Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Latest Episodes:

In Search Of /r/petfree Jun 03, 2025

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Ask Redditors what's the worst subreddit, and a few names always come up. /r/atheism and /r/childfree are unpopular, but if I read them with an open mind, I always end up sympathetic - neither lifestyle is persecuted in my particular corner of society, but the Redditors there have usually been through some crazy stuff, and I don't begrudge them a place to vent. The one that really floors me is /r/petfree.

The denizens of /r/petfree don't like pets. Their particular complaints vary, but most common are:

Some stores either allow pets or don't enforce bans on them, and then there are pets go in those stores, and they are dirty and annoying.
Some parks either allow off-leash pets or don't enforce bans on them, and then there are off-leash pets in those parks, and they are dirty and annoying.
Sometimes pets attack people.
Sometimes inconsiderate people get pets they can't take care of and offload some of the burden onto you.
Sometimes people are cringe about their pets, in an "AWWWWW MY PRECIOUS WITTLE FUR BABY" way.
Sometimes people barge into spaces that are about something else and talk about their pets instead.

These are all valid complaints. But the people on /r/petfree go a little far:

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

Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr Jun 03, 2025

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Thanks to everyone who commented on the original post. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-ai

Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius May 23, 2025

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Some of the more unhinged writing on superintelligence pictures AI doing things that seem like magic. Crossing air gaps to escape its data center. Building nanomachines from simple components. Plowing through physical bottlenecks to revolutionize the economy in months.

More sober thinkers point out that these things might be physically impossible. You can't do physically impossible things, even if you're very smart.

No, say the speculators, you don't understand. Everything is physically impossible when you're 800 IQ points too dumb to figure it out. A chimp might feel secure that humans couldn't reach him if he climbed a tree; he could never predict arrows, ladders, chainsaws, or helicopters. What superintelligent strategies lie as far outside our solution set as "use a helicopter" is outside a chimp's?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/testing-ais-geoguessr-genius

Moldbug Sold Out May 23, 2025

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Cathy Young's new hit piece on Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) doesn't mince words. Titled The Blogger Who Hates America, it describes him as an "inept", "not exactly coherent" "trollish, ill-informed pseudo-intellectual" notable for his "woefully superficial knowledge and utter ignorance".

Yarvin's fans counter that if you look deeper, he has good responses to Young's objections:

Both sides are right. The synthesis is that Moldbug sold out.

In the late 2000s, Moldbug wrote some genuinely interesting speculations on novel sci-fi variants of autocracy. Admitting that the dictatorships of the 20th century were horrifying, he proposed creative ways to patch their vulnerabilities by combining 18th century monarchy with 22nd century cyberpunk to create something better than either. These ideas might not have been realistic. But they were cool, edgy, and had a certain intellectual appeal.

Then in the late 2010s, he caught his first whiff of actual power and dropped it all like a hot potato. The MAGA movement was exactly what 2000s Moldbug feared most - a cancerous outgrowth of democracy riding the same wave of populist anger as the 20th century dictatorships he loathed. But in the hope of winning a temporary political victory, he let them wear him as a skinsuit - giving their normal, boring autocratic tendencies the mystique of the cool, edgy, all-vulnerabilities-patched autocracy he foretold in his manifestos.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/moldbug-sold-out

The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs May 23, 2025

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President Trump's approval rating has fallen to near-historic lows. With economic disruption from the tariffs likely to hit next month, his numbers will probably get even worse; this administration could reach unprecedented levels of unpopularity. If I were a far-right populist, I would be thinking hard about a strategy to prevent the blowback from crippling the movement.

Such a strategy is easy to come by. Anger over DOGE and deportations has a natural floor. If Trump's base starts abandoning him, it will be because of the tariffs. But tariffs aren't a load-bearing part of the MAGA platform. Other right-populist leaders like Orban, Bukele, and Modi show no interest in them. They seem an idiosyncratic obsession of Trump's, a cost that the rest of the movement pays to keep him around.

So, (our hypothetical populist strategist might start thinking after Trump's approval hits the ocean trenches and starts drilling) - whatever. MAGA minus Trump's personal idiosyncrasies can remain a viable platform. You don't even have to exert any effort to make it happen. Trump will retire in 2028 and pass the torch to Vance. And although Vance supports tariffs now, that's only because he's a spineless toady. After Trump leaves the picture, Vance will gain thirty IQ points, make an eloquent speech about how tariffs were the right tool for the mid-2020s but no longer, and the problem will solve itself. Right?

Don't let them get away with this. Although it's true that tariffs owe as much to Trump's idiosyncrasies as to the inexorable logic of right-wing populism, the ability of a President to hold the nation hostage to his own idiosyncrasies is itself a consequence of populist ideology.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-populist-right-must-own-tariffs

AI Futures: Blogging And AMA May 23, 2025

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AI Futures Project is the group behind AI 2027. I've been helping them with their blog. Posts written or co-written by me include:

Beyond The Last Horizon - what's behind that METR result showing that AI time horizons double every seven months? And is it really every seven months? Might it be faster?
AI 2027: Media, Reactions, Criticism - a look at some of the response to AI 2027, with links to some of the best objections and the team's responses.
Why America Wins - why we predict that America will stay ahead of China on AI in the near future, and what could change this.

I will probably be shifting most of my AI blogging there for a while to take advantage of access to the team's expertise. There's also a post on transparency by Daniel Kokotajlo, and we hope to eventually host writing by other team members as well.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/ai-futures-blogging-and-ama

Links For April 2025 May 22, 2025

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[I haven't independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can't guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]

ttps://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-april-2025

Highlights From The Comments On POSIWID May 22, 2025

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(original post: Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does)

…

Thanks to everyone who commented on this controversial post.

Many people argued that the phrase had some valuable insight, but disagreed on what it was. The most popular meaning was something like "if a system consistently fails at its stated purpose, but people don't change it, consider that the stated purpose is less important than some actual, hidden purpose, at which it is succeeding".

I agree you should consider this, but I still object to the original phrase, for several reasons.

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

Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does Apr 14, 2025

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(see Wikipedia: The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does)

Consider the following claims

The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure two-thirds of cancer patients.
The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to get stuck in a years-long stalemate with Russia.
The purpose of the British government is to propose a controversial new sentencing policy, stand firm in the face of protests for a while, then cave in after slightly larger protests and agree not to pass the policy after all.
The purpose of the New York bus system is to emit four billion tons of carbon dioxide.

These are obviously false.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpose-of

My Takeaways From AI 2027 Apr 14, 2025

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Here's a list of things I updated on after working on the scenario.

Some of these are discussed in more detail in the supplements, including the compute forecast, timelines forecast, takeoff forecast, AI goals forecast, and security forecast. I'm highlighting these because it seems like a lot of people missed their existence, and they're what transforms the scenario from cool story to research-backed debate contribution.

These are my opinions only, and not necessarily endorsed by the rest of the team.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-takeaways-from-ai-2027