Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Answers to the questions I get most often at meetup Q&As https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/from-the-mailbag DEAR SCOTT: When are you going to publish Unsong? — Erik from Uruk Dear Erik, Aaargh. I have an offer from a publisher to publish it if I run it by their editor who will ask me to edit lots of things, and I've been so stressed about this that I've spent a year putting it off. I could self-publish, but that also sounds like work and what if this is the only book I ever write and I lose the opportunity to say I have a real published book because I was too lazy? The only answer I can give you is that you're not missing anything and this is nobody's fault but my own. Maybe at some point I will make up my mind and something will happen here, sorry. DEAR SCOTT: How is your Lorien Psychiatry business going? — Letitia from Lutetia Dear Letitia, As far as I can tell, patients are getting the treatments they need and are generally happy with the service. In terms of financials, it's going okay, but I'm not scaling it enough to be sure. I originally calculated that if I charged patients $35/month and worked forty hours a week, I could make a normal psychiatrist's salary of about $200K. I must have underestimated something, because I was only making about two-thirds what I expected, so I increased the price to $50/month. But also, it turns out I don't want to work forty hours a week on psychiatry! Psychiatry pays much less per hour than blogging and is much more stressful! So in the end, I found that I was only doing psychiatry work ten hours a week, and spending the rest of the time doing blogging or blogging-related activities. Seeing patients about ten hours a week, three patients per hour, at $50/patient/month, multiplies out to $75,000/year. I'm actually making more like $40,000/year. Why? Partly because the 10 hours of work includes some unpaid documentation, arguing with insurance companies, and answering patient emails. Partly because patients keep missing appointments and I don't have the heart to charge them no-show fees. And partly because some people pay less than $50/month, either because I gave them a discount for financial need, or because they signed up at the original $35/month rate and I grandfathered them in. At my current workload, if I worked 40 hours a week at Lorien I could make $160,000. But if I worked 40 hours/week and was stricter about making patients pay me, I could probably get that up to $200,000. But also, if I quadrupled my patient load, that would mean a lot more documention, arguing with insurance companies, emergencies, and stress. So I can't say for sure that I could actually handle that. Plus forcing patients to pay me is some extra work and could make some patients leave or make the model harder somehow. So I can't say for sure that I could do that either.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-rhythms-of-the-brain Brain waves have always felt like a mystery. You learn some psychology, some neuroscience, a bit of neuroanatomy. And then totally separate from all of this, you know that there are things called "brain waves" that get measured with an EEG. Why should the brain have waves? Are they involved in thinking or feeling or something? How do you do computation when your processors are firing in a rhythmic pattern dozens of times per second? Why don't AIs have anything like brain waves? Should they? I read Rhythms Of The Brain by Prof. Gyorgy Buzsaki to answer these questions. This is a tough book, probably more aimed at neuroscientists than laypeople, and I don't claim to have gotten more than the most superficial understanding of it. But as far as I know it's the only book on brain waves - and so our only option for solving the mystery. This review is my weak and confused attempt to transmit it, which I hope will encourage other people toward more successful efforts.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/another-bay-area-house-party [Previously: Every Bay Area House Party] Blaise Pascal said all human evil comes from inability to sit alone in a room. Your better nature - your rational soul - tells you that nothing good has ever come from attending large social events. But against that better nature stands the Devil, wielding a stick marked "FOMO". If you don't go to social events, maybe other people will go and have great times and live fuller lives than you. "As the dog returns to its vomit, so returns the fool to his folly", says the Bible. And so you find yourself mumbling thanks to your Uber driver and crossing the threshold of another Bay Area house party. "Heyyyyy, I haven't seen you in forever!" says a person whose name is statistically likely to be Michael or David. "What have you been working on?" "Resisting the urge to go to events like this", you avoid saying. "What about you?" "Oh man," says Michael or David, "The most exciting startup. Just an amazing startup. We're doing procedural myth generation with large language models." "Oh?" "Yeah. We fine-tune an AI on a collection of hundreds of myths from every culture in the world. Then we can prompt it. A myth about snowflakes. A myth about mountain-climbing. A myth about lunch."

What do Sam Altman, Matt Bruenig, and the Sacramento Kings have in common? -- Are the polls wrong? -- CFTC vs. Everybody https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/mantic-monday-101722 Midterm Examination Polls this year look bad for Senate Republicans. Pollsters' simulations give them a 22% chance (Economist), 34% chance (538), or 37% chance (RaceToTheWH) of taking power. Even Mitch McConnell has admitted he has only "a 50-50 proposition" of winning. But polls did pretty badly last election. "Least accurate in 40 years", said Politico. On average they overestimated Biden's support by four points, maybe because Republicans distrust pollsters and refuse to answer their questions. Might the same thing be happening this year? If so, does it give Republicans reason for optimism? Prediction markets say . . . kind of!

