Astral Codex Ten

Publications: H

301 min read

Publications: H

Substacks, magazines, zines, journals, and publications referenced in the archive. This section collects the H 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.

Hacker News6 mentions across 6 issues

Hacker News is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between July 23, 2021 and January 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "It recently went viral on Hacker News"; "The people on Hacker News were extremely kind to me"; "making the front page of Hacker News twice last week". It most often appears alongside COVID, India, Metaculus.

Article page
Hacker News
Mention count
6
Issue count
6
First seen
July 23, 2021
Last seen
January 30, 2024
Outbound links
Issue trail
Related pages
Source context
Links For July
July 23, 2021 · Original source
13: One of the best parts of writing my lockdown effectiveness post was learning about Corona Game, an educational game where you try to set COVID policy for the Czech Republic. It recently went viral on Hacker News, and there were lots of great comments about it, including some from the authors. Related: Matt Shapiro (who comments here as PoliMath) adds to the discussion of costs and benefits of COVID lockdowns.
Inline links: Corona Game, lots of great comments about it, the discussion of costs and benefits of COVID lockdowns
Highlights From The Comments On Ivermectin
November 23, 2021 · Original source
The people on Hacker News were extremely kind to me. csee wrote:
Inline links: on Hacker News, csee
Mantic Monday: Dogs In Wizard Hats
December 27, 2021 · Original source
3: Congratulations to Google’s new prediction market team for making the front page of Hacker News twice last week! A good demonstration that there’s a lot of interest in this field.
Inline links: the front page of Hacker News, twice
Links For December
December 30, 2021 · Original source
24: Ask Hacker News: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do? “I have been working as a software developer for almost two decades. I have received multiple promotions. I make decent money, 3x - 4x my area's median salary, so I live a comfortable life. I have never been fired or unemployed for more than a few months total over my entire career. Through most of that time I have averaged roughly 5 - 10 hours of actual work a week…Are most of us secretly lying about how much we are working? Have I just been incredibly lucky and every boss I have had is too incompetent to notice?”
Inline links: Ask Hacker News: Are most of us developers lying about how much work we do?
Open Thread 306
December 11, 2023 · Original source
4: Since I was pretty gung ho about the Lumina tooth probiotic, I want to link the good criticism I found as a counterbalance (without necessarily endorsing it). Here’s someone from Hacker News doubting that it will colonize the mouth (or do much if it does) - though see comments below. Here’s an endodontist talking about how hard it is to study this or get any evidence that it works. Some other people pointed out that the graph on the post shows only 50% colonization after one year; Aaron says he has other information showing it eventually reaches near 100% colonization and he’ll get that to me soon. Some people were extremely skeptical about whether any of this was even real, so here’s an NYT article about the original Hillman research from 2004 that will hopefully put those doubts to rest. I agree that there isn’t proof of efficacy and it will be hard to prove that, but I think the suggestive evidence compares well to other supplements I respect (albeit not $20K supplements), and no one in the comments had a good story for why it would cause harm - so I chose to take the free sample. I’ll let you know if anything terrible happens to me! Till then, you can also check the prediction markets.
Inline links: someone from Hacker News doubting, an endodontist talking about, here’s an NYT article about the original Hillman research from 2004, the prediction markets
24
January 30, 2024 · Original source
So one way to think of this is that non-market forecasting systems will outperform market systems when the markets are small and immature, but we might expect this to change as they get bigger. If that’s true, Johnson reminds us we’re not there yet. You can find further discussion of the article on r/slatestarcodex and Hacker News.
Inline links: r/slatestarcodex, Hacker News
Highlights From The Comments3 mentions across 3 issues

Highlights From The Comments is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between May 08, 2023 and December 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "maybe two Highlights From The Comments threads up soon"; "plus a Highlights From The Comments"; "I hope to do a Highlights From The Comments eventually". It most often appears alongside ACX, Astralcodexten Com, ACX Grantee Trevor Klee.

Mention count
3
Issue count
3
First seen
May 08, 2023
Last seen
December 15, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
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Source context
Open Thread 275
May 08, 2023 · Original source
4: Thanks to everyone who left good comments on the controversial posts last week; I hope to have at least one and maybe two Highlights From The Comments threads up soon.
Links For July 2025
July 01, 2025 · Original source
18: The latest on theism, fine-tuning, anthropics, and many-worlds: Onid on simplicty priors, Onid contra mathematical realism, and Dylan Black on measure (plus a Highlights From The Comments). I especially appreciate the Highlights From The Comments thread - it’s easy to write a blog post with the standard argument for some position; the real benefit comes when you see someone’s back-and-forth with smart critics. Good for Dylan for answering so many people’s questions and objections.
Inline links: Onid on simplicty priors, Onid contra mathematical realism, Dylan Black on measure, Highlights From The Comments
Open Thread 412
December 15, 2025 · Original source
1: Thanks to everyone who responded to the Vibecession post. I hope to do a Highlights From The Comments eventually, but I’m swamped right now and probably won’t do much of anything besides posting from drafts for the rest of the year.
Inline links: Vibecession
Harper’s2 mentions across 2 issues

Harper’s is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 23, 2026 and March 02, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "I was recently mentioned in a Harper’s article on Bay Area AI culture"; "The Harper’s fact-checker asked me if this was true"; "I think I got my tone wrong on last week’s Open Thread and made people think I was condemning the Harper’s article that mentioned me". It most often appears alongside ACX, Astralcodexten Com, Bay Area.

Article page
Harper’s
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
February 23, 2026
Last seen
March 02, 2026
Outbound links
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Source context
Open Thread 422
February 23, 2026 · Original source
4: I was recently mentioned in a Harper’s article on Bay Area AI culture. I agreed to be included, it’s basically fine, I’m not objecting to it, but a few small issues, mostly quibbles with emphasis rather than fact:
Inline links: a Harper’s article on Bay Area AI culture
The piece says rationalists believe “that to reach the truth you have to abandon all existing modes of knowledge acquisition and start again from scratch”. The Harper’s fact-checker asked me if this was true and I emphatically said it wasn’t, so I’m not sure what’s going on here.
Open Thread 423
March 02, 2026 · Original source
2: I think I got my tone wrong on last week’s Open Thread and made people think I was condemning the Harper’s article that mentioned me. I actually liked it and was just trying to clarify a few points. Please don’t get angry about it on my behalf. So as to not make things worse, I’ll banish further discussion of this to a comment.
Inline links: comment
Heuristics That Almost Always Work2 mentions across 2 issues

Heuristics That Almost Always Work is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between February 09, 2022 and March 01, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "See my post from yesterday, Heuristics That Almost Always Work"; "see my post from yesterday, Heuristics That Almost Always Work"; "the relevant ACX post is Heuristics That Almost Always Work". It most often appears alongside Tyler Cowen, ACX, ACX Grants.

Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
February 09, 2022
Last seen
March 01, 2022
Outbound links
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Source context
So You Want To Run A Microgrants Program
February 09, 2022 · Original source
See my post from yesterday, Heuristics That Almost Always Work.
Inline links: Heuristics That Almost Always Work
This is a dangerous game - most of the time you try to beat Heuristics That Almost Always Work, you fail. Still, part of what you’re doing in setting yourself up as a grants evaluator is claiming to be able to do this (unless you have another story in mind, like that you’re good at soliciting proposals or leveraging your personal brand to get funding). The overall grantmaking ecosystem needs some people to take the obvious high-value opportunities, and other people to seek out the opportunities whose value isn’t obvious. If you want to be the latter, good luck.
Ukraine Warcasting
March 01, 2022 · Original source
A bunch of leftists - Michael Tracey, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald - failed because they couldn’t believe that warmongering intelligence officials trying to scare everyone about Russia had a point. They admittedly had great heuristics: there are lots of warmongers, our intelligence community has been really wrong lots of times before, and the past few years have seen a lot of really embarrassing Russia-related paranoia. Unfortunately, the relevant Less Wrong post here is Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, and the relevant ACX post is Heuristics That Almost Always Work, so they failed.
Inline links: Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, Heuristics That Almost Always Work
House Of Strauss2 mentions across 2 issues

House Of Strauss is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between September 29, 2022 and February 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Sports: House Of Strauss"; "A reader asks House of Strauss (edgy sports Substack) whether the vibe shift away from political correctness threatens the edgy Substack business model". It most often appears alongside China, Substack, Texas.

Article page
House Of Strauss
Mention count
2
Issue count
2
First seen
September 29, 2022
Last seen
February 27, 2025
Outbound links
Issue trail
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Source context
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
I guess this is the QAnon thing (though he has some kind of complicated objection to that terminology). And QAnon is among the most over-covered phenomena of our time, so much so that it’s hard to have a novel or interesting take on it. But I’ll try: I think the right genre for Trump is “outlaw prince” - like Robin Hood, or Song Jiang, or your better class of pirate captain. Realistically he’s just out to enrich himself. But he defeats and embarrasses so many people along the way that he becomes a legend, inextricably tied to the very idea that the establishment can be beaten. He develops a cult following, his relatively meager real accomplishments get exaggerated in song and legend, and everyone assumes that he was only stealing from the rich in order to give to the poor or something. He can’t be caught, he can’t be defeated; like Elvis, he won’t even be able to die. He has ascended to the realm of archetypes. I guess that is a kind of winning a #SoulWAR. Sports: House Of Strauss This blog is mostly locked, but I was able to find Adam Scheffer And The Problem Of On-Ness.
Inline links: complicated objection, House Of Strauss, Adam Scheffer And The Problem Of On-Ness
Links For February 2025
February 27, 2025 · Original source
Source is CipherNews (h/t Stefan Schubert) apparently citing Climate Action Tracker, but I get the impression that this is just some people eyeballing the size of pledges and not any more sophisticated forecasting. I don’t know how to square this with the claims that such and such a thing (summer temperature, sea ice, etc) is much worse than anyone expected. 17: I don’t know anything about the Lucy Letby case, but all of my smart friends who have been right about this kind of thing before say she’s innocent. 18: A reader asks House of Strauss (edgy sports Substack) whether the vibe shift away from political correctness threatens the edgy Substack business model - as the power of orthodoxy declines, can you still get rich and famous as a brave anti-orthodoxy critic? His answer: nothing that can happen from here is as bad as the Twitter/X link deboost (which made attracting attention harder for everyone). I mostly agree: I think discoverability has suffered, people who are already famous will be able to stay famous without too much extra effort, and everyone else will have to explore new options. 19: Spectator: Could AI Lead To A Revival Of Decorative Beauty? Profiles Not Quite Past, a startup using AI and fancy printing to make customized Delft tiles. It’s a good idea and the tiles are very pretty, but the tiles are sort of a best possible case (a pretty, traditional object that can have a customized 2D image and be mass-printed). I think most forms of lost decorative beauty aren’t bottlenecked by ability to generate 2D images of the type image models are good at, and so will have to wait. 20: Some friends including Kelsey Piper wrote an emergency PEPFAR Report, collecting evidence for why PEPFAR is good/effective/important and deserves to be kept. Some key points: PEPFAR has saved between 7.5 and 30 million lives, at a cost between $1,500 and $10,000 per life saved. The US government is willing to spend at least a thousand times this much to save an American life.
Inline links: CipherNews, Stefan Schubert, Climate Action Tracker, the Lucy Letby case, His answer, Could AI Lead To A Revival Of Decorative Beauty?, Not Quite Past, PEPFAR Report
Halakhic Responses To Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Machines1 mentions across 1 issues

Halakhic Responses To Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Machines is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 17, 2024 and December 17, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "A Conservative rabbinical assembly has released Halakhic Responses To Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Machines". It most often appears alongside 2016 US Presidential election, ACX Grant, AI.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
December 17, 2024
Last seen
December 17, 2024
Outbound links
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Source context
Links For December 2024
December 17, 2024 · Original source
8: A Conservative rabbinical assembly has released Halakhic Responses To Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Machines, ie guidelines for how Jewish law should treat AI. Mostly boring, but it does cite Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi’s 18th century ruling about whether you can include a golem in a minyan.
Inline links: Halakhic Responses To Artificial Intelligence And Autonomous Machines
Hanania’s Substack1 mentions across 1 issues

Hanania’s Substack is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 24, 2022 and June 24, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Hanania writes on his Substack". It most often appears alongside 501(c)(3), 80,000 Hours, 9/11.

Reference entry
Hanania’s Substack
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 24, 2022
Last seen
June 24, 2022
Outbound links
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Source context
Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy
June 24, 2022 · Original source
[update 6/26: at least one paragraph of this review appears to be plagiarized; see here for more information. I will be investigating this and possibly disqualifying it from the contest -SA]
Inline links: here
It is very much an academic book that should revolutionise the whole field of IR by challenging the fundamental assumption of realpolitik with impressive rigour, so the brisk 200 pages should probably be mandatory reading for IR/political science freshmen. Like Robin Hanson, I would have been persuaded by an article length analysis, but as Hanania himself agrees, the belabouring book length treatment is to disabuse academics who by nature demand sweat and impressive mastery of literatures — this review should, dare I say, suffice for the cynical reader.
Inline links: Robin Hanson, Hanania
‘revolving doors’ for all three concentrated interest to actively collaborate (80% of retired three- and four-star generals between 2004 and 2008 went on to work as consultants or executives in the defence industry; ‘rent-a-general’ like the Four Star Group in which generals leverage their Pentagon contacts to consult in equity investing) You know the book is dry when this is one of the only two graphics. 3. Team America: World Police Hanania argues that Ikenberry and other’s advocacy of America’s role in maintaining the “rules based international order” cannot account for the American exceptionalism in blatantly violating international law — 237 American military interventions between 1950 and 2017 (3.5 per year), and 64 covert regime changes in the Cold War alone. In the satire, the terrorists have WMDs courtesy of Kim Jong Un; in real life, Saddam had neither WMDs nor terrorist ties. International law allows the use of force either in self-defence or with the approval of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). The “legal” American military interventions include: The Korean War (1950-1953): UNSC declared a “breach of the peace” when North Korea crossed the 38th parallel
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!GcEn!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4683929f-6fab-4b6f-ae65-f65ee690add0_958x301.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WQjC!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0065eeba-39d4-473f-8031-5e296b548650_1200x1600.png
Harvard Business Review1 mentions across 1 issues

Harvard Business Review is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 20, 2021 and May 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Harvard Business Review on when corporate philanthropy is good vs. cringe". It most often appears alongside 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, AI X-Risk Research Podcast, Alignment Research Center.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 20, 2021
Last seen
May 20, 2021
Outbound links
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Links For May
May 20, 2021 · Original source
27: Harvard Business Review on when corporate philanthropy is good vs. cringe. My favorite sentence: "Tobacco giant Philip Morris…spent $ 75 million on its charitable contributions in 1999 and then launched a $ 100 million advertising campaign to publicize them."
Inline links: when corporate philanthropy is good vs. cringe
Harvard Crimson1 mentions across 1 issues

Harvard Crimson is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 24, 2021 and February 24, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "the Harvard Crimson can't stop raving about Hamilton". It most often appears alongside 1950s, 1980s, 1983.

Reference entry
Harvard Crimson
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
February 24, 2021
Last seen
February 24, 2021
Outbound links
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Source context
Book Review: Fussell On Class
February 24, 2021 · Original source
Class gives us a hint: it urges us to watch for "prole drift", the tendency of lower-class signals and behaviors to become higher-class over time. I was surprised by this - I would have expected the opposite, where lower classes gradually catch on and learn how to ape their betters, and their betters need to invent new signals to replace the compromised ones. But I can't deny that Fussell has a point too - witness rap going from an underclass phenomenon to a middle-class one to one where the Harvard Crimson can't stop raving about Hamilton.
Inline links: can't stop raving
Harvard Gazette1 mentions across 1 issues

Harvard Gazette is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 14, 2021 and October 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Harvard Gazette reviews Stephen Pinker’s new book on rationality". It most often appears alongside @literalbanana, ACX, Barcelona.

Reference entry
Harvard Gazette
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
October 14, 2021
Last seen
October 14, 2021
Outbound links
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Source context
Links For October
October 14, 2021 · Original source
5: Harvard Gazette reviews Stephen Pinker’s new book on rationality. Someone sent this to me for the contrast with Secret Of Our Success - Pinker argues that hunter-gatherer tribes use critical thinking all the time, are skeptical of arguments from authority, and “owe their survival to a scientific mindset”. I’d love to see a debate between Pinker and Henrich (or an explanation of why they feel like they’re really on the same side and don’t need to iron anything out).
Inline links: reviews Stephen Pinker’s new book on rationality
Hattie on education1 mentions across 1 issues

Hattie on education is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 08, 2023 and June 08, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Credit here: Hattie on education". It most often appears alongside ACX survey, Adderall, Ambien.

Reference entry
Hattie on education
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
June 08, 2023
Last seen
June 08, 2023
Outbound links
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Source context
Attempts To Put Statistics In Context, Put Into Context
June 08, 2023 · Original source
The correlation between reading and math is higher than the correlation between which countries are near the equator, and which countries are hot. The first effect might sound kind of trivial, but it is r = 0.86. And the second effect might sound immense, but it is only r = 0.64. The real correlation between standardized reading and math tests is in between, r = 0.72. The examples above might be sort of cheating, because they’re comparing college majors (which are averaged-out aggregates of people) to countries (which are just individual countries). But that’s my point. It’s easy to cheat! Obviously someone wanting to exaggerate or downplay the generality of intelligence could choose which of these two ways they wanted to “put it into context”. I don’t have a solution to this except for constant vigilance and lots of examples. So here are a lot of examples. I thought I was the first to do this, but partway through I found some prior art. None completely satisfied me, but I’ve stolen a little from all of them. Credit here: Meyer et al, Hattie on education, Reason Without Restraint, Leucht et al. Some effect sizes and correlations are naturally misleading, or depend a lot on context. I’ve tried as hard as I can to avoid these and make all my examples clear, but they will necessarily require some charity. Effect Size: DARE keeps kids off drugs: 0.02
Inline links: r = 0.86, r = 0.64, r = 0.72, Hattie on education, Reason Without Restraint, Leucht et al, 0.02
Heads Or Tails: The Impact Of A Coin Toss On Major Life Decisions And Subsequent Happiness1 mentions across 1 issues

Heads Or Tails: The Impact Of A Coin Toss On Major Life Decisions And Subsequent Happiness is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 25, 2021 and May 25, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "One of my all-time favorite studies is Steven Levitt’s Heads Or Tails: The Impact Of A Coin Toss On Major Life Decisions And Subsequent Happiness". It most often appears alongside 2002 meta-analysis by Cochrane Collaboration, 5-HTP, 5-HTP.

Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
May 25, 2021
Last seen
May 25, 2021
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Peer Review Request: Depression
May 25, 2021 · Original source
One of my all-time favorite studies is Steven Levitt’s Heads Or Tails: The Impact Of A Coin Toss On Major Life Decisions And Subsequent Happiness. A researcher got subjects who were unsure whether or not they wanted to make a big change in their lives to decide by flipping a coin. The people who randomly ended up in the “do make the change” group ended up much happier six months later. (2 points on a 1-10 scale). This was especially true when the subject was considering breaking up (2.7 points happier) or quitting a job (5.2 points happier). This doesn’t mean everyone should break up with their partner and quit their job! But it does mean that if you really want to do that, and you’ve been holding off out of fear, you should consider not holding off.
Inline links: Heads Or Tails: The Impact Of A Coin Toss On Major Life Decisions And Subsequent Happiness
Health Affairs1 mentions across 1 issues

Health Affairs is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 04, 2022 and November 04, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "published many articles... most recently including a Health Affairs piece". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, acanthamoeba keratitis, ACX.

Reference entry
Health Affairs
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
November 04, 2022
Last seen
November 04, 2022
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ACX Grants: Project Updates
November 04, 2022 · Original source
37: Good Science Project, Working To Improve Federal Science Funding (?/10) The Good Science Project officially launched back in April, and has brought on a Senior Fellow (Betsy Ogburn of Johns Hopkins, with an interest in clinical trial quality and infrastructure) and Eric Gilliam (formerly working for Steve Levitt, with an interest in progress studies and the creation of effective scientific institutions). They have published many articles on science reform, most recently including a Health Affairs piece arguing for an NIH Center of Innovation, and are advising ARPA-H (the new “DARPA for health”) on meta-science issues. Staffers at the White House and Congress regularly ask for their input. You can read their Substack here.
Inline links: Health Affairs piece, their Substack here
Hebrew Bible1 mentions across 1 issues

Hebrew Bible is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 17, 2023 and November 17, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "So how does the Hebrew Bible escape this failure mode?". It most often appears alongside Abel, Adam and Eve, America.

Reference entry
Hebrew Bible
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
November 17, 2023
Last seen
November 17, 2023
Outbound links
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Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
November 17, 2023 · Original source
So how does the Hebrew Bible escape this failure mode? Girard says divine intervention. God (here meaning literal God, exactly as the average churchgoer understands Him) tried to break the reign of Satan (here meaning metaphorical Satan, the single-victim process) over the Jewish people, by constantly providing them with examples of the single-victim process being bad and ensuring those examples were written up accurately. He got the Israelites to obsess over these examples and worship them as a holy text, trying to hammer the whole thing into their heads. Finally, He sent His only begotten Son as the perfect victim, who would undergo the process in its entirety and have it be written up with unprecedented attention to detail. This extra-compelling example finally penetrated the Israelites’ thick skulls. Although Peter and the other disciples sort of joined the mob in denying Jesus at the beginning, after the Resurrection they started thinking previously barely-thinkable thoughts, like “what if our mob was in the wrong?” and “what if mob violence is bad?”
Herald Tribune1 mentions across 1 issues

Herald Tribune is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 30, 2021 and April 30, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "a decade’s worth of Herald Tribune, searching for articles". It most often appears alongside 1893, 1970s, 1980s.

Reference entry
Herald Tribune
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
April 30, 2021
Last seen
April 30, 2021
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Your Book Review: Double Fold
April 30, 2021 · Original source
Rebecca Rego Barry was one of the researchers who benefited from a treasure trove of newspapers that had been saved from dispersal by Baker immediately before Double Fold was published. She used them to sift through a decade’s worth of Herald Tribune, searching for articles written by a columnist whom she was analyzing for her thesis. “Could the articles be found on microfilm? Theoretically they could, with another year and an extra set of eyes, if whoever had microfilmed it had done a decent job in the first place.”
Inline links: one of the researchers
Herasight1 mentions across 1 issues

Herasight is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 31, 2025 and July 31, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "On their Substack, Herasight also criticizes Nucleus’ monogenic screening product; Herasight continued with exhaustive criticism". It most often appears alongside 23andMe, 23andme, Alex Young.

