LessWrong posts by zvi

Claude's Constitution is an extraordinary document, and will be this week's focus. Its aim is nothing less than helping humanity transition to a world of powerful AI (also known variously as AGI, transformative AI, superintelligence or my current name of choice ‘sufficiently advanced AI.’ The constitution is written with Claude in mind, although it is highly readable for humans, and would serve as a fine employee manual or general set of advice for a human, modulo the parts that wouldn’t make sense in context. This link goes to the full text of Claude's constitution, the official version of what we previously were calling its ‘soul document.’ As they note at the end, the document can and will be revised over time. It was driven by Amanda Askell and Joe Carlsmith. There are places it can be improved. I do not believe this approach alone is sufficient for the challenges ahead. But it is by far the best approach being tried today and can hopefully enable the next level. Overall this is an amazingly great document, and we’ve all seen the results. I’ll be covering the Constitution in three parts. This first post is [...] ---Outline:(01:39) How Anthropic Describes The Constitution(03:22) Decision Theory And Acausal Trade(06:35) AI and Alignment Are The Final Exam Of Philosophy(10:32) Values and Judgment Versus Rules(16:04) The Fourth Framework(17:41) Core Values(19:51) The Three Principles(23:39) Help Is On The Way(27:03) What Was I Made For?(30:22) Do The Right Thing --- First published: January 26th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ArNGbGfki7MNMnfGD/claude-s-constitutional-structure --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

If there's several things this blog endorses, one of them would be going meta. It's time. The big picture awaits. You’re Single Because You Live In The Wrong Place The most important meta question is location, location, location. This is the periodic reminder that dating dynamics are very different in different locations, and gender ratios are far more uneven than they appear because a lot of people pair off and aren’t in the pool. If you are a man seeking to date women, New York City is the place to be. Churrasco Suadade: when I’m out I notice that tables at restaurants and bars in manhattan are probably around 80-95% women, it's a new dynamic that no one is talking about. Fixed Income Guy: Are you at all the poor people places? All the finance guy hang outs are 80% dudes. I mention Fixed Income Guy to mock him, as in why are you spending a lot more money to hang out with 80% dudes and largely finance dudes at that? I mean, sure, if that's what you want. Darrell Owens: Oh this is new? Coming from the Bay Area [...] ---Outline:(00:20) You're Single Because You Live In The Wrong Place(02:04) You're Single Because You're Not Okay Making Less Money Than She Does, You Fool(03:19) You're Single Because You Work Out The Wrong Amount(07:32) You're Single Because You Don't Know You Are Hot(09:27) You're Single Because Age Gap Discourse Is Crazy(10:04) Dating Apps Are Bad For Mental Health(13:13) You're Single Because You Listened To E-Girl Advice(14:13) You're Single Because You Didn't Hire Blaine Anderson(15:52) You're Single Because You Think Zizek Mocked Date Me Docs(18:36) You're Still Single Because You Don't Appreciate Relationships(20:50) You're Not Single And Haven't Been For a While(22:25) You Are Still Single As Evidenced By Would(24:02) You're Single Because You Lack Motivation(25:03) You're Single Because Of Robin Hanson(26:00) You're Single Because You Did This Instead Of Going To Therapy(26:58) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 23rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7y6YA8o6oisAzDSgk/dating-roundup-11-going-too-meta --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Anthropic released a new constitution for Claude. I encourage those interested to read the document, either in whole or in part. I intend to cover it on its own soon. There was also actual talk about coordinating on a conditional pause or slowdown from both DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which I also plan to cover later. Claude Code continues to be the talk of the town, the weekly report on that is here. OpenAI responded by planning ads for the cheap and free versions of ChatGPT. There was also a fun but meaningful incident involving ChatGPT Self Portraits. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Call in the tone police. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. He who lives by the pattern. Huh, Upgrades. Claude health integrations, ChatGPT $8/month option. Gemini Personalized Intelligence. Signs of both remain somewhat lacking. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Get that bathtub viking. Fun With Media Generation. Studio Ghibli pics are back, baby. We’re Proud To Announce The Torment Nexus. Ads come to ChatGPT. They Took Our Jobs. Find a game plan. Don’t count on [...] ---Outline:(00:52) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(01:25) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(01:55) Huh, Upgrades(02:48) Gemini Personalized Intelligence(07:06) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(10:34) Fun With Media Generation(11:35) We're Proud To Announce The Torment Nexus(18:58) They Took Our Jobs(25:29) The Revolution of Rising Expectations(26:30) Get Involved(27:52) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(30:30) In Other AI News(32:57) Axis of Assistance(39:58) Show Me the Money(40:39) California In Crisis(42:14) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(43:57) Quiet Speculations(52:32) Elon Musk Versus OpenAI(56:31) The Quest for Sane Regulations(01:03:30) Chip City(01:08:57) The Week in Audio(01:14:19) Rhetorical Innovation(01:19:47) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(01:23:06) Alignment Is Not Primarily About a Metric(01:30:43) How To Be a Safe Robot(01:37:52) Living In China(01:41:05) Claude 3 Opus Lives(01:41:23) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(01:42:42) Messages From Janusworld(01:43:53) Everyone Is Confused About AI Consciousness(01:45:36) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 22nd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pCkYfhYcwFLELoYQf/ai-152-brought-to-you-by-the-torment-nexus --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

We’re back with all the Claude that's fit to Code. I continue to have great fun with it and find useful upgrades, but the biggest reminder is that you need the art to have an end other than itself. Don’t spend too long improving your setup, or especially improving how you improve your setup, without actually working on useful things. The Efficient Market Hypothesis Odd Lots covered Claude Code. Fun episode, but won’t teach my regular readers much that is new. Bradly Olsen at the Wall Street Journal reports Claude [Code and now Cowork are] Taking the AI World By Storm, and ‘Even Non-Nerds Are Blown Away.’ It is remarkable how everyone got the ‘Google is crushing everyone’ narrative going with Gemini 3, then it took them a month to realize that actually Anthropic is crushing everyone, at least among the cognoscenti with growing momentum elsewhere, with Claude Code and Claude Opus 4.5. People are realizing you can know almost nothing and still use it to do essentially everything. Are Claude Code and Codex having a ‘GPT moment’? Wall St Engine: Morgan Stanley says Anthropic's ClaudeCode + Cowork is dominating investor chatter and [...] ---Outline:(00:28) The Efficient Market Hypothesis(01:57) Huh, Upgrades(03:49) Obsidian(04:33) New Tools(04:57) Tool Search(07:17) Out Of The Box(08:48) Skilling Up(12:01) The Art Must Have An End Other Than Itself Or It Collapses Into Infinite Recursion(13:43) Safely Skip Permissions(14:44) A Matter of Trust(16:30) Code Versus Cowork(18:14) Claude Cowork Offers Mundane Utility(21:52) Claude Code Offers Mundane Utility(23:32) Vibe Coding Requires Good Vibes(24:06) Codex of Ultimate Vibing(25:12) No Soup For You(26:46) Server Overload(28:17) Here's The Pitch(29:12) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 21st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rCf8KLrpzdtFoFTJD/claude-codes-3 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

A short fun one today, so we have a reference point for this later. This post was going around my parts of Twitter: @gmltony: Go to your ChatGPT and send this prompt: “Create an image of how I treat you”. Share your image result. That's not a great sign. The good news is that typically things look a lot better, and ChatGPT has a consistent handful of characters portraying itself in these friendlier contexts. Treat Your ChatBots Well A lot of people got this kind of result: Eliezer Yudkowsky: Uncle Chu: A good user From Mason: Matthew Ackerman: I kinda like mine too: Some more fun: It's Over Others got different answers, though. roon: it's over Bradstradamus: i’m cooked. iMuffin: we’re cooked, codex will have to vouch for us Diogenes of Cyberborea: oh god There can also be danger the other way: David Lach: Maybe I need some sleep. It's Not Over But Um, Chat? And then there's what happens if you ask a different question, as Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it this sure is a pair of test [...] ---Outline:(00:51) Treat Your ChatBots Well(02:58) It's Over(04:28) It's Not Over But Um, Chat?