The Types Of Candidate You Find In The California Gubernatorial Race
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Sorry, I give up. In past elections, I’ve covered every single candidate for governor of California, from the incumbents all the way down to the cranks. In 2022 there were twenty-six of them, and . But sorry, I give up. This year there are sixty. It’s too many. I can’t disambiguate them all into unique individuals with their own personalities, hopes, and dreams. So as consolation for the list I’m not giving you, here are the basic types, and a few examples of each. The Top-Tier Democrats One of these people will definitely win, but what else is there to say about them? They’re all...
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The Sigmoids Won't Save You
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
“All exponentials eventually become sigmoids” is an annoying AI talking point. If someone presents a graph like this… ….and points out that it seems like AI capabilities could soon reach the level marked “High”, then the height of intelligent debate is to point out that actually, the trend could go like this: …and then it would never reach the level marked “High”! In slogan form, this is “all exponentials eventually become sigmoids” (a sigmoid is the s-shape of the second graph, which starts exponential but gradually flattens out). It’s technically true. No process can...
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Nostalgebraist's Hydrogen Jukeboxes
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
, the only good theory of taste is Nostalgebraist’s. He wrote a post called , analyzing the literary output of an AI called R1. This AI tried hard to write good fiction, which was part of the problem. It crammed its stories with what Nostalgebraist called (stealing a term from Ginsberg) the “eyeball kick” - a flashy stylistic move that immediately catches the reader’s attention and “wows” them. Here are examples - some from R1, others from an experimental OpenAI model trained specifically for fiction-writing: “There is a prompt like a spell: write a story about AI and grief,...
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Three Model Organisms For Taste
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
(a continuation of ) Reddit Vexillology Vexillology is the c. elegans of aesthetics - the simplest model organism that lets us observe dynamics of interest. I haven’t read enough MFA books to do more than relay the thoughts of my betters, and you probably haven’t either. But anyone can have opinions on flags. If you’re like me, you learned the following code of good flags: They should be so simple that a child could draw them. No images, no “busy” areas, and - for God’s sake - no text The : “never put metal on metal, or color on color”. In medieval heraldry, “metals” were...
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Contra Everyone On Taste
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Last year I wrote , which got many good responses from (eg) , , and . I tastelessly forgot to respond to them until now, but I appreciate how they forced me to refine my thinking. In particular, they helped me realize that “taste” and “good art” are hard to talk about, because the discussions conflate many different things: 1: Sensory Delight. Ode To Joy makes the listener feel joyful. Michelangelo’s David fills the viewer with awe at the human figure. The great cathedrals are impressive buildings, in a way that hits you like a punch to the gut. These judgments are...
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What Deontological Bars?
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Constraint consequentialists believe that you should try to do good things that improve the world, unless those break hard-and-fast rules (“deontological bars”). For example, you shouldn’t assassinate democratically-elected leaders, even very bad ones. Why not? Since bad leaders set bad policy, and bad policy can kill many thousands of people, wouldn’t it be for the greater good? Because there’s always one gun-owner who thinks any given leader’s policies are bad, so without the rule, every leader would face constant assassination attempts, probably some of them would succeed, and...
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Your Attempt To Solve Debate Will Not Work
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
As a blogger, I hear about lots of projects to “solve debate”, or “disagree better”, or “map arguments”. Often these are ACX grant applications. I always turn them down. They’re well-intentioned, sophisticated, and doomed. I appreciate that Internet arguments usually don’t go well, that there are lots of ways to improve them, and that this is a worthy cause. But I’ve also seen a dozen projects of this sort fail. Here’s why I think yours will too: “Debate” almost never corresponds to mappable arguments. The simplest “solve debate” proposal is the argument map. Some...
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Links For April 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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Half A Month Of Consolation Writing Advice
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
This month, rationalist institution is running their second , a bootcamp for aspiring bloggers. Participants have to publish a post a day, or they get kicked out. You can read their posts . I’m too old to manage that pace, but agreed to participate as an advisor. Then I missed the first half of the month because I was on a trip. As compensation, here are fifteen pieces of writing advice for the fifteen days I was absent. 1: Against microdishonesty Sasha Chapin has a piece . Maybe lying gives Sasha writer’s block, but for my last set of mentees it more often just made things sound awkward...
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Orban Was Bad, Even Though We Don't Have A Perfect Word For His Badness
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
, __________ of Hungary for sixteen years, earlier this week. The simplest phrase to put in the blank is “prime minister”. Some people have proposed more loaded terms like “strongman”, “autocrat”, and “dictator”. But he did lose his re-election bid earlier this week, prompting comments that these more loaded terms, especially the d-word, might have been hyperbolic.
info_outlineEvery 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 “They said WHAT?”, progressing on to “Oh God we are so fucked”, and occasionally ending in some kind of plan. Sending letters. Phoning members of Congress. Calling up that one lobbyist who had a fancy dinner with Trump a year ago and is still riding that high to claim he has vast administration influence.
I’ve been on the periphery of a handful of these campaigns, usually in medicine or AI. The common thread is that protests by liberals rarely work. The Trump administration loves offending liberals! If every Democratic member of Congress condemns the plan to ban aluminum, that just proves that aluminum really was “woke”, and makes them want to do it more. What works, sometimes, is objections/protests from Republicans and Trump supporters.
These are hard to get. Trump supporters might support the insane plan. Even if they don’t, they might be nervous to speak up or appear disloyal. You’ve got to find someone who’s supported Trump until now, built up a reputation for loyalty, but this one time they finally snap and cash in some of their favors and agree to speak out. Sometimes it’s because they’re an aluminum magnate themselves and this would destroy their business. Other times they’re just a think tank guy or influencer who happens to be really knowledgeable on this one issue and willing to take a stand on it. By such people is the world preserved.
https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-support-your-local-collaborator