Hi, I remember Scot, or maybe one of the commenter’s mentioning that Charles Babbage had once written a letter to Alfred Tennyson, where he told Tennyson that a line in his poem, which said something to the effect of Every moment dies a man. every moment one is born, was incorrect, because if true it would mean that the population would never grow or shrink. He instead suggested something along the lines of every moment 1 and 1/16 is born. While this was not exactly true either, it was close enough for an approximation.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to be able to find this. Does anyone have any idea where it was mentioned, or whether I hallucinated the whole thing, or more likely read it somewhere else and got mixed up about where I saw it.
How reliable is ChatGPT as a translator? Pretty much, at least between languages that have a decent amount of text available online to train on. But on underrepresented languages it's quite terrible: it basically does not speak any major African language. I assembled a dataset using the OpenAI API, code here: https://gitlab.com/mariomario/lugha Post describing the methodology here: https://mariopasquato.substack.com/p/does-chatgpt-speak-your-language Any comments or questions are extremely welcome!
I've reached the proof of concept stage for the XWord construction software I am working on. Auto fill is working in most cases and completing a themed grid is becoming much easier. I am going to refine it a bit more and post my progress to my Substack in the next couple weeks.
When I do publish that post I hope to ask for for constructive criticism and advice from crossword enthusiasts, general language mavens and software developers regarding the techniques I am using.
In the meantime I've published a post with a couple pictures taken in Minnesota state park in the SE corner of the state. Some beautiful fall color from Friday afternoon.. It probably was the last sunny 70 degree day we will have in 2023 here so I am savoring the ones I did post along with the ones in my local folder. I didn't care to watch Game of Thrones but I am familiar with the phrase, "Winter is coming." I like the cold and and the snow myself but its beauty is definitely less colorful.
Someone very close to me is in the hospital and very sick. If any of you are praying type people, I would appreciate your prayers. Thoughts from the secular are appreciated too.
Another mistake the NY Times article on Manifest made is they said Aella's spicy live polling asked about how many psychedelic drugs we've taken. She actually asked about how many psychoactive drugs we've taken. The memory is very vivid for me because I was shocked to find I had taken the 3rd most despite only taking prescribed psychiatric medications. #winning
Would not recommend reading the Quintin Pope link at all, it's just a messy list of refutation that don't lead anywhere. To some extent I do agree with Eliezer with it being rather strawman too
I can't pick through all the bullshit, so I'm hoping that one of the smart and tuned-in folks here can help me with this:
What is (if any) the serious argument AGAINST anti-caste laws? Note-- I'm not looking for something that follows the general contours of 'well, blah blah blah ethnocentrism blah blah blah racism blah blah'. I mean an actually intellectual argument against these laws that I might feel compelled to contemplate and perhaps ultimately support.
This is a clever idea which has the virtue of likely being constitutional (because despite using the phrase "term limits" it would not actually boot any justices off of the Supreme Court):
What are your favorite musical instruments to play, people? Also, what are your favorite online blogs, communities, chats, groups, or whatever, that are about music and are of interest to musicians?
I only started reading ACX after the move from SSC. I have gone back and read the top posts from SSC but still felt like I was missing out on some of the old classics. I built a website to resurface old content from blogs by sending weekly emails. Let me know if you have any suggestions of other blogs / content you’d like to see, hope you find it helpful!
"astralcodexten.com" doesn't work. It needs the "www.". Or, on Firefox at least, it works if I have a slash at the end: "astralcodexten.com/" Maybe this is a known issue, I don't know
So, it would seem (I'm exercising a three-minute commenting rule on fast-moving global events) that Israel has agreed to open the Rafah crossing to some humanitarian supplies, in the context of Biden's visit. I assume the decision had been made in advance, but Biden's acquiescence to Israel's version of events regarding the hospital bombing as well as today's American veto of an UNSC resolution calling for a humanitarian pause helped ensure Israel wouldn't rescind it.
My understanding of Rafah is that Egypt and Hamas control it physically, but Israel retains a monitoring presence on the Egyptian side and (with Egyptian cooperation) is capable of closing it and vetoing the entry of people and cargo into the strip. It can, and does, back up its desires with violence, as with yesterday's bombing of the Saladin road leading up to the crossing. The EU monitoring mission for the crossing exists on paper but is largely shuttered at this point.
Egypt, for its part, doesn't want large numbers of Palestinians to flood out of Gaza into its territory. This is motivated primarily by fear of an internal humanitarian crisis (although there has been some furtive talk of aid for Egypt from the EU and Arab states to support Palestinian refugees if Egypt permits their entry). To a lesser extent the el-Sisi regime is motivated by internal political fears (many Palestinians would be sympathetic to what remains of the Muslim Brotherhood), as well as by the external Arab political principle of maintaining Gaza as a Palestinian entity and part of future independent Palestine. There is a world in which Israel occupies Gaza, makes it into more of a living hell than it already is, and most civilians simply leave for Egypt, which results in de facto Israeli annexation.
What worries me is that I don't see how supplies are meant to enter given the destruction of the roads and infrastructure on the Palestinian side of the crossing - and in the early reports I don't see any suggestion of an intra-Gaza safety corridor to get them over to the strip's north, where humanitarian conditions are worst.
The hospital explosion in Gaza is an example of how the media reports on controversy to the exclusion off factual news. Undoubtedly, missiles fired from Israel's side have killed hundreds of civilians already - but what gets the headlines is an instance where it's not entirely clear what happened. The result is to create an environment where the public lets confirmation bias determine their beliefs, as they are only presented with 50% (weightless) Bayesian updates. Now that social media plays a large part in deciding what is communicated, we can see that it is not due to any kind of conspiracy. Content consumers are more interested in engaging in endless debates without sufficient information to reach a conclusion than they are in straightforward facts with one possible interpretation: even at the cost of knowing anything. I first noticed this in the police violence reporting around the time of George Floyd where cases that lead to arguments got more collective air time than cases where even those who generally supported the police considered unacceptable.
I just read that some local organizations in St. Louis, with the support of that city's mayor, are putting together resources to bring Central/South American migrants there from Chicago and try to get them to settle in St. Louis. (STL is only a 5-hour bus ride from Chicago which is why they are targeting that location as people source rather than Texas or Florida or NYC.)
This follows up a similar effort a few years ago which resettled 2,000 Afghani asylum seekers who have (according to the article I read) "found jobs and started businesses and cultural organizations." That program in turn was inspired by a wave of Bosnian-war refugees settling in STL starting in the 1990s (as of 2013 that city had 70,000 residents of Bosnian heritage which is the largest such community in the country).
That makes sense and I have wondered why more of the US's declining but still sizeable cities/counties haven't pursued it. Places like STL which were once leading urban areas [4th-largest city in the US in 1950, 58th-largest now] and are still sizeable clusters of restorable urban housing stock plus local demand for unskilled and semi-skilled workers? Where a bunch of highly-motivated people could get a fresh community going and turn around some urban decay and/or a stagnant older suburb.
Seems like there are a dozen or more mid-to-large "rust belt" metros where that approach would be sensible.
Yes, I was reflecting on Melvin’s comment and I don’t know which word is more offensive as a whole. But ISTM they offend *differently*: ‘fucking’ offends against purity/refinement, where ‘retarded’ offends mainly against kindness.
In which zionist commenters who have spent the past week outraged that anyone could possibly condone the actions of Hamas explain why Israel bombing a hospital and murdering hundreds of peope is perfectly okay
1) On a personal level, having a happy, productive, meaningful life requires dissolving attachments to past injustices committed against you. (Move on. Stop obsessing about the past Bad Thing, and go find some new Good Things in your life.)
2) This is exploitable by hostile agents.
3) This is exploitable in ways which harm reproductive fitness, providing a opportunity for organisms to evolve mechanisms to prevent it from happening.
Book Review: the first thirty pages of The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
I picked up this book from one of those free bookshelves outside someone's house, and read the first twenty or thirty pages of it over lunch.
This book is about 2005. It doesn't know it's about 2005, it thinks it's about globalisation and how the jobs of middle class westerners will soon be taken by outsourcees in India. But it's really about 2005 and the passage of time and how the concerns of the past slowly blend into the concerns of the present without you really noticing. The book seems dated, as any eighteen year old book about the near future really should, but since 2005 still feels like the "early present" rather than the past, it's disconcerting. Nowadays of course things still get outsourced to India but not to any greater extent than in 2005, and the sorts of jobs he was concerned would soon be outsourced to India are things that are instead being replaced with AI.
The other very 2005 thing is the preoccupation with Islamic terrorism, something we were all preoccupied with for years, then it slowly receded, then it receded some more, and then we all forgot we were ever concerned with it, and then last week it came back and soon it will probably be 2005 again.
Things change over the years. Sometimes we notice them changing and read and write articles about "hey, this thing is changing, have you noticed?" Other times they change just as fast, but nobody bothers to point them out as they change, and you only realise they've changed when you read an old book and feel disoriented. This book is an interesting time capsule of those second sort of thing.
My situation has become very problematic, and I do not know what to do. I am writing this wondering if anyone might have a good idea.
