This is a link post. I don’t know if it occurred to me until my thirties to think of exercise as an enjoyable thing. I was familiar with finding obscure corner-cases that were fun, such as Dance Dance Revolution. But the idea of it just often being a good time was alien. I hesitate to blame anyone for anything, but school seems culpable here. I got the impression so firmly that PE class (‘physical education’ or ‘physed’) was a kind of horror, I’m not sure I would have treated this fact as on less

The multiverse offers one possible explanation for the apparent fine-tuning of our universe. But every explanation carries assumptions. How do we decide which explanation of reality makes the most sense?

By cataloguing the ephemera that slip between the headlines of my days, future me has a ready reckoner of my life.Psyche audio helps you to better understand yourself and others through expert guides, provocative ideas and personal life stories. We address psychological questions and puzzles from a range of perspectives including philosophy, history, anthropology and more. You will discover practical knowledge and insights to help you navigate everyday challenges, overcome difficulties

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit claremontinstitute.substack.comFive weeks from election day, hosts Spencer Klavan and Mike Sabo take stock of Republicans’ standing in the midterms. As incumbents, they already face stiff headwinds, and Trump’s interventions have made things still more difficult in key states. Will Trump’s communication strategy amid the affordability crisis and the Iran War turn voters away from conservative candidates? Plus: a prediction of Democrats’s

Our universe depends on a delicate balance among its fundamental forces. Our lives can require balance too: between structure and freedom, strength and humility, control and trust.

This is a link post. Celeste and I are excited to launch Babel Translation, a nonprofit organization translating English-language writing on AI safety to be accessible to a global audience! We’re starting with Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese. AI has been moving so fast. Its risks are indeed globally felt, and we’d like to help make those risks understandable globally, too. But language remains a barrier to shared engagement in AI safety. Much writing & discussion is in English, and

This lesson outlines the crucial do's and don'ts for effectively researching a social challenge, emphasizing the importance of a systematic, inquisitive, and humble approach to problem-solving. It guides aspiring social entrepreneurs on how to avoid common pitfalls and thoroughly understand an issue before developing solutions.🎯 Learning Objectives• Be systematic and meticulously track your research.• Question all assumptions and put your ego aside, learning from previous efforts.• Cultivate a

I was born at the end of the cold war, unaware of the danger we were emerging from. Duck and cover drills (as if those could protect schoolchildren from a nuclear blast) were a curiosity of the past. The farmer-poet Wendell Berry, who wrote about the dread of nuclear war, died recently. From his 1968 “The peace of wild things”: When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood

This is a link post. Want to start a conversation about HuggingFace with your mom but she's inexplicably bouncing off the METR report? Try this explainer I wrote in the style of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad. Art by the wonderful HungerArtist --- First published: September 30th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7NZ6ZWjenzzCbCJ5b/frog-and-toad-and-the-increasingly-capable-machines Linkpost URL: https://...

Fred Hoyle predicted the remarkable nuclear resonance that makes carbon possible. When the conditions necessary for life appear extraordinarily precise, when does coincidence begin to invite a deeper question?

In this module, delve into the fundamental concept of 'community' within the realm of social entrepreneurship. Learn how to define community, identify key stakeholders, and understand the importance of engaging with and supporting lived experience leaders to drive effective social change. This video is a crucial step in your research process to understand challenges and contribute to existing solutions.🎯 Learning Objectives• Define 'community' and its relevance to social entrepreneurship•

This is a link post. Want to start a conversation about HuggingFace with your mom but she's inexplicably bouncing off the METR report? Try this explainer I wrote in the style of Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad. Art by the wonderful HungerArtist ---First published: September 30th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7NZ6ZWjenzzCbCJ5b/frog-and-toad-and-the-increasingly-capable-machines Linkpost URL:https://frogandtoad.ai ---

Very simple idea, but I thought it'd be worth making a reference post on this. Some people are saying AI will make all goods cheaper, so you'll be able to afford a nice life by working. Without any redistribution, just by market mechanisms. These people are wrong. AI will lower the price of goods you need to survive, and also the price of your labor. The question is which will get cheaper faster. Let's use energy cost as a proxy. A day's worth of labor equivalent to yours can be done by ...

Around 10 to 20 years ago, people realized that a bunch of aliens exist & that we can build portals which can summon them. The bigger the portal you make, the bigger the alien it can admit. These portals and aliens have several characteristics: We can't go through the portals into the aliens’ side. We can only learn about the aliens by studying the ones we’ve summoned.This relationship is not symmetrical. The aliens know a lot about our worldYou can't specify exactly which alien will walk

I was born at the end of the cold war, unaware of the danger we were emerging from. Duck and cover drills (as if those could protect schoolchildren from a nuclear blast) were a curiosity of the past. The farmer-poet Wendell Berry, who wrote about the dread of nuclear war, died recently. From his 1968 “The peace of wild things”: When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood

Life flourishes within surprisingly narrow boundaries. From Earth’s place in the solar system to the constraints in our own lives, could some limitations actually create the conditions in which we flourish?

I'll keep this short, since it's a simple observation that I haven't seen anybody else make, about the way computer systems do math. If you ask a language model to do a multi-step math problem (let's take GLM-5.3 as an example because you can see the entire CoT — nothing up its sleeve), you might see something like this: We need to evaluate the integral $int_0^infty frac{x^3}{e^x - 1} dx$. The standard approach: Use the geometric series expansion. We have $frac{1}{e^x - 1} = frac{e^{-x}}{1 -

The fundamental constants of our universe seem remarkably calibrated for life. What might that precision suggest about the nature of the universe—and whether there is design behind it?

In my first “Meat Matters” substack, I wrote that despite some recent popular press obituaries, I remain optimistic about the scientific viability of cultivated meat, and I spelled out why. Here's the executive summary: In less than a decade, costs have fallen by orders of magnitude, government funding and scientific progress have surged, and multiple companies report that they are within striking distance of price parity. In short: The science and engineering challenges will not require