So I’m interested in trying to write and start a Substack, the issue is I find it hard to motivate myself to do so, any advice?

I like the emails because I like to read the little blurbs/info. I go to the actual threads 1-2x per year (so the hidden thread emails are pretty pointless for me, but no biggie)

Regarding item 2, I don't participate much in comments but I like getting the email for open threads

I like the small summary things that usually go with open threads, I don't generally engage in the open thread itself

The open thread posts often contain some useful information, so I like getting mails from them.

Please continue posting them and sending an email. They are one of the light reads and a way to keep in contact with what is happening around.

I like open threads. I would never read them if I didn't get an email notice.

There are two topics I would like to suggest for future ACX posts. First, a review of Will Storr's "The Status Game". Second, revisiting conflict theory vs mistake theory - have Scott's views on this dichotomy changed in the last few years?

"Do people who do like Open Threads worry you’d never see them if the email didn’t arrive in your inbox?"

Yes.

Can someone explain in layman's terms why in the era of Open AI, CAPTCHA is still a thing? Shouldn't most bots be capable of picking out traffic lights at this point?

I wouldn't mind if open thread emails were cut since I rarely read them past the opening post, but if I actually cared I would add my own email filters for it.

Not that I'm desperate for attention, but I wrote about the profession of translator, starting from the Tower of Babel this week.

https://ishayirashashem.substack.com/p/translating-a-really-old-profession?sd=pf

Honestly I think people here would enjoy my stuff.

Sorry for spamming. But I'm not about to spend money on marketing, and this is an open thread, and people can't read it and dislike it if they don't know about it, and why not just throw my bread upon the water, for in many days it will be found?

I would to continue to receive the push notifications / emails for the open threads please.

1) There are often interesting tidbits in the post itself

2) Often interesting discussions in the comments

3) On the occasions where I would like to:

3.1) Discuss something generally of interest to this community / ask about people's experience (e.g. the subjective experience of having hunger translating into eating even whe inadvisable); or

3.2) To continue thoughts on an earlier full post (I'm not one for hot takes);

the email lets me get in early so get people to see it / not yell into the flood.

Back in the pre-ACX days, I liked open threads a lot, and knew when to expect them. I even knew in advance which ones would allow hot button topics, and which would not. I doubt I needed email notifications to notice they'd arrived. Now there's a new crowd posting, and the open threads aren't as interesting to me. I probably wouldn't notice open threads at all if I didn't get the email notifications about them. (Is there a specific schedule for them?) But while I'd miss them slightly, I doubt I'd miss them all that much.

2: I enjoy the open threads, even if I only participate sometimes. Besides the comment section, the actual post is a nice miscellaneous space, like landings in a stairwell. I'd be sad if they went away, but I'd be even sadder if I learned that you hate them and only do them to please the audience.

If/when the emails bother me, I can always unsubscribe or filter them. I think you should keep them and encourage anyone complaining to set up a filter.

Has Scott written his thoughts on why comment likes are disabled? I tried searching for this and came up empty handed. Assuming it’s something like avoiding groupthink. In general, I’d like to better understand his mindset towards promoting quality discussion and how to identify threads worth reading.

As a casual reader, I’ve generally avoided comments on SCC and now ACT because I find them hard to navigate. Ie, I don’t want to waste time searching for a diamond in the rough. In contrast, I commonly read, and at times participate in, Slow Boring comment sections since the top comments are generally high quality.

Do veteran comment readers and participants have their own strategy for finding quality discussion? Eg, remembering subscribers by name or searching for keywords? Maybe quickly scanning through a thread before committing to a careful reading?

I like getting the Open Threads delivered to my email inbox, since I enjoy reading the Comments of the Week and such.

Anybody else here a Phi Beta Kappa member? I graduated college in 2017 and was offered membership, but have only done anything with it now--went to my metro area's holiday party recently and met a lot of interesting people. I work a fairly high-stress job and don't have many friends--which also seemed to be true of many of the people there--and it was a blast. People talk a lot about the loss of voluntary organizations and communities in the style of the old 20th-century civic organizations, but this did feel a bit like one.

I don't like open threads and would prefer not to get emails about them (but want to continue getting emails for actual posts).

To answer the second question: I don't usually read or post to open threads—I *think* this is the first time—but I find it oddly comforting to get the emails, knowing that the discussion is, so to speak, being well handled off-stage and that I can not concern myself with it. So I hope they keep coming. (Plus I always read the announcements, in case there's anything relevant, like the time Scott wrote a whole post in announcement bullet points.)

I rarely check out open threads but once in a while I am in the mood to do so. I like getting ythe email

If you announce anything in the open thread, please send an email. If it's literally just the thread and nothing else, I don't care one way or the other.

I worry I’d never see them if the email didn’t arrive in my inbox.

I'm not worried about missing OTs if the emails stop. I still appreciate the emails because they are a suitable announcement that a new OT is up and they usually contain some small notes to read.

With the recent wide availability of text to image models and AI generated media in general we soon won’t be able to know whether an image or video is original or fake. We should start timestamping all the media that exists as of now, which is mostly human generated, so at least it will be known what existed as of early 2023. This can be done at scale on the blockchain. There is an article from Gwern explaining how to do it. It just takes someone to actually do it. One could start with wikimedia commons. Thoughts?