I'm diagnosed with autism, OCD, and bipolar ("type un-specified"). Somehow, whether due to past social mishaps or the underdeveloped emotional circuitry, I have pretty strong rejection sensitivity and basically shut down whenever someone I respect says something mean to me or that I do not know how to interpret, which happens every 3 months. In addition, probably owing to the obsessive-compulsiveness, I have strong limerent tendencies, and have been stuck in one "basin of attraction" from highschool for about two years, having extremely intense recurrent thoughts on a daily or hourly basis. My mind often feels completely incoherent, and I do not know what is happening. Other times it feels like it is running four thoughts in parallel. This became too much for me to operate with, so in September, I stopped being able to do so. Medication and therapy are not helping, and probably will not yield much effect size in the time they need to. I think I am going to be removed from my college (I am a first year student, technically enrolled through a high school program, so if I fail, I will not graduate high school either). What can I do to start operating again? Long term, I will do anything in the bounds of sane and ethical conduct, but I can only do so much right now. I will do my best to implement anything sane suggested, and if I reach functional behavior again, I promise to do everything to reduce suffering.
Re: Gaza. I would suggest that anyone who lives in a country that can positively influence the situation write to their representatives. Here is approximately what I sent if it helps:
I appreciated your recent statement committing to help the civilians of Israel and Gaza. However, I am concerned the food, water and medicine is being blocked by the Israeli government. This is unacceptable behavior of any country, much less an ally. Make sure aid can get in and people can get out, before it is too late.
Random funny/sad observation: I was watching a Youtube of a Model A Ford owner starting his car. One retro lever was referred to as accelerating or retarding the spark-plug timing.
Whenever the driver said something about the spark timing being retarded, the close-caption algorithm simply excised the (apparently canceled) word.
What's the game theory solution to Israel-Palestine conflict? Assumed goals could be least harm for most people, *my side winning (whichever side), or other goals.
Anyone else find it bizarrely coincidental that the side that lost the US Civil War are the biggest advocates of the 2A? Has anyone written on this seeming connection?
Given how much the gov. has funded psychology research, is there any connection between their research and the replication crisis? IOW, did the CIA* fund a bunch of fake research?
Absolute hilarity: The 'banned books' subreddit on reddit has...banned "anti-semitic" books from the subreddit. Really goes to show the absurdity of the left-wing "anti-censorship" discourse. Books that are literally illegal in many countries aren't "banned books", but books removed from school curricula and libraries (but can literally be purchased from amazon in 30 seconds) are. Also, of course, this only applies to left-wing books - if a blue state governer banned a teacher from teaching from 'The Bell Curve', this would be a ban of misinformation and hate speech, not a book ban.
I'm thinking about taking creatine supplements, not to help me get ripped, but to combat the loss of muscle that begins in middle age. (I already exercise. But if creatine gives some added benefit I'm all for it.) Does anyone here do that or have info about its efficacy?
The Brazilian flag says Ordem e Progresso. Order and Progress. Isn't that a funny, no, absolutely insane thing to put on your flag? That's a civil war in 3 words, so much blood has been spilled between the two. So can the tensions and contradictions inherent in the two be solved? I say they can:
I just wanted to take a moment to share my newsletter, Interessant3. Every week, I curate and delve into three intriguing topics that invite thought and discussion.
In the latest edition, I shared a fascinating paper on "surf localism" that looks at how community-driven norms, rather than state interventions, are shaping the surf culture along the European Atlantic coast.
I also linked the Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) Reading List from Balliol College, Oxford—a goldmine for anyone interested in these connected disciplines that inform our society.
Lastly, I shared a snapshot of the contentious and ever-evolving climate debate, with Steven Koonin's meticulous response to a "fact check" of a review of his book "Unsettled." It offers a balanced and nuanced understanding of both the author's and the critic's views.
If you're interested in a weekly dose of thought-provoking topics, feel free to subscribe to Interessant3. I'd love to have you in this growing community of curious minds!
I read The Hour I First Believed when it came out, and while Scott wrote it with a semi ironic tone, it crystalized a handful of thoughts I had already been putting together.
A whole host of stuff falls out of this. Eternal life as somewhere in the universe your process will be picked up even if you die locally. Many magical practices like summoning and possession look like simulating other entities that exist in other places in the universe. Spiritual action in our universe can be affected by our simulators.
I'm thinking about writing a book about a spirituality based in Tegmarkianism, and I'm looking for like-minded people to discuss this with.
In an earlier interation of existence some 20 years ago I wrote a short book about the Arab-Israeli conflict (which has subsequently been used by others to explain Israel's perspective) and lectured around the world in schools, synagogues, radio and the like.
Since then I've lived in Arab countries and developed a broader view.
I want to speak to an audience again. I think that I can have conversations and perhaps influence the outcome in a positive way.
Most of what I did in the past was live gatherings with anywhere between 15 and 700 people. In those scenarios I primarily have a conversation with the audience through the means of Q & A. it's rational, friendly, honest and collaborative.
And I can use your help.
I have a fundamental disagreement with the term "Severe ADHD" because it claims - flasely - that people like myself just need to accept that the world is made for people with "better" execution function and that I had best suffer and try ad infinitum until I can get jump over a few "obstacles" in the hope of succeeding.
Nearing 50 I have found that, for myself at least, nothing has worked.
When I run with my strengths things go very well until I hit some roadblock but when I attempt to "overcome" my weaknesses I don't get anywhere at all. So I am not trying to change.
Twenty years ago my attempts to share my knowledge and heart (more as a moderator than a "teacher" per se) I was never able to schedule a single venue. By happenstance two guys overheard a conversation I was having and arranged venues for me all over South Africa.
In fact, every single venue was arranged by other people.
The obvious problem with that is that the organizations often had some propaganda point or other that they wanted me to stick to which I would not do. I'm a terrible salesman Either I am honest or I'm useless.
So at this time the distance I have been able to get on my own had been a handful of substack signups and an equally tiny handful of youtube followes and whatsapp group participants.
My biography piques the interest and while I've received many critiques I have never been called boring.
So, in order to remain honest/independent without a party line, and without attempting to use the parts of the brain I lack to figure out how to contact podcasts (or whatever) on my own, I'm letting you know these few things about me and asking for your help in participating in live or video venues which already have an audience.
I have been an intense explorer and serious rabbi for many years and my main interest at this time is in resolving the issues that we all have as human individuals through honest - live - communication.
I can't successfully convey the intricacies in a comment (or even in any sized block of text) but I have a very hopeful way forward.
If you have a venue or a personal connection to someone who does and you're interested in potentially having me on I would love to answer what questions you might have so that you could make a decision.
Please keep in mind my "severe adhd". Genuinely, all I can do is accept invitations. I know that people more neuro-normative in this regard may find that to be hard to grok but it's the reality.
Advice to call X, Y, Z would thus be wasted but once you've made an introduction for me with X, Y, Z I would be happy to call them.
The Rationalist revival has put wind into the sails of start-ups like Manifold Markets, which was initially funded by a grant program run by Astral Codex Ten, a Rationalist blog that has promoted prediction markets. (It also received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund, the philanthropic arm of the bankrupt crypto exchange whose founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is a fan of prediction markets.)" Given the paragraph above, who received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund?
ChatGPT
Manifold Markets received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund.
Does anyone else refuse to subscribe to the NY Times because of what they did to Scott? (Not this incident; the previous one.) I can't stand the thought of enriching them, but maybe I'm being ridiculous.
I have been reflecting on the article about whether children are better at language acquisition because the findings (that people in their late teens are as good as babies and children at learning, and adults aren't much worse) definitely violated my priors. I used to teach English as a second language, and the findings did not jibe with what I saw.
I think it's a problem that the analysis was based on written samples, not speech. In my English classes, there were people who could write well through dedicated study, but who struggled to speak well. And there were people who could speak well, but had bad written grammar.
Written language is not something humans evolved to do, and so we should not expect children to have an in-built advantage at it. But humans did evolve for spoken language, so it would make sense if kids are born more ready to tackle this. Much, perhaps most, of spoken language is not conveyed on the page, as anyone knows who has got into a twitter fight. Scott mentioned this issue, saying maybe kids learn accents better. But I think "accent" underplays what it means to be fully competent at a spoken language.
I suggest that written language better resembles math, which is also not built in. Spoken language is more like walking, something kids evolved to learn, so we should expect a stronger critical period. Open to other thoughts.
Kind of vague, but does anyone have general job-seeking advice? I'm a recent graduate with a cognitive science degree struggling to land roles in software development/data analysis. My major left me with a good deal of programming skills, particularly dealing with data scraping and statistical analysis, but I'm having a difficult time marketing myself. I'm continuing to create and add side projects to my resume in the meantime. It's possible the job market is just volatile right now, but the whole thing is demoralizing.
I've never owned a powerful computer, but I'm thinking of getting a good gaming PC that won't become obsolete until 2030. It must be able to support a new game like Starfield on full graphics, and I also must be able to plug a VR headset into it to play today's best VR games on full graphics and without lag.
What's the minimum I need to buy now to meet those requirements?
EDIT: When I wrote "won't become obsolete by 2030," I meant to imply it would still be able to play the mid-tier games of 2030, NOT that it would be able to play the best games of 2030 on maxed out graphics.
Anybody have any thoughts on transactional analysis? I’m finally diving into it.
My first impression is that it tries to do a little too much, as most of these grand theories do. For example, in Scripts People Live, the author is very insistent that people are born okay and are taught by their environment that they are not Ok. (Contrary to Im Ok, You’re Ok, which states the opposite.)
The author makes very strong statements to the affect that schizophrenia and similar ailments are curable (making no mention of genetics or genetic predispositions). I have no relevant background in these topics, but I don’t believe most experts would agree with that viewpoint.
That said, I love the general approach to therapy - collaborative, open, and with the focus of every session on workings towards finding answers to the presenting problems.
