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PODCAST

Astral Codex Ten Podcast

The official audio version of Astral Codex Ten, with an archive of posts from Slate Star Codex. It"s just me reading Scott Alexander"s blog posts.

technology

All Episodes

04:03

X Fact Check: Does Gender Integration Moderate Politics?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/03/01

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/x-fact-check-does-gender-integration

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08:32

Love And Liberty

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/16

Libertarians don’t really have their own holiday. Communists have May Day. The woke have MLK’s birthday. Nationalists have July 4th or their local equivalent. But libertarians have nothing. I propose Valentine’s Day. The way people think about love is the last relic of the way that libertarians think about everything. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/love-and-liberty

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12:53

Sam Altman Wants $7 Trillion

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/16

I. Sam Altman wants $7 trillion. In one sense, this isn’t news. Everyone wants $7 trillion. I want $7 trillion. I’m not going to get it, and Sam Altman probably won’t either. Still, the media treats this as worthy of comment, and I agree. It’s a useful reminder of what it will take for AI to scale in the coming years. The basic logic: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sam-altman-wants-7-trillion

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23:11

ACX Grants Results 2024

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/16

Thanks to everyone who participated in ACX Grants, whether as an applicant, an evaluator, or a funder. The best part of ACX Grants is telling the winners they won, which I’ll do in a moment. The worst part of ACX Grants is telling the non-winners they didn’t win. If I wasn’t able to give you a grant, it doesn’t mean I hate your project. Sometimes I couldn’t find the right evaluator to confirm that you were legit. Sometimes I sent your project to foundations or VCs who I thought it would be a

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05:46

Evolution Explains Polygenic Structure

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/09

We’ve been gradually working our way through the conversation around E. Fuller Torrey’s concerns about schizophrenia genetics - last week we had It’s Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably Mostly Genetic, the week before Unintuitive Properties Of Polygenic Disorders. Here are two more arguments Torrey makes that we haven’t gotten to: Studies have failed to find any schizophrenia genes of large effect. If schizophrenia is genetic, it must be caused of thousands of genes, hidden in the most

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10:34

You Don't Hate Polyamory, You Hate People Who Write...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/09

I. Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article. The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now I hate polyamorous people.” This is a common pattern. Sometimes, if someone’s very careful, they read three or four books about polyamory. Everyone in all the books is awful and unhappy

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21:31

It's Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/09

Famous schizophrenia researcher E. Fuller Torrey recently wrote a paper trying to cast doubt on whether schizophrenia is really genetic. His exact argument is complicated, but I feel like it sort of equivocates between “the studies showing that schizophrenia are genetic are wrong” and “the studies are right, but in a philosophical sense we shouldn’t describe it as ‘mostly genetic’”. Awais Aftab makes a clearer version of the philosophical argument. He’s not especially interested in debating the

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10:07

Seems Like Targeting

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/09

I. Recently Claudine Gay resigned as President of Harvard over plagiarism accusations and a fumbled Congressional testimony on anti-Semitism. The plagiarism was discovered by conservative journalists Chris Rufo and Chris Brunet. It would be quite a coincidence for them to find it at exactly the moment Gay was already under attack for her anti-Semitism testimony. More likely, they either: Found it a while ago, and kept it in reserve for a time when Gay was in the news Or were angry about Gay’s

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18:05

Mantic Monday 1/29/24

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/02/09

Election problems // Trump odds // AI worlds https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/mantic-monday-12924

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34:01

The Psychopolitics Of Trauma

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/27

I. Everyone knows politics makes people crazy. But what kind of crazy? Which page of the DSM is it on? I’m only half joking. Psychiatrists have spent decades developing a whole catalog of ways brains can go wrong. Politics makes people’s brains go wrong. Shouldn’t it be in the catalog? Wouldn’t it be weird if 21st century political extremists had discovered a totally new form of mental dysfunction, unrelated even by analogy to all the forms that had come before? You’ll object: politics only