Reference entry
Herasight
Mention count
1
Issue count
1
First seen
July 31, 2025
Last seen
July 31, 2025
Outbound links
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Suddenly, Trait-Based Embryo Selection
July 31, 2025 · Original source
Sample Nucleus results. And this week, Herasight4 entered the space with the most impressive disease risk scores yet, an IQ predictor worth 6-95 extra points, and a series of challenges to competitors, whom they call out for insufficient scientific rigor. Their most scathing attack is on Nucleus itself, accusing its predictions of being misleading and unreliable. Let’s start with the science, then move on to the companies and see if we can litigate their dispute. In Theory, All Of This Should Work Polygenic embryo screening is a natural extension of two well-validated technologies: genetic testing of embryos, and polygenic prediction of traits in adults. Genetic testing of embryos has been done for decades, usually to detect chromosomal abnormalities like Down Syndrome or simple single-gene disorders like cystic fibrosis. It’s challenging - you need to take a very small number of cells (often only 5-10) from a tiny proto-placenta that may not have many cells to spare, and extract a readable amount of genetic material from this limited sample - but there are known solutions that mostly work. But most traits are polygenic, requiring information about thousands or tens of thousands of genes to predict. These are too complicated to understand fully at current levels of technology, but some studies have chipped away at the problem and gotten a partial understanding. Often this looks like being able to predict a few percent of the variance in a trait, and determine whether someone’s genetic risk is slightly higher or lower than average. Polygenic prediction of traits in adults is still young and full of hidden pitfalls. Last month, we discussed how some early studies unknowingly conflated direct genetic effects and various confounders6 - for example, they tended to pick up on genes associated with well-off ethnic groups or families who had good health outcomes for social reasons. Pinpointing the direct component requires an additional step where researchers validate their algorithms within families (for example, on pairs of siblings where one has a higher polygenic score than the other) to see how much predictive power remains. This is especially important for embryo selection companies, whose entire value proposition depends on comparing two genomes from the same family. How have they done? It depends on the number of embryos they have to work with; the more embryos, the better you can do by selecting the best. Herasight’s numbers on how breast cancer risk goes down with number of embryos used in selection. A typical round of IVF produces 1-10 embryos (younger women usually = more). Women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (prevalence: 10%) may get as many as 20. For more, you will probably need to do multiple IVF rounds. Here is a table of different companies’ reported risk reductions, slightly adjusted7 for different reporting conventions but otherwise taking all claims at face value (we’ll talk about how wise that is later). Relative risk reduction for five conditions (gray = no data / disputed data). Here baseline is for embryos neither of whose parents have the condition. GP and Orchid both say their technology has improved since reporting these numbers and they will report better numbers soon. GP numbers are not within-family validated and might be lower if they were. Absolute risk after selection for five conditions (gray = no data / disputed data), ibid. Some people might genuinely want to select on a single condition. For example, people with a strong family history of schizophrenia might want to minimize the chance of their children getting the disease; for these people, reducing schizophrenia risk by 58% (while keeping everything else constant) sounds pretty good. Everyone else probably wants a generically healthy embryo with low risk of all conditions. Exactly how this works depends on the customer’s own values - would they prefer an embryo with lower cancer risk to one who will have fewer heart attacks? - and the exact benefits will depend on how parents make that decision. Genomic Prediction and Herasight try to help by providing semi-objective measures of which embryo is overall healthiest according to different conditions’ effects on longevity and patient-rated quality of life. For Genomic Prediction, that’s the “embryo health score” If you selected the single highest-health-score embryo from a set of five, here’s how they’d do: For Herasight, it’s a “polygenic longevity index”. They don’t give exact risk reduction numbers for each disease, saying that it depends too much on a couple’s specific family history, but say that most people gain 1-4 years of healthy life (when I test it on a set of twenty embryos, the the healthiest gets an extra 1.66 years). How much would you pay to give your children an extra 1-4 years of healthy life? This is no longer a hypothetical question. Here are the costs of the companies in this space: Is it worth it? If: You’re already doing IVF
Inline links: Herasight, 4, 5, 6, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VOdq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb1ba32f3-72fa-4be1-846c-6b0b04a5a213_774x279.png, 7, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0oUh!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8419603-9239-43bb-8c79-77b078ff0789_548x136.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rpEJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc539a717-a130-460d-90c9-4ab64619f26d_548x133.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3Kc6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbda325bb-13fb-4c27-b8c3-24facce5c71a_676x153.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1Am!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F831ab3c6-4053-4ff9-bc2f-879aee4349cf_673x740.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Q2vE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fadcf2bb4-8dd1-4a88-9728-6953a820971b_422x575.png
Herasight’s numbers on how breast cancer risk goes down with number of embryos used in selection. A typical round of IVF produces 1-10 embryos (younger women usually = more). Women with polycystic ovarian syndrome (prevalence: 10%) may get as many as 20. For more, you will probably need to do multiple IVF rounds. Here is a table of different companies’ reported risk reductions, slightly adjusted7 for different reporting conventions but otherwise taking all claims at face value (we’ll talk about how wise that is later). Relative risk reduction for five conditions (gray = no data / disputed data). Here baseline is for embryos neither of whose parents have the condition. GP and Orchid both say their technology has improved since reporting these numbers and they will report better numbers soon. GP numbers are not within-family validated and might be lower if they were. Absolute risk after selection for five conditions (gray = no data / disputed data), ibid. Some people might genuinely want to select on a single condition. For example, people with a strong family history of schizophrenia might want to minimize the chance of their children getting the disease; for these people, reducing schizophrenia risk by 58% (while keeping everything else constant) sounds pretty good. Everyone else probably wants a generically healthy embryo with low risk of all conditions. Exactly how this works depends on the customer’s own values - would they prefer an embryo with lower cancer risk to one who will have fewer heart attacks? - and the exact benefits will depend on how parents make that decision. Genomic Prediction and Herasight try to help by providing semi-objective measures of which embryo is overall healthiest according to different conditions’ effects on longevity and patient-rated quality of life. For Genomic Prediction, that’s the “embryo health score” If you selected the single highest-health-score embryo from a set of five, here’s how they’d do: For Herasight, it’s a “polygenic longevity index”. They don’t give exact risk reduction numbers for each disease, saying that it depends too much on a couple’s specific family history, but say that most people gain 1-4 years of healthy life (when I test it on a set of twenty embryos, the the healthiest gets an extra 1.66 years). How much would you pay to give your children an extra 1-4 years of healthy life? This is no longer a hypothetical question. Here are the costs of the companies in this space: Is it worth it? If: You’re already doing IVF
Inline links: 7, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0oUh!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe8419603-9239-43bb-8c79-77b078ff0789_548x136.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rpEJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc539a717-a130-460d-90c9-4ab64619f26d_548x133.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3Kc6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbda325bb-13fb-4c27-b8c3-24facce5c71a_676x153.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!t1Am!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F831ab3c6-4053-4ff9-bc2f-879aee4349cf_673x740.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Q2vE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fadcf2bb4-8dd1-4a88-9728-6953a820971b_422x575.png
You’re okay using expected utility calculations where a 50% chance of preventing X is half as good as fully preventing X. …then I’ll go out on a limb and say yeah, obviously it’s worth it. Consider e.g. Genomic Prediction, which costs $3,250 for five embryos and claims to lower absolute risk of Type 2 diabetes by 12%. That implies that not getting Type 2 diabetes is worth $27,000. Ask anybody dealing with regular insulin injections (let alone limb amputations) whether it would be worth $27,000 to wave a magic wand and not have Type 2 diabetes! It’s not a hard question! And that’s just one of a dozen conditions you can lower the risk for! Other ones, like not getting breast cancer, might be so valuable that it’s hard to even attach numbers! (but maybe the low time discount rate is a mistake? Suppose you invest the $3,250 in an index fund that makes 7% over inflation, then give it to your future child when they turn 45 (average age of type 2 diabetes diagnoses). Now it’s worth $75,000. Is this the “true” cost of the intervention? Does it matter that this counterfactual is fake and most people don’t do this?) What about IQ? Six extra IQ points (Herasight’s estimate with five embryos) is about a quarter of the gap between the average person and the average Ivy League student. The benefits of intelligence are hard to quantify, but it’s been shown to have probably-causal positive effects on income, mortality, and achievement. Probably the income effects alone make up for the cost of intervention - again assuming total parent-child altruism and low discount rate8. So if we accept all of these claims and assumptions, the choice seems obvious. It’s probably even obvious for governments to pay for all citizens to get these, given how much they’d save on health care costs. In Practice, It’s Complicated Critics have raised both scientific and ethical objections to polygenic embryo screening. Most significantly, it’s been condemned by various bodies including the Society For Psychiatric Genetics, the European Society of Human Genetics, and the Behavioral Genetics Society. Their statements are . . . not good. They tend towards vague language about how people are more than just their genes, or how no genetic test can be perfect, or how embryo screening is not exactly the same thing as some other form of screening which has a longer history and more proponents. “Although in general higher scores mean you are more likely to have a condition, many healthy people will have high scores; others might develop the condition even with a low score”, says the Society for Psychiatric Genetics, as if they have just blown the lid off some dastardly conspiracy. “Screening embryos for psychiatric conditions may increase stigma surrounding these diagnoses”, they continue - an objection which, taken seriously, could be used to ban every form of medical treatment. We will mostly ignore these people and try to imagine the objections that mildly competent critics might raise, some of which will coincidentally overlap with the content of the non-hypothetical statements. Scientific Objection: Efficacy Are we sure this works at all? A typical polygenic score is created by collecting thousands or millions of adult genomes, then matching genetic information with surveys about who has the trait/condition of interest. Reputable studies then test these scores on holdout samples - adults who were not used to make the score, to see if they still accurately predict who has the trait/condition. Polygenic embryo selection depends on an assumption that the scores which work in these kinds of retrospective tests will also work prospectively on embryos. This assumption hasn’t been formally proven in studies (which would require years to decades to conduct), but seems common-sensical. The strongest challenge to the application of polygenic scores for embryo selection comes from a recent body of research showing that most scores combine causal genetic effects with population stratification, and therefore can be expected to lose much of their predictive power when comparing two members of the same family (e.g. two embryos from the same couple). There is increasing agreement in the field that unless scores are validated within families, headline results like “decreases risk of X by Y%” will be large overestimates. When I talked to company representatives, they all said that they took accuracy extremely seriously and had various white papers and journal articles where anyone could double-check their methodology. But I attended an industry conference a few months ago, and the gossip level was comparable to a high school cafeteria (minus the sex rumors - most of the attendees were having their own kids via IVF). Everyone had some story about someone being careless or fudging their numbers. Some of the conflicts broke out into the open on Wednesday, when Herasight left stealth and published a white paper and associated blog post. They criticize Genomic Prediction for reporting between-family rather than within family results9, and Orchid for smuggling a term for age into their Alzheimer’s predictor (unsurprisingly, this makes it work better). We’ll get to their accusations against Nucleus below. Note that this was recent enough that competitors haven’t had time to respond or to air their own criticisms of Herasight; if this happens, I’ll try to keep you updated. Maybe this is cope, but my optimistic perspective is that this bounds the damage. This obviously isn’t a field capable of maintaining a conspiracy of silence. But aside from the Nucleus allegations, the complaints aren’t existential. Maybe some numbers are too high, maybe some predictors are slightly rigged. But the more we learn about these admittedly concerning problems, the more we can hope that we’d have heard about it if nothing worked at all. Overall my strongest opinion on the scientific criticisms is: Authorities on all sides have cited Alex Young10 as an authority on how polygenic scores can be confounded or misleading.
Inline links: income, mortality, achievement, 8, Society For Psychiatric Genetics, European Society of Human Genetics, Behavioral Genetics Society, white paper, blog post, 9, 10
hereticalinsights.substack.com1 mentions across 1 issues

hereticalinsights.substack.com is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 03, 2025 and July 03, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "( https://hereticalinsights.substack.com/i/146616013/disassortative-mating )". It most often appears alongside 23andme, @alextisyoung, Aborigines.

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Highlights From The Comments On Missing Heritability
July 03, 2025 · Original source
And the WGS estimate is higher for height than the RDR estimates (55%), my take on this is that there is an assumption in RDR that posit that the environment of individuals are independent to each others and don't influence each others in correlation to the relatedness which since it's violated bias the estimate downward. (https://hereticalinsights.substack.com/i/146616013/disassortative-mating)
Inline links: https://hereticalinsights.substack.com/i/146616013/disassortative-mating
I don’t entirely understand what’s going on here, and I challenged rad1kal on some of the assortative mating implications here, but the blog that rad1kal linked (their own? I’m not sure) has a much deeper discussion of the Equal Environment Assumption than I included in my post, see here.
Inline links: here, here
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Here’s Why Automaticity Is Real Actually is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 31, 2023 and August 31, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "present Here’s Why Automaticity Is Real Actually , as mine is an extreme case". It most often appears alongside Against Automaticity, Banana, Buddha.

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Here's Why Automaticity Is Real Actually
August 31, 2023 · Original source
I invite anyone to be the Lakatos to my Feyerabend, and present Here’s Why Automaticity Is Real Actually, as mine is an extreme case and does not pretend to be a measured, balanced examination of the subject.
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Book Review: The Origins Of Woke
May 01, 2024 · Original source
I don’t read Hanania’s blog religiously. Maybe he has an article somewhere about Here’s Why I Think It’s Good To Have A Glaring Omission Around This Part Of My Argument. But I can’t predict what it would say.
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What Happened With Bio Anchors?
February 12, 2026 · Original source
Epoch/Croxton are current best estimates, and can probably fairly be read as the “real” answer against which Cotra and Davidson’s earlier guesses should be judged. All numbers are yearly multiples, so 1.4 means that willingness to spend grows 1.4x per year, ie 40%. Willingness To Spend: How much money are companies willing to spend on AI, in the form of chips and data centers? $/FLOP: How quickly do Moore’s Law, economies of scale, and other factors bring down the price of AI compute? Training Run Length: How long are companies spending on AI training runs for frontier models (instead of using those chips for smaller models, experiments, or consumer services)? Real Compute: The product of the three parameters above. Algorithmic Progress: How effectively do researchers discover new algorithms that makes training AIs cheaper and more efficient? Total Effective Compute: The product of real compute and algorithmic progress. So for example, the Epoch column’s 10.7x means that in any given year, you can train an AI 10.7x better than the last year, because you have 3.6x more compute available, and that compute is 3.0x more efficient. Cotra and Davidson were pretty close on willingness to spend and on FLOPs/$. This is an impressive achievement; they more or less predicted the giant data center buildout of the past few years. They ignored training run length, which probably seemed like a reasonable simplification at the time. But they got killed on algorithmic progress, which was 200% per year instead of 30%. How did they get this one so wrong? Here’s Cotra’s section on algorithmic progress: Algorithmic progress forecasts Note: I have done very little research into algorithmic progress trends. Of the four main components of my model (2020 compute requirements, algorithmic progress, compute price trends, and spending on computation) I have spent the least time thinking about algorithmic progress. I consider two types of algorithmic progress: relatively incremental and steady progress from iteratively improving architectures and learning algorithms, and the chance of “breakthrough” progress which brings the technical difficulty of training a transformative model down from “astronomically large” / “impossible” to “broadly feasible.” For incremental progress, the main source I used was Hernandez and Brown 2020, ”Measuring the Algorithmic Efficiency of Neural Networks”. The authors reimplemented open source state-of-the-art (SOTA) ImageNet models between 2012 and 2019 (six models in total). They trained each model up to the point that it achieved the same performance as AlexNet achieved in 2012, and recorded the total FLOP that required. They found that the SOTA model in 2019, EfficientNet B0, required ~44 times fewer training FLOP to achieve AlexNet performance than AlexNet did; the six data points fit a power law curve with the amount of computation required to match AlexNet halving every ~16 months over the seven years in the dataset.² They also show that linear programming displayed a similar trend over a longer period of time: when hardware is held fixed, the time in seconds taken to solve a standard basket of mixed integer programs by SOTA commercial software packages halved every ~13 months over the 21 years from 1996 to 2017.³ Grace 2013 (”Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains”) is the only other paper attempting to systematically quantify algorithmic progress that I am currently aware of, although I have not done a systematic literature review and may be missing others. I have chosen not to examine it in detail because a) it was written largely before the deep learning boom and mostly does not focus on ML tasks, and b) it is less straightforward to translate Grace’s results into the format that I am most interested in (”How has the amount of computation required to solve a fixed task decreased over time?”). Paul is familiar with the results, and he believes that algorithmic progress across the six domains studied in Grace 2013⁴ is consistent with a similar but slightly slower rate of progress, ranging from 13 to 36 months to halve the computation required to reach a fixed level of performance. Additionally, it seems plausible to me that both sets of results would overestimate the pace of algorithmic progress on a transformative task, because they are both focusing on relatively narrow problems with simple, well-defined benchmarks that large groups of researchers could directly optimize.⁵ Because no one has trained a transformative model yet, to the extent that the computation required to train one is falling over time, it would have to happen via proxies rather than researchers directly optimizing that metric (e.g. perhaps architectural innovations that improve training efficiency for image classifiers or language models would translate to a transformative model). Additionally, it may be that halving the amount of computation required to train a transformative model would require making progress on multiple partially-independent sub-problems (e.g. vision and language and motor control). I have attempted to take the Hernandez and Brown 2020 halving times (and Paul’s summary of the Grace 2013 halving times) as anchoring points and shade them upward to account for the considerations raised above. There is massive room for judgment in whether and how much to shade upward; I expect many readers will want to change my assumptions here, and some will believe it is more reasonable to shade downward. Cotra’s estimate comes primarily from one paper, Hernandez & Brown, which looks at algorithmic progress on a task called AlexNet. But later research demonstrated that the apparent speed of algorithmic progress varies by an order of magnitude based on whether you’re looking at an easy task (low-hanging fruit already picked) or a hard task (still lots of room to improve). AlexNet was an easy task, but pushing the frontier of AI is a hard task, so algorithmic progress in frontier AI has been faster than the AlexNet paper estimated. In Cotra’s defense, she admitted that this was the area where she was least certain, and that she had rounded the progress rate down based on various considerations when other people might round it up based on various other considerations. But the sheer extent of the error here, compounded with a few smaller errors that unfortunately all shared the same direction, was enough to throw off the estimate entirely. Since Cotra and Davidson were expecting AI to get 3.6x more effective compute each year, but it actually got 10.7x more, it’s no mystery why their timelines were off. When John recalculates Davidson’s model with Epoch’s numbers, he finds that it estimates AGI in 2030, which matches the current vibes. IV. With this information in place, it’s worth looking at some prominent contemporaneous critiques of Bio Anchors. Various people criticized Bio Anchors’ many strange anchors for how much compute it would take to produce AGI. For example, one anchor estimated that it would take 10^45 FLOPs, because that was how many calculations happened in all the brains of all animals throughout the evolutionary history (which eventually produced the human brain that AIs are trying to imitate). To make things even weirder, this anchor assumed away all animals other than nematodes as a rounding error (fact check: true!) All of these seemed to detract from the main show, an attempt to estimate the compute involved in the human brain. But even this more sober anchor was complicated by time horizons - it’s not enough to imitate the human brain for one second; AIs need to be able to imitate the human brain’s capacity for long-term planning. Cotra calculated how much compute AGI would require if it needed a planning horizon of seconds, weeks, or years. Thanks to METR, we now know that existing AIs have already passed a point where they can do most tasks that take humans seconds, are moving through the hour range, and are just about to touch one day. So the “seconds” anchor is ruled out. But it also seems unlikely that AGI will require years, because most human projects don’t take years, or at least can be split into tasks that take less than one year each (intuition pump: are we sure the average employee stays at an AI lab for more than a year? If not, that proves that a chain of people with sub-one-year time horizons can do valuable work). The AI Futures team guessed that the time horizon necessary for AIs to really start serious recursive self-improvement was between a few weeks and a few months (though this might look like a totally different number on the METR graph, which doesn’t translate perfectly into real life). If this is true, then all three anchors (seconds, hours, years) were off by at least an order of magnitude. But it turns out that none of this matters very much. The highest and lowest anchors cancel out, so that the most plausible anchor - human brain with time horizon of hours to days - is around the average. If you remove all the other anchors and just keep that one, the model’s estimates barely change. But also, we’re talking about crossing twelve orders of magnitude here. The difference between the different time horizon anchors doesn’t register much on that level, compared to things like algorithmic progress which have exponential effects. Maybe this is the model basically working as intended. You try lots of different anchors, put more weight on the more plausible ones, take a weighted average of each of them, and hopefully get something close to the real value. Bio Anchors did. Or maybe it was just good luck. Still hard to tell. Eliezer Yudkowsky argued that the whole methodology was fundamentally flawed. Partly because of the argument above - he didn’t trust the anchors - but also partly because he expected the calculations to be obviated by some sort of paradigm shift that couldn’t be shoehorned into “algorithmic progress” (like how you couldn’t build an airplane in 1900 but you could in 1920). As of 2026 - still before AGI has been invented and we get a good historical perspective - no such shift has occurred. The scaling laws have mostly held; whatever artificial space you try to measure models in, the measurement has mostly worked in a predictable way. There have really only been two kinks in the history of AI so far. First, a kink in training run size around 2010: Second, a kink in time horizons around 2024 and the invention of test-time compute: The 2010 kink was before Cotra’s forecast and priced in. The 2024 kink is interesting and relevant - but since it was on a parameter Cotra wasn’t measuring, and probably too small to show up on the orders-of-magnitude scale we’re talking about, it’s probably not a major cause of the model’s inaccuracy. Other things have been even more predictable: So Cotra’s bet on progress being smooth and measurable has mostly paid off so far. But Yudkowsky further explained that his timelines were shorter than Bio Anchors because people would be working hard to discover new paradigms, and if the current paradigm would only pay off in the 2050s, then probably they would discover one before then. You could think of this as a disjunction: timelines will be shorter than Cotra thinks, either because deep learning pays off quickly, or because a new paradigm gets invented in the interim. It turned out to be the first one. So although Yudkowsky’s new paradigm has yet to materialize, his disjunctive reasoning in favor of shorter-than-2050 timelines was basically on the mark. Nostalgebraist argued that Cotra’s whole model was a wrapper for an assumption that Moore’s Law will continue indefinitely. If it does, obviously you get enough compute for AI at some point, even if it requires some absurd process like simulating all 500 million years of multicellular evolution. I never entirely understood this objection, because - although Bio Anchors does depend on a story where Moore’s Law doesn’t break before we get the relevant amount of compute - this is only one of many background assumptions (like that a meteor doesn’t hit Earth before we get the relevant amount of compute). Given those assumptions, it does a useful not-just-assumption-repeating job of calculating when transformative AI will happen. As Cotra implicitly predicted, we seem on track to get AGI before Moore’s Law breaks down, and so Moore’s Law didn’t end up mattering very much. And if all of Cotra’s non-Moore’s-Law parameter estimates had been correct, her model would have given about the same timelines we have now, and surprised everyone with a revolutionary claim about the AI future. But Nostalgebraist added, almost as an aside: Cotra has a whole other forecast I didn’t mention for “algorithmic progress,” and the last number is what you get from just algorithmic progress and no Moore’s Law. So depending on how much you trust that forecast, you might want to take all these numbers with an even bigger grain of salt than you’d expected from everything else we’ve seen. How much should you trust Cotra’s algorithmic progress forecast? She writes: “I have done very little research into algorithmic progress trends. Of the four main components of my model (2020 compute requirements, algorithmic progress, compute price trends, and spending on computation) I have spent the least time thinking about algorithmic progress.” ...and bases the forecast on one paper about ImageNet classifiers. I want to be clear that when I quote these parts about Cotra not spending much time on something, I’m not trying to make fun of her. It’s good to be transparent about this kind of thing! I wish more people would do that. My complaint is not that she tells us what she spent time on, it’s that she spent time on the wrong things. Like Cotra herself, I think Nostalgebraist was spiritually correct even if his bottom line (about Moore’s Law) was wrong. His meta-level point was that a seemingly complicated model could actually hinge on one or two parameters, and that many of Cotra’s parameter values were vague hand-wavey best guess estimates. He gave algorithmic progress as a secondary example of this to shore up his Moore’s Law case, but in fact it turned out to be where all the action was. V. Those were the rare good critiques. The bad critiques were the same ones everyone in this space gets: You’re just trying to build hype.
Inline links: ”Measuring the Algorithmic Efficiency of Neural Networks”, ”Algorithmic Progress in Six Domains”, later research, fact check: true!, argued that, https://epoch.ai/blog/the-longest-training-run, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GAJbegsvnd85hX3eS/thoughts-on-extrapolating-time-horizons, https://epoch.ai/benchmarks/eci, argued that
Hidden Forces1 mentions across 1 issues

Hidden Forces is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 21, 2021 and May 21, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "try Hidden Forces with Demetri Kofinas". It most often appears alongside 1992 treaty, ACX, Africa.