I also find the notion of scripts extremely compelling. Again, they seem to take it a little too far - inventing complex jargon and formulas, insisting on somatic components to scripts, etc. but I’m finding it very interesting and occasionally insightful.
Thoughts? Recommendations for books/essays to read, both for and against?
One thing that genuinely puzzles me is the purpose of commenters who come here to drill extremely one-sided statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Using the commenter M. Khan as an example (and I asked with no response): What is the point of repeatedly saying that Hamas is never wrong and Israel is always wrong? What is it that supposed to accomplish? I assume he really does want to help Palestinians; there is no conceivable way in which this is useful for advancing his goal. If anything, it makes it a tiny bit worse...
After reading the new Musk biography I went and read the Jobs biography by Isaacson, and am currently half-way through the FTX book by Michael Lewis. One thing that all 3 books have in common is they all stress the insane work hours at Apple/Tesla/SpaceX/FTX. Apparently working 12+ hours for 6-7 days a week wasn't uncommon at any of these places. It made me curious how much other people in start-ups/tech work. I've worked at start-ups before, and currently work at a company that operates somewhat like a start-up. It's not uncommon to work above 40-hours a week or to do 2-3 hours of work on a weekend every now and then, but I've never encountered people regularly working 12+ hours. I'd be curious in hearing anyone's thoughts/experiences on this
Approximately 23 million people in the US are government employees (about 16% of the total workforce), mostly at the state and local level. This is obviously a huge number of people both numerically and as a percent. A further ~10% of the entire US workforce works for NGOs. 80% of all NGO revenues come from government grants - which moves the total number of government paid jobs to about 24-25%.
I started noticing the effects of government paid jobs a few years ago, having somehow not noticed for most of my life. Particularly about NGOs, and how large they collectively were. This workforce is obviously going to be much more responsive to government whims and changing perceptions. They will also tend to be college educated, inflating the numbers of people going to college - another 2.x% of all US employees are at colleges and universities.
My gut reaction is that this part of the workforce is highly incentivized to support Democrats and Democratic positions. Even Republicans and independents working for the government would have reason to support higher taxes and more things under government control, even if not all Democrat positions. It feels a bit "chicken or egg" but this also seems like a natural scenario for college-educated left-leaning people to have a place to go when private industry doesn't need so many of them as are graduating. Just go to an NGO. Having about 1/4 of all US jobs being non-productive (purely in the sense of not producing products or services that are sold) would have a significant warping effect on lots of economic perspectives and metrics.
Are there other ways to read this? From a partisan perspective it feels like a handout to Democrats on multiple levels, though I'm sure that's not super fair for me to say.
"Holly Elmore and PauseAI are holding pro-pause protests October 21 in eight cities around the world, including San Francisco."
Meanwhile, November 14th-17th in Seattle, Microsoft are holding a jamboree in meatspace and online about "Experience AI transformation in action at Microsoft Ignite":
Does PauseAI have anything on their Very Significant And Important Protest, Ya? page about this? Doesn't look like it. Are they attending? No idea. Are they in contact with Microsoft et al. about these kinds of pauses? I sure hope they are, but I have no idea.
What do I want to indicate by the contrasting events? That money trumps principles every time, and so long as AI is being held out as the new $$$$$$$ machine for everyone, especially during a period of tech slow-down for the big companies, I think earnest appeals about "oh please please please turn off your money-maker" are going nowhere. Protest in your little home fields all you like, kids, but unless you're up there onstage with Satya, it just means a bunch of college students get to take the day off for a nice walk in the city.
"Despite their well-funded claims that they “deserve” to have more influence over your life than you have over theirs, the powerful, believe it or not, are lying....
"Last week I mentioned Dr. Scott Siskind / SlateStarCodex / ACX . He is an intelligent and good person. Or at least as intelligent and good as a person can be. And apparently the New York Times is still smarting from his little upstart rebellion a few years back when he embarrassed them by making a fuss just because they were planning to doxx him for the lulz...
"It took me 47 years, but 24 hours ago I realized that Trotsky was right. You and I may not be interested in mud wrestling assholes but the mud wrestling assholes are interested in us. Playing by the rules of water polo against the Einsatzgruppen will leave you in a ditch under 30,000 other bodies...
"I've got your back and I'm sure my friends feel the same way. It will be fun to take down bullies. Their time has come."
I went to listen to a talk by Connor Leahy for an article I am writing on the subject. Basically, Conjecture and FLI are doing a series of talks on AI X-risk before the UK summit in November. One thing that struck me was his answer to the following question:
I asked him, "If you believe that the problem we are facing is not a technical problem but a coordination one, what are some people you would point towards as thought leaders in the field of coordination at scale?" His answer was "Don't read, try to actually coordinate, start a company, a think tank, an institution" He struck me as very practically-oriented, less interested in debating and more interesting in doing stuff and organizing people. He is involved in a lot of debates online and it might seem like debating is his main thing but that might be just the medium shaping the message. Would love to hear some more thoughts about Connor from other who have met him, or who have listened to him
Assume the greatest writer in the English language exists because great writers exist in a well-ordered set, and that some higher authority knows this set backwards and forwards. This higher authority is not biased; it simply knows objectively who the greatest writer is.
You win a billion dollars if you can guess who the greatest writer in the English language is according to this higher authority. Who do you guess?
I read an interview with a Hisbollah officer, and he had an interesting take on the Hamas attack on Israel.
He believes that Hamas didn't expect their attack to go so well, and that it essentially spiraled out of control. That they sent a lot of different groups with different methods, and the expected outcome would be that a few would get through, get ~10km into Israeli territory, kill a few Israeli and capture a handful of hostages. Then Israel would fire a few rockets as retaliation, kill a few people and go back to business. That would be a great outcome for Hamas because hostages have been extremely valuable in the past.
But then resistance was a lot weaker than Hamas expected. Lots of groups broke through and they went 20km, then 50km, without meeting any resistance from the Israeli army. Essentially, the whole thing got out of control.
It was not a high Hisbollah officer, but he suggested that higher Hisbollah ranks knew in advance that something would come from Hamas, but were terrified when they realized the extent of the attack.
What is your take on this? It would explain a lot of things surprisingly well for me. On the other hand, I am not sure whether I can square it with the massive number of rockets that Hamas fired during their attack.
The main point made in the above is that American military power is no longer a deterrent, due to the decline in US military industry as well as perceived political division in America.
Smith alleges that the Hamas attack is part of the Russia-China-Iranian axis emboldened by American weakness. He says the US is not ready for a war with China.
My question is why are we gearing for a war with China over Taiwan? It strikes me as stupid to fight such a big war over Taiwan. But I get the impression the real reason we should fight China over Taiwan is that if we don't it signals that the Pax America is really, really done. After which China won't have any reason not to take over every country save Australia to its south. China may also lay claim to all those Road & Belt initiatives it suckered African countries to grow indebted to.
Combine that with Russia allying with China and this could get ugly.
I have been working as a software developer for a little bit now, and I'm finding that the main factor for how productive I can be is how long I can focus for. My productivity is a lot less related to how many hours I can work for than it is to if I feel well rested and able to focus. I'm sure that plenty of other people here have this same experience, so I'm wondering what you guys do about it?
It's hard to appreciate poetry in a language one doesn't know, so this is my attempt to make Italian poetry more easily enjoyable to English speakers. https://italianpoetry.it
I basically implemented what I would like to have when I listen to songs or poems in a language I don't speak: karaoke-like, word by word, literal translation, with notes about word usage and some context when needed.
And some stuff about the language itself --- the part needed for the poems, at least.
> I think a natural reading of this sentence is that Astral Codex Ten received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund. Some people who read the article said they understood it this way and thought I took FTX money. I didn’t. The article meant to say that Manifold did.
> I appreciate NYT moving from its previous policy of blatant and deliberate falsehoods about me, to a newer, kinder policy of accidental and ambiguous falsehoods about me. That’s the first step towards not publishing any falsehoods about me at all!
In my reading, the NYT sentence is ambiguous enough that it's reasonable for you to issue a clarifying statement, but the reading you disclaim is not the most natural reading of their sentence, and the most natural reading is in fact what they meant to say. (There's a strong parallelism between "Manifold was funded by ACX" and "Manifold was 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 funded by FTX".) So I'm not inclined to slam the NYT for this.
I suppose recent events have once and for all disproven the 'dumb college kids' trope, the theory that college kids only believe what they believe because they are naive or uninformed. They just saw with their own eyes videos of the most horrific acts of evil imaginable, and then proceeded to publicly celebrate it in the most explicit terms. Let's now acknowledge that this is not just naiveté, this is pure, incurable evil that can only be met with one response.
Does anyone have any recommendations for obscure science fiction? I recently read everything by qntm (aka Sam Hughes) and am now hooked on sci-fi, especially stuff that will change the way I think about the world/life/technology/etc. I found this great list: noahpinion.blog/p/my-sci-fi-novel-recommendations but I'm convinced the best authors are probably writing in relative obscurity on some unknown corner of the internet like qntm.
So who are some of your favorite lesser known or just underrated authors, who I probably wouldn't know about otherwise? And can you share one of your favorite passages as a sample?
p.s. First time commenting here, I just want to say thanks to everyone who comments; I love reading all your brilliant ideas/observations :)
A common technique of propagandists is to take terms that have been loaded with emotional, political, and historical context from one situation and apply them to another, in an attempt to smuggle in all the related baggage of those terms regardless of whether it actually applies in the new situation.
