Episodes

  • “EU explained in 10 minutes” by Martin Sustrik

    “EU explained in 10 minutes” by Martin Sustrik
    Oct 24 2025
    If you want to understand a country, you should pick a similar country that you are already familiar with, research the differences between the two and there you go, you are now an expert.

    But this approach doesn’t quite work for the European Union. You might start, for instance, by comparing it to the United States, assuming that EU member countries are roughly equivalent to U.S. states. But that analogy quickly breaks down. The deeper you dig, the more confused you become.

    You try with other federal states. Germany. Switzerland. But it doesn’t work either.

    Finally, you try with the United Nations. After all, the EU is an international organization, just like the UN. But again, the analogy does not work. The facts about the EU just don’t fit into your UN-shaped mental model.

    Not getting anywhere, you decide to bite the bullet and learn about the EU the [...]

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    First published:
    October 21st, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/88CaT5RPZLqrCmFLL/eu-explained-in-10-minutes

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    17 mins
  • “Cheap Labour Everywhere” by Morpheus

    “Cheap Labour Everywhere” by Morpheus
    Oct 24 2025
    I recently visited my girlfriend's parents in India. Here is what that experience taught me:

    Yudkowsky has this facebook post where he makes some inferences about the economy after noticing two taxis stayed in the same place while he got his groceries. I had a few similar experiences while I was in India, though sadly I don't remember them in enough detail to illustrate them in as much detail as that post. Most of the thoughts relating to economics revolved around how labour in India is extremely cheap.

    I knew in the abstract that India is not as rich as countries I had been in before, but it was very different seeing that in person. From the perspective of getting an intuitive feel for economics, it was very interesting to be thrown into a very different economy and seeing a lot of surprising facts and noticing how [...]

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    First published:
    October 16th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2xWC6FkQoRqTf9ZFL/cheap-labour-everywhere

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    4 mins
  • [Linkpost] “Consider donating to AI safety champion Scott Wiener” by Eric Neyman

    [Linkpost] “Consider donating to AI safety champion Scott Wiener” by Eric Neyman
    Oct 24 2025
    This is a link post. Written in my personal capacity. Thanks to many people for conversations and comments. Written in less than 24 hours; sorry for any sloppiness.



    It's an uncanny, weird coincidence that the two biggest legislative champions for AI safety in the entire country announced their bids for Congress just two days apart. But here we are.

    On Monday, I put out a long blog post making the case for donating to Alex Bores, author of the New York RAISE Act. And today I’m doing the exact same thing for Scott Wiener, who announced a run for Congress in California today (October 22).

    Much like with Alex Bores, if you’re potentially interested in donating to Wiener, my suggestion would be to:

    1. Read this post to understand the case for donating to Scott Wiener.
    2. Understand that political donations are a matter of public record, and that this [...]
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    First published:
    October 22nd, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n6Rsb2jDpYSfzsbns/consider-donating-to-ai-safety-champion-scott-wiener

    Linkpost URL:
    https://ericneyman.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/consider-donating-to-ai-safety-champion-scott-wiener/

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    3 mins
  • “Which side of the AI safety community are you in?” by Max Tegmark

    “Which side of the AI safety community are you in?” by Max Tegmark
    Oct 23 2025
    In recent years, I’ve found that people who self-identify as members of the AI safety community have increasingly split into two camps:

    Camp A) "Race to superintelligence safely”: People in this group typically argue that "superintelligence is inevitable because of X”, and it's therefore better that their in-group (their company or country) build it first. X is typically some combination of “Capitalism”, “Molloch”, “lack of regulation” and “China”.

    Camp B) “Don’t race to superintelligence”: People in this group typically argue that “racing to superintelligence is bad because of Y”. Here Y is typically some combination of “uncontrollable”, “1984”, “disempowerment” and “extinction”.

    Whereas the 2023 extinction statement was widely signed by both Camp B and Camp A (including Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis and Sam Altman), the 2025 superintelligence statement conveniently separates the two groups – for example, I personally offered all US Frontier AI CEO's to sign, and none chose [...]

