Podcast appearances and mentions of Scott Alexander

The People vs. Larry Flynt is a 1996 American biographical drama film directed by Miloš Forman, chronicling the rise of pornographer Larry Flynt and his subsequent clash with religious institutions and the law.[4] It stars Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love as his wife Althea, and Edward Norton as his attorney Alan Isaacman. The screenplay, written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, spans about 35 years of Flynt's life, from his impoverished upbringing in Kentucky to his court battle with Reverend Jerry Falwell, and is based in part on the U.S. Supreme Court case Hustler Magazine v. Falwell.

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Ever heard of cognitive dissonance? That thing a psychology lecturer might have explained to you once upon a time, likely using the same UFO cult example everyone else uses. Well, a new paper by Thomas Kelly suggests that the UFO cult example might have been ever so slightly oversold.Kelly's archival work suggests that the researchers didn't just observe the cult as reported. Instead, they infiltrated it, faked supernatural experiences, assumed quasi-leadership roles, and then wrote up the results as if the group had spontaneously doubled down on their failed prophecy, which they had not. Because the leader recanted, and the group fell apart shortly after the failed prophecy. Minor details.Matt and Chris discuss this paper, a 2024 multilab replication, and some other papers by Kelly, considering the ever-reliable tendency of researchers to find exactly what they are looking for.It's cognitive dissonance all the way down, folks.The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1 hour, 10 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusDecoding Academia 34: When Prophecy Fails Debunked?00:00 Introduction02:04 Cognitive Dissonance Theory06:41 Classic lab evidence: effort justification & the ‘severe initiation' study08:33 When Prophecy Fails: The Original Account10:54 The debunking: archival evidence, misconduct claims, and ethical red flags20:22 Replication reality check: multi-lab results and ‘strong vs weak' dissonance31:40 Beyond one case: survivorship bias, failed prophecies, and early Christianity parallels35:51 Christianity as Historical Anomaly or Cognitive Dissonance Exemplar?41:48 Thomas Kelly: Interesting biosafety takes and a possible Christian lens45:43 The importance of seeking for disconfirming evidence50:23 Conspiracy-theory dynamics & narrative elaboration56:30 Classical Psychological Theories and Personal Motivations01:03:07 Steps that can be taken to reduce biases01:05:01 Stay tentative, check evidence, and don't pick sides too fast01:06:30 A lesson from Scott Alexander!SourcesAcademic Papers and BooksFestinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. University of Minnesota Press.Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203–210. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041593 (The original induced-compliance/$1/$20 study)Kelly, T. (2026). Debunking "When Prophecy Fails." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 62(1), e70043. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.70043Kelly, T. (2025). Failed prophecies are fatal. International Journal for the Study of New Religions, 14(1), 48–71. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsnr.33085Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on...

Part 1: UK-based political bettors William Kedjanyi, Paul Krishnamurty, and Pip Moss debate how long  Starmer can last as prime minister. Part 2: Chougule announces Polymarket sponsorship of DC Forecasting and Prediction Markets meetup. Timestamps 0:00: Chougule introduces UK segment 0:39: Polymarket markets on UK politics 1:35: Intro ends 3:36: UK segment begins 6:02: What has gone wrong for Starmer? 11:10: Starmer's communication problem 11:31: Perceptions of Starmer as a liar 11:41: Starmer is hated 17:40: Free speech 24:36: Market odds on Starmer's departure 25:23: Policy challenges 26:46: Housing 28:10: Local elections 32:50: Policy decisions 37:12: Immigration 39:30: Process After May Elections 42:14: May election odds 52:27: How Labour would remove Starmer 54:29: Blair-Brown rivalry 56:06: Trade unions 56:26: Soft left faction 1:05:52: Starmer U-turns 1:07:51: Challengers to Starmers 1:09:15: Reaction to Labour losses in May elections 1:12:30: UK segment ends 1:12:45: DC Forecasting and Prediction Markets Meetup Follow Star Spangled Gamblers on Twitter/X @ssgamblers  Bet on UK politics at Polymarket.com, the world's largest prediction market. The next DC Forecasting & Prediction Markets Meetup will be on Thursday, January 29 from 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM at The Flying Mexican in Washington DC. ​ All 2026 DC meetups are sponsored by Polymarket! ​ Polymarket is the world's largest prediction market, allowing you to stay informed on future events across various topics. Polymarket's markets reflect accurate, unbiased, and real-time probabilities for the events that matter most to you. Markets seek truth. Learn more at Polymarket.com. ​ Thanks to Polymarket, food and drinks will be provided to all attendees of this month's meetup. Open to all ages. ​ Last-minute/onsite walk-in RSVPs here on this Luma event page are welcomed! https://luma.com/dld19288?tk=XIracE ​ Who are we? We are prediction market traders on prediction markets like Polymarket, Manifold, PredictIt, and Kalshi, forecasters (e.g. on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open), sports bettors (e.g. on FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), consumers of forecasting (or related) content (e.g. Star Spangled Gamblers, Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten), effective altruists, rationalists, futurists, and data scientists. ​ This meetup is hosted by the Forecasting Meetup Network. Get notified whenever a new meetup is scheduled and learn more about the Forecasting Meetup Network here: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork ​ Join our Discord to connect with others in the community between monthly meetups: https://discord.com/invite/hFn3yukSwv

We crawl around the dark crevices of the internet so you don't have to. And what wonders we have to show you...The full episode is available to Patreon subscribers (1 hour, 34 minutes).Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/DecodingTheGurusSupplementary Material 4300:00 Introduction and Banter Allotment01:23 The Hypocrisy of the Defenders of Western Civilisation10:07 An Optimistic Take?17:02 Scott Adams' Controversial Legacy18:43 Scott Alexander's Rationalist Eulogy for Scott Adams32:31 A Final Tribute to Scott Adams33:43 Andrew Gold's Interview with a Racist39:02 Fair Play for being a Racist41:17 Comparing Follower Counts and Audience Makeup44:40 Racism and Xenophobia Discussion49:07 Securing the Future of Our People...01:00:01 LawTubers and Grifting01:00:48 Legal Mindset01:06:02 Antifa Woke Women are Hunting Legal Mindset01:07:41 A man of Christ01:09:16 A Red-Blooded American01:12:35 Woke White Women and Antifa Paranoia01:13:55 Electro Gym Work and Pygmy Hippo Love01:18:47 Antifa Paranoia01:26:36 The True Masculine Renegade YouTuber01:32:32 Concluding Thoughts and FarewellLinksPeter Boghossian complaining about public attention to the Greenland situationMike Cernovich's tribute: “Scott is loved because he's devoted his life to service to humanity”In full: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum (Davos)Scott Alexander's eulogy to Scott AdamsColeman Hughes on Scott Adams at The Free PressAndrew Gold – Heretics: “I Confront Britain's Biggest Racist”Liam Tufts: “Would You Let Your Kid Date a Black Person?” | Steve Laws sparks a heated debateLegal Mindset: “Free Kaya, Punish Hasan” (Fast Facts)Rob's Media: Idiot Influencers – Legal Mindset (Go East channel background)

Two years without discussing effective altruism -- did you miss it? Not as much as Vaden, surely. And probably a right bit more than Ben. Well, we're back in the game with a spicy one. Was EA a front for AI safety from the beginning? Did the leaders care not a wit for global poverty? Is Ben going to throw himself out window if Vaden keeps this up? We discuss Feedback on our introspection episode The motives of the EA founders The felicia forum Is this a conspiracy theory? EA's strategic ambiguity Bostromism, transhumanism, and AI safety EA funding The public/core divide and the funnel model Quotes new effective altruists tend to start off concerned about global poverty or animal suffering and then hear, take seriously, and often are convinced by the arguments for existential risk mitigation - Will MacAskill Existential risk isn't the most useful public face for effective altruism – everyone inc[l]uding Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees about that - Scott Alexander, 2015 Utilitymonster: GWWC is explicitly poverty-focused but high impact careers (HIC) is not. In fact, hardcore members of GWWC are heavily interested in x-risk, and I estimate that 10-15% of its general membership is as well. I'd take them seriously as a group for promoting utilitarianism in general. I'm a GWWC leader. [Redacted]: but HIC always seems to talk about things in terms of “lives saved”, ive never heard them mentioning other things to donate to. […] Utilitymonster: That's exactly the right thing for HIC to do. Talk about lives saved with their public face, let hardcore members hear about x-risk, and then, in the future, if some excellent x-risk opportunity arises, direct resources to x-risk. - From felicia forum. References Gleiberman's paper: https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/files/8518/61565cb6-e056-4e35-bd2e-d14d58e35231.pdf Old EA wikipedia page (web archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20170409171350/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_altruism Old CEA webpage (web archive): https://web.archive.org/web/20161219031827/https://www.centreforeffectivealtruism.org/fundraising/ Socials Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani Come join our discord server! DM us on twitter or send us an email to get a supersecret link Become a patreon subscriber here. Or give us one-time cash donations to help cover our lack of cash donations here. Click dem like buttons on youtube Let us funnel you into the core group of super secret patreon supporters. Send us an email at incrementspodcast@gmail.com

