Astral Codex Ten

Pepsi

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Pepsi

Article

Pepsi is a recurring brand in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 6 times across 6 issues between August 25, 2021 and December 04, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “If you’re otherwise ambivalent between companies (eg Coke vs. Pepsi)”; “it always reminded me of that one really pretentious Pepsi logo”; “chatbot run by Pepsi trying to make me buy more Pepsi products”. It most often appears alongside United States, Coke, Google.

Metadata

  • Category: Brands
  • Mention count: 6
  • Issue count: 6
  • First seen: August 25, 2021
  • Last seen: December 04, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Carbon Costs Quantified
August 25, 2021 · Original source
If you’re otherwise ambivalent between companies (eg Coke vs. Pepsi), patronize ones that try hard to reduce or offset their carbon footprint.
Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture
October 04, 2021 · Original source
I used to hate this kind of stuff - it always reminded me of that one really pretentious Pepsi logo. But I recently visited the Sagrada Familia Museum, and it had quotes from Gaudi’s notebook, and he sounds exactly like this. So maybe it started with brilliant architects actually having thoughts like this, and then everyone else had to fake it in order to keep up?
Inline links: that one really pretentious Pepsi logo
Mostly Skeptical Thoughts On The Chatbot Propaganda Apocalypse
February 02, 2023 · Original source
But if I learned that my Internet friend who I’d talked to every day for a year was actually a chatbot run by Pepsi trying to make me buy more Pepsi products, I would never buy another can of Pepsi in my life.
Sure, Whatever, Let's Try Another Contra Caplan On Mental Illness
June 29, 2023 · Original source
Liking Pepsi more than Coke. You could think of this as a preference for drinking Pepsi over drinking Coke - or as an internal state marked by a strong repulsion to Coke plus a strong attraction to Pepsi.
Liking Pepsi more than Coke. You could think of this as a preference for drinking Pepsi over drinking Coke - or as an internal state marked by a strong repulsion to Coke plus a strong attraction to Pepsi. In the first two situations, it’s much more natural to use internal-state language, and in the sixth, it’s much more natural to use preference language. The middle three aren’t obvious, which is why we’re having this debate. The Buddhists say desire is suffering, and sometimes this is literally true. An itch is the clearest example; it’s in an almost perfect superposition between raw suffering and pure desire (to scratch yourself). Is it a preference or a constraint? It’s both - a preference to scratch one’s self, and a constraint to be forced to feel suffering if you don’t scratch yourself. While the person may choose whether or not to scratch themselves, they cannot choose whether or not to feel the suffering. Put a gun to their head and say “stop feeling suffering when you don’t scratch yourself” and they will have no choice but to die. It’s possible, although bizarre, to think of normal preferences like the preference for Pepsi over Coke this way. You could say “this person has the constraint that they will feel suffering when they are forced to drink Coke instead of Pepsi”. It’s not very useful. But it’s possible. Whether it’s more useful to think of any given situation as a preference or a constraint depends on things like whether you can easily satisfy the preference, whether the preference is ego-syntonic or ego-dystonic, and whether it seems normal by social standards. Consider Prader-Willi syndrome, caused by damage to a region of chromosome 15. Symptoms tend to include short limbs, mental retardation, and extreme hunger. Here’s how the NYT describes this last problem (content warning for body horror): One result is a heightened, permanent sensation of hunger. “They describe it as physical pain,” Jennifer Miller, an endocrinologist at the University of Florida who treats children with Prader-­Willi, told me. “They feel like they’re going to die if they don’t get food. They’re starving.” Parents must lock their pantries, refrigerators and trash cans, and their children frequently lie and steal to get something to eat. They have been known to memorize credit-card numbers and secretly phone for delivery, use a drill to remove the door from a locked refrigerator and break into a neighbor’s garage and eat, uncooked, an entire frozen pizza. And here’s how it describes one particular patient’s last moments: In 2004, Peter and Gayle Girard held their annual Christmas Eve party for family members at their home in Orlando, Fla. Before dinner, they set out chips, vegetables and dip, shrimp, a bowl of punch and sodas. Their 17-year-old son, Jeremy, had Prader-­Willi, and they often hosted events at their home so he could join in while they kept an eye on him — as they believed they were doing that night. But the next morning, Jeremy’s belly was distended, and he complained of pain. At the emergency room, doctors pumped his stomach, but his condition worsened. A day passed before surgeons discovered that his stomach, which had been distended long enough to lose blood flow and become septic, had ruptured. Jeremy died that night. Only afterward did the Girards learn that other family members saw him eating more than he should have but didn’t alert them. I insist on calling Prader-Willi syndrome a disease, and a serious one, even though the extreme hunger of Prader-Willi is continuous with/shades into the normal hunger where I would like a slice of pizza. My preference for pizza is so easily satisfied that it rarely bothers me. It’s ego syntonic - I am fine with being the sort of person who likes pizza. It’s socially normal - everyone likes pizza. It doesn’t cause much trouble - it wouldn’t improve my life much if I stopped wanting pizza. So I think of it as a preference. If it were otherwise - the extreme hunger of someone with Prader-Willi - it would be more natural to talk about it as a compulsion, a sense of extreme pain inflicted on me when I wasn’t eating enough, something ontologically similar to a stomach flu that also produces extreme pain in the abdominal region. IV. None of this really addresses Caplan’s most recent post, which is, I think, a much worse point. His current post says that either you have to believe that mental illness doesn’t exist and is just voluntary preferences which are stigmatized by society, or you have to believe that homosexuality is objectively a mental illness. Not only are each of these incoherent ideas, they’re not even the same incoherent idea! You could easily accept one of the incoherent ideas and reject the other! Consider the following three positions: Down’s Syndrome is a terrible disease that inflicts vast suffering on its victims. Also it inflicts suffering on society by making people unproductive. We should be very angry about this, and do everything we can do make people with Down’s Syndrome normal.
Inline links: Here’s how the NYT describes
In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
November 28, 2023 · Original source
Gotten 3,000 companies including Pepsi, Kelloggs, CVS, and Whole Foods to commit to selling low-cruelty meat.
Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House
December 04, 2024 · Original source
It must have been incredibly jarring and impressive, like an embassy from the future. Imagine that you’re Pepsi, Coke just built the glass building, and you’re still in the brick building. Doesn’t seem great.