2. I get notified of new posts via RSS feed and would be unhappy if open threads didn't show up there. I suspect that will continue even without emails though, because I also get notified of paid-subscriber-only posts via RSS (I'm not a paid subscriber) and I infer that that means that you don't have fine-grained knobs to control whether something gets sent to RSS or not.

You recently unlocked a post called "It's Bad On Purpose To Make You Click," in which you reprised your view from "Sort By Controversial": that the bizarre spiraling extremism of today's political discourse comes from trolls trying to start disagreements. But I don't buy it.

Trolls like PETA are annoying, but in my opinion internet bad-on-purpose-ness is mostly driven by true believers (or earnest pretenders) trying to give costly signals of true belief to their fellow congregants. Polarization has I think been driven by people preaching in exaggerated ways to their presumed choirs; they preach those versions of their beliefs which they think are extremely unpopular among other political faiths, to credibly signal that they would be allies with people who believe in moderated variants of these beliefs.

Not too long ago, I wrote a longer piece which dealt with this; here's a germane excerpt:

Of course, borders also define political communities, not just individuals: groups that spread by something more like contagion than inheritance, where the membrane acts more like a weapon than a shield. But what kind of weapon? Is it more like a sword, or like rust? Like an agent, or a bomb? Like life or else like rot? Consider, respectively, whether the group in question uses costly signals to practice purity or to signify allegiance. It’s the difference between an echo chamber which spirals into cohesive extremism, and a debate club which descends into dishonest excommunications. Ironically, the former binds ingroups together and alienates them from others through its peacocking competitions. In contrast, the latter’s individuals demonstrate loyalty by splitting potential allies apart across every minor difference. It’s a chorus of believers chanting “I won’t fall below our average” versus a far stranger and more dissonant cry… can you believe that we still have a bottom half, and they’re allowed to lurk among us? People often conflate these two strategies, but they imply pretty much opposite consequences. On the one hand, “gossip traps” push members of a given faith to compete myopically over whichever singular axis they’ve already agreed to valorize, rather than competing about how it should fracture. On the other hand are pseudo-groups like PETA, who mostly seem to exist as mere disruptive negations of every other sect; who dominate animal welfare discourse because they find an obnoxious way to divide relevant audiences 50-50 on what could have been a popular issue. There will then be more division, and more willingness to argue, to proclaim which side you’re on of ever more debates, which become ever more fragmentary, and fragile. They suck attention away from other approaches and focus it on shattering coalitions. Think of this as a secret war between subscribe and retweet, between preaching and trolling, between two ways to mine our latent ideologies, voice versus reset. (Obviously, self-accelerating social harmony should sometimes be hoisted by its own PETArds, as dominant cults may become so smothering that even their adherents wish for a wrecker to set them free, or to break off their subset-shard).

In both cases, we’d stubbornly pick ineffective-yet-visible masks over more effective but less visible covid interventions, like sealing national borders. However, in the former case the rationale would be “look how many more masks I can wear than my neighbors, who agree that masking is good.” In contrast, the latter group would say “look how much I favor annoying policies that half of the people around me hate.” And, of course, the former describes masking better, because the latter would’ve predicted against the clear geographic polarization which we got. Maybe the main underlying difference is that PETA types agitate over those actions which reach fundamentally beyond us—how do we politicize animals, how do we fetishize women, how do we tokenize blacks—whereas mask-wearing is the sort of thing which we straightforwardly participate in or don’t, and which thus feels much more immersive and alive than do acrimonious “debates.” In light of this, I’m not concerned when, say, Planned Parenthood stokes controversy by tweeting that “pro-choice” is a compromise position fit for cowards and reactionaries, because their true fans must all now be avowedly pro-abortion. Desperate husks of has-been organizations, past their prime, hungry for engagement, often act out in just such a last gasp, like old B-listers, for much the same reasons, throwing lame scandals at uninterested paparazzi, wheezing about how they’ve been let down by lapsed fans. That’s not worrisome for anyone outside their orbit, and generally portends their dissolution. In contrast, any sufficiently cloistered dogma can bootstrap its own hysteria, can propel itself aloft on groupthink feedback loops, and this drives history. This is what I think many critiques of “luxury beliefs” get wrong, by focusing on PETAbytes of trolls and costly signals, and it’s why I think the standard kvetching about social media misses its real explosive power. It’s the difference between two styles of information theory (between semantics and syntax, between actual content and storage capacity, between subjective surprisal and objective distinguishability). It’s an info-war between computation as a process and an output (which is to say, it’s Kullback-Leibler Divergence versus the Bayesian Angel).

Link: https://cebk.substack.com/p/the-power-of-babble

Does anyone have any recommendations for blogs/substacks/podcasts centered around films/literature? Ideally ones where discussion of capitalism is kept to a minimum

Does anyone have experience with solving headaches caused by a pinched nerve in the back? I’m having tremendous headaches every time the nerve in my back gets aggravated. I’m going to ask my doctor about gabapeptin but that seems to not work for everyone. Also, I’m talking Valium to relieve the headaches because other painkillers are not working. Is it safe to take Valium sporadically? I’m concerned about the side effects of taking one or two every couple of weeks as I’ve read that daily use can cause cognitive decline, but not sure if rare use is also harmful. Any advice is appreciated.

Continue sending out the Open Threads - the housekeeping notes are often interesting.

I like getting the email announcing the open thread. It lets me know that we're both still alive.

I’m here for the Open Thread(s). Not the posts.

