybody - the homeless, their advocates, various experts - interviewed in the article - agrees that the hotel rooms are kind of dehumanizing and much worse than having real housing. And this article suggests that government budgeters believe it’s not cost-effective compared to alternatives. Since the homeless don’t like it, and it’s expensive, almost everyone seems to agree it made sense as a short-term COVID measure only. The government’s preferred medium-term solution is single resident occupancy (SRO) hotels. These are big apartment/hotel-like structures where everyone has a small bedroom and then there are communal bathrooms and maybe kitchens. These used to be the archetypal living situation for poor Americans (Matt Yglesias talks about them as “boarding houses” here). But moral reformers banned them in the 1900s on the grounds that they were slums - I think this is the usual “surely the reason poor people live bad lives is because capitalists oppress them by selling them cheap low-quality goods, and if we just ban selling people cheap low-quality goods, everyone will have high-quality goods and poor people will live great lives!” argument. Somehow this failed to work and homelessness got worse over this period, but there are still some SRO hotels left, and the government got them and converted them to public housing for homeless people. Shellenberger does not have high opinions of these: The Tenderloin [district of San Francisco]’s single resident occupancy hotels . . . have for decades been dominated by a culture of heavy substance use and prostitution. “Of the people in supportive housing in San Francisco, 93 percent have a major mental illness that we can name,” said a housing policy maker. “That is very, very high. Eighty percent use cocaine, speed, or heroin every thirty days, or get drunk to the point of unconsciousness.” Tom Wolf, a former Salvation Army caseworker and a member of San Francisco’s Drug Dealing Taskforce, says the city’s supportive housing facilities are themselves a major market for illegal drugs. “Go down the street to the Camelot Hotel on Turk Street,” said Wolf. “Almost everyone that I’ve seen in those hotels are using. The last front desk guy that was working there got busted because he was selling crack. The actual guy that works in the single resident occupancy hotel is selling crack! It’s insane, man.” In any case, there are only so many of these still left. The government often announces plans to buy defunct regular hotels and convert them into these structures, which would indeed be a medium-term solution for housing the homeless, except that they usually get bogged down in fights about code. Politico discusses one of these attempts in New York City (h/t Marginal Revolution): “There are very few hotels that physically could be converted and comply with the requirements of today’s zoning and building code without substantial, expansive reconstruction, partial removal or demolition,” said James Colgate, a land use partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP who has advised clients on zoning issues including the conversions of hotels. “That would increase the costs greatly.” For example, a building’s elevators, doorways, or rooms may be slightly short of the size required for a residential structure. Residential buildings are also required to have a certain amount of rear-yard space that a hotel may not have. “You would literally have to be chopping off part of the building,” Rosen said. …The legislation dictates that each unit include a kitchen or kitchenette with a full-sized refrigerator, cooktop and sink — something Rosen said made utilizing the program “simply too expensive.” “This is the classic case of the perfect being the enemy of the possible,” said Mark Ginsberg, a partner at the firm Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, which has worked on hotel conversions. Some advocates who pushed the creation of the program say those provisions were necessary to ensure it didn’t generate substandard housing […] “We didn’t want a program that cut corners to make it more palatable to developers,” said Joseph Loonam, housing campaign coordinator for the progressive advocacy group VOCAL-NY. “We wanted a program that centered the needs of homeless New Yorkers, which is true high quality affordable housing where they can have full autonomy and dignity.” As Marginal Revolution pointed out, Loonam got what he wanted; the expensive, over-regulated program was unpalatable to developers, with only one company putting in an offer; for whatever reason, NYC refused to go with that one company, and no housing was produced. But fine, these are also terrible, and they’re only medium-term solutions anyway. What about building real, long-term apartments for homeless people? Shellenberger tells the story of Los Angeles’ Proposition HHH, which raised $1.2 billion to do exactly this. They hoped to build ~10,000 units for the homeless, at a projected price of $140,000 each; since LA had about 30,000 homeless people at the time, this would solve a third of the problem - a good start. (how do these numbers line up with my back-of-the-envelope calculation for SF above? I talked about renting rather than building, but usually annual rents = 1/20th or so of total prices, so I was estimating about $700,000 per person. This is probably partly because SF costs more than LA, and partly because I was imagining median apartments whereas LA is probably working on very cheap apartments) But in fact, five years later, LA has completed only 700 units, and the cost per unit has spiralled to $531,000 each. Nobody has a good explanation for what happened, with Shellenberger quoting one local service provider who said a lot of it was “bullshit costs”. Now might be a good time to re-read Considerations On Cost Disease. [Update: this might not be accurate - see this comment] This seems to be a general problem: everyone is committed to Housing First and to long-term good solutions rather than short- or medium- term mediocre ones. But that means building housing. And some combination of NIMBYism and over-regulation means building housing is somewhere between ruiniously expensive and impossible. Claim 4: Shelters Are Unpopular Among Progressive Activists And The Homeless Themselves San Francisco doesn’t have more homelessness than eg New York, but almost all the homeless in New York live in shelters and stay off the street. Why doesn’t that work here? Shellenberger: In the context of cities with permissive attitudes toward drugs, like San Francisco, many homeless people stay in [tent] encampments to use illegal substances more freely and easily than they can in the shelters. Many policy makers understand this. “I went out with a team twice to have conversations with people to get an understanding of what they’re dealing with,” said Mayor Breed in 2020. “It was absolutely insane. Most of the people did not take us up on the offer [of shelter and services].” Even people who would prefer to live in sober environments say they do not want to quit their addictions. “When we surveyed people in supportive housing in New York,” said University of Pennsylvania homelessness researcher Dennis Culhane, “almost everybody wanted their neighbors to be clean and sober but they didn’t want rules for themselves about being clean.” In 2016, after the city of San Francisco broke up a massive, 350-person homeless encampment, dozens of the homeless refused the city’s offers of help. Of the 150 people moved during a single month of homeless encampment cleanups in 2018, just eight people accepted the city’s offer of shelter. In 2004, just 131 people went into permanent supportive housing after 4,950 contacts made by then-mayor Newsom’s homeless outreach teams. An article by a former homeless person explains the problems with shelters beyond just “can’t use drugs”. Residents are crammed into a small space with 300 other homeless people. Lice and bedbugs are everywhere. Everybody catches every disease. Everybody has stories about getting raped or beaten up. Invasive moralizing about drugs somehow exists side by side with rampant drug use. Shelters are gender segregated, which means straight people can’t stay with their partner. Most shelters ban children and nobody has any idea what to do with them. Most shelters ban pets - a lot of homeless people have dogs for protection or companionship, and you can’t just store them somewhere while you’re sheltering. Although some lucky people can get 90-day beds, other people need to apply for beds on a day-by-day basis, which requires waiting in line several hours every day. Users talk about rampant cutting in line, denying cutting in line, false accusations of cutting in line, etc. Most shelters kick people out between 9-5, either to save on staffing costs or in the hopes that they’ll get a job. But many have strict curfews requiring people to be back by 5 PM sharp, which can make jobs impossible - if your boss doesn’t let you out until 5 and you have a half-hour commute, how do you get back to the shelter on time? Results of a survey at one of SF’s new Navigation Centers at why their clients refused to go to normal shelters. But even the homeless people who do want to go to shelters mostly can’t get in. This app gives the current status of San Francisco’s homeless shelter waitlist. If you applied today, there would be 900 people ahead of you in line for one of the city’s 1500 - 2500 shelter beds. The app says that the median wait time is 826 days. So however many homeless people don’t want to go to shelters, we’re not building enough shelters to serve the ones who do. Why not? Shellenberger again: In the spring of 2021, Friedenbach published an op-ed opposing a proposal considered by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to create, within eighteen months, sufficient homeless shelters and outdoor “Safe Sleeping Sites” for all of the city’s unsheltered homeless. “One can simply take a look to New York City,” she wrote. “Their department spends about $1.3 billion dollars of its budget on providing shelter for their unhoused population while thousands remain on the street. . . . As a result, New York has a higher rate of homelessness than San Francisco.” Housing First advocate Margot Kushel of the University of California, San Francisco agreed. “The problem with New York—and I spend a lot of time with people working in the system in New York—is that they spend an estimated $30,000 for each person per year to keep them in shelter. That’s not what we want to do. Because if you create the shelter and you don’t create the housing, then people are just in shelter forever.” Housing First advocates oppose shelter in Los Angeles. “Why haven’t we solved homelessness?” asked Housing First creator Sam Tsemberis. “Because [Los Angeles mayor] Eric Garcetti [has] Andy Bales [saying,] ‘You need emergency housing.’ ‘These people need to be cleaned up.’ ‘They need to be sober.’ ‘They need Jesus before they’ll be ready for housing.’ I said, ‘People should be housed and then maybe they’ll get sobriety and Jesus and the rest.’ We’re definitely on polar opposites of the whole thing.” Advocates for the homeless at the national level similarly oppose more shelters. “I don’t agree that we should be building more transitional housing,” said the head of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. […] In other words, the reason that there are so many homeless people on the streets in San Francisco is that both progressive and moderate Democratic elected officials, and the city’s most influential homelessness experts and advocates, have for two decades opposed building sufficient shelters. And that is unlikely to change even after San Francisco starts spending hundreds of millions more per year on the problem and might even get worse. This basically seems true. I found this webpage of a former SF Supervisor candidate a helpful corroborating source. He was running on a platform of “maybe we should build some homeless shelters”. He lost. You can also find a bunch of webpages by the sorts of people Shellenberger is complaining about, for example this site: Sup[ervisor] Rafael Mandelman today pushed his new legislation that would require the city to offer at least temporary shelter to everyone living on the streets, a step that some say would lead to more homeless sweeps and do nothing to create permanently affordable housing . . . [our] Coalition has argued for years that the solution to homelessness is housing—not temporary shelter, which may never lead to housing. The ex-supervisor candidate gives some helpful numbers: permanent housing costs about $600,000 per person housed. Shelters cost between $20,000 and $30,000 per person housed. So SF could build enough shelters to clear its waitlist for about $30 million. More recently, SF has tried a sort of compromise, opening “deluxe” shelters called Navigation Centers which avoid some of the problems of regular shelters. They also cost more than twice as much, and the city has only created about 300 beds. Also, the people in regular shelters are angry, because being in a regular shelter disqualifies you from getting into a (much better) Navigation Center. Some of them are considering leaving their shelter, going back on the streets, then waiting however many months or years it takes to get a Navigation Center bed instead. I’m not at all sure of these numbers, but it looks like of SF’s ~7,000 homeless, about 2,000 are in shelters already, and 1,000 are on the shelter waitlist. I don’t know if the remaining 4,000 have made a specific commitment not to go to shelters, or just have given up on the waitlist process. My conclusion: agree with San Fransicko about the role of progressive activists, but I think it overemphasizes the role of wanting to use drugs in why homeless people themselves sometimes avoid shelters, and underemphasizes the many other problems with them. Claim 5: Drug Decriminalization Isn’t Working California legalized marijuana in 2016. Shellenberger says that San Francisco’s commitment to drugs has gone beyond that: it has effectively decriminalized opioids, cocaine, and the rest. Any attempt to lessen use of these drugs is attacked as “stigmatizing”; instead, government policy centers around providing addicts with needles and other drug paraphernalia under the guise of “harm reduction”. Shellenberger hits all the right beats here. Like many people, he tries to undo the damage done by The New Jim Crow, a book which convinced millions of people that mass incarceration was driven by a racist War On Drugs. In fact, less than a fifth of prisoners are in for drug-related crimes. And when the government was first debating the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, black leaders were among the strongest proponents of both. The talking point at the time - among everyone from black Congressional leaders to black churches - was that the government’s failure to crack down on drug use was racist, borne of them not caring about predominantly black drug victims. And while we’ve been patting ourselves on the back about how enlightened we are for ending the drug war: Drug overdoses are today the number one cause of accidental death in the United States as a result of America’s historic addiction and overdose epidemic. Overdose deaths rose from 17,415 in 2000 to 93,330 in 2020, a 536 percent increase.Significantly more people die of drug overdoses today than of homicide (13,927 in 2019) or car accidents (36,096 in 2019). […] There are about twenty-five thousand injection drug users in San Francisco, a number 50 percent larger than the number of students enrolled in the city’s fifteen public high schools. San Francisco gives away more needles to drug users, six million per year, than New York City, despite having one-tenth the population. The part of this chapter that stood out to me as most worth looking into deeper was the section on Portugal: For decades, harm reduction and decriminalization advocates have pointed to Portugal as a model, noting that it decriminalized drugs and expanded drug treatment. In 2013, Portugal’s drug-induced death rate was sixty-six times less than that of the United States. The number of people in treatment increased by 60 percent between 1998 and 2011, with three-quarters receiving an opioid substitute like methadone or Suboxone, the brand name of buprenorphine. Drug use among 15- to 24-year-olds actually declined after decriminalization. “All drugs have been legalized,” explained Monique Tula, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition. “Their focus is on giving people tools, like job apprenticeships, and the means to support themselves.” […] [But Portugal] never legalized drugs. It only decriminalized them, reducing criminal penalties but maintaining prohibition. Drug dealers were still sent to prison even after the 2001 decriminalization. And Portugal does not let people addicted to hard drugs with behavioral disorders off the hook like progressive West Coast cities have done. It’s true that Portugal massively expanded drug treatment, but people are still arrested and fined for possession of heroin, meth, and other hard drugs. And drug users are typically sent to a regionally administered “Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction,” composed of a social worker, lawyer, and doctor who encourage, push, and coerce drug treatment. And decriminalization doesn’t end drug violence. “Even if trafficking enforcement decreased, like it did in Portugal,” said criminologist John Pfaff, “illegal drug markets would still be forced to rely on violence to resolve disputes.” Indeed, prostitution and violence are ever-present in the open-air drug scenes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. “We are seeing behaviors from our guests that I’ve never seen in thirty-three years,” said Rev. Andy Bales, who runs the largest homeless shelter on Skid Row in Los Angeles. “They are so bizarre and different that I don’t even feel right describing the behaviors. It’s extreme violence of an extreme sexual nature.” People are not dying from drug overdose deaths in San Francisco because they’re being arrested. They’re dying because they aren’t being arrested. Decriminalization reduces prices by lowering production and distribution costs, which increases use. This was also the case for alcohol consumption. It increased after prohibition ended in the United States. Even in Portugal, drug overdose deaths and overall drug use rose after decriminalization. I was most surprised by the claim that Portuguese overdose deaths rose after decriminalization. Uncharacteristically, San Fransicko doesn’t give a citation for it, but we can try to retrace its reasoning. Decriminalization proponents tend to point to these numbers, helpfully converted to per 100,000 population and graphed here: But an anti-drug Australian think tank argues that the peak in 2001 is made up: Claims that there were more than 75 drug-related deaths in 2001 which more than halved to 34 deaths in 2002 use a figure for 2001 for which there is no substantiation. Official drug-related deaths for Portugal, taken from the latest 2018 EMCDDA Statistical Bulletin are copied below. Notice that there is no such figure recorded for 2001. They include a link to EMCDDA, the EU organization charged with monitoring these things. The link contains two datasets, both of which seem to be measuring the same thing but getting different results. One dataset starts in 2002, the other in 2008. I don’t know what the difference here is, but they’re right that neither includes 2001. If you ignore the pre-2002 data, the graph looks like this: They say “opiate”, but AFAICT these numbers are actually about all drugs. But the proponents link to the updated 2020 version of the same website, which all of a sudden does have data from 2001 and before. I don’t know why EMCDDA can’t make up its mind, but I think the Australians are wrong and the original graph is fine. On the other hand, does it really matter? Both of these show drug deaths decreasing until 2005, then going up and down a bit, then going back up again starting in 2011. I think a reasonable interpretation would be that decriminalization in Portugal did decrease overdose deaths a bit, and then they started rising again from that low baseline around the same time other European countries saw rising overdose deaths. I would also accept “these are pretty small effects and we shouldn’t ascribe any significance to them”. But San Fransicko’s claim - that overdose deaths increased after the reform - seems false. The only way I can see justifying it is taking the second graph - the one that wrongly claims there is no pre-2002 data - and then attributing the fact that twelve years after the reform lowered deaths, deaths finally rose above the pre-reform level to be the fault of the reform. This is like saying “people claim the Black Plague killed a lot of Europeans, but the European population actually rose after the Plague”, which is true in the sense that it was above its pre-Plague max by like 1600 or whatever. What about overall drug use? Here I recommend A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs, which is on exactly this topic of how people keep selectively quoting results from Portugal to prove their point. It argues that drug use is inherently hard to measure. There are four different Portuguese datasets for the time at issue, lots of different drugs, lots of different age/gender combinations, and lots of different ways of measuring drugs (did you use drugs in the past month? the past year? your lifetime?) It’s easy to tell a story of how past-month cocaine use skyrocketed among 14-29 year old males according to X source, or how lifetime marijuana use fell in high school-age women according to Y. The main trick that opponents use is measuring lifetime drug use. Portugal is a very conservative