The Palestinian mass slaughter of Israeli civilians is often justified in this manner. It's not exactly easy to justify mass killings of unarmed people at a rave with the use of simple, descriptive, non-emotionally loaded language. "Well you see, the Israelis currently have military ships out in the water that prevent goods from coming in from Iran, to reduce the amount of bombs, rockets, and weapons that can get into Gaza. And they also built a big fence around their national border. Therefore, mass slaughter of any of them is justified." But it is easy to say "Apartheid. Therefore, mass slaughter of any of them is justified."
More generally, you have a phenomenon where just compiling the list of reasons given for why Israel constitutes an "apartheid regime" (or any other Bad Word), and then doing a find-and-replace on the bad word, pasting in the list of purported offenses committed instead, leaves the arguments in favor of the Palestinian massacres quite obviously baseless. When you can no longer smuggle in all the historical context that doesn't apply in the new situation, it becomes clear that you're justifying genocide on the basis of the existence of a border fence.
This also applies to terms like "ethnic cleansing" - it's hard to explain why "moving people to a better spot than they are currently in, where their lives will be objectively better than if they stay put" is the worst, most evil possible thing, but you can just say "ethnic cleansing" to try to imply that this must also necessarily come with mass killings, similar to the mass killings present alongside some historical instances of moving people. Or one of the worst offenders, using "genocide" to describe things like "splitting up members of a group" or "changing the culture of a group" as if they were equivalent to the mass killing of that group.
I sometimes take courses or do study programs. Mostly on science and engineering topics. I feel like a lot of people here either have similar interests or might be doing something similar. Is anyone interested in getting a ready/study group together? The idea would be to keep it light enough as a time commitment that full time working professionals and students could do it on the side for self-improvement.
DALL-E 3 does better overall. It still has trouble with the stained glass one and the llama with the bell on its tail (it keep putting the bell in its mouth), but it does a better job with the other 3 prompts. The images are higher quality, making it more clear it got all the elements right. Here are the images I think it got right: https://imgur.com/a/qMvOEPu
I read the NYT article until I got to "a sticker of a shoggoth, an artificial intelligence meme based on a science fiction character".
While "character" is debatable, I think the appropriate genre here is "horror", or perhaps "fantasy" at the most general. The story in question is a bit more sci-fi than usual for Lovecraft, yeah. But calling it "a science fiction character" is missing the point, which would be solved by calling it "a character from a horror story".
I'm about 1/3 of the way through Lewis's book on SBF, and also listening to his podcast about the trial. I expect others are are accessing one or both of these sources as well. I'm interested in other people's takes on SBF & the collapse of his business.
Idle speculation about the impact of the current iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Western politics: It seems like the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions of the left-liberal coalition have an intractable disagreement and are poised to tear the coalition apart over it. As the war goes on, Palestine-partisans will have plenty of Palestinian suffering to complain about, but I expect the horrors of the 10/7 attacks to remain vivid enough in the minds Israel-partisans that they will be in no mood to see Israelis cast in the role of settler-colonial oppressor. And if Jewish and other Israel-partisan donors start withholding money from organizations that are critical of Israel, I would expect pro-Palestinian leftists take that as further confirmation that Jews are part of the privileged white oppressor hegemon.
But I foresee a possible upside to all this internal political strife: Perhaps they will eventually tire of fighting and arrive at a renewed appreciation for tolerance and liberal discourse norms as a result, following the dynamic Scott described in section III of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization. Already some universities have announced that they no longer want to issue official statements about each new Current Thing, and the president of Harvard posted a video about the importance of free speech after Harvard took a lot of heat over a bunch of student organizations cosigning a statement saying the violence was entirely Israel's fault.
For now, I'm suspicious that this newfound appreciation for free speech and institutional neutrality is just a strategic retreat and won't extend to greater tolerance for opinions which are broadly unpopular on the Left, but like I said, the Israel-Palestine issue seems to be a deep and irreconcilable division within the Left, so if the internal fight about it is long and bruising enough, maybe that will eventually open up space for other kinds of heterodoxy.
I listened to Scott's Manifest 2023 interview, and someone mentioned that getting Destiny involved resulted in a massive spike in usage. Has anyone within the prediction markets scene considered talking with other Destiny-adjacent political commentators like Hasan Piker (hasanabi), Ian Kochinski (vaush), David Pakman, and Cenk Uygur?
On the topic of predictions, I found out that Fox News has a feature called America Predicts [0]. Any thoughts? They seem to be the first major publication to start experimenting with this sort of thing. For example: "Will a member of Congress be caught giving a speech generated by AI by Dec. 31?" is currently sitting at a 71% chance.
Australia has just rejected (by a 60 to 40% margin) a proposal to create an indigenous advisory body in the constitution. I'm curious about the instinctive reactions of people from other countries to this. And does any other country have something like this already, and how does it operate in practice?
It seems weird that there's an apparent link between menstruation cycles and the moon. What is going on there?
A lot of articles say it's a myth, but they're referring to the menstral cycle starting at a particular time in the lunar cycle (eg ovulation occurring at the full moon). Which it doesn't. Or they point out that people's cycles vary, often between 24 and 38 days. (See: https://helloclue.com/articles/cycle-a-z/myth-moon-phases-menstruation)
What is true, however, is that the global average menstrual cycle length is almost exactly the same as the lunar cycle length (29 vs 29.5 days). That doesn't seem like a coincidence.
The circadian rhythm is another biological cycle driven by a heavenly body. It's triggered by light, and I would guess that would be the driver behind a moon-menstruation link too (mostly because I'm not sure what else it could be... gravity?).
When humans are deprived sunlight (eg, when they're blind), they develop circadian rhythm disorders - their internal clocks drift out of sync so that their sleep/wake cycles are shorter or longer and not necessarily in sync with daylight hours.
Could it be that menstrual cycles are naturally in sync with the moon, but have drifted apart because we're all inside at night now? Has anyone studied the menstral cycles of women more exposed to the night sky?
Is there any good ideas as to a reason for the two to be linked? My best (incomplete) guess would be that it's safer to menstruate when it's dark/not dark because of predators for some reason. Or it's a better time to have sex. I dunno.
I threw together a simple webpage to replace sequential bargaining with a one-shot system of each person entering a price and then getting a number. I don't think it leads to a more efficient result in the economic sense of the term, but I doubt it leads to a worse one either. I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
Over the weekend I watched the Geoguessr world cup, an esport where competitors try to locate a location from a google maps streetview image as quickly as possible. I'd recommend watching the VOD, it's good fun https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1950736728, but through it I stumbled across some spreadsheets with information on competitive play.
I found this extremely interesting, especially the elementary clues and landscape guides. It's basically an encyclopedia of the world from the very specific perspective of trying to find out where an image was taken as quickly as possible. It's full of fun facts such as "France sometimes features dashes side (road) lines and the middle dashed lines are usually denser/closer together than in most other European countries" and "The eucalypti in Northern Territories look different from the rest of Australia. They are shorter, have thinner trunks and are often black on the bottom from the wildfires". Some are even sourced, including a report on Hazelnut yields to help pin down where in northern Turkey you are.
Hi, I remember Scot, or maybe one of the commenter’s mentioning that Charles Babbage had once written a letter to Alfred Tennyson, where he told Tennyson that a line in his poem, which said something to the effect of Every moment dies a man. every moment one is born, was incorrect, because if true it would mean that the population would never grow or shrink. He instead suggested something along the lines of every moment 1 and 1/16 is born. While this was not exactly true either, it was close enough for an approximation.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to be able to find this. Does anyone have any idea where it was mentioned, or whether I hallucinated the whole thing, or more likely read it somewhere else and got mixed up about where I saw it.
How reliable is ChatGPT as a translator? Pretty much, at least between languages that have a decent amount of text available online to train on. But on underrepresented languages it's quite terrible: it basically does not speak any major African language. I assembled a dataset using the OpenAI API, code here: https://gitlab.com/mariomario/lugha Post describing the methodology here: https://mariopasquato.substack.com/p/does-chatgpt-speak-your-language Any comments or questions are extremely welcome!
I've reached the proof of concept stage for the XWord construction software I am working on. Auto fill is working in most cases and completing a themed grid is becoming much easier. I am going to refine it a bit more and post my progress to my Substack in the next couple weeks.
When I do publish that post I hope to ask for for constructive criticism and advice from crossword enthusiasts, general language mavens and software developers regarding the techniques I am using.
In the meantime I've published a post with a couple pictures taken in Minnesota state park in the SE corner of the state. Some beautiful fall color from Friday afternoon.. It probably was the last sunny 70 degree day we will have in 2023 here so I am savoring the ones I did post along with the ones in my local folder. I didn't care to watch Game of Thrones but I am familiar with the phrase, "Winter is coming." I like the cold and and the snow myself but its beauty is definitely less colorful.
https://gunflint.substack.com/p/e67c516f-905d-4a4f-ab65-23ccfc03e50b
Someone very close to me is in the hospital and very sick. If any of you are praying type people, I would appreciate your prayers. Thoughts from the secular are appreciated too.
Another mistake the NY Times article on Manifest made is they said Aella's spicy live polling asked about how many psychedelic drugs we've taken. She actually asked about how many psychoactive drugs we've taken. The memory is very vivid for me because I was shocked to find I had taken the 3rd most despite only taking prescribed psychiatric medications. #winning
Would not recommend reading the Quintin Pope link at all, it's just a messy list of refutation that don't lead anywhere. To some extent I do agree with Eliezer with it being rather strawman too
I can't pick through all the bullshit, so I'm hoping that one of the smart and tuned-in folks here can help me with this:
What is (if any) the serious argument AGAINST anti-caste laws? Note-- I'm not looking for something that follows the general contours of 'well, blah blah blah ethnocentrism blah blah blah racism blah blah'. I mean an actually intellectual argument against these laws that I might feel compelled to contemplate and perhaps ultimately support.
