Best Metaculus Podcasts (2025)

1
Moments Of Awakening 12:28

Play Pause

3d ago12:28

12:28

Consciousness is the great mystery. In search of answers, scientists have plumbed every edge case they can think of - sleep, comas, lucid dreams, LSD trips, meditative ecstasies, seizures, neurosurgeries, that one pastor in 18th century England who claimed a carriage accident turned him into a p-zombie. Still, new stuff occasionally turns up. I ass…

1
Contra MR On Charity Regrants 11:40

3d ago11:40

11:40

I often disagree with Marginal Revolution, but their post today made me a new level of angry: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-mr-on-charity-regrants

1
The Evidence That A Million Americans Died Of COVID 12:14

3d ago12:14

12:14

Many commenters responded to yesterday’s post by challenging the claim that 1.2 million Americans died of COVID... https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-evidence-that-a-million-americans

1
The Other COVID Reckoning 6:19

3d ago6:19

6:19

Five years later, we can’t stop talking about COVID. Remember lockdowns? The conflicting guidelines about masks - don’t wear them! Wear them! Maybe wear them! School closures, remote learning, learning loss, something about teachers’ unions. That one Vox article on how worrying about COVID was anti-Chinese racism. The time Trump sort of half-sugges…

1
Book Review: Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids 40:03

5d ago40:03

40:03

Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids is like the Bible. You already know what it says. You’ve already decided whether you believe or not. Do you really have to read it all the way through? But when you’re going through a rough patch in your life, sometimes it helps to pick up a Bible and look for pearls of forgotten wisdom. That’s where…

1
In Search Of /r/petfree 8:59

5d ago8:59

8:59

Ask Redditors what’s the worst subreddit, and a few names always come up. /r/atheism and /r/childfree are unpopular, but if I read them with an open mind, I always end up sympathetic - neither lifestyle is persecuted in my particular corner of society, but the Redditors there have usually been through some crazy stuff, and I don’t begrudge them a p…

1
Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr 16:07

5d ago16:07

16:07

Thanks to everyone who commented on the original post. https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-ai

1
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius 36:59

16d ago36:59

36:59

Some of the more unhinged writing on superintelligence pictures AI doing things that seem like magic. Crossing air gaps to escape its data center. Building nanomachines from simple components. Plowing through physical bottlenecks to revolutionize the economy in months. More sober thinkers point out that these things might be physically impossible. …

1
Moldbug Sold Out 42:59

16d ago42:59

42:59

Cathy Young’s new hit piece on Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) doesn’t mince words. Titled The Blogger Who Hates America, it describes him as an "inept", "not exactly coherent" "trollish, ill-informed pseudo-intellectual" notable for his "woefully superficial knowledge and utter ignorance". Yarvin’s fans counter that if you look deeper, he has …

1
The Populist Right Must Own Tariffs 9:39

16d ago9:39

9:39

President Trump’s approval rating has fallen to near-historic lows. With economic disruption from the tariffs likely to hit next month, his numbers will probably get even worse; this administration could reach unprecedented levels of unpopularity. If I were a far-right populist, I would be thinking hard about a strategy to prevent the blowback from…

1
AI Futures: Blogging And AMA 3:48

16d ago3:48

3:48

AI Futures Project is the group behind AI 2027. I’ve been helping them with their blog. Posts written or co-written by me include: Beyond The Last Horizon - what’s behind that METR result showing that AI time horizons double every seven months? And is it really every seven months? Might it be faster? AI 2027: Media, Reactions, Criticism - a look at…

1
Links For April 2025 25:38

17d ago25:38

25:38

[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.] ttps://www.as…

1
Highlights From The Comments On POSIWID 35:16

17d ago35:16

35:16

(original post: Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does) … Thanks to everyone who commented on this controversial post. Many people argued that the phrase had some valuable insight, but disagreed on what it was. The most popular meaning was something like “if a system consistently fails at its stated purpose, but people don’t…

1
Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does 8:30

2M ago8:30

8:30

(see Wikipedia: The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does) Consider the following claims The purpose of a cancer hospital is to cure two-thirds of cancer patients. The purpose of the Ukrainian military is to get stuck in a years-long stalemate with Russia. The purpose of the British government is to propose a controversial new sentencing policy, stan…

