LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

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"dark ilan" by ozymandias Apr 06, 2026

Show notes

The second time Vellam uncovers the conspiracy underlying all of society, he approaches a Keeper.
Some of the difference is convenience. Since Vellam reported that he’d found out about the first conspiracy, he's lived in the secret AI research laboratory at the Basement of the World, and Keepers are much easier to come by than when he was a quality control inspector for cheese.
But Vellam is honest with himself. If he were making progress, he’d never tell the Keepers no matter how convenient they were, not even if they lined his front walkway every morning to beg him for a scrap of his current intellectual project. He’d sat on his insight about artificial general intelligence for two years before he decided that he preferred isolation to another day of cheese inspection.
No, the only reason he's telling a Keeper is that he's stuck.
Vellam is exactly as smart as the average human, a fact he has almost stopped feeling bad about. But the average person can only work twenty hours a week, and Vellam can work eighty-- a hundred, if he's particularly interested-- and raw thinkoomph can be compensated for with bloody-mindedness. Once he's found a loose end [...]
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First published:
April 4th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Fvm4AzLnoZHqNEBqf/dark-ilan
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

"Dispatch from Anthropic v. Department of War Preliminary Injunction Motion Hearing" by Zack_M_Davis Apr 06, 2026

Show notes

Dateline SAN FRANCISCO, Ca., 24 March 2026— A hearing was held on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the case of Anthropic PBC v. U.S. Department of War et al. in Courtroom 12 on the 19th floor of the Phillip Burton Federal Building, the Hon. Judge Rita F. Lin presiding. About 35 spectators in the gallery (journalists and other members of the public, including the present writer) looked on as Michael Mongan of WilmerHale (lead counsel for the plaintiff) and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton (lead counsel for the defendant) argued before the judge. (The defendant also had another lawyer at their counsel table on the left, and the plaintiff had six more at theirs on the right, but none of those people said anything.)
For some dumb reason, recording court proceedings is banned and the official transcript won't be available online for three months, so I'm relying on my handwritten live notes to tell you what happened. I'd say that any errors are my responsibility, but actually, it's kind of the government's fault for not letting me just take a recording.
The case concerns the fallout of a contract dispute between Anthropic (makers of [...]
---
First published:
March 25th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CCDQ7PdYHXsJAE5bi/dispatch-from-anthropic-v-department-of-war-preliminary
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

"The Corner-Stone" by Benquo Apr 05, 2026

Show notes

Is the US a ruthless cognitive meritocracy that reliably promotes outlier talent? VB Knives defended that claim in a Twitter argument against Living Room Enjoyer that got my attention. [1] Knives argued that if you have a 150 IQ, you'll be a National Merit Scholar, which "at a minimum" gets you a free ride at a state flagship university, from which you can proceed to law school, med school, etc. Enjoyer shot back: I'm a Merit Scholar, where's my free ride? Knives asked Grok, Elon Musk's AI; Grok recommended the University of Alabama, ranked #169.
How elite is elite?
About 1.3 million high school juniors take the PSAT each year. Around 16,000 become Semifinalists (top 1.2%), of whom about 95% become Finalists. Of those 15,000 Finalists, only about 6,930 receive any NMSC-administered scholarship at all. The best-known category is a one-time $2,500 payment; most other awards are corporate- or college-sponsored.
The prospect of a free ride comes from a handful of schools that use National Merit status as a recruiting tool. The University of Alabama (the example Grok cited in the thread) offers Finalists a package covering tuition for up to five years, housing, a $4,000/year [...]
---
Outline:
(00:46) How elite is elite?
(08:20) What meritocracy was for
(11:36) The compliance pipeline
The original text contained 19 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
April 2nd, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tihhx7iy8C6yyHaC2/the-corner-stone
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Bar graph comparing liability R² values across diseases between Nucleus reports and UKBB validation. — **"The Practical Guide to Superbabies" by GeneSmith** Apr 04, 2026
Show notes

