Biden administration
Article
Biden administration is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 9 times across 9 issues between March 15, 2021 and November 26, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt”; “I will still be recording predictions about the Biden administration”; “Kudos to the Biden administration, which has already ordered 10 million courses of Paxlovid”. It most often appears alongside Israel, Matt Yglesias, Metaculus.
Metadata
- Category: Organizations
- Mention count: 9
- Issue count: 9
- First seen: March 15, 2021
- Last seen: November 26, 2025
Appears In
- Mantic Monday: Mantic Matt Y
- Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions
- When Will The FDA Approve Paxlovid?
- Predictions For 2022
- Who Predicted 2022?
- Links For July 2023
- In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
- Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds
- Why AI Safety Won’t Make America Lose The Race With China
Related Pages
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- Israel (4 shared issues)
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- Matt Yglesias (4 shared issues)
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- Metaculus (4 shared issues)
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- Nancy Pelosi (4 shared issues)
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- OpenAI (4 shared issues)
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- Russia (4 shared issues)
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- Twitter (4 shared issues)
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- Biden (3 shared issues)
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- China (3 shared issues)
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- Democrats (3 shared issues)
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- Donald Trump (3 shared issues)
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- FDA (3 shared issues)
External Links
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.
1. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate races 2. The same party wins both Senate races in Georgia 3. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating higher than his disapproval rating 4. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating above 50% 5. US GDP growth in 2021 is the fastest of any year of the 21st century 6. The year-end unemployment rate is below 5 percent 7. The year-end unemployment rate is above 4 percent 8. Lakers win the NBA championship 9. Joe Biden ends the year as president 10. Nancy Pelosi sets a definitive retirement schedule 11. A vacancy arises on the Supreme Court 12. The EU ends the year with more confirmed Covid-19 deaths than the US 13. Substack will still be around 14. People will still be writing takes asking if Substack is really sustainable 15. Apple releases new iMacs powered by Apple silicon 16. Apple does not release a new Mac Pro powered by Apple silicon 17. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 2 percent 18. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 3 percent 19. Lloyd Austin not confirmed as Defense Secretary 20. No federal tax increases are enacted 21. Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt 22. United States rejoins JCPOA and Iran resumes compliance 23. Israel and Saudi Arabia establish official diplomatic relations 24. US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs 25. Slow Boring will exceed 10,000 paid members
1. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Georgia Senate races (60%) 2. The same party wins both Senate races in Georgia (95%) 3. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating higher than his disapproval rating (70%) [83%] 4. Joe Biden ends the year with his approval rating above 50% (60%) [60%] 5. US GDP growth in 2021 is the fastest of any year of the 21st century (80%) [84%] 6. The year-end unemployment rate is below 5 percent (80%) 7. The year-end unemployment rate is above 4 percent (80%) 8. Lakers win the NBA championship (25%) [25%] 9. Joe Biden ends the year as president (95%) [96%] 10. Nancy Pelosi sets a definitive retirement schedule (60%) 11. A vacancy arises on the Supreme Court (70%) [50%] 12. The EU ends the year with more confirmed Covid-19 deaths than the US (60%) [80%] 13. Substack will still be around (95%) 14. People will still be writing takes asking if Substack is really sustainable (80%) 15. Apple releases new iMacs powered by Apple silicon (90%) [84%] 16. Apple does not release a new Mac Pro powered by Apple silicon (70%) [53%] 17. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 2 percent (70%) 18. Monthly year-on-year core CPI growth does not go above 3 percent (90%) 19. Lloyd Austin not confirmed as Defense Secretary (60%) 20. No federal tax increases are enacted (95%) 21. Biden administration unilaterally relieves some but not all student debt (80%) 22. United States rejoins JCPOA and Iran resumes compliance (80%) 23. Israel and Saudi Arabia establish official diplomatic relations (70%) [38%] 24. US and China reach agreement to lift Trump-era tariffs (70%) 25. Slow Boring will exceed 10,000 paid members (70%) [75%]
Overall I approximately quadrupled my original $220 investment into about $900. I plan to take out all the money I won except about $1000 and see how much I end up with at the end of the first Biden administration.
I currently intend to blog about current-events-style politics less than before but still a non-zero amount, as an average of those considerations. You might have already noticed this. I will still be recording predictions about the Biden administration, and depending on how I do, I might increase or decrease the current-events-blogging for the next administration.