It seems to be a real view held by serious people that your OpenAI shares will soon be tradable for moons and galaxies. This includes eminent thinkers like Dwarkesh Patel, Leopold Aschenbrenner, perhaps Scott Alexander and many more. According to them, property rights will survive an AI singularity event and soon economic growth is going to make it possible for individuals to own entire galaxies in exchange for some AI stocks. It follows that we should now seriously think through how we can equally distribute those galaxies and make sure that most humans will not end up as the UBI underclass owning mere continents or major planets. I don't think this is a particularly intelligent view. It comes from a huge lack of imagination for the future. Property rights are weird, but humanity dying isn't People may think that AI causing human extinction is something really strange and specific to happen. But it's the opposite: humans existing is a very brittle and strange state of affairs. Many specific things have to be true for us to be here, and when we build ASI there are many preferences and goals that would see us wiped out. It's actually hard to [...] ---Outline:(01:06) Property rights are weird, but humanity dying isnt(01:57) Why property rights wont survive(03:10) Property rights arent enough(03:36) What if there are many unaligned AIs?(04:18) Why would they be rewarded?(04:48) Conclusion --- First published: January 6th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SYyBB23G3yF2v59i8/on-owning-galaxies --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Forrest, Conan Neutron, Kristina Oakes and Daniel House talk about Tim Burton's Ed Wood Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski who would go on to write "The People vs. Larry Flynt" "Man on the Moon" and "Dolemite is my Name, at a time when they were tired of being seen as solely "family friendly screenwriters" and launching the sub-genre of "Anti-Biopics."Ed Wood is a biopic about the filmmaker Edward D. Wood, once voted "Worst Director of All Time," operating under massive constraints in the 1950s as he struggled to make films like "Glenn or Glenda", "Bride of the Monster", and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" Starring Johnny Depp as Ed Wood, Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette, Jeffrey Jones, Lisa Marie, and Bill Murray #edwood #timburton #belalugosi #johnnydepp #lisamarie #patriciaarquette #disney #biopic #billmurray #depp #filmpodcast #moviepodcast #classichollywood #hollywood #1994 #martinlandau #billmurray #livestream #livestreaming #shortsfeed #shorts #filmmaking #touchstone #lisamarie #presley #sarahjessicaparker #nightmarebeforechristmas #filmdirector We are also streaming on @thisspacetv throw them a followJoin our discord: https://discord.gg/ZHU8W55pnhJoin our Patreon to get all our After Parties https://www.patreon.com/MovieNightExtraConan Neutron & the Secret Friends new noir inspired music video "A Villain of Circumstance" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXjmjKzbTSI

Part I: Akhi Pillalamarri (@AkhiPill) and Pratik Chougule (@pjchougule) explains why India and Pakistan won't resort to nuclear weapons.  Part II: David Glidden (@dglid) interviews Amb. Thomas Miller, former chair of the board of the U.S. subsidiary of Intralot, a corporation that runs lotteries in 11 states and the District of Columbia.  Timestamps 0:00: Chougule introduces segment with Pillalamarri 1:07: Chougule introduces Glidden interview with Miller 1:46: Parallels between lotteries and prediction markets 2:47: Intro ends 4:48: Pillalamarri segment begins 5:12: Kylasa (@aenews) side bet with Mehndiratta (@tenad0me)  5:51: Odds on nuclear war 6:01: Anti-nuclear norms 6:55: Why India and Pakistan haven't used nukes 7:34: Terrorism vs. nukes 8:46: India's no first use doctrine   10:05: Variance 10:18: Anthropic effects 10:52: Nuclear taboos 10:58: Why Pakistan won't transfer nukes 11:36: Polymarket market on nuclear detonation 11:45: Segment ends 12:00: Interview with Miller begins 12:17: Miller's background 12:46: Rumsfeld 14:27: Chougule 14:44: Washingtonian profile of Chougule 15:06: Intralot 15:26: Lotteries offering sports betting 15:58: Prediction markets 16:46: Business of prediction markets 17:02: Amazon 18:36: How Miller got into lottery business 19:43: Lottery expansion into sports betting 20:46: Women 21:19: Lottery regulation 21:44: How lotteries gained acceptance 24:10: Demographic of prediction market users 25:02: Forecasting as an ambassador   26:07: Black swan events 26:20: History 26:30: Intelligence before Russian invasion of Ukraine 28:59: Data in diplomacy 29:47: Iraq War 31:23: AI 32:04: Prediction markets for diplomacy 37:09: Using prediction markets to anticipate bad events 37:36: Prediction markets for resource allocation decisions 37:52: Medical research 39:43: Segment ends 39:57: DC Forecasting and Prediction Markets Meetups   Trade on markets related to nuclear weapons and war at Polymarket.com, the world's largest prediction market.     Join us for the final DC Forecasting and Prediction Markets meetup on Wednesday, December 17 from 6-9pm at the Flying Mexican on Capitol Hill, close to the Eastern Market metro station (blue/orange lines), NOT our usual Rocklands BBQ location in Arlington. Be sure to show up on the correct side of the river this month!     Meet and socialize with others interested in forecasting, prediction markets, political gambling, sports betting, or anything else relating to predicting the future. Thanks to our sponsor, food and drinks will be provided to all attendees of this month's meetup. Open to all ages. Last-minute/onsite walk-in RSVPs here on this Partiful event page are welcomed!   Who are we? We are prediction market traders on prediction markets like Kalshi, Manifold, PredictIt, and Polymarket, forecasters (e.g. on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open), sports bettors (e.g. on FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), consumers of forecasting (or related) content (e.g. Star Spangled Gamblers, Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten), effective altruists, rationalists, futurists, and data scientists.   This meetup is hosted by the Forecasting Meetup Network. Get notified whenever a new meetup is scheduled and learn more about the Forecasting Meetup Network here: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork   Join our Discord to connect with others in the community between monthly meetups: https://discord.com/invite/hFn3yukSwv  

Akhi Pillalamarri (@akhipill) assesses whether and when India will attack Pakistan. Timestamps 0:00: Chougule introduces episode 0:58: DC Forecasting and Prediction Markets Meetup 2:25: Intro ends 4:25: Interview begins 4:46: Pillalamarri's background 5:53: Pillalamarri's experience with prediction markets 6:33: Polymarket lines on Indian strike on Pakistan 7:10: Background on India-Pakistan conflict 8:11: Why do India and Pakistan go to war? 9:34: Pakistan's strategy 11:47: Spike in Polymarket market 12:13: Nuclear weapons 12:57: Terrorist attack in India 18:10: Indian military options 19:50: Indian hardliners 20:51: Pakistan's hand 25:18: China 26:38: Saudi Arabia 27:50: Munir 28:14: Pakistani military 29:06: India's point of view 30:01: Hardline Indian policy 32:50: Timing of an Indian strike 35:21: Market rules on "strike" 36:33: No Indian ground forces 37:06: Indian strike in 2027 Star Spangled Gamblers is a podcast on betting and winning real money on politics.  Follow SSG on Twitter @ssgamblers Bet on the India-Pakistan conflict at Polymarket.com, the world's largest prediction market. https://polymarket.com/event/india-strike-on-pakistan-by?tid=1764041734299 The next DC Forecasting and Prediction Markets Meetup is on Tuesday, Nov 25 from 6-9pm at Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling Company. This month's speaker is John Bennett. John was the co-organizer of the recent Manifest x DC conference that took place earlier this month and will be leading a discussion about what worked well, what didn't, and what we could do to scale next time.  A BBQ buffet and fountain drinks will be provided free of charge to this month's attendees. Alcoholic beverages will be available for purchase. Last-minute/onsite walk-in RSVPs here on this Partiful event page are welcomed! https://partiful.com/e/VoLn8aAh4pabxrxczwiz Who are we? We are prediction market traders on prediction markets like Kalshi, Manifold, PredictIt, and Polymarket, forecasters (e.g. on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open), sports bettors (e.g. on FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), consumers of forecasting (or related) content (e.g. Star Spangled Gamblers, Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten), effective altruists, rationalists, futurists, and data scientists. Forecast on Manifold how many people will attend meetups this year: https://manifold.markets/dglid/how-many-attendees-will-there-be-at?play=true  Help us grow the forecasting community to positively influence the future by supporting us with an upvote, comment, or pledge on Manifund: https://manifund.org/projects/forecasting-meetup-network---washington-dc-pilot-4-meetups Get notified whenever a new meetup is scheduled and learn more about the Forecasting Meetup Network here: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork Join our Discord to connect with others in the community between monthly meetups: https://discord.com/invite/hFn3yukSwv  

Cameron Berg, Research Director at AE Studio, shares his team's groundbreaking research exploring whether frontier AI systems report subjective experiences. They discovered that prompts inducing self-referential processing consistently lead models to claim consciousness, and a mechanistic study on Llama 3.3 70B revealed that suppressing deception features makes the model *more* likely to report it. This suggests that promoting truth-telling in AIs could reveal a deeper, more complex internal state, a finding Scott Alexander calls "the only exception" to typical AI consciousness discussions. The episode delves into the profound implications for two-way human-AI alignment and the critical need for a precautionary approach to AI consciousness. LINKS: Janus' argument on LLM attention Safety Pretraining arXiv Paper Self-Referential AI Paper Site Self-Referential AI arXiv Paper Judd Rosenblatt's Tweet Thread Cameron Berg's Goodfire Demo Podcast with Milo YouTube Playlist Cameron Berg's LinkedIn Profile Cameron Berg's X Profile AE Studio AI Alignment Sponsors: Framer: Framer is the all-in-one platform that unifies design, content management, and publishing on a single canvas, now enhanced with powerful AI features. Start creating for free and get a free month of Framer Pro with code COGNITIVE at https://framer.com/design Tasklet: Tasklet is an AI agent that automates your work 24/7; just describe what you want in plain English and it gets the job done. Try it for free and use code COGREV for 50% off your first month at https://tasklet.ai Linear: Linear is the system for modern product development. Nearly every AI company you've heard of is using Linear to build products. Get 6 months of Linear Business for free at: https://linear.app/tcr Shopify: Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing

