Afleveringen
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People love trying to find holes in the drowning child thought experiment. This is natural: itâs obvious you should save the child in the scenario, but much less obvious that you should give lots of charity to poor people (as it seems to imply). So there must be some distinction between the two scenarios. But most peopleâs cursory and uninspired attempts to find these fail.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/more-drowning-children
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Jake Eaton has a great article on misophonia in Asterisk.
Misophonia is a condition in which people canât tolerate certain noises (classically chewing). Nobody loves chewing noises, but misophoniacs go above and beyond, sometimes ending relationships, shutting themselves indoors, or even deliberately trying to deafen themselves in an attempt to escape.
So itâs a sensory hypersensitivity, right? Maybe not. Thereâs increasing evidence - which I learned about from Jake, but which didnât make it into the article - that misophonia is less about sound than it seems.
Misophoniacs who go deaf report that it doesnât go away. Now they get triggered if they see someone chewing. Itâs the same with other noises. Someone who gets triggered by the sound of forks scraping against a table will eventually get triggered by the sight of the scraping fork. Someone triggered by music will eventually get triggered by someone playing a music video on mute.
Maybe this isnât surprising?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/misophonia-beyond-sensory-sensitivity
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Last month, I put out a request for experts to help me understand the details of OpenAIâs forprofit buyout. The following comes from someone who has looked into the situation in depth but is not an insider. Mistakes are mine alone.
Why Was OpenAI A Nonprofit In The First Place?
In the early 2010s, the AI companies hadnât yet discovered scaling laws, and so underestimated the amount of compute (and therefore money) it would take to build AI. DeepMind was the first victim; originally founded on high ideals of prioritizing safety and responsible stewardship of the Singularity, it hit a financial barrier and sold to Google.
This scared Elon Musk, who didnât trust Google (or any corporate sponsor) with AGI. He teamed up with Sam Altman and others, and OpenAI was born. To avoid duplicating DeepMindâs failure, they founded it as a nonprofit with a mission to âbuild safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanityâ.
But like DeepMind, OpenAI needed money. At first, they scraped by with personal donations from Musk and other idealists, but as the full impact of scaling laws became clearer, Altman wanted to form a forprofit arm and seek investment. Musk and Altman disagree on what happened next: Musk said he objected to the profit focus, Altman says Musk agreed but wanted to be in charge. In any case, Musk left, Altman took full control, and OpenAI founded a forprofit subsidiary.
This subsidary was supposedly a âcapped forprofitâ, meaning that their investors were capped at 100x return - if someone invested $1 million, they could get a max of $100 million back, no matter how big OpenAI became - this ensured that the majority of gains from a Singularity would go to humanity rather than investors. But a capped forprofit isnât a real kind of corporate structure; in real life OpenAI handles this through Profit Participation Units, a sort of weird stock/bond hybrid which does what OpenAI claims the capped forprofit model is doing.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/openai-nonprofit-buyout-much-more
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Sorry, you can only get drugs when there's a drug shortage.
Three GLP-1 drugs are approved for weight loss in the United States:
Semaglutide (OzempicÂź, WegovyÂź, RybelsusÂź) Tirzepatide (MounjaroÂź, ZepboundÂź) Liraglutide (VictozaÂź, SaxendaÂź)âŠbut liraglutide is noticeably worse than the others, and most people prefer either semaglutide or tirzepatide. These cost about $1000/month and are rarely covered by insurance, putting them out of reach for most Americans.
âŠif you buy them from the pharma companies, like a chump. For the past three years, thereâs been a shortage of these drugs. FDA regulations say that during a shortage, itâs semi-legal for compounding pharmacies to provide medications without getting the patent-holdersâ permission. In practice, that means they get cheap peptides from China, do some minimal safety testing in house, and sell them online.
So for the past three years, telehealth startups working with compounding pharmacies have sold these drugs for about $200/month. Over two million Americans have made use of this loophole to get weight loss drugs for cheap. But there was always a looming question - what happens when the shortage ends? Many people have to stay on GLP-1 drugs permanently, or else they risk regaining their lost weight. But many canât afford $1000/month. What happens to them?
Now weâll find out. At the end of last year, the FDA declared the shortage over. The compounding pharmacies appealed the decision, but last month the FDA confirmed its decision was final. As of March 19 (for tirzepatide) and April 22 (for semaglutide), compounding pharmacies will no longer be able to sell cheap GLP-1 drugs.