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Hidden Forces
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Your Book Review: The Accidental Superpower
May 21, 2021 · Original source
Are people today aware of how deserts and oceans provide security against invasions, how waterways facilitate trade, or how international trade requires protection against adversaries? If America actually does pull back from the free trade world that it shaped after the war, we should expect a lot more attention to questions like these. In the meantime, at least in part due to Zeihan’s influence, I’m seeing more discussion about these subjects. For a (slightly) less-than-book-length preview of them, see Conrad Bastable’s (very funny and entertaining, to say nothing of its informational value) The Full Stack of Society: Can You Make A Whole Society Wealthier? [Full Version], which cites Zeihan at some point. Or if podcasts are more your thing, try Hidden Forces with Demetri Kofinas, who recently interviewed the world-traveling/veteran/writer/investor Radigan Carter and got into Zeihan’s thesis with him (they both agree with it), or any of the many podcasts with Zeihan himself.
Inline links: The Full Stack of Society: Can You Make A Whole Society Wealthier? [Full Version], recently interviewed, Radigan Carter
High Dose Escitalopram For The Treatment Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder1 mentions across 1 issues

High Dose Escitalopram For The Treatment Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 31, 2021 and March 31, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The third study is Rabinowitz, Baruch, and Barak, High Dose Escitalopram For The Treatment Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder". It most often appears alongside ASRI, Celexa, Cipriani.

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Oh, The Places You'll Go When Trying To Figure Out The Right Dose Of Escitalopram
March 31, 2021 · Original source
The third study is Rabinowitz, Baruch, and Barak, High Dose Escitalopram For The Treatment Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Basically the same story, and possibly not relevant given that OCD may need higher doses than depression. But it's useful as a sanity check, and it confirms that high-dose Lexapro was pretty well-tolerated. It also says one patient got manic on 45 mg Lexapro, which is too bad for the patient but otherwise a good sign - accidentally making bipolar people manic is sometimes considered a sign that an antidepressant is working. The mania stopped after bringing the Lexapro down to 30 mg, which suggests the 45 mg dose really was doing something the 30 mg dose wasn't.
Inline links: High Dose Escitalopram For The Treatment Of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
High-Stakes Alignment Via Adversarial Training1 mentions across 1 issues

High-Stakes Alignment Via Adversarial Training is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 28, 2022 and November 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "High-Stakes Alignment Via Adversarial Training (written 5/2022, gives an optimistic assessment of progress)". It most often appears alongside Adversarial Training For High-Stakes Reliability, AI, AI X-Risk Podcast.

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Can This AI Save Teenage Spy Alex Rider From A Terrible Fate?
November 28, 2022 · Original source
High-Stakes Alignment Via Adversarial Training (written 5/2022, gives an optimistic assessment of progress)
Inline links: High-Stakes Alignment Via Adversarial Training
Highlights From The Comments On Fatima1 mentions across 1 issues

Highlights From The Comments On Fatima is a recurring publication 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 "and Highlights From The Comments On Fatima". It most often appears alongside Arthur, Arthur T, BANGKOK.

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A Buddhist Sun Miracle?
March 27, 2026 · Original source
I did my best to research the event, and the results were The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know and Highlights From The Comments On Fatima. The main thing I was able to add to the Substack discussion, if not the broader worldwide one, was a survey of similar events. There were apparent sun miracles at various other Catholic sites and apparitions of the Virgin, including a crowd of hundreds of thousands in Italy, and a small town in Bosnia where they seem to happen regularly. But also, people who “sungaze” - a weird alternative medicine practice where people stare at the sun in the hopes that maybe this will help something and they won’t go blind - report sometimes seeing the sun spin and change color in similar ways. And Buddhist meditators report that concentrating very hard on any bright light will cause similar things to happen.
Inline links: The Fatima Sun Miracle: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, Highlights From The Comments On Fatima
Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People1 mentions across 1 issues

Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 09, 2024 and July 09, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Continued at: Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People". Its page links directly to every issue where the archive references it.

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Details That You Should Include In Your Article On How We Should Do Something About Mentally Ill Homeless People
July 09, 2024 · Original source
Continued at: Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People
Inline links: Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People
Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate1 mentions across 1 issues

Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 15, 2024 and April 15, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Thanks to everyone for continued good discussion on the Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate". It most often appears alongside Ann Arbor, Astralcodexten, Boulder.

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Open Thread 325
April 15, 2024 · Original source
2: Thanks to everyone for continued good discussion on the Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate. I want to avoid getting bogged down in this forever, so I’ll mostly try to resist responding and just highlight some of the pro-lab-leak comments I found most thought-provoking:
Inline links: Highlights From The Comments On The Lab Leak Debate
Highlights On The Comments For Rhythms Of The Brain1 mentions across 1 issues

Highlights On The Comments For Rhythms Of The Brain is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 20, 2022 and November 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "In my Highlights On The Comments For Rhythms Of The Brain post". It most often appears alongside ACX Tokyo meetup group, ACX unofficial subreddit, AI Safety.

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Open Thread 251
November 20, 2022 · Original source
3: In my Highlights On The Comments For Rhythms Of The Brain post, I meant to include this Qualia Computing blog post, but forgot; sorry.
Inline links: Highlights On The Comments For Rhythms Of The Brain, this Qualia Computing blog post
Hilarius Bookbinder1 mentions across 1 issues

Hilarius Bookbinder is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between May 15, 2025 and May 15, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "This recent essay by blogger “Hilarius Bookbinder” is representative". It most often appears alongside ACX survey, Amazon, Barbara Kingsolver.

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Hilarius Bookbinder
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Book Review: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids
May 15, 2025 · Original source
I am more convinced by the widespread negative reports from teachers. People dismiss these by claiming there is some generic bias to think “the youth” used to be better in “the good old days”. But I hear stories like these from teachers who have been in the field for 30, 40 years, never said anything like this between 1980 and 2010, but now suddenly think there’s a crisis (one of them is my mother, who taught high school until her retirement in the late 2010s). This recent essay by blogger “Hilarius Bookbinder” is representative of the (voluminous) genre:
Inline links: This recent essay
History Of The Future1 mentions across 1 issues

History Of The Future is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 27, 2025 and February 27, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "L Rudolf L has a proposed History Of The Future scenario". It most often appears alongside /r/NootropicsDepot, @fae_dreams, @ObhishekSaha.

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History Of The Future
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Links For February 2025
February 27, 2025 · Original source
35: Related: L Rudolf L (author of the post on capital/labor in the Singularity that I discussed here) has a proposed History Of The Future scenario (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) tracking what he thinks will happen from now to 2040. Extremely slow takeoff, assumes alignment will be solved, etc - I want to challenge some of these assumptions, but will wait until a different scenario I’m waiting on gets published. The part I found most interesting here is Rudolf’s suggestion that there will be neither universal unemployment nor UBI, but a sort of vapid jobs program where even after AI can make all decisions without human input, the government passes regulations mandating that humans be “in the loop” (using safety as a fig leaf) and we get a world where everyone works forty hour weeks attending useless meetings where everyone tells each other what the AIs did and then rubber stamps it - sort of like the longshoremen “hereditary fiefdoms” that were in the news last year.
Inline links: here, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
historyforatheists.com1 mentions across 1 issues

historyforatheists.com is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 10, 2022 and October 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/". It most often appears alongside 9-11, Adraste, America.

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historyforatheists.com
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Highlights From The Comments On Columbus Day
October 10, 2022 · Original source
You are entering a world of pain when you mention Eostre . . . https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/ . We should have a ‘Debunk the Eostre Myth’ day. It’s already celebrated regularly by many people.
Inline links: https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/
HiTOP1 mentions across 1 issues

HiTOP is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 25, 2023 and January 25, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "I like HiTOP". It most often appears alongside DSM, DSM, DSM-III.

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HiTOP
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You Don't Want A Purely Biological, Apolitical Taxonomy Of Mental Disorders
January 25, 2023 · Original source
Here’s a post about HiTOP, a scientifically-grounded taxonomy of mental disorders meant to compete with the DSM. It has many good features (see further discussion here about advantages and disadvantages) and deserves more attention. But one claim stood out. The author of the post writes:
Inline links: Here’s a post about HiTOP, see further discussion here about advantages and disadvantages
A purely biological, apolitical taxonomy of mental disorders seems tempting. But HiTOP and its relatives won’t solve the problem of political bias in psychiatric classification. Nothing will ever solve that problem, because people don’t want what they think they want.
New taxonomies of mental disorders are still useful for other reasons. I’m not criticizing HiTOP - I like HiTOP - and the DSM is still silly for a lot of reasons. This post is not an attack on new taxonomies full stop. It’s just the claims to be able to avoid political bias in what is vs. isn’t a disorder that I find compelling.
Hoel1 mentions across 1 issues

Hoel is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between September 02, 2022 and September 02, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "2 of the 5 winners, plus an extra 1.5 of the remaining finalists, were authors of Substacks which I read and have linked to here ( Hoel , Roger’s Bacon , Resident Contrarian". It most often appears alongside 1587, 1587, A Year Of No Significance, @campeters4.

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Hoel
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Book Review Contest 2022 Winners
September 02, 2022 · Original source
1st: The Dawn Of Everything, reviewed by Erik Hoel. Erik is a neuroscientist and author of the recent novel The Revelations. He writes at his Substack The Intrinsic Perspective.
Inline links: The Dawn Of Everything, The Revelations, The Intrinsic Perspective
I was happy with my decision to keep this contest anonymous, because the most “famous” person to enter won first place, and if it had been open-identity I would have wondered whether he was drawing on a pre-existing fan base. But no, Erik can rest assured he is actually very good at writing (which he probably already knew, being a novelist and all, but you never know). In fact, 2 of the 5 winners, plus an extra 1.5 of the remaining finalists, were authors of Substacks which I read and have linked to here (Hoel, Roger’s Bacon, Resident Contrarian, and the extra 0.5 is for Etienne who I didn’t know about before this week but just saw his post Common Tech Jobs Described As Cabals Of Mesoamerican Wizards on the subreddit). I’m always suspicious that everything is fake and good writers aren’t actually good and it’s just a social conspiracy to believe that they are, but these results are a vote in support of our existing writer-identification-institutions (are they all Substack? I guess it’s just Substack) - although many unknown people also did very well, including the 2nd place winner (I didn’t get a response to my email asking how I should reveal his identity, so I’m defaulting to initials, but I don’t recognize his real name either).
Inline links: Hoel, Roger’s Bacon, Resident Contrarian, Common Tech Jobs Described As Cabals Of Mesoamerican Wizards
Hofstadter article1 mentions across 1 issues

Hofstadter article is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 19, 2022 and October 19, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "inspiration for the Hofstadter article". It most often appears alongside AI Circle, Anna, Bay Area.

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Hofstadter article
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Another Bay Area House Party
October 19, 2022 · Original source
“Somebody edited a Controversy section into the Douglas Hofstadter article. It talked about how Hofstadter provoked criticism for forcing the Wikimedia Foundation to censor true but unflattering information from his Wikipedia page. Totally false. Never happened.”
[Thanks to Davis Tower Kingsley for pitching Skyhook to me, to eigenrobot for alerting me of CA 2799, and to Tom Wolfe’s Wikipedia page for the inspiration for the Hofstadter article]
Inline links: eigenrobot, Tom Wolfe’s Wikipedia page
Holmes et al. 2021 paper1 mentions across 1 issues

Holmes et al. 2021 paper is a recurring publication 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 "Holmes et al. 2021 paper". It most often appears alongside 1950s influenza strain, 1977 influenza pandemic, 1992 scientific investigation.

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Your Book Review: Viral
July 30, 2022 · Original source
Holmes et al. 2021 paper, reviewing evidence and concluding in favor of natural origins.
Inline links: Holmes et al. 2021 paper
Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rents Exceed A Third Of Incomes1 mentions across 1 issues

Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rents Exceed A Third Of Incomes is a recurring publication 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 "The Zillow article mentioned is Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rents Exceed A Third Of Incomes". 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.

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Book Review: San Fransicko
June 23, 2022 · Original source
That regression line looks suspicious, but I hear computers are never wrong. So one possible conclusion is that SF has around the amount of homelessness you would predict from its very high housing prices, and around the percent unsheltered you would predict from its balmy winter weather, and there’s nothing further to be explained. Shellenberger does not like this conclusion. San Francisco’s mild climate alone cannot explain why it has more homeless people than other cities. Miami, Phoenix, and Houston have year-round warm weather and far fewer homeless than San Francisco per capita. Per capita homelessness in San Francisco, Greater Miami, Greater Phoenix, and Greater Houston in 2020 was 9.3, 1.3, 1.6, and 0.8 per 1,000 residents, respectively. And Greater Miami, Greater Phoenix, and Greater Houston saw their per capita homeless population decline from 2005 to 2020 by 39, 17, and 74 percent while San Francisco saw its rise 30 percent. Nor can housing prices explain the discrepancy. Palo Alto and Beverly Hills have mild climates and expensive housing but don’t have San Francisco’s homeless problem. As for the Zillow study that was reported to find a correlation between rising rents and homelessness, a deeper look at the research reveals a more nuanced finding. Homelessness and affordability are correlated only in the context of certain “local policy efforts [and] social attitudes,” concluded researchers. This feels like kind of a shell game. San Francisco’s mild climate alone can’t explain why it has more homeless people per capita than Miami or Houston. But as the graph above shows, housing prices do explain about 75% of the difference between SF and those two cities. But because the book talks about the Miami-SF discrepancy in the paragraph about climate instead of the paragraph about prices, it makes it sound like a mystery that neither prices nor climate can explain. The Zillow article mentioned is Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rents Exceed A Third Of Incomes, which is based on this study. Shellenberger’s summary is not really the researchers’ conclusion. The article does mention “local attitudes” and “social policy” once, but only to explain that the paper includes a term representing “latent factors” that they’re not going to bother distinguishing from each other in their model, and some of those terms could be local policy or social attitudes. Later they mention there are some outliers in their model (eg Houston), and it would be reasonable to assume that the latent factors help explain the outliers, but they don’t give us any reason to think that this is more interesting than the fact that every model ever will have outliers. But also, this is one study by Zillow. Alyssa and I both tried the same analysis, and found the same thing, with a correlation that’s unusually high for this kind of work. Sure, there are outliers, but San Francisco isn’t one of them. San Francisco is only a couple of percent off where the regression line would predict. That leaves the point about Palo Alto and Beverly Hills. They “have mild climates and expensive housing but don’t have San Francisco’s homeless problem”. At first I felt like this was cheating - yeah, rich suburbs don’t have lots of homelessness, come on. But “rich” and “high property values” are pretty close to synonyms. If you’re going to say that high property values cause homelessness, isn’t it in fact pretty surprising that rich suburbs don’t have it? In fact, if you’re a homeless person, why wouldn’t you want to live in a suburb? Quieter (so probably easier to sleep at night) more places out of sight to pitch tents, less crime (important if you’re living on the street!), and potentially lower cost of living in terms of food and goods. I tried looking into this issue and found explanations like: Usually it’s poor people who become homeless. Cities have more poor people than suburbs, because they have more rental units, small apartments, public transportation, and blue-collar jobs. Suburbs, by natural consequence of their layout, enforce a certain wealth minimum before people can live there, and people above that wealth minimum rarely lose everything and become homeless. It’s strange that poor people tend to live in cities (ie places with very high land values), and you have to wonder whether there are ways that could be different, but it does seem true.
Inline links: Homelessness Rises Faster Where Rents Exceed A Third Of Incomes, this study
Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity Strategies In Neurological Disease1 mentions across 1 issues

Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity Strategies In Neurological Disease is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 16, 2021 and March 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "From Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity Strategies In Neurological Disease". It most often appears alongside Alaska, Chronotherapeutics Manual, electroconvulsive therapy.

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Sleep Is The Mate Of Death
March 16, 2021 · Original source
How does this relate to electroconvulsive therapy? From Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity Strategies In Neurological Disease:
Inline links: Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity Strategies In Neurological Disease:
Homeric epics1 mentions across 1 issues

Homeric epics is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 14, 2023 and July 14, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "stories from the Bible and Homeric epics (the Iliad and Odyssey)". It most often appears alongside !Kung San, aboriginal people on the west coast of Canada, Adam Smith.