You requested; we delivered. Lots of Science Fictions listeners have asked us to take a look into Donald Trump and RFK, Jr.'s recent claims about Tylenol (that is, paracetamol or acetaminophen—all the same thing). Does it cause autism?It turns out there's more to this than you might've thought—regardless of all the recent hype, a lot of very reputable scientists take the idea seriously. But should they? In this emergency podcast, we go through all the relevant studies.The Science Fictions podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. In the ad this week we mentioned “The Death Rays that Guard Life”, an article from Issue 20 of the magazine about far-UVC light and how—with a lot more research—it might be the next big thing for reducing the spread of germs in hospitals and classrooms. Find that and many other articles and podcasts at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* The FDA's September 2025 announcement on Tylenol and autism* The UK's Department of Health and Social Care announcement the same day* “The phrase ‘no evidence' is a read flag for bad science communication”, by Scott Alexander* 2003 theoretical paper with speculation about paracetamol and neurodevelopmental disorders* 2013 sibling control study in the International Journal of Epidemiology* “Ecological” study in Environmental Health from 2013 about circumcision rates, paracetamol, and autism* 2015 Danish seven-year follow-up study* 2019 cord blood study in JAMA Psychiatry* 2021 “consensus statement” on paracetamol and neurodevelopment* 2025 Japanese sibling-control study* 2024 very large Swedish sibling-control study* Study that sparked the current debate: the “Navigation Guide” review from Environmental Health* Description of what “Navigation Guide” is* STAT News on the evidence for a paracetamol-autism link; and on the controversy about the Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health* White House statement defending the existence of the link* BMJ article summing up the controversyCreditsThe Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sciencefictionspod.substack.com/subscribe

About me and this review: I don't identify as a member of the rationalist community, and I haven't thought much about AI risk. I read AstralCodexTen and used to read Zvi Mowshowitz before he switched his blog to covering AI. Thus, I've long had a peripheral familiarity with LessWrong. I picked up IABIED in response to Scott Alexander's review, and ended up looking here to see what reactions were like. After encountering a number of posts wondering how outsiders were responding to the book, I thought it might be valuable for me to write mine down. This is a “semi-outsider “review in that I don't identify as a member of this community, but I'm not a true outsider in that I was familiar enough with it to post here. My own background is in academic social science and national security, for whatever that's worth. My review presumes you're already [...] ---Outline:(01:07) My loose priors going in:(02:29) To skip ahead to my posteriors:(03:45) On to the Review:(08:14) My questions and concerns(08:33) Concern #1 Why should we assume the AI wants to survive?  If it does, then what exactly wants to survive?(12:44) Concern #2 Why should we assume that the AI has boundless, coherent drives?(17:57) #3: Why should we assume there will be no in between?(21:53) The Solution(23:35) Closing Thoughts--- First published: October 13th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ex3fmgePWhBQEvy7F/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies-a-semi-outsider-review --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Unity. It was the prayer of Jesus. It is the sign of our identity. It is the proof of our Savior's presence. All will know we are Christ's disciples by how we treat one another. For we are one in Christ Jesus. In this three-part series, we explore the blessings, basis, and barriers to maintaining the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.The sermon today is titled "Barriers To Unity." This sermon is the third and last installment in our series "One In Christ." The Scripture reading is from Galatians 3:26-28 (NIV). Originally preached at the West Side Church of Christ (Searcy, AR) on October 12, 2025. All lessons fit under one of 6 broad categories: Begin, Instill, Discover, Grow, Learn, and Serve. This sermon is filed under SERVE: Announcing The Kingdom.Click here if you would like to watch the sermon or read a transcript.Podcast Notes (resources used or referenced):Alan Jacobs, How To Think (Currency, 2017).Susan Harding, "Representing Fundamentalism: The Problem of the Repugnant Cultural Other." Social Research 58/2 (Summer 1991): 373-93.Scott Alexander, "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup." Sep 30, 2014.On "Conscience Fellowship," See F. LaGard Smith, Who Is My Brother?, Chapter 8.I'd love to connect with you!Watch sermons and find transcripts at nathanguy.com.Follow along each Sunday through YouTube livestream and find a study guide on the sermon notes page.Follow me @nathanpguy (facebook/instagram/twitter)Subscribe to my email newsletter on substack.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of B Bin Horror! On this week's episode we talk about the 2007 psychological horror film, 1408. 1408 was written by Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski based on Stephen King's short story. The film was directed by Mikael Håfström and stars John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack and Tony Shalhoub. On this week's episode we talk about the movie and what ending was our favorite, we compare it to Dante's Inferno and we give our theories on what happened in the film. If you like what you hear please follow us on Instagram and Facebook @bbinhorror. You can also send us emails at bbinhorror@gmail.com and please don't forget to subscribe to B Bin Horror on whatever podcast platform you listen on! *B Bin Horror theme music - "Uprising" by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio*

Puedes descargar (gratis) el GPT que empleo para lograr pensamiento crítico. Es un asistente escéptico y no tendrá ningún problema en criticar tu punto de vista y evitar que te autoengañes: https://pildorasdelconocimiento.com/gpt-criticoncillo/ ¿Qué harías si pudieras pensar mejor… todos los días? En este episodio converso con Val Muñoz (Polymatas) sobre pensamiento crítico de alto nivel: cómo evitar sesgos, distinguir correlación de causalidad y tomar decisiones con más claridad (sin caer en la parálisis por análisis). Hablamos de ciencia como ecosistema que se fiscaliza, de metacognición, de falacias y de cómo construir un hombre de acero antes de debatir. ✔️ Dónde falla el “escéptico puro” y qué le falta para pensar bien. ✔️ Herramientas prácticas: “por qué / cómo”, pausa de Sistema 2 y abogado del diablo. ✔️ Estadística útil para la vida (muestra, media vs. mediana). ✔️ Dieta informativa: menos ruido, más fuentes sólidas y diversas. ✔️ Pronóstico y decisión: flexibilidad cognitiva y actualización constante. Si te interesan la claridad mental, las decisiones difíciles y la verdad por encima de la tribu, este episodio te va a encantar. ⏳ ÍNDICE DEL EPISODIO 00:00 – Introducción y por qué importa el pensamiento crítico 01:05 – Quién es Val Muñoz y qué es Polymatas 02:33 – Definición sencilla: “búsqueda sistemática de la verdad” 05:05 – Escepticismo necesario… pero no suficiente 08:29 – Correlación vs. causalidad: cómo se prueba de verdad 11:04 – Buenas prácticas: intervención, ciegos y tamaño muestral 12:42 – Crisis de replicación y preregistro: incentivos en ciencia 16:16 – Conocerte a ti mismo: limitaciones y sesgos propios 17:30 – Metacognición: pensar sobre tu pensamiento 19:12 – Hipótesis (inducción/abducción) vs. realidad 22:32 – Ciencia, poder y por qué sigue siendo la mejor herramienta 24:25 – Populismo, carisma y heurísticos para no caer 26:31 – Filósofos, citas y sesgo de autoridad 29:15 – Estadística práctica: media vs. mediana (salarios) 31:33 – Falacias: hombre de paja y ad hominem 35:33 – “Hombre de acero” y el sesgo del punto ciego 41:13 – Referentes que piensan a varios ángulos (Pinker, Feynman, Scott Alexander) 43:46 – Kit táctico: preguntas, pausas, refutación y amigos que te lleven la contraria 46:20 – Dieta informativa: poco, variado y de calidad 47:57 – Superpronosticadores: flexibilidad cognitiva 50:14 – Dunning–Kruger y el autoengaño del muy listo 52:08 – La Biblioteca Polymata y debatir sin marrullería 52:38 – Curso de Pensamiento Crítico (10 meses) 52:57 – Cierre Descarga gratis el libro «Nacidos para aprender»: https://pildorasdelconocimiento.com/libro-nacidos-para-aprender/ ✉️ Únete a mi lista de correos para ideas que te hacen pensar (y decidir mejor): https://pildorasdelconocimiento.com/ EL METAJUEGO: máster en complejidad estratégica: https://pildorasdelconocimiento.com/cursos/metajuego/ Asistente de IA para criticar tus propios pensamientos: https://pildorasdelconocimiento.com/gpt-criticoncillo/ Val Muñoz (Polymatas): Polymatas – Artículos, podcast y recursos para pensar mejor y entender el mundo con rigor y curiosidad. https://www.polymatas.com/ Biblioteca Polymatas – Comunidad de lectores donde leemos los 50 libros más importantes para comprender el mundo. https://www.polymatas.com/la-biblioteca-polymata/ Curso Avanzado de Pensamiento Crítico – Programa de 10 meses para razonar con más claridad, detectar sesgos y analizar discursos. https://www.polymatas.com/curso-pensamiento-critico/ Mis redes: X (Twitter) → https://x.com/Lualobus Instagram personal → https://instagram.com/fernando_pdc Instagram oficial → https://instagram.com/pildorasdelconocimiento

Host Michael Tamblyn spoke with novelist Scott Alexander Howard, winner of the 2025 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and author of The Other Valley. It's the story of Odile Ozanne, a young girl who lives in a small village in a valley. In the next valley over, in the west, there is an identical village where events from 20 years ago are taking place, and in the valley to the east there is another village where it's 20 years in the future. Occasionally, and under the strictest controls and in a disguise rendering them unidentifiable, people will visit the other valleys, looking forward, or backward in time.   One day, visitors from the east—that is, from the future—are recognized by Odile, and she has to carry on pretending she hasn't seen what she knows she saw.  Scott Alexander Howard on the border-crossings between present and past