PS: Kudos to the Biden administration, which has already ordered 10 million courses of Paxlovid, effective immediately, to be distributed as soon as the FDA gives them permission. This is great. But all their initiative will go to waste unless the FDA can do its part quickly too.
Inline links: has already ordered
VOX PREDICTIONS 1. Democrats will lose their majorities in the House and Senate (95%): SELL TO 90% 2. Inflation in the US will average under three percent (80%): HOLD 3. Unemployment in the US will fall below four percent by November (80%): SELL to 60% if they mean in November, otherwise hold 4. Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade (65%): SELL to 60% 5. Stephen Breyer will retire from the Supreme Court (55%): N/A 6. Emmanuel Macron will be reelected president of France (65%): HOLD 7. Jair Bolsonaro will be reelected president of Brazil (55%): SELL to 50% 8. Bongbong Marcos will be elected president of the Philippines (55%): BUY to 60% 9. Rebels will not capture Addis Ababa (55%): N/A 10. China will not reopen its borders in the first half of 2022 (80%): BUY to 90% 11. Chinese GDP will continue to grow for the first 3/4 of the year (95%): SELL to 90% 12. 20% of US kids between 0.5 and 5 years old will get at least one COVID vaccine by year's end (65%): HOLD 13. WHO will designate another Variant Of Concern by year's end (75%): HOLD 14. 12 billion COVID shots will be given out globally by 11/2022 (80%): HOLD 15. At least one country will have less than 10% of people vaccinated with two shots by 11/2022 (70%): BUY to 95% 16. A psychedelic drug will be decriminalized/legalized in at least one more US state (75%): HOLD 17. AI will discover a new drug promising enough for clinical trials (85%): HOLD 18. US govt will not renew the ban on funding gain-of-function research (60%): HOLD 19. The Biden administration will set the social cost of carbon at $100/ton or more (70%): HOLD 20. 2022 will be warmer than 2021 (80%): HOLD 21. Kenneth Branagh's Belfast will win Best Picture (55%): SELL to 30% 22. Norway will win the most medals at the 2022 Winter Olympics (60%): HOLD
Matt Yglesias scored his question “Will Nancy Pelosi announce plans to retire?” as TRUE, but technically she only announced that she would retire as Democratic leader, not as a Congresswoman, so the question is false as written. Vox Future Perfect scored their question “Will the Biden administration set a social cost of carbon at > $100” as PARTIALLY RIGHT, because they announced plans to maybe do this, but they have not done it yet and the question is false as written. We originally resolved “Will a Biden administration Cabinet-level official resign?” as FALSE, but Eric Lander, a science advisor who resigned, was technically Cabinet-level and the question as written is true. These changes didn’t affect headline results much, but they shifted some people up or down a few places, and shifted a few people with very high confidence on these questions up or down a few dozen places.
Inline links: who resigned
9: Related: How Government Bullying Shapes The Rules Of Social Media: Jawboning Against Speech. I think this is pretty important - people like to talk as if social media censorship is organic and corporate, but in fact the government has lots of techniques for strong-arming companies into getting what they want. As long as this happens quietly and implicitly, they can make a mockery of constitutional protections without anyone being able to call them on it (there needs to be a snappy term for this; this article suggests “jawboning”). I appreciate the What Is To Be Done section. Relevant breaking news: judge issues preliminary injunction banning Biden administration officials from meeting social media site representatives.
Helped (probably, I have no secret knowledge) the Biden administration pass what they called "the strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust.”