This is a clever idea which has the virtue of likely being constitutional (because despite using the phrase "term limits" it would not actually boot any justices off of the Supreme Court):
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/whitehouse-booker-blumenthal-padilla-introduce-new-supreme-court-term-limits-bill
Whether it has any chance of passage in Congress now or ever, I've no idea. But I'd vote for it.
What are your favorite musical instruments to play, people? Also, what are your favorite online blogs, communities, chats, groups, or whatever, that are about music and are of interest to musicians?
I only started reading ACX after the move from SSC. I have gone back and read the top posts from SSC but still felt like I was missing out on some of the old classics. I built a website to resurface old content from blogs by sending weekly emails. Let me know if you have any suggestions of other blogs / content you’d like to see, hope you find it helpful!
https://www.evergreenessays.com/
"astralcodexten.com" doesn't work. It needs the "www.". Or, on Firefox at least, it works if I have a slash at the end: "astralcodexten.com/" Maybe this is a known issue, I don't know
So, it would seem (I'm exercising a three-minute commenting rule on fast-moving global events) that Israel has agreed to open the Rafah crossing to some humanitarian supplies, in the context of Biden's visit. I assume the decision had been made in advance, but Biden's acquiescence to Israel's version of events regarding the hospital bombing as well as today's American veto of an UNSC resolution calling for a humanitarian pause helped ensure Israel wouldn't rescind it.
My understanding of Rafah is that Egypt and Hamas control it physically, but Israel retains a monitoring presence on the Egyptian side and (with Egyptian cooperation) is capable of closing it and vetoing the entry of people and cargo into the strip. It can, and does, back up its desires with violence, as with yesterday's bombing of the Saladin road leading up to the crossing. The EU monitoring mission for the crossing exists on paper but is largely shuttered at this point.
Egypt, for its part, doesn't want large numbers of Palestinians to flood out of Gaza into its territory. This is motivated primarily by fear of an internal humanitarian crisis (although there has been some furtive talk of aid for Egypt from the EU and Arab states to support Palestinian refugees if Egypt permits their entry). To a lesser extent the el-Sisi regime is motivated by internal political fears (many Palestinians would be sympathetic to what remains of the Muslim Brotherhood), as well as by the external Arab political principle of maintaining Gaza as a Palestinian entity and part of future independent Palestine. There is a world in which Israel occupies Gaza, makes it into more of a living hell than it already is, and most civilians simply leave for Egypt, which results in de facto Israeli annexation.
What worries me is that I don't see how supplies are meant to enter given the destruction of the roads and infrastructure on the Palestinian side of the crossing - and in the early reports I don't see any suggestion of an intra-Gaza safety corridor to get them over to the strip's north, where humanitarian conditions are worst.
The hospital explosion in Gaza is an example of how the media reports on controversy to the exclusion off factual news. Undoubtedly, missiles fired from Israel's side have killed hundreds of civilians already - but what gets the headlines is an instance where it's not entirely clear what happened. The result is to create an environment where the public lets confirmation bias determine their beliefs, as they are only presented with 50% (weightless) Bayesian updates. Now that social media plays a large part in deciding what is communicated, we can see that it is not due to any kind of conspiracy. Content consumers are more interested in engaging in endless debates without sufficient information to reach a conclusion than they are in straightforward facts with one possible interpretation: even at the cost of knowing anything. I first noticed this in the police violence reporting around the time of George Floyd where cases that lead to arguments got more collective air time than cases where even those who generally supported the police considered unacceptable.
I just read that some local organizations in St. Louis, with the support of that city's mayor, are putting together resources to bring Central/South American migrants there from Chicago and try to get them to settle in St. Louis. (STL is only a 5-hour bus ride from Chicago which is why they are targeting that location as people source rather than Texas or Florida or NYC.)
This follows up a similar effort a few years ago which resettled 2,000 Afghani asylum seekers who have (according to the article I read) "found jobs and started businesses and cultural organizations." That program in turn was inspired by a wave of Bosnian-war refugees settling in STL starting in the 1990s (as of 2013 that city had 70,000 residents of Bosnian heritage which is the largest such community in the country).
That makes sense and I have wondered why more of the US's declining but still sizeable cities/counties haven't pursued it. Places like STL which were once leading urban areas [4th-largest city in the US in 1950, 58th-largest now] and are still sizeable clusters of restorable urban housing stock plus local demand for unskilled and semi-skilled workers? Where a bunch of highly-motivated people could get a fresh community going and turn around some urban decay and/or a stagnant older suburb.
Seems like there are a dozen or more mid-to-large "rust belt" metros where that approach would be sensible.
Yes, I was reflecting on Melvin’s comment and I don’t know which word is more offensive as a whole. But ISTM they offend *differently*: ‘fucking’ offends against purity/refinement, where ‘retarded’ offends mainly against kindness.
What are people's predictions about who bombed the hospital?
IDF or Hamas?
In which zionist commenters who have spent the past week outraged that anyone could possibly condone the actions of Hamas explain why Israel bombing a hospital and murdering hundreds of peope is perfectly okay
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lums/research/news/lancaster-university-to-open-atlantic-hurricanes-expert-climate-prediction-market
Theory:
1) On a personal level, having a happy, productive, meaningful life requires dissolving attachments to past injustices committed against you. (Move on. Stop obsessing about the past Bad Thing, and go find some new Good Things in your life.)
2) This is exploitable by hostile agents.
3) This is exploitable in ways which harm reproductive fitness, providing a opportunity for organisms to evolve mechanisms to prevent it from happening.
4) Humans have evolved such mechanisms.
5) Videos of dead torture victims in the street.
Any thoughts?
Book Review: the first thirty pages of The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
I picked up this book from one of those free bookshelves outside someone's house, and read the first twenty or thirty pages of it over lunch.
This book is about 2005. It doesn't know it's about 2005, it thinks it's about globalisation and how the jobs of middle class westerners will soon be taken by outsourcees in India. But it's really about 2005 and the passage of time and how the concerns of the past slowly blend into the concerns of the present without you really noticing. The book seems dated, as any eighteen year old book about the near future really should, but since 2005 still feels like the "early present" rather than the past, it's disconcerting. Nowadays of course things still get outsourced to India but not to any greater extent than in 2005, and the sorts of jobs he was concerned would soon be outsourced to India are things that are instead being replaced with AI.
The other very 2005 thing is the preoccupation with Islamic terrorism, something we were all preoccupied with for years, then it slowly receded, then it receded some more, and then we all forgot we were ever concerned with it, and then last week it came back and soon it will probably be 2005 again.
Things change over the years. Sometimes we notice them changing and read and write articles about "hey, this thing is changing, have you noticed?" Other times they change just as fast, but nobody bothers to point them out as they change, and you only realise they've changed when you read an old book and feel disoriented. This book is an interesting time capsule of those second sort of thing.
My situation has become very problematic, and I do not know what to do. I am writing this wondering if anyone might have a good idea.
I'm diagnosed with autism, OCD, and bipolar ("type un-specified"). Somehow, whether due to past social mishaps or the underdeveloped emotional circuitry, I have pretty strong rejection sensitivity and basically shut down whenever someone I respect says something mean to me or that I do not know how to interpret, which happens every 3 months. In addition, probably owing to the obsessive-compulsiveness, I have strong limerent tendencies, and have been stuck in one "basin of attraction" from highschool for about two years, having extremely intense recurrent thoughts on a daily or hourly basis. My mind often feels completely incoherent, and I do not know what is happening. Other times it feels like it is running four thoughts in parallel. This became too much for me to operate with, so in September, I stopped being able to do so. Medication and therapy are not helping, and probably will not yield much effect size in the time they need to. I think I am going to be removed from my college (I am a first year student, technically enrolled through a high school program, so if I fail, I will not graduate high school either). What can I do to start operating again? Long term, I will do anything in the bounds of sane and ethical conduct, but I can only do so much right now. I will do my best to implement anything sane suggested, and if I reach functional behavior again, I promise to do everything to reduce suffering.
Thanks,
Ishaan
Re: Gaza. I would suggest that anyone who lives in a country that can positively influence the situation write to their representatives. Here is approximately what I sent if it helps:
I appreciated your recent statement committing to help the civilians of Israel and Gaza. However, I am concerned the food, water and medicine is being blocked by the Israeli government. This is unacceptable behavior of any country, much less an ally. Make sure aid can get in and people can get out, before it is too late.
Random funny/sad observation: I was watching a Youtube of a Model A Ford owner starting his car. One retro lever was referred to as accelerating or retarding the spark-plug timing.
Whenever the driver said something about the spark timing being retarded, the close-caption algorithm simply excised the (apparently canceled) word.
Just another sign of the times I guess.
What's the game theory solution to Israel-Palestine conflict? Assumed goals could be least harm for most people, *my side winning (whichever side), or other goals.
Does anybody have a transcript or video of Scott's speech at the Manifest Conference?
2 random observations/questions:
Anyone else find it bizarrely coincidental that the side that lost the US Civil War are the biggest advocates of the 2A? Has anyone written on this seeming connection?
Given how much the gov. has funded psychology research, is there any connection between their research and the replication crisis? IOW, did the CIA* fund a bunch of fake research?