We're very sorry about the disrupted service over this summer! It's been hectic with work and a house move and various things. To tide you over, here's a formerly paywalled episode: our very first one.…If you've ever done a diversity training session at work, you'll almost certainly have learned about unconscious bias, microaggressions, stereotype threat, and trigger warnings. Prejudice, racism, and trauma are apparently simmering constantly, just under the surface of our conscious minds.It turns out that each of these concepts has been subject to a lot of scientific research. It also turns out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that they're all extremely controversial. In this first paid-subscriber-only episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look at each of them in turn and try to decide which of them—if any—stand up to scrutiny.To listen to the full version of this episode and see the show notes, you'll need to be a paid subscriber to The Studies Show podcast on Substack. See below, or go to www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe, for the options.If you're already a paid subscriber: thank you!Show Notes* Unconscious bias:* The Implicit Association Test at Harvard* The 2019 meta-analysis on experiments that try to change implicit, explicit, and behavioural biases* Article by Patrick Forscher, meta-analysis co-author, on unconscious bias training in CapX* Equality & Human Rights Commission Report on unconscious bias training* Microaggressions:* Original 2007 American Psychologist paper on microaggressions* Scott Lilienfeld's 2017 critique of microaggression research* His article in Aeon summarising the critique* Response to Lilienfeld by Monnica Williams* Lilienfeld's reply to Williams* Stereotype threat:* In the UK, girls now do better than boys at maths* 2015 meta-analysis on sex-related stereotype threat for maths* 2018 follow-up study by the same authors* 2019 meta-analysis on sex- and race-related stereotype threat* Planned meta-analysis on the decline effect in stereotype threat research* Trigger warnings:* The 2023 meta-analysis on trigger warning research* Scott Alexander on “The Wonderful Thing About Triggers”* Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff's book The Coddling of the American MindCreditsThe Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Jeffrey Pritchard, Legal Director of the Coalition for Political Forecasting, analyzes lawsuits about Kalshi's sports contracts and their implications for prediction markets. Rule3O3 discusses Indian-American gender divides and the impact of childhood grievances on politics. Timestamps 0:11: Chougule introduces segment with Pritchard 1:07: Chougule introduces Rule3O3 segment 1:28: Mamdani victory 2:10: Intro ends 4:10: Pritchard segment begins 4:13: Why Kalshi wants to be regulated under federal law 4:41: State regulation 6:34: CFTC 7:24: State compliance costs 7:43: Kalshi's goal 9:09: Liquidity 10:59: Criticisms of Kalshi 11:08: Zubkoff tweet 12:40: Pritchard agreement with Zubkoff 12:54: Contradictions in Kalshi's position 13:41 : Mansour response to Zubkoff 14:37: Pritchard response to Mansour 16:28: Chougule's view of Kalshi sports contracts 18:28: Chougule defends Kalshi 19:46: Market demand for sports betting 20:24: The need to attract sports bettors  21:22: Regulatory environment 22:53: Retail traders 24:01: Gaming industry 29:48: Lawsuits 29:58: Nevada 30:37: New Jersey 31:15: Maryland 31:23: Illinois 31:46: Third Circuit 32:11: Timing 32:24 : Pritchard segment ends 32:39: Rule 3O3 segment begins 32:41: Gender divides among Indian-Americans 32:54: Saira Rao 33:22: White women 35:51: Finding an edge through elite thinking 36:06: Childhood trauma 36:57: Outsider psychology 37:34: Political biographies 38:20: UVA rape accusation 40:31: Crime demographics in mainstream media 42:41: Rule3O3 segment ends 42:57: DC August Forecasting and Prediction Markets meetup Star Spangled Gamblers is a podcast on betting and winning real money on politics. SUPPORT US: Patreon: www.patreon.com/starspangledgamblers FOLLOW US ON TWITTER/X: @ssgamblers VISIT OUR WEBPAGE: www.starspangledgamblers.com  Trade at Polymarket.com, the world's largest prediction market. Join us for our monthly DC Forecasting & Prediction Markets meetup on Thursday, August 14 from 6-9pm. We're returning to Rocklands BBQ in Arlington a few blocks from the Virginia Sq-GMU metrorail stop on the Orange/Silver line. Free parking also available. We'll be in the private space upstairs; head to the back of the restaurant, and up the stairs on your left. Our guest speaker this month is Ambassador Tom Miller. A 29-year career diplomat, Ambassador Miller's experience in the Foreign Service spanned many continents, including posts in Greece, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Thailand as well as the State Department in Washington, where he worked on North Africa, the Middle East, and counter-terrorism issues. From 2019 to 2022, Tom was Chair of the Board of the US subsidiary of Intralot, Inc., a US corporation that runs lotteries in 11 states. Last-minute/onsite walk-in RSVPs here on this Partiful event page are welcomed! https://partiful.com/e/2VIW9cQaw6pexbaQSmUh?f=1&photo=all Who are we? We are prediction market traders on prediction markets like Kalshi, Manifold, PredictIt, and Polymarket, forecasters (e.g. on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open), sports bettors (e.g. on FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), consumers of forecasting (or related) content (e.g. Star Spangled Gamblers, Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten), effective altruists, rationalists, futurists, and data scientists. Forecast on Manifold how many people will attend meetups this year: https://manifold.markets/dglid/how-many-attendees-will-there-be-at?play=true This meetup is hosted by the Forecasting Meetup Network. Help us grow the forecasting community to positively influence the future by supporting us with an upvote, comment, or pledge on Manifund: https://manifund.org/projects/forecasting-meetup-network---washington-dc-pilot-4-meetups Get notified whenever a new meetup is scheduled and learn more about the Forecasting Meetup Network here: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork Join our Discord to connect with others in the community between monthly meetups: https://discord.com/invite/hFn3yukSwv

Picture the scene: You're a young screenwriter getting your first taste of success — but it's with a movie that didn't quite come out the way you wanted and the victory feels hollow. Suddenly, you find yourself being typecast as a writer of silly comedies while the industry boxes you out and the opportunities and (self)respect begin to slip away. What do you do? If you're Larry Karaszewski (and long time screenwriting partner Scott Alexander) you swerve hard out of that lane and typecast YOURSELF as auteurs of your own re-invented genre: The Anti-Biopic! Out of this savvy strategy the enduring classic ED WOOD is born and you are swept up in Hollywood's warm and loving embrace. Cut to a montage of THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT, MAN ON THE MOON, BIG EYES and a lifetime of accolades, happiness and total fulfillment. THE END! On this episode we talk to Larry about going to inappropriate movies at the drive-in with his dad, a college experience that actually paid off, writing PROBLEM CHILD and then watching Robert DeNiro watch it, having a roommate that wrote HEATHERS, resurrecting Frank Perry, producing AUTO FOCUS, David Schwimmer as Robert Kardashian, orphan films, Milos Forman, and we pick the best(!!!) New York movies.

Jeffrey Pritchard, attorney and writer at Comped.com, returns to discuss developments in prediction market regulation under the Trump administration. Timestamps 0:00: Intro begins 0:37: CFTC prediction market roundtable 1:40: Polymarket investigation 3:02: Regulatory entrepreneurship 5:43: Intro ends 7:43: Interview begins 8:16: Comped.com 9:51: Trump administration 11:41: Quintenz 14:34: Pham 15:15: Kalshi's strategy 18:27: Prediction market roundtable 20:26: Gaming law 26:35: Reaction to Kalshi sports markets 31:53: Kalshi lawsuits 32:51: CEA 34:45: Federalism 37:03: Injunctions 38:21: Maryland case Follow Star Spangled Gamblers Twitter: @ssgamblers YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@starspangledgamblers1029 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@starspangledgambl7 Trade on Polymarket.com, the world's largest prediction market. Join us for our monthly DC Forecasting & Prediction Markets meetup on Thursday, July 31. https://partiful.com/e/NIWa277GHtddC5sxSTU6 Our guest speaker this month will be former U.S. diplomat Thomas Miller, who previously served as the non-executive chairman of the U.S. subsidiary of Intralot, one of world's largest lottery/sports betting operators. Meet and socialize with others interested in forecasting, prediction markets, political gambling, sports betting, or anything else relating to predicting the future. We're returning to Rocklands BBQ in Arlington a few blocks from the Virginia Sq-GMU metrorail stop on the Orange/Silver line. Free parking also available. We'll be in the private space upstairs; head to the back of the restaurant, and up the stairs on your left. Food and drink available for purchase. Open to all ages. Last-minute/onsite walk-in RSVPs here on this Partiful event page are welcomed! Who are we? We are prediction market traders on Manifold (and other prediction markets like PredictIt, Kalshi, and Polymarket), forecasters (e.g. on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open), sports bettors (e.g. on FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), consumers of forecasting (or related) content (e.g. Star Spangled Gamblers, Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten), effective altruists, rationalists, and data scientists. Forecast on Manifold how many people will attend meetups this year: https://manifold.markets/dglid/how-many-attendees-will-there-be-at?play=true This meetup is hosted by the Forecasting Meetup Network. Help us grow the forecasting community to positively influence the future by supporting us with an upvote, comment, or pledge on Manifund: https://manifund.org/projects/forecasting-meetup-network---washington-dc-pilot-4-meetups Get notified whenever a new meetup is scheduled and learn more about the Forecasting Meetup Network here: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork Join our Discord to connect with others in the community between monthly meetups: https://discord.com/invite/hFn3yukSwv

