Open Thread 343

...

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.