Letâs take a second to think of the real victims here: telehealth company stockholders.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-ozempocalypse-is-nigh
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Most headlines have said something like New NAEP Scores Dash Hope Of Post-COVID Learning Recovery, which seems like a fair assessment.
I feel bad about this, because during lockdowns I argued that kidsâ educational outcomes donât suffer long-term from missing a year or two of school. Re-reading the post, I still think my arguments make sense.
So how did I get it so wrong?
When I consider this question, I ask myself: do I expect complete recovery in two years? In 2026, we will see a class of fourth graders who hadnât even started school when the lockdowns ended. They will have attended kindergarten through 4th grade entirely in person, with no opportunity for âlearning lossâ.
If thereâs a sudden switch to them doing just as well as the 2015 kids, then it was all lockdown-induced learning loss and I suck. But if not, then what?
Maybe the downward trend isnât related to COVID? On the graph above, the national (not California) trend started in the 2017 - 2019 period, ie before COVID. And the states that tried hardest to keep their schools open did little better than anyone else:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/what-happened-to-naep-scores
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I enjoy the yearly book review contest, but it feels like last yearâs contest is barely done, and I want to give you a break so you can read more books before we start over. So this year, letâs do something different. Submit an ACX-length post reviewing something, anything, except a book.
You can review a movie, song, or video game. You can review a product, restaurant, or tourist attraction. But donât let the usual categories limit you. Review comic books or blog posts. Review political parties - no, whole societies! Review animals or trees! Review an oddly-shaped pebble, or a passing cloud! Review abstract concepts! Mathematical proofs! Review love, death, or God Himself!
(please donât review human races, I donât need any more NYT articles)
Otherwise, the usual rules apply. Thereâs no official word count requirement, but previous finalists and winners were often between 2,000 and 10,000 words. Thereâs no official recommended style, but check the style of last yearâs 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 send me your review through this Google Form. The form will ask for your name, email, the thing youâre reviewing, and a link to a Google Doc. The Google Doc should have your review exactly as you want me to post it if youâre a finalist. DONâT INCLUDE YOUR NAME OR ANY HINT ABOUT YOUR IDENTITY IN THE GOOGLE DOC ITSELF, ONLY IN THE FORM. I want to make this contest as blinded as possible, so Iâm going to hide that column in the form immediately and try to judge your docs on their merit.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/everything-except-book-review-contest
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Intelligence seems to correlate with total number of neurons in the brain.
Different animalsâ intelligence levels track the number of neurons in their cerebral cortices (cerebellum etc donât count). Neuron number predicts animal intelligence better than most other variables like brain size, brain size divided by body size, âencephalization quotientâ, etc. This is most obvious in certain bird species that have tiny brains full of tiny neurons and are very smart (eg crows, parrots).
Humans with bigger brains have on average higher IQ. AFAIK nobody has done the obvious next step and seen whether people with higher IQ have more neurons. This could be because the neuron-counting process involves dissolving the brain into a âsoupâ, and maybe this is too mad-science-y for the fun-hating spoilsports who run IRBs. But common sense suggests bigger brains increase IQ because they have more neurons in humans too.
Finally, AIs with more neurons (sometimes described as the related quantity âmore parametersâ) seem common-sensically smarter and perform better on benchmarks. This is part of what people mean by âscalingâ, ie the reason GoogBookZon is spending $500 billion building a data center the size of the moon.
All of this suggests that intelligence heavily depends on number of neurons, and most scientists think something like this is true.
But how can this be?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-should-intelligence-be-related
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[I havenât 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 canât guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-february-2025
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Conflict theory is the belief that political disagreements come from material conflict. So for example, if rich people support capitalism, and poor people support socialism, this isnât because one side doesnât understand economics. Itâs because rich people correctly believe capitalism is good for the rich, and poor people correctly believe socialism is good for the poor. Or if white people are racist, itâs not because they have some kind of mistaken stereotypes that need to be corrected - itâs because they correctly believe racism is good for white people.
Some people comment on my more political posts claiming that theyâre useless. You canât (they say) produce change by teaching people Economics 101 or the equivalent. Conflict theorists understand that nobody ever disagreed about Economics 101. Instead you should try to organize and galvanize your side, so they can win the conflict.
