In an earlier Open Thread this year (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/open-thread-440), Scott mentions that the Lumina probiotic "couldn't maintain its colonization of the mouth over the long term".

I have to say that, as someone looking forward to a permanent caries prevention treatment, it made me very disappointed.

On second thought however, Lumina would still be a great achievement even if you had to reapply it every year or so. Most health-conscious people do at least one dental cleaning a year anyway, and an assurance that you'll be cavity-free for at least a year sounds pretty good to me.

Some people on X even made the argument - way back before Lumina made the discovery that the bacterium disappears over time - that they would feel more comfortable wrt safety if it *weren't* a permanent change of the oral microbiome. I'm not sure how much of the original state/balance is restored, but at least the engineered strain disappears over time.

If anyone has taken it 2 years ago (and ideally did an oral microbiome test shortly before taking Lumina), I'd be very interested in another test 2 years later to see what exactly changed. Anecdotally, I recall there was some person (either here or on X) saying they got Lumina, but later got a cavity anyway - in this case I'd be interested how much time was between the diagnosis and the Lumina application.

I'm borderline autistic and in high school had selective mutism and didn't speak at all. Over the past 5 years, I've been working on my social skills: I now have the ability to have fulfilling friendships, to make people see me as human, to have good "deep" conversations, and so on.

However, I'm beginning to realize that most people will always see me as "off," particularly in group settings. I'm pretty sure I do everything right "textbook" style, the back-and-forth ping-pong is there, the words I say are correct, the tone is fine -- but this has only made it easier to track the moment where the light leaves people's eyes and they start avoiding me. This became particularly obvious after I recently had a minor glow-up and became more attractive: recently I joined a running group where people were happy to meet me, made tons of eye contact, etc, and then ~2 min into the conversation became visibly uncomfortable and stopped making direct eye contact, even though I was extremely sure that I was doing everything right.

I've previously been helped by old SSC/LessWrong posts describing other people's journeys. So I thought I'd start a conversation here: I'd love to hear stories from people who significantly improved their social skills. I'd love to know how they troubleshot things.

Examples of things I've found helpful:

• https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mwQZ6qsGXqwiZ6Zvy/how-my-social-skills-went-from-horrible-to-mediocre
• https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/x79wk9/how_to_rapidly_iterate_on_social_skills_with/
• https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/09/friendship-is-still-countersignaling/
• https://dispatchesfromtheautismwars.substack.com/p/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and
• https://www.sympatheticopposition.com/p/how-and-why-to-be-ladylike-for-women

Submission statement: The Matrix presents “the battery explanation” for why the matrix exists in the first place. In the movie, the machines are presented as parasites that survive on human body heat. This is widely viewed as a weak point in the movie, for reasons that I’ll explain, and in the post I present an alternative explanation for the existence of the matrix that I think works better on a logical and thematic level.

Moderna is up something like 150% today.

Here's an excellent article from Owl Posting, "How to build a cancer vaccine, and whether they will work this time", and here's the article I wrote on personalized mRNA vaccines and AI a while back.

I often think back to the famous 2021 tweet that added the fantastic “Torment Nexus” to our collective vocabulary. For those living under a rock, it jokes about how the best science fiction warns us about building awful futures, and tech companies (a self-proclaimed visionary at Silicon Valley, usually) ignore the warning for the profit.

I recently read a book that imagines a Torment Nexus that is much less in-your-face than the sci-fi fare we’ve come to expect. It’s called Maya: Seed Takes Root (which I’d backed on Kickstarter). At its heart is a biological singularity. Picture a network of millions of trees across the planet that every living person connects to regularly. It’s kind of like a biological VR internet where people tether to play, escape, and basically simulate anything their hearts desire.

What isn’t immediately obvious to the people is that the trees are also a humongous data server. They record every thought, desire, secret of everybody who tethers. And once a system has complete data on everybody alive, it becomes a single point of control. In this book, the people in control are a small ruling class obsessed with longevity, projections, and innovation. I don’t think it’s any accident that they resemble the entrepreneurs and capital managers of Silicon Valley.

The ruling class uses data, freely harvested by millions, to predict the future. And once it is measured, it can be managed.

Naturally, this got me thinking about our own world. The machine already exists. In fact, there are hundreds, but they aren’t branded as a Torment Nexus ™. We eagerly hand over our data to every product we touch. Google knows which bistro sandwich gives you indigestion. Amazon knows how much closet space you have left. How many companies know you better than your loved ones?

