Against The Concept Of Telescopic Altruism
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
I. “Telescopic altruism” is a supposed tendency for some people to ignore those close to them in favor of those further away. Like its cousin “virtue signaling”, it usually gets used to own the libs. Some lib cares about people in Gaza - why? Shouldn’t she be thinking about her friends and neighbors instead? The only possible explanation is that she’s an evil person who hates everyone around her, but manages to feel superior to decent people by pretending to “care” about foreigners who she’ll never meet. This collapses upon five seconds’ thought. Okay, so the lib is angry...
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A Buddhist Sun Miracle?
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
In 1917, some Portuguese children started seeing visions of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin told them she would enact a great miracle on a certain day in October, and a crowd of 100,000 gathered to witness the event. According to eyewitness reports, newspaper articles, etc, they saw the sun spin around, change colors, and do various other miraculous things. At least a hundred separate testimonies of the event have come down to us, with only two or three people saying they didn’t see it. Catholics continue to bring this up as one of the best-attested miracles and strongest empirical proofs of the...
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How Natural Tradeoff And Failure Components?
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Michael Halassa: is a good article on the genetics of psychosis. Previous research found that schizophrenia genes decreased IQ but increased educational attainment. Usually IQ and education are correlated, so this was surprising. The new research finds two components to schizophrenia genetic risk. The first component, shared with bipolar, increases educational attainment. The second component, not shared with bipolar, decreases IQ. They average out to the observed full-spectrum genetic signal of constant-to-increased educational attainment paired with constant-to-decreased IQ. In 2021, I...
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Every Debate On Pausing AI
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
SUPPORTER: America needs to start talking to China to come up with a bilateral agreement to pause AI. The agreement would need to be transparent, mutually enforceable, and… OPPONENT: We can’t unilaterally pause AI! China would destroy us! SUPPORTER: As I said, we need to start negotiating a bilateral agreement so that both sides will… OPPONENT: You fool! Don’t you know that while we unilaterally pause AI, China will be racing ahead and using their lead to erode our fundamental rights and freedoms? How could you be so naive! SUPPORTER: Look, I promise this is about negotiating for a...
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Being John Rawls
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
I. John Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 21, 1921. Not John Rawls the famous liberal philosopher (or, rather, John Rawls the famous liberal philosopher was also born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 21, 1921, but he is not the subject of our story). This is John Rawls the alcoholic. John Rawls the alcoholic was twelve when they lifted Prohibition. He partook immediately, and dropped out of school the following year, supporting himself through a combination of odd jobs, petty crime, and handouts. When he was 41, he committed a not-so-petty crime - killing a man in a bar...
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Support Your Local Collaborator
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Every few weeks, a Trump administration official comes up with an insane plan that would devastate some American industry, region, or demographic. Maybe an Undersecretary of the Interior decides that aluminum is “woke” and should be banned. They circulate a draft order saying it will be illegal for US companies to use aluminum, starting in two weeks, Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter. Next begins a frantic scramble on the parts of everyone affected, trying to make them back down. Industry lobbies, think tanks, and public intellectuals exchange frantic emails, starting with...
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Shameless Guesses, Not Hallucinations
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
I hate the term “hallucinations” for when AIs say false things. It’s perfectly calculated to mislead the reader - to make them think AIs are crazy, or maybe just have incomprehensible failure modes. AIs say false things for the same reason you do. At least, I did. In school, I would take multiple choice tests. When I didn’t know the answer to a question, I would guess. Schoolchild urban legend said that “C” was the best bet, so I would fill in bubble C. It was fine. Probably got a couple extra points that way, maybe raised my GPA by 0.1 over the counterfactual. Some kids...
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Last Rights
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Guest post by David Speiser The Problem Everyone hates Congress. That showing that cockroaches are more popular than Congress is now thirteen years old, and things haven’t improved in those thirteen years. Congressional approval dipped below 20% during the Great Recession and hasn’t recovered since. A republic where a supermajority of citizens neither like nor trust their representatives is not the most stable of foundations, so it should not be shocking that the legislative branch is being subsumed by the executive. What’s the solution? Many have been proposed, some with very...
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SEIU Delenda Est
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
California lets interest groups propose measures for the state ballot. Anyone who gathers enough signatures (currently 874,641) can put their hare-brained plans before voters during the next election year. This year, the big story is the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, a 5% wealth tax on California’s billionaires. Your views on this will mostly be shaped by whether or not you like taxing the rich, but opponents have argued that it’s an especially poorly written proposal: It includes a tax on “unrealized gains”, like a founder’s share of a private company which hasn’t been sold yet. This...
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Mantic Monday: Groundhog Day
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Having Your Own Government Try To Destroy You Is (At Least Temporarily) Good For Business On Friday, the Pentagon declared AI company Anthropic a “supply chain risk”, a designation never before given to an American company. This unprecedented move was seen as an attempt to punish, maybe destroy the company. How effective was it? Anthropic isn’t publicly traded, so we turn to the prediction markets. has a “perpetual future” on Anthropic stock, a complicated instrument attempting to track the company’s valuation, to be resolved at the IPO. Here’s what they’ve got:
info_outlineFinalist #5 in the Book Review Contest
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-how-language-began
[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. 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]