Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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Your Book Review: Don Juan Jul 27, 2024

Show notes

Finalist #3 in the Book Review Contest

[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book 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]

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-don-juan

Prediction Markets Suggest Replacing Biden Jul 27, 2024

Show notes

The last week hasn't been great for the Democratic Party. First Biden bombed the debate. But the subsequent decision about whether/how to replace Biden has also been embarrassing. Biden has refused to step aside gracefully, and party elites don't seem to have any contingency plan. Worse, they don't even seem united on the need to figure anything out, with many deflecting the conversation to irrelevant points like "Trump is also bad" or pretending that nothing is really wrong.

Some of the party's problems are hard and have no shortcuts. But the big one - figuring out whether replacing Biden would even help the Democrats' electoral chances - is a good match for prediction markets. Set up markets to find the probability of Democrats winning they nominate Biden, vs. the probability of Democrats winning if they replace him with someone else.

(see my Prediction Market FAQ for why I think they are good for cases like these)

Before we go into specifics, the summary result: Replacing Biden with Harris is neutral to slightly positive; replacing Biden with Newsom or a generic Democrat increases their odds of winning by 10 - 15 percentage points. There are some potential technical objections to this claim, but they mostly suggest reasons why the markets might overestimate Biden's chances rather than underestimate them.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/prediction-markets-suggest-replacing

Your Book Review: Dominion Jul 10, 2024

Show notes

Matthew Scully, author of Dominion, is an unlikely animal welfare advocate. He's a conservative Christian who worked as a speechwriter for George W. Bush. That's like finding out that Greta Thunberg's Chief of Staff spent their spare time writing a 400-page, densely researched book called "Guns Are Good, Actually."

Scully's unusual background could be why it took me years of reading everything on animal welfare I could get my hands on before I stumbled on his 2002 manifesto. Let this be a warning to other authors — write just one little State of the Union address that exalts the War on Terror and your books might not get a lot of reach in more liberal, EA-adjacent circles.

Scully is like a right-wing, vegetarian, Christian, David Foster Wallace. If you read DFW's Consider the Lobster and thought, "I wish someone would write a full length book with this vibe, where a very talented and surprisingly funny writer excoriates problematic industries," Dominion is the book for you.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-dominion-by-matthew

My 2024 Presidential Debate Jun 29, 2024

Show notes

Alexander: Hello and welcome to the first Presidential debate of 2024. Based on the remarkable popularity of the previous debates I moderated (2016, 2020, 2023), I've been asked to come here again and help the American people learn more about the our two candidates - President Joseph Biden, and former president Donald J. Trump. This debate will be broadcast live to select viewers, and I'll also post a transcript on my blog.

Let's start with a question for President Biden. Mr. President, the biggest political story of the past four years was Dobbs. v. Jackson Women's Health, which overturned Roe v. Wade and gave final decision-making power on abortion back to the states. How would a second Biden administration treat this issue? Do you think states should be setting policy on abortion?

Biden: I'm not even sure states exist.

Alexander: You're . . . not sure states exist?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/my-2024-presidential-debate

Clarification On "Fake Tradition Is Traditional" Jun 29, 2024

Show notes

I think I got the original post slightly off.

I was critiquing Sam Kriss' claim that the best traditions come from "just doing stuff", without trying to tie things back to anything in the past.

The counterexample I was thinking of was all the 2010s New Atheist attempts to reinvent "church, but secular". These were well-intentioned. Christians get lots of benefits from going to church, like a good community. These benefits don't seem obviously dependent on the religious nature. So instead of tying your weekly meeting back to what Jesus and St. Peter and so on said two thousand years ago, why not "just do stuff" and have a secular weekly meeting?

Most of these attempts fell apart. One of them, the Sunday Assembly, clings to existence but doesn't seem too successful. People with ancient traditions 1, people who just do stuff 0.

But after thinking about it more, maybe this isn't what Sam means.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/clarification-on-fake-tradition-is

Your Book Review: Autobiography Of Yukichi Fukuzawa Jun 29, 2024

Show notes

I had been living in Japan for a year before I got the idea to look up whose portraits were on the banknotes I was handling every day. In the United States, the faces of presidents and statesmen adorn our currency. So I was surprised to learn that the mustachioed man on the ¥1,000 note with which I purchased my daily bento box was a bacteriologist. It was a pleasant surprise, though. It seems to me that a society that esteems bacteriologists over politicians is in many ways a healthy one.

