Astral Codex Ten

LinkedIn

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LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is a recurring publication in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between February 03, 2022 and October 22, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “https://www.linkedin.com/in/guptaro”; “and on LinkedIn”; “here’s their LinkedIn page”. It most often appears alongside ACX, Bitcoin, Elon Musk.

Metadata

  • Category: Publications
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: February 03, 2022
  • Last seen: October 22, 2025

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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.

ACX Grants ++: The First Half
February 03, 2022 · Original source
#18: Philanthropic Messaging Strategies Using Evolutionary Ideas I’m Ro Gupta. Inspired initially by https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/06/what-is-the-greatest-good/395768/, I’d like to commission research that explores if and how Kin Selection and Hamilton’s Rule [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection#Hamilton%27s_rule] can be applied in mass communications for altruistic giving of humans in modern times. The goal is to uncover alternative messaging strategies that help subjects transcend blood-thicker-than-water hardwiring, based on underlying evolutionary biology theory – e.g. kin recognition, kin altruism – that ultimately serves to increase wealthy countries’ proportion of altruistic giving to less genetically familiar yet higher need/ impact populations, e.g. those of the Global South. [Estimates suggest around 5% of US giving currently goes to international causes.] I believe I have the right combination of academic, professional, NGO and global experience [https://www.linkedin.com/in/guptaro] to lead this, and access to a high quality network of research and communications experts to match grants to. I estimate a robust synthesis of existing work could be done for the low tens of thousands of USD, while a primary research phase one could be substantively scoped for the high tens to one hundred thousand USD. If of interest to be a part of this as a researcher, funder or general thought partner, please get in touch: http://www.rocrastination.com/contact/.
Book Review Contest 2023 Winners
September 15, 2023 · Original source
Safe Enough, reviewed by Seth Miller. Seth is a chemist who consults on emerging technologies around energy storage, carbon capture, and other climate solutions. He periodically blogs on the intersection of science, technology, and business at perspicacity.xyz and perspicacity.substack.com, and on LinkedIn.
Inline links: Safe Enough, perspicacity.xyz, perspicacity.substack.com, LinkedIn
My Antichrist Lecture
October 22, 2025 · Original source
Revelation 9:16: “And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.” These are all the same Greek word, ἀριθμός. None of them mean a secret mysterious number that symbolizes their identity. They all mean something like “headcount”. So to be consistent, you would translate Revelation 13:18 as: Let him that hath understanding take the headcount of the Beast: for it is the headcount of a man; and his headcount is 666. This is looking good for our hypothesis that the Beast is an AI company. There’s only one remaining hurdle. The second clause specifically says that we’re talking about the number/headcount “of a man” rather than of a company. Can we square this circle? Not all translations say “the number of a man”. Some say “the number of humanity”, or “the number of mankind”. The exact phrase is “ἀριθμὸς γὰρ ἀνθρώπου”, and the word at issue meaning man/humanity/mankind is the last one, “ἀνθρώπου”. In our alphabet, this word is anthropou. It is the genitive form of the stem anthrop-, meaning man/humanity, and predictably means “of man/humanity”. This word has come into English pretty much wholly intact, with the Greek genitive ending (-ου) simply changed to the corresponding English ending (-ic). It is our word “anthropic”, meaning “of man/humanity”. Why would you use any other word in a translation? Thus: Let him that hath understanding take the headcount of the Beast: for it is the headcount of Anthropic; and its headcount is 666. What is the headcount of Anthropic? I can’t find a precise answer, but here’s their LinkedIn page: Seems concerning. Anthropic might seem like an unlikely candidate for the Beast, given its emphasis on ethical conduct and safe AI research. However, they do perform various experiments on turning AIs evil - always in the context of examining these scenarios and figuring out how best to prepare - and one can imagine ways this could go wrong. We’ll examine likely failure modes in more detail later. The Mark Of The Beast John continues (13:17): And [the Beast] causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark. In the context of AI, this resembles the idea of biometric proof of personhood. Suppose that future AI agents have access to bank accounts and can transact like humans. Some platforms may choose to let AIs access their services unrestricted; others may choose to limit use to humans. How would these work in a world where AIs can break CAPTCHAs? One plan is to assign each human a code based on some immutable feature of their body, like a fingerprint or eye scan, then let the humans use that code as an ironclad ID. The most famous plan along these lines is Sam Altman’s WorldCoin. The Mark of the Beast cannot be WorldCoin itself, because WorldCoin uses an iris scan, but the Mark uses the hand or forehead. Handprints are a common biometric recognition target, but foreheads? Yes! Just last year, researchers found that forehead creases were actually a cutting-edge biometric target, and suggested them as a superior alternative to fingerprints (contactless) and facial recognition (blocked by masks during a pandemic). This section suggests that Anthropic will come up with its own proof-of-personhood scheme, superior to OpenAI’s WorldCoin in that it uses the newer forehead-based biometric recognition (with the more commonly-used handprint as a backup). We’ll discuss more about why you might not want to be in their database later. The Woman Of The Apocalypse Revelation 12:1 introduces an unnamed figure commonly called the Woman of the Apocalypse: And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The woman gives birth to a son, who is implied to be the Messiah. Satan tries to kill the son, so the mother