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.
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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...
info_outlineThis month, rationalist institution Lighthaven is running their second Inkhaven, a bootcamp for aspiring bloggers. Participants have to publish a post a day, or they get kicked out. You can read their posts here.
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 If You Have Writer’s Block, Maybe Stop Lying To Yourself. Maybe lying gives Sasha writer’s block, but for my last set of mentees it more often just made things sound awkward and unclear. The English language hates the slightest whiff of dishonesty, even levels so small you wouldn’t naturally notice them yourself. It punishes you by making your writing worse.
I remember asking one of my mentees to take out a tangential paragraph that didn’t really connect to the rest of the argument. They refused, and awkwardly admitted that it was the one thing they really wanted to say with the essay. They’d written the essay about something else, because the other thing was more presentable. Then they’d smuggled their actual point in as a payload. Clever plan, but your readers will notice.
There are countless reasons to lie when you’re writing. Maybe you thought of a really clever introduction, but the thing it introduces is 5% different from the thing you really want to say, so you need to be a little vague and smush them together. Maybe you have a really great perspective on something which is almost like the topic du jour, and you need to make it sound like it’s exactly the topic du jour to get it published. Maybe you can rebut 99 out of 100 arguments for some stupid evil position that you want to debunk, but it would be embarrassing to leave one hanging, so you smudge it together into the other 99 arguments. English will punish you for all these things. Sometimes there’s no better solution and you have to settle, but your readers will notice.