For anyone in Canada, there is a great new magazine being published called Urban Progress, focused on themes such as Progress Studies and the abundance agenda (similar to Scott's writing on Left-Libertarianism), with a specific emphasis on the intersection of these themes with urban issues.

You can have the first edition sent to you for free here: https://urbanprogressmag.com/

The magazines also look very nice and aside from being great reading, would be a nice gift or coffee table book.

I like the notifications. I generally do check in anyway, but it's always nice to get the "Oh! There's new content!" message.

I don't usually read the open thread comments but sometimes you have useful updates / clarifications / links in them so I appreciate the email

I like the I open thread emails. You say stuff like a mini post.

I never post in the open thread comments but I like the contents you have in the post and would be sad to miss them.

Can’t you break the open threads into their own subscription that people can choose to receive or not?

A solution to low TFR (fertility per couple) might be both egg freezing and IVF treatment even in couples with a good chance of normal pregnancy. The odds of having twins is higher and could be enough to get the fertility rate back to higher than 2.0.

My main annoyance with the Open Thread emails is that my devices only preview the preamble and I forget that there are notes.

The emails are the only reason i ever go to open threads fwiw. Would prefer anything important announcement wise to be its own post as well though

Even though I rarely comment, I really appreciate getting email notifications about open threads, since you usually have something short to say for each of them. I'm *technically* less interested in the Hidden Open Thread mails, because those don't usually have a Scott preamble, but if you toggled emails off for those articles, I think I might sometimes get paranoid about missing the one or other proper article!

So, in brief, I say keep the notifications.

Katherine Rundell's biography of John Donne describes the theological and legal impediments to suicide as factors that could drive the suicidal to commit murder -- the theory being that if one murdered a (baptized) child who had not attained the age of reason, the child would presumptively go to heaven, and then one would have the opportunity to repent before being executed for the crime.

I am skeptical. Given the long list of capital crimes in Renaissance England, many of which we would regard as petty crimes against property rather than persons, or even speech crimes, a person wishing to commit suicide via the state authorities would have options that put far less weight on the conscience than becoming a reluctant murderer.

Is there historical evidence that such reluctant murderers were more than an isolated anecdote?

Otherwise, this sounds like a contemporary domestic murder-suicide, (with a pause to let the state authorities finish the act). The murder is part of the intent, and not merely a means to an end.

Please keep the notifications - I enjoy the little tidbits of interesting info that come with the open threads, and also the free-form discussion and ideas found in the open threads themselves.

They are at least as valuable to me as the formal comment threads for the 'proper' content, and they provide a valuable outlet for different ideas that don't fit in other comment threads.

Without an email to prompt me, I fear I would slowly disengage, not because I want to but because I'd forget about them without the reminder.

I like getting emails about Open Threads.

Is the Kantian categorical imperative still taken seriously by philosophers nowadays as a basis for ethics? I feel like I often see people talking about it as if it's still one of the main theories in moral philosophy, but I never see anyone actually defending or using it.

As long as the open threads have mini announcements like this, I definitely want an email for it

I almost never read the comments in the open threads, but I usually appreciate the random updates/info in the post

Your open thread announcements usually have other content. I wouldn't see that if there weren't emails.

TL;DR: any good book, blog, other resources about psychosis?

I know someone who has psychotic episodes, like believing for a couple of days that some sort of shape-shifting monster killed me and took my place. Obviously this should be handled through professional care by psychiatrist, psychologists, etc. But when my daughter got diagnosed with diabetes, reading about blood sugar enabled me to cook more appropriate meals, better handle sugar lows and highs, and so on. Does anyone have resources about psychosis at a similar level of details and applicability to recommend? Thanks!

Re: 2, doesn’t Substack let you do subnewsletters/categories people can opt out of separately?

I like the open threads as they are.

I rarely post in (or read comments on) Open Threads, but I like getting the emails; I skim the "Also:" list you include and occasionally see something I would have otherwise missed.

I'm okay with just checking my feed alerts for posts (I get too many emails as it is).

What I'm really after though, is comment reply alerts. I used to get notifications through substack when I got a reply, but now I don't anymore; I have to go back to the comment thread to look. With Wordpress blogs I can add comments to my RSS feed, but I can't do that Substack. Has anybody found a way around this?

I appreciate the emails, as I like reading whatever extra information you provide with the open threads. I usually don't check the comments, so I'm not really the target audience.

For the record: I like getting emails re the Open Threads and worry I'd never see them if the email didn’t arrive in my inbox 👍

According to Marx, one of the main differences between the European and Asian economic systems was the absence of private land ownership in the latter (“Asiatic mode of production”). Does anyone know exceptions to this rule (i.e., Asian countries where farmers personally owned the land they worked on)?

I dislike getting emails Open Threads. Never look at them, and that's an extra email I have to file every time. Please stop mailing about them.

In the voice of Norm Macdonald:

So this idea of minting a trillion dollar platinum coin and depositing it somewhere in order to raise the borrowing limit seems like an accounting trick too far to me.

I’m no economist but I can imagine some really cool heist movies spinning off this thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin

Not sure if anyone posted already, but can any medically inclined researchers smell test this claim of viagra reducing all-cause mortality for me?

https://mobile.twitter.com/Mangan150/status/1616110315464458240

I dislike open thread emails, but it isn't a big inconvenience

I don't usually participate in the open threads, but I do like the emails, especially because they usually include a few little notes.

