Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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Open Letter To The NIH Sep 02, 2025

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You can sign the letter here.

The Trump administration has been retaliating against its critics, and people and groups with business before the administration have started laundering criticism through other sources with less need for goodwill. So I have been asked to share an open letter, which needs signatures from scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals. The authors tell me (THIS IS NOT THE CONTENTS OF THE LETTER, IT'S THEIR EXPLANATION, TO ME, OF WHAT THE LETTER IS FOR):

The NIH has spent at least $5 billion less of that money than Congress has appropriated to them, which is bad because medical research is good and we want more of it.

In May, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told a room full of people that he would spend all the money by the end of the fiscal year. That is good news, because any money not spent by that point will disappear. The bad news is the fiscal year ends on September 30th and according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, "the true shortfall far exceeds $5 billion."

Our open letter requests that Dr. Bhattacharya do what he said he would and spend all the money by September 30th.

We as the originators of the letter do not want to be named publicly because we are concerned about being the focal point for blame and retaliation. We would rather be members of a large crowd of signatories than be singled out as individuals to make an example of. Based on our understanding of current administration norms, we do not expect retaliation against private individuals who sign this letter.

We are looking for signatures from scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals. So if that is you, please sign here. If you want to help support the letter more broadly, email nihfundingletter@gmail.com. Our stretch goal is to have a thousand people sign the letter within the next two weeks.

To hammer home (since many people failed to understand it) that this is not the contents of the letter, I am including the actual contents below:

We, the undersigned scientists, doctors, and public health stakeholders, commend your commitment to spend all funds allocated to the NIH, as reported in The Washington Post. At the same time, we are concerned by reports that U.S. institutions received nearly $5 billion less in NIH awards over the past year. With less than one month to the end of the fiscal year, we submit this urgent request to ensure that your commitment is upheld. If you anticipate that all appropriated funds cannot be spent in time, we request a public disclosure of the barriers preventing the achievement of this crucial responsibility.

We present this request in the spirit of the broad, bipartisan consensus in favor of spending appropriated NIH funds. In their July letter to the Office of Management and Budget, fourteen Republican senators, led by Senators Collins, Britt, and McConnell, forcefully argued that suspension of NIH funds "could threaten Americans' ability to access better treatments and limit our nation's leadership in biomedical science." The case for investment in medical research transcends political divides as it serves our collective national interest.

The return on investment from research is compelling. Synthesizing the empirical literature, economist Matt Clancy estimates that each public and private R&D dollar yields roughly $5.50 in GDP—and about $11 when broader benefits are counted. Every dollar of NIH funding not deployed represents lost opportunities for breakthrough treatments, missed chances to train the next generation of scientists, and diminished returns on America's innovation ecosystem.

Spending these funds is also a competitiveness imperative as China attempts to transform itself from a low-end manufacturer to a high-tech research and innovation juggernaut. In 2024, the Chinese government increased its spending on science and technology by 10%, and the nation's total expenditure on research and development increased by 50% in nominal terms between 2020 and 2024. As China's number of clinical trials and new drug candidates begin to outpace the U.S., America cannot afford to allow biomedical research funding to go unspent.

We respectfully ask that you ensure that NIH will obligate all FY25 funds by September 30, 2025, and, if that is not possible, that you address the scientific community to explain why and what must be done to ensure all appropriated funds are spent in FY26. We stand ready to support your efforts to preserve this vital national investment.

https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-open-letter-to-the-nih

In Search Of AI Psychosis Sep 02, 2025

Show notes

AI psychosis (NYT, PsychologyToday) is an apparent phenomenon where people go crazy after talking to chatbots too much. There are some high-profile anecdotes, but still many unanswered questions. For example, how common is it really? Are the chatbots really driving people crazy, or just catching the attention of people who were crazy already? Isn't psychosis supposed to be a biological disease? Wouldn't that make chatbot-induced psychosis the same kind of category error as chatbot-induced diabetes?

I don't have all the answers, so think of this post as an exploration of possible analogies and precedents rather than a strongly-held thesis. Also, I might have one answer - I think the yearly incidence of AI psychosis is somewhere around 1 in 10,000 (for a loose definition) to 1 in 100,000 (for a strict definition). I'll talk about how I got those numbers at the end. But first:

I. Lenin Was A Mushroom

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-search-of-ai-psychosis

Your Review: Ollantay Aug 24, 2025

Show notes

Finalist #9 in the Review Contest

[This is one of the finalists in the 2025 review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]

Ollantay is a three-act play written in Quechua, an indigenous language of the South American Andes. It was first performed in Peru around 1775. Since the mid-1800s it's been performed more often, and nowadays it's pretty easy to find some company in Peru doing it. If nothing else, it's popular in Peruvian high schools as a way to get students to connect with Quechua history. It's not a particularly long play; a full performance of Ollantay takes around an hour.1

Also, nobody knows where Ollantay was written, when it was written, or who wrote it. And its first documented performance led directly to upwards of a hundred thousand deaths.

