Astral Codex Ten

Bryan

5 min read

Bryan

Article

Bryan is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between June 29, 2023 and October 13, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Bryan mentions how I have already addressed his fork”; “I emailed Bryan and asked him how much time he spent on childcare”; “Bryan and his team are working on open-source software”. It most often appears alongside Bryan Caplan, Caplan, Scott.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: June 29, 2023
  • Last seen: October 13, 2025

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.

Sure, Whatever, Let's Try Another Contra Caplan On Mental Illness
June 29, 2023 · Original source
Bryan Caplan thinks he’s debating me about mental illness. He’s not. Sometimes he posts some thoughts he has been having about mental illness, with or without a sentence saying “this is part of my debate with Scott”. Then I write a very long essay explaining why he is wrong. Then he ignores it, and has more thoughts, and again writes them up with “this is part of my debate with Scott”. I would not describe this as debating. Call it unibating, or monobating, or another word ending in -bating which is less polite but as far as I can tell equally appropriate.
Inline links: a very long essay explaining why he is wrong
Although he doesn’t answer my rebuttals, he does diligently respond to various unrelated posts of mine, explaining why they must mean I am secretly admitting he was right all along. When I wrote about the scourge of witches stealing people’s penises, Caplan spun it as me secretly admitting he was right all along about mental illness. Sometimes I feel like this has gone a bit too far - when I announced I had gotten married, Caplan spun it as me secretly admitting he was right all along about mental illness.
Inline links: the scourge of witches stealing people’s penises, spun it as, spun it as
Let it be known to all that I am never secretly admitting Bryan Caplan is right about mental illness. There is no further need to speculate that I am doing this. If you want to know my position vis-a-vis Bryan Caplan and mental illness, you are welcome to read my four thousand word essay on the subject, Contra Contra Contra Caplan On Psych. You will notice that the title clearly telegraphs that it is about Bryan Caplan and mental illness, and that (if you count up the contras) I am against him. If that ever changes, rest assured I will telegraph it in something titled equally clearly.
Inline links: Contra Contra Contra Caplan On Psych
Book Review: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids
May 15, 2025 · Original source
Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids is like the Bible. You already know what it says. You’ve already decided whether you believe or not. Do you really have to read it all the way through?
Inline links: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids
Zick & Bryant point out that a large portion of childcare time is “secondary childcare” while doing something else. This could be anything from “you’re sneaking a peek at your phone in the middle of babysitting” to “you’re napping, but your teenager is downstairs and can wake you if he needs you”.
Inline links: Zick & Bryant
Bryan worries that most parents refuse to do this because they think the world is less safe than in their parents’ and grandparents’ generation. He says that’s wrong. Modern death rates for children are a quarter what they were in the golden age of outside kids. Most of the improvement comes from less disease, which is only slightly relevant to this question. But deaths from accidents (including car accidents) are down even more (5x!). Deaths from homicide are up slightly, but realistically it doesn’t matter given how rare homicides were to begin with (and most child homicide victims are unfortunately killed by family members).
ACX Grants Results 2025
October 13, 2025 · Original source
Bryan Davis, $50K, for software tools that speed FDA applications. Critics often focus on the expensive studies required for FDA approval, but those at least have a public interest benefit; a less-well-known hurdle is the logistics of the application itself, which use “an opaque, Adobe-only file in a deprecated format that resists integration into collaborative workflows”; most companies hire expensive consultants to explain the software to them rather than risk ruinous errors. Bryan and his team are working on open-source software that integrates with the FDA’s preferred format and automate the “application consultant” role. Our grant pays for their MVP.