Mar 9, 2023
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/give-up-seventy-percent-of-the-way
I.
Someone asks: why is “Jap” a slur? It’s the natural shortening of “Japanese person”, just as “Brit” is the natural shortening of “British person”. Nobody says “Brit” is a slur. Why should “Jap” be?
My understanding:...
Mar 9, 2023
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/issue-two-of-asterisk
…the new-ish rationalist / effective altruist magazine, is up here. It’s the food issue. I’m not in this one - my unsuitability to have food-related opinions is second only to @eigenrobot’s - but some of my friends are. Articles include:
Mar 9, 2023
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/kelly-bets-on-civilization
Scott Aaronson makes the case for being less than maximally hostile to AI development:
Here’s an example I think about constantly: activists and intellectuals of the 70s and 80s felt absolutely sure that they were doing the right thing to battle nuclear...
Mar 9, 2023
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/impact-market-mini-grants-update
Impact markets are a charity analogy to private equity. Instead of prospectively giving grants to projects they hope will work, charitable foundations retrospectively give grants to projects that did work. Investors fund those...
Mar 9, 2023
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/against-ice-age-civilizations
There’s a good debate about this on the subreddit; see also Robin Hanson and Samo Burja.
You can separate these kinds of claims into three categories:
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Civilizations about as advanced as the people who built Stonehenge
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Civilizations about as...