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Homeric epics
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Your Book Review: The Educated Mind
July 14, 2023 · Original source
From trivial to rich: the trick What could an intellectually rich elementary school curriculum look like, if we built it on kids’ cognitive strengths? He gives us one suggestion to help us do this: ask where each discipline came from in the first place. What was math before it was math, for example — or science before it was science? Q: How on Earth could that help? That’ll become clear later, when we finally uncover what Egan thinks “education” actually is, and see what job he wants us to give schools. For now, take it as a tantalizing hint… or, y’know, just ignore it. Elementary literature & language What was literature before it was literature? Before people invented writing, they had rich oral traditions: they told simple stories, recited poems, and shared proverbs. Egan suggests that these bits of oral tradition should form the backbone of the elementary literature curriculum. Q: What sorts of stories? As many as we can, and from as many diverse cultures as possible! Folktales are wonderful, as are myths. Think the Aboriginal story of “The Rainbow Serpent”, episodes from the Sumerian “Epic of Gilgamesh”, the Egyptian story of Osiris & Isis, the Greek story of Orpheus & Eurydice, the Chinese Legend of the White Snake, the Japanese Tale of Amaterasu and Susanoo, the Ashanti tales of Anansi, the Aztec myth of Quetzalcoatl, the English legend of King Arthur, the Maori myth of Maui and the Sun, the Roman story of Romulus and Remus, selections from the Indian Mahabharata, the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, the Inca legend of the Sun and Moon, the Iroquois Myth of the Flying Head (a real thing! look it up!), and the Ojibwe story of Turtle Island. Q: That was a lot of examples. Are you going to keep giving so many? I’ve got a [mumble mumble mumble] to get to. Sorry about that. Sometimes, though, I feel that a limitation of reading Educated Mind is that, in trying to keep his book to a manageable size, Egan skimped on examples in some places that it matters. It’s easy to read his occasional example and assume he intends that it hold some central place in the curriculum — when all he wants to do is display how rich and diverse the curriculum could be. (Also: good God, I didn’t even include an example from Norse mythology!) So from now on, just assume that every category could be filled with oodles of examples. Q: What sorts of poems? Lots of poems, first of all. We shouldn’t steer toward “fancy” poems — rather, we should find poems that appeal to kids immediately — think Shel Silverstein, Mother Goose, Dr. Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, Edward Lear, or Ogden Nash… that sort of thing. In a biting essay, Egan suggests these poets like these appeal to kids precisely because they leverage kids’ cognitive strengths: “we should find, and encourage saying and singing and shouting aloud verse with strong narrative forms, thumping rhymes and rhythms, the most vivid images, fun with metaphors, and a rollicking story.” Q: Why proverbs? Proverbs stick in your mind almost effortlessly. (“All’s fair in love and war!” “When in Rome, do as the Romans do!” “You can’t judge a book by its cover!”) They’re also useful; they capture general truths. Kids can apply them to all sorts of situations, but also discuss them — to what extent are they wise or foolish? (I remember my surprise when I realized that they couldn’t all be true — because you can’t follow “look before you leap” and “he who hesitates is lost” at the same time! I’m embarrassed to say that I think I only realized this when I was in college.) Elementary science What was science before it was science? Egan suggests: being immersed in the natural world. We might, he writes, encourage elementary students to “adopt” some feature of the natural world — a patch of grass, a cat, a branch, a stream — and simply observe it at length. To do this, we can use the cognitive strength of reverie. Q: Oh, do you mean like kids sometimes do in science class nowadays — describe a thing to a partner, make notes, draw it, and label its parts? No, the exact opposite! That’s all about squeezing the experience into words and forms that we understand. What we want “is less an attempt to know about nature as to know it in some participatory way, to know it as something we are an intimate part of, not set off from”. Q: That sounds a little… “woo” to me. It did to me, too… until I remembered my childhood climbing tree. I didn’t much like to go outside as a child, but I had this one tree that I’d climb up and read for hours and hours. If I close my eyes I can bring to mind the precise texture of its bark, the roughness of its broken-off branches, the coolness of its leaves, the always-surprising solidness of its trunk… I’m bigger now, but I think if I were back in my parent’s yard, I could still navigate its limbs with my eyes closed. I have, at this point in my life, read a fair number of books about trees, but I’d be surprised if all of them together more than equaled the amount I learned from that tree — my tree. Elementary math What was math before it was math? Egan suggests: counting and logic. We might, then, use rhythms, metaphors, stories, and jokes to help kids become fond of these. Q: Counting is pretty… basic. Could it really be improved? Beware of “the curse of knowledge”: Steven Pinker’s phrase for forgetting that something was once difficult! Egan suggests we should spend time helping kids count wonderfully. We can start early with counting rhymes. (“One, two, buckle my shoe! Three, four, out the door! Five, six…”) But we can also help kids use their fingers as metaphors. There are some pretty cool ways of using your hands as an abacus — and did you know that you can count up to 1,023 using just your fingers on both hands, and a knowledge of binary? Q: Logic — I’m intrigued! Aristotelian, or Boolean? Neither, for the time being — Piaget was presumably onto something when he found that young children couldn’t reason abstractly, but he was looking at logic in a vacuum. When we put logic into the context of stories, we find that kids can deal with logic just fine. There’s an entire worldwide network of educators, in fact, called Philosophy for Children, who have written whole books about how to do this, and Egan loves it all. Sometimes they read stories and ask simple questions: “What is friendship?” or “What does it mean to be brave?” They also pose ethical questions: “Is it ever right to spill a secret?” And they pose paradoxes: “Can you step in the same river twice?” Q: You mentioned “jokes” a moment ago. Care to elaborate? Egan thinks that, to help kids get good at math, you should tell kids jokes. Q: That’s… new. I think so, too — but he backs it up pretty well. To be funny, jokes (or at least most kid jokes) rely on a leap in logic: Why can’t you trust an atom? They make up everything. Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-hoo? Don’t cry, it’s just a joke! To understand the joke, kids have to follow the logic — spotting patterns, making connections, and tracking what their audience expects a word to mean. That’s a lot of cognitive lifting. And Egan goes further, suggesting that we grit our teeth and create methods to help kids invent their own jokes, no matter how horrible they’ll be at first. (The things we do for learning…) Q: Wait wait wait! What about addition facts, and multiplication tables, and fractions? Egan emphasizes that his methods are designed to be add-ons to the standard math curriculum. In general, he’s a don’t-blow-up-the-system sort of guy, and if something seems especially weird, you should probably assume it’s an add-on to the regular curriculum rather than a replacement, even if I forget to say so. Elementary arts What was art before it was art? Egan suggests we pop our heads into Paleolithic caves for our inspiration. Whatever the specific meaning of all those charcoal elk and aurochs and mammoths (communication with the spirit world? art for art’s sake? a way to impress babes?), Egan thinks it obvious that they were also an attempt to capture an intense experience that would be difficult to express in words alone. What did it feel like to be near an aurochs, or a saber-toothed tiger? “The arts help us,” Egan writes, “to hear and see afresh, to force our perceptions and sensations to experience again the immediacy and vividness of the world”. If we follow this, then, we don’t want to help kids build “art skills” so they can draw like an adult — rather, we want to help them amass a repository of diverse aesthetic feelings that they’ll want to express. We should provide them with a riot of experiences. Q: That couldn’t be more opaque. Examples, please! Egan writes that we should have children learn to whistle, sing, and click their tongue; we should help them emulate the ways a skunk or a hawk or a stick bug might move through a space. We should expose them to scores of different temperatures and materials. In music, we should help them love Beethoven, yes, but also the Beatles; Tchaikovsky, yes, but also Tuvan throat singers, and also John Cage, whale song, and bird song. Q: That’s a lot of experiences, but what would they be doing? An interesting aspect of Egan’s view of education is that he doesn’t seem to think we should push kids right to the “doing” phase. He wants to help kids cultivate an affective relationship with the world. In any case, he writes that as students get more experienced, we should prompt them to move from merely enjoying these experiences to trying to systematically shape similar experiences. And drawing, painting, and playing music could easily be folded into other parts of the curriculum. Elementary social studies What was social studies before it was social studies? Well. Remember how, just a moment ago, I wrote that you could assume that you should probably assume that Kieran isn’t in favor of junking the curriculum as it currently stands? He suggests we very carefully pick up the elementary social studies curriculum, place it into a trash can, and set the whole mess on fire. He isn’t worried about much of importance being lost. (Remember that the “expanding horizons” model is, to him, the original sin of 20th century educational reform, and he repeatedly quotes student surveys showing that “social studies” regularly wins the title of “most boring subject”.) In its place, he suggests we put history — which, he hints, we should think of as the centerpiece of the elementary curriculum. So the real question is what was history before it was history? His answer, surprisingly, is myth. Q: Egan wants us to teach myths as if they were history? Not at all. What he suggests, though, is that we look at how myths operate as narratives — so we can design an intellectually vivid history curriculum. And myths really are special: each is built on at least one binary (like weak vs. strong, or lies vs. truth, or so on), and uses that to tell the story of the big picture of the world. They’re so powerful that people can understand it, remember it, and love it — even if that thing never happened. We should take that power, Egan says, and apply it to things that really did happen. Q: So what history does he think kids should learn in elementary school? The great struggles of humanity from across the whole. Flippin’. World. We’re still talking about young children, so these should be done as simple stories. The goal isn’t to make them history PhD’s, so we needn’t even try to put them in any sort of order. Egan suggests that, in first grade, we pick a single binary like “freedom against oppression” and tell kids a welter of stories, again from as many cultures as possible, and as many times in history as possible. Q: Can you give examples? Oh, all right — in first grade we can tell kids the stories of the war of the Greek city-states against the Persian empire, and the slave uprising of Spartacus against the Romans. We can tell them about the plight of Jews in medieval Europe, and of the unsuccessful Sepoy Rebellion in India against the British. We can tell the stories of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and about the Chinese Taiping Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. We can tell them the story of the escaped slave Harriet Tubman returning to the South to rescue her kinsmen, the story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges facing threats to integrate her elementary school, and the story of how the Mau-Mau uprising led to modern-day Kenya. We can tell the stories of Mexican-American union organizer Cesar Chavez and of Malala Yousafzai surviving an assassination attempt to advocate for female literacy. The world does not lack for stories of oppression and liberation that can capture the attention of a six-year-old. Q: That’s… huh. What stories might they hear in second and third grade? Egan gives examples, but I won’t list them here. He suggests we use a similar approach for each, except that we swap out the binary each year. He thinks “the struggle for security against danger” would work well for year two, and “the struggle for knowledge against ignorance” would work well for year three. (That year could have a lot of overlap with the science curriculum.) Q: Anything else, for history? Yes — they should get a sense of Big History. They should get some simple stories about the ice age, the Cenozoic, the age of dinosaurs, the Paleozoic, the origins of our solar system, and the Big Bang. (Because if the ancient Norse can tell their story of the beginning of the universe, by gum, we can tell ours, too.) To sum up Egan argues that the problem of early schooling is that it’s trivial — and it’s trivial because the dominant theories of educational psychology see children as lesser versions of adults. What else would we teach them, except dumbed-down versions of what adults learn? But children have certain cognitive strengths that schools aren’t making systematic use of. If we rebuild elementary schools on those strengths, we could turn schooling upside down. We could stop seeing the curriculum as a bag of information to impart, and start seeing it as a set of great stories to tell — and invite kids into. Kids could experience (both intellectually and emotionally) the great struggles of humanity and see that they can join in them. Students could experience the story of education as the beginning of a very real adventure. Egan’s elementary school: some skeptical questions Q: I’m not sure I’m understanding what you mean by “mental images”. Care to explain? It’s an interesting fact of human cognition that just a few words can whip up a complex mental experience. Egan doesn’t just mean what we might call “visual imagery” — the ability to hold, say, the image of a bespectacled, spat-wearing duck in your mind without seeing a photograph. He’s also including what psychologists call auditory imagery, olfactory imagery, gustatory imagery, and tactile imagery. Q: How could all of that be helpful in schools? Humanity has a built-in VR system, and we’re not using it! Egan invites us to pretend we’re teaching a class about the humble earthworm. We might list off facts — “earthworms are so many centimeters long, move through soil by means of their something-or-other muscles…” but he suggests we can evoke images, say, “of what it would be like to slither and push through the soil, hesitantly exploring in one direction then another, looking for easier passages, contracting and expanding our sequence of muscles segment by segment, and sensing moisture, scents, grubs, or whatever”. Those facts are now felt by the student; the knowledge has become part of them. And just a few words can spark a complex mental experience, one going beyond literal images to include imagined sounds, smells, tastes, and more. These experiences can feel real and stick with us. (That these mental images are so easy to evoke, and so meaningfully felt, feels something like the proverbial hundred dollar bill on the ground.) Q: How could metaphors be helpful? It really is interesting that so much of the “constructivist” turn in psychology — that is, the notion that children don’t absorb knowledge, but construct it — has continued to focus on logics-mathematical reasoning, when there’s been mounting evidence for decades that metaphors are more central. It’s not just that we use metaphors to better understand things we already know, we also use them to grasp new knowledge. What’s more, psychologists have devised tests to measure the skill at metaphor-making, and have given them to people of different ages. What they found was that eleven-year-olds make more metaphors (and higher quality metaphors) than do undergraduates — and that four-year-olds have both groups beat. Again, hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk. Q: Your talk of “binaries” has me worried — binaries like good/evil and male/female are the source of so many of our most pernicious stereotypes! Isn’t the purpose of education to get us beyond stuff like this? Yes, it is! Education is supposed to complicate our understanding — but that means we’ve gotta start somewhere, and binaries provide us a natural starting place. As an uncontroversial example, think about temperature. We all begin as babies by perceiving two temperatures — hot and cold. Later, we add on intermediate categories — warm and cool. (Note that the human body is the assumed mid-point to temperature. Binaries often work like this; “big” and “small” mean “bigger or smaller than me”, “nasty” and “kind” mean “nastier or kinder than I am, except when my brother is really asking for it”, and so on.) A good story (and an Egan-inspired elementary curriculum is, in a sense, nothing but good stories) will go further, and transform the binary. Toy Story is grounded in the binary of abandonment/belonging: at the beginning, the toy cowboy Woody belongs to his owner, and has his affection. Then a rival comes who threatens his belonging. In trying to get back to belonging, Woody is entirely lost — and to save the day, he has to come to a deeper understanding of what belonging means. Now, all lessons can’t be Pixar movies. But the good stories (especially in literature and history) will challenge and subvert the binaries they begin with. Q: I see the pattern of Egan drawing from “as many cultures as possible”. Why so many? Is this a political correctness thing? If it helps to think of it as such, then, sure! I don’t think Egan would have had a problem with that. But his ultimate reason for including so much diversity goes deeper. For Egan, including such world-wide diversity isn’t optional, and the answer to why is bound up in his definition of education. (Keep reading.) His answer also insists that we, whenever possible, also include stories from the Bible and Homeric epics (the Iliad and Odyssey). Q: Mmm, stories from the Bible aren’t going to fly in my local school! So be it! Egan doesn’t spend much time obsessing over the practicalities of… His interest is in describing what an ideal education might look like, if it were possible. Every lesson, every classroom, and every school is necessarily a compromise. Q: You make a big deal of poems. But isn’t poetry dead? An interesting contrast can be made to classical education, which also has kids read a lot of poems — they see knowing great poems as one of the marks of an educated person; again, for an academicist, it’s the information that transforms. Egan begs to disagree. Poems are important because they’re a wonderful way to train their cognitive strengths, like rhythm (poems are language fueling by thumping). We want to help kids learn to use this tool better, and a great way to do that is to help them recite poems that they’ve learned by heart. Q: “Learn by heart” — is that code for “memorize”?! It is! Egan is actually quite big on memorization — he points out that all the knowledge in the world can do nothing for a person once they’ve forgotten it. He didn’t, however, appreciate the academicist focus on memorizing without understanding (or at least enjoyment). Q: I’m still worried about the science curriculum, as you’re describing it. Can you allay my fears? Honestly, while I feel there’s something profoundly right to how Egan is describing early experiences of nature, I feel the same way. Note that there’s more science coming in the social studies curriculum. But if that’s still not enough, one could bring down aspects of the middle school science stage. Q: Anything else that Egan suggests we do in elementary school literature and language? He suggests that we help kids learn a second language! This is so obviously true (why do American schools typically wait until kids lose the ability to naturally absorb languages to start teaching languages?) he doesn’t belabor it, though. Q: You had mentioned that Egan’s vision seems more internal-focused. Should we be worried about that? While I strongly suspect that his curriculum would make kids more creative in any way you’d like to measure it, Egan wasn’t particularly interested in “creativity” — he was more about helping kids find the world interesting. I get the sense that he thinks kids will do things with minimal prompting once they’re loaded up with complex internal experiences. Q: I think I’m beginning to understand Egan — is he basically saying “make learning fun”? “Fun”, applied to education, is a dangerous word. Egan worries about the dangers of an emotionally unserious curriculum producing emotionally stunted adults. That doesn’t mean we need to tell students only “serious” stories — only that we treat the world honestly. “Disney-esque sentimentality is the exact emotional equivalent to intellectual contempt”. Q: But aren't some of these stories too dark for children who have themselves experienced oppression and disaster? Egan argues that these stories may be especially helpful to them — they can help them understand their struggles better, and give voice to them. Q: At the very start of this, you promised us “rationality”… but I’m not seeing rationality here! All this talk of “adventure” almost seems to go the opposite direction. What gives? Wait for it. But for a hint right now — Egan is fond of citing his fellow educational theorist Jerome Bruner, who claimed “any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development”. Bruner was criticized for that; his critics charged that he was ignoring learning differences and socio-economic realities. Egan thinks he was profoundly right. Part 3: A new kind of middle school What’s the matter with middle school? What was middle school like for you? In math, I recall a jumble of barely-related topics. In literature, I remember reading great literature — Frankenstein, Romeo and Juliet — only in their dumbed-down summary formats. In social studies, I remember teachers proclaiming on the first day of class that unlike all of our previous history classes, this class wouldn’t be about names and dates… and then going on to memorize names and dates. And in science, I remember being forced to dissect a frog only to discover that frogs are — you guessed it — made of slimy frog parts. Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us, middle school feels like getting booted out of the (in retrospect) Eden of elementary school, and like marking time before the serious studying of high school. It feels meaningless. In my favorite of his books, Egan calls so much middle school curricula “human deserts”, noting “we have created a system in which the importance of human emotions for meaning seems barely noticed”. Why so meaningless? If our dominant approaches to educational psychology fundamentally misinterpret younger children, Egan suggests, they basically throw up their hands when faced with pre-teens and teenagers. Mainstream schools begin to introduce vocational training to help lighten the load, and Maria Montessori famously suggests that adolescents should be sent to go run a farm. Egan is sympathetic to those responses, but points out that they don’t do much to lighten the load that the academic curriculum often becomes at this age. This feeling of meaninglessness, he argues, is utterly tragic — it comes just when a hunger for meaning blossoms in adolescents! We can see that hunger for meaning in their lives outside the classroom, where their interests ramp up into veritable obsessions. What are adolescents obsessed with? What might we see, if we become Jane Goodalls of early adolescence? First, teens are obsessed with gossip. The motivations of others — why did he do that? and what was he THINKING? — are hypothesized and talked to death. Second, that they’re pulled toward idealism. Many feel a dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and feel a romantic urge to make it a better place. They’re often lured into simplistic beliefs that promise to help them do that. Third, they love extremes: they want to find limits, and test them. Obviously, this can show up as risky behavior, but we can also see it in their love for the bizarre — note adolescents’ fascination in things like aliens, cryptids, and ghosts. (Egan loves pointing out that The Guinness Book of World Records is a perennial bestseller among kids at this age. How else would they find out who had the world’s longest fingernails?) Fourth, they gravitate toward heroes — people who push the edges of those limits. By celebrating heroes, they can vicariously share in their transcendence. Look for the posts hanging up in a teenager’s bedroom to guess what boundaries they feel most hemmed in by: athletes push against physical limits; a death metal guitarist might push against authority and conventional morality. An activist or entrepreneur might push against our dulled morality or our sense of what’s possible. Finally, we might spot teens taking up hobbies and making collections. Hobbies can be a way to identify yourself as part of a group against the rest of the world (“I’m the sort of person who goes bird-watching!”), and collections can be a way to climb the status ladder inside the community. Egan points out that a collection can also be a way to feel like you have control over what you’re discovering is a very big and complex world of detailed information (“I’ve spotted every one of the fifty most common birds of Texas — even the black-capped vireo!”) Egan’s insight is that these obsessions give teenagers a sense of meaning, and that we can use them as tools to make middle schools that overflow with meaning. From meaningless to meaning-soaked Again, Egan sketches out a new kind of curriculum subject-by-subject. Before, his trick was to ask where the subject first evolved out of; now, it’s to ask who first discovered or created the specific content we’re teaching. “All knowledge”, he writes, “is human knowledge. Everything we know is knowable through the lives of its inventors, discoverers, or users, and we can have access to that knowledge through the hopes, fears, or intentions that drove them”. Middle school math Who first discovered the concepts students learn in math? The answer, of course, is a wide diversity of curious men and women living across the world over the last few thousand years. Egan says: bring those people into how we teach math. If we used gossip and heroes to help students find it meaningful, what kind of math would result? When we teach the Pythagorean theorem, we should give a sense of who Pythagoras was — a cult-founder who worshiped numbers to find God, whose followers (according to a piece of ancient gossip) murdered one of their members who discovered irrational numbers! Q: Well, sure, that works for Pythagoras, but he’s a known nut job; surely most math doesn’t come from such interesting roots? When we teach the Cartesian coordinate system, students should meet Rene Descartes, the Calvinist French polymath who saw the possibility that math could decipher the world, if only we could unite algebra and geometry… and invented the xy-plane to do exactly that. When we teach scientific notation, we should call our students’ attention to the importance of the number zero, and tell them the story of the Pope who tried to introduce Arabic numerals to Christian Europe and may have been assassinated because of it. When we teach algebra, we should ask students why “algebra” is Arabic for “the fixing of bones”, and tell the story of what Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was up to. We could do this all day. Literally everything students learn in school was first invented or discovered by some interesting person who was struggling to accomplish something hard. To learn is to connect with those people, whether we know it or not. Egan says: help kids know it. Math has been dehumanized: re-humanize it. Q: So the math curriculum needs to become a history of math curriculum, and math teachers need to become history teachers? No, the content needn’t change. But with surprisingly little work, we can bring in the gossipy stories of heroes, and their obsessions can spread to students. Middle school science Who first discovered the things students learn about in science? If you’re thinking “scientists”, you’re only partially right. Most of the big-picture ideas that we now think of as “science” were discovered before the word “scientist” was invented, or the discipline was professionalized. Frequently, they were hatched by true amateurs, working in their free time, hungry to unlock the secrets of nature. We can use gossip and heroes to spread their obsessions to students just as we taught math, but Egan points out two twists. The first is that the content itself can take on heroic qualities: everything is impressive, when you look at it in a certain light. In an interview, Egan once said: “My book is an attempt to show that, indeed, everything in the world is wonderful, but that schools are designed almost to disguise this slightly shameful fact. We represent the world to children as mostly known and rather dull. The opposite is the case: we are surrounded by mystery, and what we know is fascinating”. What would even the most boring subjects look like, if we emphasized their heroic qualities? Well: What’s a tooth? Bone, wrapped in rock, surrounding tiny cells that your body feeds with blood. What’s a bar of chocolate? A crystal of jellyfish-shaped fat molecules stacked together; when you put it in your mouth you shake them apart into a writhing confusion. What’s the air around you? The bottom of a 10-mile-deep ocean; when you put your tongue over a soda straw and your Pepsi stops leaking out, it’s not because a “vacuum” is “sucking” it up, but because that ocean is squeezing it into your face. Again, we could do this all day! And in middle school science, we can. Everything in the world is wonderful; we can help students see this again and again. The second twist is that science is a subject rich in extremes. Here Egan introduces a concept that we’ll see crop up again: “15-minute segments”. To help us fit as much wonder as possible into a school day, he suggests we supplement the usual school subjects with a few quick lessons. To infuse science with extremes, he suggests we add on three: “human & natural records”, “extremes of animals & plants”, and “cosmology”. Middle school history Who first made the things students learn about in history? Why, the historical characters themselves! Since we’ve given kids a grounding in history in elementary school, now we can build on that, going through many of the same events as before, but in more depth, and more vividly. We’ll leverage the interest with other people’s inner lives to tell stories focusing on the perspectives of the people who made history — zooming in, when possible, on scandalous details. We’ll leverage the tool of idealism to choose historical characters who chafed against their surroundings, and understand what they were trying to accomplish. What was their vision of the world? What did they hope for, and what did they fear? Q: Isn’t the “great man” approach to history out of fashion? Egan’s approach doesn’t say that “great men” made history — it’s just leveraging gossip to help kids see history as something meaningful that can expand their own possibilities. “Early adolescence is commonly a time of intense and vivid emotional life, and also a time of deepest boredom and depression… [We] can give shape to the intermediate curriculum and offer the students a world that is rich, complex, varied, and as intense and vivid as their own emotional lives”. We also should add on another “15-minute segment” just to pump in as many biographies as possible, and from people who don’t always fit into the normal history curriculum. Call it “Brief Lives”, and throw in anyone who’s struggled to push some limit — Mary Wollstonecraft, Jesse Owen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the students’ great-aunts, whoever. As students get older, this can transition to “People and Their Ideas”. Here, we’d focus less on the details of the person’s life, and use it as a backdrop to showing how meaningful some of history’s most important ideas could be. Think Aristotle and syllogisms, Edward Said and orientalism, Confucius and propriety, Cornel West and race, Buddha on the four noble truths, Muhammad and the five pillars, Karl Marx and communism, Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Thomas Hobbes and the state of nature, John Locke and natural rights, Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism, Thomas Aquinas on the sacraments, Martin Luther on faith, Voltaire on the freedom of speech… you get the idea. Q: Can you really get a profound understanding of utilitarianism in 15 minutes? Yes! The point of this segment isn’t to develop a systematic understanding of any one idea, it’s to introduce students to the exciting possibilities of human thought. (As a bonus, this might make them less likely to fall for the first ideology that they encounter later in life.) Diversity is important for this — as it is with culture. Throughout this, we should also be trying to expose students to as much cultural diversity as possible, because in high school, we’ll be trying to make sense of our society, and it’s impossible to do that unless we have something to compare it against. Middle school literature & language You might think that this subject would be easy — that middle school literature is already filled with “strong and clear narratives”, that it deals with “transcendent human qualities such as courage, love, and persistence”, that it focuses on “extremes of human experience”, that it examines “something strange and exotic”. You’d be right! Egan’s pretty happy with a bog-standard middle school literature curriculum, done well. In this part of the book, his spends most of his limited space suggesting three rather odd activities which could also be useful — especially for increasing students’ awareness of language, so they can use it better. The first is etymology — not, however, memorizing lists of roots, but in being told the entertaining backstories of specific words. Take the word “berserk”, for example — we now use it to mean something relatively mild (“if my mom catches me coming home late, she’ll go berserk”), but it comes from an old Norse word meaning “a raging warrior of superhuman strength”. And that’s because ber meant “bear” and serk meant “shirt”: soldiers of the bear cult would don the skin of a bear to, in their minds, transform into one — howling, foaming at the mouth, and gnawing the rims of their shields. (Most adults walk through life with little understanding that the words falling out of their mouths are entities, with their own back-stories. Communication is, at the very least, more interesting when we become aware of this.) The second is to add on another language to learn — not, this time, to become fluent in it, but just to become aware of how very different human languages can be. (For native English speakers, Sanskrit might work well, or Cantonese, or perhaps even ancient Egyptian. Again, the point isn’t for this language to be useful — it’s to explore diversity.) The final one is to study humor — not just jokes anymore, but comedy at its finest. Egan cites (at length!) Monty Python as a group of people who were particularly brilliant in their use of the English language. Examining their skits can lead us into not just an appreciation of semantics (the study of how meaning is made from smaller pieces, like etymology) but also pragmatics (the study of how meaning is made in social situations). Pretty heady stuff, for a conversation about a dead parrot. Part 4: A new kind of high school I’ll confess — I loved parts of high school… and among nerdy folks, I suspect I’m not alone. For some of us, this was a golden time. Even at my local public high school, I had access to academically thrilling classes — especially, in my last two years, advanced literature and history. I felt like I was finally understanding the ideas that mattered. In any case, Egan is quick to acknowledge that, at this level, the sort of education he advocates really is being practiced in some places. What he can add is an understanding of what makes it wonderful, how to make it even more wonderful, and how to make it wonderful for many, many more people. What’s the matter with high school? Far too often, even when high school classes are intellectual, they’re dry. For the majority of students, all this academic stuff is experienced as utterly lifeless, a mass of dead information to be squeezed inside one’s head for a test and then left to evaporate. Egan mocks the curriculum wars that seem to be a permanent feature of the teaching life; quoting the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, he says “while the academic left and right bicker over whether the curriculum is too traditional or too radical, they fail to recognize that most students absorb so little of academic culture that the bickering is largely irrelevant”. Why so dry? Egan suggests three reasons to explain this. First, because high school academic classes are too often masses of small details with no sign of the big picture. Second, because they’re typically slavishly disciplinary, and aren’t able to address the questions that span the disciplines. Third, because they’re often designed to bring students through what everyone is sure of, and hide away any controversies. In all of these, Egan suggests that what’s called “academics” in high school is too often a dim imitation of what real academics are actually practicing. There’s a fourth reason, though, and it’s probably the biggest of all — by the time they get to high school, most students haven’t actually learned that much! An academic approach is designed to connect small details into the big picture; for people who arrive in high school (and college) classes without having already collected much in their heads, academics are going to taste dry. (An implication of this for anyone trying to improve schools is that we might not want to start with high schools. If your goal is to create a new kind of academic learning, first start at elementary school — or barring that, middle school.) What motivates mad scientists? When we wanted to re-conceive the elementary and middle school curriculums, we looked at what students were already good at — kids’ cognitive strengths and adolescents’ obsessions. For this level it might be easier to look — for reasons that will become clear when we finally unveil Egan’s crazy-sounding definition of education — at the sorts of things that bring intellectuals joy. Q: Which intellectuals? Take your pick. Galileo, Einstein, Smith, Marx, Goodall, Chomsky, Curie… all the people who took to the life of the mind like fish to water. But that’s a lot to hold in my mind at once, so I’m just going to think about Doc Brown from Back to the Future: He was high on intellectualism I’ve never been there, but the brochure looks nice Let’s call these people “mad scientists”. And let’s pretend we once again took up our job of being primatologists, and snooped on these folks “in the wild” (“in the lab”? this is beginning to get recursive…)… what would we find motivating them? Asking simple questions, for one. (What is space? What is society? What is a human? What is language?) Building general schemes (big theories) that hold lots of evidence together. Finding their place in the cosmos. And (perhaps above all) seeking certainty. Once again, Egan suggests we use these as tools to remake the curriculum. From dry to daring What could a high school curriculum look like, if it were rebuilt on these tools? Once again, Egan has a trick. This time, it’s to ask what fights have driven the development of each of these fields forward — and how we can help students enter them. First, a mini-segment! Intellectuals invented the academic disciplines to better pursue the life of the mind, but the disciplines can get in the way. Some of the most important intellectual discoveries that could help students are too big to fit into any of the disciplines. We need a place to introduce them plainly. Egan proposes another mini-segment — again, just 15 minutes a day, a few times a week — called “Metaknowledge”. Q: Isn’t that already in the International Baccalaureate program? Yes, he acknowledges that he’s borrowing from that! This segment would introduce ideas that would enrich student thinking across the disciplines: game theory, cognitive biases, systems thinking, Bayesian reasoning, epistemology, ethics, logic, cultural evolution, and so on. High school literature How can we help students enter the big fights of literature? Intellectuals of a literary bent — professors, critics, poets, novelists — delight in arguing over literature like rabbis arguing over the Talmud. Take, just for one example, the debates over Shakespeare’s character of Ophelia. Does she love Hamlet, or is she a victim of his emotional abuse? Is she truly insane, or is she acting? Is she passive, or is she pulling the strings? Oceans of ink have been spilled arguing over questions like these; our students can, perhaps, spill a few ounces more. The usefulness of arguing literature, for Egan, isn’t that it’s oh-so important for educated adults to know a lot about Ophelia. (This, again, was where the academicists went wrong — in thinking that being educated was about getting the best knowledge in your head.) Rather, arguing over literature is a training arena for the all-important intellectual move of this kind of understanding: building general schemes out of evidence, and struggling with anomalies. One person, for example, might hold that Ophelia is insane, and cite all sorts of obvious evidence — her father just was murdered by her lover, she rants nonsense while (bizarrely) handing out flowers to friends… But then he’s challenged when he reads a scholar pointing out that, to people in Elizabethan England, types of flowers have symbolic meanings. How does he deal with that? He could ignore it, claiming it an over-reading of Shakespeare. (Sometimes a flower is just a flower!) Or he could address it, complicating his own scheme. This intellectual work is best done with other people, who are incentivized to challenge your understanding of something, and go back and forth, building competing models and calling attention to anomalies. This process — the “dialectic” — pops up again and again in the academic disciplines. It’s the center of how understanding works, at this stage. And the nice thing about practicing it on literature is that, more so than in history or science, the evidence is shared knowledge — it’s right in front of everyone, written out. But there are other ways literature class can be helpful to the general life of the mind. Egan also suggests that we’ll want to specially include literature that helps students understand complex ideas. Camus, Orwell, Borges, Calvino might be particularly helpful here… and I imagine that genres like science fiction and magical realism might be particularly useful, too. (Note, though, that once again none of this requires a radical remaking of the curriculum, or of the canon of texts that we traditionally assign to high schoolers.) Q: Oh yes, the canon — what does Egan have to say about the canon wars? When he wrote Educated Mind in the nineties, the long-brewing canon war was approaching its inevitable apocalyptic climax. On one side of this Plain of Megiddo were the pro-canon traditionalists, arguing that we should keep assigning the texts that had been argued over for centuries. Facing them were the anti-canon reformers, arguing the standard texts over-represented the perspective of dead white men. Onto the middle of the plain rides Egan on a white horse, who bellows above the din: “I’VE GOT A BUSLOAD OF HIGH SCHOOLERS WHO WANTS TO JOIN IN, EVERYONE OKAY WITH THAT?” To do so, he says, we need to give students the arguments from both sides. So, for example, bell hooks, Edward Said, and China Achebe should be on the syllabus, as should Allan Bloom, Mortimer Adler, and Diane Ravitch. And of course they should actually read the texts cherished by both sides, too, so they can argue better. High school history How could entering the big fights help us reinvent high school history? First, we might look for dueling histories. It’s time for students to get into historiography and understand that history isn’t just what happened, it’s something we make. We might help kids read chapters from Howard Zinn’s socialist history of America alongside the corresponding chapters from Paul Johnson’s conservative history of America. How could big questions help? We want to help students see how various people have disagreed over some of the big questions of what human history is, at its most basic. We can have them compare Steven Pinker’s theory of civilization’s progress (Better Angels of our Nature) with Yuvah Noah Harari’s theory of civilization’s woes (Sapiens). We could have them compare so-and-so’s account of human history as an ever-expanding unlatching of energy sources with Robert Wright’s account of human history as unlatching more and more positive-sum games (Nonzero). What role could the lure of certainty play? To help them grow their skills at finding anomalies, we might help them work through pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. Q: Conspiracy theories! Oh, come now, you’re playing with fire. Well, the world is on fire. Our students will spend the rest of their lives encountering terrible-but-beguiling arguments about how the world works; if we don’t prepare them for those, what have we been doing? So we should introduce arguments that the Moon landing was a hoax, that the Illuminati founded America, that aliens built the pyramids, and so on. At no point can we demean students for falling for any of these theories — the job of a teacher at this stage, Egan writes, is to support students in their reasoning even when their beliefs are offensive and stupid, gradually offering anomalies. There’s no way out of bad theories except through them. By the time students graduate, we want them to have wrestled with terrible ideas and — for a while — lost. They need to experience what it’s like to change their minds about something they felt strongly about. They need to viscerally realize, in Feynman’s famous phrase, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” High school natural science How could entering the big fights reinvent high school science? At present, so much of the high school science curriculum — especially “honors” classes — is oriented toward helping amass details. (The same is true of 100-level university classes, which famously “survey” the field to prepare for more advanced studies. I always thought this was stupid — of the huge lecture hall of students in my Geology 100 class, how many went on to take even a second course?) The meaty debates that propel science forward are held back. Egan complains: “The more general and speculative theories in any discipline are treated like an unconventional and disreputable relation who, even though the children find her exciting and entertaining, must be kept hidden from view, her very existence denied as long as possible”. This is a stupid approach — students with an adventurous bent are convinced that science isn’t for them. Egan proposes, simply, that we flip this, and organize high school science classes around the big debates. We shouldn’t be ashamed at how, well, adolescent this might look: “the dramatic, speculative, and contentious theories will be up-front in the early years of the [high school] curriculum”. What might those be? Egan doesn’t give a list, but we can spitball some: instead of explaining what “matter” is from the top down, a physics class could problematize “matter” by following the debates over the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and by becoming familiarized with the various interpretations of quantum mechanics
Inline links: In a biting essay, In my favorite of his books, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ywm7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9c9b1ed-a260-4117-8679-0b5a32339748_1600x574.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WPeH!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F62ea55f8-0458-484f-be45-7a011d050756_1600x625.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!FPXt!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb017fc37-3151-4556-87f1-31a097cf7594_1600x574.png
Homestuck.net1 mentions across 1 issues

