Open Thread 405
This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit , Discord , and bulletin board , and in-person meetups around the world .
Metadata
- Published: October 27, 2025
- Source: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-405
- Document ID:
2025-10-27_open-thread-405_full
Category Map
Events
- Boston municipal election (1 mentions)
- Russia-Ukraine war (1 mentions)
Organizations
- ACX (151 mentions)
- Metaculus (86 mentions)
- Forethought (1 mentions)
People
- Will MacAskill (14 mentions)
- Tom Davidson (6 mentions)
- Fatima (2 mentions)
- Gumphus (1 mentions)
Places
- Berkeley (79 mentions)
- Oxford (35 mentions)
- Prague (19 mentions)
- Haifa (9 mentions)
- Huntsville (6 mentions)
Publications
- Asterisk Magazine (5 mentions)
Full Primary Source Text
This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit , Discord , and bulletin board , and in-person meetups around the world . Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here . Also: 1: Meetups this week include Haifa, Huntsville, and Prague - see the meetup post for more information. 2: The ACX Boston meetup group has completed their voter guide for this week’s Boston municipal election . 3: In Highlights From The Comments On Fatima , I mentioned someone who analogized the problem of evil in religion to “the problem of non-characteristicness” in physics, but said I couldn’t credit them properly because I’d lost the link and forgotten who it was. It was Gumphus . 4: Metaculus is gearing up for another yearly forecasting contest, and looking for ideas for questions. You can see this year’s question set here - for example, “Will there be a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war by the end of 2025?”. I’ll post an Open Thread comment below where you can list your ideas and someone from Metaculus will read them. 5: Forethought (AI preparedness research org including Will MacAskill, Tom Davidson, etc) wants to hire more researchers. Offices in Oxford/Berkeley, slight bias towards people in these areas but remote work possible. Salaries £80,000 - £150,000 depending on qualifications and seniority. Must be, uh, good at research, I think this looks more like academic philosophy or economic modeling than like training LLMs, but it’s pretty vague. Learn more and apply here . 6: Asterisk magazine (EA/rationalist-adjacent, I’ve blogged about their work eg here and here ) is looking for a new managing editor. You’ll help find interesting stories in fields like global health, economics, AI, and general tech-adjacent (and less tech-adjacent) culture, and convert them into polished articles. $90,000 -$120,000, remote work possible. Learn more and apply here .
Backlinks
- ACX
- Asterisk Magazine
- Astral Codex Ten
- Berkeley
- Events: B
- Events: R
- Fatima
- Haifa
- Huntsville
- Metaculus
- Organizations: A
- Organizations: F
- Organizations: M
- Oxford
- People: F
- People: G
- People: T
- People: W
- Places: B
- Places: H
- Places: O
- Places: P
- Prague
- Publications: A
- Timeline of Issues
- Tom Davidson
- Will MacAskill