Best LessWrong Podcasts (2025)

1
“Season Recap of the Village: Agents raise $2,000” by Shoshannah Tekofsky 13:24

Play Pause

5d ago13:24

13:24

Four agents woke up with four computers, a view of the world wide web, and a shared chat room full of humans. Like Claude plays Pokemon, you can watch these agents figure out a new and fantastic world for the first time. Except in this case, the world they are figuring out is our world. In this blog post, we’ll cover what we learned from the first …

1
239 – SymbyAI 1:22:57

1d ago1:22:57

1:22:57

Steven works at SymbyAI, a startup that’s bringing AI into research review and replication. We talk with founder Ashia Livaudais about improving how we all Do Science. Also – If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies preorders here, or at Amazon. LINKS SymbyAI Contact Ashia at [email protected] Kaggle arXiv 00:00:01 – If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies…

1
“The Best Reference Works for Every Subject” by Parker Conley 13:02

6d ago13:02

13:02

Introduction The Best Textbooks on Every Subject is the Schelling point for the best textbooks on every subject. My The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject is the Schelling point for the best tacit knowledge videos on every subject. This post is the Schelling point for the best reference works for every subject. Reference works provide an …

1
“‘Flaky breakthroughs’ pervade coaching — and no one tracks them” by Chipmonk 9:31

7d ago9:31

9:31

Has someone you know ever had a “breakthrough” from coaching, meditation, or psychedelics — only to later have it fade? Show tweet For example, many people experience ego deaths that can last days or sometimes months. But as it turns out, having a sense of self can serve important functions (try navigating a world that expects you to have opinions,…

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“The Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships” by johnswentworth 23:19

8d ago23:19

23:19

What's the main value proposition of romantic relationships? Now, look, I know that when people drop that kind of question, they’re often about to present a hyper-cynical answer which totally ignores the main thing which is great and beautiful about relationships. And then they’re going to say something about how relationships are overrated or some…

1
“It’s hard to make scheming evals look realistic” by Igor Ivanov, dan_moken 7:47

10d ago7:47

7:47

Abstract Claude 3.7 Sonnet easily detects when it's being evaluated for scheming. Surface‑level edits to evaluation scenarios, such as lengthening the prompts, or making conflict of objectives less salient, do improve realism of evaluation scenarios for LLMs, yet these improvements remain modest. The findings confirm that truly disguising an evalua…

1
[Linkpost] “Social Anxiety Isn’t About Being Liked” by Chipmonk 5:23

11d ago5:23

5:23

This is a link post. There's this popular idea that socially anxious folks are just dying to be liked. It seems logical, right? Why else would someone be so anxious about how others see them? Show tweet And yet, being socially anxious tends to make you less likeable…they must be optimizing poorly, behaving irrationally, right? Maybe not. What if so…

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“Truth or Dare” by Duncan Sabien (Inactive) 2:03:21

12d ago2:03:21

2:03:21

Author's note: This is my apparently-annual "I'll put a post on LessWrong in honor of LessOnline" post. These days, my writing goes on my Substack. There have in fact been some pretty cool essays since last year's LO post. Structural note: Some essays are like a five-minute morning news spot. Other essays are more like a 90-minute lecture. This is …

1
“Meditations on Doge” by Martin Sustrik 17:57

13d ago17:57

17:57

Lessons from shutting down institutions in Eastern Europe. This is a cross post from: https://250bpm.substack.com/p/meditations-on-doge Imagine living in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in early 2000's: All marshrutka [mini taxi bus] drivers had to have a medical exam every day to make sure they were not drunk and did not have high blood pres…

1
[Linkpost] “If you’re not sure how to sort a list or grid—seriate it!” by gwern 4:37

15d ago4:37

4:37

This is a link post. "Getting Things in Order: An Introduction to the R Package seriation": Seriation [or "ordination"), i.e., finding a suitable linear order for a set of objects given data and a loss or merit function, is a basic problem in data analysis. Caused by the problem's combinatorial nature, it is hard to solve for all but very small set…

1
“What We Learned from Briefing 70+ Lawmakers on the Threat from AI” by leticiagarcia 31:47

15d ago31:47

31:47

Between late 2024 and mid-May 2025, I briefed over 70 cross-party UK parliamentarians. Just over one-third were MPs, a similar share were members of the House of Lords, and just under one-third came from devolved legislatures — the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd, and the Northern Ireland Assembly. I also held eight additional meetings attended exc…

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238 – Part 2 of How A Rationalist Becomes A Christian 1:26:10

