Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Finalist #16 in the Book Review Contest To tell the story of the fall of a realm, it's best to start with its rise. More than three thousand years ago, the Shang dynasty ruled the Chinese heartland. They raised a sprawling capital out of the yellow plains, and cast magnificent ritual vessels from bronze. One of the criteria of civilization is writing, and they had the first Chinese writing, incisi...

"Literal Banana" on Carcinization writes Against Automaticity , which they describe as: An explanation of why tricks like priming, nudge, the placebo effect, social contagion, the "emotional inception" model of advertising, most "cognitive biases," and any field with "behavioral" in its name are not real. My summary (as always, read the real thing to keep me honest): for a lot of the '90s and '00s...

Original post: What Can Fetish Research Tell Us About AI? Table Of Contents: 1: Alternative Theories Of Fetishes 2: Comments Including Testable Predictions 3: Comments That Were Very Angry About My Introductory Paragraph 4: Commenters Describing Their Own Fetishes 5: Other Comments https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-fetishes

Superconductor autopsy -- Prediction mutual funds -- Flight delays Sorry guys, LK-99 doesn't work . The prediction markets have dropped from highs in the 40s down to 5 - 10. It's over. What does this tell us about prediction markets? Were they dumb to ever believe at all? Or were they aggregating the evidence effectively, only to update after new evidence came in? I claim they were dumb. Although...

Finalist #15 in the Book Review Contest [ This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked ] In which I argue: Why Nations Fail is not a very good bo...

Thanks to everyone who responded to my request for ACX meetup organizers. Volunteers have arranged meetups in 169 cities around the world, from Baghdad to Bangalore to Buenos Aires. You can find the list below, in the following order: Africa & Middle East Asia-Pacific Europe North America South America You can see a map of all the events on the LessWrong community page . You can also see a searcha...

Original post here . And I forgot to highlight a link to the directory of dating docs . Table Of Contents 1: Comments That Remain At Least Sort Of Against Dating Docs 2: Comments Concerned That Dating Docs Are Bad For Status Or Signaling 3: Comments About Orthodox Judaism And Other Traditional Cultures 4: Comments Including Research 5: Comments By People With Demographically Unusual Relationships...

On the fetish post , I discussed people who had some early sexual experience - like seeing a sexy cartoon character - and reacted in some profound way, like becoming a furry. Sometimes people have described this as a "critical window" for sexuality (similar to the "critical period" in language learning? ) where young children "imprint" on sexual experiences - and then can't un-imprint on them late...

Scott Young writes about Seven Expert Opinions I Agree With That Most People Don't . I like most of them, but #6, Children don't learn languages faster than adults , deserves a closer look. Some people imagine babies have some magic language ability that lets them pick up their first language easily, even as we adults struggle through verb conjugations to pick up our second. But babies are embedde...

 Epistemic status: Ha ha, only serious... Arguing about gender is like taking OxyContin. There can be good reasons to do it. But most people don't do it for the good reasons. And even if you start doing it for good reasons, you might get addicted and ruin your life. Walk through San Francisco if you want to see people who ruined their lives with opioids; browse Substack to get a visceral appreciat...

[ This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked ] Are bees smart?  To answer that question, here's a crab spider: Sadly, this is not a review of a...

[previously in series: 1 , 2 , 3 ] You spent the evening agonizing over which Bay Area House Party to attend. The YIMBY parties are always too crowded. VC parties were a low-interest-rate phenomenon. You've heard too many rumors of consent violations at the e/acc parties - they don't know when to stop. And last time you went to a crypto bro party, you didn't even have anything to drink, and someho...

The New York Times has an article on "dating docs" . These are a local phenomenon - I think an ex of mine might have been Patient Zero. I don't begrudge the Times for writing about them. I'm just surprised they're considered an interesting phenomenon. What could be more obvious than making sure potential dates know what you're like? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-describable-d...

Finalist #13 in the Book Review Contest [ This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked ] Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating, Adam...

[original post: Dictator Book Club: Putin ] Table of Contents: 1. Comments Further Illuminating Putin's Rise To Power 2. Comments Questioning Masha Gessen's Objectivity 3. Comments Claiming Putin Is Very Slightly Less Bad Than The Book Suggests 4. Comments On Putin As Culture Warrior 5. Comments Expressing Concern That The FBI/CIA Are Capable Of Undermining Democracy In The US https://astralcodext...

[Remember, I haven't independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can't guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-augus...

[ This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked ] What does it take to be literally Hitler? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review...

Actual serious review here , Amazon link to the book here . These were just some extra parts that stuck out to me. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/more-memorable-passages-from-the

Review of Masha Gessen's "The Man Without A Face" [previously in series: Erdogan , Modi , Orban , Xi ] I. Vladimir Putin's Childhood As Metaphor For Life   Vladimir Putin appeared on Earth fully-formed at the age of nine. At least this is the opinion of Natalia Gevorkyan, his first authorized biographer. There were plenty of witnesses and records to every post-nine-year-old stage of Putin's life....

You can find the meetup organizer volunteer form here . If you want to know if anyone has signed up to run a meetup for your city, you can view that here . Everyone else, just wait until 8/25 and I'll give you more information on where to go then. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/meetups-everywhere-fall-2023-call  

Plus more CFTC, X, and UFOs https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-73123-room-temperature

Finalist #11 in the Book Review Contest [ This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked ] What kind of fiction could be remarkable enough for an A...

Suppose there's freedom of religion: everyone can choose what religion to practice. Is there some sense in which this is "undemocratic"? Would it be more "democratic" if the democratically-elected government declared a state religion, and everyone had to follow it? You could, in theory, define "democratic" this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically e...

[original post: Contra The Social Model Of Disability ] Table Of Contents 1: Comments Defending The Social Model 2: Comments About The Social Model Being Used (Or Not) In Real Life 3: Other Comments 4: Summary / What I Learned https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-social

Machine Alignment Monday, 7/24/23 Intelligence explosion arguments don't require Platonism. They just require intelligence to exist in the normal fuzzy way that all concepts exist. First, I'll describe what the normal way concepts exist is. I'll have succeeded if I convince you that claims using the word "intelligence" are coherent and potentially true. Second, I'll argue, based on humans and anim...