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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

03:23

Book Review Contest Rules 2023

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/02/03

Basically the same as 2022 - this is just a reminder to start working on entries https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-contest-rules-2023 Sure, this seemed to go well last the last few times, let's do it again. Write a review of a book. Any book you like - most past winners have been nonfiction, but maybe you can change that! There’s no official word count requirement, but previous finalists and winners were often between 2,000 and 10,000 words. There’s no official recommended style,

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01:18:05

Response To Alexandros Contra Me On Ivermectin

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/02/03

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/response-to-alexandros-contra-me I. In November 2021, I posted Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, where I tried to wade through the controversy on potential-COVID-drug ivermectin. Most studies of ivermectin to that point had found significant positive effects, sometimes very strong effects, but a few very big and well-regarded studies were negative, and the consensus of top academics and doctors was that it didn’t work. I wanted to figure out what

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28:21

Mantic Monday 1/30/2023

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/02/01

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-1302023 One million Metaculi, fake stocks, scandal markets again Happy One Millionth Prediction, Metaculus Metaculus celebrated its one millionth user forecast with a hackathon, a series of talks, and a party: This was a helpful reminder that Metaculus is a real organization, not just a site I go to sometimes to check the probabilities of things. The company is run remotely; catching nine of them in a room together was a happy coincidence. Although

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23:44

Janus' Simulators

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/29

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/janus-simulators This post isn’t exactly about AI. But the first three parts will be kind of technical AI stuff, so bear with me. I. The Maskless Shoggoth On The Left Janus writes about Simulators. In the early 2000s, the early AI alignment pioneers - Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nick Bostrom, etc - deliberately started the field in the absence of AIs worth aligning. After powerful AIs existed and needed aligning, it might be too late. But they could glean some basic

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09:57

You Don't Want A Purely Biological, Apolitical...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/26

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/you-dont-want-a-purely-biological CONTENT NOTE: This essay contains sentences that would look bad taken out of context. In the past, I’ve said “PLEASE DON’T TAKE THIS OUT OF CONTEXT” before or after these, but in the New York Times’ 2021 article on me, they just quoted the individual sentence out of context without quoting the “PLEASE DON’T TAKE THIS OUT OF CONTEXT” statement following it. To avoid that, I will be replacing spaces with the letter “N”, standing

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22:56

Who Predicted 2022?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/26

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/who-predicted-2022 Winners and takeaways from last year's prediction contest Last year saw surging inflation, a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and a surprise victory for Democrats in the US Senate. Pundits, politicians, and economists were caught flat-footed by these developments. Did anyone get them right? In a very technical sense, the single person who predicted 2022 most accurately was a 20-something data scientist at Amazon’s forecasting division. I know this

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02:53

ACX Survey Results 2022

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/22

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/acx-survey-results-2022 Thanks to the 7,341 people who took the 2022 Astral Codex Ten survey. See the questions for the ACX survey See the results from the ACX Survey (click “see previous responses” on that page I’ll be publishing more complicated analyses over the course of the next year, hopefully starting later this month. If you want to scoop me, or investigate the data yourself. you can download the answers of the 7000 people who agreed to have their

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05:55

Which Political Victories Cause Backlash?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/22

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/which-political-victories-cause-backlash Four years ago I wrote Trump: A Setback For Trumpism, pointing out that when Trump became president, his beliefs became much less popular. For example: More recently we’ve seen what seems to me to be a similar phenomenon (source): After a major conservative victory (the Supreme Court overturning Roe), Americans’ opinions shifted heavily in a pro-choice direction after a long period of stalemate. The change seems to be of

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12:12

SSC Survey Results On Schooling Types

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/19

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ssc-survey-results-on-schooling-types Taken from the 2020 Slate Star Codex Survey. SSC/ACX readers are a heavily-selected population and nothing about them necessarily generalizes to anyone who isn’t an SSC/ACX reader. But you are an SSC/ACX reader, so maybe they generalize to you. Most of these questions are heavily confounded by different types of people going to different schools. In a few cases, I’ve made feeble efforts to get past this, in other cases I

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04:22

2023 Subscription Drive + Free Unlocked Posts

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/18

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/2023-subscription-drive-free-unlocked 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 Early access to some draft posts The warm glow of supporting the blog. I feel awkward doing a subscription drive, because I already make a lot of money with this blog. But the graph of paid subscribers over time