country; drug use is pretty new and most of the older generation wasn’t involved. So as time goes on and more and more people try drugs but “un-trying” drugs isn’t a thing, the percent of the population who have tried drugs inevitably goes up. This definitely happened but isn’t a fair reflection of any specific reform. The authors find that in the past decade or so, there has been a bit more short-term experimentation with drugs, but less long-run use. They conclude: As shown in Figure 2, general population (aged 15–64) trends for recent and current drug use in Portugal indicate minimal if any changes between 2001 and 2007. Instead, rates of discontinuation of drug use (the proportion of the population that reported ever having used a drug but opting not to in recent years) increased, which reinforces that just as in the school populations, the growth in lifetime-reported use reflected predominantly short-term experimental use. Increases in recent and current drug use were more notable in some cohorts, particularly those aged 25 to 34 (albeit, with a maximum of 7% of any one cohort reporting recent use, absolute levels remained low). But as shown in Figure 3, recent and current drug use declined among those aged 15–24, the population who were most at risk of initiation and long-term engagement. The available evidence thus gives grounds for arguing that while there was some growth in the scale of drug use in post-reform Portugal, there was an overall positive net benefit for the Portuguese community. What about San Fransicko’s main point - that as the US has wound down the War on Drugs, drug overdose rates have sextupled? I think this is mostly not causal. I think the sextupling of overdoses is a combination of expansion in prescription opioid use, various forms of social decay making people less happy and therefore more likely to use drugs, and “improvements” in drug “technology” and the “supply chain” (eg production of fentanyl in China). I don’t know of any source that attempts to tease out the exact contribution of all of these things, but I would note that overdose deaths have risen the most in very conservative Midwestern states that haven’t walked back the drug war as much as California. Conclusion: As usual, I appreciate San Fransicko’s corrections to the prevailing narrative, but its own additions are dubious. Its claim that Portugal saw increased drug-related deaths seems false as far as I can tell. Its claim that it saw increased drug use depends on your definition, but is misleading and not the most natural way to sum up the evidence. Claim 6: San Francisco’s Soft-On-Crime Policies Led To Rising Crime Ten years ago, the news was full of stories about how some teenager stole a gumdrop and was sentenced to nine hundred billion years in jail. At some point, there was a genre shift to stories about how some hardened criminal murdered fifty people with an axe and the judge let him go with a warning because having jails felt racist. Source: Ed West, do note that this example is from the UK How suspicious should we be of each type of story? There will always be an extreme right tail of overly harsh sentences, and an extreme left tail of overly lenient ones. Were the 2000s really as draconian as they felt? Is the modern era really as pathetic? Or is it all just a function of who you read and what agenda they’re pushing? Shellenberger: During California governor Jerry Brown’s time in office, voters passed several reforms aimed at reducing the size of the prison population. In 2012, voters passed a change to the Three Strikes law so that the third strike imposes a life sentence only if the new felony was serious or violent. In addition to lowering punishments for drug possession, Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, redefined shoplifting, forgery, petty theft, and receiving stolen property as misdemeanors when the value in question does not exceed $950. In 2016, voters approved a proposition that shortened the time it took for some nonviolent offenders to be eligible for parole and which released nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and rehabilitation. Property crimes rose in San Francisco starting in 2012. Larceny, which is shoplifting and other petty theft, rose 50 percent, from roughly 3,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to about 4,500 in 2019. Property crimes as a whole, which include larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary, rose from 4,000 incidents per 100,000 people in 2011 to 5,500 in 2019. One study suggests that Proposition 47 increased the rate of auto theft 17 percent and the rate of larceny (non-auto property) theft 9 percent, but discerning between causation and correlation may not be possible. Upon taking office in January 2020, [famously soft-on-crime San Francisco district attorney Chesa] Boudin followed through on his campaign promises. Instead of prosecuting and incarcerating people for breaking car windows to steal money and other items from inside, Boudin proposed creating a $1.5 million fund to reimburse car owners. But there were over 25,000 car break-ins reported in 2019. If every break-in cost just $250 in repairs, the fund would need four times that amount. And what would prevent people from falsely claiming to have been robbed in order to get city money? […] Boudin opposed efforts by the mayor and the city attorney to prevent drug dealers who had already been arrested from entering the Tenderloin. “Until the city is serious about treating addiction and the root causes of drug use and selling,” said Boudin in a statement, “these recycled, punishment-focused approaches are unlikely to succeed at doing anything more than making headlines.” Home burglaries rose in early 2021 in San Francisco. Homeowners started posting on Twitter videos from their security cameras of people breaking into homes and garages. “When I first moved here we had a car break-in problem,” said Michael Solana, a writer who works for a venture capital fund. “Now we have a home invasion problem. These things are wearing on people.” Boudin attributed the rise of burglaries in San Francisco to the decline of tourism and “people in desperate economic circumstances.” Progressive supervisor Hillary Ronen agreed. “We know that [economic insecurity and inequality] is one of the root causes of property crimes specifically,” she said. But Tom Wolf and others argued that the robberies were, like the shoplifting, done by people seeking money to buy drugs and feed their addictions. “The drugstores have been shoplifted to death and that’s all because of drug use,” said Tom. “I know. I used to do the same thing when I was out there. That’s what you do. You ‘boost.’ And then you go and you sell your stuff down at UN Plaza,” an open-air drug scene. In a May 2021 city supervisors’ meeting, a representative from CVS called San Francisco “the epicenter of organized retail crime in the country” and claimed that 85 percent of the shoplifting is committed by organized theft rings. Police broke up one such ring in October 2020 and recovered $8 million of stolen merchandise. The problem goes beyond property crime. Boudin declined to prosecute two men who went on to kill people. One man had been repeatedly arrested for stealing cars, despite having just been released from prison earlier in the year, and appeared to be abusing meth. On New Year’s Eve, 2020, the man killed two people while driving intoxicated. Police found inside of his car a semiautomatic handgun and twenty-three grams of methamphetamine. On February 4, another intoxicated driver killed a pedestrian in a stolen car. The San Francisco police had arrested him in October 2020 for possessing a stolen car, a tool for stealing cars, and what appeared to be meth. Boudin chose not to pursue charges. In December, the California Highway Patrol arrested the man again for driving a stolen vehicle under the influence. Again he was not prosecuted. The accident victim, an immigrant from Kenya, and his wife had moved to San Francisco two weeks before the fatal crash. “I blame the DA,” said the widow of the victim. The suspect, she said, “was someone who was out in the public who shouldn’t have been in the public. It was completely avoidable.” Tom said he could feel the difference on the streets. “Drug dealing is unabated and it’s not one guy, it’s fifty guys dealing fentanyl and meth,” he said. “And it’s going unabated because the district attorney says, ‘These are the nonviolent, quality-of-life crimes,’ and ‘I’m not going to prosecute them.’” [..] District Attorney Boudin was offering weaker sentences than even defense attorneys were requesting, according to Vicki Westbrook of San Francisco. “There’s a defense attorney who said, ‘It used to be that I would argue for this deal in court with the DA but now I don’t say anything because the DA is going to offer me a deal better than what I would have suggested. Somebody shot up the street with an automatic weapon. The first offer was six months in jail or time served plus two years of probation or something. And then [the DA] said, “How about thirty days in jail?”’” Vicki laughed. “You really can do anything in San Francisco,” she said. “If you do get arrested, chances are you’re going to be out of jail in less than thirty days for damn near everything except maybe killing somebody and maybe even then, too. It’s hard to say at this point.” Taking each of these points individually: Proposition 47 There are two good big studies on the effects of Prop 47, one by Public Policy Institute and one by some UCI criminologists. The PPI study finds that the proposition increased theft and car break-ins by about 10%. The UCI study finds the same, but notes that under different assumptions the effects wouldn’t quite obtain statistical significance. This seems a bit too much like post hoc trying to get rid of an inconvenient effect, plus an effect on the border of statistical significance is different from positively finding no effect. I think a reasonable interpretation is that theft and car break-ins rose about 10% because of the proposition, just as Shellenberger says. Some pro-47 sites note that most states have some limit on how much you to have to shoplift before it’s a felony, and Prop 47 brought California closer to the national average, rather than turning it into an outlier. Chesa Boudin Chesa Boudin took office two months before the COVID pandemic began. Any attempt to separate the effect of Chesa Boudin from the effect of the pandemic is doomed. Shoplifting definitely plummeted when Boudin took office, but that’s because all the stores were closed. Murders definitely rose a little after Boudin took office, but that’s because that was also when the Black Lives Matter protests happened, which demoralized police and led to a so-far-permanent spike in murders nationwide. Percent of criminals caught definitely fell when Boudin took office, but that’s because various aspects of the justice system were closed for COVID (I will grudgingly entertain speculation that a further decrease in arrest rates from 2020 to 2021 may have been a genuine Boudin effect). In the absence of any real way to judge his performance, I think San Fransicko’s points about Boudin are plausible, though speculative. Shoplifting This one is terrible. There’s a surprisingly spirited debate here (some of you may have already read Applied Divinity Studies’ article). The debate is: everyone on the ground in San Francisco - store owners, security guards, customers, random citizens - say that shoplifting has increased massively over the past decade. But statistics mostly say it hasn’t. Source here. This is shoplifting crimes per 100,000 people. Kern County is a deep red county in California (including Bakersfield) that is known for being tough on crime. Against this, seriously, everyone says that shoplifting has obviously increased. I had a patient who worked in shoplifting prevention, he told me - his psychiatrist! Who he had no reason to lie to! - that he was constantly stressed dealing with the shoplifting surge devastating the stores he covered. Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response to someone posting the data showing shoplifting hasn’t risen - it’s just a lot of people laughing hysterically. What’s going on? I was able to find a different set of statistics that does seem to show a longer-term increase in shoplifting (source): The very big spike at the end might be a change in reporting by one or two stores - you can find the argument here. But it does look like shoplifting went from about 125 incidents/month in the early 2010s to more like 250/month just before the pandemic. Why is this graph so different from the other one? It looks like the top one came from the Department of Justice, and the bottom one came from SFPD. I’m not sure why these report differently. When you multiply out by 800K people in SF, by 12 months/year, and 30ish days/month, the first graph corresponds to 4 shoplifting incidents per day, and the second to 6. As LouB’s analysis here points out, that seems suspiciously low for a city of 800,000 people where stores are constantly closing because of shoplifting. Maybe off by a factor of a few hundred from what we’d expect. LouB writes: The SFPD report only references shoplifting offenses that required SFPD officers to prepare an incident report. That means either the shoplifter fought security, committed additional crimes, or stole more than $950 worth of items. It’s not that SFPD’s report is erroneous, it’s just not a representative statistic. In a parallel statistic, SFPD only completes incident reports for traffic accidents when there is an injury. Therefore, thousands of noninjury accidents are handled civilly without SFPD reports the same way thousands of shoplifting offenses are handled without reports. An insurance company would not determine premium rates based solely on SFPD incident reports, nor should readers interpret SFPD shoplifting reports as anywhere near the total picture of the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco. (this would also explain why one or two stores changing their reporting policy can produce a spike equal to everyone else in San Francisco combined) But comparing incident reports from 2010 to incident reports from 2020 should still be apples-to-apples, unless the likelihood of reporting any given incident changed in the meantime. Did it? This news article quotes a San Franciscan who says that when they try to report shoplifting incidents, the cops tell them not to because “it doesn’t make a difference”. If cops say that now more often than they used to, it would make all these statistics meaningless. (Applied Divinity Studies claims to have an argument that shows this can’t be true. It goes something like: if San Francisco was a better place to shoplift than its neighbors - eg Oakland - then shoplifters would leave Oakland to go to San Francisco, and we would see Oakland shoplifting rates falling. Oakland shoplifting rates are falling, but no more so than the rest of the state, so there can’t be increased tolerance for shoplifting in San Francisco. I find this dubious for many reasons. First of all, many of the same reasons shoplifting is up in San Francisco - like Prop 47 or soft-on-crime progressive policies - also apply to Oakland. Second, given that shoplifting fell massively everywhere because of the pandemic, it feels dubious to try to compare different cities; maybe one city had stricter pandemic lockdowns than others. Third, do criminals really shop around for friendly jurisdictions? If so, why are so many crimes like car break-ins, concentrated in “the bad part of town”? Why wouldn’t criminals leave the bad part of town for under-exploited areas with richer residents and less competition? Maybe criminals in fact aren’t very strategic or mobile? Maybe they don’t want to stand in the BART station and then take a half-hour train ride holding a bag of stolen goods?) Maybe a better argument against this being true is how stable the shoplifting rates have been over time. Wouldn’t it be weird if (let’s say) a tripling of the real shoplifting rates was matched by a third-ing of the reporting rates (rather than a halving or a quartering or whatever)? On the other hand, here’s Shellenberger with some helpful data: Some of this is probably because of Proposition 47, which made some forms of shoplifting punishable with citation rather than arrest (but wouldn’t that be a clear discontinuity rather than a gradual trend?) But overall it sure seems like shoplifting is being taken less seriously, which might encourage people to report less. Another statistic I see is that only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest; I don’t know how this is different from the graph above with numbers in the 30s; maybe it involves different levels of what makes something a “case”. I accept that the data don’t consistently show a spike in shoplifting. But what’s the alternative? My patient who works in loss prevention in SF stores is lying to me? The nice elderly Chinese man who sold me my last pair of glasses and chatted to me about the rampant shoplifting in his mall was lying? The San Francisco police are lying? Walgreens pretends to be concerned about shoplifting as part of a dastardly plot to close a bunch of stores for no reason? Target and CVS pretend to care about shoplifting as part of a plot to restrict their stores’ opening hours for no reason? Every big store near me has suddenly gotten a security guard at the front as part of some corporate-sponsored jobs program? Maybe the conservative narrative that soft-on-crime San Francisco must be experiencing rising crime rates took on a life of its own. Maybe it infiltrated not just the usual suspects like the SF police unions, but even such supposedly-liberal bastions as the New York Times. Maybe lots of big corporations took advantage of the fake narrative to make unpopular business decisions they were planning on making anyway. And maybe ordinary San Franciscans, confronted with everyone telling them they were in a shoplifting epidemic, started paying more attention to security guards and petty criminals who had always been there, a sort of mass hallucination that gripped everyone in the city. I can’t rule this out. Americans thought crime was rising all throughout the early 2000s, when it was in fact way down. Or maybe some statistics that we already know are off by several orders of magnitude got off by an additional factor of two or so. I think this one is more likely, but I’m genuinely not sure. Other Crime From the Economist: The Center on Juvenile And Criminal Justice puts it even more starkly, arguing that “San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime”: This are potentially susceptible to the same reporting bias as shoplifting. So what about homicide? Homicide is practically always reported and investigated, making it a gold standard in crime measurement. (source) Looks pretty good until 2019. I don’t expect to gain useful information post-2020; the pandemic and the post-George-Floyd murder surge will make it impossible to evaluate for local variation. What about compared to other places? For some reason this top 20 table fails to list Washington DC, which should be just before Atlanta. SF doesn’t make the top 20, although its neighbor Oakland does. Probably most murder variation in US cities is explained by percent African-American and maybe percent Borderer; with relatively few people in these groups SF was never in the running. I’m not sure if some abstracted version of the city with all demographic factors adjusted away would have an unusually high murder rate, but at that point it would be pretty distant from any interesting real-world question. You can see the leaderboard for other types of crime here; San Francisco is often in the top ten, but never the top three. As far as I can tell, San Francisco has seen a big spike in car breakins over the past few years, with no clear trend for other property crime, violent crime, or homicides. It’s not an outlier among American cities in any kind of crime. Conclusion of this section: San Fransicko’s specific claims are basically correct, but suggest a medium-term rise in SF crime which is mostly contradicted by the data. These show stable-to-decreasing murder, stable-to-decreasing violent and property crimes other than car break-ins, and large rises in car break-ins only. The data also show stable-to-decreasing shoplifting, but I’m not sure how much to trust them vs. common sense. Honestly, I’m pretty confused here and not sure what to think. Claim 7: Jim Jones (Of Kool-Aid Cult Fame) Used To Be The Chairman Of SF’s Housing Authority Okay, this isn’t really a statistical claim that I can research different perspectives on. Still, it’s so wacky that I couldn’t resist mentioning it in this review. Jim Jones, famous for killing everyone in his Guyana-based Jonestown cult with poisoned Kool-Aid, used to be the SF government’s top guy on homelessness. Shellenberger writes: Jones married and moved first to Northern California and then to San Francisco with his wife to start a church. He called it the People’s Temple. Jones believed he was the leader of a socialist revolution. He warned of nuclear war and claimed black people would be put in concentration camps. He became a hugely charismatic preacher among African Americans, the disaffiliated poor, and young transplants to the city looking for community. Scenes from the era show a remarkably large and diverse congregation smiling and singing. The People’s Temple grew and provided services. Jones cultivated two progressive San Francisco politicians, George Moscone and Willie Brown, and mobilized people to volunteer for their campaigns […] His son and a San Francisco historian believe he stole the mayoral election for Moscone in 1975. Historian David Talbot, founder of