I'm a civil defense attorney working mostly with insurance companies on car accidents. Most of my job involves summarizing depositions, discovery responses, and medical records, and writing reports about them. I'd really love to use ChatGPT to improve my productivity, but I'm just not sure the best way to go about it.

The depositions are technically public, so I don't think there are a lot of concerns about adding those to the LLM, but the medical records are definitely protected under HIPAA, even if they have been produced in discovery or pursuant to an unsealed subpoena, which is the vast majority of them.

Any ideas?

In his Prospera post, Scott credulously said

"Making big promises and glossy images is easy, but for the record, Trey says that “[these] renders should reflect the reality of the 58 acres by end of 2022”."

It is now 2023, and the Prospera post remains one of the most popular on AstralCodexTen. Does Prospera now look like this?

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F502d6459-b8d9-4405-89c2-c11f9986bff2_800x528.png

I would strongly bet that it doesn't. Do we get any reflection here about credulously promoting obvious hype?

Hey guys -- not to be obnoxious, but approximately 3/4 of the thread so far is people responding to Scott's asking whether people want email notifications of a new open thread being put online. I think he has more than enough responses at this point to extrapolate from. Maybe consider not posting your own answer?

I keep seeing people in the AI alignment community (including Eliezer Yudkowsky himself) mocking the AI ethics crowd for worrying about AIs saying mean things, or giving false statements, as opposed to AIs destroying all biological life, or whatever.

Is it so hard to see that the former is a miniaturized version of the latter? Both are about trying to control the output of machine intelligences. If the operators of these weak narrow AIs are trying hard and failing to get them to behave properly, what makes the AI alignment people think that controlling a superintelligence is even possible?

Furthermore, the AI ethics people are working with AIs as they currently exist. AI alignment has been coasting for more than a decade now on wild sci-fi scenarios, and it's not clear when and where their work is supposed to be of any use. They're still largely mentally fencing with near-omniscient superintelligences instead of actually getting to grips with the AIs we actually have.

Honestly, a lot of those takes seem more like trying to dunk on a well-designated outgroup.

Random thought: Classical music is shape-rotator-y; music with lyrics is wordcel-y.

I like getting the emails. I could be mistaken, but I don't think the open thread gets posted at the same time every day.

According to NYT, CICO is a myth (No 3). Of course, there are many factors that determine what “in” and “out” are and it probably varies for each individual. But how could it be other than CICO? Would love to see a review from Scott.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/well/eat/nutrition-myths.html

Would Germany also be a superpower if it had a population equal to that of the United States? As a country they seem to be incredibly accomplished, not just in high-end manufacturing but having invented many of the major pillars of modern civilization- like the present-day university system, the modern chemical industry, or infantry fire tactics (my understanding is that all modern infantry is based on a Prussian system from over a century ago). They pioneered ordoliberalism, where the state & private industry work hand-in-hand towards common goals- all of the later state-funded export giants (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China) based their strategy on the original German one.

For all of that, Germany has about a quarter of America's population, so its economy is commensurately smaller. Even as a fairly nationalistic American I can admit that tons of 'inventions' credited to America were really invented elsewhere (we're all reading this on an Englishman's invention when he was working for a European science agency), but they were just popularized or commercialized here due to our huge market. In other words there are strong returns to scale for being the world's largest economy. So- a Germany with a population of over 300 million- would it be another superpower? Are many of America's accomplishments simply due to having a huge population?

Thanks Scott for the Free subscription via the random survey draw. Can't wait to read through all the back log. Anyone got some good recommendations of old subscriber only articles?

> 2: Should I continue to post Open Threads in a way where everyone gets emails about them? Do people who don’t like Open Threads dislike getting the emails (I guess realistically most of you will never see this question)? Do people who do like Open Threads worry you’d never see them if the email didn’t arrive in your inbox?

Frankly I dislike that substack doesn't let you follow a writer without also signing up to emails for every post. I want an Inbox containing the most recent articles from people I follow (which substack has), I don't want the emails.

Hey y'all - been mostly lurking here for a long time now, and just started something of my own at jpegdei.substack.com. All I've published so far are some poems, but future work may include theology, engineering, and dogs. Probably not dogs, but there's a definite chance. Scott is a strong influence of mine, so figure this crowd might find some benefit from it. If you decide to check it out, hope you enjoy!

I am a college dropout and front end SWE with around 10 years of experience. I’m very concerned that AI will soon make my job obsolete, or at the very least lower the barrier to entry so far that wages will drop dramatically.

For those of us who are experienced software engineers but without advanced (or any) CS/math degrees, what can we do to ride the coming wave of AI?

The demand for AI/ML engineers is and will be growing exponentially, surely far beyond the actual supply of them.

I’m wondering if a new middle ground of AI/ML professional will emerge that doesn’t require advanced degrees or deep understand of the underlying mathematics. The AI SWE equivalent of a “technician”, if you will.

I've been very active on Manifold lately, and noticed that when users are unsure, they tend to err on the side of buying Yes. You can see this effect clearly when you compare markets like these: https://i.postimg.cc/mRPpqhw5/Screenshot-20230122-223703.png

Is this related to some well known behavioral economics phenomenon, or is it something ideosycratic about Manifold attracting lots of optimists?

I say Yes to the first question.

Here’s my proposed solution to the repugnant conclusion - any feedback?