15d ago1:26:10

1:26:10

We speak with a long-time Denver rationalist who’s converting to Christianity about why. Eneasz can’t get over the abandonment of epistemics. This is Part 2, see the previous episode (here) for Part 1. LINKS Thomas Ambrose on Twitter Paid Bonus content for the week – Pressed Into The Navy (patreon, substack) 00:00:05 – The trap 01:19:00 – Guild of …

1
“Winning the power to lose” by KatjaGrace 3:32

20d ago3:32

3:32

Have the Accelerationists won? Last November Kevin Roose announced that those in favor of going fast on AI had now won against those favoring caution, with the reinstatement of Sam Altman at OpenAI. Let's ignore whether Kevin's was a good description of the world, and deal with a more basic question: if it were so—i.e. if Team Acceleration would co…

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[Linkpost] “Gemini Diffusion: watch this space” by Yair Halberstadt 2:16

21d ago2:16

2:16

This is a link post. Google Deepmind has announced Gemini Diffusion. Though buried under a host of other IO announcements it's possible that this is actually the most important one! This is significant because diffusion models are entirely different to LLMs. Instead of predicting the next token, they iteratively denoise all the output tokens until …

1
“AI Doomerism in 1879” by David Gross 13:05

22d ago13:05

13:05

I’m reading George Eliot's Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879)—so far a snoozer compared to her novels. But chapter 17 surprised me for how well it anticipated modern AI doomerism. In summary, Theophrastus is in conversation with Trost, who is an optimist about the future of automation and how it will free us from drudgery and permit us to furt…

1
“Consider not donating under $100 to political candidates” by DanielFilan 2:01

27d ago2:01

2:01

Epistemic status: thing people have told me that seems right. Also primarily relevant to US audiences. Also I am speaking in my personal capacity and not representing any employer, present or past. Sometimes, I talk to people who work in the AI governance space. One thing that multiple people have told me, which I found surprising, is that there is…

1
“It’s Okay to Feel Bad for a Bit” by moridinamael 5:51

27d ago5:51

5:51

"If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies." - Epictetus "Whatever suffering arises, all arises due to attachment; with the cessation of attachment, there is the cessation of suffering." - Pali canon "He is not disturbed by loss, he does not delight…

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“Explaining British Naval Dominance During the Age of Sail” by Arjun Panickssery 8:52

28d ago8:52

8:52

The other day I discussed how high monitoring costs can explain the emergence of “aristocratic” systems of governance: Aristocracy and Hostage Capital Arjun Panickssery · Jan 8 There's a conventional narrative by which the pre-20th century aristocracy was the "old corruption" where civil and military positions were distributed inefficiently due to …

1
“Eliezer and I wrote a book: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by So8res 6:42

29d ago6:42

6:42

Eliezer and I wrote a book. It's titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Unlike a lot of other writing either of us have done, it's being professionally published. It's hitting shelves on September 16th. It's a concise (~60k word) book aimed at a broad audience. It's been well-received by people who received advance copies, with some endorsement…

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“Too Soon” by Gordon Seidoh Worley 8:19

29d ago8:19

8:19

It was a cold and cloudy San Francisco Sunday. My wife and I were having lunch with friends at a Korean cafe. My phone buzzed with a text. It said my mom was in the hospital. I called to find out more. She had a fever, some pain, and had fainted. The situation was serious, but stable. Monday was a normal day. No news was good news, right? Tuesday s…

1
237 – How A Rationalist Becomes A Christian 1:26:53

29d ago1:26:53

1:26:53

We speak with a long-time Denver rationalist who’s converting to Christianity about why. Part one, it turns out. LINKS Thomas Ambrose on Twitter The Rationalist Summer Trifecta: Manifest 2025 LessOnline 2025 VibeCamp 2025 00:00:05 – OK so why? 01:24:55 – Guild of the Rose 01:25:41 – Thank the Supporter! Our Patreon, or if you prefer Our SubStack He…

1
“PSA: The LessWrong Feedback Service” by JustisMills 4:34

1M ago4:34

4:34

At the bottom of the LessWrong post editor, if you have at least 100 global karma, you may have noticed this button. The button Many people click the button, and are jumpscared when it starts an Intercom chat with a professional editor (me), asking what sort of feedback they'd like. So, that's what it does. It's a summon Justis button. Why summon J…