*not just them, I know
Absolute hilarity: The 'banned books' subreddit on reddit has...banned "anti-semitic" books from the subreddit. Really goes to show the absurdity of the left-wing "anti-censorship" discourse. Books that are literally illegal in many countries aren't "banned books", but books removed from school curricula and libraries (but can literally be purchased from amazon in 30 seconds) are. Also, of course, this only applies to left-wing books - if a blue state governer banned a teacher from teaching from 'The Bell Curve', this would be a ban of misinformation and hate speech, not a book ban.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bannedbooks/new/
I'm thinking about taking creatine supplements, not to help me get ripped, but to combat the loss of muscle that begins in middle age. (I already exercise. But if creatine gives some added benefit I'm all for it.) Does anyone here do that or have info about its efficacy?
The Brazilian flag says Ordem e Progresso. Order and Progress. Isn't that a funny, no, absolutely insane thing to put on your flag? That's a civil war in 3 words, so much blood has been spilled between the two. So can the tensions and contradictions inherent in the two be solved? I say they can:
Order and Progress
https://squarecircle.substack.com/p/order-and-progress
I just wanted to take a moment to share my newsletter, Interessant3. Every week, I curate and delve into three intriguing topics that invite thought and discussion.
In the latest edition, I shared a fascinating paper on "surf localism" that looks at how community-driven norms, rather than state interventions, are shaping the surf culture along the European Atlantic coast.
I also linked the Philosophy, Politics, Economics (PPE) Reading List from Balliol College, Oxford—a goldmine for anyone interested in these connected disciplines that inform our society.
Lastly, I shared a snapshot of the contentious and ever-evolving climate debate, with Steven Koonin's meticulous response to a "fact check" of a review of his book "Unsettled." It offers a balanced and nuanced understanding of both the author's and the critic's views.
If you're interested in a weekly dose of thought-provoking topics, feel free to subscribe to Interessant3. I'd love to have you in this growing community of curious minds!
Cheers!
👉 https://interessant3.substack.com/ 👈
I read The Hour I First Believed when it came out, and while Scott wrote it with a semi ironic tone, it crystalized a handful of thoughts I had already been putting together.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/04/01/the-hour-i-first-believed/
A whole host of stuff falls out of this. Eternal life as somewhere in the universe your process will be picked up even if you die locally. Many magical practices like summoning and possession look like simulating other entities that exist in other places in the universe. Spiritual action in our universe can be affected by our simulators.
I'm thinking about writing a book about a spirituality based in Tegmarkianism, and I'm looking for like-minded people to discuss this with.
In an earlier interation of existence some 20 years ago I wrote a short book about the Arab-Israeli conflict (which has subsequently been used by others to explain Israel's perspective) and lectured around the world in schools, synagogues, radio and the like.
Since then I've lived in Arab countries and developed a broader view.
I want to speak to an audience again. I think that I can have conversations and perhaps influence the outcome in a positive way.
Most of what I did in the past was live gatherings with anywhere between 15 and 700 people. In those scenarios I primarily have a conversation with the audience through the means of Q & A. it's rational, friendly, honest and collaborative.
And I can use your help.
I have a fundamental disagreement with the term "Severe ADHD" because it claims - flasely - that people like myself just need to accept that the world is made for people with "better" execution function and that I had best suffer and try ad infinitum until I can get jump over a few "obstacles" in the hope of succeeding.
Nearing 50 I have found that, for myself at least, nothing has worked.
When I run with my strengths things go very well until I hit some roadblock but when I attempt to "overcome" my weaknesses I don't get anywhere at all. So I am not trying to change.
Twenty years ago my attempts to share my knowledge and heart (more as a moderator than a "teacher" per se) I was never able to schedule a single venue. By happenstance two guys overheard a conversation I was having and arranged venues for me all over South Africa.
In fact, every single venue was arranged by other people.
The obvious problem with that is that the organizations often had some propaganda point or other that they wanted me to stick to which I would not do. I'm a terrible salesman Either I am honest or I'm useless.
So at this time the distance I have been able to get on my own had been a handful of substack signups and an equally tiny handful of youtube followes and whatsapp group participants.
My biography piques the interest and while I've received many critiques I have never been called boring.
So, in order to remain honest/independent without a party line, and without attempting to use the parts of the brain I lack to figure out how to contact podcasts (or whatever) on my own, I'm letting you know these few things about me and asking for your help in participating in live or video venues which already have an audience.
I have been an intense explorer and serious rabbi for many years and my main interest at this time is in resolving the issues that we all have as human individuals through honest - live - communication.
I can't successfully convey the intricacies in a comment (or even in any sized block of text) but I have a very hopeful way forward.
If you have a venue or a personal connection to someone who does and you're interested in potentially having me on I would love to answer what questions you might have so that you could make a decision.
Please keep in mind my "severe adhd". Genuinely, all I can do is accept invitations. I know that people more neuro-normative in this regard may find that to be hard to grok but it's the reality.
Advice to call X, Y, Z would thus be wasted but once you've made an introduction for me with X, Y, Z I would be happy to call them.
Why are so many rationalists polyamorous?
If this has been discussed before, please provide links.
Why couldn't the NYT writer have said "Manifold Markets" rather than "It"?
The writer was either trying to be ambiguous, or doesn't write clearly.
The Rationalist revival has put wind into the sails of start-ups like Manifold Markets, which was initially funded by a grant program run by Astral Codex Ten, a Rationalist blog that has promoted prediction markets. (It also received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund, the philanthropic arm of the bankrupt crypto exchange whose founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is a fan of prediction markets.)" Given the paragraph above, who received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund?
ChatGPT
Manifold Markets received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund.
I initially read the NYT article the way it was intended. It didn't look like they were accusing you of receiving FTX money to me.
Does anyone else refuse to subscribe to the NY Times because of what they did to Scott? (Not this incident; the previous one.) I can't stand the thought of enriching them, but maybe I'm being ridiculous.
I have been reflecting on the article about whether children are better at language acquisition because the findings (that people in their late teens are as good as babies and children at learning, and adults aren't much worse) definitely violated my priors. I used to teach English as a second language, and the findings did not jibe with what I saw.
I think it's a problem that the analysis was based on written samples, not speech. In my English classes, there were people who could write well through dedicated study, but who struggled to speak well. And there were people who could speak well, but had bad written grammar.
Written language is not something humans evolved to do, and so we should not expect children to have an in-built advantage at it. But humans did evolve for spoken language, so it would make sense if kids are born more ready to tackle this. Much, perhaps most, of spoken language is not conveyed on the page, as anyone knows who has got into a twitter fight. Scott mentioned this issue, saying maybe kids learn accents better. But I think "accent" underplays what it means to be fully competent at a spoken language.
I suggest that written language better resembles math, which is also not built in. Spoken language is more like walking, something kids evolved to learn, so we should expect a stronger critical period. Open to other thoughts.
Kind of vague, but does anyone have general job-seeking advice? I'm a recent graduate with a cognitive science degree struggling to land roles in software development/data analysis. My major left me with a good deal of programming skills, particularly dealing with data scraping and statistical analysis, but I'm having a difficult time marketing myself. I'm continuing to create and add side projects to my resume in the meantime. It's possible the job market is just volatile right now, but the whole thing is demoralizing.
To what degree are the different problems in academia linked?
Is the widespread toleration for academic fraud related to strong censorship of dissenting opinions?
Also the increase in administrators, higher costs, gender imbalance and grade inflation.
Is there one fundamental issue driving all these problems, some universal dysfunction problem or several distinct issues.
I've never owned a powerful computer, but I'm thinking of getting a good gaming PC that won't become obsolete until 2030. It must be able to support a new game like Starfield on full graphics, and I also must be able to plug a VR headset into it to play today's best VR games on full graphics and without lag.
What's the minimum I need to buy now to meet those requirements?
EDIT: When I wrote "won't become obsolete by 2030," I meant to imply it would still be able to play the mid-tier games of 2030, NOT that it would be able to play the best games of 2030 on maxed out graphics.
Anybody have any thoughts on transactional analysis? I’m finally diving into it.
My first impression is that it tries to do a little too much, as most of these grand theories do. For example, in Scripts People Live, the author is very insistent that people are born okay and are taught by their environment that they are not Ok. (Contrary to Im Ok, You’re Ok, which states the opposite.)
The author makes very strong statements to the affect that schizophrenia and similar ailments are curable (making no mention of genetics or genetic predispositions). I have no relevant background in these topics, but I don’t believe most experts would agree with that viewpoint.
That said, I love the general approach to therapy - collaborative, open, and with the focus of every session on workings towards finding answers to the presenting problems.
I also find the notion of scripts extremely compelling. Again, they seem to take it a little too far - inventing complex jargon and formulas, insisting on somatic components to scripts, etc. but I’m finding it very interesting and occasionally insightful.
Thoughts? Recommendations for books/essays to read, both for and against?
One thing that genuinely puzzles me is the purpose of commenters who come here to drill extremely one-sided statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Using the commenter M. Khan as an example (and I asked with no response): What is the point of repeatedly saying that Hamas is never wrong and Israel is always wrong? What is it that supposed to accomplish? I assume he really does want to help Palestinians; there is no conceivable way in which this is useful for advancing his goal. If anything, it makes it a tiny bit worse...