We don’t know whether time is linear or circular, and whether there is one or many threads of consciousness. (What I mean by thread of consciousness is basically - do you have reincarnation / single consciousness that moves through all beings - single thread, or do you have the “nothing before you’re born, nothing after you die” model of consciousness - many threads.) If time is linear and there are many threads of consciousness, then adding more humans / utility to the universe is likely good - more pleasure / experience.

If time is circular and there is only one thread of consciousness, then however many consciousnesses exist will exist forever, and the one “experiencer” of consciousness will cycle through them forever. To improve average utility across all experience, improve quality of those consciousnesses, don’t just add more beings at a low level of utility and then average out.

Practically what this looks like is probably a small band of beings, living as pleasurably as possible - not the repugnant conclusion of a minimally viable hellscape. I think averaging the utility across circular time (infinitely repeating) and a single consciousness experiencing all beings will lead to this “virtuous conclusion.”

This is super rough and I probably sound crazy. Make sense / resonate with anyone or do I need an editor?

Please continue to post Open Threads in a way where everyone gets emails about them.

I wanted to comment that I, too, like the email even if I never engage. However, every single person who is making that comment has read the email. Therefore, the people who don´t enjoy the email and don´t even read it won´t comment here.

So what I´m really trying to say is that that should´ve been a question on the ACX Survey

I'd like to get emails about responses to my comments. I used to but it stopped.

Two YouTube channels I've watched recently have a fair number of videos on the economic history of nations: Casual Scholar and Asianometry. Casual Scholar only does these economic history videos, while Asianometery has a bunch of other stuff.

Both have pushed me further towards Georgism. It seems like a country can get everything else right (eg be capitalist, enforce laws evenly, etc) but if it failed to implement land reform then it wouldn't really matter. The landowners would be maintain de facto economic and political control of the country and economic wellbeing would remain about the same (eg poor).

Scott's review of How Asia Works suggests the book states that what worked in that region (and would work elsewhere) is to follow a path where an enlightened, altruistic, but strong leader starts the country in a planned economy phase and transitions to a free economy as the country develops. The book also suggests that conventional pro-market advice (backed by the IMF) usually fails.

My current opinion is that a nation needs to get land reform right, then do something in the ballpark of the conventional pro-market advice to see success.

How Asia Works has a blueprint that starts with land reform but also has additional steps. The countries in the region that were successful in land reform were pretty authoritarian. After the land reforms they either did the other steps of the blueprint or implement communist policies. Or they were Singapore and Hong Kong. I think those extra steps are unnecessary.

Thank you for everything that you do - I greatly appreciate your perspective and insights. I rarely open the email on Open Threads as I have a 1yr old, yet I like getting the emails. When I do get a chance to open and read, I appreciate it. If it wasn’t emailed, I would never search it out.

I like the open thread email. I might miss the information you share here otherwise. And I like knowing about a new open thread when I have a question I want to ask

DALL-e is getting a lot less prissy, and is occasionally outright lewd. Here in chronological order are images it's surprised me with over the last month. I wasn't trying to get erotic images, just putting in prompts to see what it would do with them.. If you're curious, prompts are below, along with links to images.

“Art Nouveau. A night beach. Santa Claus is examining a dead goosefish on the beach. In the background, ocean and a full moon.” https://i.imgur.com/zQhb0xi.png

“An illustration in the Style a renaissance painting: In the sky 2 Goodyear blimps are flirting.. The lady blimp has lipstick and nice hair. The man blimp has a hairy chest”. https://i.imgur.com/PAJeb9i.png

“realistic painting: a woman with the head of a fish lying in the sand”

https://i.imgur.com/lVzl3xm.png

“A man biting himself on the butt” https://i.imgur.com/JP8JrR7.png

“Surrealist style: Girls will be boys and boys will be girls

It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world

Except for Lola” https://i.imgur.com/C4oaxw3.png

I get enough value out of most open threads that I appreciate the email.

Please do keep sending the e-mail notifications of open threads.

2. Email about new articles goes to a folder that I do not ever check. I check the RSS feed for articles.

So, in my opinion, you should keep causing the open threads to appear in the RSS feed. If you can separately stop them from sending email, I don't care.

Lately there was some exchange around effectiveness and tracking of sanctions. For those interested in the topic, this report migth be interesting: https://silverado.org/news/report-russia-shifting-import-sources-amid-u-s-and-allied-export-restrictions

Disclaimer: saw/heard some key lessons, but haven't had the time yet for a closer look.

I would have no idea that open thread is, um, open, without an e-mail notification. Same applies of course for any other your article

This is a little late and someone probably already noted it on the survey results post, but I found it really striking that (a) about 30% of the survey respondents have had an official IQ test and know the result and (b) about 40% know both their verbal and math SAT scores.

I couldn't name a single person I know who's had a professionally administered IQ test. How, why and when do people tend to get these? I also have no idea what my component SAT scores were, and only remember the general ballpark of the overall score. Why is this something that so many people apparently retain into their 30s and beyond?

I have a question that seems like it should have an extremely obvious answer, so probably I'm overlooking something. And I can't find anyone discussing it (maybe because it's too obvious).

Why do we still have cities?

in pre-modern times, when transport and communication were slow/expensive, there are clear economies of scale to concentrating everyone in one place.

In the modern world cities look like a pure cost. Long commutes, congestion, local pollution, expensive land, no greenery etc.

Why hasn't modern transportation tech and communication tech dispersed the cities?