Macbeth has killed at most fifty people,2 and yet it routinely tops listicles of "deadliest plays". I'm here to propose that Ollantay take its place.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-ollantay

My Responses To Three Concerns From The Embryo Selection Post Aug 24, 2025

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[original post here]

#1: Isn't it possible that embryos are alive, or have personhood, or are moral patients? Most IVF involves getting many embryos, then throwing out the ones that the couple doesn't need to implant. If destroying embryos were wrong, then IVF would be unethical - and embryo selection, which might encourage more people to do IVF, or to maximize the number of embryos they get from IVF, would be extra unethical.

I think a default position would be that if you believe humans are more valuable than cows, and cows more valuable than bugs - presumably because humans are more conscious/intelligent/complex/thoughtful/have more hopes and dreams/experience more emotions - then in that case embryos, which have less of a brain and nervous system even than bugs, should be less valuable still.

One reason to abandon this default position would be if you believe in souls or some other nonphysical basis for personhood. Then maybe the soul would enter the embryo at conception. I think even here, it's hard to figure out exactly what you're saying - the soul clearly isn't doing very much, in the sense of experiencing things, while it's in the embryo. But it seems like God is probably pretty attached to souls, and maybe you don't want to mess with them while He's watching. In any case, all I can say is that this isn't my metaphysics.

But most people in the comments took a different tactic, arguing that we should give embryos special status (compared to cows and bugs) because they had the potential to grow into a person.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-responses-to-three-concerns-from

Your Review: Dating Men In The Bay Area Aug 24, 2025

Show notes

Finalist #8 in the Review Contest

I. The Men Are Not Alright

Sometimes I'm convinced there's a note taped to my back that says, "PLEASE SPILL YOUR SOUL UPON THIS WOMAN." I am not a therapist, nor in any way certified to deal with emotional distress, yet my presence seems to cause people to regurgitate their traumas.

This quirk of mine becomes especially obvious when dating. Many of my dates turn into pseudo-therapy sessions, with men sharing emotional traumas they've kept bottled up for years. One moment I'm learning about his cat named Daisy, and then half a latte later, I'm hearing a detailed account of his third suicide attempt, complete with a critique of the food in the psychiatric ward.

This repeated pattern in my dating life has taught me three things:

I am terrible at small talk.
Most men are not accustomed to genuine questions about their well-being, and will often respond with a desperate upwelling of emotion.
The men are not alright.

This is a review of dating men in the Bay Area. But more than that, it's an attempt to explain those unofficial therapy sessions to people who never get to hear them. It's a review of the various forms of neglect and abuse society inflicts upon men, and the inevitable consequences to their happiness and romantic partnerships.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-dating-men-in-the-bay

In Defense Of The Amyloid Hypothesis Aug 20, 2025

Show notes

A guest post by David Schneider-Joseph

The "amyloid hypothesis" says that Alzheimer's is caused by accumulation of the peptide amyloid-β. It's the leading model in academia, but a favorite target for science journalists, contrarian bloggers, and neuroscience public intellectuals, who point out problems like:

Some of the research establishing amyloid's role turned out to be fraudulent.
The level of amyloid in the brain doesn't correlate very well with the level of cognitive impairment across Alzheimer's patients.
Several strains of mice that were genetically programmed to have extra amyloid did eventually develop cognitive impairments. But it took much higher amyloid levels than humans have, and on further investigation the impairments didn't really look like Alzheimer's.
Some infectious agents, like the gingivitis bacterium and the herpesviruses, seem to play a role in at least some Alzheimer's cases.
. . . and amyloid is one of the body's responses to injury or infection, so it might be a harmless byproduct of these infections or whatever else the real disease is.
Anti-amyloid drugs (like Aduhelm) don't reverse the disease, and only slow progression a relatively small amount.

Opponents call the amyloid hypothesis zombie science, propped up only by pharmaceutical companies hoping to sell off a few more anti-amyloid me-too drugs before it collapses. Meanwhile, mainstream scientists . . . continue to believe it without really offering any public defense. Scott was so surprised by the size of the gap between official and unofficial opinion that he asked if someone from the orthodox camp would speak out in its favor.

I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer's isn't my field, but I got very interested in it, spent six months studying the literature, and came away believing the amyloid hypothesis was basically completely solid. I thought I'd share that understanding with current skeptics.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-hypothesis

Highlights From The Comments On Liberalism And Communities Aug 15, 2025

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[Original post: Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP?]

1: Comments About The Theory 2: Comments About Specific Communities 3: Other Comments

Comments About The Theory

Darwin writes:

I think you may (*may*, I'm not sure) be vastly underestimating how many people are in some form of nontraditional tight-knit community.

Notice that many of the communities you list are things you've directly personally encountered through your online interests or social circle. Most people have never heard of libertarian homesteaders or rationalist dating sites, perhaps you have also never heard of the things most other people belong to.

