Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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Everything-Except-Book Review Contest 2025 Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

I enjoy the yearly book review contest, but it feels like last year's contest is barely done, and I want to give you a break so you can read more books before we start over. So this year, let's do something different. Submit an ACX-length post reviewing something, anything, except a book.

You can review a movie, song, or video game. You can review a product, restaurant, or tourist attraction. But don't let the usual categories limit you. Review comic books or blog posts. Review political parties - no, whole societies! Review animals or trees! Review an oddly-shaped pebble, or a passing cloud! Review abstract concepts! Mathematical proofs! Review love, death, or God Himself!

(please don't review human races, I don't need any more NYT articles)

Otherwise, the usual rules apply. There's no official word count requirement, but previous finalists and winners were often between 2,000 and 10,000 words. There's no official recommended style, but check the style of last year's finalists and winners or my ACX book reviews (1, 2, 3) if you need inspiration. Please limit yourself to one entry per person or team.

Then send me your review through this Google Form. The form will ask for your name, email, the thing you're reviewing, and a link to a Google Doc. The Google Doc should have your review exactly as you want me to post it if you're a finalist. DON'T INCLUDE YOUR NAME OR ANY HINT ABOUT YOUR IDENTITY IN THE GOOGLE DOC ITSELF, ONLY IN THE FORM. I want to make this contest as blinded as possible, so I'm going to hide that column in the form immediately and try to judge your docs on their merit.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/everything-except-book-review-contest

Links For February 2025 Mar 11, 2025

Show notes

[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.]

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-february-2025

Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

Conflict theory is the belief that political disagreements come from material conflict. So for example, if rich people support capitalism, and poor people support socialism, this isn't because one side doesn't understand economics. It's because rich people correctly believe capitalism is good for the rich, and poor people correctly believe socialism is good for the poor. Or if white people are racist, it's not because they have some kind of mistaken stereotypes that need to be corrected - it's because they correctly believe racism is good for white people.

Some people comment on my more political posts claiming that they're useless. You can't (they say) produce change by teaching people Economics 101 or the equivalent. Conflict theorists understand that nobody ever disagreed about Economics 101. Instead you should try to organize and galvanize your side, so they can win the conflict.

I think simple versions of conflict theory are clearly wrong. This doesn't mean that simple versions of mistake theory (the idea that people disagree because of reasoning errors, like not understanding Economics 101) are automatically right. But it gives some leeway for thinking harder about how reasoning errors and other kinds of error interact.

https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-why-i-am-not-a-conflict-theorist

Highlights From The Comments On Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

[Original thread here: Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Arguments For God's Existence.]

1: Comments On Specific Technical Points 2: Comments From Bentham's Bulldog's Response 3: Comments On Philosophical Points, And Getting In Fights

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

Lives Of The Rationalist Saints Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

St. Felix publicly declared that he believed with 79% probability that COVID had a natural origin. He was brought before the Emperor, who threatened him with execution unless he updated to 100%. When St. Felix refused, the Emperor was impressed with his integrity, and said he would release him if he merely updated to 90%. St. Felix refused again, and the Emperor, fearing revolt, promised to release him if he merely rounded up one percentage point to 80%. St. Felix cited Tetlock's research showing that the last digit contained useful information, refused a third time, and was crucified.

St. Clare was so upset about believing false things during her dreams that she took modafinil every night rather than sleep. She completed several impressive programming projects before passing away of sleep deprivation after three weeks; she was declared a martyr by Pope Raymond II.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/lives-of-the-rationalist-saints

Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence Mar 06, 2025

Show notes

It feels like 2010 again - the bloggers are debating the proofs for the existence of God. I found these much less interesting after learning about Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis, and this doesn't seem to have reached the Substack debate yet, so I'll put it out there.

Tegmark's hypothesis says: all possible mathematical objects exist.

Consider a mathematical object like a cellular automaton - a set of simple rules that creates complex behavior. The most famous is Conway's Game of Life; the second most famous is the universe. After all, the universe is a starting condition (the Big Bang) and a set of simple rules determining how the starting condition evolves over time (the laws of physics).

Some mathematical objects contain conscious observers. Conway's Life might be like this: it's Turing complete, so if a computer can be conscious then you can get consciousness in Life. If you built a supercomputer and had it run the version of Life with the conscious being, then you would be "simulating" the being, and bringing it into existence. There would be something it was like to be that being; it would have thoughts and experiences and so on.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/tegmarks-mathematical-universe-defeats

Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

From the Commerce Department:

U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a database identifying over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Biden-Harris administration. This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.

I saw many scientists complain that the projects from their universities that made Cruz's list were unrelated to wokeness. This seemed like a surprising failure mode, so I decided to investigate. The Commerce Department provided a link to their database, so I downloaded it, chose a random 100 grants, read the abstracts, and rated them either woke, not woke, or borderline.

Of the hundred:

40% were woke
20% were borderline
40% weren't woke

This is obviously in some sense a subjective determination, but most cases weren't close - I think any good-faith examination would turn up similar numbers.

https://readscottalexander.com/posts/acx-only-about-40-of-the-cruz-woke-science

Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

In the past day, Zvi has written about deliberative alignment, and OpenAI has updated their spec. This article was written before either of these and doesn't account for them, sorry.

OpenAI has bad luck with its alignment teams. The first team quit en masse to found Anthropic, now a major competitor. The second team quit en masse to protest the company reneging on safety commitments. The third died in a tragic plane crash. The fourth got washed away in a flood. The fifth through eighth were all slain by various types of wild beast.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/deliberative-alignment-and-the-spec

1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals Feb 17, 2025

Show notes

As RFK Jr. fights to be confirmed in Congress, the rest of Trump's health team is already taking shape.

1DaySooner is an ACX grantee organization that advocates for innovative health policies. They've helped me write a list of who some of these people are, and some of the policies they could consider.

For practical reasons, we focus on upside only, so consider these the Venn-diagram-union of the ideas we're most excited about, and the ones we think they might be most excited about - the new health policy we might get get in our ~90th percentile best outcome.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/1daysooners-trump-ii-health-policy

Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative Feb 10, 2025

Show notes

PEPFAR - a Bush initiative to send cheap AIDS drugs to Africa - has saved millions of lives and is among the most successful foreign aid programs ever. A Trump decision briefly put it "on pause", although this seems to have been walked back; its current status is unclear but hopeful.

In the debate around this question, many people asked - is it really fair to spend $6 billion a year to help foreigners when so many Americans are suffering? Shouldn't we value American lives more than foreign ones? Can't we spend that money on some program that helps people closer to home?

This is a fun thing to argue about - which, as usual, means it's a purely philosophical question unrelated to the real issue.

If you cancelled PEPFAR - the single best foreign aid program, which saves millions of foreign lives - the money wouldn't automatically redirect itself to the single best domestic aid program which saves millions of American lives.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/money-saved-by-canceling-programs

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