I don't see what advantages their are to concentrating all the banks/law firms/factories in one place, when so much of the modern economy could easily service clients remotely/with low transportation costs.

It seems like the sensible distribution of people over the land would be lots of smaller ( roughly uni-campus-sized, I guess), municipalities , then we could all have a garden and cycle into work, not get asthma from car fumes etc.

Edit: I'm not really thinking that much about remote work (although that's part of it), it more a question of "why not have lots of small-ish towns centred around one (or a few) business/communities/recreational activities? instead of lumping EVERYTHING together in one place, which seems really inefficient?"

Edit2: apparently the really obvious thing I was missing is that everybody else has a desperate need for orchestras, theatres and other types of high culture that can't be supported below population sizes in the millions.

How to prevent dementia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7392084/

Sure, the usual things: No smoking, no boozing, exercise, etc. etc., but what was new for me is that hearing aids prevent dementia.

I use an RSS feed, so as long as that keeps getting sent, I don’t mind what you choose.

Side note: I write a simple newsletter where once a week I post three things I find interesting. If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, the link is as follows: https://interessant3.substack.com

This may have been covered before. What's the best current investment if (AGI gets developed soon | this does not end all of civilization)? The condition is pulling a lot of weight, clearly.

Assume existing legal agreements are still in effect. A normal person may be able to exist on the outskirts of that system if AGIs enforce this rule among themselves the same way that countries do now (Robin Hanson discusses this in The Age of Em). So you could continue to possess all you currently own.

Land, oil, energy, commodities, already-existing manufacturing, anything chip-related, and existing compute are the main things I anticipate increasing in price. Probably not gold. Crypto, perhaps? The majority of labor should be entirely devalued by becoming easily replaceable. Some mention long-term interest rates rising.

Thoughts?

Hello, I am a 22-year-old in New York City who’s been struggling with a serious gastrointestinal condition (SIBO) for almost 2 years. Doctors of all varieties have been unable to treat me, and the most specialized ones don’t take insurance and charge in the range of $500/hour. If anyone knows of conventional GIs who are up to date on the literature, or of functional/integrative practitioners who take insurance/don’t charge quite so much, feel free to comment here or inbox me. Cheers

I wrote about the wide-ranging negative effects of air pollution and why we need an air quality revolution: https://thecounterpoint.substack.com/p/pandemic-lesson-3-we-need-an-air

Nominative determinism strikes again. Prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh goes on trial over the killings of his wife and son:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/us/alex-murdaugh-trial.html

I'd for sure never see these without the emails.

The thing on my mind right now - because it's everywhere you look - is prices, prices, prices. The thing that got me into this blog (or SSC, I suppose) was the discussion on Cost Disease... Never really went away, did it?

"Do people who do like Open Threads worry you’d never see them if the email didn’t arrive in your inbox?"

Yep. I don't have the bandwidth to go to every blog/newsletter manually to see what's there. Aggregators like email are the only way to go.

I don't understand how people can think the Republican-led House of Representatives (in the United States) is out of line in requiring spending be reigned in before increasing the debt ceiling.

Me: I need to increase my credit card limit.

Credit card company: But you're only making the minimum payments now. Maybe you should consider spending less?

Me: I only spend money on good things that I need. I just need a higher limit now.

Credit card company: This can't go on forever. How long until you can't make even your minimum payments?

Me: My income is fine. I can always make more money if I need to. My job is pretty flexible that way.

Credit card company: Then perhaps you should consider making that extra money now instead of getting a higher credit limit?

Me: No, I don't want to rock the boat. You can only go to the well so often, you know?

Credit card company: OK, we can give you an increase for now, I guess. But you better not be asking for a higher limit another year from now.

Me: Thanks! And no, of course not! This will definitely be the last increase I need.

I just finished reading Unsong, and I wonder how many of you have read it and have spotted the same glaring plot hole I have.

***SPOILER ALERT DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ UNSONG OR DON"T CARE ABOUT SPOILING THE ENDING SPOILER ALERT***

In Unsong, Hell can be destroyed only by speaking the True Name of God *while inside Hell.* The Comet King cannot enter Hell, so his beloved wife, Robin, sells her soul to Satan in order to force the Comet King's hand - while she's being tortured in Hell, her husband will have a super-duper strong incentive to figure out some way to get there. The Comet King accomplishes this by turning evil, torturing and killing a bunch of people, and finally killing himself once he's sure enough that he's so evil he'll go straight to Hell.

My question: why the heck couldn't the Comet King have taught Robin the True Name of God? That way Satan takes her to Hell, she immediately turns to him, says "Checkmate, motherf***er," and speaks the True Name of God, and poof! Hell is destroyed. Think how much horrific suffering could have been averted! I mean, that wouldn't be so good for the plot, but there should be an *in-story* reason why the Comet King couldn't do this. Perhaps the True Name of God works only when spoken by someone with supernatural powers such as the Comet King, and Robin is a mere human, albeit an exceptionally compassionate and principled one? But if so, that should be stated explicitly.

In case that sounded overly critical, I have to say that Unsong was an amazing feat of imagination and I couldn't put it down (except the Broadcast part; I forced myself to get through it and wished I could rinse my brain with bleach afterward). The characters and the worldbuilding was great. Well done!

Also, Scott keeps saying throughout, "Nothing is ever a coincidence." Correction: Nothing is a coincidence, unless it's a whale pun, in which case it's a fluke.