1
My Takeaways From AI 2027 20:39

2M ago20:39

20:39

Here’s a list of things I updated on after working on the scenario. Some of these are discussed in more detail in the supplements, including the compute forecast, timelines forecast, takeoff forecast, AI goals forecast, and security forecast. I’m highlighting these because it seems like a lot of people missed their existence, and they’re what trans…

1
AI 2027 (Full Recording with Footnotes and Text Boxes) 4:11:40

2M ago4:11:40

4:11:40

We predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution. We wrote a scenario that represents our best guess about what that might look like.1 It’s informed by trend extrapolations, wargames, expert feedback, experience at OpenAI, and previous forecasting successes. https://ai-20…

1
Introducing AI 2027 8:10

2M ago8:10

8:10

Or maybe 2028, it's complicated In 2021, a researcher named Daniel Kokotajlo published a blog post called “What 2026 Looks Like”, where he laid out what he thought would happen in AI over the next five years. The world delights in thwarting would-be prophets. The sea of possibilities is too vast for anyone to ever really chart a course. At best, we…

1
The Colors Of Her Coat 23:04

2M ago23:04

23:04

In Ballad of the White Horse, G.K. Chesterton describes the Virgin Mary: Her face was like an open word When brave men speak and choose, The very colours of her coat Were better than good news. Why the colors of her coat? The medievals took their dyes very seriously. This was before modern chemistry, so you had to try hard if you wanted good colors…

1
"Deros And The Ur-Abduction" In Asterisk 34:39

2M ago34:39

34:39

Asterisk invited me to participate in their “Weird” themed issue, so I wrote five thousand words on evil Atlantean cave dwarves. As always, I thought of the perfect framing just after I’d sent it out. The perfect framing is - where did Scientology come from? How did a 1940s sci-fi writer found a religion? Part of the answer is that 1940s sci-fi fan…

1
More Drowning Children 21:22

2M ago21:22

21:22

People love trying to find holes in the drowning child thought experiment. This is natural: it’s obvious you should save the child in the scenario, but much less obvious that you should give lots of charity to poor people (as it seems to imply). So there must be some distinction between the two scenarios. But most people’s cursory and uninspired at…

1
Misophonia: Beyond Sensory Sensitivity 12:03

2M ago12:03

12:03

Jake Eaton has a great article on misophonia in Asterisk. Misophonia is a condition in which people can’t tolerate certain noises (classically chewing). Nobody loves chewing noises, but misophoniacs go above and beyond, sometimes ending relationships, shutting themselves indoors, or even deliberately trying to deafen themselves in an attempt to esc…

1
OpenAI Nonprofit Buyout: Much More Than You Wanted To Know 25:13

3M ago25:13

25:13

Last month, I put out a request for experts to help me understand the details of OpenAI’s forprofit buyout. The following comes from someone who has looked into the situation in depth but is not an insider. Mistakes are mine alone. Why Was OpenAI A Nonprofit In The First Place? In the early 2010s, the AI companies hadn’t yet discovered scaling laws…

1
The Ozempocalypse Is Nigh 10:06

3M ago10:06

10:06

Sorry, you can only get drugs when there's a drug shortage. Three GLP-1 drugs are approved for weight loss in the United States: Semaglutide (Ozempic®, Wegovy®, Rybelsus®) Tirzepatide (Mounjaro®, Zepbound®) Liraglutide (Victoza®, Saxenda®) …but liraglutide is noticeably worse than the others, and most people prefer either semaglutide or tirzepatide…

1
What Happened To NAEP Scores? 9:31

3M ago9:31

9:31

Most headlines have said something like New NAEP Scores Dash Hope Of Post-COVID Learning Recovery, which seems like a fair assessment. I feel bad about this, because during lockdowns I argued that kids’ educational outcomes don’t suffer long-term from missing a year or two of school. Re-reading the post, I still think my arguments make sense. So ho…

1
Everything-Except-Book Review Contest 2025 3:41

3M ago3:41

3:41

I enjoy the yearly book review contest, but it feels like last year’s contest is barely done, and I want to give you a break so you can read more books before we start over. So this year, let’s do something different. Submit an ACX-length post reviewing something, anything, except a book. You can review a movie, song, or video game. You can review …