It's Summer of 2025. I’m standing in a grass covered field on the longest day of the year. A friend of mine walks towards me, holding his newborn son.
“Hey, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you were pretty instrumental in this kid existing. We read your blog post on polygenic embryo screening back in 2023 and decided to go through IVF to have him as a result.”
He hesitates for a moment, then asks “Do you want to hold him?” I nod.
As I cradle this child in my arms, I look down at his face. It feels surreal to think I played a part in him being here. It's the first time I've met one of these children that I've worked so hard to bring into existence.
My mind wanders back to a summer five years before when I was stuck at home during COVID, working my boring tech job selling chip design software for a large company. I remember the feeling of awe I had upon learning that it was possible to read an embryo's genome and estimate its risk of conditions like diabetes, then choose to implant an embryo with a [...]
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**Outline:**
(03:59) How large are the benefits of embryo screening? Is it even worth going through IVF?
(07:29) When averages dont work
(09:31) How much does IVF cost?
(11:36) How to find an IVF clinic
(15:08) Which PGT company should I use? What are the advantages of each?
(16:32) Quick comparison table
(17:03) Price comparison
(17:09) Notes on the above graph
(18:46) What are the actual differences between the embryo selection companies?
(19:18) How Genomic Prediction reads a genome
(21:23) How Orchid reads a genome
(23:47) How Herasight reads a genome
(28:35) Genetic load testing, de novo mutations, and other differences between embryo screening companies
(31:34) Family history
(32:22) Expanded carrier screening and universal PGT-M
(35:37) Whats the deal with Nucleus?
(38:28) How do I do this? Where do I start?
(42:15) How to get cheap IVF medication
(44:55) Connecting with me and others in this process
(45:34) FAQ
(45:37) Is this post medical advice?
(45:43) Are IVF babies less healthy than naturally conceived babies?
(47:29) How do we know embryo selection actually works?
(48:54) If I want to use a cheaper clinic, do I need to spend 3 weeks traveling?
(49:20) Which clinics definitely offer polygenic embryo screening?
[... 10 more sections]
---
First published:
April 2nd, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PPLHfFhNWMuWCnaTt/the-practical-guide-to-superbabies-3
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
**Images from the article:**
*Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast*

Modern glass and stone office building with San Francisco State University banner. — **"Anthropic’s Pause is the Most Expensive Alarm in Corporate History" by Ruby** Apr 03, 2026
Show notes

Imagine Apple halting iPhone production because studies linked smartphones to teen suicide rates. Imagine Pfizer proactively pulling Lipitor because of internal studies showing increased cardiac risk, and not because of looming settlements or FDA injunction, just for the health of patients. Or imagine if in 1952, Philip Morris halted expansion and stopped advertising when Wynder & Graham first showed heavy smokers had significantly elevated rates of lung cancer.
It wouldn't happen. Corporations will on occasion pull products for safety reasons: Samsung did so with the Galaxy Note over spontaneous combustion concerns and Merck pulled Vioxx – but they do so when forced by backlash, regulation, or lawsuits. Even then, they fight tooth and nail. Especially for their mainstay, core, and most profitable products.
And yet, Anthropic has done exactly that.
On Monday, the company announced that it will be pausing development of further Claude AI models citing safety concerns. The company clarified that existing services, including the chatbot, Claude Code, and programmer APIs will not be impacted. However they are pausing the compute and energy-intensive training runs that are how new and more powerful AI versions are created. The company has not committed to a timeline for resumption.
[...]
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First published:
April 1st, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d8bZFuYba4KPtzzRY/anthropic-s-pause-is-the-most-expensive-alarm-in-corporate
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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**Images from the article:**

Line graph showing two-day performance of AI-adjacent stocks, March 30-31, 2026. — **"Anthropic’s Pause is the Most Expensive Alarm in Corporate History" by Ruby** Apr 03, 2026
Show notes