the progressive website Salon, points to evidence that Jones committed sufficient voter fraud to account for Moscone’s narrow 4,443-vote margin of victory. “We loaded up all thirteen of our buses with maybe seventy people on each bus, and we had those buses rolling nonstop up and down the coast into San Francisco the day before the election,” said Jones Jr. “Could we have been the force that tipped the election to Moscone? Absolutely! Slam dunk. He only won by four thousand votes.” When federal investigators looked into fraud claims three years later, they discovered that all of the records were missing from the city of San Francisco’s registrar of voters. Jones also boasted of providing Moscone with black women from his congregation for sex. One time Moscone, drunk and “accompanied by a young black woman whom the politician had kindly agreed to drive home,” crashed into another car. Another time, Moscone and Willie Brown “were with a black woman in an alley at two in the morning at some restaurant in North Beach,” said a local bar owner. State legislator “John Burton was part of that gang too. They were all using marijuana and cocaine.” Said Jones Jr., Moscone would “always be there at temple parties with a cocktail in his hand and doing some ass grabbing.” A Temple member overheard Jones speaking to Moscone the day after one of those parties saying, “I want to let you know that the young lady you went off with is underage,” adding, “Now don’t worry, Mayor, we’ll take care of you—because we know that you’ll take care of us.” Afterward, Moscone made Jones the chairman of the powerful San Francisco Housing Commission. Jones cultivated progressives with money and favors. He made large donations to the ACLU, the NAACP, and United Farm Workers. Jones and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on a campaign plane a few days before the 1976 presidential election, and Mondale praised People’s Temple shortly afterward. Jones met with First Lady Rosalynn Carter several times. Governor Jerry Brown praised Jones. Glide Memorial Church’s Rev. Cecil Williams loved Jones. There is a photo from 1977 of a smiling Williams awarding Jones the church’s “Martin Luther King, Jr. Award.” Jones used his perch as chairman of the Housing Commission to fight for housing for the poor. He tried to use eminent domain to acquire the International Hotel, a single resident occupancy hotel. After a court sided with the hotel’s owner, Jones mobilized seven thousand protesters to picket it. By mid-January 1977, the situation had become heated. There were rumors that protesters inside the building were armed with guns and Molotov cocktails. Jones lost the legal battle in 1977, and the tenants were evicted. But the drama was a publicity victory for Jones, which burnished his image as a white savior. A conservative member of the Board of Supervisors who was defeated in the mayoral election by Moscone accused the new mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the rest of the city establishment of being blind to Jones’s extremism. “There’s no radical plot in San Francisco,” insisted Moscone, in response. “There’s no one I’ve appointed to any city position whom I regard as radical or extremist.” Willie Brown, a powerful state legislator from 1964 to 1995 before becoming mayor in 1996, “seemed oblivious to Jones’ hucksterism and demagoguery,” notes a historian. Brown was master of ceremonies at a dinner for Jones in the fall of 1976 attended by an adulatory crowd of the rich and powerful, including Governor Jerry Brown. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein . . . Chairman Mao,” he said, to loud applause. And yet Jones was contemptuous of Brown even as Brown did Jones more and more favors. Jones mocked Brown for his designer suits, sports cars, and women. Once, while Brown was addressing the congregation and Jones was seated onstage behind him, Jones flipped his middle finger up to mock him. San Francisco’s establishment stood by Jones even after a California magazine, New West, owned by Rupert Murdoch, published an exposé of Jones’s beatings of Temple members and financial abuses in August 1977. The article was written by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter and was meant for the Chronicle to publish. But the newspaper killed the story because it didn’t want to alienate Jones, whom it viewed as central to its plans to expand the Chronicle’s circulation in the heavily African American Fillmore District. Jones also managed to avoid investigation and prosecution in part by getting the district attorney to hire as deputy district attorney Jones’s longtime attorney and confidant. Progressives defended Jones against the New West article. At a rally in the summer of 1977, Willie Brown said, “When somebody like Jim Jones comes on the scene, that absolutely scares the hell out of most everybody occupying positions of power in the system.” Angela Davis sent a radio message broadcast over the cult’s compound, Jonestown, in Guyana. “I know you’re in a very difficult situation right now,” she said, “and there is a very profound conspiracy designed to destroy the contributions which you have made to the struggle.” After visiting Jonestown, the attorney to the Black Panthers said, “I have seen paradise.” Harvey Milk, too, was tarnished by his association with Jones. In the fall of 1977, Milk wrote to President Carter’s secretary of health, education, and welfare requesting that Social Security checks be sent to elderly Temple members in Guyana. “People’s Temple,” wrote Milk, has “established a beautiful retirement community in Guyana.” In truth, the cult was disintegrating. Jones separated families and lovers, pitted relatives against each other, and forced neighbors to inform on each other. Jones sent people who violated the rules to solitary confinement in “the Box,” an underground cubicle where people were held as prisoners for days on end. Others were drugged. Progressives who had spent thirty years fighting to close prisons and mental hospitals found themselves praising a man who had reproduced their worst practices. In November 1978 a Bay Area congressman flew to Guyana to investigate human rights violations at Jonestown with NBC News. Jones gave the delegation a formal reception at Jonestown. A Temple member surreptitiously passed a note to one of the delegation members, saying he and another member wanted to escape. They fled the next day after a Temple member tried to stab the congressman. Jones didn’t prevent them from leaving but then sent gunmen to fire machine guns at the delegation at the airport, killing the congressman and four others. A few hours later, 907 inhabitants of Jonestown drank Flavor Aid laced with cyanide and died. Two-thirds of the victims were African American and one-third were children. Jones had told them that if they didn’t drink it they would be killed by invading soldiers from a shadowy global military conspiracy intent on imposing fascism and torturing children. As people started crying in grief, Jones scolded them. “Stop these hysterics,” he said. “This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die.” Jones’s wife protested the murder of children and had to be forcibly restrained. “We didn’t commit suicide,” said Jones in a tape recording, “we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” Few were as stained by Jonestown as Willie Brown and George Moscone. “Even as the bloated bodies of the dead were removed from the jungle and the wounded were airlifted by the U.S. Air Force to hospitals in the United States,” wrote a historian, “Brown said he had ‘no regrets’ over his association with Jones.” They repeatedly disavowed responsibility. Said Moscone, “it’s clear that if there was a sinister plan, then we were taken in. But I’m not taking any responsibility. It’s not mine to shoulder.” This is Shellenberger at his best: telling us crazy stories from the recesses of San Francisco history, maybe kind of spinning the narration in a way that makes all progressives seem guilty by association, but with the tale itself so gripping that it’s hard to be mad. And Jones wasn’t alone. This was the golden age of San Francisco cults, when (Shellenberger tells us) “more than half of all high school students in the San Francisco Bay Area reported at least one recruiting attempt by a cult member, and 40 percent reported at least three contacts.” This chapter of SF history came to an end in 1978, when Dan White, who had just resigned from San Francisco’s Board Of Supervisors (ie City Council) entered City Hall through a window and assassinated Mayor Moscone and fellow Supervisor Harvey Milk, then successfully got charges reduced to manslaughter through a legal manuever that has gone down in history as “the Twinkie Defense” (realistically the defense was that he was depressed, but reporters seized on a comment that implied it was because he ate too many Twinkies). Everything about 1970s San Francisco was like this. With the Mayor and his right-hand-man both dead, San Francisco leadership ended up in the hands of previously second-tier politician Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein was what passed for a moderate in 1970s SF (which meant she had been targeted for assassination by various left-wing groups - she survived when a bomb left on her windowsill failed to explode). In Shellenberger’s telling, she managed to clean up some of the mess and restore a semblance of normalcy. San Francisco never forgave her. Moscone - voting fraud committer, underage sex enjoyer, and Jim Jones’ bff - is beloved as a martyr in today’s SF, but (the book points out) Feinstein is so loathed that in 2021 the Board of Education voted to rename Dianne Feinstein Elementary School. The Moscone Center is 2 million square feet and can fit about 10,000 people. Not to be confused with the Moscone Recreation Center, Moscone Station, or Moscone Elementary School. Meanwhile, all Dianne Feinstein got was one lousy elementary school and the Tithonus package of eternal life without eternal youth. Claim 8: The Intolerant Left Shuts Down Debate On These Issues Another one that’s probably hard to do a randomized controlled trial on. You could probably predict that this one was coming - it’s a necessary narrative beat in this genre of book. I think this beat is good. My impression is that people who aren’t themselves public figures disagreeing with left-wing ideas still don’t understand how scary it is and how much hate you get. Maybe now that 2/3s of every political essay written over the past five years is about this topic, people will finally get it through their thick skulls that it exists and is bad. I would also note that “traumatizing the sorts of people who write popular books about politics, in a such a way that they feel compelled as a sort of self-therapy to write page after page telling readers how angry they should be at you and your whole coalition” isn’t great political praxis. I would like people to figure this out and stop doing it. Anyway, Shellenberger is doing his part in this effort: In 2001, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness wheat-pasted posters of a fake front-page San Francisco Chronicle across town. Just beneath the masthead a large headline read “Fuck the Homeless!” right above a picture of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown laughing. Below his photo was the headline “Save the Tourists.” Progressives level the same charges at people thirty years later. “Because of some of the stuff I say,” said a community activist in Seattle’s historically black Capitol Hill neighborhood, “people say, ‘Oh, she’s not for them.’ But I have a heart for homeless and mentally ill. Most of my family works with the mentally ill.” Noted a Chronicle journalist in 2017, “Inevitably, homeless advocates and others will say, ‘You’re not compassionate,’” in response to stories about homeless encampments. “They called me a racist,” said Tom. “They accused me, a guy who used to be homeless, of demonizing the homeless, because I’m asking for accountability.” I found myself similarly accused. In 2019, after I published an article for Forbes about the homeless crisis, a progressive homeless activist accused me on Twitter of having written my article to “make money off of a fear tactic” of “fueling hatred [and] even increasing violence against homeless people.” After I asked the former San Francisco supervisor for the Tenderloin neighborhood, former mayoral candidate Jane Kim, how such a progressive city ended up with so much suffering, she said, “My concern, Michael, just to be very honest, is that when that kind of messaging goes out, violence against people who are unhoused goes up.” […] I soon discovered in my research that I was hardly the first person that progressive elected officials and homelessness advocates had accused of fomenting violence against unhoused people. Many others had been criticized for far worse over the years, including San Francisco’s highest elected officials. “The criticism [by progressive homelessness advocates] was heavy, political and personal,” wrote former mayor Willie Brown in his 2008 memoir. “People accused me of abandoning the problem when I was working daily to try and get a solution going. It was brutal. . . . I had become demonized, and my own efforts belittled.” It is notable that the result of such personal attacks is to frighten off people seeking to change, and perhaps improve, the situation. “The problem” of homelessness, concluded Mayor Brown within nine months of entering office, “may not be solvable.” And [Quoting Chris Rufo]. “The chief of psychiatry in a public hospital system in one of the largest California cities told me, ‘I know for a fact, and all of my colleagues know, that what we actually need to deal with the problem in the biggest cities in California is long-term residential secure psychiatric care. But I can’t say that publicly because I would be disemboweled by the activist left. My job would be in jeopardy. My reputation would be in jeopardy. My whole life would get turned upside down for even broaching the subject of expanding secure mental health facilities and compulsory mental health treatment.’ And I said, ‘So what’s the solution?’ and this person said, ‘We muddle through.’” And: In San Francisco, radical left activists protested [African-American] Mayor London Breed in front of her home. Breed said the protesters were “all white people. But that didn’t bother me as much as the taunting of me coming outside with firework torches in their hands looking like what used to happen when the KKK would show up to black people’s houses to burn their houses down.” While I was reading the book, I came across this tweet, which suggests that being unimpressed with SF’s lefty homeless activist scene is not limited to Michael Shellenberger: Claim 9: European Cities Like Amsterdam Successfully Solved Their Own Drug And Homelessness Problems By Doing The Opposite Of SF Shellenberger bases his plan to solve these problems on ideas that he says were pioneered in Amsterdam and spread to other European cities. In the 1980s, Amsterdam had the kinds of problems San Francisco deals with now: open-air drug markets, overdose deaths, homelessness, and crime. But in the 90s, they admitted they had a problem and took decisive action: What’s the secret?” I asked him. “Amsterdam has decriminalized marijuana and many other drugs but I haven’t seen any homeless. What is San Francisco doing wrong?” Rene said that in the 1980s, the Zeedijk neighborhood in Amsterdam was a lot like the Tenderloin [the worst part of San Francisco] today. There was open-air drug use, particularly of heroin, and needles strewn about, as well as crime. People started to flee the neighborhood, worsening its slum conditions. Homeless people squatted in abandoned buildings. “We had ghettos where it was not safe to go,” said Rene, who started working in the neighborhood as a nurse in 1985. It was considered a “no go” zone. “We had a lot of people from abroad who came to Amsterdam because our heroin was so good. But our heroin was so good that they died from it.” At first the city tried a “helping approach” exclusively, offering addicts clean needles, methadone, and other forms of help without any law enforcement, but it didn’t work. “In the eighties we just wanted to help people,” said Rene. “We started with methadone programs and medical treatment. We did a lot of work without much of a carrot and a stick. It was really a disappointment. They just used the methadone to stay addicted. They dealt drugs and committed other crimes. They lied and cheated about it. We were just supporting a different kind of market. We had to learn the hard way [...] The Amsterdam City Council asked the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service to develop a strategy to deal with “unmotivated drug users”...The police broke up the open-air drug scene and health workers were on hand to offer methadone, treatment, and shelter. The police broke up gatherings of more than four or five users, but did not treat personal and private use as a crime. Officers ticketed violators, and if users did not pay their fines, which was frequent, the courts ordered arrests, and sentenced individuals to follow a treatment plan or face incarceration. “For every individual homeless person, we make a plan,” said Rene. “We made tens of thousands of those plans.” Plans are overseen by a caseworker and a team that may include a psychiatrist, shelter provider, service provider, judge, employer, parole officer, and police officer. “You need people in the police and health department working together,” he said. What Amsterdam did was the same as other major European cities. Lisbon, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Zurich all dealt with their open-air drug markets, using a combination of law enforcement and social services. Crucially, Amsterdam and other European cities prevented services from being concentrated in a single neighborhood, since their concentration often enables an open-air drug scene to thrive [...] The efforts worked. “We had several thousand people who were addicted to heroin in the eighties and nineties,” said Rene. “Many died. Today we have four or five hundred people addicted to methadone. And we have about 120 in Amsterdam who we supply heroin to on a medical basis because methadone doesn’t work for them. They have to use heroin.” The Amsterdam strategy goes something like: Break up open-air drug markets and anywhere that more than 4-5 drug users are congregating. Yes, people can just use their drugs in private, but this is legitimately better. Open-air markets normalize drugs with their blatantness, and make it hard to quit for the same reason it’s hard to diet if your partner leaves boxes of donuts out in the house every day.
Inline links: a proper randomized study, Somers, Moniruzzaman and Palepu, Padgett et al, Kirst et al, Milby, a $14 billion budget, This article, talk about, another article about people objecting to, boarding houses, Politico, has completed only 700 units, Considerations On Cost Disease, this comment, An article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4wi2!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F00f02bfe-c696-415d-ba80-5edb997021cb_809x487.png, survey, This app, this webpage, this site, many people, among the strongest proponents of both, these numbers, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!msoV!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8b34d51f-d6ed-43ee-a069-5e74fe75c421_1812x1102.png, an anti-drug Australian think tank, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CN2E!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85656c06-22bc-4076-80f0-b7a9bd4aa0d3_574x331.png, A Resounding Success Or Disastrous Failure: Re-examining The Interpretation Of Evidence On The Portuguese Decriminalisation Of Illicit Drugs, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VvrE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2341944a-388d-4da9-9788-8474567b83fc_540x737.png, Ed West, Public Policy Institute, UCI criminologists, Applied Divinity Studies’ article, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!aTNC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa27aeb21-ed87-4e67-b82c-b3ceecee7082_500x238.png, here, Here’s the San Francisco subreddit’s response, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_NL6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcf7dc478-45d3-487d-8c29-8bc7cdf182dd_2400x1500.png, LouB’s analysis here, This news article, only 2.3% of shoplifting cases result in an arrest, New York Times, the Economist, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!58I3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc63dc7bc-1f8e-49fd-9c68-61c85278d69e_608x662.png, San Francisco’s ‘Crime Wave’ Is Just One Crime, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!h17s!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F956c0917-2a9b-4ff7-a08e-6aee5030583a_590x376.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TkFS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5c5faa01-ac22-48a2-96fe-47efb6f52514_616x334.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Bg2w!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18e49c63-16ba-4878-96e6-aec12d7c5953_481x667.png, percent African-American, percent Borderer, here, the Twinkie Defense, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!8wK3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F683b9754-f663-47ad-88f5-aa99bc208ec8_1401x622.jpeg, https://twitter.com/weheartprez/status/1526983899309432832
Turkish1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkish is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 12, 2021 and August 12, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan". It most often appears alongside 2017 presidential election, Amazon, Apple.