For my part, I have been part of a foam combat ('boffer') organization since college. You may want to say 'that's not a community, that's just a hobby', but the people in this sport form a strong community with tight bonds outside the game itself. Not only do I go to practices twice a week, I have 2 D&D games and 1 board game night every week with mostly members of the community, members of the community are my friends that I go out to movies and dinners with, play video games with voice chat on Discord with, talk to online in Discord servers and web forums and group chats, go to parties with and gossip about with other community members. Aside from attending over a dozen weddings of community members (mostly to other community members), I've served as best man for 2 members and wedding officiant for 2 other members. The sport itself has houses, guilds, and fighting units, all with their own ethos, credos, goals, activities, and hierarchies; it has knighthoods and squireships, it has awards for arts and crafts and community service. The sport has regular camping events that end up looking like temporary compounds of hundreds to thousand+ members, lasting from a weekend to a week. We may not have a singular God or Invisible Hand we all worship, but we have strong community norms towards things like inclusion, creating positive experiences, some modernized gender-neutral version of chivalry, creating safe spaces, etc.

If you didn't know me very very well, you might know that 'oh yeah, he does some kind of sword fighting thing on the weekends I think?', and not know there's a large and strong community there.

I wonder how many other things are like this - I think 'oh yeah, they play softball on the weekends, oh yeah, they belong to a knitting circle, oh yeah, they go to a lot of concerts, oh yeah, they volunteer at some kind of community center', and have no idea that there's a strong close-knit community surrounding those things that remains largely invisible to outsiders.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-liberalism

Your Review: My Father's Instant Mashed Potatoes Aug 15, 2025

Show notes

My dad only actually enjoys about ten foods, nine of them beige. His bread? White. His pizza? Cheese. His meat? Turkey breast. And his side dish? Mashed potatoes.

As a child I hated mashed potatoes, despite his evangelization of them. I too was a picky eater growing up, but I would occasionally attempt to see what he saw in his beloved spuds. Whenever I tried a bite, the texture disgusted me: a gritty gruel of salty flakes coated with the oleic pall of margarine. The flavor reminded me of stale Pringles. I checked back once every couple years, but was repulsed by them every time.

I lobbied my parents for pasta or frozen tater tots or any other side I actually liked. Family dinners were often dichotomous, the same protein supplemented by two different carbs. "You are not my son," my father would joke as he continued to put away his potato slop. "Maybe you're not my father," I'd shoot back when he shunned the rest of the family's rice pilaf. Our starch preferences seemed irreconcilable.

As I entered my teen years, my palate expanded. After I'd tried and enjoyed brussels sprouts and sushi and escargot, my hatred of one of the most basic and inoffensive of all foods seemed silly. One day at a nice restaurant, I decided to give mashed potatoes one more try.

Upon taking my first bite, I realized three things:

1) Mashed potatoes are good.

2) Whatever my dad had been eating at home was not mashed potatoes.

3) My world is built on lies.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-my-fathers-instant-mashed

Should Strong Gods Bet On GDP? Aug 15, 2025

Show notes

Slightly contra Fukuyama on liberal communities

Francis Fukuyama is on Substack; last month he wrote Liberalism Needs Community. As always, read the whole thing and don't trust my summary, but the key point is:

R. R. Reno, editor of the magazine First Things, the liberal project of the past three generations has sought to weaken the "strong Gods" of populism, nationalism, and religion that were held to be the drivers of the bloody conflicts of the early 20th century. Those gods are now returning, and are present in the politics of both the progressive left and far right—particularly the right, which is characterized today by demands for strong national identities or religious foundations for national communities.

However, there is a cogent liberal response to the charge that liberalism undermines community. The problem is that, just as in the 1930s, that response has not been adequately articulated by the defenders of liberalism. Liberalism is not intrinsically opposed to community; indeed, there is a version of liberalism that encourages the flourishing of strong community and human virtue. That community emerges through the development of a strong and well-organized civil society, where individuals freely choose to bond with other like-minded individuals to seek common ends. People are free to follow "strong Gods"; the only caveat is that there is no single strong god that binds the entire society together.

In other words - yes, part of the good life is participation in a tight-knit community with strong values. Liberalism's shared values are comparatively weak, and its knitting comparatively loose. But that's no argument against the liberal project. Its goal isn't to become this kind of community itself, but to be the platform where communities like this can grow up. So in a liberal democracy, Christians can have their church, Jews their synagogue, Communists their commune, and so on. Everyone gets the tight-knit community they want - which beats illiberalism, where (at most) one group gets the community they want and everyone else gets persecuted.

On a theoretical level, this is a great answer. On a practical level - is it really working? Are we really a nation dotted with tight-knit communities of strong values? The average person has a church they don't attend and a political philosophy that mainly cashes out in Twitter dunks. Otherwise they just consume whatever slop the current year's version of capitalism chooses to throw at them.

It's worth surveying the exceptions that prove the rule:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/should-strong-gods-bet-on-gdp

Your Review: Joan of Arc Aug 07, 2025

Show notes

Finalist #6 in the Review Contest

When the prefect of Alexandria's daughter converted to Christianity, nothing in particular happened - it wasn't as though the laws outlawing the cult would be enforced against her. She was smart, she was pretty (beautiful, even) and she had connections. So long as she kept quiet, Catherine could have a comfortable life.

She didn't keep quiet.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-joan-of-arc

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