Astral Codex Ten Podcast

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xexFJ7h0vULMDE7N77q_MIzXoerexfe_CqqGEL6hEoQ/edit#heading=h.qi8yp2d9wbt2 Podcast note: This reader-written review was included because it won the Readers' Choice Award from among all the runners-up. What does the future look like? We are living through a transition between epochs. Whether marked by COVID-19, the election of Donald Trump or earlier by the global s...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-contest-winners Thanks to everyone who participated or voted in the Book Review Contest. The winners are: FIRST PLACE : Progress and Poverty , reviewed by Lars Doucet Lars is a Norwegian-Texan game designer, and you can read his game design blog  here . He's a pretty serious Georgist and posts regularly in the  Georgism subreddit . SECOND PLACE : D...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness-much-more Back when everyone was debating lockdowns, I promised I'd come back to it after there was more data. God willing, the pandemic is over enough that we've got all the data we're going to get. So: did lockdowns work? There's no way to answer this completely and taking into account every relevant factor, so I'm necessarily going to...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lockdown-effectiveness-much-more Back when everyone was debating lockdowns, I promised I'd come back to it after there was more data. God willing, the pandemic is over enough that we've got all the data we're going to get. So: did lockdowns work? There's no way to answer this completely and taking into account every relevant factor, so I'm necessarily going to...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/model-city-monday Support the author: astralcodexten.substack.com/subscribe Then support the podcast: patreon.com/sscpodcast   Happy belated Fourth of July! This potentially-recurring column is about modern-day independence-seekers: charter cities, utopian communes, secessionist movements, and the like. I've always found these fascinating, and finally remember...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-how Support the author: astralcodexten.substack.com/subscribe Then support the podcast: patreon.com/sscpodcast   I made a mistake in the email notifications, so if you didn't know I wrote  a review of Joe Studwell's  How Asia Works  earlier this week - well, now you know. Erusian  writes : 1.) Three things stick out here. Firstl...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/welcome-polygenically-screened-babies   Another thing I missed during my hiatus last year:  the birth of the first polygenically-screened baby . [ conflict of interest notice:  LifeView , the company that handled the screening, was co-founded by  Steve Hsu . I've known Steve for many years now, he is very nice to me, always patiently answers my genetics questi...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-works   What was the best thing that ever happened? From a very zoomed-out, by-the-numbers perspective, it has to be China's sudden lurch from Third World basketcase to dynamic modern economy. A billion people went from starving peasants to the middle class. In the 1960s, sixty million people died of famine in the Chinese countryside; by t...

Now that the book review contest is winding down, I want to start another big project: the ACX Reader Research Survey. I used to do regular December surveys with questions I was interested in. Some people would ask me to include questions for their own research projects. I always declined, because if I said yes to everyone it would take a whole new survey to fit all the questions on. Eventually I...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-june   [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/mantic-monday-62121 Among this month's interesting Metaculus predictions: If Puerto Rico gets statehood, will their first two senators both be Democrats?   50% . I'd seen accusations that the Democrats want Puerto Rican statehood to seize a Senate advantage, and counterarguments that no, PR isn't as solid-blue as people like to think, but this is the first tim...

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/16/fear-and-loathing-at-effective-altruism-global-2017/   San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run – but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world….There wa...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/vote-in-the-book-review-contest Thanks for reading the entries in this very delayed (and then very protracted) book review contest. Please  vote for your favorites here , using approval voting (ie vote for however many you want). I'll probably keep voting open until the end of June in case you want a chance to go back and re-read your favorites. In case you've...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-plagues-and-peoples   [ This is the seventeenth of seventeen finalists in the book review contest. This one was chosen out of the reviews I somehow missed the first time around. There were four other such essays, which you can see in  a supplementary runners-up packet here . I'll make a post about how to vote tomorrow. - SA ] Biological evolut...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/on-cerebralab-on-nuttcarhart-harris   [ epistemic status: extremely speculative ] George at CerebraLab has a  new review  of  Nutt and Carhart-Harris's paper on serotonin receptors  (I previously reviewed it  here ). Two points stood out that I had previously missed: First of all - predictive coding identifies suffering with prediction error. This conflicts wi...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-smith-on-jewish-selective   Noah Smith  asks whether Jews are really disproportionately successful . (in case it shapes the way you read any of this, both he and I are Jewish) By the numbers, it would seem they are. US Jews have  a median household income  about 50% higher than US Christians, a  net worth about 6x that of Christians , and are  about twi...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-how-children-fail   [ This is the sixteenth of seventeen finalists in the book review contest. It's not by me - it's by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. This entry was promoted to finalist status by readers; thanks to everyone who voted! - SA ] 1: Why...

[ This is the fifteenth of seventeen finalists in the book review contest. It's not by me - it's by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. This entry was promoted to finalist status by readers; thanks to everyone who voted! - SA ] George Orwell's  Down and Out in Paris and London  is at least three things; a hi...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/drug-users-use-a-lot-of-drugs   I. If you look at any  list of side effects  for the FDA-approved version of s-ketamine (Spravato), you see things like urinary tract problems, bladder problems, pain on urination, feeling of urgency to urinate. You can find a bunch of papers like  Ketamine: An Important Drug With A Serious Adverse Effect , where they say that k...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/i-will-not-eat-the-bugs From  the comments on Moral Costs Of Chicken Vs. Beef : As far as moral concern goes, I think it's right to act your rational conviction, but I can't honestly surmount my own doubt that it makes sense to care about animal well-being...if I really am to say that chickens have moral worth, I don't see any easy spot to get off that train b...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/instead-of-pledging-to-change-the   In April, Joe Biden  pledged to halve US emissions  (from their 2005 max) by 2030. This is nice, but I can't help but remember eg Australia's 2009 Copenhagen summit pledge to decrease emissions 5% by 2020 (in fact, they increased 17%). Or Brazil's pledge at the same summit to cut emissions 38% by 2020 (in fact, they increase...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-wheres-my-flying   [ This is the fourteenth of many finalists in the book review contest. It's not by me - it's by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. I'll be posting about two of these a week for several months. When you've read all of them, I'll ask yo...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-collapse-of   [ This is the thirteenth of many finalists in the book review contest. It's not by me - it's by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. I'll be posting about two of these a week for several months. When you've read all of them, I'll ask you...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/moral-costs-of-chicken-vs-beef Support Scott Alexander's blogging: astralcodexten.substack.com/subscribe Podcast patreon: patreon.com/sscpodcast I. I've  previously argued  that meat-eaters concerned about animal welfare should try to eat beef, not chicken. The logic goes: the average cow is very big and makes 405,000 calories of beef. The average chicken is v...

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-do-treatments-for-accelerated   Progeria is a rare disease that makes people age unnaturally quickly. Babies born with progeria can lose their hair in toddlerhood, get wrinkles by grade school age, and die - apparently of old age - in their early teens. You can see a picture of a progeroid child  here , though I don't recommend it. There's been a lot of r...