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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

30:25

Mantic Monday 8/15/22

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/16

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-81522 RIP PredictIt -- Hedgehog Markets -- Salem/CSPI Fellowship The Passing Of PredictIt In 2014, Victoria University in New Zealand struck a deal with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency that regulates some markets in the US. CFTC would let Victoria set up a prediction market - at the time a relatively new idea - for research purposes only. Their no-action letter placed strict limits on Victoria’s project: The market would

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35:49

Your Book Review: God Emperor Of Dune

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/14

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-god-emperor-of-dune Finalist #14 in the Book Review Contest [This is one of the finalists in the 2022 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 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. This contains

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14:16

Will Nonbelievers Really Believe Anything?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/12

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/will-nonbelievers-really-believe There’s a popular saying among religious apologists: Once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe in nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything. Big talk, although I notice that this is practically always attributed to one of GK Chesterton or CS Lewis, neither of whom actually said it. If you’re making strong claims about how everybody except you is gullible, you should at

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17:27

A Cyclic Theory Of Subcultures

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/12

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-cyclic-theory-of-subcultures David Chapman’s Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths In Subculture Evolution is rightfully a classic, but it doesn’t match my own experience. Either through good luck or poor observational skills, I’ve never seen a lot of sociopath takeovers. Instead, I’ve seen a gradual process of declining asabiyyah. Good people start out working together, then work together a little less, then turn on each other, all while staying good people and

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21:47

Why Not Slow AI Progress?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/09

Machine Alignment Monday 8/8/22 https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-not-slow-ai-progress The Broader Fossil Fuel Community Imagine if oil companies and environmental activists were both considered part of the broader “fossil fuel community”. Exxon and Shell would be “fossil fuel capabilities”; Greenpeace and the Sierra Club would be “fossil fuel safety” - two equally beloved parts of the rich diverse tapestry of fossil fuel-related work. They would all go to the same parties - fossil fuel

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30:39

Your Book Review: Exhaustion

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/07

Finalist #13 in the Book Review Contest https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-exhaustion [This is one of the finalists in the 2022 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 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 - SA] I. Imagine you

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15:17

Absurdity Bias, Neom Edition

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/05

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/absurdity-bias-neom-edition Alexandros M expresses concern about my post on Neom. My post mostly just makes fun of Neom. My main argument against it is absurdity: a skyscraper the height of WTC1 and the length of Ireland? Come on, that’s absurd! But isn’t the absurdity heuristic a cognitive bias? Didn’t lots of true things sound absurd before they turned out to be true (eg evolution, quantum mechanics)? Don’t I specifically believe in things many people have

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25:28

Slightly Against Underpopulation Worries

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/05

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/slightly-against-underpopulation So I hear there’s an underpopulation crisis now. I think the strong version of this claim - that underpopulation could cause human extinction - is 100% false. The weaker version - that it could make life unpleasant in some countries - is true. But I don’t think it’s at the top of any list of things to worry about. 1: Declining Birth Rates Won’t Drive Humans Extinct, Come On Not only are we not going to go extinct because of

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24:18

Model City Monday 8/1/22

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/08/03

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/model-city-monday-8122 Neom Neom Neom Suppose you are an oil-rich country. You drill the oil and get very rich, for now. But someday you will run out of oil, or the world will switch to green sustainable energy, and then you will stop being very rich. Seems bad. There are two main classes of solution to this problem. Norway’s solution is to invest the oil money into a sovereign wealth fund; after they run out of oil, they can stay rich off investment income

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43:17

Your Book Review: Viral

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/30

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-viral Finalist #12 in the Book Review Contest [This is one of the finalists in the 2022 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 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 - SA]

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23:55

Links For July '22

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/30

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-july-095 [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: Rude compounds on Reddit (source, original). Thousands of cocksuckers, shitlords, and libtards,

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29:01

Highlights From The Comments On Criticism Of...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/29

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-criticism 1: I said in the original post that I wrote this because I knew someone would write the opposite article (that organizations accept specific criticism in order to fend off paradigmatic criticism), and then later Zvi did write an article kind of like that. He writes: It is the dream of anyone who writes a post called Criticism of [a] Criticism Contest to then have a sort-of reply called Criticism of Criticism of

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11:00

Forer Statements As Updates And Affirmations

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/27

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/forer-statements-as-updates-and-affirmations The Forer Effect is a trick used by astrologers, psychics, and social psychologists. Given a list of statements like these: You have a great need for other people to like and admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them

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41:18

ELK And The Problem Of Truthful AI

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/27

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/elk-and-the-problem-of-truthful-ai Machine Alignment Monday 7/25/22 I. There Is No Shining Mirror I met a researcher who works on “aligning” GPT-3. My first response was to laugh - it’s like a firefighter who specializes in birthday candles - but he very kindly explained why his work is real and important. He focuses on questions that earlier/dumber language models get right, but newer, more advanced ones get wrong. For example: Human questioner: What

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01:08:06

Your Book Review: The Society Of The Spectacle

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/23

Finalist #11 in the Book Review Contest https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-society-of-the [This is one of the finalists in the 2022 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 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 - SA]

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19:12

Criticism Of Criticism Of Criticism

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/20

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/criticism-of-criticism-of-criticism I. The voters wanted Anti-Politics Machine to be a Book Review Contest Finalist this year, and I listened. But I wasn’t happy about it. I hate having to post criticism of EA. Not because EA is bad at taking criticism. The opposite: they like it too much. It almost feels like a sex thing. “Please, tell me again how naughty I’m being!” I went to an EA organization’s offices once - I think it was OpenPhil, but don’t quote me on

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01:14:32

Your Book Review: The Righteous Mind

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/18

Finalist #10 in the Book Review Contest https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-righteous-mind [This is one of the finalists in the 2022 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 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 - SA]

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55:37

Impact Markets: The Annoying Details

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/17

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/impact-markets-the-annoying-details I said last year that I’d like to try running this year’s ACX Grants through impact markets. Since then, some people have expressed interest in the technical implementation, and - to nobody’s surprise more than my own - it’s starting to look like it could happen. A reminder: impact certificates are like a VC funding ecosystem for charity. Charity founders with good ideas sell shares in their proposed projects. Profit-seeking

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37:30

Book Review: The Man From The Future

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/14

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-man-from-the-future John von Neumann invented the digital computer. The fields of game theory and cellular automata. Important pieces of modern economics, set theory, and particle physics. A substantial part of the technology behind the atom and hydrogen bombs. Several whole fields of mathematics I hadn’t previously heard of, like “operator algebras”, “continuous geometry”, and “ergodic theory”. The Man From The Future, by Ananyo Bhattacharya,

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13:38

Mantic Monday 7/11/22

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/07/13

New star forecasting team -- Musk vs. Twitter -- Donald Trump wriggling his way out of things https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-71122 Curtains For Trump? The original case for formal forecasting grew out of pundits often being confident and wrong. And nowhere have pundits been wrong more often than when they predict that the newest scandal will end Donald Trump’s career once and for all. Source: KnowYourMeme I thought of this last week while reading Is Conservative Media

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1,151 results

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