Astral Codex Ten Podcast

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-governor Californians love long-shot bets. Actors trying to make it big in LA, tech founders chasing unicorns in San Francisco, cult leaders trying to found religions in Pasadena. In Silicon Valley, VCs turn the long-shot bet into an art: if some new startup has a 5% chance of making a billion, that's $50 million in expectation. Just a whole state full of people looking for weird opportunities. ...which makes it extra funny that the biggest opportunity of all came by a few months ago, and they all missed it. My claim is that basically anyone with the slightest amount of fame or money - any B-list actor, any second-tier tech CEO, any successful blogger or influencer, maybe me, maybe even you - could have maneuvered themselves into a position where they had a 5-10% chance of becoming Governor of California. Let's start at the beginning. Governor Gavin Newsom had a bad year. First he pissed off Republicans with his strong response to COVID. Then he pissed off the people who wanted strong responses to COVID by attending an unvaccinated unmasked dinner. Also, taxes are still high, homelessness is still high, rents are still (too damn) high, and parts of the state are literally on fire. Gavin Newsom didn't cause most of this, but he also hasn't announced any particularly inspired plans to fight it. Just a really, really bad year. (also, his ex-wife is dating Donald Trump Jr, which has to hurt) California has a long tradition of direct democracy. Citizens can circulate petitions, and if they get enough signatures, everyone has to vote on them. After several tries, Republicans finally got enough signatures on a “recall Newsom” petition to trigger an election. The way the election works is: there are two questions on the ballot. First, should Newsom be removed as governor? Second, if he is removed, who replaces him? Everyone gets to vote on both questions, so even if you want to keep Newsom you can still vote on who replaces him if he loses.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/carbon-costs-quantified   This post tries to quantify how much carbon is produced by various activities, lifestyle changes, and actors.      can’t stress enough how approximate and unreliable these numbers are. The reason I made this chart and other people didn’t isn’t because I’m smarter or harder-working than they are. It’s because I’m less responsible, and more willing to use numbers that are kind of grounded in wild guesses, and technically shouldn’t be compared to each other. My defense is they’re probably mostly order-of-magnitude correct, and I believe having probably mostly order-of-magnitude correct estimates is better than having no estimates at all. Explanations below:

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/meetups-everywhere-2021-times-and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QFbM5B9KfsiwqO6DvJ4D05dQitBtZ6kYDwXZ3Hj6SEc/edit#gid=1585750313 Thanks to everyone who respond to my request for ACX outdoor meetup organizers. Volunteers have arranged meetups in 170 cities around the world, including beautiful Lusk, Wyoming (population: 1,526). You can see the full list here, and I’ll also have it below in case you can’t access the spreadsheet for some reason. I’ll be trying to attend ~15 of the 170 meetups. Since I focused on the US last time, I’m going to focus on Europe this year (plus a few US cities on the way). My very preliminary itinerary (all dates in US month/day format) is: Berkeley: Saturday 8/28, 1 PM Boston: Sunday, 9/5, 5 PM New York: Monday, 9/6, 5 PM Washington DC: Saturday, 9/11, 5 PM Lisbon: Saturday, 9/18, 5 PM Madrid: TBD (late September?) Zurich: TBD (late September?) Vienna: TBD (late September?) Prague: TBD (early October?) Berlin: TBD (early October?) Paris: TBD (early October?) London: TBD (mid October?) Cambridge: TBD (mid October?) Oxford: TBD (mid October?) Edinburgh: TBD (mid October?) I don’t want to make confident predictions about how quickly I can travel through Europe, so I’ll post the rest of my schedule once I know more. If you gave me a schedule for the first five cities, I’ve unilaterally replaced it with what works for me, sorry. If you’re trying to organize a meetup for the TBD cities, sorry I’m making your life confusing right now. Also, if COVID or something else comes up, I might have to drop some cities from my list, in which case I’ll let you know and you can have a normal meetup at whatever time works for you.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-aducanumab These are highlights from the comments of Adumbrations Of Aducanumab, Details Of The Infant Fish Oil Story, and discussion of those posts elsewhere. C_B writes: I agree with this post's overall point that the FDA is not, on average, too lax, and that the Atlantic article's take that the aducanumab approval is a sign of them being too lax is a bad take. That said, I think the beginning of this article really undersells how uniquely bad the aducanumab approval is. It's not just "pretty unclear whether it actually treats Alzheimers." Nobody in the field thinks there's any serious possibility that it treats Alzheimers. - Here's Derek Lowe talking about it: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/08/the-aducanumab-approval - The FDA's advisory committee doesn't think it treats Alzheimers: https://alzheimersnewstoday.com/2020/11/11/fda-committee-votes-aducanumab-trial-data-fail-support-alzhimers-treatment-benefit/ - The trial was halted for futility: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-biogen-alzheimers/biogen-eisai-scrap-alzheimer-drug-trials-idUSKCN1R213G - The details of the "positive results" are textbook p-hacking of exactly the sort that the whole replication crisis has been about. It's a post-hoc subgroup analysis where the subgroup was selected based on similarity to the patients who had the most positive results; i.e., trivially guaranteed to show "positive" results via group selection. You can read more details in the statistical reviewer's comments in the advisory committee's document (PDF, starting on p. 174): https://www.fda.gov/media/143502/download

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-august   [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: Ever wonder what happened to the Borgias after the Renaissance? Apparently they’re still around, and one of them - Rodrigo Borja Cevallos - was president of Ecuador back in the 90s. A lot of the Spanish branch of the family (who spell their name “Borja”) seem to have ended up in Latin America, which makes me curious whether Cuban-American immigration economist George Borjas is related too. 2: It’s long been a YIMBY talking point that building more luxury or market-rate houses will indirectly free up affordable housing, as richer people move out of cheaper houses into costlier ones. A new paper confirms and quantifies this effect: “Constructing a new market-rate building that houses 100 people ultimately leads 45 to 70 people to move out of below-median income neighborhoods, with most of the effect occurring within three years.”

