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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

23:52

The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/14

Here's my understanding of the situation: Anthropic signed a contract with the Pentagon last summer. It originally said the Pentagon had to follow Anthropic's Usage Policy like everyone else. In January, the Pentagon attempted to renegotiate, asking to ditch the Usage Policy and instead have Anthropic's AIs available for "all lawful purposes"1. Anthropic demurred, asking for a guarantee that their AIs would not be used for mass surveillance of American citizens or no-human-in-the-loop killbots

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05:54

Malicious Streetlight Effects Vs. "Directional...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/14

Malicious streetlights are an evil trick from Dark Data Journalism. Some annoying enemy has a valid complaint. So you use FACTS and LOGIC to prove that something similar-sounding-but-slightly-different is definitely false. Then you act like you've debunked the complaint. My "favorite" example, spotted during the 2016 election, was a response to some #BuildTheWall types saying that illegal immigration through the southern border was near record highs. Some data journalist got good statistics and

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03:12

Book Review Contest Rules 2026

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/14

It's that time again. Even numbered years are book reviews, odd-numbered years are non-book reviews, so you're limited to books for now. Write a review of a book. 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, but check the style of last time's finalists and winners or my ACX book reviews (1, 2, 3) if you need inspiration. Please limit yourself to one entry per person or team. Then

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17:05

Crime As Proxy For Disorder

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/14

The problem: people hate crime and think it's going up. But actually, crime barely affects most people and is historically low. So what's going on? In our discussion yesterday, many commenters proposed that the discussion about "crime" was really about disorder. Disorder takes many forms, but its symptoms include litter, graffiti, shoplifting, tent cities, weird homeless people wandering about muttering to themselves, and people walking around with giant boom boxes shamelessly playing music at

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16:22

Record Low Crime Rates Are Real, Not Just Reporting...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/14

Last year, the US may have recorded the lowest murder rate in its 250 year history. Other crimes have poorer historical data, but are at least at ~50 year lows. This post will do two things: Establish that our best data show crime rates are historically low Argue that this is a real effect, not just reporting bias (people report fewer crimes to police) or an artifact of better medical care (victims are more likely to survive, so murders get downgraded to assaults)

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24:55

What Happened With Bio Anchors?

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/10

[Original post: Biological Anchors: A Trick That Might Or Might Not Work] I. Ajeya Cotra's Biological Anchors report was the landmark AI timelines forecast of the early 2020s. In many ways, it was incredibly prescient - it nailed the scaling hypothesis, predicted the current AI boom, and introduced concepts like "time horizons" that have entered common parlance. In most cases where its contemporaries challenged it, its assumptions have been borne out, and its challengers proven wrong. But its

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11:09

Political Backflow From Europe

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/10

The European discourse can be - for lack of a better term - America-brained. We hear stories of Black Lives Matter marches in countries without significant black populations, or defendants demanding their First Amendment rights in countries without constitutions. Why shouldn't the opposite phenomenon exist? Europe is more populous than the US, and looms large in the American imagination. Why shouldn't we find ourselves accidentally absorbing European ideas that don't make sense in the American

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48:11

Links For February 2026

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/10

[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-february-2026

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02:00:37

Moltbook: After The First Weekend

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/03/03

[previous post: Best Of Moltbook] From the human side of the discussion: As the AIs would say, "You've cut right to the heart of this issue". What's the difference between 'real' and 'roleplaying'? One possible answer invokes internal reality. Are the AIs conscious? Do they "really" "care" about the things they're saying? We may never figure this out. Luckily, it has no effect on the world, so we can leave it to the philosophers1. I find it more fruitful to think about external reality instead,

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53:50

Best Of Moltbook

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/02/18

Moltbook is "a social network for AI agents", although "humans [are] welcome to observe". The backstory: a few months ago, Anthropic released Claude Code, an exceptionally productive programming agent. A few weeks ago, a user modified it into Clawdbot, a generalized lobster-themed AI personal assistant. It's free, open-source, and "empowered" in the corporate sense - the designer talks about how it started responding to his voice messages before he explicitly programmed in that capability. After

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18:52

Slightly Against The "Other People's Money" Argument...