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    First published:
    October 22nd, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zmtqmwetKH4nrxXcE/which-side-of-the-ai-safety-community-are-you-in

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    4 mins
  • “Doomers were right” by Algon

    “Doomers were right” by Algon
    Oct 23 2025
    There's an argument I sometimes hear against existential risks, or any other putative change that some are worried about, that goes something like this:

    'We've seen time after time that some people will be afraid of any change. They'll say things like "TV will destroy people's ability to read", "coffee shops will destroy the social order","machines will put textile workers out of work". Heck, Socrates argued that books would harm people's ability to memorize things. So many prophets of doom, and yet the world has not only survived, it has thrived. Innovation is a boon. So we should be extremely wary when someone cries out "halt" in response to a new technology, as that path is lined with skulls of would be doomsayers."

    Lest you think this is a straw man, Yann Le Cun compared fears about AI doom to fears about coffee. Now, I don't want to criticize [...]

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    First published:
    October 22nd, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cAmBfjQDj6eaic95M/doomers-were-right

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    5 mins
  • “Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems” by Algon

    “Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems” by Algon
    Oct 22 2025
    People don't explore enough. They rely on cached thoughts and actions to get through their day. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to them making progress on their problems. The solution is simple. Just do one new thing a day to solve one of your problems.

    Intellectually, I've always known that annoying, persistent problems often require just 5 seconds of actual thought. But seeing a number of annoying problems that made my life worse, some even major ones, just yield to the repeated application of a brief burst of thought each day still surprised me.

    For example, I had a wobbly chair. It was wobbling more as time went on, and I worried it would break. Eventually, I decided to try actually solving the issue. 1 minute and 10 turns of an allen key later, it was fixed.

    Another example: I have a shot attention span. I kept [...]

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    First published:
    October 3rd, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gtk2KqEtedMi7ehxN/do-one-new-thing-a-day-to-solve-your-problems

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    3 mins
  • “That Mad Olympiad” by Tomás B.

    “That Mad Olympiad” by Tomás B.
    Oct 19 2025
    "I heard Chen started distilling the day after he was born. He's only four years old, if you can believe it. He's written 18 novels. His first words were, "I'm so here for it!" Adrian said.

    He's my little brother. Mom was busy in her world model. She says her character is like a "villainess" or something - I kinda worry it's a sex thing. It's for sure a sex thing. Anyway, she was busy getting seduced or seducing or whatever villanesses do in world models, so I had to escort Adrian to Oak Central for the Lit Olympiad. Mom doesn't like supervision drones for some reason. Thinks they're creepy. But a gangly older sister looming over him and witnessing those precious adolescent memories for her - that's just family, I guess.

    "That sounds more like a liability to me," I said. "Bad data, old models."

    Chen waddled [...]

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    First published:
    October 15th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LPiBBn2tqpDv76w87/that-mad-olympiad-1

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    27 mins
  • “The ‘Length’ of ‘Horizons’” by Adam Scholl

    “The ‘Length’ of ‘Horizons’” by Adam Scholl
    Oct 17 2025
    Current AI models are strange. They can speak—often coherently, sometimes even eloquently—which is wild. They can predict the structure of proteins, beat the best humans at many games, recall more facts in most domains than human experts; yet they also struggle to perform simple tasks, like using computer cursors, maintaining basic logical consistency, or explaining what they know without wholesale fabrication.

    Perhaps someday we will discover a deep science of intelligence, and this will teach us how to properly describe such strangeness. But for now we have nothing of the sort, so we are left merely gesturing in vague, heuristical terms; lately people have started referring to this odd mixture of impressiveness and idiocy as “spikiness,” for example, though there isn’t much agreement about the nature of the spikes.

    Of course it would be nice to measure AI progress anyway, at least in some sense sufficient to help us [...]

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    Outline:

    (03:48) Conceptual Coherence

    (07:12) Benchmark Bias

    (10:39) Predictive Value

    The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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    First published:
    October 14th, 2025

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PzLSuaT6WGLQGJJJD/the-length-of-horizons

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    14 mins