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LessWrong (30+ Karma)

LessWrong

Audio narrations of LessWrong posts.

technology philosophy

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4:26

“Sadly, The Whispering Earring” by Dentosal

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/03

The Whispering Earring (which you should read first) explores one of the most dystopic-utopic scenarios. Imagine you could achieve all you've ever wanted by just giving up your agency. While theoretically this seems rather undesirable, in practice you get double benefits: that enviable high-status having-done-things reputation, without having to do all that scary failure-prone responsibility-taking. Just don't tell anyone you have the earring, otherwise the status points gained are void. Of course

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5:43

“Common research advice #2: say precisely what you...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/03

As previously mentioned, research feedback I give to more junior research collaborators tends to fall into one of three categories: Doing quick sanity checksSaying precisely what you want to sayAsking why one more time In each case, I think the advice can be taken to an extreme I no longer endorse. Accordingly, I’ve tried to spell out the degree to which you should implement the advice, as well as what “taking it too far” might look like. I talked about doing quick sanity checks in a previous

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110:21

“AI #162: Visions of Mythos” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/03

Anthropic had some problem with leaks this week.We learned that they are sitting on a new larger-than-Opus AI model, Mythos, that they believe offers a step change in cyber capabilities. We also got a full leak of the source for Claude Code. Oh, and Axios was compromised, on the heels of LiteLLM. This looks to be getting a lot more common. Defense beats offense in most cases, but offense is getting a lot more shots on goal than it used to. The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Aplocayloptimist came

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7:03

“2026: The year of throwing my agency at my health...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/03

I have bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed in late 2012 following my one and only severe manic episode. Most psychiatrists would regard me as a resounding success case – I never even remotely come close to suicidal depression, manic delusions of grandeur, impulsive spending, or irresponsible sexual behavior. By standard measures, I am well-adjusted, functional, and successful. Part of this relative success is adherence to appropriate medication, and another part is maintaining good insight[1] into my

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6:09

[Linkpost] “Q1 2026 Timelines Update” by Daniel...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/03

This is a link post. We’re mostly focused on research and writing for our next big scenario, but we’re also continuing to think about AI timelines and takeoff speeds, monitoring the evidence as it comes in, and adjusting our expectations accordingly. We’re tentatively planning on making quarterly updates to our timelines and takeoff forecasts. Since we published the AI Futures Model 3 months ago, we’ve updated towards shorter timelines. Daniel's Automated Coder (AC) median has moved from late 2029

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13:33

“How social ideas get corrupt” by Kaj_Sotala

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

I’ve noticed that sometimes there is an idea or framework that seems great to me, and I also know plenty of people who use it in a great and sensible way. Then I run into people online who say that “this idea is terrible and people use it in horrible ways”. When I ask why, they point to people applying the idea in ways that do indeed seem terrible - and in fact, applying it in ways that seem to me like the opposite of what the idea is actually saying. Of course, some people might think that I’m the

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8:02

“The Indestructible Future” by WillPetillo

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

Doctor: Mr. Burns, I'm afraid you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything! [...] Burns: You're sure you just haven't made thousands of mistakes? Doctor: Uh, no. No, I'm afraid not. Burns: This sounds like bad news! Doctor: Well, you'd think so, but all of your diseases are in perfect balance, [...] we call it "Three Stooges Syndrome" Burns: So, what you're saying is...I'm indestructible! Doctor: Oh, no, no! In fact, even a slight breeze could— Burns: Indestructible... In the

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5:16

“My most common advice for junior researchers” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

Written quickly as part of the Inkhaven Fellowship. At a high level, research feedback I give to more junior research collaborators often can fall into one of three categories: Doing quick sanity checksSaying precisely what you want to sayAsking why one more time In each case, I think the advice can be taken to an extreme I no longer endorse. Accordingly, I’ve tried to spell out the degree to which you should implement the advice, as well as what “taking it too far” might look like. This piece

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58:09

“The Practical Guide to Superbabies” by GeneSmith

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

It's Summer of 2025. I’m standing in a grass covered field on the longest day of the year. A friend of mine walks towards me, holding his newborn son. “Hey, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you were pretty instrumental in this kid existing. We read your blog post on polygenic embryo screening back in 2023 and decided to go through IVF to have him as a result.” He hesitates for a moment, then asks “Do you want to hold him?” I nod. As I cradle this child in my arms, I look down at his face

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32:05

“The Corner-Stone” by Benquo

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

Is the US a ruthless cognitive meritocracy that reliably promotes outlier talent? VB Knives defended that claim in a Twitter argument against Living Room Enjoyer that got my attention.[1] Knives argued that if you have a 150 IQ, you'll be a National Merit Scholar, which "at a minimum" gets you a free ride at a state flagship university, from which you can proceed to law school, med school, etc. Enjoyer shot back: I'm a Merit Scholar, where's my free ride? Knives asked Grok, Elon Musk's AI; Grok

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8:16

“Systematically dismantle the AI compute supply...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

This is not an April fool's joke, I’m participating in Inkhaven, which means I need to write a blog post every day. I recently watched The AI Doc. It's the first big documentary featuring AI safety. It's playing in theatres across America. It's got a bunch of my friends and colleagues in it. It starts out with a sick Neil Young deep cut. I thought it was pretty great overall. I liked the discussion of AI risks, but I was really disappointed by the way it discussed solutions to the risks from AI.

