Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Latest Episodes:

If It's Worth Your Time To Lie, It's Worth My Time To Correct It Jun 14, 2025

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People don't like nitpickers. "He literally did the WELL AKTUALLY!" If you say Joe Criminal committed ten murders and five rapes, and I object that it was actually only six murders and two rapes, then why am I "defending" Joe Criminal?

Because if it's worth your time to lie, it's worth my time to correct it.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/if-its-worth-your-time-to-lie-its

P-Zombies Would Report Qualia Jun 14, 2025

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There's a long-running philosophical argument about the conceivability of otherwise-normal people who are not conscious, aka "philosophical zombies". This has spawned a shorter-running (only fifteen years!) rationalist sub-argument on the topic. The last time I checked its status was this post, which says:

1. Both Yudkowsky and Chalmers agree that humans possess "qualia".

2. Chalmers argues that a superintelligent being which somewhow knew the positions of all particles in a large region of the Universe would need to be told as an additional fact that any humans (or other minds possessing qualia) in this region of space possess qualia – it could not deduce this from mere perfect physical knowledge of their constituent particles. Therefore, qualia are in some sense extra-physical.

3. Yudkowsky argues that such a being would notice that humans discuss at length the fact that they possess qualia, and their internal narratives also represent this fact. It is extraordinarily improbable that beings would behave in this manner if they did not actually possess qualia. Therefore an omniscient being would conclude that it is extremely likely that humans possess qualia. Therefore, qualia are not extra-physical.

I want to re-open this (sorry!) by disagreeing with the bolded sentence. I think beings would talk about qualia - the "mysterious redness of red" and all that - even if we start by assuming they don't have it. I realize this is a surprising claim, but that's why it's interesting enough to re-open the argument over1.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/p-zombies-would-report-qualia

Choose Nonbook Review Finalists 2025 Jun 14, 2025

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It's time to narrow the 141 entries in the Non-Book Review Contest to about a dozen finalists. I can't read 141 reviews alone, so I need your help. Please pick as many as you have time for, read them, and rate them using this form.

Don't read them in order! If you read them in order, I'll have 1,000 votes on the first review, 500 on the second, and so on to none in the second half. Either pick a random review (thanks to Taymon for making a random-review-chooser script here) or scroll through the titles until you find one that catches your interest - you can see individual entries here (thanks to a reader for collating them):

Again, the rating form is here.

Thanks! You have until June 20, when I'll count the votes and announce the finalists.

https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-choose-nonbook-review-finalists-2025

Bayes For Everyone Jun 14, 2025

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A guest post by Brandon Hendrickson

[Editor's note: I accept guest posts from certain people, especially past Book Review Contest winners. Brandon Hendrickson, whose review of The Educated Mind won the 2023 contest, has taken me up on this and submitted this essay. He writes at The Lost Tools of Learning and will be at LessOnline this weekend, where he and Jack Despain Zhou aka TracingWoodgrains will be doing a live conversation about education.]

I began my book review of a couple years back with a rather simple question:

Could a new kind of school make the world rational?

What followed, however, was a sprawling distillation of one scholar's answer that I believe still qualifies as "the longest thing anyone has submitted for an ACX contest". Since then I've been diving into particulars, exploring how we use the insights I learned while writing it to start re-enchanting all the academic subjects from kindergarten to high school. But in the fun of all that, I fear I've lost touch with that original question. How, even in theory, could a method of education help all students become rational?

It probably won't surprise you that I think part of the answer is Bayes' theorem. But the equation is famously prickly and off-putting:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/bayes-for-everyone

Sorry, I Still Think MR Is Wrong About USAID Jun 14, 2025

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Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution continues to disagree with my Contra MR On Charity Regrants. Going through his response piece by piece, slightly out of order:

Scott takes me to be endorsing Rubio's claim that the third-party NGOs simply pocket the money. In reality my fact check with o3 found (correctly) that the money was "channelled through" the NGOs, not pocketed. Scott lumps my claim together with Rubio's as if we were saying the same thing. My very next words ("I do understand that not all third party allocations are wasteful…") show a clear understanding that the money is channeled, not pocketed, and my earlier and longer post on US AID makes that clearer yet at greater length. Scott is simply misrepresenting me here.

The full post is in the image below:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/sorry-i-still-think-mr-is-wrong-about

Moments Of Awakening Jun 05, 2025

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Consciousness is the great mystery. In search of answers, scientists have plumbed every edge case they can think of - sleep, comas, lucid dreams, LSD trips, meditative ecstasies, seizures, neurosurgeries, that one pastor in 18th century England who claimed a carriage accident turned him into a p-zombie. Still, new stuff occasionally turns up.

I assume this tweet is a troll (source: the guy has a frog avatar)1:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moments-of-awakening

Contra MR On Charity Regrants Jun 05, 2025

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I often disagree with Marginal Revolution, but their post today made me a new level of angry:

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-mr-on-charity-regrants

The Evidence That A Million Americans Died Of COVID Jun 05, 2025

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Many commenters responded to yesterday's post by challenging the claim that 1.2 million Americans died of COVID...

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-evidence-that-a-million-americans

The Other COVID Reckoning Jun 05, 2025

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Five years later, we can't stop talking about COVID. Remember lockdowns? The conflicting guidelines about masks - don't wear them! Wear them! Maybe wear them! School closures, remote learning, learning loss, something about teachers' unions. That one Vox article on how worrying about COVID was anti-Chinese racism. The time Trump sort of half-suggested injecting disinfectants. Hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, fluvoxamine, Paxlovid. Those jerks who tried to pressure you into getting vaccines, or those other jerks who wouldn't get vaccines even though it put everyone else at risk. Anthony Fauci, Pierre Kory, Great Barrington, Tomas Pueyo, Alina Chan. Five years later, you can open up any news site and find continuing debate about all of these things.

The only thing about COVID nobody talks about anymore is the 1.2 million deaths.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-other-covid-reckoning

Book Review: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids Jun 03, 2025

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Bryan Caplan's Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids is like the Bible. You already know what it says. You've already decided whether you believe or not. Do you really have to read it all the way through?

But when you're going through a rough patch in your life, sometimes it helps to pick up a Bible and look for pearls of forgotten wisdom. That's where I am now. Having twins is a lot of work. My wife does most of it. My nanny does most of what's left. Even so, the remaining few hours a day leave me exhausted. I decided to read the canonical book on how having kids is easier and more fun than you think, to see if maybe I was overdoing something.

After many trials, tribulations, false starts, grabs, shrieks, and attacks of opportunity . . .

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-selfish-reasons-to-have