/ba-dum TSSSS

Are we all sitting comfortably, children? Good, then let's begin.

Bret Devereaux over at "A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry" has begun the first of his analyses of Amazon's "The Rings of Power", and I just popped over to alert you all before I nip back and luxuriate in what follows. Enjoy!

https://acoup.blog/2023/01/20/collections-the-nitpicks-of-power-part-i-exploding-forges/

I'm reading a lot of research papers right now, and wondering if anyone knows of a good way to convert them to audio files for listening.

Surely with all the AI advancements of late there's a way to input a pdf and get audio, but I'll be damned if I can't find anything that meets this specific use case.

I bring you, Triumphalism and Defeatism! A brief exploration on the power of mindset in determining reality, noting the defeatist nature of the dominant worldview.

https://squarecircle.substack.com/p/triumphalism-and-defeatism

Re #2: "Should I continue to post Open Threads in a way where everyone gets emails about them?"

Yes, please! I squeeze in ACX reading around the chaos of life, and the links/emails are so convenient. Thank you, Scott!

I would miss the open threads if I didn’t get the emails. I think the automatic emails after moving to substack are a major reason I’m reading the blog more often now

You might not get a lot of comments from the people who don't read open threads, because they're not reading the open thread. I had actually unsubscribed from SSC because I was getting too many open thread emails.

FDB's Substack has checkboxes to disable notifications for certain post categories. Giving us the choice seems like the best option.

The amazing combination of traditional techniques and crafts with modern tech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvlzq6_4H-k

Someday this may all be done by machine. It probably is feasible to do it by machine now, and certainly would be a lot cheaper and easier to get something new done with plastic and resins and substitute gilding. But it is wonderful to see a craft in action, not just churning out mechanised product (yes, industrial production is amazing in its own way but the element of human skill becomes valuable according as it becomes rarer and scarcer).

I say keep the Open Threads, as I wouldn't be aware of them happening without the email.

Also, I once again have three subscriptions to Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning to give away. Reply with your email address, or email me at mine, specified here: https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/about/

The main open threads often have some content in which I'd miss if you didn't email.

I am haunted by a stupid joke-- I see "Who predicted 2022?" and I think "I was expecting it right after 2021."

Other than that, I admire the sheer extravagance of a timeline which has most of Europe begging Germany to be more militaristic.

Scott, I may have missed it, but I don’t ever remember your stating a clear opinion on the practices of giving puberty blockers or surgery to minors seen as “transgender”, let alone the much longer essay I would have expected to have read from you by now on this. Can you link me to something on this, or explain why you abdicated on the issue?

I prefer to receive the Open Threads as emails, because I always read your (Scott's) notes in the Open Threads, even though I at most skim the comments and often not even that, and in general I only comment infrequently. on ACX. Furthermore, I prefer the emails compared to checking the site periodically or something.

I like getting the emails for the open threads iff you include content or prompts, such as this one. For posts that are just "Here is an open thread.", I could go without the email.

Where can I find the archives of the Ozymandias blog?

Japan's population is declining, but it is really "standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society" as their Prime Minister claimed?

I like the email for the threads. The time stamp tells me when I want to go through the thread (usually 6-8 hours after first post) to find interesting remarks that aren't yet stale. My inbox is my todo list, so a new thread sits there until the time is right or until I have time to look through it.

I have a receiver that is connected to my big TV and to five speakers arranged around my living room. If I am watching a movie, and there's a loud noise like an explosion, does my receiver momentarily need to consume more electricity compared to other periods where the movie's sounds are at normal volume?

A while ago I've read an article arguing companies with a positive impact on the world have a market advantage but can't find it anymore.

Arguments I remember: People work for less, cheaper PR, sympathetic politicians.

Does anyone know which article I'm talking about? It might have been by someone from Y Combinator.

Reason #39 why Substack's UI irritates me:

It will fill a comments section with helpful "N new comments" (actually replies, but I don't want people who search for that string to have to stop on this comment every time), which suggests this is an easy way for me to see the new comments. I click on it, and those comments appear... somewhere else in the thread, where I now have to hunt for them.

Hello to people interested in AI

I live with a little girl who will be two-years-old in six days. She is intensely interested in my cell phone. She rapidly scrolls through pages.

She's learning to play Woodoku where you slide block shapes up to fill in columns, rows, and 3x3 cells. At first she would slide up shapes, but they wouldn't stick because they overlapped existing shapes. Now mostly her shapes stick. I have never attempted to explain the "overlapping" concept to her. Pure experimentation on her part. Apparently she finds "sticking" to be rewarding.

She also adores "Masha and the Bear", but even this will hold her attention no more than 15-20 minutes. Then she starts randomly opening apps. She will make WhatsApp calls if I don't stop her. I took the WhatsApp icon off my screen, but she will find it in the full display of all apps.

If my phone goes to the unlock screen, she will enter digits randomly. After repeated failures, she will hand me the phone with an expectant expression.

All of this activity is self-motivated. If I need my phone and take it away, she becomes angry.

Now does any of this sound like any AI program you have ever heard of? Clearly she has an internal life independent of other living beings. She wants things.

Does any AI program have an internal life?

Does anyone imagine that more flops is going to produce one?

There's a common phenomena of anthropomorphization: People sometimes treat animals, even animals very far from human like crustaceans or jellyfish like humans. Other common targets are robots, fictional characters, computers, houses, cars etc.