Homestuck.net is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 03, 2022 and February 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "My last project was Homestuck.net, a pretty complete archive of the best works of the Homestuck fandom". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

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Homestuck.net
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ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#11: Preserve And Categorize Web Fiction I'm Makin, and I'm looking for a tiny amount of funding to save the world of web fiction from the ravages of time, with a focus on rational/ist/EA fiction. So much of the history of the genre is hard to reach, and I can put it up for permanent categorization, linking and eventual mirroring on a website. All I need is money to keep DigitalOcean instances up for a long, LONG time, though I'm also looking at IPFS as an option (and if you're aware of any better fits, I welcome advice!). My last project was Homestuck.net, a pretty complete archive of the best works of the Homestuck fandom, which has taught me the necessary steps to archive and display things for future humans to use long-term. I also started the initiative to revamp the r/rational wiki so it was actually usable. If my archival project sounds good to you, I'm looking for yearly Patreon pledges at patreon.com/makin. You can reach me at makin@protonmail.com if a funny-looking Patreon is not an option or want more details about how your money will be used.
white-paper1 mentions across 1 issues

homunculus.com/white-paper is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 21, 2022 and January 21, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "you can read our white paper at homunculus.com/white-paper". It most often appears alongside 1/28/22, ACX Grants, Aries.

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Resubmit And Summarize Your Proposals For Grants ++
January 21, 2022 · Original source
Homunculus LLC is a startup working on developing the Philosopher's Stone, which would lead to universal immortality and infinite wealth. Our CEO, Nicholas Flamel, has a PhD from the University of Paris and is universally recognized for his work deciphering hieroglyphics. Our CTO, John Dee has a PhD from Oxford and served as court astrologer to Elizabeth I. We believe that precise application of quicksilver while Aries is in the ascendant is the secret to creating the Stone; you can read our white paper at homunculus.com/white-paper. We're looking for seed investments between 10,000 and 100,000 gold florins; if you think you can help, please email inquiries@homunculus.com.
Honduran Constitution1 mentions across 1 issues

Honduran Constitution is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 14, 2021 and April 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The law enabling ZEDEs was passed as an amendment to the Honduran Constitution". It most often appears alongside Alaska, America, Amisulpride.

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Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
The law enabling ZEDEs was passed as an amendment to the Honduran Constitution, which would require a 66% majority to overrule (it was passed with a 78% majority, so that would require an overwhelming turn against it). The law also says that even if repealed, it will take ten years for the repeal to take effect (I don’t know if this is legal or enforceable). Ten years is longer than a Honduran election cycle, so you would need two consecutive governments to agree to repeal it.
Honduras-Kuwait Treaty For Reciprocal Investment1 mentions across 1 issues

Honduras-Kuwait Treaty For Reciprocal Investment is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 14, 2021 and April 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The particular treaty involved is the Honduras-Kuwait Treaty For Reciprocal Investment". It most often appears alongside Alaska, America, Amisulpride.

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Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
Próspera says they are “guaranteed by international treaty”. The particular treaty involved is the Honduras-Kuwait Treaty For Reciprocal Investment (link in Spanish), in which I think Honduras tells Kuwait that they should feel comfortable investing in ZEDEs because Honduras promises not to get rid of them for 50 years. I don’t have anywhere near the understanding of international law I would need to know if this is actually binding. Could a future ZEDE-hostile Honduran Congress repeal this treaty? Would that damage their international reputation? Precipitate the Great Honduras-Kuwait War Of 2036?
Inline links: Honduras-Kuwait Treaty For Reciprocal Investment
Hormann 20141 mentions across 1 issues

Hormann 2014 is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 13, 2022 and April 13, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Hormann 2014 finds that under some assumptions, BPA can reach levels potentially associated with toxicity". It most often appears alongside acetaminophen, ADHD, Arthur Jensen.

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Obscure Pregnancy Interventions: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
April 13, 2022 · Original source
Hormann 2014 finds that under some assumptions, BPA can reach levels potentially associated with toxicity from receipt-holding alone; their subjects held the receipt for 4 minutes.
Inline links: Hormann 2014
Hormeze: Gematria, Insanity, Meaning, and Emptiness1 mentions across 1 issues

Hormeze: Gematria, Insanity, Meaning, and Emptiness is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 05, 2026 and February 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "Best (worst?) paragraph I read this month, Hormeze: Gematria, Insanity, Meaning, and Emptiness". It most often appears alongside 4o, 60 Minutes, @MattZeitlin.

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Links For February 2026
February 05, 2026 · Original source
26: Best (worst?) paragraph I read this month, Hormeze: Gematria, Insanity, Meaning, and Emptiness:
Inline links: Hormeze: Gematria, Insanity, Meaning, and Emptiness
Horse Rides Astronaut1 mentions across 1 issues

Horse Rides Astronaut is a recurring publication 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 "issues he discussed earlier in Horse Rides Astronaut". It most often appears alongside Athens, Creole, DALL-E.

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My Bet: AI Size Solves Flubs
June 07, 2022 · Original source
I am grateful to Marcus for saying nice things about my post on DALL-E last week, which he (I think accurately) relates to some of the issues he discussed earlier in Horse Rides Astronaut. He is a legend and it makes me feel good to be noticed by him.
Inline links: Horse Rides Astronaut
I am grateful to Marcus for saying nice things about my post on DALL-E last week, which he (I think accurately) relates to some of the issues he discussed earlier in Horse Rides Astronaut. He is a legend and it makes me feel good to be noticed by him. @slatestarcodex, consistent with what i speculated in ","username":"GaryMarcus","name":"Gary Marcus ????","profile_image_url":"","date":"Mon May 30 23:20:39 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":3,"like_count":12,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{"url":"https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/horse-rides-astronaut","image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1200,h_600,c_limit,f_jpg,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F79c44c33-12ac-408c-964e-5fceeac289a4_2388x1668.png","title":"Horse rides astronaut","description":"What nearly everyone got wrong about DALL-E & Google’s Imagen, and why when it comes to AI hype, you still can’t believe what you read","domain":"garymarcus.substack.com"},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> But look. Not to steal GPT-3’s shtick or anything, but I am a dumb pattern-matcher. Marcus has a PhD in cognitive science and is able to think these things through on an incredibly deep level. All I can do is draw on a tiny number of past experiences and hope that the future vaguely resembles the past.
Inline links: Horse Rides Astronaut
Hot Mess1 mentions across 1 issues

Hot Mess is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 05, 2026 and February 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as "framing of their recent “Hot Mess” paper". It most often appears alongside 4o, 60 Minutes, @MattZeitlin.

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Links For February 2026
February 05, 2026 · Original source
31: Related: Dario Amodei essay on The Adolescence of Technology. Mixed reactions from Zvi, Ryan, Oliver, and Transformer. This and the framing of their recent “Hot Mess” paper seem like Anthropic trying to distance themselves from concerns about systematically misaligned and power-seeking AI in favor of an “industrial accident” threat model. I don’t know if this is their heartfelt position based on all the extra private evidence they no doubt have by now, a well-intentioned PR attempt to sanewash themselves and sell alignment to a doomer-skeptical government/public, part of a balance between more and less doomerish factions, or a newly-ultra-successful tech company learning to talk its book, but it doesn’t line up with what the smartest people I know conclude using the public evidence, and it makes me nervous. I think Jan Leike’s post above does a better job balancing the reassuringness of the current evidence for the tractability of the infrahuman regime vs. the fact that we still don’t know what happens around highly-effective agency and superintelligence.
Inline links: Dario Amodei essay on The Adolescence of Technology, Zvi, Ryan, Oliver, Transformer, the framing of their recent “Hot Mess” paper
House & Garden1 mentions across 1 issues

House & Garden is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 04, 2024 and December 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "architecture sections of newspapers and magazines (Wolfe blames Domus, House & Garden)". It most often appears alongside 3D printing, Abercrombie & Fitch, AI.

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Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
December 04, 2024 · Original source
...iness. There was a pipeline from the architecture schools (now dominated by the modernists) to the architecture sections of newspapers and magazines (Wolfe blames Domus, House & Garden, and The New York Times Magazine in particular). Rich people would read the magazines, understand that modern architecture was “in”, and go with it so as to not feel “le...
House Inhabit1 mentions across 1 issues

House Inhabit is a recurring publication 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 "Starting with: Culture: House Inhabit". It most often appears alongside 1 Kings 10-11, 2008 Democratic National Convention, Adam Scheffer.

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Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
This is me reviewing one Substack from every category. Usually it’s the top one in the category, but sometimes it will be another if the top one is subscriber-gated or a runner-up happens to catch my eye. Starting with: Culture: House Inhabit Ah, Culture. This is where you go to read about Shakespeare, post-modernism, arthouse films, and Chinese tapestries, right?
Inline links: House Inhabit
Housing First For Homeless People With Active Addiction: Are We Overreaching?1 mentions across 1 issues

Housing First For Homeless People With Active Addiction: Are We Overreaching? is a recurring publication 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 "The multiauthor review cited is Housing First For Homeless People With Active Addiction: Are We Overreaching?". 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.

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Book Review: San Fransicko
June 23, 2022 · Original source
…and find that: Those in the intervention group incurred 2.6 fewer hospitalized days (p = .08), 1.2 fewer emergency room visits (p = .04), 7.5 fewer days in residential substance abuse treatment (p = .004), 9.8 fewer nursing home days (p = .08), and 3.8 more outpatient visits each year (p = .01) annually compared with those in the usual care group. Those in the intervention group had 7.7 fewer prison days during the study period (p = .07). Those in the intervention group had 62 more days in stable housing (p = .001) and 12 more days in respite care (p = .002) than those in the usual care group. Those in the intervention group used case management services (i.e., telephone calls and face-to-face meetings) more frequently than those in the usual care group, having on average 18 more encounters per year (p < .001). This study provided case management along with the free housing. I don’t know whether to think of that as a confounder, or a standard aspect of Housing First programs (especially since it is much harder to case manage someone with no fixed address). Notice that it assumes the cost of housing is given as $30/day. I think this is realistic for low-income housing in Chicago, but other California programs I’ve looked at have worked out to more like $70 - $100/day, which (assuming nothing else changed) would switch the conclusion of this study from “Housing First saves money” to “Housing First costs money”. Now let’s see what San Fransicko has to say: The evidence for Housing First turns out to be significantly weaker than its proponents suggest. For example, the much lauded initiative to reduce homelessness among veterans was only four percentage points more successful than the overall decline in homelessness, when accounting for age, which is necessary to accurately estimate what is due to policy and what is due to demographic changes. As for Utah, its legislative auditor general concluded in 2018 that the 91 percent number was wrong, based on a sloppy use of incorrect methodologies. Before 2015, Utah had annualized its homeless count, meaning that researchers counted the homeless at a single point in time and multiplied the data by some factor. But after 2015 the state used raw point-in-time counts, causing a precipitous drop in the official population counts. Over the same period, the state also narrowed its definition of chronic homelessness in several ways, resulting in further apparent reductions. In reality, the homeless population in Utah increased by 12 percent between 2016 and 2020. An experiment with 249 homeless people in San Francisco between 1999 and 2002 found those enrolled in the city’s Housing First program, Direct Access to Housing, used medical services at the same rate as those who were not given housing through the program, suggesting that the Housing First program likely had minimal impact on the participants’ health. Wrote a team of researchers, “obtaining housing does not necessarily resolve other issues that may impede one’s housing success,” pointing to the lack of significant improvements in substance use and psychiatric symptoms over the twelve months that people were housed (the share of patients with severe substance use actually saw a modest increase). The problem with Housing First stems from the fact that it doesn’t require that people address their mental illness and substance abuse, which are often the underlying causes of homelessness. Several studies have found that people in Housing First–type housing showed no improvement in drug use from when they were first housed. In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a review of the scientific literature of Housing First. “On the basis of currently available research,” the report’s authors wrote, with some surprise, “the committee found no substantial evidence that [permanent supportive housing] contributes to improved health outcomes, notwithstanding the intuitive logic that it should do so and limited data showing that it does do so for persons with HIV/AIDS.” Tsemberis said he was not surprised by the findings of the National Academies. “It’s not like housing creates improved health,” he said. “You have to have a relationship with a nurse. You have to be educated on what your health problems are. You have to have a team that engages you and makes you an active participant in your own health care. I don’t even know if that would stop the number of deaths.” And, at least in the study funded by Benioff and conducted by Margot Kushel, which had those services, it did not. All of this seems to fit with what I found above. But: Housing First may even increase addiction and overdose deaths and make quitting drugs more difficult. Warned a multiauthor review in 2009, “One potential risk [of Housing First’s harm reduction approach] would be worsening the addiction itself, as the federal collaborative initiative preliminary evaluation seemed to suggest.” The authors pointed to an experiment that had to be stopped and reorganized after the homeless individuals in the abstinence group complained of being housed with people in the control group, who didn’t stop their drug and alcohol use. “They claimed that they preferred to return to homelessness rather than live near drug users.” The multiauthor review cited is Housing First For Homeless People With Active Addiction: Are We Overreaching? They write: “It would be premature to conclude that Housing First programs cannot accommodate persons with severe addiction. But it also would be premature to suggest that research data provide clear guidance on whether, or how, Housing First programs can accommodate persons with ongoing severe drug and alcohol abuse. In the absence of research data on this subject, it is reasonable to consider the kinds of risks that may occur in Housing First programs. One potential risk would be worsening the addiction itself, as the federal collaborative initiative preliminary evaluation seemed to suggest (Mares, Greenberg, and Rosenheck 2007), or failing to progress toward addictive recovery.” Elsewhere, they describe this same study as: “The eleven-site federal collaborative initiative found an association between early access to housing and increases in alcohol problems during the subsequent year” The study is here, but I can’t find this result anywhere. It describes its own results (my emphasis) as: The average number of days housed in the previous 90 days increased dramatically from 18 at baseline, to 68 at the 3-month follow-up, and rose steadily thereafter to 83 at the 12 month follow-up (Table 2). Mean monthly public assistance income increased steadily from $316 at baseline to $478 one year later, a 50% increase. Significant improvements of modest magnitude were also observed in overall quality of life, mental health functioning, and reduced psychological distress. Alcohol and drug problems remained largely unchanged over time. Total quarterly health costs declined by 50%, from $6,832 at baseline to $3,376 at 12 months. A 54% decrease in mean inpatient costs ($5,776 to $2,677) accounted for nearly 90% of the overall decrease in quarterly health care costs during clients' first year in the program And the table (slightly edited for readability): I might be misunderstanding this - I can’t imagine why the authors of the review would have gotten this wrong - but it does look to me like alcoholism stayed steady throughout this study. A 24-month followup of what I think is the same study also finds that drug users who were housed used slightly fewer drugs over time, although probably not to any significant degree worth caring about: 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: Housing First For Homeless People With Active Addiction: Are We Overreaching?, here, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!sgvd!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5250de4e-08fe-460d-87a6-58654d6e57bf_880x292.png, 24-month followup, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!OZrF!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Facb2c749-e076-4b50-ae77-83576401a16f_556x639.png, 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
How AI Is Learning To Think In Secret1 mentions across 1 issues

How AI Is Learning To Think In Secret is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 05, 2026 and February 05, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as ""How AI Is Learning To Think In Secret, by Nicholas Andresen"". It most often appears alongside 4o, 60 Minutes, @MattZeitlin.

