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Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Feb 16, 2024

Libertarians don’t really have their own holiday. Communists have May Day. The woke have MLK’s birthday. Nationalists have July 4th or their local equivalent. But libertarians have nothing.

I propose Valentine’s Day. The way people think about love is the last relic of the way that libertarians think...


Feb 16, 2024

I.

Sam Altman wants $7 trillion.

In one sense, this isn’t news. Everyone wants $7 trillion. I want $7 trillion. I’m not going to get it, and Sam Altman probably won’t either.

Still, the media treats this as worthy of comment, and I agree. It’s a useful reminder of what it will take for AI to scale in the coming...


Feb 16, 2024

Thanks to everyone who participated in ACX Grants, whether as an applicant, an evaluator, or a funder.

The best part of ACX Grants is telling the winners they won, which I’ll do in a moment. The worst part of ACX Grants is telling the non-winners they didn’t win. If I wasn’t able to give you a grant, it...


Feb 9, 2024

We’ve been gradually working our way through the conversation around E. Fuller Torrey’s concerns about schizophrenia genetics - last week we had It’s Fair To Describe Schizophrenia As Probably Mostly Genetic, the week before Unintuitive Properties Of Polygenic Disorders. Here are two more arguments Torrey makes...


Feb 9, 2024

I.

Yesterday I criticized The Atlantic’s recent invective against polyamory (subscriber-only post, sorry). Today I want to zoom away from the specific bad arguments and examine the overall form of the article.

The overall form was: “I read a memoir about polyamory, everyone involved seemed awful and unhappy, and now...