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3:40

“The quest for general intelligence is hitting a...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

There has been a lot of talk in the AI community lately about the possibility of achieving general intelligence. Indeed, recent progress in areas such as mathematical problem solving and coding has been dramatic, with recent systems assisting in the creation of platforms such as Moltbook and helping an AI researcher in discovering faster matrix multiplication algorithms. Despite the hype, however, it seems like there are clear limitations to the current best non-AI systems: They cannot perform

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10:45

“Intelligence Dissolves Privacy” by Vaniver

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

The future is going to be different from the present. Let's think about how. Specifically, our expectations about what's reasonable are downstream of our past experiences, and those experiences were downstream of our options (and the options other people in our society had). As those options change, so too our experiences, and our expectations of what's reasonable. I once thought it was reasonable to pick up the phone and call someone, and to pick up my phone when it rang; things have changed, and

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25:06

“Anthropic’s Pause is the Most Expensive Alarm in...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

Imagine Apple halting iPhone production because studies linked smartphones to teen suicide rates. Imagine Pfizer proactively pulling Lipitor because of internal studies showing increased cardiac risk, and not because of looming settlements or FDA injunction, just for the health of patients. Or imagine if in 1952, Philip Morris halted expansion and stopped advertising when Wynder & Graham first showed heavy smokers had significantly elevated rates of lung cancer. It wouldn't happen

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17:58

“I’m Suing Anthropic for Unauthorized Use of My...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

Last year, I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop Caffe Strada, sipping on a matcha latte and writing a self-insert fanfic about how our plucky protagonist escapes the mind-controlling clutches of an evil anti-animal welfare company, when I came across an interesting article on AI character. The core argument is that when you train an AI to be helpful, honest, and ethical, the AI model doesn’t just learn those rules as abstract instructions. Instead, it infers an entire persona from cultural

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9:27

“Orders of magnitude: use semitones, not decibels” by...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

I'm going to teach you a secret. It's a secret known to few, a secret way of using parts of your brain not meant for mathematics... for mathematics. It's part of how I (sort of) do logarithms in my head. This is a nearly purposeless skill.What's the growth rate? What's the doubling time? How many orders of magnitude bigger is it? How many years at this rate until it's quintupled? All questions of ratios and scale. Scale... hmm. 'Wait', you're thinking, 'let me check the date...'. Indeed. But

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6:12

“Dying with Whimsy” by NickyP

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/02

To me it feels pretty emotionally clear we are nearing the end-times with AI. That in 1-4 years[1] things will be radically transformed, that at least one the big AI labs will become autonomous research organizations working on developing the next version on AI, perhaps with some narrow guidance of humans in oversight or acquisition of more resources until robotics is solved too. And i believe there will be some nice benefits at first with this, with the AI organizations providing many goods and

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9:22

“Announcing Doublehaven with Reflections on Humour”...

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/01

Inkhaven is a writers’ retreat, well, really it's a bloggers’ retreat. In the Lighthaven campus, Berkeley, a couple dozen bloggers get together to complete an almost insurmountable challenge for us mere mortals. Post one blogpost every single day for a whole month. I say ‘insurmountable’ but in fact they all succeeded last time, although apparently it was not uncommon for them to claw success from the jaws of defeat at 11:45 pm each night. I look at this and I feel the same way that traditionalists

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17:50

“AI for AI for Epistemics” by owencb, Lukas Finnveden

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/01

We feel conscious that rapid AI progress could transform all sorts of cause areas. But we haven’t previously analysed what this means for AI for epistemics, a field close to our hearts. In this article, we attempt to rectify this oversight. Summary AI-powered tools and services that help people figure out what's true (“AI for epistemics”) could matter a lot. As R&D is increasingly automated, AI systems will play a larger role in the process of developing such AI-based epistemic tools. This has

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7:52

“Save the Sun Shrimp!” by Jack

LessWrong (30+ Karma) ·

2026/04/01

The supposition that we live in a "goldilocks zone" is frankly just nonsense built up by an anthropocentric need to feel self-important, like Copernicus I am here to rescue us from a self-absorbed disaster of thought. Indeed, what is required for life to form is the ability to create complex structures with causal persistence times above a threshold. With this in mind we are able to find many areas where organisms could persist, if we just had the eyes to see them, namely the Sun! The surface of

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LessWrong (30+ Karma)

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