Reference entry
Turkish
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 12, 2021
Last seen
August 12, 2021
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Contra Hanania On Partisanship
August 12, 2021 · Original source
This is a little more pressing than it might otherwise be, because I get the feeling Hanania is using his own explanation (liberals care more) as an apology for dictatorship. After quoting some of my piece on Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan, he writes:
Inline links: my piece on Turkish dictator Recep Erdogan
Turkiye1 mentions across 1 issues

Turkiye is a recurring place 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 "to work on animal rights in Turkiye"; "animal rights in Turkiye". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 23andme, ACX.

Reference entry
Turkiye
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 10, 2024
Last seen
February 10, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
ACX Grants Results 2024
February 10, 2024 · Original source
Çağrı Mutaf, $15,000, to work on animal rights in Turkiye. The 680 million farmed fish in Turkiye, like farmed fish everywhere, live in terrible conditions - for example, some farms kill the fish by leaving them to die slowly of asphyxiation over half an hour. Çağrı and his team have already secured better conditions for 40 million Turkish fish, and plan to continue their work by securing welfare guarantees from more aquaculture and seafood companies.
Inline links: work on animal rights in Turkiye
Tuscaloosa1 mentions across 1 issues

Tuscaloosa is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 10, 2023 and April 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA, USA". It most often appears alongside 100 Alexander St, 10004 Jasper Ave, Edmonton, AB T5J 1R3, 11841 Wagner St, Culver City, CA.