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/kids-can-recover-from-missing-even I. Introduction Back when the public schools were closed or online, someone I know burned themselves out working overtime to get the money to send their kid to a private school. They figured that all the other parents would do it, their kid would fall hopelessly behind, and then they’d be doomed to whatever sort of horrible fate awaits people who don’t get into the right colleges. I hear this is happening again now, with more school closures, more frantic parents, and more people asking awful questions like “should I accept the risk of sending my immunocompromised kid to school, or should I accept him falling behind and never amounting to anything?” (see also this story) You can probably predict what side I’m on here. Like everyone else, I took a year of Spanish in middle school; like everyone else who did that, the sum total of what I remember is “no hablo Espanol” - and even there I’m pretty sure I forgot a curly thing over at least one of the letters. Like everyone else, I learned advanced math in high school; like everyone else, I can do up to basic algebra, the specific math I need for my job, and nothing else (my entire memory of Algebra II is that there is a thing called “Gaussian Elimination”, and even there, I’m not sure this wasn’t just the name of a video game). Like everyone else, I once knew the names and dates of many important Civil War battles; like everyone else - okay, fine, I remember all of these, but only because the Civil War is objectively fascinating.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/blindness-schizophrenia-and-autism   Some weird psychiatric trivia: no congenitally blind person ever gets schizophrenia (journal article, popular article). “Trivia” is exactly the right word for this fact; it’s undeniably interesting, but what do you do with it? So far nobody has done anything, other than remark “hmm, that’s funny”. I was thinking about this recently in the context of the diametrical model of autism vs. schizophrenia. This is itself pretty close to psychiatric trivia - a lot of features of schizophrenia and autism seem to be opposites of each other. As I put it here: Many of the genes that increase risk of autism decrease risk of schizophrenia, and vice versa. Autists have a smaller-than-normal corpus callosum; schizophrenics have a larger-than-normal one. Schizophrenics smoke so often that some researchers believe they have some kind of nicotine deficiency; autists have unusually low smoking rates. Schizophrenics are more susceptible to the rubber hand illusion and have weaker self-other boundaries in general; autists seem less susceptible and have stronger self-other boundaries. Autists can be pathologically rational but tend to be uncreative; schizophrenics can be pathologically creative but tend to be irrational. The list goes on.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hanania-on-partisanship Support the author on Substack: astralcodexten.substack.com Then support the podcast: www.patreon.com/sscpodcast Richard Hanania of the Center For The Study Of Partisanship And Ideology asks "why is everything liberal?" Given that there are approximately equal numbers of Trump voters and Biden voters in elections, how come we have "woke capital" celebrating Pride Month, instead of unwoke capital celebrating some conservative cause (as might have happened fifty years ago)? How come conservatives worry about censorship by liberal tech companies instead of vice versa? How come conservatives worry about college turning their kids liberal instead of vice versa?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/outdoor-careful-meetups-everywhere Support the author on Substack: astralcodexten.substack.com Then support the podcast: www.patreon.com/sscpodcast https://forms.gle/mvueraFmq2hSqdH27 There are ACX-affiliated 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 once annually, and it's that time of year again. Given the COVID situation, I debated whether or not I should hold the meetups this year. I've decided yes, for a few reasons: According to the recent surveys, 97% of ACX readers in the US are vaccinated. Other developed countries have roughly similar numbers (except for Australia, where I am recommending no meetups for now). I will request that only vaccinated people attend these meetups - but knowing that I can’t enforce this, it makes me reassured to learn that almost everyone is vaccinated anyway. Everyone liked outdoor meetups better last time, so we can just hold the meetups outdoors. My state (California) currently says small to medium outdoor gatherings are okay, with light restrictions starting once they have 10,000 people.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/eight-hundred-slightly-poisoned-word Support the author on Substack: astralcodexten.substack.com Then support the podcast: www.patreon.com/sscpodcast   In 2012, a Berkeley team found that indoor carbon dioxide had dramatic negative effects on cognition (paper, popular article). Subjects in poorly ventilated environments did up to 50% worse on a test of reasoning and decision-making. This is potentially pretty important, because lots of office buildings (and private houses) count as poorly-ventilated environments, so a lot of decision-making might be happening while severely impaired. Since then people have debated this on and off, with some studies confirming the effect and others failing to find it. I personally am skeptical, partly because the effect is so big I would expect someone to have noticed, but also because submarines, spaceships, etc have orders of magnitude more carbon dioxide than any civilian environment, but people still seem to do pretty hard work in them pretty effectively. As part of my continuing effort to test this theory in my own life, I played a word game eight hundred times under varying ventilation conditions. …okay, fine, no, I admit it, I played a word game eight hundred times because I’m addicted to it. But since I was playing the word game eight hundred times anyway, I varied the ventilation conditions to see what would happen. The game was WordTwist, which you can find here (warning: potentially addictive). You get a 5x5 square of letters and you have to find as many words as possible (of four letters or more) within three minutes. You can move up, down, right, left, or diagonal, and get more points for harder words. A typical board looks like this: