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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

21:01

Birth Order Effects: Nature vs. Nurture

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/06/01

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/birth-order-effects-nature-vs-nurture Introduction Thanks to everyone who waited two years for me to get around to this. In 2018, thanks to the 8,000 of you who filled out the Slate Star Codex Reader Survey, I discovered that higher birth order siblings were much more likely to read this blog than later-borns: Source here; thanks to Emile for the graph That is, of people with exactly one sibling who read this blog, about 72% of those are the older of the

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37:42

A Guide To Asking Robots To Design Stained Glass Windows

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/31

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-guide-to-asking-robots-to-design I love stained glass. Not so much your usual suburban house stained glass with a picture of lilies. The good stuff. Cathedral windows, Art Nouveau, Art Deco. Why did we stop doing that? I blame the conspiracy. Recently I’ve been experimenting with small-scale alternatives. You can get custom-printed window film from these people. If you print out a picture of a stained glass scene and stick it on a window, it looks pretty

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32:41

Your Book Review: The Anti-Politics Machine

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/28

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-anti-politics [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] Everyone familiar with Effective Altruism knows

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30:05

In Partial, Grudging Defense Of The Hearing Voices...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/26

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/in-partial-grudging-defense-of-the 1: The New York Times has an article out on the Hearing Voices Movement - ie people with hallucinations and delusions who want this to be treated as normal and okay rather than medicalized. Freddie deBoer has a pretty passionate response here. Other people have differently passionate responses: I’ve met some Hearing Voices members. My impression is that everyone on every side of this discussion is a good person trying to make

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01:24:20

California Gubernatorial Candidates From Z to Z

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/25

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/california-gubernatorial-candidates California is the home of Alphabet Inc, so it’s symbolically appropriate that we have twenty-six candidates in this year’s gubernatorial primary. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will get bored after looking into two or three. Not us! We are going to do our civic duty and evaluate them all, in the order they’re listed on the ballot. Starting with:

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07:12

Willpower, Human and Machine

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/24

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/willpower-human-and-machine Two paragraphs from the mesa-optimizers post, which I quoted again in the adaptation-executors post: Consider evolution, optimizing the fitness of animals. For a long time, it did so very mechanically, inserting behaviors like “use this cell to detect light, then grow toward the light” or “if something has a red dot on its back, it might be a female of your species, you should mate with it”. As animals became more complicated, they

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51:01

Your Book Review: Making Nature

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/22

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-making-nature [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] The world of scientific publishing is organized as a

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18:13

Lavender's Game: Silexan For Anxiety

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/19

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lavenders-game-silexan-for-anxiety 1: What is silexan? There are dozens of natural supplements that purport to treat anxiety. Most have a few small sketchy studies backing them up. Together, they form a big amorphous mass of claims that nobody has the patience to sift through or care about. But recently silexan (derived from lavender) has started to stand out of the crowd. Daily Mail had an interview with psychiatry professor Hans Peter-Volz, who said that

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09:26

Link: Troof On Nootropics

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/18

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/link-troof-on-nootropics Should have signal-boosted this earlier, forgot, sorry. The author of the blog Troof sort of replicated my 2020 nootropics survey. But instead of another survey, they made a recommendation engine. You rated all the nootropics you’d taken, and it compared you to other people and predicted what else you would like. The end result was the same: lots of people providing data on which nootropics they liked. Troof got 1981 subjects - more than

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15:58

Contra Dynomight On Sexy In-Laws

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/18

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-dynomight-on-sexy-in-laws I. From the Dynomight blog: You, Your Parents, And The Hotness Of Who You Marry. They start with a traditional situation: some romance novel heroine wants to marry a tall, dark stranger. But her parents want her to marry a much older nobleman/doctor/engineer who can provide her with a stable income. Or the gender-flipped version: the young man courts a beautiful debutante, while his parents try to force him to marry the

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52:57

Your Book Review: Consciousness And The Brain

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/14

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-consciousness-and Finalist #1 of 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] Imagine

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53:30

Book Review: The Gervais Principle

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/11

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-the-gervais-principle I. The Gervais Principle, by postrationalist heresiarch Venkatesh Rao, claims to be a business book. It claims a lot of things, actually. According to its introduction: By my estimate, the material in this book has already triggered . . . hazardous reflection for thousands of people over the past four years. It has triggered significant (and not always positive) career moves for dozens of people that I know of. And: There is

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22:19

Mantic Monday 5/9/22

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/10

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-5922 The future of abortion, plus a valiant attempt at market manipulation Warcasting Changes in Ukraine prediction markets since my last post April 18: Will at least three of six big cities fall by June 1?: 5% → 2% Will World War III happen before 2050?: 22% →25% Will Russia invade any other country in 2022?: 5% →10% Will Putin still be president of Russia next February?: 85% → 80% Peace or cease-fire before 2023?: 65% → 52% Will

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01:20

Berkeley Meetup This Saturday

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/06

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/berkeley-meetup-this-saturday-26e Why: Because we’re having spring meetups in 70 cities, and Berkeley is one of them. I’m signal-boosting this one because I’ll be able to attend. When: Saturday, May 7, 1:00 PM. Where: UC Berkeley, the lawn just east of West Circle and north of Free Speech Bikeway. Who: Anyone who wants. Please feel free to come even if you feel awkward about it, even if you’re not “the typical ACX reader”, even if you’re worried people won’t

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10:22

Why Do People Prefer My Old Blog's Layout To Substack's?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/06

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-do-people-prefer-my-old-blogs This keeps coming up. When I was first considering moving to Substack, I asked my readers what they thought. They thought various things, but one of them was they hated the layout. At some point I turned this into a formal survey, and:

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26:36

Every Bay Area House Party

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/05/04

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/every-bay-area-house-party You walk in. The wall decorations vaguely suggest psychedelia. The music is pounding, head-splitting, amelodious. Everyone is struggling to speak over it. Everyone assumes everyone else likes it. You flee to the room furthest from the music source. Three or four guys are sitting in a circle, talking. Two girls are standing by a weird lamp, drinks in hand. You see Bob. “Hi, Bob!” “Hey, good to see you again!” “What’s new?” “Man, it’s

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27:52

Highlights From The Comments On Xi Jinping

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/04/29

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-xi I: Xi’s Rise To Power II: Censorship III: Anti-Corruption And Centralization IV: Miscellaneous I. Rise To Power — Erusian on Xi’s rise: > “Why did Xi succeed at gathering power, where others didn’t?” Communist leaderships choose their leaders for ideological reasons. You're reducing it to cynical power politics. But this isn't how the the Soviet premier got or the Chinese paramount leader gets selected. They're selected

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40:19

Book Review: A Clinical Introduction To Lacanian...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/04/27

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-a-clinical-introduction [epistemic status: I didn’t understand this book. Think of this review as detailing the ways I didn’t understand it and hypothesizing what certain parts might mean, and not as an attempt to summarize/re-explain something I understand well] I. Remember that AI? From the mesa-optimizers post a few weeks ago? It was trained to pick strawberries. The programmers rewarded it whenever it got a strawberry in its bucket. It started

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04:39

Initial Conditions

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/04/23

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/initial-conditions Consider people who go by their first and middle initials, eg John Q Smith introduces himself as “Hi, I’m J.Q.” Authors who use their initials on their books (eg J.K. Rowling) don’t count, unless they also go by their initials in everyday life. Is there any pattern to who does this - ie which initials lead people to initialize their names? Think about this for a second before you continue: . . . In my experience it’s about 50% JD, 49% a few

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27:05

Contra Hoffman On Vitamin D Dosing

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2022/04/22

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoffman-on-vitamin-d-dosing [epistemic status: pretty uncertain about each individual fact, moderate confidence in general overview] I. Hoffman Contra Me I’ve said many times that (to a first approximation) Vitamin D is a boring bone-related chemical. Most claims that it does exciting things outside of bones - cure COVID! prevent cancer! decrease cardiovascular risk! - are hype, and have failed to stand up to replication. Ben Hoffman disagrees, and

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1,151 results

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