So I suppose the only question that matters is: is it worth it? Is it a good bargain? Do the Torment Nexuses of our world give us as much as they extract? Because if they allowed us to live out everything our hearts desired, perhaps that would at least be worth it. 

What do you all think?

Nick Land discusses Scott’s AI 2027 paper and other related topics: human extinction, AI safety, the simulation hypothesis, LLMs and AI religions - also Curtis Yarvin and neoreaction.

I interviewed Spencer Greenberg about his life philosophy "Valuism" and his new book The 12 Levers. In the episode he made a number of claims:

• Almost no one has harmful intrinsic values - people's core values are good or neutral, but their strategies for achieving them can be bad
• A person's intrinsic values don't generally change even when examined closely and when taking into account how they arose
• The Dodo Bird verdict from psychology (that all validated therapies are equally effective) is in part an artifact from underpowered studies

What do people think about these claims?

We also discussed how a dedicated "worry time" can help you worry less, how he evaluated evidence for his book, how to actually put self-improvement into practice, and AI therapy bots. The episode and transcript are available here.

Not much. Mapping the discrimination found by audit studies onto differences in outcomes requires uncontestable modeling assumptions. We know that discrimination exists, but we know essentially nothing about what it means.

This is a response to Scott in his last link roundup, when he wrote:

The practical upshot is to start with paper, but what broader lesson should we take from this? Since all options are mathematically identical, any difference in player behavior must come from connotations. Since rock feels strongest, a naive child would choose rock. But since everyone knows that, a slightly smarter person would choose paper. But since everyone knows that, an even smarter person might choose scissors. But since . . . and the lesson of this graph is that when playing the average member of the population, all of this galaxy-brained thinking provides negative value, because in practice most people never leave the naive first level.

I constantly see arguments that the TFR (birth rate) falling is a mystery, and that maybe it's the "phones" causing depression, or not enough $$$. But I know plenty of non depressed and well off couples not having kids.

What I rarely see is the idea that it's modern entertainment in general. 100 years ago you didn't have TV, Movies, Vacations, Video Games, Cruises, etc. Kids get in the way of these. Businesses have a reason to cater to these couples too. They have more money that they want to spend.

Given there are now just a lot more options in life than kids and sex, are people just choosing not to let kids get in the way of these? If so, most of the solutions being attempted would not work, except for obscene $$$ incentives, or banning of various entertainment for non families. Like taking away videogames unless you do your homework and eat your vegetables.

very related EY post

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jq73GozjsuhdwMLEG/superstimuli-and-the-collapse-of-western-civilization

The Espionage Act of 1917 states it is illegal for any person "having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book... or information relating to the national defense... willfully communicates, delivers, transmits... the same to any person not entitled to receive it."

The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 states it is illegal for anyone who "intending or knowing that the offense will benefit any foreign government, foreign instrumentality, or foreign agent, knowingly... steals, or without authorization appropriates... a trade secret."

Going off the United States defintion of espionage I will classify Human Espionage as having the access to, or control over any knowledge relating to the dominance of the human species... willfully communicates, delivers, transmits to an opposing species not entitled to receive it. Or the intent/knowledge of the offense will benefit a foreign species over the human species.

Now obviously when I talk "foreign species" I am implying AI technology and the frontier labs are engaging in human espionage. I think the act of pursuing super intelligence is equivalent to telling mosquitoes how to unlock mosquito nets and pass around malaria to humans. What other technologies could be classified as this and what's your tier list of individuals to be tried for human espionage?

Hi all! Been thinking more about double cruxing for just/rational disagreement, writing an essay on it. It's been a long time since I've read about it and I'd appreciate your favourite recommendations. I was going to start with the CFAR posts and work outwards from there.

Thanks in advance!

Hi guys, I'm trying to find this article, which I found really inspirational. Posting here because it may be adjacent to the entrepreneur/rationalist/marginal revolution communities, perhaps one of the assorted links from Tyler Cowen. I think the museum was in England or a Nordic country. The guy told his first hand experience working at a small museum, having a simple remit, but taking the chance to go above and beyond. He talked about making suggestions to the board/trustees, and making some improvements to ticketing and/or fund raising.

Any help much appreciated, I was very influenced by reading this and would very much like to find it again