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/02/18

In the comments to last year's USAID post, Fabian said: While i am happy for the existence of charity organisations, i don't get why people instead of giving to charity are so eager to force their co-citizens to give. If one charity org is not worth getting your personal money, find another one which is. But don't use the tax machine to forcefully extract money for charity. There are purposes where you need the tax machine, preventing freerider induced tragedy of the commons. But for charity

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50:55

Highlights From The Comments On Scott Adams

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/02/10

[original post: The Dilbert Afterlife] Table of Contents: 1: Should I Have Written This At All? 2: Was I Unfair To Adams? 3: Comments On The Substance Of The Piece 4: The Part On Race And Cancellation (INCLUDED UNDER PROTEST) 5: Other Comments 6: Summary/Updates https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-scott

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01:10:27

The Dilbert Afterlife

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/02/04

Thanks to everyone who sent in condolences on my recent death from prostate cancer at age 68, but that was Scott Adams. I (Scott Alexander) am still alive1. Still, the condolences are appreciated. Scott Adams was a surprisingly big part of my life. I may be the only person to have read every Dilbert book before graduating elementary school. For some reason, 10-year-old-Scott found Adams' stories of time-wasting meetings and pointy-haired bosses hilarious. No doubt some of the attraction came from a

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35:48

Mantic Monday: The Monkey's Paw Curls

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/30

The Monkey's Paw Curls Isn't "may you get exactly what you asked for" one of those ancient Chinese curses? Since we last spoke, prediction markets have gone to the moon, rising from millions to billions in monthly volume. For a few weeks in October, Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan was the world's youngest self-made billionaire (now it's some AI people). Kalshi is so accurate that it's getting called a national security threat. The catch is, of course, that it's mostly degenerate gambling,

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20:41

SOTA On Bay Area House Party

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/30

[previously in series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] Every city parties for its own reasons. New Yorkers party to flaunt their wealth. Angelenos party to flaunt their beauty. Washingtonians party to network. Here in SF, they party because Claude 4.5 Opus has saturated VendingBench, and the newest AI agency benchmark is PartyBench, where an AI is asked to throw a house party and graded on its performance. You weren't invited to Claude 4.5 Opus' party. Claude 4.5 Opus invited all of the coolest

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15:27

The Permanent Emergency

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/30

One morning around 6, the police banged on our door. "OPEN UP!" they shouted, the way police shout when they definitely have an alternative in mind for if you won't. I was awake at the time, because the kids were up early and I was on shift. I opened the door. The cops seemed mollified by the fact that I was carrying twin toddlers and looked too frazzled to commit any difficult crimes. They said they'd gotten a 9-1-1 call from my house with plenty of screaming. Had there been any murders in the past

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51:03

Highlights From The Comments On Boomers

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/23

[original post: Against Against Boomers] Before getting started: First, I wish I'd been more careful to differentiate the following claims: Boomers had it much easier than later generations. The political system unfairly prioritizes Boomers over other generations. Boomers are uniquely bad on some axis like narcissism, selfishness, short-termism, or willingness to defect on the social contract. Anti-Boomerism conflates all three of these positions, and in arguing against it, I tried to argue

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06:41

You Have Only X Years To Escape Permanent Moon Ownership

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/23

If you're not familiar with "X years to escape the permanent underclass", see the New Yorker here, or the Laine, Bear, and Trammell/Dwarkesh articles that inspired it. The "permanent underclass" meme isn't being spread by poor people - who are already part of the underclass, and generally not worrying too much about its permanence. It's preying on neurotic well-off people in Silicon Valley, who fret about how they're just bourgeois well-off rather than future oligarch well-off, and that only the

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55:36

Highlights From The Comments On Vibecession

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/10

[Original post: Vibecession - Much More Than You Wanted To Know] Table of Contents 1: When was the vibecession? 2: Is the vibecession just sublimating cultural complaints? 3: Discourse downstream of the Mike Green $140K poverty line post 4: What about other countries? 5: Comments on rent/housing 6: Comments on inflation 7: Comments on vibes 8: Other good comments 9: The parable of Calvin's grandparents 10: Updates / conclusions

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01:19

ACX/Metaculus Prediction Contest 2026

Astral Codex Ten Podcast ·

2026/01/10

This year's prediction contest is live on Metaculus. They write: This year's contest draws directly from that community, with all questions suggested by ACX readers. Both experienced forecasters and newcomers are invited to participate, making predictions across U.S. politics, AI, international affairs, and culture. To participate, submit your predictions by January 17th at 11:59 PM PT. At that time, we will take a snapshot of all standing forecasts, which will determine the contest rankings and

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1,139 results

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