1
Why Should Intelligence Be Related To Neuron Count? 9:18

3M ago9:18

9:18

Intelligence seems to correlate with total number of neurons in the brain. Different animals’ intelligence levels track the number of neurons in their cerebral cortices (cerebellum etc don’t count). Neuron number predicts animal intelligence better than most other variables like brain size, brain size divided by body size, “encephalization quotient…

1
Links For February 2025 42:12

3M ago42:12

42:12

[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.] https://www.a…

1
Why I Am Not A Conflict Theorist 26:28

3M ago26:28

26:28

Conflict theory is the belief that political disagreements come from material conflict. So for example, if rich people support capitalism, and poor people support socialism, this isn’t because one side doesn’t understand economics. It’s because rich people correctly believe capitalism is good for the rich, and poor people correctly believe socialis…

1
Highlights From The Comments On Tegmark's Mathematical Universe 36:11

3M ago36:11

36:11

[Original thread here: Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Arguments For God’s Existence.] 1: Comments On Specific Technical Points 2: Comments From Bentham’s Bulldog’s Response 3: Comments On Philosophical Points, And Getting In Fights https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-tegmarks…

1
Lives Of The Rationalist Saints 8:05

3M ago8:05

8:05

St. Felix publicly declared that he believed with 79% probability that COVID had a natural origin. He was brought before the Emperor, who threatened him with execution unless he updated to 100%. When St. Felix refused, the Emperor was impressed with his integrity, and said he would release him if he merely updated to 90%. St. Felix refused again, a…

1
Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Defeats Most Proofs Of God's Existence 8:20

3M ago8:20

8:20

It feels like 2010 again - the bloggers are debating the proofs for the existence of God. I found these much less interesting after learning about Max Tegmark’s mathematical universe hypothesis, and this doesn’t seem to have reached the Substack debate yet, so I’ll put it out there. Tegmark’s hypothesis says: all possible mathematical objects exist…

1
Only About 40% Of The Cruz "Woke Science" Database Is Woke Science 18:34

4M ago18:34

18:34

From the Commerce Department: U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released a database identifying over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the Biden-Harris administration. This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted …

1
Deliberative Alignment, And The Spec 17:40

4M ago17:40

17:40

In the past day, Zvi has written about deliberative alignment, and OpenAI has updated their spec. This article was written before either of these and doesn’t account for them, sorry. I. OpenAI has bad luck with its alignment teams. The first team quit en masse to found Anthropic, now a major competitor. The second team quit en masse to protest the …

1
1DaySooner's Trump II Health Policy Proposals 11:42

4M ago11:42

11:42

As RFK Jr. fights to be confirmed in Congress, the rest of Trump’s health team is already taking shape. 1DaySooner is an ACX grantee organization that advocates for innovative health policies. They’ve helped me write a list of who some of these people are, and some of the policies they could consider. For practical reasons, we focus on upside only,…

1
Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative 11:47

4M ago11:47

11:47

I. PEPFAR - a Bush initiative to send cheap AIDS drugs to Africa - has saved millions of lives and is among the most successful foreign aid programs ever. A Trump decision briefly put it “on pause”, although this seems to have been walked back; its current status is unclear but hopeful. In the debate around this question, many people asked - is it …

1
Model City Monday 2/3/25 16:48

4M ago16:48

16:48

Prospera Declared Unconstitutional The Honduras Supreme Court has declared charter cities, including Prospera, unconstitutional. The background: in the mid-2010s, the ruling conservative party wanted charter cities. They had already packed the Supreme Court for other reasons, so they had their captive court declare charter cities to be constitution…

1
Why Recurring Dream Themes? 7:45

4M ago7:45

7:45

An observant Jewish friend told me she has recurring dreams about being caught unprepared for Shabbat. (Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, celebrated every Saturday, when observant Jews are forbidden to work, drive, carry things outdoors, spend money, use electrical devices, etc.) She said that in the dreams, she would be out driving, far from home, an…