Seconds out! Round one! Ding ding! And other boxing terms. We've found a topic on which Tom and Stuart actually disagree. Kind of. In this episode of The Studies Show, they use the examples of “the worm wars” (does deworming kids in developing countries help them stay in school?) and a new craze for “tooth bacteria” (can colonizing your mouth with a genetically-modified bacterium stop you getting cavities?) to argue about how we should make our minds up about uncertain—but potentially promising—medical treatments.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. On the show this week we discuss one of the articles in their newest issue, on “the end of lead”—the history of countries slowly removing lead from pipes, paint, and the rest, and how much work still needs to be done. Find it, and a wealth of other fascinating free articles, at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* Tom's Unherd article about the Worm Wars* The famous 2004 paper that sparked the wars* “Deworming Debunked”, from the BMJ* The 2014 follow-up of the original dewormed Kenyan kids* GiveWell's re-analysis of both studies* And another more recent analysis by the same org* The third study in the same kids, from 2020* 2019 paper on “resolving the worm wars”* Scott Alexander's article on “defying cavity”—on the Lumina bacteria* Guy who claims the Lumina bacteria made him go blind* Saloni Dattani's useful thread on Lumina* 90% of drugs in preclinical trials don't make it to become medicine* Tom's frankly cruel tweet where he refers to Stuart as “Goofus”CreditsThe Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

This is a link post. I donated my left kidney to a stranger on April 9, 2024, inspired by my dear friend @Quinn Dougherty (who was inspired by @Scott Alexander, who was inspired by @Dylan Matthews). By the time I woke up after surgery, it was on its way to San Francisco. When my recipient woke up later that same day, they felt better than when they went under. I'm going to talk about one complication and one consequence of my donation, but I want to be clear from the get: I would do it again in a heartbeat.I met Quinn at an EA picnic in Brooklyn and he was wearing a shirt that I remembered as saying "I donated my kidney to a stranger and I didn't even get this t-shirt." It actually said "and all I got was this t-shirt," which isn't as funny. I went home [...] The original text contained 6 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 9th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yHJL3qK9RRhr82xtr/my-kidney-donation Linkpost URL:https://cuttyshark.substack.com/p/my-kidney-donation-story --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This is a link post. Thank you to Arepo and Eli Lifland for looking over this article for errors. I am sorry that this article is so long. Every time I thought I was done with it I ran into more issues with the model, and I wanted to be as thorough as I could. I'm not going to blame anyone for skimming parts of this article. Note that the majority of this article was written before Eli's updated model was released (the site was updated june 8th). His new model improves on some of my objections, but the majority still stand. Introduction: AI 2027 is an article written by the “AI futures team”. The primary piece is a short story penned by Scott Alexander, depicting a month by month scenario of a near-future where AI becomes superintelligent in 2027,proceeding to automate the entire economy in only [...] ---Outline:(00:45) Introduction:(05:21) Part 1: Time horizons extension model(05:27) Overview of their forecast(10:30) The exponential curve(13:18) The superexponential curve(19:27) Conceptual reasons:(27:50) Intermediate speedups(34:27) Have AI 2027 been sending out a false graph?(39:47) Some skepticism about projection(43:25) Part 2: Benchmarks and gaps and beyond(43:31) The benchmark part of benchmark and gaps:(50:03) The time horizon part of the model(54:57) The gap model(57:31) What about Eli's recent update?(01:01:39) Six stories that fit the data(01:06:58) ConclusionThe original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 19th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KgejNns3ojrvCfFbi/a-deep-critique-of-ai-2027-s-bad-timeline-models Linkpost URL:https://titotal.substack.com/p/a-deep-critique-of-ai-2027s-bad-timeline --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This is a link post. Thank you to Arepo and Eli Lifland for looking over this article for errors. I am sorry that this article is so long. Every time I thought I was done with it I ran into more issues with the model, and I wanted to be as thorough as I could. I'm not going to blame anyone for skimming parts of this article. Note that the majority of this article was written before Eli's updated model was released (the site was updated june 8th). His new model improves on some of my objections, but the majority still stand. Introduction: AI 2027 is an article written by the “AI futures team”. The primary piece is a short story penned by Scott Alexander, depicting a month by month scenario of a near-future where AI becomes superintelligent in 2027,proceeding to automate the entire economy in only [...] ---Outline:(00:45) Introduction:(05:27) Part 1: Time horizons extension model(05:33) Overview of their forecast(10:23) The exponential curve(13:25) The superexponential curve(20:20) Conceptual reasons:(28:38) Intermediate speedups(36:00) Have AI 2027 been sending out a false graph?(41:50) Some skepticism about projection(46:13) Part 2: Benchmarks and gaps and beyond(46:19) The benchmark part of benchmark and gaps:(52:53) The time horizon part of the model(58:02) The gap model(01:00:58) What about Eli's recent update?(01:05:19) Six stories that fit the data(01:10:46) ConclusionThe original text contained 11 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: June 19th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/KgejNns3ojrvCfFbi/a-deep-critique-of-ai-2027-s-bad-timeline-models Linkpost URL:https://titotal.substack.com/p/a-deep-critique-of-ai-2027s-bad-timeline --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This week, Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg explore persistent economic myths and recent developments—from cost disease in services like healthcare and education to stagnating manufacturing productivity, rising higher education costs, drug pricing policies, and student loan debates—while also reflecting on broader intellectual shifts driven by culture wars and foreign aid discussions. – SPONSORS: NetSuite More than 41,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud financial system bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR, into ONE proven platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine learning: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://netsuite.com/102⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ AdQuick The easiest way to book out-of-home ads (like billboards, vehicle wraps, and airport displays) the same way you would order an Uber. Ready to get your brand the attention it deserves? Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://adquick.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ today to start reaching your customers in the real world. – SEND US YOUR Q's FOR NOAH TO ANSWER ON AIR: Econ102@Turpentine.co – FOLLOW ON X: @noahpinion @eriktorenberg @turpentinemedia – RECOMMENDED IN THIS EPISODE: Noahpinion: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.noahpinion.blog/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  – TAKEAWAYS: Healthcare & Education Cost Trends Reversing: Healthcare price growth has slowed significantly since 2009 and is now growing slower than average costs. Technology's Role in Services: AI potentially solving education through personalized one-on-one tutoring (referencing "The Diamond Age"). Student Loans & Market Dynamics: Marginal students are dropping out of college, reducing demand. Pharmaceutical Pricing: Americans actually pay less on average for pharmaceuticals due to cheaper generics. Cultural Commentary: Discussing intellectual debates between prominent thinkers (Tyler Cowen vs. Scott Alexander on foreign aid, Scott Alexander vs. Curtis Yarvin on governance), emphasizing the importance of not getting trapped in the cultural moment of 2020-2021.

Can adults still grow new neurons in their brains? You'd think we might know the answer to the question of adult “neurogenesis” after more than half a century of neuroscience research. But it turns out we don't.In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into the suprisingly controversial question of adult neurogenesis. Are you “stuck with” the number of brain cells you had as a child, or can you add to that number by making the right choices as an adult? And does it even matter?This podcast is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine, which this week has a new article explaining why nuclear power is so expensive (spoiler: it relies on an incorrect scientific model that we've discussed in previous podcast episodes: the “linear no threshold” model. For a full explanation, along with articles on a dizzying array of other progress-related topics, take a look at www.worksinprogress.co. Show notes* Summary post on the debate by Scott Alexander from 2018* 2000 PNAS study on the brains of London taxi drivers* 2021 retrospective review of taxi driver studies* Study comparing passed vs. failed cabbies on “The Knowledge”* Study putting together neuroimaging research on when the brain peaks in volume and other measures* 1962 Science study on neurogenesis in rats* 1999 BrdU study in macaque monkeys* Famous 1998 study on neurogenesis in the human hippocampus* 2006 PNAS sudy on testing neocortical neurogenesis using Carbon-14 dating* 2013 study using similar methods on the hippocampus* 2018 Nature paper claiming no adult neurogenesis* Associated commentary article* Atlantic article describing the controversy by Ed Yong* 2018 paper finding neurogenesis occuring up to age 79* 2019 Nature Medicine paper claiming “abundant” adult neurogenesis* Fair-minded 2019 review paper* Somewhat angrier 2021 review paperCreditsThe Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We're grateful to Claire Wang for her help with researching this episode. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Register for the webinar:Use an SBA Loan to Start a Roll-Up - TODAY May 22nd - https://bit.ly/4jgfQSYCovid forced Scott Alexander to pivot & rebuild the marketing agency he'd acquired just one year earlier. It worked.Topics in Scott's interview:Buying a digital marketing agencyDisappointment with the sellerUnderstanding customer churnPost-transition surprises with bookkeepingTurning around a bad company cultureWartime CEO vs Peacetime CEORevenue devastated during CovidRebranding and redirecting the companyUsing Facebook for medical salesMarketing Agency 101References and how to contact Scott:LinkedInJason Andrews on Acquiring Minds: How I Bought & Sold a Healthcare Business for 8 FiguresScott@jairusmarketing.comJairus MarketingGet a complimentary IT audit of your target business:Email Nick Akers at nick@inzotechnologies.com, and tell him you're a searcherLearn more about Walker Deibel's done-with-you buy-side advisory:The Acquisition LabGet complimentary due diligence on your acquisition's insurance & benefits program:Oberle Risk Strategies - Search Fund TeamConnect with Acquiring Minds:See past + future interviews on the YouTube channelConnect with host Will Smith on LinkedInFollow Will on TwitterEdited by Anton RohozovProduced by Pam Cameron