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-3b1 Original post: Why Is The Central Valley So Bad? 1: Several Valley residents commented with their perspectives. Some were pretty grim. For example, 21st Century Salonniere (writes The 21st Century Salon) writes: It is horrible. It's been horrible since at least 1996 when I got trapped here by my spouse's job. We were going to stay two years tops and go back East. (Long boring story about what went wrong.) The only things you could say for it back then were "Well, the produce is good" and "Houses are affordable, sort of." Now the house prices in our neighborhood have doubled in the 4 years since we bought this home, and there's no way we could now, if we moved here today, ever buy a home in this hellhole. Who on earth is coming here and why? > "the problem is more that everyone in the Central Valley wants to leave." Yes. Every interesting or smart critical thinker I've ever met here, everyone who gives even the slightest shit about museums and theatre and music and culture (with the exception of a few people who were born and raised here, so "it's home") has been desperate to leave. I've met a lot of nice people here over the years. They become close friends and they always leave the state. I'm counting down till I can leave too. […]

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-october-397 [Remember, I haven't independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can't guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.] 1: The history of the exocentric compound noun: although English usually combines verbs and nouns in as $NOUN-$VERBER (eg "firefighter", "giftgiver"), some lower-class medieval people used an alternative form, $VERB_$NOUN. Their dialect survives in a few words most relevant to seedy medieval life, like "pickpocket", "turncoat", and "cutthroat". (EDIT: see here for corrections and for a more detailed discussion) 2: File under "inevitable": YouTuber builds a computer in Minecraft that you can play Minecraft on.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-columbus [Original post: A Columbian Exchange] 1: The most popular comments were those objecting to my paragraph about holidays replacing older holidays: All of our best holidays have begun as anti-holidays to neutralize older rites. Jesus was born in the spring; they moved Christmas to December to neutralize the pagan Solstice celebration. Easter got its name because it neutralized the rites of the spring goddess Eostre. Hanukkah was originally a minor celebration of a third-tier Bible story; American Jews bumped it up several notches of importance in order to neutralize Christmas. Starting with Christmas, Retsam says that there are three main theories - Adraste's plus two others: 1) March 25 + 9 months, 2) solstice symbolism, 3) co-opting paganism. (The earliest reference to this theory seems to be a millennium later in the 12th century) Apparently the logic for March 25 is that it was calculated to be the day that Jesus died (easier to calculate since it was Passover), and Jewish tradition held that great people lived for exact, whole number of years. (i.e. were conceived and died on the same day) This is somewhat convincing. But December 25 was literally the winter solstice on the Roman calendar (today the solstice is December 21st), and it really is suspicious that some unrelated method just happened to land on the most astronomically significant day of the year. Likewise, March 25 was the spring equinox, so the Annunciation date is significant in and of itself. (I guess if you're Christian you can believe that God chose to incarnate on that day because He liked the symbolism - although He must have been pretty upset when Pope Gregory rearranged the calendar so that it no longer worked). Jesus died two days before Passover, but Passover is linked to the Hebrew calendar and can fall on a variety of Roman calendar days. So the main remaining degree of freedom is how the early Christians translated from the (Biblically fixed) Hebrew date to the (not very clear) Roman date. This seems to have been calculated by someone named Hippolytus in the 3rd century, but his calculations were wrong - March 25 did not fall on a Friday (cf. Good Friday) on any of the plausible crucifixion years. Also, as far as I can tell, the relevant Jewish tradition is that prophets die on the same day they are born, not the same day they are conceived. For example, Moses was born on, and died on, the 7th of Adar (is it worth objecting that it should be the same date on the Hebrew calendar and not the Roman?) Maybe this tradition was different in Jesus' time? But it must be older than the split between Judaism and Islam - the Muslims also believe Mohammed died on his birth date. So although the Annunciation story is plausible, it's hard for me to figure out exactly how they got March 25 and December 25, and there's room for them to have fudged it to hit the Solstice, either to compete with pagans or just because the astronomically significant dates were impressive in their own rights. I guess I will downgrade to a 5% credence that competing with pagans was a significant factor in the date of Christmas. Moving on to Easter. Russell Hogg writes: You are entering a world of pain when you mention Eostre . . . https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/ . We should have a 'Debunk the Eostre Myth' day. It's already celebrated regularly by many people. And Feral Finster adds: Glad others decided to debunk that particular bit of midwit received wisdom. I get tired of doing so, over and over.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/a-columbian-exchange Adraste: Happy Indigenous People's Day! Beroe: Happy Columbus Day! Adraste: …okay, surely we can both sketch out the form of the argument we're about to have. Genocide, political correctness, moral progress, trying to destroy cherished American traditions, etc, etc, would you like to just pretend we hit all of the usual beats, rather than actually doing it? Beroe: Does "Columbus Day was originally intended as a woke holiday celebrating marginalized groups; President Benjamin Harrison established it in 1892 after an anti-Italian pogrom in order to highlight the positive role of Italians in American history" count as one of the usual beats by this point? Adraste: I would have to say that it does. Beroe: What about "Indigenous People's Day is offensive because indigenous peoples were frequently involved in slavery and genocide"? Adraste: I'm not sure I've heard that particular argument before. Beroe: But surely you can sketch it out. Many indigenous peoples practiced forms of hereditary slavery, usually of war captives from other tribes. Some of them tortured slaves pretty atrociously; others ceremonially killed them as a spectacular show of wealth. There's genetic and archaeological evidence of entire lost native tribes, most likely massacred by more warlike ones long before European contact. Some historians think that the Aztecs may have ritually murdered between 0.1% and 1% of their empire's population every year, although as always other historians disagree. I refuse to celebrate Indigenous People's Day, because I think we need to question holidays dedicated to mass murderers even when they're "traditional" or "help connect people to their history".