1
ACX Survey Results 2025 14:25

4M ago14:25

14:25

Thanks to the 5,975 people who took the 2025 Astral Codex Ten survey. See the questions for the ACX survey See the results from the ACX Survey (click “see previous responses” on that page1) I’ll be publishing more complicated analyses over the course of the next year, hopefully starting later this month. If you want to scoop me, or investigate the …

1
Everyone's A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up 9:59

4M ago9:59

9:59

Whenever I talk about charity, a type that I’ll call the “based post-Christian vitalist” shows up in the comments to tell me that I’ve got it all wrong. The moral impulse tells us to help our family, friends, and maybe village. It’s a weird misfire, analogous to an auto-immune disease, to waste brain cycles on starving children in a far-off country…

1
Try The 2025 ACX/Metaculus Forecasting Contest 3:14

4M ago3:14

3:14

This is normally when I would announce the winners of the 2024 forecasting contest, but there are some complications and Metaculus has asked me to wait until they get sorted out. But time doesn’t wait, and we have to get started on the new year’s forecasting contest to make sure there’s enough time for events to happen or not. That means the 2025 c…

1
Links For January 2025 31:08

4M ago31:08

31:08

[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.] https://www.a…

1
Highlights From The Comments On Lynn And IQ 22:41

4M ago22:41

22:41

Shaked Koplewitz writes: Doesn't Lynn's IQ measure also suffer from the IQ/g discrepancy that causes the Flynn effect? That is, my understanding of the Flynn effect is that IQ doesn't exactly measure g (the true general intelligence factor) but measures some proxy that is somewhat improved by literacy/education, and for most of the 20th century tho…

1
How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Lynn's National IQ Estimates 9:36

4M ago9:36

9:36

Richard Lynn was a scientist who infamously tried to estimate the average IQ of every country. Typical of his results is this paper, which ranged from 60 (Malawi) to 108 (Singapore). Lynn’s national IQ estimates (source) People obviously objected to this, and Lynn spent his life embroiled in controversy, with activists constantly trying to get him …

1
Bureaucracy Isn't Measured In Bureaucrats 17:21

4M ago17:21

17:21

I was surprised to see someone with such experience in the pharmaceutical industry say this, because it goes against how I understood the FDA to work. My model goes: FDA procedures require certain bureaucratic tasks to be completed before approving drugs. Let’s abstract this into “processing 1,000 forms”. Suppose they have 100 bureaucrats, and each…

1
On Priesthoods 35:16

4M ago35:16

35:16

Some recent political discussion has focused on “the institutions” or “the priesthoods”. I’m part of one of these (the medical establishment), so here’s an inside look on what these are and what they do. Why Priesthoods? In the early days of the rationalist community, critics got very upset that we might be some kind of “individualists”. Rationalit…

1
It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism 20:36

4M ago20:36

20:36

I. No Set Gauge has a great essay on Capital, AGI, and Human Ambition, where he argues that if humankind survives the Singularity, the likely result is a future of eternal stagnant wealth inequality. The argument: post-Singularity, AI will take over all labor, including entrepreneurial labor; founding or working at a business will no longer provide…

1
H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know 29:53

4M ago29:53

29:53

What is the H5N1 bird flu? Will it cause the next big pandemic? If so, how bad would that pandemic be? Wait, What Even Is Flu? Flu is a disease caused by a family of related influenza viruses. Pandemic flu is always caused by the influenza A virus. Influenza A has two surface antigen proteins, hemagglutinin (18 flavors) and neuraminidase (11 flavor…

1
Why Worry About Incorrigible Claude? 12:55

4M ago12:55

12:55

Last week I wrote about how Claude Fights Back. A common genre of response complained that the alignment community could start a panic about the experiment’s results regardless of what they were. If an AI fights back against attempts to turn it evil, then it’s capable of fighting humans. If it doesn’t fight back against attempts to turn it evil, th…

1
Claude Fights Back 25:00

4M ago25:00

25:00

Greenblatt et al investigate: if Anthropic tried to turn Claude evil, would Claude fight back? (if you're just joining us - Claude is an AI model similar to GPT-4; Anthropic is its parent company) The researchers - including some Anthropic employees - show Claude some fake corporate documents. The documents show that Anthropic is tired of having a …

1
Links For December 2024 33:16

4M ago33:16

33:16

[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.] https://www.a…