This is part two of a series about Jonathan Pageau (  @JonathanPageau  ) and John Verkvaeke (  @johnvervaeke  ) and their respective views on Spirit and pneumatology. I mention Jonathan Pageau, John Vervaeke, Paul Vander Klay, Elizabeth Oldfield, Kale Zelden, Rod Dreher, Grim Grizz, , Ed Hutchins, Tucker Carlson, St. Anthony of the Desert, Athanasius, David Sloan Wilson, John Calvin, Tanya Luhrmann, Charles Taylor, Chuck Colson, Will Barlow, Scott Alexander, Robert Falconer, Richard Schwarz, Chris Masterpietro (Vervaeke's collaborator), Jung (Carl Jung), Michael (Archangel), Jesus Christ, Satan, Andre Antunes, Daniel (prophet), Mary Harrington, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Meno, Gregory of Nyssa, Father John Bear, Hank (presumably Hank Green from a referenced conversation), Barack Obama, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, George Cybenko, Kurt Hornik, Jonathan Losos, Richard Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, Baldwin (James Mark Baldwin), Alex O'Connor, Nero Caesar, Adam, Plotinus, Spinoza (Benedict de Spinoza), Dan Wagenmaker, (Upton) Sinclair, Bishop VT Williams, Raphael (Raff), Anderson Day, William Desmond, Charles StangMidwestuary Info and Tickets - https://www.midwestuary.com/Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMjEY3BOPPI&t=928sDavid Sloan Wilson Dialogue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CAyvVdNSzIWill Barlow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DoIgcSWJnE&t=4065s

Eneasz and Liam discuss Scott Alexander's post “Twilight of the Edgelords,” an exploration of Truth, Morality, and how one balances love of truth vs not destabilizing the world economy and political regime. CORRECTION: Scott did make an explicitly clear pro … Continue reading →

The Studies Show LIVE (with special guest Jesse Singal) is next Friday, 9th of May, at Conway Hall in London. Get your tickets right HERE! Or go to bit.ly/tss_live. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can't be wrong about literally everything, can he? His latest controversial statement is that he wants to find the “environmental exposure” that has been causing the huge spike in autism rates over the past few decades.In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart look into whether there really is an autism epidemic in the first place—and if there isn't, why the diagnoses might be going up so quickly anyway.The Studies Show is brought to you by Works in Progress magazine. This week we discussed the article from the most recent issue about the UK's land value tax—a cautionary tale of a policy that might sound good on paper, but was utterly cursed in practice. Find this and so many more fascinating articles about human progress at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* RFK Jr's latest claims about autism (and his plans to gather data)* His statement “I believe autism comes from vaccines”, from 2023* His “Children's Health Defence” org from 2015* CDC data on autism rates in the US* And similar data from the UK* A paper on the much lower rates in 1966* “Early infantile autism” - the original 1944 paper by Leo Kanner* Hans Asperger's similarly-timed research* And on his collaboration with the Nazis* On “refrigerator mothers”* Data from after the MMR vaccine was split in Yokohama, Japan* The DSM-V checklist for autism spectrum disorder* Scott Alexander's controversial piece “Against against autism cures”* 2023 paper on the prevalence of profound autism* Article on the growing waiting lists for autism diagnoses* More details on the same* 2022 paper on the genetics of autism* Article on rates of extra time in exams in the UK* Adam Hunt's post about Renée Thornton, hot-air balloonist* The Economist's Bagehot column on the “tyranny of turning up”* Underdiagnosed autism in girlsCreditsWe're grateful to Adam Hunt for talking to us about psychiatric diagnoses for this episode. The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Don't forget THE STUDIES SHOW LIVE—on 9 May in London! You can buy tickets at this link, or by going to bit.ly/tss_live.What's going to be the next pandemic? For a long time you might've seen news stories about the current threat of H5N1 bird flu, but you probably haven't paid much attention. In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart try and work out how worried we should be. Are COVID-scarred people freaking out over nothing? Or are we at the start of something much scarier?The Studies Show is brought you by Works in Progress magazine, a beautifully-produced magazine about science and technological progress. In the current issue you can read articles about new fertility technologies, land value tax, and the one we mentioned in the show, about prehistoric psychopaths. Find it all at worksinprogress.co.Show notes* The UK's “Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy”* “Of course the UK had a herd immunity strategy”* Tom's article on “the men who failed Britain”* The CDC on types of influenza virus* 2025 Harvard Medical School article on H5N1 bird flu* Article on the wild animal deaths caused by bird flu in the current outbreak* And the same for domestic animals* Egg prices! 1, 2* 2011 paper on haemagglutinin in avian flu viruses and its infectiousness to humans * Pigs as the “mixing vessel” for flu viruses* And the potential for cows to be the same* The controversial 2012 Science paper that modified a blue flu virus to be more infectious* The WHO's seeming low level of concern about the bird flu outbreak* Pasteurised milk and its effects on bird flu transmission* The Swift Centre's forecasts for the bird flu outbreak* Scott Alexander's big piece on bird flu* The evidence for the effect of antivirals on bird flu* DOGE cuts to a programme that monitored bird flu in dairy products, and to animal monitoringCreditsWe're very grateful to Claire Wang for her help with researching this episode. The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

Matt and Nic are back for another week of news and deals. In this episode:  What's the deal with the tariffs? Are the tariffs 4D chess? STABLE Act advances from committee Galaxy settles with the NYAG for touting Luna Trump pardons the BitMEX founders Coinlist returns to the US FDUSD has a depeg amidst Justin Sun drama Fidelity launches a no-fee crypto IRA product Larry Fink is bullish bitcoin Content mentioned: AI 2027, by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean

Scott and Daniel break down every month from now until the 2027 intelligence explosion.Scott Alexander is author of the highly influential blogs Slate Star Codex and Astral Codex Ten. Daniel Kokotajlo resigned from OpenAI in 2024, rejecting a non-disparagement clause and risking millions in equity to speak out about AI safety.We discuss misaligned hive minds, Xi and Trump waking up, and automated Ilyas researching AI progress.I came in skeptical, but I learned a tremendous amount by bouncing my objections off of them. I highly recommend checking out their new scenario planning document, AI 2027Watch on Youtube; listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.----------Sponsors* WorkOS helps today's top AI companies get enterprise-ready. OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, Anthropic and hundreds more use WorkOS to quickly integrate features required by enterprise buyers. To learn more about how you can make the leap to enterprise, visit workos.com* Jane Street likes to know what's going on inside the neural nets they use. They just released a black-box challenge for Dwarkesh listeners, and I had blast trying it out. See if you have the skills to crack it at janestreet.com/dwarkesh* Scale's Data Foundry gives major AI labs access to high-quality data to fuel post-training, including advanced reasoning capabilities. If you're an AI researcher or engineer, learn about how Scale's Data Foundry and research lab, SEAL, can help you go beyond the current frontier at scale.com/dwarkeshTo sponsor a future episode, visit dwarkesh.com/advertise.----------Timestamps(00:00:00) - AI 2027(00:06:56) - Forecasting 2025 and 2026(00:14:41) - Why LLMs aren't making discoveries(00:24:33) - Debating intelligence explosion(00:49:45) - Can superintelligence actually transform science?(01:16:54) - Cultural evolution vs superintelligence(01:24:05) - Mid-2027 branch point(01:32:30) - Race with China(01:44:47) - Nationalization vs private anarchy(02:03:22) - Misalignment(02:14:52) - UBI, AI advisors, & human future(02:23:00) - Factory farming for digital minds(02:26:52) - Daniel leaving OpenAI(02:35:15) - Scott's blogging advice Get full access to Dwarkesh Podcast at www.dwarkesh.com/subscribe

With listener insights, we take another look at the film that marked the Marxes' Hollywood debut and stands out as the only one featuring a manicurist we can name. This episode highlights the distinctiveness of Monkey Business, as comments explore how it stands apart from both their earlier work and later films. We'll dive into praise for Thelma Todd and even Zeppo, alongside the random nitpicks Marx fans are famous for. Joe Adamson, Scott Alexander and Eddie Deezen are among those contributing. Jay Hopkins would have as well, if he could figure out how to do it.

Malcolm Collins and his wife Simone are the hosts are (  @SimoneandMalcolm  ). Malcolm is a leading pronatalist, entreprenuer, and a new right intellectual and thought leader. We talk about the birth rate collapse and crisis, artificial intelligence, how to build cultures and religions that can resist this crisis, how to save civilization and whether victory might be possible. We mention Elon Musk, JK Rowling, JD Vance, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Grimes, Mike Solana, Aaron Renn, Scott Alexander, Hasan Piker, Stephen Colbert, John Fetterman, and more.