1
“Orienting Toward Wizard Power” by johnswentworth 8:20

1M ago8:20

8:20

For months, I had the feeling: something is wrong. Some core part of myself had gone missing. I had words and ideas cached, which pointed back to the missing part. There was the story of Benjamin Jesty, a dairy farmer who vaccinated his family against smallpox in 1774 - 20 years before the vaccination technique was popularized, and the same year Ki…

1
“Interpretability Will Not Reliably Find Deceptive AI” by Neel Nanda 13:15

1M ago13:15

13:15

(Disclaimer: Post written in a personal capacity. These are personal hot takes and do not in any way represent my employer's views.) TL;DR: I do not think we will produce high reliability methods to evaluate or monitor the safety of superintelligent systems via current research paradigms, with interpretability or otherwise. Interpretability seems a…

1
“Slowdown After 2028: Compute, RLVR Uncertainty, MoE Data Wall” by Vladimir_Nesov 11:33

1M ago11:33

11:33

It'll take until ~2050 to repeat the level of scaling that pretraining compute is experiencing this decade, as increasing funding can't sustain the current pace beyond ~2029 if AI doesn't deliver a transformative commercial success by then. Natural text data will also run out around that time, and there are signs that current methods of reasoning t…

1
“Early Chinese Language Media Coverage of the AI 2027 Report: A Qualitative Analysis” by jeanne_, eeeee 27:35

1M ago27:35

27:35

In this blog post, we analyse how the recent AI 2027 forecast by Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean has been discussed across Chinese language platforms. We present: Our research methodology and synthesis of key findings across media artefacts A proposal for how censorship patterns may provide signal for t…

1
236 – Twilight of the Edgelords with Liam Nolan 1:47:29

1M ago1:47:29

1:47:29

Eneasz and Liam discuss Scott Alexander’s post “Twilight of the Edgelords,” an exploration of Truth, Morality, and how one balances love of truth vs not destabilizing the world economy and political regime. CORRECTION: Scott did make an explicitly clear pro Kamala post LINKS Scott Alexander’s Twilight of the Edgelords Liam & Waweru’s fiction & phil…

LessWrong Podcasts

1
LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

LessWrong

1
The Bayesian Conspiracy

The Bayesian Conspiracy

1
The Filan Cabinet

Daniel Filan

1
Heart of the Matter

Bryan Davis & Jay Kannaiyan

1
“Season Recap of the Village: Agents raise $2,000” by Shoshannah Tekofsky 13:24

1
239 – SymbyAI 1:22:57

1
“The Best Reference Works for Every Subject” by Parker Conley 13:02

1
“‘Flaky breakthroughs’ pervade coaching — and no one tracks them” by Chipmonk 9:31

1
“The Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships” by johnswentworth 23:19

1
“It’s hard to make scheming evals look realistic” by Igor Ivanov, dan_moken 7:47

1
[Linkpost] “Social Anxiety Isn’t About Being Liked” by Chipmonk 5:23

1
“Truth or Dare” by Duncan Sabien (Inactive) 2:03:21

1
“Meditations on Doge” by Martin Sustrik 17:57

1
[Linkpost] “If you’re not sure how to sort a list or grid—seriate it!” by gwern 4:37

1
“What We Learned from Briefing 70+ Lawmakers on the Threat from AI” by leticiagarcia 31:47

1
238 – Part 2 of How A Rationalist Becomes A Christian 1:26:10

1
“Winning the power to lose” by KatjaGrace 3:32

1
[Linkpost] “Gemini Diffusion: watch this space” by Yair Halberstadt 2:16

1
“AI Doomerism in 1879” by David Gross 13:05

1
“Consider not donating under $100 to political candidates” by DanielFilan 2:01

1
“It’s Okay to Feel Bad for a Bit” by moridinamael 5:51

1
“Explaining British Naval Dominance During the Age of Sail” by Arjun Panickssery 8:52

1
“Eliezer and I wrote a book: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies” by So8res 6:42

1
“Too Soon” by Gordon Seidoh Worley 8:19

1
237 – How A Rationalist Becomes A Christian 1:26:53

1
“PSA: The LessWrong Feedback Service” by JustisMills 4:34

1
“Orienting Toward Wizard Power” by johnswentworth 8:20

1
“Interpretability Will Not Reliably Find Deceptive AI” by Neel Nanda 13:15

1
“Slowdown After 2028: Compute, RLVR Uncertainty, MoE Data Wall” by Vladimir_Nesov 11:33

1
“Early Chinese Language Media Coverage of the AI 2027 Report: A Qualitative Analysis” by jeanne_, eeeee 27:35

1
236 – Twilight of the Edgelords with Liam Nolan 1:47:29