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February 05, 2026 · Original source
61: How AI Is Learning To Think In Secret, by Nicholas Andresen. Good description of human attempts to use English chain-of-thought to monitor AI, and AIs’ attempts to develop incomprehensible chains of thought and become unmonitorable.
Inline links: How AI Is Learning To Think In Secret
How And Why To Be Ladylike (For Women With Autism)1 mentions across 1 issues

How And Why To Be Ladylike (For Women With Autism) is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 28, 2022 and December 28, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "How And Why To Be Ladylike (For Women With Autism) . I know ACX readership is 85-90% male". It most often appears alongside 2C-B, 48: Bean, @AliceFromQueens.

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December 28, 2022 · Original source
56: How And Why To Be Ladylike (For Women With Autism). I know ACX readership is 85-90% male, but I recommend this article to people of any gender. Partly because it doubles as a good explanation of why “ladylikeness” should exist as a concept. But also because I think straight people benefit from reading dating advice aimed at the opposite sex - not just so you can catch their adversarial strategies, but also so you know what constraints they’re working under, why they’re hard, and what they’re after.
Inline links: How And Why To Be Ladylike (For Women With Autism)
How Could A Moratorium Fail?1 mentions across 1 issues

How Could A Moratorium Fail? is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 05, 2023 and October 05, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "In How Could A Moratorium Fail? , David Manheim discussed his own takeaways from the debate". It most often appears alongside AI Is Centralizing By Default, Let’s Not Make It Worse, AI Pause Will Likely Backfire, AI Policy Institute.

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Pause For Thought: The AI Pause Debate
October 05, 2023 · Original source
In How Could A Moratorium Fail?, David Manheim discussed his own takeaways from the debate:
Inline links: How Could A Moratorium Fail?
How Do We Rate The Importance Of Historical Figures?1 mentions across 1 issues

How Do We Rate The Importance Of Historical Figures? is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 19, 2024 and August 19, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "New subscriber-only post this week, How Do We Rate The Importance Of Historical Figures?". It most often appears alongside ACX, AI Alignment, AI policy.

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Open Thread 343
August 19, 2024 · Original source
2: New subscriber-only post this week, How Do We Rate The Importance Of Historical Figures?, on those lists speculating whether Jesus/Napoleon/Mohammed/whoever was the most important person in history.
Inline links: How Do We Rate The Importance Of Historical Figures?
How I Made $10K Predicting Which Studies Will Replicate1 mentions across 1 issues

How I Made $10K Predicting Which Studies Will Replicate is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 20, 2022 and December 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "One participant wrote about his experience: How I Made $10K Predicting Which Studies Will Replicate". It most often appears alongside 7-11, AGI, AMC.

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Prediction Market FAQ
December 20, 2022 · Original source
If we decide to redo Study #2, will we get the same results? …and so on. Obviously the market can’t be sure how studies will turn out - otherwise we wouldn’t need scientists or experiments! But this acts as a force multiplier, letting you get predictions about 100 studies even if you can only do one - and might guide which one you redo. Predicting replicability—Analysis of survey and prediction market data from large-scale forecasting projects, published in PLoS One, attempted this and found the markets were pretty accurate - 73% was their headline finding, but read the study for more. One participant wrote about his experience: How I Made $10K Predicting Which Studies Will Replicate. You can learn more about this project at replicationmarkets.com Eliezer Yudkowsky once wrote a story about a civilization that settled legal questions this way. They had a few truly brilliant legal experts - the equivalent of US Supreme Court Justices - but not enough to answer every possible question that might come up. So for each question they made a prediction market: If we submit Question #1 to the Supreme Court, will they rule in favor?
Inline links: Predicting replicability—Analysis of survey and prediction market data from large-scale forecasting projects, How I Made $10K Predicting Which Studies Will Replicate, replicationmarkets.com
How Language Began1 mentions across 1 issues

How Language Began is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 17, 2025 and October 17, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "he also wrote last year’s finalist How Language Began". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, ACX, ACX.

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How Language Began
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Non-Book Review Contest 2025 Winners
October 17, 2025 · Original source
The Synaptic Plasticity And Memory Hypothesis, by John V. John is a neuroscientist and AI researcher in Boston; he also wrote last year’s finalist How Language Began. He just started blogging at Theories of Intelligence. If you loved or hated his review, check his Substack soon for a detailed response to some of your comments and criticisms.
Inline links: The Synaptic Plasticity And Memory Hypothesis, How Language Began, Theories of Intelligence
How Long Should You Rest Between Sets For Maximum Growth?1 mentions across 1 issues

How Long Should You Rest Between Sets For Maximum Growth? is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 07, 2021 and April 07, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "The #1 result was How Long Should You Rest Between Sets For Maximum Growth?". It most often appears alongside academic science, Ahtiainen et al., Altmetric.

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Metis And Bodybuilders
April 07, 2021 · Original source
The #1 result was How Long Should You Rest Between Sets For Maximum Growth?, which had been voted the best answer by users of bodybuilding.com. It said that people training for strength should wait 3-5 minutes, but people training for hypertrophy (bigger muscles) should wait 30 - 60 seconds. I interpret that as confirming Henselmans’ claim that short rest periods are consensus - except that the answer cites eleven scientific studies. The studies all show that various biological things that could correlate with muscle growth (eg anabolic hormone release) are higher after short rest periods than long ones, but they don’t directly prove that the the short rest periods cause more gains.
Inline links: How Long Should You Rest Between Sets For Maximum Growth?
How Not To Lose Your Job To AI - The Skills AI Will Make More Valuable1 mentions across 1 issues

How Not To Lose Your Job To AI - The Skills AI Will Make More Valuable is a recurring publication 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 "has written their own essay on How Not To Lose Your Job To AI - The Skills AI Will Make More Valuable". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, abundance liberalism, Afghanistan.

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September 04, 2025 · Original source
56: People often ask me what potential careers will have the best chances if AI starts taking jobs. I have no idea, but 80,000 Hours - an organization very much at the intersection of career counseling and AI futurology - has written their own essay on How Not To Lose Your Job To AI - The Skills AI Will Make More Valuable, although it stops short of recommending specific careers by name.
Inline links: How Not To Lose Your Job To AI - The Skills AI Will Make More Valuable
How quickly could robots scale up?1 mentions across 1 issues

How quickly could robots scale up? is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 08, 2025 and April 08, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "well-covered in Ben Todd’s How quickly could robots scale up?". It most often appears alongside 1960s sci-fi, AI 2027, AI 2027.

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My Takeaways From AI 2027
April 08, 2025 · Original source
Most of this - plus the final calculations about exactly how many robots this implies getting manufactured when - is well-covered in Ben Todd’s How quickly could robots scale up?
Inline links: How quickly could robots scale up?
How The Alt-Right Won1 mentions across 1 issues

How The Alt-Right Won is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 04, 2024 and April 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "How The Alt-Right Won , by a alt-right veteran and tactician". It most often appears alongside Aaron Peskin, ACLU, AGI And The Efficient Market Hypothesis.

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How The Alt-Right Won
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April 04, 2024 · Original source
24: How The Alt-Right Won, by a alt-right veteran and tactician. Useful as a look into what strategies the alt-right thought they were using. I owe all the misinformation experts and antifa people and so on an apology - the way they thought the alt-right worked, even the paranoid-sounding bits, is exactly how the alt-right self-conceptualized themselves as working. The only exception is that this guy thought progressives who conflated ordinary Trumpists with the alt-right were serving alt-right interests (ie it was counterproductive for the progressives doing it).
Inline links: How The Alt-Right Won
How The Biggest Consumer Apps Got Their First 1,000 Users1 mentions across 1 issues

How The Biggest Consumer Apps Got Their First 1,000 Users is a recurring publication 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 "The first post on there is How The Biggest Consumer Apps Got Their First 1,000 Users". It most often appears alongside 1 Kings 10-11, 2008 Democratic National Convention, Adam Scheffer.

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Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
This is a person named Lenny, whose Substack conveniently has a Top Posts page pinned to the front. The first post on there is How The Biggest Consumer Apps Got Their First 1,000 Users. I will never make an app, yet this post fascinated me. I read it all the way to the end.
Inline links: How The Biggest Consumer Apps Got Their First 1,000 Users
How The UK Became One Of The Poorest Countries In Western Europe1 mentions across 1 issues

How The UK Became One Of The Poorest Countries In Western Europe is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 20, 2023 and July 20, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The Atlantic’s How The UK Became One Of The Poorest Countries In Western Europe". It most often appears alongside Adam Tooze, Brexit, Britain.

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Highlights From The Comments On British Economic Decline
July 20, 2023 · Original source
Source: Mainly Macro Or various articles like The Atlantic’s How The UK Became One Of The Poorest Countries In Western Europe and Foreign Policy’s Britain Is Much Worse Off Than It Understands - Things Weren’t Nearly This Bad In The 1970s . This isn’t clearly reflected in the GDP statistics, which show the UK growing at an average rate for developed countries between 2000 and today: Source: Our World In Data Or between 2010 and today: I prefer the Our World In Data graphs since they let you clearly show relative growth, but they only go up to 2018. A World Bank graph requires a little more interpretation, but goes up to 2022: Source: World Bank. Britain is the thick blue line. …and it also shows UK growth being about average. So what’s going on? I asked about this in an Open Thread. Here were some of your responses. Eric Rall writes: There are two different ways of calculating real GDP per capita in an international context, both of which involve converting local currency to dollars and then inflation-adjusting the dollars based on the US's GDP deflator. One uses market exchange rates, while the other uses "Purchasing Power Parity", attempting to optimize the GDP figure as a proxy for standard-of-living by using local prices for equivalent goods and services as the currency conversion factor. For Brexit-related and COVID-related reasons, the relationship between PPP and market exchange rates for Britain have been highly unstable in the period in question: exchange rates have been very volatile (ranging from US$1.08 to US$1.40 per £1.00), and tariffs and COVID disruption have both radically changed the availability and prices of imported goods. Looking at either the PPP or market exchange rate numbers, everyone took a big hit in 2020, while Britain appears to have taken a deeper hit than France and the overall OECD average (the two control groups I picked off the top of my head). The big difference is that in market exchange rate terms, the recovery looks proportionate to the decline (i.e. Britain fell more, but also recovered proportionately faster so as to bounce back to approximately 2019 levels in 2022 the same as France and OECD): (source) But in PPP terms, the UK has recovered at the same rate as France and OECD and thus appears to have permanently (so far) lost ground in standard of living relative to other countries. UK was also growing more slowly in PPP terms between 2015 and 2019 than France, but about the same as the OECD average: (source) Putting some numbers on the second graph: Just before COVID, Britain had 106% the average OECD GDP
Inline links: Mainly Macro, How The UK Became One Of The Poorest Countries In Western Europe, Britain Is Much Worse Off Than It Understands - Things Weren’t Nearly This Bad In The 1970s, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nKCR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5bb80548-f7f0-4707-b7bd-601e881e30c0_1164x792.png, Our World In Data, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!V5Hz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9c58e9b6-9edd-4021-83dc-df0de003eca1_1165x723.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!3fAl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2cffb938-e8c2-45b1-9ad2-fe575666403b_811x632.png, World Bank, asked about this in an Open Thread, writes, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ctPl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F168f87c7-e9e0-45f8-901c-dd418f541b57_800x617.png, source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AqdU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faae66a91-fc33-43e0-90b9-2ec1a41d5dc8_790x627.png, source
How To Legalize Prediction Markets1 mentions across 1 issues

How To Legalize Prediction Markets is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between January 31, 2023 and January 31, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Related: Richard Hanania has an article on How To Legalize Prediction Markets". It most often appears alongside 2022 contest, American Civics Exchange, CFTC.

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2023
January 31, 2023 · Original source
Taking Stock Prediction market users really want stocks. “Stock” in this sense means an instrument that measures the status of a person, group, or idea. When their status goes up, the stock goes up. When their status goes down, the stock goes down. It feels like a natural way to bet on things like “I’m bearish on Elon Musk and think everyone else is overestimating him.” It’s hard to turn this vague idea into a real financial instrument. You could try tying it to their Twitter follower count, or Google search trends, or net worth, but none of these exactly track “status”. If Musk commits murder in broad daylight, his search volume will go up, his Twitter follower count will stay about the same, his net worth might not be affected, but his status will have gone way down. The current solution is to make no effort whatsoever to moor stocks to the real world and just hope they work out. This could work! It’s kind of like a Ponzi scheme or crypto token. Some big influencer endorses MoonCoin, and MoonCoin goes up, because MoonCoin has gained status, which means more people will want to buy it, because it’s even more likely that more people will want to buy it later. Crypto tokens keep a fig leaf of “and maybe in the cyberpunk future when all transactions everywhere have switched to crypto this will really pay off”, but over time that fig leaf became increasingly threadbare, and a fun low-stakes instrument like Manifold stocks might do fine without it. But the 0% to 100% prediction scale is a bad match for stocks. If Elon started at 50% in 2000, then when Tesla made it big he surely should have doubled. And that brings him up to 100% and leaves nowhere for him to go. Also, people who bet on Elon Musk in 2000 might be miffed that their prescient choice only doubled their money. Probably the solution is some kind of cardinal number. But which one, and at what scale? Again, the lesson from crypto is that maybe it doesn’t matter. Just start at 10 or something or something and see where it ends up. Manifold leadership isn’t totally resigned yet to having stocks be meaningless Ponzi schemes. If you have a better idea for how to run stocks, leave it in the comments here and they’ll probably see it. CFTC vs. PredictIt Update So far it’s not clear if this means indefinite normal operation, or if they’ll spend the extra time trying to wind existing markets down. The overall chance of them winning their lawsuit remains unchanged at around 25%. PredictIt has gotten some sympathetic news coverage, including from the Washington Post. In the process, the Post tried to get some clarity on what terms of the no-action letter PredictIt violated, apparently without success: @CFTC why they're shutting PredictIt down. They give no real answer, just as in the original withdrawal letter. Closest thing we have to an answer is that they don't want other prediction markets. But why? No sense here at all. washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023… ","username":"RichardHanania","name":"Richard Hanania","profile_image_url":"","date":"Tue Jan 24 18:12:59 +0000 2023","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/FnQbawZaYAAKRws.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/zeKhe8sjnT","alt_text":null}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":8,"like_count":39,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> @StephenPiment I'm flat appalled the CFTC said \"you violated terms\", but won't tell anyone, @PredictIt included, which ones, and then has big enough balls to try to get the judge to dismiss PI's \"shotgun\" defense. Um, with no info what other case COULD they make?\n","username":"kmett","name":"Edward Kmett","profile_image_url":"","date":"Sun Nov 27 19:01:29 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":0,"retweet_count":8,"like_count":21,"impression_count":0,"expanded_url":{"url":"https://www.bonus.com/news/cftc-predictit-hearings-coming/","image":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/8d5a1d5e-49ee-4294-84cd-eb5a4259bbc3_1200x800.jpeg","title":"Hearings Coming Soon in PredictIt Lawsuit, CFTC Asks to Dismiss","description":"The CFTC is seeking to have the PredictIt lawsuit dismissed, while the plaintiffs want the case fast-tracked due to the shutdown deadline.","domain":"bonus.com"},"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM"> I guess they’ll have to give some kind of explanation during the hearing, right? Related: Richard Hanania has an article on How To Legalize Prediction Markets. The actual advice isn’t very surprising, and mostly boils down to “write letters to the government officials in charge of this”, but like other people I learned something new from the details: In the United States, prediction markets are, with a few minor exceptions, against the law. If you don’t have a legal background, you might think that means that Congress at some point considered the issue, decided people shouldn’t be able to bet on real world events, and passed a law to that effect, which was then signed by the president. But this is not what happened. As with most things, Congress has never directly considered the matter. Rather, prediction markets are illegal due to the discretion of a government agency called the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Why does it have this right? And on what basis has it made prediction markets illegal? […] In 1936, Congress passed and FDR signed the Commodity Exchange Act. In 1974, Congress created the CFTC to enforce the original law, which has been amended on multiple occasions over the years. The CFTC has authority to regulate what are called “derivatives markets.” A derivatives contract derives its value from some kind of underlying asset or benchmark in the real world. The thing to understand about derivatives is that the baseline is that they’re legal. That’s why you can “bet” on the price of oil through a futures contract. The CFTC wasn’t created to ban derivative markets, but to regulate them, though this can involve prohibiting certain kinds of markets altogether. Current law includes the following provision on event contracts, [banning]: activity that is unlawful under any Federal or State law;
Inline links: remains unchanged at around 25%, Washington Post, How To Legalize Prediction Markets, can involve
How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, The Snapchat Story1 mentions across 1 issues

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, The Snapchat Story is a recurring publication 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 "How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher". It most often appears alongside 1 Kings 10-11, 2008 Democratic National Convention, Adam Scheffer.

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Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
— How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher
Inline links: How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, The Snapchat Story
How Will The Bomb Find You?1 mentions across 1 issues

How Will The Bomb Find You? is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 13, 2021 and October 13, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "C.S. Lewis's " How Will The Bomb Find You? " essay". It most often appears alongside Anatoly Karlin, atomic bomb, C.S. Lewis.

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Highlights From The Comments On Kids And Climate Change
October 13, 2021 · Original source
I'm reminded again of C.S. Lewis's "How Will The Bomb Find You?" essay. It was quoted a fair bit in light of coronavirus fears, but I think it applies even better to climate change:
Inline links: How Will The Bomb Find You?
Howe 20221 mentions across 1 issues

Howe 2022 is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between November 01, 2024 and November 01, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "one of the main papers Gusev cited to make his case, Howe 2022". It most often appears alongside /r/BadMTGCombos, @cremieuxrecuel, @justin_garson.

