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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

38:20

"Through A Glass Darkly" In Asterisk Magazine

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/07/01

(Includes full article narration.) I have an article summarizing attempts to forecast AI progress, including a five year check-in on the predictions in Grace et al (2017). It’s not here, it's at asteriskmag.com, a rationalist / effective altruist magazine: Through A Glass Darkly. This is their AI issue (it’s not always so AI focused). https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/through-a-glass-darkly-in-asterisk

en

33:15

Your Book Review: Public Citizens

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/30

[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] I. Today, pundits across the political spectrum bemoan America’s inability to build. Across the country, NIMBYs and status-quo defenders exploit procedural rules to block new development, giving us a

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39:29

Davidson On Takeoff Speeds

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/25

Machine Alignment Monday 6/19/23 The face of Mt. Everest is gradual and continuous; for each point on the mountain, the points 1 mm away aren’t too much higher or lower. But you still wouldn’t want to ski down it. I thought about this when reading What A Compute-Centric Framework Says About Takeoff Speeds, by Tom Davidson. Davidson tries to model what some people (including me) have previously called “slow AI takeoff”. He thinks this is a misnomer. Like skiing down the side of Mount Everest,

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34:28

Your Book Review: Njal’s Saga

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/23

Finalist #5 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] I. I found Njal’s Saga hard to follow. Halfway through, a friend reassured me it wasn’t my fault. The medieval Icelanders had erred in releasing it as a

en

04:13

Your Incentives Are Not The Same As Media Companies'

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/18

Unfortunately I hate many of you. Only the ones with Twitter accounts. If you don’t have one of those, you’re fine. But if you do have one, there’s a good chance you said something which horribly offended me. You said everyone who believed X was an idiot and a Nazi, and I believed X. You read the title but not the body of an article about some group I care about, and viciously insulted them based on your misunderstanding of their position. You spent five seconds thinking of a clever dunk on someone

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29:40

The Canal Papers

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/18

You know all the stuff we’ve been talking about here the past few years - mental mountains, trapped priors, relaxed beliefs under psychedelics? The new keyword for all of that is “canalization”. At least that’s what I gather from a giant paper recently published by some of the leading thinkers in computational psychiatry (Karl Friston, Robin Carhart-Harris, etc). A quick review: you can model the brain as an energy landscape . . . . . . with various peaks and valleys in some multidimensional space

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45:55

Your Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/14

Finalist #4 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] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-mans-search-for

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07:02

Attempts To Put Statistics In Context, Put Into Context

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/09

Sometimes people do a study and find that a particular correlation is r = 0.2, or a particular effect size is d = 1.1. Then an article tries to “put this in context”. “The study found r = 0.2, which for context is about the same as the degree to which the number of spots on a dog affects its friskiness.” But there are many statistics that are much higher than you would intuitively think, and many other statistics that are much lower than you would intuitively think. A dishonest person can use one of

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40:48

Highlights From The Comments On The Academic Job Market

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/09

Original post: Why Is The Academic Job Market So Weird? Table Of Contents Comments With More Information On Academic Hiring 2. Comments About How Things Got This Way 3. Comparisons To The Programmer Job Market 4. Comparisons To Other Job Markets 5. Proposed Solutions 6. Comments With Practical Advice For New PhDs https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-bc8

en

16:33

Your Book Review: Why Machines Will Never Rule the World

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/04

Finalist #3 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] I'll begin with a contentious but invariably true statement, which I've no interest in defending here: new books—at least new nonfiction books—are not meant to be

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22:57

Links For May 2023

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/04

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-may-2023 [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.]

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10:23

All Medications Are Insignificant In The Eyes Of God...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/04

In this post, the author suggests that the standard metrics for assessing the efficacy of medications, especially antidepressants, may be flawed and restrictive, indicating that if these stringent standards were applied to other common medications, they too would be deemed 'clinically insignificant', despite widespread acceptance of their effectiveness. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/all-medications-are-insignificant

en

10:49

Are Woo Non-Responders Defective?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/04

This post explores the differing responses to alternative wellness practices, suggesting various explanations, and highlights the challenge of discerning whether certain behaviors, such as drug use among schizophrenics, serve as coping mechanisms or exacerbate the issues. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/are-woo-non-responders-defective

en

01:07:37

Your Book Review: Lying for Money

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/06/02

[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] You can't really understand the exception without understanding the rule. In order for him to understand why it was remarkable that the Titanic sank, you would first have to explain to the caveman how

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38:10

Hypergamy: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/05/27

“Female hypergamy” (from now on, just “hypergamy”) is a supposed tendency for women to seek husbands who are higher-status than themselves. Arguing about educational hypergamy (women seeking husbands who are more educated than themselves) is especially popular, because women are now (on average) more educated than men - if every woman wants a more-educated husband, most won’t get them, and there will be some kind of crisis.

en

29:14

Mantic Monday 5/22/23

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/05/25

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-52223 Whales v. Minnows // US v. Itself // EPJ v. The Veil Of Time // Balaji v. Medlock Manifold is a play money prediction market. Its intended purpose is to have fun and estimate the probabilities of important events. But instead of betting on important events, you might choose to speculate on trivialities. And instead of having fun, you might choose to ruin your life. From the beginning, there were joke markets like “Will at least 100 people bet

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01:00:57

Your Book Review: Cities And The Wealth Of...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/05/21

[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] If you know Jane Jacobs at all, you know her for her work on cities. Her most famous book, published in 1961, is called The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It criticizes large-scale, top-down

en

07:39

Why Is The Academic Job Market So Weird?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/05/19

Bret Devereaux writes here about the oddities of the academic job market. His piece is comprehensive, and you should read it, but short version: professors are split into tenure-track (30%, good pay and benefits) and adjunct (50%, bad pay and benefits). Another 20% are “teaching-track”, somewhere in between. Everyone wants a tenure-track job. But colleges hiring new tenure-track faculty prefer newly-minted PhDs to even veteran teaching-trackers or adjuncts. And even if they do hire a veteran

en

33:21

Galton, Ehrlich, Buck - An exploding generational bomb

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/05/19

Adam Mastroianni has a great review of Memories Of My Life, the autobiography of Francis Galton. Mastroianni centers his piece around the question: how could a brilliant scientist like Galton be so devoted to an evil idea like eugenics? This sparked the usual eugenics discussion. In case you haven’t heard it before: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck

en

37:58

Highlights From The Comments On Long COVID And...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/05/17

Table of Contents 1. Summary Of Best Comments And Overall Updates 2. Comments Proposing Explanations Based On Response Patterns 3. Comments Proposing Explanations Based On Biology 4. Comments By Jim Coyne 5. Comments Expressing Concerns About The Dangers Of Calling Things Psychosomatic 6. Other Comments https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-long Original post: Replication Attempt - Bisexuality And Long COVID

en

1,151 results

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