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08:11

Some Unintuitive Properties Of Polygenic Disorders

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/27

E. Fuller Torrey recently published a journal article trying to cast doubt on the commonly-accepted claim that schizophrenia is mostly genetic. Most of his points were the usual “if we can’t name all of the exact genes, it must not be genetic at all” - but two arguments stood out: Even though twin studies say schizophrenia is about 80% genetic, surveys of twin pairs show that if one identical twin has schizophrenia, the other one only has a 15% to 50% chance of having it. The Nazis ran a

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09:51

Should The Future Be Human?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/27

Machine Alignment Monday 1/22/24 Business Insider: Larry Page Once Called Elon Musk A “Specieist”: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Google cofounder Larry Page disagree so severely about the dangers of AI it apparently ended their friendship. At Musk's 44th birthday celebration in 2015, Page accused Musk of being a "specieist" who preferred humans over future digital life forms [...] Musk said to Page at the time, "Well, yes, I am pro-human, I fucking like humanity, dude." A month later, Business Insider

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06:12

Subscrive Drive 2024 + Free Unlocked Posts

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/27

Astral Codex Ten has a paid subscription option. You pay $10 (or $2.50 if you can’t afford the regular price) per month, and get: Extra articles (usually 1-2 per month) A Hidden Open Thread per week Access to the occasional Ask Me Anythings I do with subscribers Early access to some draft posts The warm glow of supporting the blog. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/subscrive-drive-2024-free-unlocked

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19:26

Links For January 2024

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/22

[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://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-january-2024

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20:40

Against Learning From Dramatic Events

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/22

Does it matter if COVID was a lab leak? Here’s an argument against: not many people still argue that lab leaks are impossible. People were definitely doing dangerous work with viruses; Chinese biosafety protocols were definitely mediocre. Maybe the Wuhan Institute had bad luck, and one of the viruses there escaped. Or maybe they had good luck, by sheer coincidence no viruses escaped, and an unrelated pandemic started nearby. A good Bayesian should start out believing there’s some medium chance of a

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21:08

AI Sleeper Agents

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/20

Machine Alignment Monday 1/15/24 A sleeper agent is an AI that acts innocuous until it gets some trigger, then goes rogue. People might make these on purpose. For example, the CIA might “encourage” big AI labs to make sleeper agents. Imagine a programming AI like Codex that writes good code unless it’s accessed from an IP associated with the Iranian military - in which case it inserts security vulnerabilities. But in theory you could get one of these by accident. Suppose an AI had some secret goal,

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30:19

Highlights From The Comments On Capitalism & Charity

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/14

[original post: Does Capitalism Beat Charity?] 1: Comments Where I Want To Reiterate That I’m In Near Mode 2: Comments Directly Arguing Against My Main Point, Thank You 3: Comments Promoting Specific Interesting Capitalist Charities 4: Other Interesting Comments 5: Updates And Conclusions https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-capitalism

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19:25

The Road To Honest AI

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/14

Can blob fish dance ballet under diagonally fried cucumbers made of dust storms? AIs sometimes lie. They might lie because their creator told them to lie. For example, a scammer might train an AI to help dupe victims. Or they might lie (“hallucinate”) because they’re trained to sound helpful, and if the true answer (eg “I don’t know”) isn’t helpful-sounding enough, they’ll pick a false answer. Or they might lie for technical AI reasons that don’t map to a clear explanation in natural language

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13:17

Does Capitalism Beat Charity?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/07

"You can't write a check to capitalism directly" This question comes up whenever I discuss philanthropy. It would seem that capitalism is better than charity. The countries that became permanently rich, like America and Japan, did it with capitalism. This seems better than temporarily alleviating poverty by donating food or clothing. So (say proponents), good people who want to help others should stop giving to charity and start giving to capitalism. These proponents differ on exactly what

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14:03

Singing The Blues

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2024/01/07

[epistemic status: speculative] I. Millgram et al (2015) find that depressed people prefer to listen to sad rather than happy music. This matches personal experience; when I'm feeling down, I also prefer sad music. But why? Try setting aside all your internal human knowledge: wouldn’t it make more sense for sad people to listen to happy music, to cheer themselves up? A later study asks depressed people why they do this. They say that sad music makes them feel better, because it’s more "relaxing"

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1,102 results

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