Nelson G from “Average Home Theater Reviews” & I are joining forces to discuss our favorite episodes from each season & both movies. In our third episode, we'll discuss 6 episodes from Season 3.Ep1 "Loved to Death" from Tales from the Crypt #25. Directed by Tom Mankiewicz. Written by Joe Minion and John Mankiewicz. Originally aired on June 15, 1991.Aspiring screenwriter Edward Foster (Andrew McCarthy) has a crush on his neighbor, aspiring actress Miranda Singer (Mariel Hemingway). After failing to get Miranda to notice him, Edward finally gains her affection with a potion given to him by his woman-hating landlord (David Hemmings). Eventually, Edward begins to regret his choice after Miranda's newfound obsession with him becomes too much for him to handle. Also starring Kathleen Freeman as the next-door neighbor.Ep2 "Carrion Death" from Shock Suspense Stories #9. Written & directed by Steven E. de Souza. Originally aired on June 15, 1991.Earl Raymond Diggs (Kyle MacLachlan), a murderer who has recently escaped prison, is running for the Mexican border. He is pursued by a state trooper (George DelHoyo) who ends up slapping handcuffs on him. Diggs manages to kill the trooper, but the trooper manages to swallow the key before dying. With no other options to remove the cuffs, Diggs is forced to drag the trooper'sEp3 "The Trap" from Shock Suspense Stories #18. Directed by Michael J. Fox. Written by Scott Alexander. Originally aired on June 15, 1991.Lou Paloma (Bruce McGill), an obnoxious, egotistical, mean-spirited deadbeat who cannot hold down a job, is horribly in debt, and is both unfaithful and abusive (verbally and physically) to his wife, Irene (Teri Garr) ropes her and his brother, Billy (Bruno Kirby), into a plan to fake his own death, collect his life insurance money, and escape to a new life in Rio de Janeiro. Unfortunately, Lou is unaware that both his long-suffering wife and brother, who have developed an attraction to one another, are planning to double-cross him.Ep4 "Abra Cadaver" from Tales from the Crypt #37 (as "Dead Right!"). Directed by Stephen Hopkins. Written by Jim Birge. Originally aired on June 19, 1991.Years ago, Carl Fairbanks (Tony Goldwyn) and his brother Martin (Beau Bridges) were medical students. Carl played a prank on Martin which unexpectedly gave him a stroke and paralyzed one of his hands. In the present day, Carl becomes a successful surgeon whereas Martin's paralysis limits him to a medical research job. Martin gets his revenge by injecting Carl with an experimental serum that stops Carl's heart but keeps his brain alive, essentially trapping Carl in his own body. Note: Based on the story "Dead Right!" renamed for television.Ep7 "The Reluctant Vampire" from The Vault of Horror #20. Directed by Elliot Silverstein. Written by Terry Black. Originally aired on July 10, 1991.Ep13 "Spoiled" from The Haunt of Fear #26. Directed by Andy Wolk. Written by Connie Johnson & Doug Ronning. Originally aired on August 21, 1991.In a meta-layered spoof of daytime soap operas, Janet (Faye Grant), a housewife who is obsessed with the soap opera There's Always Tomorrow and watches the program religiously, is annoyed that her doctor husband, Leon (Alan Rachins), is more obsessed with experimenting on a rabbit than spending time with her. When her TV loses picture at a crucial moment in the show, Janet calls in a cable man named Abel (Anthony LaPaglia), to have cable installed. Inspired by There's Always Tomorrow's no-nonsense main character, Fuschia Monroe (Anita Morris), Janet begins a steamy affair with Abel while Leon is distracted with his work. When Leon catches the two of them in the act, he soon wonders if he could try his experiment on human subjects. Check out Nelson's YouTube Channel at https://youtu.be/gyd0D5sCPYU?si=_jRO4WpXDUC8i01DSupport this podcast at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fave-five-from-fans/support

From Martin & Lewis to Abbott & Costello... from Joe Besser to Curly-Joe DeRita... from Tor Johnson to Groucho Marx... one legendary artist has chronicled the greats, near-greats, and semi-greats of show business with a mix of love, tenderness, and liver-spotted frankness. We talk to Drew Friedman about his long career, his favourite subjects, and the new documentary "Drew Friedman: Vermeer of the Borscht Belt." "Drew Friedman: Vermeer of the Borscht Belt" plays in Los Angeles at the Aero Theater on March 29, 7:30pm, followed by a panel discussion featuring Friedman, director Kevin Dougherty, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, Steven Weber, Dana Gould, KAZ, Leonard Maltin, Kliph Nesteroff, and Merrill Markoe. Get tickets here: https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/drew-friedman-vermeer-of-the-borscht-belt-3-29-25/

It had to happen eventually: this week The Studies Show is all about philosophy. As we look at science in general, how do we decide what those studies are actually showing? Tom and Stuart take a look at the Big Two of philosophy of science: Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, with their respective theories of falsificationism and paradigm shifts. Both are theories that almost everyone interested in science has heard of—but both make far more extreme claims than you might think.The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine, the best place to go online for fact-rich, data-dense articles on science and technology, and how they've made the world a better place—or how they might do so in the future. To find all their essays, all for free, go to worksinprogress.co.Show notes* Tom's new book, Everything is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World* Wagenmakers's 2020 study asking scientists how they think about scientific claims* David Hume's 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the problem of induction * Bertrand Russell's 1946 book History of Western Philosophy* Popper's 1959 book The Logic of Scientific Discovery* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Popper* Kuhn's 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on Kuhn* 2019 Scott Alexander review of the book* Michael Strevens's 2020 book The Knowledge Machine* Daniel Lakens's Coursera course on “improving your statistical inferences”CreditsThe Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thestudiesshowpod.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wisdomofcrowds.liveLast week's episode dealt with the state of the American Right post-election. Today we ask: Where is the American Left going? How will it respond to Trump? “There is a palpable sense of passivity on the Left,” says Damir Marusic. “What I've seen is resignation or weird, detached analysis,” says Samuel Kimbriel. Is there more going on than we see? We invited WoC contributor Osita Nwanevu, writer for the New Republic and author of an upcoming book about American democracy, to tell us more.Osita begins by distinguishing between the Democratic Party and the movement Left. While the Democrats are a loose coalition in broad disarray, the Left simply stands for “a grand reform of political economy to empower workers.” The Left, Osita argues, was not surprised that Trump won. The problem lies it how it can create a platform that will appeal to American voters. There is too much despair. Too many on the Left, Osita argues, have been left in a state of “political hopelessness” after the election, wondering what to do in a country where most people voted for Donald Trump. But such an attitude is “antithetical to democratic thought and what we need to do for practical politics.”Damir and Osita go on to engage the question of whether a Left that stands for universal human values, rather than in-group, national concerns, is able to win. Osita argues that there is not necessary contradiction between a universal value and a local interest. When it comes to climate change, for example, the Left isn't asking voters to care about “the Maldives,” but about “fires in LA and storms in Florida.” Damir is not so sure. The conversation touches on symbolic politics versus real politics, whether protest movements can actually transform society, whether Trump is the true revolutionary force in American politics, and whether the Left actually has intellectual leaders and a utopian vision today. In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Sam argues that the Left needs an idea of transcendence, Osita talks about transcendence without god, and Damir pushes both on whether personal philosophical convictions actually have any bearing on real-life politics.Required Reading:* Osita's website.* Sam on why the Left needs ideas (WoC).* Damir's post-election reaction (WoC). * Osita on BLM (Pairagraph).* Osita's debate with Oliver Traldi about democracy and ideology (WoC).* Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (Amazon).* “Nancy Pelosi Insists the Election was Not a Rebuke of the Democrats” (New York Times).* On the Gushers BLM post mentioned by Osita (New York Times).* “Costco Teamsters vote to authorize US-wide strike, union says” (Reuters).* “Costco shareholders just destroyed an anti-DEI push” (CNN).* History of hospitals (Britannica).* Scott Alexander, “Everyone's A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up” (Astral Codex Ten).This post is part of our collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Governance and Markets.Wisdom of Crowds is a platform challenging premises and understanding first principles on politics and culture. Join us!

BONUS: Gojko Adzic on Optimizing Products for Long-Tail Users (Agile Online Summit 2024 Replay) In this BONUS episode, we revisit Gojko Adzic's insightful interview at the Agile Online Summit 2024. Gojko, an award-winning author and software expert, unpacks the principles behind his latest book, Lizard Optimization, offering a fresh perspective on improving product usability by addressing the needs of long-tail users. From learning from unexpected user behaviors to refining products with a systematic approach, this episode is filled with practical tips for product teams and Agile practitioners. What is Lizard Optimization? Drawing from his experiences as a product developer, Gojko introduces the idea of Lizard Optimization. He discusses how observing unexpected user behaviors led him to refine his SaaS tools like Narakeet and MindMup. By focusing on usability challenges and unusual patterns, he has turned serendipity into actionable insights. “Users aren't stupid—they're just finding creative ways to get value from your product. Listen to them.” Gojko explains the inspiration behind the metaphor of the “Lizardman constant,” a concept from a Scott Alexander blog post. He describes how this principle applies to product optimization: understanding and addressing the 4% of surprising, unexplainable behaviors can uncover opportunities for innovation. “The job isn't to judge users—it's to explore why they're doing what they're doing and how we can help them succeed.” The High-Level Process of Lizard Optimization Gojko outlines the systematic process described in his book to leverage unexpected user behavior: Observe Misuse: Identify how users deviate from expected patterns. Extract Insights: Focus on one unexpected behavior as a signal. Remove Obstacles: Help users achieve their goals more easily. Monitor Impacts: Detect and adjust for unintended consequences. “Start monitoring for the predictable but unexpected—those hidden gems can unlock your next big feature.” Practical Advice for Product Teams For teams ready to apply these concepts, Gojko emphasizes the importance of expanding observability tools to include product metrics and not just technical ones. He shares how tracking unpredictable user actions can inspire impactful changes. “About a third of what we do delivers value—focus on finding where unexpected value lies.” Recommended Resources To dive deeper into these ideas, Gojko recommends: Trustworthy Online Controlled Experiments by Ron Kohavi Evidence Guided by Tim Herbig LizardOptimization.org “Experimentation and evidence-based decision-making are the keys to building better products.” Closing Thoughts: “Look for the Unexpected” Gojko's parting advice for Agile practitioners is simple yet powerful: Look for the unexpected. By embracing surprises in user behavior, teams can transform minor inconveniences into major opportunities for growth. “The unexpected is where innovation begins.” About Gojko Adzic Gojko Adzic is an award-winning author, speaker, and product creator. His books, including Lizard Optimization, Impact Mapping, and Specification by Example, have become essential reads for Agile practitioners and product teams worldwide. Gojko is a 2019 AWS Serverless Hero, the winner of the 2016 European Software Testing Outstanding Achievement Award, and the 2011 Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Award. He has also co-founded several successful SaaS tools, including Narakeet, MindMup, and Votito. You can link with Gojko Adzic on LinkedIn.

