Desperately Trying To Fathom The Coffeepocalypse Argument
Release Date: 05/03/2024
Links for May 2024
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[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.]
info_outline
A Theoretical "Case Against Education"
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
There’s been renewed debate around Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education recently, so I want to discuss one way I think about this question. Education isn’t just about facts. But it’s partly about facts. Facts are easy to measure, and they’re a useful signpost for deeper understanding. If someone has never heard of Chaucer, Dickens, Melville, Twain, or Joyce, they probably haven’t learned to appreciate great literature. If someone can’t identify Washington, Lincoln, or either Roosevelt, they probably don’t understand the ebb and flow of American history. So what facts does...
info_outline
What Is Going On In IFS?
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
In , I wrote: [An Internal Family Systems session] isn’t supposed to be just the therapist walking you through guided imagery, or you making up a story you tell yourself. The therapist asks you “Look inside until you find the part that’s sabotaging your relationship”, and you are supposed to discover - not invent, discover - that your unconscious gives it the form of a snake called Sabby. And you are supposed to hear as in a trance - again, not invent - Sabby telling you that she’s been protecting you from heartbreak since your last breakup. When you bargain with Sabby, it’s a...
info_outline
Book Review: The Others Within Us
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Internal Family Systems, the hot new psychotherapy, has a secret. “Hot new psychotherapy” might sound dismissive. It’s not. . The therapy that’s getting all the buzz, curing all the incurable patients, rocking those first few small studies. The therapy that was invented by a grizzled veteran therapist working with Patients Like You, not the out-of-touch elites behind all the other therapies. The therapy that Really Gets To The Root Of The Problem. There’s always got to be one, and now it’s IFS.
info_outline
Choose Book Review Finalists 2024
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
It's time to narrow the 150 entries in the Book Review Contest to about a dozen finalists. I can't read 150 reviews alone, so I need your help. You'll find the entries in six Google Docs (thanks to a reader for collating them): Please pick as many as you have time for, read them, and rate them . Don’t read them in order! If you read them in order, I’ll have 1,000 votes on the first review, 500 on the second, and so on to none in the second half. Either pick a random review (thanks to AlexanderTheGrand and Taymon for making a random-review-chooser script ) or pick...
info_outline
Profile: The Far Out Initiative
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Suffering is part of the human condition, except when it isn't. I met a man at an ACX meetup once who claimed he has never felt anxiety, not even the littlest bit. His father was the same way, so maybe it's genetic. Some people feel more pain than others. The “more pain” category includes some big demographic groups like redheads, who and , though their . But there are also various lesser-known genetic conditions that can make bizarre things - water, light touch, mild temperature changes - excruciatingly painful. The most exotic cause of this syndrome has to be , which is both painful in...
info_outline
Mantic Monday 5/13/24
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Manifold pivot || Lab leak hindcasting || CFTC extra-double-bans prediction markets
info_outline
Highlights From The Comments On Hanson And Health Care
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Most recent post . Table Of Contents: 1: Comments From Robin 2: Comments About/From Goldin et al 3: Comments From The Rest Of You Yokels
info_outline
The Emotional Support Animal Racket
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
If you’re from a country that doesn’t have emotional support animals, here’s how it works. Sometimes places ban or restrict animals. For example, an apartment building might not allow dogs. Or an airline might charge you money to transport your cat. But the law requires them to allow service animals, for example guide dogs for the blind. A newer law also requires some of these places to allow emotional support animals, ie animals that help people with mental health problems like depression or anxiety. So for example, if you’re depressed, but having your dog nearby makes you feel...
info_outline
Asterisk/Zvi on California's AI Bill
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
California’s state senate is considering , a bill to regulate AI. Since OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta are all in California, this would affect most of the industry. If the California state senate passed a bill saying that the sky was blue, I would start considering whether it might be green, or colorless, or maybe not exist at all. And people on Twitter have been saying that this bill would ban open-source AI - no, all AI! - no, all technology more complicated than a toaster! So I started out skeptical. But ( , ) has looked at it more closely and found:
info_outlineOne of the most common arguments against AI safety is:
Here’s an example of a time someone was worried about something, but it didn’t happen. Therefore, AI, which you are worried about, also won’t happen.
I always give the obvious answer: “Okay, but there are other examples of times someone was worried about something, and it did happen, right? How do we know AI isn’t more like those?” The people I’m arguing with always seem so surprised by this response, as if I’m committing some sort of betrayal by destroying their beautiful argument.
The first hundred times this happened, I thought I must be misunderstanding something. Surely “I can think of one thing that didn’t happen, therefore nothing happens” is such a dramatic logical fallacy that no human is dumb enough to fall for it. But people keep bringing it up, again and again. Very smart people, people who I otherwise respect, make this argument and genuinely expect it to convince people!
Usually the thing that didn’t happen is overpopulation, global cooling, etc. But most recently it was some kind of coffeepocalypse:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/desperately-trying-to-fathom-the