Reference entry
Tuscaloosa
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 10, 2023
Last seen
April 10, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2023
April 10, 2023 · Original source
TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA, USA Contact: Nate Contact Info: natestrum[at]rocketmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 22nd, 12:00 PM Location: Strange Brew Coffeehouse (1101 University Blvd, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401). We'll have a sign that says "ACX." Coordinates: https://plus.codes/865J6C6W+5X
Inline links: https://plus.codes/865J6C6W+5X
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA1 mentions across 1 issues

Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA is a recurring place 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 "TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA, USA". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA, USA Contact: Nate Contact Info: natestrum[at]rocketmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 2nd, 12:00 PM Location: Strange Brew Coffeehouse: 1101 University Blvd, Tuscaloosa, AL 35401. I'll be inside with a blue shirt and a laptop. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/865J6C6W+5X Notes: If you can't make the meetup, email me so we can hang out some other time.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/865J6C6W+5X
Tuscany1 mentions across 1 issues

Tuscany is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 03, 2022 and June 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "extensive negotiations that took place at the court of Tuscany". It most often appears alongside 18th century, A Eunuch's Dream, Alessandro Moreschi.

Reference entry
Tuscany
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 03, 2022
Last seen
June 03, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: The Castrato
June 03, 2022 · Original source
“He was sent from Italy to Moscow at about the age seventeen (in 1698), but only after extensive negotiations that took place at the court of Tuscany. As Balatri tells it, the Grand Duke Cosimo III wanted to satisfy the czar so he looked to Filippo’s father for the boy’s release. The father resisted at first, but the czar’s agent—a cousin of Peter the Great from the Golitsyn family—persisted and then succeeded on the condition that Filippo be treated “as a son.” In the end it was not really the father who released and sent him abroad, of course, but the grand duke, nor was there any difficulty breaking a three-year contract the father had recently signed with a local singing master at whose home Balatri was living in Florence.” [pg. 63]
Tosi and Domenico Cecchi (Il Cortona, ca. 1650-55 to 1717-18) carried out delicate assignments for Joseph I; and De Castris (ca. 1650-1724) in the early eighteenth century played the hopeless role of intermediary between Cosimo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his estranged son until the whole thing blew up and led to his exile from Florence to Rome, where he continued to carry out diplomatic missions for the Grand Duke. These positions and actions paled by comparison with Farinelli’s, but Melani’s in the previous century were equally flamboyant, if transitory and sometimes shady (he accepted favors from different princes left and right, and in 1667 he claimed chief responsibility for the election of Cardinal Giulio Rospigliosi as Pope Clement IX). [pg. 170]
Tutwiler1 mentions across 1 issues

Tutwiler is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 29, 2022 and September 29, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "performed at the train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi"; "train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi". It most often appears alongside 1 Kings 10-11, 2008 Democratic National Convention, Adam Scheffer.

Reference entry
Tutwiler
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
September 29, 2022
Last seen
September 29, 2022
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
In fact, it’s surprising how often musical innovators are completely obliterated from the historical record. And if you pay attention you notice something eerie and unsettling: the more powerful the music, the more the innovators risk erasure. We are told that Buddy Bolden was the originator of jazz—but not a single recording survives (or perhaps was ever made). W.C. Handy is lauded as the “Father of the Blues,” but by his own admission he didn’t invent the music, but learned it from a mysterious African-American guitarist who performed at the train station in Tutwiler, Mississippi. In that instance, not only did no recordings survive, but we don’t even know the Tutwiler guitarist’s name…If you are a great visionary in music, your life is actually at danger (as we shall see below).
Twin Cities1 mentions across 1 issues

Twin Cities is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 02, 2025 and May 02, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "within the Twin-Cities metro". It most often appears alongside AI Futures Project blog, Amistad, BIENVENIDOS A PUERTO PARRA.

Reference entry
Twin Cities
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 02, 2025
Last seen
May 02, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius
May 02, 2025 · Original source
o3’s guess: “W 66th St area, Richfield, Minnesota, USA. Confidence: ~40 % within 15 km; ~70 % within the Twin-Cities metro; remainder split between Wisconsin (20 %) and Michigan/Ontario (~10 %).”
Twin Towers1 mentions across 1 issues

Twin Towers is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 26, 2024 and July 26, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "planes didn’t hit the Twin Towers at all". It most often appears alongside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 2020 election, 2024 book review contest.

Reference entry
Twin Towers
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 26, 2024
Last seen
July 26, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
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
TX1 mentions across 1 issues

TX is a recurring place 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 "GT School (Georgetown, TX)". It most often appears alongside 10,000 hour rule, 2 Hour Learning, Inc, 2-hour Learning.

Reference entry
TX
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 27, 2025
Last seen
June 27, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Review: Alpha School
June 27, 2025 · Original source
2-Hour Learning’s flagship school is the “Alpha School” in Austin Texas. The Alpha homepage makes three claims:
Inline links: Alpha homepage
Ice Skating: The kids all went ice skating. The idea was to teach resilience since none of the kids in Texas knew how to skate
Türkheim1 mentions across 1 issues

Türkheim is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2023 and June 10, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Frankl spent three years in four different concentration camps — Türkheim". It most often appears alongside A Poet in Paradise, Agrippa d'Aubigné, Alfred Adler.

Reference entry
Türkheim
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 10, 2023
Last seen
June 10, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Your Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning
June 10, 2023 · Original source
Although it starts from the beginning and ends at the end, this part of the book is not a diary in the strictest sense, it is still somewhat loose, both chronologically and geographically (Frankl spent three years in four different concentration camps — Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, and Türkheim). He brings to life his first-hand experiences in order to illustrate his more global observations, and structures his writing by the different aspects of camp incarceration, rather than a mere sequence of events. The author himself calls this part an “existential validation of my theories”.
Türkiye1 mentions across 1 issues

Türkiye is a recurring place 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 "ÇANKAYA, ANKARA, TÜRKIYE". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

Reference entry
Türkiye
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
August 25, 2023
Last seen
August 25, 2023
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
SINGAPORE Contact: Kon Contact Info: konquek[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 8th, 4:00 PM Location: Large Park (https://www.beesknees.sg/bees-knees-petite) Coordinates: https://plus.codes/6PH58R75+MX Türkiye ÇANKAYA, ANKARA, TÜRKIYE Contact: Erol C. A. Contact Info: erolca0451[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 2nd, 6:00 PM Location: Seymenler Parkı büfeler Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GFJVVW7+V8 Notes: Gelmeyi düşünenler önden mail atarsa sevinirim, hiç mail gelmezse uzun süre boş boş beklemeyeyim. - I'd appreciate it if prospective attendees send an email beforehand so I won't have to wait for no one to appear.
Inline links: https://www.beesknees.sg/bees-knees-petite, https://plus.codes/6PH58R75+MX, https://plus.codes/8GFJVVW7+V8
ÇANKAYA, ANKARA, TÜRKIYE Contact: Erol C. A. Contact Info: erolca0451[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, September 2nd, 6:00 PM Location: Seymenler Parkı büfeler Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GFJVVW7+V8 Notes: Gelmeyi düşünenler önden mail atarsa sevinirim, hiç mail gelmezse uzun süre boş boş beklemeyeyim. - I'd appreciate it if prospective attendees send an email beforehand so I won't have to wait for no one to appear.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GFJVVW7+V8
ISTANBUL, TÜRKIYE Contact: Birce Sultan Karabey Contact Info: bircesultan[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 17th, 5:00 PM Location: Emily's Garden in Cihangir, Taksim Coordinates: https://plus.codes/8GHC2XJP+75 Notes: Please RSVP so I can get an approximate headcount for the venue.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/8GHC2XJP+75