Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Upcoming Spring Meetups Across 80+ Cities: Dive into the excitement of AstralCrotix10's spring meetups, spanning diverse cities worldwide, with inclusive guidelines for attendees and organizers. Discover the map feature and learn how to manage meetup events.

Saar Wilf, an ex-Israeli entrepreneur, discusses Rootclaim's use of Bayesian reasoning to analyze open problems like Putin's health, lab leak hypothesis, and COVID-19 origins. They delve into the Wuhan Institute of Virology, unique characteristics of COVID, and debate the origins of the pandemic using statistical probabilities and expert analyses.

The podcast discusses assigning probabilities to unpredictable events like human landing on Mars and AI impact on humanity. It explores using precise percentages for clarity, the complexity of simple answers, mastering forecasting, and navigating uncertainties in AI probabilities.

I have data from two big Internet surveys, Less Wrong 2014 and Clearer Thinking 2023. Both asked questions about IQ: The average LessWronger reported their IQ as 138. The average ClearerThinking user reported their IQ as 130. These are implausibly high. Only 1/200 people has an IQ of 138 or higher. 1/50 people have IQ 130, but the ClearerThinking survey used crowdworkers (eg Mechanical Turk) who should be totally average. Okay, fine, so people lie about their IQ (or foolishly trust fake Internet IQ tests). Big deal, right? But these don’t look like lies. Both surveys asked for SAT scores, which are known to correspond to IQ. The LessWrong average was 1446, corresponding to IQ 140. The ClearerThinking average was 1350, corresponding to IQ 134. People seem less likely to lie about their SATs, and least likely of all to optimize their lies for getting IQ/SAT correspondences right. And the Less Wrong survey asked people what test they based their estimates off of. Some people said fake Internet IQ tests. But other people named respected tests like the WAIS, WISC, and Stanford-Binet, or testing sessions by Mensa (yes, I know you all hate Mensa, but their IQ tests are considered pretty accurate). The subset of about 150 people who named unimpeachable tests had slightly higher IQ (average 140) than everyone else. Thanks to Spencer Greenberg of ClearerThinking, I think I’m finally starting to make progress in explaining what’s going on. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-mystery-of-internet-survey-iqs 

Exploring therapy culture, the podcast discusses the impact on individuals' search for authenticity, real-world therapy versus generic ideals, and alexithymia. It also delves into uncovering genuine preferences, self-realization, and the pitfalls of conforming to a preconceived 'true self.'

(inspired by Aid Airdrop Kills Five People In Gaza After Parachute Fails) https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/verses-on-five-people-being-killed 

Robots of prediction, predictions of robots https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/mantic-monday-31124 

There are ACX meetup groups all over the world. Lots of people are vaguely interested, but don't try them out until I make a big deal about it on the blog. Since learning that, I've tried to make a big deal about it on the blog twice annually, and it's that time of year again. If you're willing to organize a meetup for your city, please fill out the organizer form. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/spring-meetups-everywhere-2024-call 

The podcast explores the concept of race as a series of formative experiences, justifying practices like affirmative action and cultural appropriation. It delves into the complexities of identity, discussing cases of false claims of Native ancestry and exploring the multifaceted nature of defining Jewish identity. The episodes navigate through the challenges individuals face when genetic results don't align with their perceived identity, and question the implications of legal restrictions and cancel culture in society.

I. What’s Going On We got 351 proposals for ACX Grants, but were only able to fund 34 of them. I’m not a professional grant evaluator and can’t guarantee there aren’t some jewels hidden among the remaining 317. The plan has always been to run an impact market - a site where investors crowdfund some of the remaining grant proposals. If the project goes well, then philanthropists who missed it the first time (eg me) will pay the investors for funding it, potentially earning them a big profit. In our last impact market test, some people (okay, one person) managed to get 25x their initial investment by funding a charity which did really well. So in my ideal world, we’d be running an impact market where you could invest your money in the remaining 317 proposals and make a profit if they did well. We’ve encountered two flaws on the way to that ideal world: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-grants-followup-impact-market