LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

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“Cheap Labour Everywhere” by Morpheus Oct 24, 2025

Show notes

I recently visited my girlfriend's parents in India. Here is what that experience taught me:
Yudkowsky has this facebook post where he makes some inferences about the economy after noticing two taxis stayed in the same place while he got his groceries. I had a few similar experiences while I was in India, though sadly I don't remember them in enough detail to illustrate them in as much detail as that post. Most of the thoughts relating to economics revolved around how labour in India is extremely cheap.
I knew in the abstract that India is not as rich as countries I had been in before, but it was very different seeing that in person. From the perspective of getting an intuitive feel for economics, it was very interesting to be thrown into a very different economy and seeing a lot of surprising facts and noticing how [...]
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First published:
October 16th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2xWC6FkQoRqTf9ZFL/cheap-labour-everywhere
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Consider donating to AI safety champion Scott Wiener” by Eric Neyman Oct 24, 2025

Show notes

This is a link post. Written in my personal capacity. Thanks to many people for conversations and comments. Written in less than 24 hours; sorry for any sloppiness.
It's an uncanny, weird coincidence that the two biggest legislative champions for AI safety in the entire country announced their bids for Congress just two days apart. But here we are.
On Monday, I put out a long blog post making the case for donating to Alex Bores, author of the New York RAISE Act. And today I’m doing the exact same thing for Scott Wiener, who announced a run for Congress in California today (October 22).
Much like with Alex Bores, if you’re potentially interested in donating to Wiener, my suggestion would be to:

Read this post to understand the case for donating to Scott Wiener.
Understand that political donations are a matter of public record, and that this [...]

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First published:
October 22nd, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n6Rsb2jDpYSfzsbns/consider-donating-to-ai-safety-champion-scott-wiener
Linkpost URL:
https://ericneyman.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/consider-donating-to-ai-safety-champion-scott-wiener/
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Doomers were right” by Algon Oct 23, 2025

Show notes

There's an argument I sometimes hear against existential risks, or any other putative change that some are worried about, that goes something like this:
'We've seen time after time that some people will be afraid of any change. They'll say things like "TV will destroy people's ability to read", "coffee shops will destroy the social order","machines will put textile workers out of work". Heck, Socrates argued that books would harm people's ability to memorize things. So many prophets of doom, and yet the world has not only survived, it has thrived. Innovation is a boon. So we should be extremely wary when someone cries out "halt" in response to a new technology, as that path is lined with skulls of would be doomsayers."
Lest you think this is a straw man, Yann Le Cun compared fears about AI doom to fears about coffee. Now, I don't want to criticize [...]
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First published:
October 22nd, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cAmBfjQDj6eaic95M/doomers-were-right
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems” by Algon Oct 22, 2025

Show notes

People don't explore enough. They rely on cached thoughts and actions to get through their day. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to them making progress on their problems. The solution is simple. Just do one new thing a day to solve one of your problems.
Intellectually, I've always known that annoying, persistent problems often require just 5 seconds of actual thought. But seeing a number of annoying problems that made my life worse, some even major ones, just yield to the repeated application of a brief burst of thought each day still surprised me.
For example, I had a wobbly chair. It was wobbling more as time went on, and I worried it would break. Eventually, I decided to try actually solving the issue. 1 minute and 10 turns of an allen key later, it was fixed.
Another example: I have a shot attention span. I kept [...]
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First published:
October 3rd, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gtk2KqEtedMi7ehxN/do-one-new-thing-a-day-to-solve-your-problems
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Humanity Learned Almost Nothing From COVID-19” by niplav Oct 20, 2025

Show notes

Summary: Looking over humanity's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, almostsix years later, reveals that we've forgotten to fulfill our intent atpreparing for the next pandemic. I rant.
content warning: A single carefully placed slur.
If we want to create a world free of pandemics and other biologicalcatastrophes, the time to act is now.
—US White House, “ FACT SHEET: The Biden Administration's Historic Investment in Pandemic Preparedness and Biodefense in the FY 2023 President's Budget ”, 2022
Around five years, a globalpandemic caused bya coronavirus started.
In the course of the pandemic, there have been atleast 6 million deaths and more than 25 million excessdeaths. Thevalue of QALYs lost due to the pandemic in the US alone was around $5trio.,the GDP loss in the US alone in 2020 $2trio..The loss of gross [...]
The original text contained 12 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
October 19th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pvEuEN6eMZC2hqG9c/humanity-learned-almost-nothing-from-covid-19
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Consider donating to Alex Bores, author of the RAISE Act” by Eric Neyman Oct 20, 2025

Show notes

Written by Eric Neyman, in my personal capacity. The views expressed here are my own. Thanks to Zach Stein-Perlman, Jesse Richardson, and many others for comments.
Over the last several years, I’ve written a bunch of posts about politics and political donations. In this post, I’ll tell you about one of the best donation opportunities that I’ve ever encountered: donating to Alex Bores, who announced his campaign for Congress today.
If you’re potentially interested in donating to Bores, my suggestion would be to:

Read this post to understand the case for donating to Alex Bores.
Understand that political donations are a matter of public record, and that this may have career implications. Decide if you are willing to donate to Alex Bores anyway.
If you would like to donate to Alex Bores: donations today, Monday, Oct 20th, are especially valuable. You can donate at this link.