After reading the new Musk biography I went and read the Jobs biography by Isaacson, and am currently half-way through the FTX book by Michael Lewis. One thing that all 3 books have in common is they all stress the insane work hours at Apple/Tesla/SpaceX/FTX. Apparently working 12+ hours for 6-7 days a week wasn't uncommon at any of these places. It made me curious how much other people in start-ups/tech work. I've worked at start-ups before, and currently work at a company that operates somewhat like a start-up. It's not uncommon to work above 40-hours a week or to do 2-3 hours of work on a weekend every now and then, but I've never encountered people regularly working 12+ hours. I'd be curious in hearing anyone's thoughts/experiences on this
Approximately 23 million people in the US are government employees (about 16% of the total workforce), mostly at the state and local level. This is obviously a huge number of people both numerically and as a percent. A further ~10% of the entire US workforce works for NGOs. 80% of all NGO revenues come from government grants - which moves the total number of government paid jobs to about 24-25%.
I started noticing the effects of government paid jobs a few years ago, having somehow not noticed for most of my life. Particularly about NGOs, and how large they collectively were. This workforce is obviously going to be much more responsive to government whims and changing perceptions. They will also tend to be college educated, inflating the numbers of people going to college - another 2.x% of all US employees are at colleges and universities.
My gut reaction is that this part of the workforce is highly incentivized to support Democrats and Democratic positions. Even Republicans and independents working for the government would have reason to support higher taxes and more things under government control, even if not all Democrat positions. It feels a bit "chicken or egg" but this also seems like a natural scenario for college-educated left-leaning people to have a place to go when private industry doesn't need so many of them as are graduating. Just go to an NGO. Having about 1/4 of all US jobs being non-productive (purely in the sense of not producing products or services that are sold) would have a significant warping effect on lots of economic perspectives and metrics.
Are there other ways to read this? From a partisan perspective it feels like a handout to Democrats on multiple levels, though I'm sure that's not super fair for me to say.
"Holly Elmore and PauseAI are holding pro-pause protests October 21 in eight cities around the world, including San Francisco."
Meanwhile, November 14th-17th in Seattle, Microsoft are holding a jamboree in meatspace and online about "Experience AI transformation in action at Microsoft Ignite":
https://ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/home
Does PauseAI have anything on their Very Significant And Important Protest, Ya? page about this? Doesn't look like it. Are they attending? No idea. Are they in contact with Microsoft et al. about these kinds of pauses? I sure hope they are, but I have no idea.
What do I want to indicate by the contrasting events? That money trumps principles every time, and so long as AI is being held out as the new $$$$$$$ machine for everyone, especially during a period of tech slow-down for the big companies, I think earnest appeals about "oh please please please turn off your money-maker" are going nowhere. Protest in your little home fields all you like, kids, but unless you're up there onstage with Satya, it just means a bunch of college students get to take the day off for a nice walk in the city.
Scott, I responded to the pettyness of the New York Times against you with an article of my own. It's long so I'll just offer the link
https://ydydy.substack.com/p/topple-topple-topple
followed with a few excerpts:
"Despite their well-funded claims that they “deserve” to have more influence over your life than you have over theirs, the powerful, believe it or not, are lying....
"Last week I mentioned Dr. Scott Siskind / SlateStarCodex / ACX . He is an intelligent and good person. Or at least as intelligent and good as a person can be. And apparently the New York Times is still smarting from his little upstart rebellion a few years back when he embarrassed them by making a fuss just because they were planning to doxx him for the lulz...
"It took me 47 years, but 24 hours ago I realized that Trotsky was right. You and I may not be interested in mud wrestling assholes but the mud wrestling assholes are interested in us. Playing by the rules of water polo against the Einsatzgruppen will leave you in a ditch under 30,000 other bodies...
"I've got your back and I'm sure my friends feel the same way. It will be fun to take down bullies. Their time has come."
Both GPT 3.5 and 4 interpret the NYT quote correctly (that is, when asked if acx received a grant they say "no, manifold did")
I went to listen to a talk by Connor Leahy for an article I am writing on the subject. Basically, Conjecture and FLI are doing a series of talks on AI X-risk before the UK summit in November. One thing that struck me was his answer to the following question:
I asked him, "If you believe that the problem we are facing is not a technical problem but a coordination one, what are some people you would point towards as thought leaders in the field of coordination at scale?" His answer was "Don't read, try to actually coordinate, start a company, a think tank, an institution" He struck me as very practically-oriented, less interested in debating and more interesting in doing stuff and organizing people. He is involved in a lot of debates online and it might seem like debating is his main thing but that might be just the medium shaping the message. Would love to hear some more thoughts about Connor from other who have met him, or who have listened to him
Assume the greatest writer in the English language exists because great writers exist in a well-ordered set, and that some higher authority knows this set backwards and forwards. This higher authority is not biased; it simply knows objectively who the greatest writer is.
You win a billion dollars if you can guess who the greatest writer in the English language is according to this higher authority. Who do you guess?
any startups working on Polygenic risk scores for educational attainment?
I read an interview with a Hisbollah officer, and he had an interesting take on the Hamas attack on Israel.
He believes that Hamas didn't expect their attack to go so well, and that it essentially spiraled out of control. That they sent a lot of different groups with different methods, and the expected outcome would be that a few would get through, get ~10km into Israeli territory, kill a few Israeli and capture a handful of hostages. Then Israel would fire a few rockets as retaliation, kill a few people and go back to business. That would be a great outcome for Hamas because hostages have been extremely valuable in the past.
But then resistance was a lot weaker than Hamas expected. Lots of groups broke through and they went 20km, then 50km, without meeting any resistance from the Israeli army. Essentially, the whole thing got out of control.
It was not a high Hisbollah officer, but he suggested that higher Hisbollah ranks knew in advance that something would come from Hamas, but were terrified when they realized the extent of the attack.
What is your take on this? It would explain a lot of things surprisingly well for me. On the other hand, I am not sure whether I can square it with the massive number of rockets that Hamas fired during their attack.
The Pax American seems to have ended. As evidence, Noah Smith and others believe so: https://substack.com/notes/post/p-137904390?selection=e27049cd-a56d-49d4-aeea-94b98f8d367d#:~:text=Sometimes%20when%20I%20talk%20to%20Americans%2C%20especially%20in%20the%20tech%20industry%2C%20about%20a%20war%20over%20Taiwan%2C%20I%20feel%20a%20little%20of%20the%20frustration%20Gandalf%20must%20have%20felt.
The main point made in the above is that American military power is no longer a deterrent, due to the decline in US military industry as well as perceived political division in America.
Smith alleges that the Hamas attack is part of the Russia-China-Iranian axis emboldened by American weakness. He says the US is not ready for a war with China.
My question is why are we gearing for a war with China over Taiwan? It strikes me as stupid to fight such a big war over Taiwan. But I get the impression the real reason we should fight China over Taiwan is that if we don't it signals that the Pax America is really, really done. After which China won't have any reason not to take over every country save Australia to its south. China may also lay claim to all those Road & Belt initiatives it suckered African countries to grow indebted to.
Combine that with Russia allying with China and this could get ugly.
What do you think?
I have been working as a software developer for a little bit now, and I'm finding that the main factor for how productive I can be is how long I can focus for. My productivity is a lot less related to how many hours I can work for than it is to if I feel well rested and able to focus. I'm sure that plenty of other people here have this same experience, so I'm wondering what you guys do about it?
Hooray, the Australian AI protest is in Melbourne and thus accessible to me.
Not a huge amount I can do on this front as a depressed Australian NEET, but providing a warm body, I think I can do that.
Ever leave a doctor's appointment with a vague sense of "I guess I'll just have to trust them" instead of real understanding?
The lack of accessible health info creates a gap between experts and the public. And gaps breed distrust.
But what if making sense of medicine didn't require blind faith?
That's why I started this newsletter- to close the knowledge gap through understanding.
We transform those complicated health topics into engaging explainers anyone can relate to.
For example, we'll break down things like:
How over-the-counter pain relievers actually work in your body using clever analogies.
The scientific process behind disorders in an engaging narrative format.
Deciphering clinical trial results and medical headlines for the everyday person.
Our goal is to satisfy curiosity and bridge knowledge gaps so you can better navigate health decisions.
We'll explore things like:
~The biology of fevers
~How statins work
~The science of nutrition
~How cancer therapies harness the immune system.
If you are interested, follow along - the first issue will be out this week.
We will talk about the battle between good vs bad cholesterol.
Cheers!
It's hard to appreciate poetry in a language one doesn't know, so this is my attempt to make Italian poetry more easily enjoyable to English speakers. https://italianpoetry.it
I basically implemented what I would like to have when I listen to songs or poems in a language I don't speak: karaoke-like, word by word, literal translation, with notes about word usage and some context when needed.
And some stuff about the language itself --- the part needed for the poems, at least.
Feedback welcome!
> I think a natural reading of this sentence is that Astral Codex Ten received $1 million from the FTX Future Fund. Some people who read the article said they understood it this way and thought I took FTX money. I didn’t. The article meant to say that Manifold did.
> I appreciate NYT moving from its previous policy of blatant and deliberate falsehoods about me, to a newer, kinder policy of accidental and ambiguous falsehoods about me. That’s the first step towards not publishing any falsehoods about me at all!
In my reading, the NYT sentence is ambiguous enough that it's reasonable for you to issue a clarifying statement, but the reading you disclaim is not the most natural reading of their sentence, and the most natural reading is in fact what they meant to say. (There's a strong parallelism between "Manifold was funded by ACX" and "Manifold was 𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗼 funded by FTX".) So I'm not inclined to slam the NYT for this.
I suppose recent events have once and for all disproven the 'dumb college kids' trope, the theory that college kids only believe what they believe because they are naive or uninformed. They just saw with their own eyes videos of the most horrific acts of evil imaginable, and then proceeded to publicly celebrate it in the most explicit terms. Let's now acknowledge that this is not just naiveté, this is pure, incurable evil that can only be met with one response.