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13:06

Conspiracies of Cognition, Conspiracies Of Emotion

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/18

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/conspiracies-of-cognition-conspiracies I. Some conspiracy theories center on finding anomalies in a narrative. For example, Oswald couldn’t have shot Kennedy, because the bullet came from the wrong direction. Or: the Egyptians couldn’t have built the Pyramids, because they required XYZ advanced technology. I like these because they feel straightforwardly about styles of processing evidence (Remember, I use the word “evidence” in a broad sense that includes bad

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41:52

Highlights From The Comments On The Media Very Rarely...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/17

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-061 Originally: The Media Very Rarely Lies and Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying. Please don’t have opinions based on the titles until you’ve read the posts! Table of contents: Comments Accusing Me Of Using An Overly Strict Definition Of “Lie” Comments Equating Lying With Egregiously Sloppy Reasoning Comments About Whether Infowars Believes Their Own Claims Comments On Why 8% Of

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02:13

Stage 2 Of Prediction Contest

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/11

Thanks to the 3295 of you who participated in Stage 1 of the 2023 Prediction Contest (“Blind Mode”). This is now closed. You can keep submitting Blind Mode answers if you want, but they won’t count and you can’t win. Stage 2 (“Full Mode”) is now upon us! Your job is now to use any resources you choose, to get predictions as accurate as you can. There’s no such thing as cheating, short of time travel or murdering competitors! Resources you might want to use include: Your own original research,

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22:26

Even More Bay Area House Party

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/11

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/even-more-bay-area-house-party [Previously: Every Bay Area House Party, Another Bay Area House Party] People talk about “fuck-you money”, the amount you’d have to make to never work again. You dream of fuck-you social success, where you find a partner and a few close friends, declare your interpersonal life solved, and never leave the house from then on. Still, in the real world you clock into your job at Google every day, and in the real world you attend Bay

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31:36

How Do AIs' Political Opinions Change As They Get...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/11

Future Matrioshka brains will be pro-immigration Buddhist gun nuts. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/how-do-ais-political-opinions-change I. Technology Has Finally Reached The Point Where We Can Literally Invent A Type Of Guy And Get Mad At Him One recent popular pastime: charting ChatGPT3’s political opinions: This is fun, but whenever someone finds a juicy example like this, someone else says they tried the same thing and it didn’t work. Or they got the opposite result with slightly

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01:01

Take The 2022 ACX Survey!

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/03

Each year, I post a reader survey. This helps me learn who’s reading this blog. But it also helps me try to replicate a bunch of psych findings, and investigate interesting hypotheses. Some highlights from past years include birth order effects, mathematical interests vs. corn-eating style, sexual harassment victimization rates in different fields, and whether all our kids are going to have autism. This year’s survey will probably take 20 - 40 minutes (source: it took me 15 minutes, but I knew all

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27:31

Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/03

Answers to your proposed counterexamples https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/sorry-i-still-think-i-am-right-about Last week I wrote The Media Very Rarely Lies. I argued that, although the media is often deceptive and misleading, it very rarely makes up facts. Instead, it focuses on the (true) facts it wants you to think about, and ignores other true facts that contradict them or add context. This is true of establishment media like the New York Times, but also of fringe

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34:51

Links For December 2022

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/02

[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.] 1: In the context of Elon’s Twitter takeover, @Yishan talks about the generic playbook for corporate takeovers (it really does feel like occupying a hostile

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06:27

Selection Bias Is A Fact Of Life, Not An Excuse For...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2023/01/02

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/selection-bias-is-a-fact-of-life Sometimes people do amateur research through online surveys. Then they find interesting things. Then their commenters say it doesn’t count, because “selection bias!” This has been happening to Aella for years, but people try it sometimes on me too. I think these people are operating off some model where amateur surveys necessarily have selection bias, because they only capture the survey-maker’s Twitter followers, or blog

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11:44

[Classic] Abraham Lincoln, Ape-Man

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/12/24

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/02/12/abraham-lincoln-ape-man/ Posted on February 12, 2013 Away with LiveJournal, and in with a new, sleeker-looking blog. A classier blog. A more mature blog. A blog where we’re not afraid to ask the big questions. Questions like: did Abraham Lincoln sign a demonic pact with the ghost of Attila the Hun? We turn to one of my favorite historical books of all time, the late 19th/early 20th century bestseller The Copperhead, or, The Secret Political History of our Civil

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1,151 results

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