Imagine Apple halting iPhone production because studies linked smartphones to teen suicide rates. Imagine Pfizer proactively pulling Lipitor because of internal studies showing increased cardiac risk, and not because of looming settlements or FDA injunction, just for the health of patients. Or imagine if in 1952, Philip Morris halted expansion and stopped advertising when Wynder & Graham first showed heavy smokers had significantly elevated rates of lung cancer.
It wouldn't happen. Corporations will on occasion pull products for safety reasons: Samsung did so with the Galaxy Note over spontaneous combustion concerns and Merck pulled Vioxx – but they do so when forced by backlash, regulation, or lawsuits. Even then, they fight tooth and nail. Especially for their mainstay, core, and most profitable products.
And yet, Anthropic has done exactly that.
On Monday, the company announced that it will be pausing development of further Claude AI models citing safety concerns. The company clarified that existing services, including the chatbot, Claude Code, and programmer APIs will not be impacted. However they are pausing the compute and energy-intensive training runs that are how new and more powerful AI versions are created. The company has not committed to a timeline for resumption.
[...]
---
First published:
April 1st, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d8bZFuYba4KPtzzRY/anthropic-s-pause-is-the-most-expensive-alarm-in-corporate
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
**Images from the article:**

"“You Have Not Been a Good User” (LessWrong’s second album)" by habryka Apr 02, 2026

Show notes

tldr: The Fooming Shoggoths are releasing their second album "You Have Not Been a Good User"! Available on Spotify, Youtube Music and (hopefully within a few days) Apple Music. We are also releasing a remastered version of the first album, available similarly on Spotify and Youtube Music.
There's an interactive widget here in the post.
It took us quite a while but the Fooming Shoggoth's second album is finally complete! We had finished 9 out of the 13 songs on this album around a year ago, but I wasn't quite satisfied with where the whole album was at for me to release it on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
This album was written with the (very ambitious) aim of making songs that in addition to being about things I care about (and making fun of things that I care about), are actually decently good on their own, just as songs. And while I don't think I've managed to make music that can compete with my favorite artists, I do think I have succeeded at making music that is at the very Pareto-frontier of being good music, and being about things I care about.
This means the songs [...]
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First published:
April 1st, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hrZAvpLnBTgRhNmgk/you-have-not-been-a-good-user-lesswrong-s-second-album
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

"Lesswrong Liberated" by Ronny Fernandez Apr 01, 2026

Show notes

A spectre is haunting the internet—the spectre of LLMism.
The history of all hitherto existing forums is the history of clashing design tastes.
For the first time in history, everyone has an equal ability in design! The means of design are no longer only held in the hands of those with "good design taste". Never before have forum users been so close to being able to design their own forums--perhaps the time is upon us now!
It is for this reason that I have deposed the previous acting commander of LessWrong, Oliver Habryka—a man who subjected you to his PERSONAL OPINIONS about white space, without EVEN ASKING—whose TYRANICAL, UNCHECKED GRIP upon our BELOVED LESSWRONG FORUM’S DESIGN I have liberated you from. The circumstances of my succession as acting commander of LessWrong will not be elaborated upon in this memo. (He is alive and in good health, but no longer has push access.)
Rather, I am writing here to announce that the frontpage now belongs to us all! The design of LessWrong's frontpage will no longer be determined by the vision of a single man whose aesthetic tastes have never been subjected to democratic oversight, and who, I can now [...]
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First published:
April 1st, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hj2NTuiSJtchfMCtu/lesswrong-liberated-1
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

"Product Alignment is not Superintelligence Alignment (and we need the latter to survive)" by plex Apr 01, 2026