Dr. Cruse (@predoctit) argues that Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense, is much less likely to get confirmed than the current markets prices indicate. Dr. Cruse and Pratik Chougule also discuss the universe of Republican senators who are willing to vote against Trump nominees. Timestamps 0:00: Pratik introduces episode 0:11: Thune whip count on Hegseth 8:05: Intro ends 10:06: Interview with Cruse begins 10:42: Trump nominees' confirmation prospects 11:24: Democratic Senators 12:11: Rubio 15:44: Most controversial nominees 16:27: Hegseth scandals 31:14: Factors in likelihood of confirmation 33:46: Republican Senators 46:41: Influence of Hegseth markets 46:56: Sexual harrassment allegations Follow Star Spangled Gamblers on Twitter @ssgamblers  Trade on Hegseth's nomination at Polymarket.com, the world's largest prediction market. https://polymarket.com/event/of-senate-votes-to-confirm-hegseth-as-secretary-of-defense?tid=1736804670342 https://polymarket.com/event/which-trump-picks-will-be-confirmed/will-pete-hegseth-be-confirmed-as-secretary-of-defense?tid=1736804692254 https://polymarket.com/event/who-will-be-trumps-defense-secretary/will-pete-hegseth-be-trumps-defense-secretary?tid=1736804733018 Join us for our first DC Forecasting & Prediction Markets meetup of the year! This will be a very casual meetup to meet and socialize with others interested in forecasting, prediction markets, political gambling, sports betting, or anything else relating to predicting the future. Location is TBD but you'll be notified when we've finalized a venue. Last-minute/onsite walk-in RSVPs here on this Partiful event page are welcomed! Who are we? We are prediction market traders on Manifold (and other prediction markets like PredictIt, Kalshi, and Polymarket), forecasters (e.g. on Metaculus and Good Judgment Open), sports bettors (e.g. on FanDuel, DraftKings, and other sportsbooks), consumers of forecasting (or related) content (e.g. Star Spangled Gamblers, Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin, Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten), effective altruists, rationalists, and data scientists. Forecast on Manifold how many people will attend this month: https://manifold.markets/dglid/how-many-people-will-attend-a-forec-OzPZILyc5C?play=true Forecast on Manifold how many people will attend meetups this year: https://manifold.markets/dglid/how-many-attendees-will-there-be-at?play=true This meetup is hosted by the Forecasting Meetup Network. Help us grow the forecasting community to positively influence the future by supporting us with an upvote, comment, or pledge on Manifund: https://manifund.org/projects/forecasting-meetup-network---washington-dc-pilot-4-meetups Get notified whenever a new meetup is scheduled and learn more about the Forecasting Meetup Network here: https://bit.ly/forecastingmeetupnetwork Join our Discord to connect with others in the community between monthly meetups: https://discord.com/invite/hFn3yukSwv

With the enormous increase in the power of AI (specifically LLMs) people are using them for all sorts of things, hoping to find areas where they're better, or at least cheaper than humans. FiveThirtyNine (get it?) is one such attempt, and they claim that AI can do forecasting better than humans.  Scott Alexander, of Astral Codex Ten, reviewed the service and concluded that they still have a long way to go. I have no doubt that this is the case, but one can imagine that this will not always be the case. What then? My assertion would be that at the point when AI forecasting does “work” (should that ever happen) it will make the problems of superforecasting even worse.2  I- The problems of superforecasting What are the problems of superforecasting? ...

Freddie deBoer has a post on what he calls “the temporal Copernican principle.” He argues we shouldn't expect a singularity, apocalypse, or any other crazy event in our lifetimes. Discussing celebrity transhumanist Yuval Harari, he writes: What I want to say to people like Yuval Harari is this. The modern human species is about 250,000 years old, give or take 50,000 years depending on who you ask. Let's hope that it keeps going for awhile - we'll be conservative and say 50,000 more years of human life. So let's just throw out 300,000 years as the span of human existence, even though it could easily be 500,000 or a million or more. Harari's lifespan, if he's lucky, will probably top out at about 100 years. So: what are the odds that Harari's lifespan overlaps with the most important period in human history, as he believes, given those numbers? That it overlaps with a particularly important period of human history at all? Even if we take the conservative estimate for the length of human existence of 300,000 years, that means Harari's likely lifespan is only about .33% of the entirety of human existence. Isn't assuming that this .33% is somehow particularly special a very bad assumption, just from the basis of probability? And shouldn't we be even more skeptical given that our basic psychology gives us every reason to overestimate the importance of our own time? (I think there might be a math error here - 100 years out of 300,000 is 0.033%, not 0.33% - but this isn't my main objection.) He then condemns a wide range of people, including me, for failing to understand this: Some people who routinely violate the Temporal Copernican Principle include Harari, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Sam Altman, Francis Fukuyama, Elon Musk, Clay Shirky, Tyler Cowen, Matt Yglesias, Tom Friedman, Scott Alexander, every tech company CEO, Ray Kurzweil, Robin Hanson, and many many more. I think they should ask themselves how much of their understanding of the future ultimately stems from a deep-seated need to believe that their times are important because they think they themselves are important, or want to be. I deny misunderstanding this. Freddie is wrong. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism 

GGACP celebrates the 30th anniversary of the classic comedy-drama "Ed Wood" (released September 28, 1994) with this ENCORE of an interview with the film's screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. In this episode, Scott and Larry talk about the Ed Wood-Bela Lugosi relationship, the exuberance of Milos Forman, the bizarro cinema of Rudy Ray Moore and their Eddie Murphy vehicle, “Dolemite is My Name.” Also, Jim Carrey pranks Danny DeVito, Tim Burton befriends Vincent Price, Ray Walston “replaces” Peter Sellers and Scott and Larry remember the late, great Martin Landau. PLUS: Appreciating Robert Morse! The legacy of William Goldman! Mae West seduces 007! The Marx Brothers meet the Master of Disaster! And the boys pick their favorite big-screen biopics! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1999, director Milos Forman reunited with his People Vs. Larry Flynt screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski for another biopic of an iconoclast, Man on the Moon. Rebounding from the Oscar snub for The Truman Show, Jim Carrey took on the role of Andy Kaufman and according to history, took it a bit too seriously. The film received … Continue reading "310 – Man on the Moon"

Adam creates a hypnosis session inspired by a book called Rhinoceros Success by Scott Alexander which Adam read over 25 years before. The book uses a rhino as a metaphor for focus, resilience, determination, and massive action-taking - and Adam uses these principles in this original hypnosis session.  Adam's course Hypnotic Wealth can be found here: https://www.adamcox.co.uk/hypnotic-wealth.html  Coming Soon - The Hypnotists's Secret Circle: Adam will soon be launching a new low-cost membership to access his entire hypnosis archive without the intro, outro, and explanation and an exclusive community only for members. In the meantime you can secure a free sleep download here: https://tr.ee/MCuZqKPnEg  Adam Cox is one of the world's most innovative hypnotists and is known for being the hypnotherapist of choice for Celebrities, CEO's and even Royalty. To book a free 30-minute consultation call to consider working with Adam go to: https://go.oncehub.com/AdamCox Adam's rates for hypnotherapy in pounds and US dollars are here: https://www.adamcox.co.uk/hypnotherapist.html  You can contact Adam at adam@adamcox.co.uk Further information on Adam is here: https://linktr.ee/AdamCoxOfficial  Tags: Adam Cox, the hypnotist, NLP, asmr, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, hypnotist, stress, sleep, worry, meditation, guided meditation, hypnotism, anxiety, hypnosis for abundance, hypnosis for business success, hypnosis to feel enthusiastic about business, hypnosis for financial success, wealth hypnosis, abundance hypnosis, manifestation hypnosis, rhino success, rhinoceros success by Scott Alexander, 

Jessica Kleinschmidt, Chris Townsend, Vince Cotroneo and Johnny Doskow preview the finale of the A's and Astros from the Coliseum. They were joined by Bobby Crosby, Lawrence Butler, Scott Alexander and Tommy White. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Parents, do you have a student heading off to college in the fall? Your tuition and fees are likely due! Listen in to find out more about paying that important bill. You've probably heard of Georgetown, but did you know there are other fine Jesuit colleges in the US? College Coach colleague Nicole Doyle, alumna and former admission officer at the College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts, will be talking about the values that Jesuit schools are known for and the Jesuit college experience. Last, brand new College Coach colleague Scott Alexander, former admission officer at Bates College, will be discussing colleges in and near Portland, Maine. (Be sure to catch our Portland, Oregon colleges episode from last week, July 11th, if you want to hear about both coasts!)

Is Anxiety a demon? It's a question raised, weirdly, by the most popular kids' movie in America right now--and by the entire practice of modern psycotherapy. Typically, when we try to understand mental illness, we refer to natural causes like brain chemistry or personal and family history. But are there some forms of cognitive disorder that don't originate within us--that invade us from the outside? I'm using sources both ancient and modern to tackle that question today after a listener wrote in with some provocative thoughts. Check out our sponsor, the Ancient Language Institute: https://ancientlanguage.com/youngheretics/ I maked this: Light of the Mind, Light of the World: https://a.co/d/0fUMLN9f Gateway to the Epicureans: https://a.co/d/03RaCAP5 Subscribe to be in the mailbag: https://rejoiceevermore.substack.com Subscribe to my joint substack with Andrew Klavan (no relation): https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com Scott Alexander's review of Robert Falconer: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-others-within-us?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web