But it was the lofty gaze of the man on the ¥10,000 note that really caught my attention. I find that always having a spare ¥10,000 note is something of a necessity in Japan. You never know when you might stumble upon a pop-up artisanal sake kiosk beside a metro station staircase that only accepts cash and only opens one day a year. So over the course of my time in Japan I had come to know the face of the man on that bill rather well.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-autobiography-of

Fake Tradition Is Traditional Jun 23, 2024

Show notes

A: I like Indian food.

B: Oh, so you like a few bites of flavorless rice daily? Because India is a very poor country, and that's a more realistic depiction of what the average Indian person eats. And India has poor food safety laws - do you like eating in unsanitary restaurants full of rats? And are you condoning Narendra Modi's fascist policies?

A: I just like paneer tikka.

This is how most arguments about being "trad" sound to me. Someone points out that they like some feature of the past. Then other people object that this feature is idealized, the past wasn't universally like that, and the past had many other bad things.

But "of the past" is just meant to be a pointer! "Indian food" is a good pointer to paneer tikka even if it's an idealized view of how Indians actually eat, even if India has lots of other problems!

In the same way, when people say they like Moorish Revival architecture or the 1950s family structure or whatever, I think of these as pointers. It's fine if the Moors also had some bad buildings, or not all 1950s families were really like that. Everyone knows what they mean!

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/fake-tradition-is-traditional

Failure To Replicate Anti-Vaccine Poll Jun 23, 2024

Show notes

Steve Kirsch is an inventor and businessman most famous for developing the optical mouse. More recently, he's become an anti-COVID-vaccine activist. He has many different arguments on his Substack, of which one especially caught my eye:

He got Pollfish, a reputable pollster, to ask questions about people's COVID experiences, including whether they thought any family members had died from COVID or from COVID vaccines. Results here:

7.5% of people said a household member had died of COVID
8.5% of people said a household member had died from the vaccine.

All other statistics were normal and confirmed that this was a fair sample of the population. In particular, about 75% were vaccinated (suggesting that they weren't just polling hardcore anti-vaxxers).

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/failure-to-replicate-anti-vaccine

Nobody Can Make You Feel Genetically Inferior Without Your Consent Jun 23, 2024

Show notes

Lately we've been discussing some of the ethics around genetics and embryo selection. One question that comes up in these debates is - are we claiming that some people are genetically inferior to other people? If we're trying to select schizophrenia genes out of the population - even setting aside debates about whether this would work and whether we can do it non-coercively - isn't this still in some sense claiming that schizophrenics are genetically inferior? And do we really want to do this?

I find it clarifying to set aside schizophrenia for a second and look at cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a simple single-gene disorder. A mutation in this gene makes lung mucus too thick. People born with the disorder spend their lives fighting off various awful lung infections before dying early, usually in their 20s to 40s. There's a new $300,000/year medication that looks promising, but we've yet to see how much it can increase life expectancy. As far as I know, there's nothing good about cystic fibrosis. It's just an awful mutation that leads to a lifetime of choking on your own lung mucus.

So: are people with cystic fibrosis genetically inferior, or not?

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/nobody-can-make-you-feel-genetically

Unsong Available In Paperback Jun 23, 2024

Show notes

Seven years ago, I wrote an online serial novel, Unsong, about alternate history American kabbalists. You can read the online version here.

The online version isn't going anywhere, but lots of people asked for a hard copy. I tried to get the book formally published, but various things went wrong and I procrastinated. Commenter Pycea finally saved me from myself and helped get it published on Amazon (thank you!) You can now buy the book here, for $19.99.

I think the published version is an improvement over the original. I rewrote three or four chapters I wasn't satisfied with, and changed a few character names to be more kabbalistically appropriate. The timeline and history have been rectified, and there are more details on the 2000 - 2015 period and how UNSONG was founded. I gave the political situation a little more depth (watch for the Archon of Arkansas, the Shogun of Michigan, and the Caliph of California). And the sinister Malia Ngo has been replaced by the equally sinister, but actual-character-development-having, Ash Bentham.

All of the parts that were actually good have been kept.

Thanks to everyone for being patient, and special thanks to Pycea for making this happen.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/unsong-available-in-paperback

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