Astral Codex Ten Podcast

[This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked] What does it take to be literally Hitler? https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-rise-and-fall

Actual serious review here, Amazon link to the book here. These were just some extra parts that stuck out to me. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/more-memorable-passages-from-the

Review of Masha Gessen's "The Man Without A Face" [previously in series: Erdogan, Modi, Orban, Xi] I. Vladimir Putin’s Childhood As Metaphor For Life   Vladimir Putin appeared on Earth fully-formed at the age of nine. At least this is the opinion of Natalia Gevorkyan, his first authorized biographer. There were plenty of witnesses and records to every post-nine-year-old stage of Putin’s life. Before that, nothing. Gevorkyan thinks he might have been adopted. Putin’s official mother, Maria Putina, was 42 and sickly when he was born. In 1999, a Georgian peasant woman, Vera Putina, claimed to be his real mother, who had given him up for adoption when he was ten. Journalists dutifully investigated and found that a “Vladimir Putin” had been registered at her village’s school, and that a local teacher remembered him as a bright pupil who loved Russian folk tales. What happened to him? Unclear; Artyom Borovik, the investigative journalist pursuing the story, died in a plane crash just before he could publish. Another investigative journalist, Antonio Russo, took up the story, but “his body was found on the edge of a country road . . . bruised and showed signs of torture, with techniques related to special military services.” https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/dictator-book-club-putin  

You can find the meetup organizer volunteer form here. If you want to know if anyone has signed up to run a meetup for your city, you can view that here. Everyone else, just wait until 8/25 and I'll give you more information on where to go then. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/meetups-everywhere-fall-2023-call  

Plus more CFTC, X, and UFOs https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-73123-room-temperature

Finalist #11 in the Book Review Contest [This is one of the finalists in the 2023 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked] What kind of fiction could be remarkable enough for an Astral Codex Ten review? How about the drug-fueled fantasies of a serial killer? Or perhaps the innovative, sophisticated prose of the first novel of a brilliant polymath? Or would you prefer a book written in such fantastically lucid language it feels more like a dream than a story? Possibly you’d be more interested in a book so unbelievably dangerous that the attempt to publish it was literally suicidal. Or maybe an unusual political book, such as an ultraconservative indictment of democracy by Adolf Hitler's favorite author? Or rather an indictment of both Hitler and Bolshevism, written by someone who was among the first to recognize Hitler as a true enemy of humanity? I picked On the Marble Cliffs, because it is all of that at the same time. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-on-the-marble-cliffs  

Suppose there’s freedom of religion: everyone can choose what religion to practice. Is there some sense in which this is “undemocratic”? Would it be more “democratic” if the democratically-elected government declared a state religion, and everyone had to follow it? You could, in theory, define “democratic” this way, so that the more areas of life are subjected to the control of a (democratically elected) government, the more democratic your society is. But in that case, the most democratic possible society is totalitarianism - a society where the government controls every facet of life, including what religion you practice, who you marry, and what job you work at. In this society there would be no room for human freedom. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/bad-definitions-of-democracy-and  

[original post: Contra The Social Model Of Disability] Table Of Contents 1: Comments Defending The Social Model 2: Comments About The Social Model Being Used (Or Not) In Real Life 3: Other Comments 4: Summary / What I Learned https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-social

Machine Alignment Monday, 7/24/23 Intelligence explosion arguments don’t require Platonism. They just require intelligence to exist in the normal fuzzy way that all concepts exist. First, I’ll describe what the normal way concepts exist is. I’ll have succeeded if I convince you that claims using the word “intelligence” are coherent and potentially true. Second, I’ll argue, based on humans and animals, that these coherent-and-potentially-true things are actually true. Third, I’ll argue that so far this has been the most fruitful way to think about AI, and people who try to think about it differently make worse AIs. Finally, I’ll argue this is sufficient for ideas of “intelligence explosion” to be coherent. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/were-not-platonists-weve-just-learned  

Delve into 'The Laws of Trading' by Agustin Lebron, a unique blend of trading narratives, philosophy, and decision-making. Explore the competitive nature of financial markets and the importance of adaptation. Learn about Bayesian reasoning, risk management, and the trade-off between liquidity and relationships. Discover insights on trading strategies, model development, and the challenges faced by autodidacts in the trading world.