Open Thread 343
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This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. Also:
1: I’m doing some AI safety grantmaking and am curious how other people value different parts of the ecosystem. If you have experience/familiarity with AI grantmaking, AI alignment, or AI policy, can you take this quick (~15 minute) survey?
2: New subscriber-only post this week, How Do We Rate The Importance Of Historical Figures?, on those lists speculating whether Jesus/Napoleon/Mohammed/whoever was the most important person in history.
3: Thanks to everyone who commented on last week’s post Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases? I did see a lot of commenters (who apparently hadn’t read it) loudly assume that it said “because obesity causes all diseases”. I want to emphasize that as best I can interpret the existing research, it’s not because obesity directly causes these diseases (see here for more discussion). Other people were a little more sophisticated and suggested it was because starvation / calorie restriction cures all diseases. I’m skeptical of this one too. Even if you’re in fact starving on Ozempic, it works by sending your body its biochemical “I’m full” signal - so your body is in the fullness biochemical state rather than the starving biochemical state. This isn’t a knockdown argument, because your body has lots of different signals and the full vs. starving states are multifaceted, but I would bet against this one too.
4: Comment of the week is Gwern’s comment/summary/review on the Marvel Comics book review.
5: Manifold Markets is looking for a backend engineer. See here (I know it doesn’t look like a job advertisement, but scroll down, it is) for more.