I think simple versions of conflict theory are clearly wrong. This doesnât mean that simple versions of mistake theory (the idea that people disagree because of reasoning errors, like not understanding Economics 101) are automatically right. But it gives some leeway for thinking harder about how reasoning errors and other kinds of error interact.
https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-why-i-am-not-a-conflict-theorist
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[Original thread here: Tegmarkâs Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Arguments For Godâs Existence.]
1: Comments On Specific Technical Points
2: Comments From Benthamâs Bulldogâs Response
3: Comments On Philosophical Points, And Getting In Fightshttps://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-tegmarks
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St. Felix publicly declared that he believed with 79% probability that COVID had a natural origin. He was brought before the Emperor, who threatened him with execution unless he updated to 100%. When St. Felix refused, the Emperor was impressed with his integrity, and said he would release him if he merely updated to 90%. St. Felix refused again, and the Emperor, fearing revolt, promised to release him if he merely rounded up one percentage point to 80%. St. Felix cited Tetlockâs research showing that the last digit contained useful information, refused a third time, and was crucified.
St. Clare was so upset about believing false things during her dreams that she took modafinil every night rather than sleep. She completed several impressive programming projects before passing away of sleep deprivation after three weeks; she was declared a martyr by Pope Raymond II.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lives-of-the-rationalist-saints
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It feels like 2010 again - the bloggers are debating the proofs for the existence of God. I found these much less interesting after learning about Max Tegmarkâs mathematical universe hypothesis, and this doesnât seem to have reached the Substack debate yet, so Iâll put it out there.
Tegmarkâs hypothesis says: all possible mathematical objects exist.
Consider a mathematical object like a cellular automaton - a set of simple rules that creates complex behavior. The most famous is Conwayâs Game of Life; the second most famous is the universe. After all, the universe is a starting condition (the Big Bang) and a set of simple rules determining how the starting condition evolves over time (the laws of physics).
Some mathematical objects contain conscious observers. Conwayâs Life might be like this: itâs Turing complete, so if a computer can be conscious then you can get consciousness in Life. If you built a supercomputer and had it run the version of Life with the conscious being, then you would be âsimulatingâ the being, and bringing it into existence. There would be something it was like to be that being; it would have thoughts and experiences and so on.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/tegmarks-mathematical-universe-defeats
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From the Commerce Department:
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a database identifying over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Biden-Harris administration. This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.
I saw many scientists complain that the projects from their universities that made Cruzâs list were unrelated to wokeness. This seemed like a surprising failure mode, so I decided to investigate. The Commerce Department provided a link to their database, so I downloaded it, chose a random 100 grants, read the abstracts, and rated them either woke, not woke, or borderline.
Of the hundred:
40% were woke 20% were borderline 40% werenât wokeThis is obviously in some sense a subjective determination, but most cases werenât close - I think any good-faith examination would turn up similar numbers.
https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-only-about-40-of-the-cruz-woke-science
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In the past day, Zvi has written about deliberative alignment, and OpenAI has updated their spec. This article was written before either of these and doesnât account for them, sorry.
I.OpenAI has bad luck with its alignment teams. The first team quit en masse to found Anthropic, now a major competitor. The second team quit en masse to protest the company reneging on safety commitments. The third died in a tragic plane crash. The fourth got washed away in a flood. The fifth through eighth were all slain by various types of wild beast.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/deliberative-alignment-and-the-spec
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As RFK Jr. fights to be confirmed in Congress, the rest of Trumpâs health team is already taking shape.
1DaySooner is an ACX grantee organization that advocates for innovative health policies. Theyâve helped me write a list of who some of these people are, and some of the policies they could consider.
For practical reasons, we focus on upside only, so consider these the Venn-diagram-union of the ideas weâre most excited about, and the ones we think they might be most excited about - the new health policy we might get get in our ~90th percentile best outcome.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/1daysooners-trump-ii-health-policy
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I.
PEPFAR - a Bush initiative to send cheap AIDS drugs to Africa - has saved millions of lives and is among the most successful foreign aid programs ever. A Trump decision briefly put it âon pauseâ, although this seems to have been walked back; its current status is unclear but hopeful.