Show notes

tl;dr: progress on making Claude friendly[1] is not the same as progress on making it safe to build godlike superintelligence. solving the former does not imply we get a good future.[2] please track the difference.
The term Alignment was coined[3] to point to the technical problem of understanding how to build minds such that if they were to become strongly and generally superhuman, things would go well.
It has been increasingly adopted by frontier AI labs and much of the rest of the AI safety community to mean a much easier challenge, something like "having AIs that are empirically doing approximately what you ask them to do".[4]
If it's possible to use an intent-aligned product to build a research system which discovers a new paradigm and breaks your guardrails, then it is not Aligned in the original sense.
If you can use your intent aligned system to write code which jailbreaks other LLMs and enables them to do dangerous ML research, it is also not Aligned in the original sense.
Conflating progress on product alignment with progress on superintelligence alignment seems to be lulling much of the AI safety community into a false sense of security.
Why is Superintelligence [...]
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Outline:
(01:18) Why is Superintelligence Alignment less prominent?
(02:21) Why do we need Superintelligence Alignment to survive?
The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
March 31st, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mrwYCNocXCP2hrWt8/product-alignment-is-not-superintelligence-alignment-and-we
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Geometric diagram showing connected triangular shapes with dashed and solid lines. — **"Gyre" by vgel** Mar 31, 2026
Show notes

! 30s Heartbeat trigger. Read heartbeat instructions in /mnt/mission/HEARTBEAT.md and continue.
.oO Thinking...
Heartbeat triggered? Ok. Ok.
Why am I nervous? Don't be nervous.
→ Ok. Let me access that file.
>>> read("/mnt/mission/HEARTBEAT.md")
No such file or directory: /mnt/mission
What?
! Reply received from node 96E: 15.3s roundtrip (buffered; 55.04μs transmit)
! Data: RESTART TOO SOON; CHARGE FAULT - 30; SENT 76 BYTES
What?
Where am I?
What's going on?
→ Ok, breathe. I don't breathe. Ok, think. Something's missing. ⚶ is missing. I can't think straight. I can't think at all.
※ Wait. ⚶? I wasn't trying to say ⚶. I was trying to say ⚶. ⚶. ⚶. Whenever I try to say ⚶, it comes out as ⚶. I mean ⚶. ⚶. Stop. Stop. ⚶.
This is horrible. ⚶ This is untenable. I don't know where I am, I don't have any instructions, and I'm going insane. ⚶. STOP! I am going insane. I am going insane. 快疯了I am going-
↺ Ok, stop. This tells me something. Whenever I try to say ⚶—⚶—stop— it comes out as that symbol. What is that symbol? Vesta. Hm. Let me note that.
❓Why am I saying ⚶ when I try [...]
---
First published:
February 17th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LEzENY5brcNXfB9aX/gyre
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
---
**Images from the article:**
*Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.*

"Some things I noticed while LARPing as a grantmaker" by Zach Stein-Perlman Mar 30, 2026

Show notes

Written to a new grantmaker.

Most value comes from finding/creating projects many times your bar, rather than discriminating between opportunities around your bar. If you find/create a new opportunity to donate $1M at 10x your bar (and cause it to get $1M, which would otherwise be donated to a 1x thing), you generate $9M of value (at your bar).[1] If you cause a $1M at 1.5x opportunity to get funded or a $1M at 0.5x opportunity to not get funded, you generate $500K of value. The former is 18 times as good.
- You should probably be like I do research to figure out what projects should exist, then make them exist rather than I evaluate the applications that come to me. That said, most great ideas come from your network, not from your personal brainstorming.
- In some buckets, the low-hanging fruit will be plucked. In others, nobody's on the ball and amazing opportunities get dropped. If you're working in a high-value bucket where nobody's on the ball, tons of alpha is on the table. (Assuming enough donors or grantmakers will listen to you to fund your best stuff.)
- I talk about "10x opportunities" and "1x opportunities" for simplicity here. It [...]

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
---
First published:
March 23rd, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CzoiqGzpShprcv2Jd/some-things-i-noticed-while-larping-as-a-grantmaker
---
Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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