(08:44) It's Rough Out There(09:14) Reciprocity, You See, Is The Key To Every Relationship --- First published: January 20th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eg6GgEq6KWPJZQQYE/chatgpt-self-portrait --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The main thing to know this time around is that the whole crazy ‘what is causing the rise in autism?’ debacle is over actual nothing. There is no rise in autism. There is only a rise in the diagnosis of autism. Table of Contents Autism Speaks. Exercise Is Awesome. That's Peanuts. An Age Of Wonders. GLP-1s In Particular. The Superheroes. The Supervillains. FDA Delenda Est. Hansonian Medicine. Hospital Strategy 101. Mental Hospital Strategy 101. Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay? The Lighter Side. Autism Speaks It has not, however, risen in prevalence. The entire shift in the rate of diagnosis of autism is explained by expanding the criteria and diagnosing it more often. Nothing actually changed. We already knew that vaccines don’t cause autism, and that Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, but now we know such things on an entirely different level. I admit that this result confirms all of my priors and thus I might be insufficiently skeptical of it, but there are a lot of people with what we in 2026 call autism that are out there, they love [...] ---Outline:(00:23) Autism Speaks(04:42) Exercise Is Awesome(06:41) That's Peanuts(07:09) An Age Of Wonders(08:05) GLP-1s In Particular(09:09) The Superheroes(10:32) The Supervillains(14:21) FDA Delenda Est(16:35) Hansonian Medicine(18:13) Hospital Strategy 101(18:58) Mental Hospital Strategy 101(21:04) Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?(21:10) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 19th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBkJmFStydJbAJmry/medical-roundup-6 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Good news, we managed to make some cuts. I think? Table of Contents California In Crisis. Bad News. Opportunity Knocks. Government Working. The Efficient Market Hypothesis Has Thoughts. No All That Money Doesn’t Go To Pay Interest. While I Cannot Condone This. Burnout. Good News, Everyone. Good Advice. For Your Entertainment. Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game. Sports Go Sports. Antisocial Media. California In Crisis I’ve written about this before, but it turns out it's even worse than I realized. California is toying with a 1.5% annual wealth tax on billionaires, sufficiently seriously that Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel have left the state as a precaution. ​Teddy Schleifer: NEWS: Google co-founder Sergey Brin is cutting ties with California. In the 10 days before Christmas, an entity connected to Brin terminated or moved 15 California LLCs that oversee some of his business interests or investments out of the state. With @RMac18 + @hknightsf . This would also include an annual 1% wealth tax on anyone over $50 million, per year, including on [...] ---Outline:(00:17) California In Crisis(04:35) Bad News(05:47) Opportunity Knocks(06:58) Government Working(12:09) The Efficient Market Hypothesis Has Thoughts(13:30) No All That Money Doesn't Go To Pay Interest(16:31) While I Cannot Condone This(18:03) Burnout(20:52) Good News, Everyone(30:36) Good Advice(31:45) For Your Entertainment(40:48) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game(40:59) Sports Go Sports(41:36) Antisocial Media --- First published: January 16th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wh5KpofdQHs2D2hEj/monthly-roundup-38-january-2026 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Claude Code and Cowork are growing so much that it is overwhelming Anthropic's servers. Claude Code and Cowork news has for weeks now been a large portion of newsworthy items about AI. Thus, at least for now, all things Claude Code and Cowork will stop appearing in the weekly updates, and will get their own updates, which might even be weekly. Google offered us the new Universal Commerce Protocol, and gives us its take on Personalized Intelligence. Personalized Intelligence could be a huge deal if implemented correctly, integrating the G-Suite including GMail into Gemini, if they did a sufficiently good job of it. It's too early to tell how well they did, and I will report on that later. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. LLMs do the math. Huh, Upgrades. Veo 3.1, GLM-Image, AI Overviews in GMail and more. Comparative Advantage. Code those vibes. Overcoming Bias. LLMs systematically favor female candidates over male ones. Choose Your Fighter. Peter Wildeford's division of LLM labor. Get My Agent On The Line. Evals and dashboards for AI agents. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. AIs find it hard to go [...] ---Outline:(00:53) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(04:00) Huh, Upgrades(07:06) Comparative Advantage(07:41) Overcoming Bias(09:09) Choose Your Fighter(10:14) Get My Agent On The Line(11:23) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(13:49) Fun With Media Generation(17:01) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer(18:41) They Took Our Jobs(21:47) Autonomous Killer Robots(24:34) Get Involved(25:10) Introducing(28:03) In Other AI News(29:45) Show Me the Money(31:02) Quiet Speculations(33:56) The Quest for Sane Regulations(36:10) China Proposes New Regulations On AI(40:51) Chip City(44:19) The Week in Audio(48:17) Ghost in a Jar(49:29) Rhetorical Innovation(59:00) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(59:21) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone --- First published: January 15th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L27yM3qBqDnigtxLM/ai-151-while-claude-coworks --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

And once they take our jobs, will we be able to find new ones? Will AI take those too? Seb Krier recently wrote an unusually good take on that, which will center this post. I believe that Seb is being too optimistic on several fronts, but in a considered and highly reasonable way. The key is to understand the assumptions being made, and also to understand that he is only predicting that the era of employment optimism will last for 10-20 years. By contrast, there are others that expect human employment and even human labor share of income to remain robust indefinitely, no matter the advances of AI capabilities, even if AI can do a superior job on all tasks, often citing comparative advantage. I will centrally respond to such claims in a different future post. So to disambiguate, this post is about point #2 here, but I also assert #1 and #3: By default, if AI capabilities continue to advance, then the humans lose control over the future and are rather likely to all die. If we manage to avoid that, then there is a good chance humans can retain a [...] ---Outline:(01:39) Normality Is Magic(03:20) Welcome To The Cyborg Era(06:09) The Cyborg Era Will End Within Our Lifetimes(07:46) Transitional Unemployment In The Cyborg Era Will Be High(08:51) Congratulations, Many Of You Are Literally A Human(09:34) You've Got Taste(11:33) The Revolution of Rising AI Capabilities(11:56) The Revolution of Rising Expectations(12:25) Proceed With Caution(13:13) The Ostrich Take --- First published: January 14th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KAjhtrJggPtaophy7/when-will-they-take-our-jobs --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Claude Code does a lot more than code, but the name and command line scare people. Anthropic realized a rebrand was in order. Two weeks later, we have Claude Cowork, written entirely by Claude Code. Did you know that chat interfaces were always (mostly) secretly a command line? This is still very much a research preview, available only for Claude Max users on Macs with a bunch of bugs and missing features. It will improve rapidly over time. Cowork combines a lot of the power of Claude Code with the ordinary chat interface, giving it access to a folder on your computer and to Claude Code's planning and agentic capabilities. It can use that folder as context, to download, to organize and create files, and it can be paired with Claude for Chrome and use your existing connectors. Anthropic: Introducing Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work. Cowork lets you complete non-technical tasks much like how developers use Claude Code. In Cowork, you give Claude access to a folder on your computer. Claude can then read, edit, or create files in that folder. Try it to create a spreadsheet from [...] ---Outline:(02:23) Early Takes(05:51) Minimum Viable Product(07:04) Maximum Viable Product(08:16) Backup Your Directory(08:38) Meanwhile In Claude Code News(15:49) You Are The Bottleneck(18:07) Claude Code Upgrades(19:30) Oh No(20:23) I'm In Danger(20:54) In The