Or if [...]
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Outline:
(01:16) Introduction
(04:55) Things I like about Alex Bores
(08:55) Are there any things about Bores that give me pause?
(09:43) Cost-effectiveness analysis
(10:10) How does an extra $1k affect Alex Bores' chances of winning?
(12:22) How good is it if Alex Bores wins?
(12:54) Direct influence on legislation
(14:46) The House is a first step toward even more influential positions
(15:35) Encouraging more action in this space
(16:20) How does this compare to other AI safety donation opportunities?
(16:37) Comparison to technical AI safety
(17:28) Comparison to non-politics AI governance
(18:25) Comparison to other political opportunities
(19:39) Comparison to non-AI safety opportunities
(21:20) Logistics and details of donating
(21:24) Who can donate?
(21:34) How much can I donate?
(23:16) How do I donate?
(24:07) Will my donation be public? What are the career implications of donating?
(25:37) Is donating worth the career capital costs in your case?
(26:32) Some examples of potential donor profiles
(30:34) A more quantitative cost-benefit analysis
(32:33) Potential concerns
(32:37) What if Bores loses?
(33:21) What about the press coverage?
(34:09) Feeling rushed?
(35:16) Appendix
(35:19) Details of the cost-effectiveness analysis of donating to Bores
(35:25) Probability that Bores loses by fewer than 1000 votes
(38:37) How much marginal funding would net Bores an extra vote?
(40:42) Early donations help consolidate support
(42:47) One last adjustment: the big tech super PAC
(45:25) Cost-benefit analysis of donating to Bores vs. adverse career effects
(45:40) The philanthropic benefit of donating
(46:32) The altruistic cost of donating
(48:18) Cost-benefit analysis
(49:01) Caveats
The original text contained 14 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
October 20th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TbsdA7wG9TvMQYMZj/consider-donating-to-alex-bores-author-of-the-raise-act-1
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Meditation is dangerous” by Algon Oct 20, 2025

Show notes

Here's a story I've heard a couple of times. A youngish person is looking for some solutions to their depression, chronic pain, ennui or some other cognitive flaw. They're open to new experiences and see a meditator gushing about how amazing meditation is for joy, removing suffering, clearing one's mind, improving focus etc. They invite the young person to a meditation retreat. The young person starts making decent progress. Then they have a psychotic break and their life is ruined for years, at least. The meditator is sad, but not shocked. Then they started gushing about meditation again.
If you ask an experienced meditator about these sorts of cases, they often say, "oh yeah, that's a thing that sometimes happens when meditating." If you ask why the hell they don't warn people about this, they might say: "oh, I didn't want to emphasize the dangers more because it might [...]
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First published:
October 17th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fhL7gr3cEGa22y93c/meditation-is-dangerous
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“That Mad Olympiad” by Tomás B. Oct 19, 2025

Show notes

"I heard Chen started distilling the day after he was born. He's only four years old, if you can believe it. He's written 18 novels. His first words were, "I'm so here for it!" Adrian said.
He's my little brother. Mom was busy in her world model. She says her character is like a "villainess" or something - I kinda worry it's a sex thing. It's for sure a sex thing. Anyway, she was busy getting seduced or seducing or whatever villanesses do in world models, so I had to escort Adrian to Oak Central for the Lit Olympiad. Mom doesn't like supervision drones for some reason. Thinks they're creepy. But a gangly older sister looming over him and witnessing those precious adolescent memories for her - that's just family, I guess.
"That sounds more like a liability to me," I said. "Bad data, old models."
Chen waddled [...]
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First published:
October 15th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LPiBBn2tqpDv76w87/that-mad-olympiad-1
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Graph showing AI task duration over time from GPT-2 through GPT-5 releases — **“The ‘Length’ of ‘Horizons’” by Adam Scholl** Oct 17, 2025
Show notes

Current AI models are strange. They can speak—often coherently, sometimes even eloquently—which is wild. They can predict the structure of proteins, beat the best humans at many games, recall more facts in most domains than human experts; yet they also struggle to perform simple tasks, like using computer cursors, maintaining basic logical consistency, or explaining what they know without wholesale fabrication.
Perhaps someday we will discover a deep science of intelligence, and this will teach us how to properly describe such strangeness. But for now we have nothing of the sort, so we are left merely gesturing in vague, heuristical terms; lately people have started referring to this odd mixture of impressiveness and idiocy as “spikiness,” for example, though there isn’t much agreement about the nature of the spikes.
Of course it would be nice to measure AI progress anyway, at least in some sense sufficient to help us [...]
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**Outline:**
(03:48) Conceptual Coherence
(07:12) Benchmark Bias
(10:39) Predictive Value
The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.
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First published:
October 14th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PzLSuaT6WGLQGJJJD/the-length-of-horizons
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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