Pretoria
Article
Pretoria is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between April 13, 2022 and September 13, 2023. The archive places it in contexts such as “Griesel studied… in Johannesburg and Pretoria”; “in 41 decompression babies in Johannesburg and Pretoria”; “engineering company in Pretoria, South Africa”. It most often appears alongside Elon Musk, South Africa, Abe Lincoln.
Metadata
- Category: Places
- Mention count: 2
- Issue count: 2
- First seen: April 13, 2022
- Last seen: September 13, 2023
Appears In
Related Pages
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- Elon Musk (2 shared issues)
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- South Africa (2 shared issues)
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- Abe Lincoln (1 shared issues)
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- acetaminophen (1 shared issues)
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- ADHD (1 shared issues)
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- AI alignment movement (1 shared issues)
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- Ambras (1 shared issues)
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- Andrew Beal (1 shared issues)
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- Android (1 shared issues)
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- Antarctic (1 shared issues)
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- anti-apartheid party (1 shared issues)
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- Arthur Jensen (1 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.
In 1974, Griesel studied the visual evoked response (sometimes considered a useful measure of infant intelligence) in 41 decompression babies in Johannesburg and Pretoria, and found no difference from a matched control.
Inline links: Griesel
These studies seem unanimous, and Cochrane is usually excellent, so I can’t recommend decompression. I do have one tiny remaining note of uncertainty, which is: all of this abdominal decompression research was done in Johannesburg and Pretoria between 1968 and 1974. Elon Musk was born in Pretoria in 1971. I’ve tried to find information on whether or not his mother was a test subject, but come up blank. I assume someone would have mentioned it if she were.
Musk’s father Errol ran a successful engineering company in Pretoria, South Africa. For a while he also represented the anti-apartheid party in the city council. His net worth was probably in the single-digit to low-double-digit millions.