Beginning Was The Command Line --- First published: January 13th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fm2N4cws8nbdmfGux/claude-coworks --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The game is asymmetrical. Life is not fair. Doesn’t matter. Play to win the game. You’re Single Because Your Emotions Gave Her The Ick Ah, the ultimate ick source. A man expressing their emotions is kind of the inverse of the speech in Barbie about how it's impossible to be a woman. It's easy. A man must be in touch with and transparent about his emotions, but must also be in conscious control over them, without repressing them, while choosing strategically when to be and not be transparent about them, and ultimately be fine, such that we will also be fine if all that information we shared can then be shared with others or used as a weapon. Express your emotions. No, not those, and definitely not like that. But do it. That's the goal. If you say that's not fair? Well, life it's fair, I report the facts rather than make the rules, and the whole thing sounds like a you problem. Kryssy La Reida: Serious question for men…what is it that makes you feel like you are in a relationship with a woman that you can’t express your feelings to? Or [...] ---Outline:(00:19) You're Single Because Your Emotions Gave Her The Ick(05:03) You Are Still Single Because You Don't Know When To Show Emotions(07:58) You're Single Because You Don't Have Enough Gendered Energy(09:29) You're Single And I Have To Praise You Like I Should(12:17) You're Single Because You Guessed Wrong On Paying For The Date(15:02) You're Single But Not Because You Make Too Much Money(16:35) You're Single Because You Gave Someone A Ride(19:15) You're Single Because You Left The Price Tag On But It's For The Best(20:37) You're Single So You At Least Get To Keep Your Upgrade(22:13) You're Single Because You Tried To Problem Solve(23:50) You're Single Because You Were Actually A Crazy Stalker --- First published: January 12th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zphaHyABxMEDqNQ7K/dating-roundup-10-gendered-expectations --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is so hot right now. The cool kids use it for everything. They definitely use it for coding, often letting it write all of their code. They also increasingly use it for everything else one can do with a computer. Vas suggests using Claude Code as you would a mini-you/employee that lives in your computer and can do literally anything. There's this thread of people saying Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is AGI in various senses. I centrally don’t agree, but they definitely have a point. If you’d like, you can use local Claude Code via Claude Desktop, documentation here. It's a bit friendlier than the terminal and some people like it a lot more. Here is a more extensive basic discussion of setup options. The problem is the web interface still lacks some power user functions, even after some config work Daniel San misses branch management, create new repository directory via ‘new’ and import plugins from marketplaces. If you haven’t checked Claude Code out, you need to check it out. This could be you: Paulius: ​whoever made this is making me FEEL SEEN Table [...] ---Outline:(01:32) Hype!(06:26) My Own Experiences(11:35) Now With More Recursive Self Improvement(13:06) A Market Of One(13:46) Some Examples Of People Using Claude Code Recently(20:25) Dealing With Context Limits(21:08) The Basic Claude Code Setup(23:14) Random Claude Code Extension Examples I've Seen Recently(25:09) Skilling Up(31:23) Reasons Not To Get Overexcited(37:33) Get Pretty Excited --- First published: January 9th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MQGAMHQNTFyJTke2H/claude-codes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Claude Code is the talk of the town, and of the Twitter. It has reached critical mass. Suddenly, everyone is talking about how it is transforming their workflows. This includes non-coding workflows, as it can handle anything a computer can do. People are realizing the power of what it can do, building extensions and tools, configuring their setups, and watching their worlds change. I’ll be covering that on its own soon. This covers everything else, including ChatGPT Health and the new rounds from xAI and Anthropic. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Even Rufus, Amazon's Choice. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. They don’t believe you. Language Models Have All The Fun. In glorious AI future, does game play you? Huh, Upgrades. Claude Code 2.1.0, and JP Morgan using AI for its proxy advice. On Your Marks. Yes, Meta pretty much did fraud with the Llama 4 benchmarks. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. The year of doing real things? Fun With Media Generation. The art of making people believe a human made it. You Drive Me Crazy. Crazy productive. They Took Our Jobs. Will [...] ---Outline:(00:46) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(01:18) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(01:52) Language Models Have All The Fun(02:57) Huh, Upgrades(03:42) On Your Marks(04:12) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(07:39) Fun With Media Generation(07:55) You Drive Me Crazy(10:10) They Took Our Jobs(13:35) Get Involved(14:08) Introducing(16:46) In Other AI News(18:31) Show Me the Money(20:30) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(21:32) Quiet Speculations(24:25) The Quest for Sane Regulations(27:32) AGI and Taxation(31:29) Chip City(31:46) The Week in Audio(31:54) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(33:17) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(34:27) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 8th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fWJsqHXHBAEd8rq69/ai-150-while-claude-codes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Going Full San Francisco Waymo goes Full San Francisco West Bay except for SFO: Jeff Dean: Exciting expansion! @Waymo now serves the whole SF Bay Area Peninsula from SF to San Jose and is taking riders on freeways. They can serve SJC, and SFO is almost ready, employee rides are in place and public rides are ‘coming soon.’ Brandan: Would be nice if @Waymo comes across the bay to Berkeley! Jeff Dean: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it! Going Down The Highway Waymo is going to start using freeways in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. That's a big deal for longer rides, but there is still the problem that Waymos have to obey the technical speed limit. On freeways no huamn driver does this, so obeying the technical speed limit is both slower and more dangerous. We are going to need a regulatory solution, ideally that allows you to drive at the average observed speed. Looking For Adventure This is all a big unlock, but it depends on having enough cars to take advantage. At this point, aside from regulatory barriers in some places like [...] ---Outline:(00:10) Going Full San Francisco(01:03) Going Down The Highway(01:33) Looking For Adventure(02:38) And Whatever Comes Our Way(05:38) It's Coming(06:20) Who Stands In The Way(08:59) My One Weakness(11:20) The path forward(15:59) Cruise Control(18:24) Growth Rates(20:02) The Competition(21:21) They Took Our Jobs(22:44) Bikers As Winners(23:21) The Elderly As Big Winners(26:19) Save The Cat(29:24) It's Going To Be The Future Soon(31:12) In-Context Old Man Yells At Self-Driving Car(32:07) The Safety Case(34:12) Keep It Classy(34:39) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 7th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ry3SyA92bJCPe75Nt/advancements-in-self-driving-cars --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The central message of the fertility roundups has always been that we have a choice. If we do want to raise fertility, we can do that. People respond to incentives. That means money, especially if paid up front, and it also means time, lifestyle and respect. If we do it purely with cash, it would be expensive, but a well-designed version of this would still be net profitable to the state. On the order of $300k per additional live birth would get this done in the United States, depending on how you structure it. This is not money spent, it is money transferred, and it helps the kids quite a lot. If we do it by dealing with the Revolution of Rising Requirements, by providing non-cash advantages or changing the culture, that's a more complex intervention, but we have options that let us do far better. Those who disagree have tried almost nothing, and are all out of ideas. Selection Alex Strudwick Young: Today parents can, for the first time, access polygenic embryo testing for IQ and many diseases through a routine test (PGT-A) done worldwide and in 60% of US IVF cycles. [...] ---Outline:(01:05) Selection(02:22) Surrogacy(02:46) IVF(08:05) Technological Versus Social Solutions(09:32) Dakka(10:51) All The Dakka(12:24) Insufficient Dakka Works Insufficiently(14:35) The Effectiveness of Dakka(17:47) The Wrong Dakka(18:52) Dakka Does Not Disproportionally Motivate The Poor(21:25) Is That a Lot?