flees with her child to Heaven, where she waits for 1,260 days. This is obviously a reference to the Virgin Mary and Christ, but (as per the multilayered symbolism of Revelation) somehow also a reference to some specific person in the End Times. I originally couldn’t figure out who that person was, but a now-deactivated Tumblr poster, resinsculpture, convinced me that it was Ursula von der Leyen, current president of the European Union. Here is a typical official picture of von der Leyen. She is in her trademark yellow suit (“clothed with the sun”), standing with her head centered in the twelve stars of the EU flag (“upon her head a crown of twelve stars”). In what sense is “the moon under her feet”? In her role as President, von der Leyen stands above, and frequently addresses, the European Parliament, which looks like this: The Parliament, also known as the Hemicycle, takes the shape of a half (or slightly crescent) moon. When von der Leyen stands in her yellow suit, in front of the Parliament, with the flag behind her, she is “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars”.2 Von der Leyen is one of the leaders behind the EU’s push to become a “regulatory superpower”, which has born fruit in some surprisingly promising AI regulations. In particular, Europe has been especially strict on biometric proof-of-personhood: If the apocalypse involves a rogue Anthropic model somehow empowered by proof-of-personhood, Europe is one of the best candidates to resist. Von der Leyen, then, stands as a metonymy for the European Union as a bulwark for the forces of Good. The Witnesses / The Lamb Of God The Lamb is John’s version of the Messiah or the Second Coming. He gives us two clues about its identity. First, Revelation 11:3: And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. The Lamb will be preceded by two witnesses. Revelation itself does not name them, but Jewish tradition says that one will be the prophet Elijah. Second, 12:1: And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. The Lamb will stand on Mount Zion. This is a specific mountain in Jerusalem, but also a poetic name for Israel (for example, “Zionism” = support for Israel). So we are looking for someone or something in Israel, which is being heralded by Elijah. The name Elijah is different in different languages, but the Russian version is “Ilya”. And in fact, famous AI scientist Ilya Sutskever recently founded an Israel-based AI company called “Safe Superintelligence”: Is there some sense in which Ilya Sutskever has “his Father’s name written on [his] forehead”? As weird as it sounds, I think this one might just be literally true. There is some kind of unusual pattern on his forehead (image source). I cannot make heads or tails of it right-side-up, but when I flip it over… …it appears to be the Name of God in Hebrew. In our working hypothesis, Ilya is Elijah, the First Witness3, which suggests that the one he is heralding - that is, the Safe Superintelligence which is to be built by his company - is the Lamb of God, the Messiah that will defeat the unsafe superintelligences produced by Anthropic and other companies. The Antichrist / The Dragon Revelation doesn’t use the word “Antichrist” - the concept comes from from the separate Epistles of John, which may or may not be by the same author. Most scholars identify the Epistle’s Antichrist with Revelation’s Beast, but I dissent: we hypothesize the Beast to be a company, but I can’t get past the elegance of having the Antichrist be - like the Christ - a particular individual. I prefer to identify him with a different character in Revelation, namely the Dragon. On the level of Biblical narrative - the same level where the Woman is the Virgin Mary - the Dragon is clearly Satan. On the level of apocalyptic prophecy, he may additionally represent an individual from our own age. Who? John says (13:2 - 13:4) The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority . . . People worshiped the dragon, because he had given authority to the beast. We saw above that the Beast is a company. Who gives companies their power, then demands to be worshiped by them? Obviously VCs. And in fact, venture capitalists are often identified with dragons in the popular imagination: But which venture capitalist? Plenty of people have claimed to know secret ways to identify the Antichrist, but surely the best-credentialled expert here is the Pope, and according to Wikipedia: Pope Pius IX in the encyclical Quartus Supra, quoting Cyprian, said Satan disguises the Antichrist with the title of Christ. What is the title of Christ? In the Bible, we find two common titles: “The Son of Man” (Matthew 12:32, Luke 12:8, John 1:51)
Inline links: Revelation 9:16, exact phrase, their LinkedIn page, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dz9y!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F596f66e3-4745-44f8-b868-12e9ca03cc63_789x862.png, perform various experiments on turning AIs evil, biometric proof of personhood, WorldCoin, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!rYmL!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F972fc381-4d38-4e55-88d7-88b1e4f79010_2363x3150.png, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Nj3r!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5324e82d-bc07-4ff2-9fb7-44fb61f61c24_934x473.png, Yes!, resinsculpture, Ursula von der Leyen, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!plab!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fed45366f-e577-4e7a-9161-27d692d8f031_862x575.avif, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!lAgG!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa5c91f3a-873f-4b73-b68d-bc14a7cfffc9_600x314.jpeg, 2, surprisingly promising AI regulations, especially strict on biometric proof-of-personhood, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vntf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcab19e9-c8f0-4996-9fb1-942061463e5d_839x520.png, says, Ilya, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!pdG7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd81ef77a-d6d6-41dc-9281-3f0d55702f2a_1210x510.png, image source, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1eC5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffb37f1e4-9cbc-4153-b20a-8e879ad753ce_1711x719.png, Name of God in Hebrew, 3, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!W4E8!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc7d2847a-aba1-42a7-b376-9f6e0fd319f0_841x468.png, according to Wikipedia