Does anyone have any recommendations for obscure science fiction? I recently read everything by qntm (aka Sam Hughes) and am now hooked on sci-fi, especially stuff that will change the way I think about the world/life/technology/etc. I found this great list: noahpinion.blog/p/my-sci-fi-novel-recommendations but I'm convinced the best authors are probably writing in relative obscurity on some unknown corner of the internet like qntm.
So who are some of your favorite lesser known or just underrated authors, who I probably wouldn't know about otherwise? And can you share one of your favorite passages as a sample?
p.s. First time commenting here, I just want to say thanks to everyone who comments; I love reading all your brilliant ideas/observations :)
A common technique of propagandists is to take terms that have been loaded with emotional, political, and historical context from one situation and apply them to another, in an attempt to smuggle in all the related baggage of those terms regardless of whether it actually applies in the new situation.
The Palestinian mass slaughter of Israeli civilians is often justified in this manner. It's not exactly easy to justify mass killings of unarmed people at a rave with the use of simple, descriptive, non-emotionally loaded language. "Well you see, the Israelis currently have military ships out in the water that prevent goods from coming in from Iran, to reduce the amount of bombs, rockets, and weapons that can get into Gaza. And they also built a big fence around their national border. Therefore, mass slaughter of any of them is justified." But it is easy to say "Apartheid. Therefore, mass slaughter of any of them is justified."
More generally, you have a phenomenon where just compiling the list of reasons given for why Israel constitutes an "apartheid regime" (or any other Bad Word), and then doing a find-and-replace on the bad word, pasting in the list of purported offenses committed instead, leaves the arguments in favor of the Palestinian massacres quite obviously baseless. When you can no longer smuggle in all the historical context that doesn't apply in the new situation, it becomes clear that you're justifying genocide on the basis of the existence of a border fence.
This also applies to terms like "ethnic cleansing" - it's hard to explain why "moving people to a better spot than they are currently in, where their lives will be objectively better than if they stay put" is the worst, most evil possible thing, but you can just say "ethnic cleansing" to try to imply that this must also necessarily come with mass killings, similar to the mass killings present alongside some historical instances of moving people. Or one of the worst offenders, using "genocide" to describe things like "splitting up members of a group" or "changing the culture of a group" as if they were equivalent to the mass killing of that group.
I sometimes take courses or do study programs. Mostly on science and engineering topics. I feel like a lot of people here either have similar interests or might be doing something similar. Is anyone interested in getting a ready/study group together? The idea would be to keep it light enough as a time commitment that full time working professionals and students could do it on the side for self-improvement.
I tried the new DALL-E 3 with the prompts from this post: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/i-won-my-three-year-ai-progress-bet
DALL-E 3 does better overall. It still has trouble with the stained glass one and the llama with the bell on its tail (it keep putting the bell in its mouth), but it does a better job with the other 3 prompts. The images are higher quality, making it more clear it got all the elements right. Here are the images I think it got right: https://imgur.com/a/qMvOEPu
I read the NYT article until I got to "a sticker of a shoggoth, an artificial intelligence meme based on a science fiction character".
While "character" is debatable, I think the appropriate genre here is "horror", or perhaps "fantasy" at the most general. The story in question is a bit more sci-fi than usual for Lovecraft, yeah. But calling it "a science fiction character" is missing the point, which would be solved by calling it "a character from a horror story".
I'm about 1/3 of the way through Lewis's book on SBF, and also listening to his podcast about the trial. I expect others are are accessing one or both of these sources as well. I'm interested in other people's takes on SBF & the collapse of his business.
I wrote a review of Michael Lewis's SBF/FTX book "Going Infinite" that I think will be of interest to ACT readers.
https://humeanbeing.substack.com/p/book-review-going-infinite
Idle speculation about the impact of the current iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Western politics: It seems like the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions of the left-liberal coalition have an intractable disagreement and are poised to tear the coalition apart over it. As the war goes on, Palestine-partisans will have plenty of Palestinian suffering to complain about, but I expect the horrors of the 10/7 attacks to remain vivid enough in the minds Israel-partisans that they will be in no mood to see Israelis cast in the role of settler-colonial oppressor. And if Jewish and other Israel-partisan donors start withholding money from organizations that are critical of Israel, I would expect pro-Palestinian leftists take that as further confirmation that Jews are part of the privileged white oppressor hegemon.
But I foresee a possible upside to all this internal political strife: Perhaps they will eventually tire of fighting and arrive at a renewed appreciation for tolerance and liberal discourse norms as a result, following the dynamic Scott described in section III of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/02/23/in-favor-of-niceness-community-and-civilization. Already some universities have announced that they no longer want to issue official statements about each new Current Thing, and the president of Harvard posted a video about the importance of free speech after Harvard took a lot of heat over a bunch of student organizations cosigning a statement saying the violence was entirely Israel's fault.
For now, I'm suspicious that this newfound appreciation for free speech and institutional neutrality is just a strategic retreat and won't extend to greater tolerance for opinions which are broadly unpopular on the Left, but like I said, the Israel-Palestine issue seems to be a deep and irreconcilable division within the Left, so if the internal fight about it is long and bruising enough, maybe that will eventually open up space for other kinds of heterodoxy.
I listened to Scott's Manifest 2023 interview, and someone mentioned that getting Destiny involved resulted in a massive spike in usage. Has anyone within the prediction markets scene considered talking with other Destiny-adjacent political commentators like Hasan Piker (hasanabi), Ian Kochinski (vaush), David Pakman, and Cenk Uygur?
On the topic of predictions, I found out that Fox News has a feature called America Predicts [0]. Any thoughts? They seem to be the first major publication to start experimenting with this sort of thing. For example: "Will a member of Congress be caught giving a speech generated by AI by Dec. 31?" is currently sitting at a 71% chance.
[0] https://www.foxnews.com/americapredicts
Australia has just rejected (by a 60 to 40% margin) a proposal to create an indigenous advisory body in the constitution. I'm curious about the instinctive reactions of people from other countries to this. And does any other country have something like this already, and how does it operate in practice?
I don't read the NYT statement the way you do. I think "also" does the work here to distance you.
It seems weird that there's an apparent link between menstruation cycles and the moon. What is going on there?
A lot of articles say it's a myth, but they're referring to the menstral cycle starting at a particular time in the lunar cycle (eg ovulation occurring at the full moon). Which it doesn't. Or they point out that people's cycles vary, often between 24 and 38 days. (See: https://helloclue.com/articles/cycle-a-z/myth-moon-phases-menstruation)
What is true, however, is that the global average menstrual cycle length is almost exactly the same as the lunar cycle length (29 vs 29.5 days). That doesn't seem like a coincidence.
The circadian rhythm is another biological cycle driven by a heavenly body. It's triggered by light, and I would guess that would be the driver behind a moon-menstruation link too (mostly because I'm not sure what else it could be... gravity?).
When humans are deprived sunlight (eg, when they're blind), they develop circadian rhythm disorders - their internal clocks drift out of sync so that their sleep/wake cycles are shorter or longer and not necessarily in sync with daylight hours.
Could it be that menstrual cycles are naturally in sync with the moon, but have drifted apart because we're all inside at night now? Has anyone studied the menstral cycles of women more exposed to the night sky?
Is there any good ideas as to a reason for the two to be linked? My best (incomplete) guess would be that it's safer to menstruate when it's dark/not dark because of predators for some reason. Or it's a better time to have sex. I dunno.
Or is it just a coincidence?
I wrote a solarpunk short story if you're looking for something quick and cozy to read!
https://solquy.substack.com/p/101523-algae-on-the-shore
For what it's worth, I interpreted the sentence about FTX in the other way - that Manifold got the FTX money.
Moving from large lies to smaller lies, the steps on the path to truth telling.
I threw together a simple webpage to replace sequential bargaining with a one-shot system of each person entering a price and then getting a number. I don't think it leads to a more efficient result in the economic sense of the term, but I doubt it leads to a worse one either. I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts.
https://outsidetheasylum.blog/negotiation/
I read that paragraph as meaning Manifold also received the money from FTX, if that’s any consolation.
My roommate's absent, so I'm staying up all night again. I could put the cookie in a box, but then I could open the box...
Over the weekend I watched the Geoguessr world cup, an esport where competitors try to locate a location from a google maps streetview image as quickly as possible. I'd recommend watching the VOD, it's good fun https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1950736728, but through it I stumbled across some spreadsheets with information on competitive play.
I found this extremely interesting, especially the elementary clues and landscape guides. It's basically an encyclopedia of the world from the very specific perspective of trying to find out where an image was taken as quickly as possible. It's full of fun facts such as "France sometimes features dashes side (road) lines and the middle dashed lines are usually denser/closer together than in most other European countries" and "The eucalypti in Northern Territories look different from the rest of Australia. They are shorter, have thinner trunks and are often black on the bottom from the wildfires". Some are even sourced, including a report on Hazelnut yields to help pin down where in northern Turkey you are.
Take a look!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SUcuQkmDgVZMqNLe7XuNEhmJulonpnSQuSiJAOqfhtY/htmlview
https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Elementary-clues-for-countries-in-GeoGuessr/1NawQwGt5H
https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Landscape_and_Vegetation_Guide/U1ZwTHRDGL
SMPY is Study of, not Stanford
The OPTIC registration link isn't working. The page just says "Page not found
Either this page doesn't exist or you don't have permission to access it." Not sure if it's just me?