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Howe 2022
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Links For November 2024
November 01, 2024 · Original source
46: In 2022, I wrote Whither Tartaria, where I asked why ornate classical styles switched to more austere modernist styles around 1900 - 1950 in a variety of different arts (painting, architecture, literature, poetry, etc). I proposed seven theories, but was unsure which if any were true. Since then, Samuel Hughes of Works In Progress has been investigating. In May, he wrote a well-researched article showing that it wasn’t just increasing cost, because ornate classical architecture now costs less than ever. Now in a new article he demolishes a different theory - it’s not just decreasing cost (and subsequent lack of ability to signal wealth) - because costs didn’t decrease in several other arts, and the change was led by artists with rich people as reluctant followers. He concludes: Modernism may well be a status game of some kind; it may well signal taste more than it signals wealth; and this latter feature may be one of the things that distinguishes it from older artistic styles. But the mechanism by which this change came about must be different to the one Alexander describes. 47: Sort of kind of related - When Hamilton Lost Its Snob Appeal. The musical Hamilton was briefly an artistic/cultural phenomenon, but tastemakers eventually switched to making fun of it. Why? Rob Henderson says it happened after ticket prices came down and the common people could enjoy it. I disagree: everyone I knew who was into Hamilton got into it from the free online soundtrack long before they’d seen the show; I think this is more likely the usual fad cycle where anybody who’s too into yesterday’s fad is behind the curve and therefore uncool. 48: Related: Why are people such jerks to public intellectuals? And more. I agree this is a great mystery. 49: Some prominent Substack psychiatrists doing a video Q&A, submit your questions here. 50: Naomi Kanakia: The Literacy Delusion had a number of explanations for why reading books seemed to be so much worse for human beings (in terms of emotional wellness and productivity) than other forms of narrative entertainment, but its main theory was the integration hypothesis. That the stream of words in a book trained the human brain into a habit of self-consciousness, that reading books forced human beings to think of themselves as a stream of text, processed through time, making a coherent argument of some sort. And that this overall flattening effect forced readers to ignore aspects of their personality or their situation that were not otherwise in line with the overarching story they'd created about themselves. Basically, reading books causes repression and neurosis. The Literacy Delusion argued that, yes, human beings are storytelling machines, but that a stream of written text is a particular kind of story—a story that is particularly flat, particularly devoid of conflicting or harmonizing information—and that this flatness creates a peculiar effect on the human brain. 51: Last month, I linked Sasha Gusev’s No, Intelligence Is Not Like Height and asked people who disagreed to share their arguments; they sure did. First, several people pointed me to a new preprint, Family-GWAS Reveals Effects Of Environment And Mating On Genetic Associations, which finds that one of the main papers Gusev cited to make his case, Howe 2022, made a mistake - imputing sibling genotypes using a process designed for non-sibling genotypes - and that once that mistake is corrected, the finding disappears and intelligence and height appear similar. Second, Joseph Bronski has a more specific post where he responds to Gusev’s points one by one. He accuses Gusev of “[making] up his own chart to remove the error bars [from the originals], to obscure the fact that the study found no evidence for this in IQ”, and says that the cases where he didn’t do that are just “population stratification and range restriction”. Third, Noah Carl at Aporia, instead of writing a direct response like Bronski, argues that the usual method of attacking twin studies is obsolete; not only have the most-debated assumptions behind twin studies been thoroughly validated, but there are now other lines of evidence besides twin studies which confirm high IQ heritability. Fourth, Leonardo Parro (not framed as a response to Gusev) goes into more depth about one of those ways, a “pedigree-based analysis” demonstrating heritability of 54 - 69%, ie no “missing heritability” compared to twin studies. He summarizes this as the effect of “rare variants” compared to the usual SNPs - ie if you only look at the most common genes that are easiest to find, you get “missing heritability” compared to twin studies, but if you widen your search to rare genes that are hard to find, you don’t. 52: Extremely related: Heliospect is a startup promising polygenic selection for IQ and other traits; they were trying to stay in stealth mode but The Guardian spied on them and nonconsensually revealed their existence. The discussion on the r/ssc subreddit centered on their claim that (given enough embryos to choose from) they could increase a baby’s expected IQ by 6 points (I’ve also heard 7.5). Sasha Gusev had previously argued that current technology maxed out at 3.5 and future technology would max out at 6, so a claim of 6 - 7.5 is pretty extreme; Gwern, who wrote the pioneering analysis of this technology, was also skeptical. But Heliospect says they’ve got better predictors than academia that use the rare variants everyone else misses; after talking to the company, Gwern retracted his objections and says he finds their claim “pretty plausible”. Local ACX commenter geneticist Gene Smith also redid some calculations, changed his mind, and says “probably pretty realistic”. I find this interesting not just because of the polygenic selection angle, but because if Heliospect is right then their predictor is able to predict more genetic IQ than the “missing heritability” people believe exists, and it should be able to put this argument to bed once and for all. 53: This month in censorship: X/Twitter banned journalist Ken Klippenstein for sharing the Trump campaign’s dossier on JD Vance. Twitter’s side of the story is that the dossier was probably originally stolen by Iranian agents and they don’t want to support that kind of thing by letting people signal-boost the illicitly obtained goods; you can read Klippenstein’s side here. He appears to be unbanned now.
Inline links: Whither Tartaria, a well-researched article showing, in a new article he demolishes a different theory, When Hamilton Lost Its Snob Appeal, Why are people such jerks to public intellectuals?, more, Some prominent Substack psychiatrists doing a video Q&A, submit your questions here, Naomi Kanakia, No, Intelligence Is Not Like Height, Family-GWAS Reveals Effects Of Environment And Mating On Genetic Associations, Howe 2022, a more specific post where he responds to Gusev’s points one by one, argues that the usual method of attacking twin studies is obsolete, goes into more depth about one of those ways, The Guardian spied on them and nonconsensually revealed their existence, discussion, previously argued, the pioneering analysis of this technology, Gwern retracted his objections, says, polygenic selection, banned journalist Ken Klippenstein, you can read Klippenstein’s side here., appears to be unbanned now
HPMOR1 mentions across 1 issues

HPMOR is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 20, 2022 and April 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "ideas presented in HPMOR's chapter involving the troll attack". It most often appears alongside A.E. Waite, Adlerian psychology, AL.

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HPMOR
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Highlights From The Comments On "Sadly, Porn"
April 20, 2022 · Original source
My view is that the preferences people see themselves as having are real, but that accurate model of human behavior rarely invokes them and uses other concepts instead. These concepts are still endogenous (nobody's being puppeteered by an evil demon) but are often of the nature being talked about here. For example, I draw a juxtaposition from the story of the tree to ideas presented in HPMOR's chapter involving the troll attack: people often act out roles. The tree acts out the role of a mother, McGonagall a strict disciplinarian, and that way of modelling behavior might actually get you somewhere. Ditto for behaviors like virtue-signalling, or any of the other social games people unconsciously play that end up dictating their behavior.
HPMOR audiobook1 mentions across 1 issues

HPMOR audiobook is a recurring publication 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 "main narrator of the HPMOR audiobook". It most often appears alongside "El Retiro" Park, 11841 Wagner Street Culver City, 1548 NE 15th Ave.

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HPMOR audiobook
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Meetups Everywhere 2023: Times & Places
August 25, 2023 · Original source
DENVER, COLORADO, USA Contact: Eneasz Brodski Contact Info: embrodski[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, September 17th, 3:00 PM Location: Sloan's Lake, near the North Bicycle Parking Lot. We'll be a little past the old stone building, at a picnic table, with a blue shade-structure set up over it. It will have a white large board leaning against it with ACX MEETUP written on it. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85FPQX22+RM Group Link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/969594296461197 Notable Guests: Eneasz Brodski, main narrator of the HPMOR audiobook as well as an author in his own right. Notes: There will be BBQ food and snacks available, including some vegan hot dogs. Feel free to bring kids.
Inline links: https://plus.codes/85FPQX22+RM, https://www.facebook.com/groups/969594296461197
podcast1 mentions across 1 issues

HPMOR audiobook/podcast is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between October 17, 2025 and October 17, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as "Eneasz is best known for creating the full-cast HPMOR audiobook/podcast". It most often appears alongside 80,000 Hours, ACX, ACX.

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podcast
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October 17, 2025
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Non-Book Review Contest 2025 Winners
October 17, 2025 · Original source
‘Red Means No’ Orgies, reviewed by Eneasz Brodski. Eneasz is best known for creating the full-cast HPMOR audiobook/podcast, and he now podcasts at The Bayesian Conspiracy covering rationalist general-interest topics. He has also published the novel What Lies Dreaming, a Lovecraftian horror set in 2nd century Rome. He blogs at Death Is Bad and will be participating in the Inkhaven residency this November.
Inline links: ‘Red Means No’ Orgies, full-cast HPMOR audiobook/podcast, The Bayesian Conspiracy, What Lies Dreaming, Death Is Bad, Inkhaven
contact1 mentions across 1 issues

http://www.rocrastination.com/contact/ is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 03, 2022 and February 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "please get in touch: http://www.rocrastination.com/contact/". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

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contact
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ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#18: Philanthropic Messaging Strategies Using Evolutionary Ideas I’m Ro Gupta. Inspired initially by https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768/, I’d like to commission research that explores if and how Kin Selection and Hamilton’s Rule [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection#Hamilton%27s_rule] can be applied in mass communications for altruistic giving of humans in modern times. The goal is to uncover alternative messaging strategies that help subjects transcend blood-thicker-than-water hardwiring, based on underlying evolutionary biology theory – e.g. kin recognition, kin altruism – that ultimately serves to increase wealthy countries’ proportion of altruistic giving to less genetically familiar yet higher need/ impact populations, e.g. those of the Global South. [Estimates suggest around 5% of US giving currently goes to international causes.] I believe I have the right combination of academic, professional, NGO and global experience [https://www.linkedin.com/in/guptaro] to lead this, and access to a high quality network of research and communications experts to match grants to. I estimate a robust synthesis of existing work could be done for the low tens of thousands of USD, while a primary research phase one could be substantively scoped for the high tens to one hundred thousand USD. If of interest to be a part of this as a researcher, funder or general thought partner, please get in touch: http://www.rocrastination.com/contact/.
www.vacantnewyork.com1 mentions across 1 issues

http://www.vacantnewyork.com/ is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 16, 2021 and April 16, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "New York City ( http://www.vacantnewyork.com/ )". It most often appears alongside "The Rent Is Too Damn High!", 16th amendment, 1886.

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www.vacantnewyork.com
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April 16, 2021
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Your Book Review: Progress And Poverty
April 16, 2021 · Original source
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: 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
about-us1 mentions across 1 issues

https://adventurenerds.com/about-us is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 03, 2022 and February 03, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "contact us through our website, https://adventurenerds.com/about-us". It most often appears alongside 538, 55-gal drum, 750k horny men.

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about-us
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ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#36: Improve Access To Outdoor Activities Adventure Nerds improves access to nature and outdoor activities. We are a startup that publishes books and resources that educate and inspire all people to get outside and enjoy nature. Adventure Nerds is a platform for sharing information that increases diversity in outdoor participation by proactively connecting communities to practical local information that is not readily available online. We reduce the cost and time required to plan outdoor activities so that people can confidently spend more time outdoors. Our educational resources give everyone the tools to plan safe, responsible adventures in nature and develop a lifelong passion for healthy outdoor activities. Integral to our work is partnering with nonprofit organizations and businesses to raise awareness for conservation and environmental action campaigns. Adventure Nerds launches in the spring of 2022 with support from Waypoint, a development program for outdoor organizations in Western North Carolina. We have published an example guidebook, and we are searching for start-up capital and business sponsors to create more resources. If you are interested in learning more or helping in any way, contact us through our website, https://adventurenerds.com/about-us.
19701 mentions across 1 issues

https://applieddivinitystudies.com/1970/ is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 07, 2023 and July 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "Here is a selection of graphs from https://applieddivinitystudies.com/1970/". It most often appears alongside Alberto Parmigiani, Ansolabehere, Barack Obama.

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1970
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Your Book Review: Secret Government
July 07, 2023 · Original source
Here is a selection of graphs from https://applieddivinitystudies.com/1970/ and
Inline links: https://applieddivinitystudies.com/1970/
grant1 mentions across 1 issues

https://blog.asrpo.com/grant is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between February 10, 2022 and February 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "explained in the original grant submission at https://blog.asrpo.com/grant". It most often appears alongside 2018, @BendiniUK, @benyeohben.

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grant
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ACX Grants ++: The Second Half
February 10, 2022 · Original source
#77: Computer Programs That Write Themselves I've been working on faster ways to create computer programs. I'm looking for funding to extend my time to work on this. This could improve the success probability of hundreds of other projects and allow the existence of many more. Tools help reduced the time and resources needed for a project. If someone tried to work on their project without access to a computer or internet, getting them a connected machine would be of high priority even though it has nothing to do with the content of the project itself. And if computers or the internet didn't already exist, it'd be worthwhile to try to come up with them. But we only know this in hindsight and the same could be true of what I'm trying to make. That we should have never tried to do without. The tool that I want to create is a computer program P that is an interactive tutorial for (re)creating P from scratch. But more importantly, P helps recreate significant variations of P. We'd then use P to make other programs that would help with whatever project is at hand. How this work and why it would be helpful is explained in the original grant submission at https://blog.asrpo.com/grant You'll also find contact info and links to some of the project's components there. Instead of funds, you can also help by contributing your own time to the project. If you think you can help with any component or are good at either compilers or thinking abstractly, please feel free to reach out.
weight-loss-and-mounjaro1 mentions across 1 issues

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Highlights From The Comments On Semaglutide
November 30, 2022 · Original source
I think those numbers might be "over one year", and they could stay on it longer than a year. I was kind of lazy just asserting “drugs might get better”, but I think the upcoming CagriSema combination and AMG-133 are good examples of how this might play out. Max Görlitz has done the proper thing and made Manifold markets for each of my predictions - see here, here, here, here, and here. Despite the problems with prediction markets for decades in the future, the “will obesity be cut in half by 2050” one seems popular: 5. Do You Have To Stay On Semaglutide Forever Or Else Gain The Weight Back? Biff_Ditt writes: I saw on the 1 year follow-up to the STEP-1 trial that most of the participants gained all of their lost weight back. Biff is probably thinking of Weight Regain And Cardiometabolic Effects After Withdrawal Of Semaglutide, which finds people gained back 2/3 of the lost weight after a year. The graph looks like it’s in the process of plateauing but not quite there, so I don’t know if we should expect them to regain the other third later. This matches what I would expect from my understanding of other diets and weight loss drugs. Still, some people disagree. Maximum Liberty writes: Anecdote is not the singular of data, but my better half lost 25 pounds on it, then had to get off it for reasons unrelated to the drug. She has not regained the weight yet -- and consistently eats less now that she had for years. So in at least one case, the drug helped with a successful change in eating habits. Lauren Thomas writes: So there's been a lot of research on dieting and losing weight, etc., and one of the things that has been found is that your body has a "set" point weight wise that it will try REALLY hard to return you to. If you lose weight, your body will slow its metabolism until you return to that weight. If you gain weight, your body will rev up metabolism. That's why you might gain 10 lbs over Christmas and then lose it in January without purposefully trying to lose weight. (this is all in the short term, ofc, as people do tend to naturally gain weight as they age). This seems to imply that semaglutide would need to be taken forever. However, there seems to be an important caveat: you *can* reset your set point, it just takes a long time at the new weight. When most people go on diets and lose weight, they end up regaining the new weight quite quickly after they "end" their diet, so they don't have a chance to reset their set point. Speaking from personal experience, I had kind of an accidental natural experiment with this: I once lost 40 lbs over the course of a year and a half, where I began with a very strict low carb diet that very very slowly trailed off to a normal diet, mostly because I got progressively more tired of being on the low carb diet. So by the time I had gotten back to my normal diet, I had been losing weight for a long time. I ended up regaining 10 lbs of the weight, but no more, and am still ~30 lbs below my peak even today (5 years later). Something like this has been my experience with dieting too so far. And something like set point reset has to exist in order to explain things like why so many obese people fail to lose weight after they start eating healthy, and maybe other things like anorexia. And maybe it works for some people. Still, the evidence suggests that most people who stop semaglutide will regain the weight, at least for the protocol used in the study. Maybe some other protocol that had them on it for more than a year would have done better? 6. Personal Anecdotes Edgehopper writes: I couldn’t get Wegovy at a reasonable price when it was approved, and then Novo Nordisk started having huge supply chain problems with their injectors. Fortunately, Eli Lilly’s coupon for Mounjaro was less restrictive at first, though they’ve had to crack down as they have trouble meeting demand for both off-label weight loss use and for the approved T2D use. I am what the doctors call “morbidly obese,” and it’s been more effective than anything else I’ve ever tried. Down about 35 lbs in the first three months, and unlike with other diets I’ve tried, I’m not feeling miserable or hungry all the time. Assuming there aren’t scary side-effects in the future, these really are miracle drugs. I do expect the price to come down relatively quickly due to competition, which is a good thing. Education Realist (blog) writes: I am on Mounjaro, and have been for four months. Lost 20 pounds so far, and I'm not yet on full dosage. Occasional mild nausea but real issue for me is....tiredness. Not fatigue or exhaustion. I'm a former insomniac who can now hit the sack at 9:00 and sleep happily to 6 am, which is insanely weird. I have been trying to lose weight for 6 years, and for most of that time been in a 20 pound range that is 100 pounds over what someone of my height should weigh. I've eaten 1500 calories a day and not lost a pound, have to drop to 1100 to lose weight verrry slowly (that's with intermittent fasting and low carbs, around 50 grams). Last year before Mounjaro I started intermittent fasting and lost 20 pounds very quickly and then stopped cold. I do not have eating issues. I don't binge. I cut out the "four white foods" six years ago because I learned that I do better on meat and cheese and vegetables than I do on pasta or bread or potatoes and vegetables. I put on weight despite walking two and in some cases four miles a day, which I can do easily. I am ridiculously healthy and do not have an obesity diagnosis. Stone cold normal readings in A1c, glucose, cholestrol. My doctor sent me to an endocrinologist after I lost 20 pounds and then stopped cold despite the same behavior (which I still do today) because she agreed I might be insulin resistant. Endocrinologist shrugged, said it's multifactorial, but agreed that anyone with my numbers, appearance, and obvious good health was clearly doing everything right and put me on Mounjaro with no further questions. Diagnosis: insulin resistance. My insurance pays around $500 but I'm on the $25 coupon. I didn't change a single thing about my eating habits and lost ten pounds in 2 months on the low dosage. Higher dosages have finally reduced my appetite somewhat, but my endocrinologist and I have decided to stop the increases at 12.5 (15 is the top) and then maybe even reduce, since my appetite is decreasing but the weight loss rate is constant. Because I lost weight doing the same behavior and no drop, I'm quite convinced that something far different than appetite suppressing is also going on (fwiw, I was on phentarmine back in the day and liked it fine). Mounjaro is supposed to increase insulin production and reduce the liver's sugar production, although what that means I dunno. I have no idea what's up with obesity but the idea that it's all about cutting intake and exercise is just stupid. I should have been losing weight for all of the past six years and haven't. Plenty of people eat healthily and are still obese. We're probably the descendants of famine survivors. Anyway, I wrote about it here: https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2022/10/09/weight-loss-and-mounjaro Eliezer Yudkowsky writes: I tried semaglutide and it did nothing to slow rate of weight gain, just produced stomach upset, going up to 2.4mg injectable. I know one other person trying semaglutide and they reported something similar. I wonder if they played some clever games with their choice of patients. My expectation of how the news goes here is a whole lot of people who try semaglutide, maybe after fighting really hard to get on it, and find that it does nothing. That said, I know at least one friend of a friend, if not a friend per se, who claims that semaglutide was their miracle drug. So maybe still worth that hard fight, even if I'm guessing that the real proportion who get nothing out of it will prove to be over 50% in real populations. Further fun fact: Semaglutide comes heavily recommended with diet and exercise and many stern injunctions about that! The actual insert sheet includes a graph for how much weight people lose with and without "lifestyle interventions" added. The two graphs are roughly the same. Lan writes: I wonder about the adoption of the medication, though. I took victoza (=saxenda, but approved for diabetes) and the absence of the desire to eat lead to some unforeseen lifestyle side effects. Given that 5 almonds made me full for the day, I was not interested in having dinner with the family or going out with friends. There is the reality that some restaurants would probably not be happy if you only ordered the smallest appetizer. In addition, alcohol was also very difficult, because the drug slows down gastric emptying and your stomach ends up absorbing alcohol for hours. I got really, really drunk for an entire night from a single glass of wine once. Before taking this drug I had not fully appreciated how much of one's (social) life revolves around food; lunch break with colleagues, dinner with family or friends, drinks on the weekend, a sweet treat, snacks and a movie etc. But once I was not interested in food anymore, combined with the tiredness that comes with eating little, a lot of those activities also lost their appeal. (On the upside, I slept like a log.) Walter Sobchak, Esq writes: I have been taking Wegovy for 14 months. When I began I weighed 275 lbs and my BMI was 39.9. I have hypertension, albeit well controlled by medicines. Diet and exercise phaaahhh. I could eat faster than I could exercise. And no, I eat very little fast food and little candy and soda. I worked with my doctor to be prescribed Wegovy. It was only approved by the FDA in June 2021. My doctor was reluctant because he was unfamiliar with the class of compounds. He does not like to prescribe off label so he was not willing to to start me on Ozempic. But, the FDA solved that problem. I knew to ask for the drug because my daughter was pre-diabetic and had been put on Metformin and Ozempic. She lost 100 lbs. in 2019 and 2020. I started on Wegovy in September 2021. I now weigh 220 and my BMI is 31.5. That represents a 20% reduction in my original weight. 220 was my original goal. To get a BMI under 30 I would have to be under 209. I doubt that I will get there. I am back in 40 in. trousers which I had not been able to wear in 30 years. 220 was my original goal. I have had no major side effects other than constipation. Even that is a little hard to tease out. I am on 7 Rx drugs and at least 5 of them are constipating. I have been pounding Metamucil and Colace for years. I have been able to fill my prescriptions using a GoodRx coupon at $1328 for a box with 4 injectors. A year requires 13 boxes. The total cost for 15 boxes has been about $20,000. I can afford it and it has been worth while. I call it a bargain, the best I've ever had. I understand that it still way too expensive for the American health care system to afford. But given the bonanza size of the market. There will be lots of competition starting with the Lilly's tirzepatide. There are several other pharma's with GLP-1 agonists in development. I am sure that the cost will come down. My doctor tells me that I can expect to stay on semaglutide for the long term. He is proposing that I switch to Ozempic 2 mg for maintenance as I can buy that for less than $1,000 for a four dose pen. My only sadness is that semaglutide wasn't invented 40 years ago when i would have saved me from a lot of damage. But, I am grateful that it exists now and that it has helped my daughter so much. Also from Walter, and I was wondering about this: I was very concerned with the injections before I started Wegovy. My experience is that the injector is fast and almost painless. My pharmacist was important because he showed me how to do it correctly before I started. 7. Tangents That I Find Tedious, But Other People Apparently Really Want To Debate Why can’t people just diet and exercise? (142 comments)
Inline links: here, here, here, here, here, writes, Weight Regain And Cardiometabolic Effects After Withdrawal Of Semaglutide, writes, writes, anorexia, writes, Education Realist, blog, https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2022/10/09/weight-loss-and-mounjaro, writes, writes, from Walter, Why can’t people just diet and exercise?
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Highlights From The Comments On Justice Creep
March 24, 2022 · Original source
This led to a very interesting subthread between kyb vs. Ruben on whether it’s in fact true that animals and very young children understand fairness. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals , this Twitter discussion and the linked papers, and the rest of the conversation.
Inline links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequity_aversion_in_animals, this Twitter discussion, the conversation
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ACX Grants: Project Updates
November 04, 2022 · Original source
19: A Wiki On Forecasting (4/10) Nikos Bosse reports that the wiki exists - you can find it at https://forecasting.wiki/. He says that he has stalled in the past few months as he pursues other projects, but that it has an active community and he is hoping to get back to it soon.
Inline links: https://forecasting.wiki/
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Resubmit And Summarize Your Proposals For Grants ++
January 21, 2022 · Original source
If you're still interested, please give me your paragraph at https://forms.gle/xhVTebsZgSEQ7BpeA . NO TAKEBACKS! NO CHANGES! ONCE IT'S SENT, IT'S SENT FOREVER!
Inline links: https://forms.gle/xhVTebsZgSEQ7BpeA
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https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between March 07, 2024 and March 07, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as "Go to https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs to check this one out"; "go to https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs to see the projects available". It most often appears alongside ACX, ACX Grants, ACX Grants.

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ACX Grants Followup Impact Market
March 07, 2024 · Original source
Despite these minor hiccups, I’m still pretty excited about this. Go to https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs to check this one out.
Inline links: https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs
Again, go to https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs to see the projects available.
Inline links: https://manifund.com/causes/acx-grants-2024?tab=certs
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ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#20: Test Charity Pitch Strategies We will conduct an intervention competition to test which strategies are most effective in convincing people to donate to an effective cause. We (Bastian Jaeger, Josh Lewis, and Noah Costelo) are part of a recently formed team that advises EA organizations on how they can attract more donations. There is little high-quality research on this topic and it is unclear which marketing approaches work best or should be trialed in the field. We will conduct a large-scale experiment to fill this gap. First, we will challenge academics and members of the EA community to submit an intervention that is most effective in generating donations for an effective charity. Next, we will distribute a survey among the participating teams and the EA community in which people are asked to predict the effectiveness of each intervention that was submitted. Finally, we will select the most promising interventions and test their effectiveness in a high-powered, pre-registered, and incentivized experiment. The study will generate actionable insights for various EA organizations looking to optimize their marketing strategy and attract more donations. The survey data will also allow us to test how accurate people are in forecasting the effectiveness of different strategies, by comparing forecasted with actual effectiveness. All data will be made openly available. See https://osf.io/adbwv/ for a more detailed description and you can contact me via b.jaeger@vu.nl.
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ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#21: Thwart Darknet Murder Plots I'm a darknet vigilante hacker, intercepting serious murder plots another the world through a back door into a dark web hitman scam website. Contacting people about their lives being in danger is a legal and ethical minefield, as is working with law enforcement and the media to bring about investigations and arrests. Sometimes people are already dead :( I'm looking to secure funding to: hire more journalists around the world to investigate these murder plots, accelerate software development of the investigation data analysis platform, cover legal costs, and more broadly professionalize the operation into a full blown charitable international investigative operation. Contact through https://pirate.london/
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Highlights From The Comments On IRBs
April 17, 2023 · Original source
2. I have done some small studies on the order of Scotts questionnaire investigation. For these, and even some larger studies, we start by asking the IRB for a waiver of consent - we make the case that there are no risks, etc, and so no consent is needed. We have always recieved the waiver. Searching PubMed turns up many such trials - here's a patient randomized trial of antibiotics where the IRB waived the requirement for patient consent: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36898748/ I am wondering if the author discusses such studies where IRBs waive patient consent.
Inline links: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36898748/
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Highlights From The Comments On Billionaire Replaceability
September 22, 2022 · Original source
I translated it a few months ago and Slime Mold Time Mold graciously hosted it on their blog, where I posted the english version and a short preface: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/05/17/norway-the-once-and-future-georgist-kingdom/
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Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate
March 28, 2024 · Original source
Some people have since claimed that Kirsch’s debate offer isn’t honest - see https://twitter.com/SkepticJonGuy/status/1665071649555906561 and https://twitter.com/SwaledaleMutton/status/1721170306788630713.
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Practically-A-Book Review: Rootclaim $100,000 Lab Leak Debate
March 28, 2024 · Original source
Some people have since claimed that Kirsch’s debate offer isn’t honest - see https://twitter.com/SkepticJonGuy/status/1665071649555906561 and https://twitter.com/SwaledaleMutton/status/1721170306788630713.
Inline links: https://twitter.com/SkepticJonGuy/status/1665071649555906561, https://twitter.com/SwaledaleMutton/status/1721170306788630713
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Your Book Review: Secret Government
July 07, 2023 · Original source
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
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Weyl Contra Me On Technocracy
January 29, 2021 · Original source
2. Given the last point, I fully acknowledge the danger of throwing stones lest I shatter my own glass house. However, leaving aside any blame, I think to make sense of my piece and Scott's response requires a bit of context that clearly he lacked. First, outside some specific blog post I wrote, I am best known as a mechanism designer. To cast me as a general opponent of technology and mechanisms runs against literally everything I am known for and have worked on my whole career. The piece was as much a self-critique and caution about taking the sorts of work I do in the wrong, over-zealous spirit as I had seen many in the rationalist community doing as anything else. Second, if responding to anything directly, it was this review of my book by https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20191533 I think that piece perfectly exemplifies the spirit I am responding to and critiquing. I think we need to avoid that spirit of mechanism design.
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Open Thread 208
January 24, 2022 · Original source
1. Scott describes my position as similar to Eric Drexler's CAIS framework. But Drexler's main focus is modularity, which he claims leads to composite systems that aren't dangerously agentic. Whereas I instead expect unified non-modular AGIs; for more, see https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/HvNAmkXPTSoA4dvzv/comments-on-cais
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Book Review Contest 2022 Winners
September 02, 2022 · Original source
...d lives in New York. You can find his Substack here . - Autumn In The Heavenly Kingdom , reviewed by NM. - Civilization And Its Discontents , reviewed by AWanderingMind. He is an anonymous blogger that blogs at https:/www.awanderingmind.blog/ - From Paralysis To Fatigue , by APsychiatryBlogger. He is a psychiatrist who writes a apsychiatryblogger.substack.com . - Golem XIV , reviewed by Mechanical Mantis. - M...
BruberyCitations.html1 mentions across 1 issues

https://www.congressionalresearch.org/BruberyCitations.html is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between July 07, 2023 and July 07, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as "The following citations are taken from https://www.congressionalresearch.org/BruberyCitations.html". It most often appears alongside Alberto Parmigiani, Ansolabehere, Barack Obama.

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BruberyCitations.html
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Your Book Review: Secret Government
July 07, 2023 · Original source
The following citations are taken from https://www.congressionalresearch.org/BruberyCitations.html
Inline links: https://www.congressionalresearch.org/BruberyCitations.html
www.endohazard.org1 mentions across 1 issues

https://www.endohazard.org/ is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between December 28, 2021 and December 28, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "a link to her website https://www.endohazard.org/". It most often appears alongside 1DaySooner, 2016 Washington carbon tax ballot initiative, @GoodSciProject.

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www.endohazard.org
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ACX Grants Results
December 28, 2021 · Original source
Nell Watson, $1,000, to work on a hazard symbol for endocrine disruptors. Endocrine disruptors are chemicals found in plastics and other artificial products that mimic natural hormones and probably contribute to obesity and other health issues. Eleanor says she is less interested in money than in spreading the word, so I am giving her a token grant and a link to her website https://www.endohazard.org/
Inline links: https://www.endohazard.org/
frequently-asked-questions-about-cder#161 mentions across 1 issues

https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-research-cder/frequently-asked-questions-about-cder#16 is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between August 20, 2021 and August 20, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "They don't exactly say this in https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-research-cder/frequently-asked-questions-about-cder#16". It most often appears alongside ACT/SSC, aducanumab, aducanumab.

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Highlights From The Comments On Aducanumab
August 20, 2021 · Original source
The FDA is forbidden from considering price during the approval process. They don't exactly say this in https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-research-cder/frequently-asked-questions-about-cder#16 but they strongly hint at the fact that price doesn't enter into the evaluation.
Inline links: https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/center-drug-evaluation-and-research-cder/frequently-asked-questions-about-cder#16
residence1 mentions across 1 issues

https://www.morazan.city/residence/ is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 14, 2021 and April 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Taken from https://www.morazan.city/residence/". It most often appears alongside Alaska, America, Amisulpride.

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residence
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Prospectus On Próspera
April 14, 2021 · Original source
Taken from https://www.morazan.city/residence/ . A police car in every pot! I’d originally thought these people were more grounded and less ideological than Próspera - where Próspera’s documentation has wild dreams of 3D property rights and land-backed crypto tokens, Ciudad Morazan’s has page after page diagramming how the sewer system is going to work. Just normal, hard-headed businesspeople doing business, right?
PMC67905881 mentions across 1 issues

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790588/ is a recurring publication 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 "a study about post-operative pain, which I believe was this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790588/". It most often appears alongside Aceso Under Glass, ACX Grant, America.

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PMC6790588
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Highlights From The Comments On Kidney Donation
November 07, 2023 · Original source
About a year and a half ago I seriously considered donating. I went through the screening and got approved to donate. During the screening process a doctor mentioned a study about post-operative pain, which I believe was this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790588/
Inline links: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6790588/
Hubinger et al 2019, Risks From Learned Optimization In Advanced Machine Learning Systems1 mentions across 1 issues

Hubinger et al 2019, Risks From Learned Optimization In Advanced Machine Learning Systems is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 11, 2022 and April 11, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "Our main source will be Hubinger et al 2019, Risks From Learned Optimization In Advanced Machine Learning Systems". It most often appears alongside AI safety curriculum, Alignment Forum, AlphaGo.

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Deceptively Aligned Mesa-Optimizers: It's Not Funny If I Have To Explain It
April 11, 2022 · Original source
So let’s try to understand the incomprehensible meme! Our main source will be Hubinger et al 2019, Risks From Learned Optimization In Advanced Machine Learning Systems.
Inline links: Risks From Learned Optimization In Advanced Machine Learning Systems
Hubinger paper1 mentions across 1 issues

Hubinger paper is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 11, 2022 and April 11, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "The original Hubinger paper". It most often appears alongside AI safety curriculum, Alignment Forum, AlphaGo.

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Hubinger paper
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Deceptively Aligned Mesa-Optimizers: It's Not Funny If I Have To Explain It
April 11, 2022 · Original source
The original Hubinger paper, which speculates about what factors make AIs more or less likely to spin off mesa-optimizers
Inline links: The original Hubinger paper
HuffPost1 mentions across 1 issues

HuffPost is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 12, 2021 and April 12, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "HuffPost doxed the real-life name of an anonymous critic of Islam". It most often appears alongside A Whirlwind Tour Of Ethereum Finance, Agan, Air Force Chapel.

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Links For April
April 12, 2021 · Original source
CNN confronted an old woman on the front lawn of her Florida home for the crime of having used her little Facebook page to promote a pro-Trump event they claimed was engineered by Russians. The same network threatened to expose the identity of another private citizen who created an anti-CNN meme unless he begged and promised not to do it again. HuffPost doxed the real-life name of an anonymous critic of Islam (whose spouted views I find repellent) and triggered a boycott of her family’s business.
Inline links: confronted, threatened to expose, boycott of her family’s business
Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences1 mentions across 1 issues

Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between June 10, 2022 and June 10, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as "in Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences". It most often appears alongside 4chan, Alexander the Great, Caesar.

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Somewhat Contra Marcus On AI Scaling
June 10, 2022 · Original source
DALL-E, “A elderly person's hand, labelled with the text ‘AN ELDERLY PERSON'S HAND’” Lucid dreaming enthusiasts suggest that two of the easiest ways to distinguish dreams from reality is that, in dreams, hands have the wrong number of fingers, and text is garbled and unreadable. This is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence. But even the waking world gives us clues, as Sarah Constantin notes in Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences. Most adults will make GPT-like mistakes (or gloss over such mistakes) unless they’re focusing all their brainpower on an issue. And a 4chan post by someone who claims to have done psych research in prison populations goes further (slightly edited for language and offensiveness): I did IQ research as a grad student, and it involved a lot of this stuff. Did you know that most people (95% with less than 90 IQ) can't understand conditional hypotheticals? For example, "How would you have felt yesterday evening if you hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch?" "What do you mean? I did eat breakfast and lunch." "Yes, but if you had not, how would you have felt?" "Why are you saying that I didn't eat breakfast? I just told you that did." "Imagine that you hadn't eaten it, though. How would you have felt?" "I don't understand the question." It's really fascinating [...] Other interesting phenomenon around IQ involves recursion. For example: "Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue." Most literate people can manage this, especially once you give them an example. "Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. In this story, one of the characters must be describing a story with at least two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue." If you have less than 90 IQ, this second exercise is basically completely impossible. Add a third level ('frame') to the story, and even IQ 100's start to get mixed up with the names and who's talking. Turns out Scheherazade was an IQ test! Time is practically impossible to understand for sub 80s. They exist only in the present, can barely reflect on the past and can't plan for the future at all. Sub 90s struggle with anachronism too. For example, I remember the 80-85s stumbling on logic problems that involved common sense anachronism stuff. For instance: "Why do you think that military strategists in WWII didn't use laptop computers to help develop their strategies?" "I guess they didn't want to get hacked by Nazis". Admittedly you could argue that this is a history knowledge question, not quite a logic sequencing question, but you get the idea. Sequencing is super hard for them to track, but most 100+ have no problem with it, although I imagine that a movie like Memento strains them a little. Recursion was definitely the killer though. Recursive thinking and recursive knowledge seems genuinely hard for people of even average intelligence. I have no proof that this person is who they say they are, but it matches some of my experience giving cognitive exams to patients from low-functioning populations. And it matches Flynn on Luria (who admittedly was approaching IQ from a cultural relativist viewpoint, but one which I think is equally applicable to the current problem). Luria gave IQ-test-like questions to various people across the USSR. He ran into trouble when he got to Uzbek peasants (transcribed, with some changes for clarity, from here): Luria: All bears are white where there is always snow. In Novaya Zemlya there is always snow. What color are the bears there? Peasant: I have seen only black bears and I do not talk of what I have not seen. Luria: What what do my words imply? Peasant: If a person has not been there he can not say anything on the basis of words. If a man was 60 or 80 and had seen a white bear there and told me about it, he could be believed. And: Luria: There are no camels in Germany; the city of B is in Germany; are there camels there or not? Peasant: I don't know, I have never seen German villages. If is a large city, there should be camels there. Luria: But what if there aren't any in all of Germany? Peasant: If B is a village, there is probably no room for camels. And: Luria: What do a chicken and a dog have in common? Peasant: They are not alike. A chicken has two legs, a dog has four. A chicken has wings but a dog doesn't. A dog has big ears and a chicken's are small. Luria: Is there one word you could use for them both? Peasant: No, of course not. Luria: Would the word "animal" fit? Peasant: Yes. And: Luria: What do a fish and a crow have in common? Peasant: A fish — it lives in water. A crow flies. If the fish just lies on top of the water, the crow could peck at it. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can't eat a crow. Luria: Could you use one word for them both? Peasant: If you call them "animals", that wouldn't be right. A fish isn't an animal and a crow isn't either. A crow can eat a fish but a fish can't eat a bird. A person can eat fish but not a crow. What I gather from all of this is that the human mind doesn’t start with some kind of crystalline beautiful ability to solve what seem like trivial and obvious logical reasoning problems. It starts with weaker, lower-level abilities. Then, if you live in a culture that has a strong tradition of abstract thought, and you’re old enough/smart enough/awake enough/concentrating enough to fully absorb and deploy that tradition, then you become good at abstract thought and you can do logical reasoning problems successfully. (Sometimes! If you’re lucky! Linda is a blah blah blah you know the story. Is she more likely to be a bank teller, or a feminist bank teller. When people get this question wrong, do they have a world-model, or not?) Imagine a world where doctors gave different diagnoses based on unrelated contingent features of the encounter like a patient’s gender, their race, or how you phrase the question. What a crazy place that would be! What is the pre-logical function that logic gets knit out of? I think it’s something like predictive pattern-matching. I think the brain starts by predicting arbitrary patterns, builds up more and more layers of abstraction to try to predict those patterns better, and eventually some of those layers cohere into something that looks like formal logic. To put it another way, my brain is in some sense a supercomputer that can outperform the best calculating machines in the world - but also, I have trouble multiplying three digit numbers in my head. The supercomputer is doing something, and then I’m using that something, very lossily, to emulate logical functions like math or formal logic. So when I see GPT, which also runs on a supercomputer, also slowly gaining the ability to multiply two-digit, then three-digit numbers as the supercomputer gets bigger and bigger, I feel a sort of kinship with it. It’s a trash heap of patterns with a hard-won ability to sometimes break out into the clear day of logical reasoning, just like me. IV. I think Marcus knows and agrees with most of this, but I think he thinks of the world-modeling ability as some special rare brain region (maybe the prefrontal cortex?) which is only online part of the time (or maybe can have its performance degrade gracefully). Whereas I think of it as shallower pattern-matching abilities which escalate to deeper and deeper pattern-matching abilities as more and more brainpower becomes available, with world-modeling as one of the deepest (and sure, probably the PFC plays a major role, but not because it has a fundamentally different structure but just because that’s where reinforcement learning stuck the highest-level patterns). Why do I think this? The human brain is pretty plastic. Usually if one part of it dies, another part can take over. This makes me think that the brain area : function correspondence isn’t entirely a function of different structures in different regions (though some of it might be this), but downstream of an originally poorly-differentiated blob of neurons that get trained by the overall predictive structure based on their proximity to various input ports (eg sensory nerves) output ports (eg motor nerves), and other brain areas. (this would also explain why the brain has a pretty consistent area dedicated to reading/writing, even though we haven’t been literate long enough to evolve new literacy-related structures) Deep learning agents are also a poorly-differentiated mass of neurons. As they get inputs and outputs (ie training data) they slowly “evolve”/develop the ability to “recognize” patterns. We don’t know how they do this or what recognition-abilities they’re evolving, except by speculating (the way Marcus and I are doing) based on what kinds of problems they can and can’t solve. It would make sense to me if poorly-differentiated blobs of neurons, when having lots of problems thrown at them, gradually move from developing simpler pattern-recognition programs (eg edge detectors), to more complicated pattern-recognition programs, all the way up to world-modeling, without any of these being hard-coded into the territory. (the brain does have a lot of things hard-coded - ie we’re not blank slates - but its plasticity suggests that the forms of hard-coding we’re talking about here are helpful but not completely necessary for cognition) If this were true, it would mean that as a blob of neurons got bigger, more sophisticated, and saw more training data, it would eventually develop new capabilities that weren’t hard-coded in, and that smaller versions of the same blob didn’t have. One of the really exciting things about GPT-3 was its sudden and unplanned development of new capabilities over GPT-2 (its creators mention “translation, question-answering, and cloze tasks, as well as several tasks that require on-the-fly reasoning or domain adaptation, such as unscrambling words, using a novel word in a sentence, or performing 3-digit arithmetic”). This seems like a good fit for the chimp → human transition, where evolutionary lineages that couldn’t do a bunch of difficult things for the first few hundred million years suddenly became good at those things in an evolutionary eyeblink. The ~5 million chimp/human gap seems like enough time to scale up chimp brains a bit (which definitely happened), but not enough time to invent a fundamentally new architecture. It wouldn’t surprise me if the architecture changed a little during this time, but we’re limited in how fundamental a change we can talk about over that period. I’m not at all sure this is true! I’m honestly close to 50-50 here. Maybe the PFC actually is magic! It just confuses me that Marcus seems to think we’ve ruled out the theory that this kind of scaling is possible, when I feel like we’ve heard plausible arguments on both sides. Nothing we’ve seen in GPTs or any other AI thus far disproves the scaling hypothesis, and a lot of what we’ve seen supports it. So sure, point out that large language models suck at reasoning today. I just don’t see how you can be so sure that they’re still going to suck tomorrow. Lemurs sucked for millions of years, then scaled up a bit and took over the world! V. …is one possible argument. Another possible argument is: language models and other deep learners really aren’t doing the same thing humans do - but whatever, their thing is powerful/effective/dangerous too. Suppose that GPT-X took over the world and killed all humans. Millennia later, some alien archaeologists come and investigate. They conclude that since its training data included Alexander the Great and Caesar, it was just pattern-matching to the kind of things they did (multiplied by a vector representing the difference between ancient and modern times), and GPT-X never demonstrated any true intelligence. So . . . what? I imagine this situation ALL THE TIME and I hate it. I think the impetus behind a lot of the AI risk stuff is that we’re barrelling to a world where AIs have far more than self-driving-car levels of capabilities, while being unpredictable in ways that are a lot like this. The history of the past few decades has been people getting surprised, again and again, at how much AIs can do without being “generally intelligent”. Douglas Hofstadter predicted in 1979 that any AI that could beat a grandmaster at chess would also be able to decide chess was boring and it preferred writing poetry. Instead, we got Deep Blue, so domain-specific it can’t even do so much as play checkers. Worse, now we have AIs that can switch between writing poetry and playing chess, and it still seems like a clever parlor trick rather than anything like real intelligence. I think basically nobody predicted this: narrow AI has won victories beyond past generations’ imagination. (cf. Nostalgebraist’s Human Psycholinguists: A Critical Appraisal) So even if GPTs aren’t a step on the path towards some sort of human-like AGI thing, I have no idea where they’ll end up. Replacing humans at all jobs? Writing novels? Taking over the world? If this seems crazy to you, “solve protein folding” sounded crazy ten years ago, and they already did that! At this point I will basically believe anything. VI. So I’m not going to take Marcus’ bet that GPT-4 will be perfect (as if anything ever is!). But here are some things I do believe, with confidence levels: At some point before 2030, someone will come out with a deep-learning-based language model which is significantly better than the current state of the art, by Gary Marcus’ admission (97%)
Inline links: hands have the wrong number of fingers, text is garbled and unreadable, Humans Who Are Not Concentrating Are Not General Intelligences, 4chan post, here, blah blah blah, https://twitter.com/GaryMarcus/status/1534887585759100930, a patient’s gender, their race, how you phrase the question, predictive pattern-matching, prefrontal cortex, mention, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!M9E6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85fd2e4d-c51e-4820-a9a2-6f79970026cb_600x368.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!_D9T!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5cb652e3-381b-488d-a6a6-f1155f7ff557_586x194.png, writing poetry, playing chess, Human Psycholinguists: A Critical Appraisal
Humble Pie1 mentions across 1 issues

Humble Pie is a recurring publication 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 "Robert Benkeser (writes Humble Pie ) says". It most often appears alongside 19th century, 21st century, Africa.

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Humble Pie
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Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
April 06, 2022 · Original source
5: Robert Benkeser (writes Humble Pie) says:
Inline links: Robert Benkeser, Humble Pie
Hustler1 mentions across 1 issues

Hustler is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 20, 2022 and April 20, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as ""I grew up when porn meant Penthouse and Hustler magazines."". It most often appears alongside A.E. Waite, Adlerian psychology, AL.

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Hustler
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Highlights From The Comments On "Sadly, Porn"
April 20, 2022 · Original source
But was everyone in my generation experiencing some memetic desire, something different from today because we consumed different porn? I grew up when porn meant Penthouse and Hustler magazines. You spent a lot of time looking at a picture of a hairy pussy. Did that create the desire I felt for my female classmates? It seems implausible, yet I don't know how to rule it out.
Hypertrophy Rest Times: How Long Should You Rest Between Sets1 mentions across 1 issues

Hypertrophy Rest Times: How Long Should You Rest Between Sets is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 1 times across 1 issues between April 07, 2021 and April 07, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as "Hypertrophy Rest Times: How Long Should You Rest Between Sets at outlift.com". It most often appears alongside academic science, Ahtiainen et al., Altmetric.

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Metis And Bodybuilders
April 07, 2021 · Original source
The #2 result was Hypertrophy Rest Times: How Long Should You Rest Between Sets at outlift.com. It says:
Inline links: Hypertrophy Rest Times: How Long Should You Rest Between Sets