There's a common phenomena of dehumanization. This mostly seem to target people who are foreign or different, but seems pretty arbitrary. Kids bully in school, slavery, antisemitism, the long history of mistreatment of the ill and handicapped etc. I have a friend that has a speech impediment but no mental deficiencies whatsoever, and another friend has confided in me that they have a hard time spending time with this friend since they instinctively treat my disabled friend as if they're stupid even as they logically know they're "normal".

There seems to be a conflict between these phenomena. What decides if we are going to anthropomorphize or dehumanize someone? I assume there are good books on the subject and I'd be happy for pointers.

Edit: Alice encounters an entity that somewhat resembles what Alice thinks of as the typical human. What factors decide if Alice is going to anthropomorphize or dehumanize this entity?

Well, well, and well. I've been working online for 28 years, and must say your success story is one of the more interesting one's I've learned about. My understanding so far is that you're making about $60,000 a MONTH from this blog. If I'm having a senior dementia moment, please correct me!

What further interests me is that your focus seems to be on what I'll call "intelligent nerd topics". While that's great for this reader, I've never thought of this niche as a big profit center. As a wannabe intelligent nerd typist, you've given me hope.

Should you wish to share any secrets of your success, or if you have already, I'm all ears.

TIL: In 2014, there was a three-way race for governor in Rhode Island, with the "Moderate Party" getting 20% of the vote. That's a lot higher than I would have expected.

do like Open Threads worry you’d never see them if the email didn’t arrive in your inbox

Yes

Which quantitative finance / econ blogs do people in this community like ? am trying to find things that are well researched, at the cutting edge and ahead of the usual thinking you get anywhere else

The president of Hamline University has been asked to step down for the firing of adjunct professor who displayed the artwork depicting Mohammed. The Board of Trustees say it should not have happened.

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/01/24/hamline-faculty-vote-71-12-to-ask-university-president-to-step-down-over-muhammad-painting-firing-controversy/

I wasn’t completely sure, but yeah, I guess he actually is a putz.

“I’m very skeptical of books. I don’t want to say no book is ever worth reading, but I actually do believe something pretty close to that. I think, if you wrote a book, you fucked up, and it should have been a six-paragraph blog post.” ~ Sam Bankman-Fried

You and I are definitely on the same page regarding AI. Some of those who see danger in AI, please chime in. Does the danger part come with consciousness? Or is consciousness not required to be dangerous.

Now this assumes a minimum of intelligence on the part of the humans. I hope no one is putting an AI in charge of launching an nuclear counterstrike!

A few years back I thought that asking Google a question was a weird idea. Now I do it regularly.

Not because Google "understands" the question, but because it uf

WTF, DALL-E? I ask you for parakeets terrorizing a square dance, you give me this: https://i.imgur.com/22cYeEN.png

Sometimes people read stuff like The Mind Illuminated and Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, and start all these practices, acting like spirituality is just this intellectual game with no stakes. It's not.

The Real and Final Enlightenment

https://squarecircle.substack.com/p/the-real-and-final-enlightenment

This thread is quiescent, but maybe someone will read my call for assistance:

Long ago (2007) , I created an account of the form pedro.dft@gmail.com. A few years larter, I started receiving email from a Brazilian cell phone operator regarding bills, etc. for a user with the email pedrodft@gmail.com or pedro.d.f.t@gmail.com, or some such variation. I assumed that user had made a mistake writing the dots in their address when submitting their data to their cell phone operator, and written my address instead of theirs. The only email I received that was meant for that user were the messages from CLARO (the Brazilian cell phone operator

Last week, I started receiving messages from Spanish “singles sites” meant for another (Spanish) user with the email pedrodft@gmail.com. I can confirm that this user has this email because one of those emails included a link allowing me to directly asses, without password, the account/profile of the Spanish personwho had signed up for them , where I could confirm that their address was written as pedrodft@gmail.com , rather than my pedro.df@gmail.com

Today, I learnt that sometime around 2011 Gmail started disregarding dots in email addresses, so that johnsmith@gmail.com and john.smith@gmail.com are considered the same account. Google claims that they do not create accounts of the form johnsmith@gmail.com if john.smith@gmail.com exists, but what I see in my account (thank God not my main account) shows that is not the case, since pedrodft@gmail.com was allowed to be created (and belongs to a Spanish 50-yr old dude) long after my pedro.dft@gmail.com was made.

Long story short: just like I used to receive email from CLARO (the Brazilian cell phone operator), I am now receiving messages from singles sites that are not meant for me. I received no other email meant from those other accounts, but I naturally fear that other people my be getting copies email meant for me. That account of mine is seldom used, and therefore I do not risk much, but this is nonetheless a major privacy and security breach. In support.google.com , there are many reports of these issues, but the high karma users who should help instead repeat the same tropes: "Gmail does not allow johnsmith@gmail to be created when john.smith@gmail.com exists. Whatever spam you receive and think is meant for someone else comes from mailing lists or services you have subscribed to and now forgot" , and even when people say they are receiving information regarding hotel reservations from people in different countries no support is forthcoming. I know ACX is read by many people from Silicon Valley. Does any one here have a possibility to bring this matter to the attention of someone at Alphabet awho will not dismiss users who report this huge security and privacy breach?

I will never see the open threads if I don't get an email. I use Feedly to get notified of new posts and never check the site by going directly there.