Astral Codex Ten

Elvis

8 min read

Elvis

Article

Elvis is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between May 20, 2021 and October 17, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “Train it on Elvis, then make it write new songs on his style”; “like Elvis, he won’t even be able to die”; “Fact check: was Elvis Jewish?“. It most often appears alongside China, Civil War, facebook.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: May 20, 2021
  • Last seen: October 17, 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.

Links For May
May 20, 2021 · Original source
4: I’m very late here, but you might still enjoy OpenAI’s Jukebox, which is basically GPT-3 for music. Train it on Elvis, then make it write new songs on his style. Or feed it the first few verses of Never Gonna Give You Up and make it guess what the rest of the song sounds like. Or just have Celine Dion sing a song about being a music generation algorithm produced by OpenAI.
Inline links: Jukebox, new songs on his style, make it guess what the rest of the song sounds like., sing a song about being a music generation algorithm produced by OpenAI
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.
Inline links: complicated objection
Links For August 2023
August 09, 2023 · Original source
13: Fact check: was Elvis Jewish? Snopes says yes, but I’m more convinced by this argument for no. [update: commenter TheGenealogian agrees no] 14: Is GPT-4 getting worse? This isn’t absurd; some people claim OpenAI has simplified the model to cut costs (though OpenAI denies this). Matei Zaharia argues yes, but I’m more convinced by the AI Snake Oil blog’s argument for no (h/t Stuart Ritchie). 15: Vox has a good piece about AI company Anthropic. I would quibble that they’re not the only safety-focused or EA-affiliated org, and we have yet to see how truly safety-focused or altruistic any AI company can be while continuing to be an AI company. But granting that it’s all a matter of degree, I agree the degree seems pretty high for them. And NYT also has an Anthropic article. 16: Eliezer bets $150,000 to $1,000 against UFOs being aliens, and gives the same argument I would - it’s unlikely that any civilization advanced enough to travel through space would still be primitive enough to use macroscopic, biologically-piloted craft that sometimes crash. 17: More nails in the coffin of growth mindset. “When examining the highest-quality evidence (6 studies, N = 13,571), the effect was nonsignificant: d = 0.02, 95% CI = [−0.06, 0.10]. We conclude that apparent effects of growth mindset interventions on academic achievement are likely attributable to inadequate study design, reporting flaws, and bias.” I think the older, very-high-effect-size studies were clearly terrible, but I’d still like to look further into the newer, small-but-significant-effect-size-that-makes-a-difference-across-large-groups studies and how they went wrong. 18: Previous work showed that after adjusting for selection bias, “what college you go to doesn’t matter” for average earnings. I was always skeptical of this - are all those rich people sending their kids to Ivies for no reason? Now Chetty, Deming, and Friedman find that: Attending an Ivy-Plus college instead of the average highly selective public flagship institution increases students’ chances of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 60%, nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school, and triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm. Ivy-Plus colleges have much smaller causal effects on average earnings, reconciling our findings with prior work. One of the authors, David Deming, has a Substack here where he explains the study in more depth. Like everyone else, this study also finds that rich people are using “holistic admissions” and the de-emphasis of standardized testing to gain an advantage: H/T Nate Silver, who writes: “Not sure how you can look at this data, ostensibly be interested in either meritocracy or equality, and want to move away from standardized tests. It's the subjective measures that are most slanted in favor of the rich kids.” Cf. Erik Hoel. 19: From @data_depot: “In 2002, 48% of Americans said "the govt is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves." 52% said "it is run for the benefit of all people." In 2020, 84% said the govt is run by a few big interests. Only 16% said it is run for the benefit of all people.” Source seems to be here, which reveals 2002 was a local peak in trust in government; maybe because of post-9/11 unity, but even 2000 was 34%, much better than our current 16%. My first instinct is to attribute this to a rise in vulgar Marxism, in the sense of everyone (even conservatives) now being trained to think in terms of an elite class screwing over everyone else (cf my review of Manufacturing Consent). But there was a previous low of 19% in 1994, which doesn’t seem to correspond to anything especially bad going on in the US, so I don’t know. 20: AskReddit: Medical professionals - have you ever had a patient so lacking in common sense you wondered how they made it so far? Linking this because there’s lots of evidence showing that education (as a proxy for intelligence?) is associated with increased life expectancy, and this thread gives you a visceral appreciation of why that might be. 21: The Fall Of [programming help site] Stack Overflow: Looks like a weak downward trend since 2021 I can’t explain, plus a strong downward trend since 11/2022 which must be from ChatGPT. In case you were wondering how AI was affecting programming! (update: probably false, see here, though see also here for evidence of smaller but real decline) 22: This month in culture war topics: London’s Pride parade featured a convicted kidnapper/torturer/rapist/sadist as a speaker, who advocated that anti-trans people should be “punch[ed] in the f**king face” ; the organizers say they stand by her.
Inline links: yes, this argument for no, agrees no, argues yes, argument for no, Stuart Ritchie, Anthropic, an Anthropic article, the same argument I would, More nails in the coffin of growth mindset, Previous work, Chetty, Deming, and Friedman, has a Substack here where he explains the study in more depth, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!VcFl!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4f08bfe5-ab31-453a-896a-54ef385da7d2_706x900.jpeg, Nate Silver, Erik Hoel, @data_depot, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!S4g-!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff18fa4d5-9ba9-4b86-a058-46246bfc8a4f_536x611.png, here, my review of, have you ever had a patient so lacking in common sense you wondered how they made it so far?, The Fall Of [programming help site] Stack Overflow, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!E7XK!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff8ba7c05-7dbb-4318-9da2-87b00d738ed7_649x518.png, probably false, see here, here, featured, stand by her
Book Review: Deep Utopia
October 17, 2024 · Original source
More generally, there must be human lives that are in the sweet spot between pleasure and difficult-striving-dramatic-excitement. The average life in history probably doesn’t make it. Even the most exciting lives, like Napoleon’s, probably aren’t perfect. And many lives are wasted on their subjects; what if Napoleon and Elvis both would have had preferred to be the other? If non-utopia is awful but utopia is boring, can we figure out some kind of sweet spot in the middle? Can we have an archipelago of different utopia levels, for people who prefer different points on the spectrum? Would varying your utopia level be a richer and more interesting life than staying in any one position for too long? Is it more fun to bliss out on superultrawireheading after a grueling stint in 18th-century France? Is it more fun to be Napoleon if you have faith in a silicon Heaven ahead of you?
Inline links: an archipelago