In the debate around this question, many people asked - is it really fair to spend $6 billion a year to help foreigners when so many Americans are suffering? Shouldnât we value American lives more than foreign ones? Canât we spend that money on some program that helps people closer to home?
This is a fun thing to argue about - which, as usual, means itâs a purely philosophical question unrelated to the real issue.
If you cancelled PEPFAR - the single best foreign aid program, which saves millions of foreign lives - the money wouldnât automatically redirect itself to the single best domestic aid program which saves millions of American lives.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-programs
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Prospera Declared Unconstitutional
The Honduras Supreme Court has declared charter cities, including Prospera, unconstitutional.
The background: in the mid-2010s, the ruling conservative party wanted charter cities. They had already packed the Supreme Court for other reasons, so they had their captive court declare charter cities to be constitutional.
In 2022, the socialists took power from the conservatives and got the chance to fill the Supreme Court with their supporters. In September, this new Supreme Court said whoops, actually charter cities arenât constitutional at all. They added that this decision applied retroactively, ie even existing charter cities that had been approved under the old government were, ex post facto, illegal.
Prosperaâs lawyers objected, saying that the court is not allowed to make ex post facto rulings. But arguing that the Supreme Court is misinterpreting the Constitution seems like a losing battle - even if youâre right, who do you appeal to?
So the city is pursuing a two-pronged strategy. The first prong is waiting. Prospera is a collection of buildings and people. The buildings can stay standing, the people can still live there - they just have to follow regular Honduran law, rather than the investment-friendly charter they previously used. Thereâs another election in November, which the socialists are expected to lose. Prospera hopes the conservatives will come in, take control of the Supreme Court again, and then theyâll say whoops, messed it up again, charter cities are constitutional after all.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/model-city-monday-2325
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An observant Jewish friend told me she has recurring dreams about being caught unprepared for Shabbat.
(Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, celebrated every Saturday, when observant Jews are forbidden to work, drive, carry things outdoors, spend money, use electrical devices, etc.)
She said that in the dreams, she would be out driving, far from home, and realize that Shabbat was due to begin in a few minutes, with no way to make it home or get a hotel in time.
I found this interesting because my recurring dreams are usually things like being caught unprepared for a homework assignment I have due tomorrow, or realizing I have to catch a plane flight but Iâm not packed and donât have a plan to get to the airport.
Most people attribute recurring nightmares to âfearâ. My friend is âafraidâ of violating Shabbat; childhood me was âafraidâ of having the assignment due the next day. This seems wrong to me. Childhood me was afraid of monsters in the closet; adult me is afraid of heart attacks, AI, and something happening to my family. But I donât have nightmares about any of these things, just homework assignments and plane flights.
So maybe the âunpreparedâ aspect is more important. Hereâs a story that makes sense to me: what if recurring dreams are related to prospective memory?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/why-recurring-dream-themes
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Thanks to the 5,975 people who took the 2025 Astral Codex Ten survey.
See the questions for the ACX survey
See the results from the ACX Survey (click âsee previous responsesâ on that page1)
Iâll 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 5500 people who agreed to have their responses shared publicly. Out of concern for anonymity, the public dataset will exclude or bin certain questions2. If you want more complete information, email me and explain why, and Iâll probably send it to you.
You can download the public data here as an Excel or CSV file:
http://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/ACXPublic2025.xlsx http://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/ACXPublic2025.csvHere are some of the answers I found most interesting:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-survey-results-2025
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Whenever I talk about charity, a type that Iâll call the âbased post-Christian vitalistâ shows up in the comments to tell me that Iâve got it all wrong. The moral impulse tells us to help our family, friends, and maybe village. Itâs a weird misfire, analogous to an auto-immune disease, to waste brain cycles on starving children in a far-off country who youâll never meet. Youâve been cucked by centuries of Christian propaganda. Instead of the slave morality that yokes you to loser victims who wouldnât give you the time of day if your situations were reversed, you should cultivate a master morality that lets you love the strong people who push forward human civilization.
A younger and more naive person might think the based post-Christian vitalist and I have some irreconcilable moral difference. Moral argument can only determine which conclusions follow from certain premises. If premises are too different (for example, a intuitive feeling of compassion for others, vs. an intuitive feeling of strength and pitilessness), thereâs no way to proceed.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/everyones-a-based-post-christian
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