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Cold Takes

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Jan
18

Good job opportunities for helping with the most important century

5 min read
Feb
28

What does Bing Chat tell us about AI risk?

3 min read
Feb
24

How major governments can help with the most important century

6 min read
Feb
20

What AI companies can do today to help with the most important century

13 min read
Feb
10

Jobs that can help with the most important century

36 min read
Jan
25

Spreading messages to help with the most important century

21 min read
Jan
13

How we could stumble into AI catastrophe

36 min read
Jan
05

Transformative AI issues (not just misalignment): an overview

25 min read
Dec
22

Racing through a minefield: the AI deployment problem

16 min read
Dec
15

High-level hopes for AI alignment

23 min read
Dec
08

AI Safety Seems Hard to Measure

23 min read
Nov
29

Why Would AI "Aim" To Defeat Humanity?

39 min read
Sep
05

Beta Readers are Great

2 min read
Jun
30

The Track Record of Futurists Seems ... Fine

14 min read
Jun
23

Nonprofit Boards are Weird

23 min read
Jun
09

AI Could Defeat All Of Us Combined

20 min read
Apr
12

Useful Vices for Wicked Problems

20 min read
Apr
05

Ideal governance (for companies, countries and more)

17 min read
Mar
29

Debating myself on whether “extra lives lived” are as good as “deaths prevented”

18 min read
Mar
18

Cold Takes reader survey - let me know what you want more and less of!

1 min read
Mar
09

Programming note

1 min read
Mar
02

The Wicked Problem Experience

12 min read
Feb
22

Learning By Writing

12 min read
Feb
18

Misc thematic links

7 min read
Feb
15

Defending One-Dimensional Ethics

20 min read
Feb
11

To Match the Greats, Don’t Follow In Their Footsteps

5 min read
Feb
08

"Moral progress" vs. the simple passage of time

4 min read
Feb
03

Investigating musical genius by listening to the Beach Boys a lot

5 min read
Feb
02

Future-proof ethics

19 min read
Jan
27

Cost disease and civilizational decline

6 min read
Jan
25

Reader reactions and update on "Where's Today's Beethoven"

12 min read
Jan
20

Book non-review: The Dawn of Everything

4 min read
Jan
18

Empowerment and Stakeholder Management

8 min read
Jan
14

Assorted cold-ish links

4 min read
Jan
11

Why it matters if "ideas get harder to find"

7 min read
Jan
07

How artistic ideas could get harder to find

11 min read
Jan
06

Seeking beta readers

1 min read
Jan
05

AI alignment research links

8 min read
Jan
04

Where's Today's Beethoven?

25 min read
Dec
28

What counts as death?

7 min read
Dec
23

Utopia links

4 min read
Dec
22

Bet with Zvi about Omicron

5 min read
Dec
21

Bayesian Mindset

29 min read
Dec
17

Cold Links: misc

3 min read
Dec
14

Visualizing Utopia

15 min read
Dec
10

TV shows I wish I could watch: Intergalactic Immigration Wars

2 min read
Dec
07

Why Describing Utopia Goes Badly

14 min read
Dec
06

Candidate for “highest-stakes question of the next several months” (rare hot take)

5 min read
Dec
02

No need to click

2 min read
Nov
30

Did life get better during the pre-industrial era? (Ehhhh)

19 min read
Nov
23

Minimal-trust investigations

16 min read
Nov
19

Tool-assisted speedrunning

6 min read
Nov
18

“Biological anchors” is about bounding, not pinpointing, AI timelines

13 min read
Nov
16

Falling everyday violence, bigger wars and atrocities: how do they net out?

11 min read
Nov
11

Weak point in “most important century”: lock-in

11 min read
Nov
09

Rowing, Steering, Anchoring, Equity, Mutiny

22 min read
Nov
04

Hunter-gatherer happiness

4 min read
Nov
02

Unraveling the evidence about violence among very early humans

23 min read
Oct
29

Cold Links: nonfiction yarns

2 min read
Oct
28

Weak point in “most important century”: full automation

4 min read
Oct
26

Was life better in hunter-gatherer times?

19 min read
Oct
20

Reading books vs. engaging with them

5 min read
Oct
19

Pre-agriculture gender relations seem bad

17 min read
Oct
15

Cold Links: assorted sports longreads

2 min read
Oct
14

If I were a billion years old

2 min read
Oct
12

Has life gotten better?: the post-industrial era

12 min read
Oct
07

“Technological unemployment” AI vs. “most important century” AI: how far apart?

4 min read
Oct
05

Has Life Gotten Better?

9 min read
Oct
01

Gell-Mann Earworms

5 min read
Sep
28

Summary of history (empowerment and well-being lens)

13 min read
Sep
24

Cold Links: assorted fun basketball stuff

1 min read
Sep
23

The Most Important Century (in a nutshell)

9 min read
Sep
21

Why AI alignment could be hard with modern deep learning

18 min read
Sep
17

Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery

4 min read
Sep
15

Call to Vigilance

5 min read
Sep
14

How to make the best of the most important century?

16 min read
Sep
09

One Cold Link: “The Past and Future of Economic Growth: A Semi-Endogenous Perspective”

6 min read
Sep
08

Medium Lights

2 min read
Sep
07

AI Timelines: Where the Arguments, and the "Experts," Stand

13 min read
Sep
02

Cold Links: Useful

3 min read
Aug
31

Forecasting transformative AI: the "biological anchors" method in a nutshell

21 min read
Aug
27

More on “multiple world-size economies per atom”

8 min read
Aug
26

The gloves are off, the pants are on

4 min read
Aug
24

Are we "trending toward" transformative AI? (How would we know?)

12 min read
Aug
19

Cold Links: heartwarming sports stuff

3 min read
Aug
17

Forecasting transformative AI: what's the burden of proof?

17 min read
Aug
12

A few quick links re: COVID-19/Delta

3 min read
Aug
11

Give Sports a Chance

4 min read
Aug
10

Forecasting Transformative AI, Part 1: What Kind of AI?

13 min read
Aug
05

Why talk about 10,000 years from now?

4 min read
Aug
04

The Great Depression, Recession and Stagnation in Full Historical Context

1 min read
Aug
03

This Can't Go On

13 min read
Jul
29

Imagining yourself as a digital person (two sketches)

11 min read
Jul
28

Does X cause Y? An in-depth evidence review

9 min read
Jul
27

Digital People FAQ

23 min read
Jul
27

Digital People Would Be An Even Bigger Deal

19 min read
Jul
23

Gallup website notes

4 min read
Jul
21

Track records for those who have made lots of predictions

3 min read
Jul
20

The Duplicator: Instant Cloning Would Make the World Economy Explode

11 min read
Jul
15

Phil Birnbaum's "bad regression" puzzles

3 min read
Jul
14

Honesty about reading

3 min read
Jul
13

All Possible Views About Humanity's Future Are Wild

13 min read
Jul
13

First Post

3 min read