Red arrow represents the 2024 election. Crypto titans had many valid complaints. The Biden administration’s crypto regulation policy was arbitrary and punitive, and occasionally skirted the border of illegality. It genuinely harmed innovation and held back important industries like remittances, digital payments, and (of course) prediction markets. As a crypto bag-holder myself, I can’t complain about all the beautiful verdant green on the chart above. Still, winning this hard is maybe a little humiliating. Does the government really need a strategic Bitcoin reserve? Should it really release economic data on three different blockchains? Must we really have a twelve foot high golden statue of Trump holding a Bitcoin in front of the US Capitol? We’re exploring bold new territory here. Give me your degens, your risk-seeking. Your huddled masses, yearning to bet free. IV. …and we’ll be exploring it a whole lot more, very soon. Last month, the AI industry announced a new SuperPAC called “Leading The Future” (a dumb name, but, in their defense, “AIPAC” was already taken). They start with $200 million in seed funding, led by a $50 million donation by Andreessen Horowitz, and another $50 million from OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman. (Why Brockman and not Altman, or OpenAI as a corporation? Because most people don’t know who Brockman is, so this keeps OpenAI’s hands clean. I imagine Altman going into a meeting, pointing at Brockman, and saying “I’m famous, you’re not, please cough up $50 million of your own money for the cause.”) On the same day, Meta announced their own SuperPAC, Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across (META) California. Why two PACs? Opinions differ; one person told me that it lets the general PAC avoid the negative associations that Facebook has gathered over the years, but the Verge thinks that maybe everyone else in tech hates Zuckerberg too much to work with him. Meta has committed to spending “tens of millions”. Most likely, the new PAC will use the playbook pioneered by crypto: destroy any candidate who dares support regulations on AI, by funding attack ads that don’t mention AI in any way and, at best, briefly mention the name “Leading The Future”. Just the Andreessen/Brockman SuperPAC, without any help from Meta, is already twice as rich as AIPAC. Their existence sends a clear message: we are going to crush any politician who tries to regulate AI. V. …unless someone stops them. Leading The Future still only has 2% as much money as the almond industry. The tiny scale of US political spending is dangerous insofar as it means that one or two billionaires willing to go all-in can distort the national landscape. But it also makes it possible to oppose them. Certainly if you can get one or two billionaires of your own - but it might even be within the range of a committed group of ordinary people. Not waiters and bartenders, maybe. But if safe AI supporters were as committed as Israel supporters, they could probably make something happen. For a long time, the AI safety movement has underperformed politically. Effective altruism includes thousands of well-off people committed to spending 10% of their income on improving the world. If a thousand of them gave $7K each to political candidates, that would be $7 million of campaign-finance-compliant hard money - about as much as anyone can gather for anything. Hard money buys more influence per dollar than soft money, so this could be a big deal. All you’d need is the right people to coordinate it. So far, this has been slow going. Partly it’s because in the early 2020s, people affiliated with FTX took point on this effort; when FTX imploded, it not only took its incipient political infrastructure with it, but poisoned the well for future efforts. And partly it’s because EAs overlearned the lesson of the early 2010s, when we spoke out against AI capabilities efforts so “effectively” that a bunch of people thought “wow, AI capabilities companies must be a really big deal, maybe I should found one!”; the resulting institutional scar tissue biased us towards staying quiet about our concerns. Still, I wouldn’t be writing this if the consultants and activists weren’t gearing up for a bigger fight. They asked me to include some action items for readers who want to participate: Email aisafetypolitics@gmail.com to connect to the people organizing this effort and talk with them about what you can do, including potential future donation opportunities.
Inline links: strategic Bitcoin reserve?, release economic data on three different blockchains?, a twelve foot high golden statue of Trump holding a Bitcoin in front of the US Capitol?, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!eZlq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faa435a03-c505-4414-8be8-4a3b76dfad12_738x612.png, announced a new SuperPAC, Mobilizing Economic Transformation Across, the Verge thinks
Mr. Sacks disliked another Biden administration rule that controlled A.I. chip sales around the world. He also questioned Washington’s consensus that selling A.I. chips abroad would be bad for the United States.
Backlinks
- Bongbong Marcos
- Brands
- Concepts: J
- Concepts: T
- Elizabeth Warren
- Eric Neyman
- Events: N
- In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism
- Kevin Esvelt
- KKK
- Links For July 2023
- Mantic Monday: Grading My Trump Predictions
- Mantic Monday: Mantic Matt Y
- Music
- Nancy Pelosi
- Organizations: B
- Organizations: K
- Organizations: L
- Organizations: M
- Organizations: P
- Pause AI
- People: A
- People: B
- People: J
- People: L
- People: R
- People: S
- People: Z
- Places: R
- Places: U
- poverty
- Predictions For 2022
- Publications: T
- Publications: W
- Rwanda
- Sam Marks
- Slow Boring
- Tech PACs Are Closing In On The Almonds
- US Senate
- When Will The FDA Approve Paxlovid?
- Who Predicted 2022?
- Why AI Safety Won’t Make America Lose The Race With China
- Yglesias