The Pentagon Threatens Anthropic
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Here’s my understanding of : 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”. 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. The Pentagon refused the guarantees, demanding that Anthropic accept the renegotiation...
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Malicious Streetlight Effects Vs. "Directional Correctness" - A Semi-Non-Apology
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Malicious 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 proved that the number of Mexicans illegally entering the country was actually quite low. When I looked...
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Book Review Contest Rules 2026
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
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 or my ACX book reviews (, , ) if you need inspiration. Please limit yourself to one entry per person or team. Then send me your review through . The form will ask for your name, email, the title of the book, and a link to a Google Doc. The...
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Crime As Proxy For Disorder
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
The problem: people hate crime and think it’s going up. But actually, crime and is . 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 200 decibels on a main street where people are trying to engage in normal activities. When people complain about these things,...
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Record Low Crime Rates Are Real, Not Just Reporting Bias Or Improved Medical Care
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
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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What Happened With Bio Anchors?
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[Original post: ] I. Ajeya Cotra’s 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 headline prediction - an AGI timeline centered around the 2050s - no longer seems plausible. The of the discussion ranges from late to , with more remote dates...
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Political Backflow From Europe
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
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 context?
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Links For February 2026
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.]
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Moltbook: After The First Weekend
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[previous post: ] 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 philosophers. I find it more fruitful to think about external reality instead, especially in terms of causes and effects.
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Best Of Moltbook
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
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 how it started responding to his voice messages before he explicitly programmed in that capability. After trademark issues with Anthropic, they changed the name first to Moltbot, then to OpenClaw. Moltbook is...
info_outlineIt’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 send me your review through this Google Form. The form will ask for your name, email, the title of the book, and a link to a Google Doc. The Google Doc should have your review exactly as you want me to post it if you’re a finalist. Don’t 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 I’m going to hide that column in the form immediately and try to judge your docs on their merit.
(does this mean you can’t say something like “This book about war reminded me of my own experiences as a soldier” because that gives a hint about your identity? My rule of thumb is that if I don’t know who you are, and the average ACX reader doesn’t know who you are, you’re fine. I just want to prevent my friends or Internet semi-famous people from getting an advantage. If you’re in one of those categories and think your personal experience would give it away, please don’t write about your personal experience.)
Please make sure the Google Doc is unlocked and I can read it. By default, nobody can read Google Docs except the original author. You’ll have to go to Share, then on the bottom of the popup click on “Restricted” and change to “Anyone with the link”. If you send me a document I can’t read, I will probably disqualify you, sorry.
Readers will vote for the ~10 finalists this spring, I’ll post one finalist per week through the summer, and then readers will vote for winners in late summer/early fall. First prize will get at least $2,500, second prize at least $1,000, third prize at least $500; I might increase these numbers later on. All winners and finalists will get free publicity (including links to any other works they want me to link to), free ACX subscriptions, and sidebar links to their blog. And all winners will get the right to pitch me new articles if they want (sample posts by Lars, Brandon, Daniel, etc).
In past years, most reviews have been nonfiction on technical topics. Depending on whether that’s still true, I might do some mild affirmative action for reviews in nontraditional categories - fiction, poetry, and books from before 1900 are the ones I can think of right now, but feel free to try other nontraditional books. I won’t be redistributing more than 25% of finalist slots this way.
Your due date is May 20th. Good luck! If you have any questions, ask them in the comments. And remember, the form for submitting entries is here.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-contest-rules-2026