Due to an oversight by the ancient Greeks, there is no Muse of blogging. Denied the ability to begin with a proper Invocation To The Muse, I will compensate with some relatively boring introductions. The name of this blog is Slate Star Codex. It is almost an anagram of my own name, Scott S Alexander. It is unfortunately missing an "n", because anagramming is hard. I have placed an extra "n" in the header image, to restore cosmic balance. This blog does not have a subject, but it has an ethos. That ethos might be summed up as: charity over absurdity. Absurdity is the natural human tendency to dismiss anything you disagree with as so stupid it doesn't even deserve consideration. In fact, you are virtuous for not considering it, maybe even heroic! You're refusing to dignify the evil peddlers of bunkum by acknowledging them as legitimate debate partners. Charity is the ability to override that response. To assume that if you don't understand how someone could possibly believe something as stupid as they do, that this is more likely a failure of understanding on your part than a failure of reason on theirs. There are many things charity is not. Charity is not a fuzzy-headed caricature-pomo attempt to say no one can ever be sure they're right or wrong about anything. Once you understand the reasons a belief is attractive to someone, you can go ahead and reject it as soundly as you want. Nor is it an obligation to spend time researching every crazy belief that might come your way. Time is valuable, and the less of it you waste on intellectual wild goose chases, the better. It's more like Chesterton's Fence. G.K. Chesterton gave the example of a fence in the middle of nowhere. A traveller comes across it, thinks "I can't think of any reason to have a fence out here, it sure was dumb to build one" and so takes it down. She is then gored by an angry bull who was being kept on the other side of the fence. Chesterton's point is that "I can't think of any reason to have a fence out here" is the worst reason to remove a fence. Someone had a reason to put a fence up here, and if you can't even imagine what it was, it probably means there's something you're missing about the situation and that you're meddling in things you don't understand. None of this precludes the traveller who knows that this was historically a cattle farming area but is now abandoned – ie the traveller who understands what's going on – from taking down the fence. As with fences, so with arguments. If you have no clue how someone could believe something, and so you decide it's stupid, you are much like Chesterton's traveler dismissing the fence (and philosophers, like travelers, are at high risk of stumbling across bull.) I would go further and say that even when charity is uncalled-for, it is advantageous. The most effective way to learn any subject is to try to figure out exactly why a wrong position is wrong. And sometimes even a complete disaster of a theory will have a few salvageable pearls of wisdom that can't be found anywhere else. The rationalist forum Less Wrong teaches the idea of steelmanning, rebuilding a stupid position into the nearest intelligent position and then seeing what you can learn from it. So this is the ethos of this blog, and we proceed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right."

Also Austin, Seattle, Tokyo, Rome, Mumbai, etc. We have two Southern California meetups this weekend: Los Angeles at 6:30 PM Saturday October 8 at 11841 Wagner St, Culver City. San Diego at 3 PM on Sunday, October 9, at Bird Park, these coordinates. See here for more details. I think I'll be able to make it to both; if for some reason that changes I'll try to update you by Open Thread beforehand. Feel free to come even if you've never been to a meetup before, even if you only recently started reading the blog, even if you're not "the typical ACX reader", even if you hate us and everything we stand for, etc. There are usually 50-100 people at these so you should be able to lose yourself in the crowd. Also coming up this weekend are meetups in Boise, Austin, Salt Lake City, Tokyo, Toulouse, Cologne, Rome, Hatten, Poznan, St. Louis, Rochester (NY), Seattle, Mumbai, and Oklahoma City. You can find times and places here.