(25:23) Alternative Dakka(26:38) The Housing Theory of Everything Is Undefeated(35:58) Happiness(37:16) Negative Dakka(38:44) Mother's Day(39:41) Status(43:34) Hungary(46:20) Audio(46:26) NatalCon(46:50) Housing Discrimination(47:20) Your Own Quest(49:36) Hope --- First published: January 6th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJw5eetbzNNu9SiSZ/fertility-roundup-6-the-art-of-more-dakka --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This week, Philip Trammell and Dwarkesh Patel wrote Capital in the 22nd Century. One of my goals for Q1 2026 is to write unified explainer posts for all the standard economic debates around potential AI futures in a systematic fashion. These debates tend to repeatedly cover the same points, and those making economic arguments continuously assume you must be misunderstanding elementary economic principles, or failing to apply them for no good reason. Key assumptions are often unstated and even unrealized, and also false or even absurd. Reference posts are needed. That will take longer, so instead this post covers the specific discussions and questions around the post by Trammell and Patel. My goal is to both meet that post on its own terms, and also point out the central ways its own terms are absurd, and the often implicit assumptions they make that are unlikely to hold. What Trammell and Patel Are Centrally Claiming As A Default Outcome They affirm, as do I, that Piketty was centrally wrong about capital accumulation in the past, for many well understood reasons, many of which they lay out. They then posit that Piketty could have been unintentionally [...] ---Outline:(01:02) What Trammell and Patel Are Centrally Claiming As A Default Outcome(03:15) Does The Above Conclusion Follow From The Above Premises?(03:30) Sounds Like This Is Not Our Main Problem In This Scenario?(07:31) To Be Clear This Scenario Doesn't Make Sense(13:51) Ad Argumento(14:44) The Baseline Scenario(16:31) Would We Have An Inequality Problem?(20:57) No You Can't Simply Let Markets Handle Everything(22:22) Proposed Solutions(25:55) Wealth Taxes Today Are Grade-A Stupid(28:27) Tyler Cowen Responds With Econ Equations(30:29) Brian Albrecht Responds With More Equations --- First published: January 5th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQwNgB7ytwqTxxYue/dos-capital --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

There are two sides of developments in fertility. How bad is it? What is causing the massive, catastrophic declines in fertility? What can we do to stabilize and reverse these trends to a sustainable level? Today I’m going to focus on news about what is happening and why, and next time I’ll ask what we’ve learned since last check-in about we could perhaps do about it. One could consider all this a supplement to my sequence on The Revolution of Rising Expectations, and The Revolution of Rising Requirements. That's the central dynamic. Household Composition What is happening? A chart worth looking at every so often. Timing Michael Arouet: No way. WTF happened in 1971? This is United States data: The replies include a bunch of other graphs that also go in bad directions starting in 1971-73. Developmental Idealism Lyman Stone, in his first Substack post, lays the blame for fertility drops in non-Western countries primarily on drops in desire for children, via individuals choosing Developmental Idealism. Lyman Stone: Five Basic Arguments for Understanding Fertility: Data has to be read “vertically” (longitudinally), not [...] ---Outline:(00:46) Household Composition(01:06) Timing(01:37) Developmental Idealism(04:47) Pessimism(05:51) Baby Boom(06:53) Paperwork(08:24) Car Seats As Contraception(11:14) You Can't Afford It(12:23) Yes The Problem Is Often Money(12:57) Housework(15:13) Greedy Careers(18:24) The Appeal of Child-Free(19:30) Motivation(22:06) Grandparents(25:26) Expectations of Impossibility(28:04) Isolation(30:00) Decoupling(31:45) South Korea(39:20) World(39:54) Various Places in Trouble(40:51) China(44:25) Russia(44:39) Europe(45:34) America(46:43) Kazakhstan(47:10) Israel(48:56) Consequences(49:49) Unfounded Optimism(50:56) History(51:44) Implications --- First published: January 2nd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SSQDuWDsbXH3kujPb/fertility-roundup-5-causation --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The Rationalist Project was our last best hope that we might not try to build it. It failed. But in the year of the Coding Agent, it became something greater: our last, best hope – for everyone not dying. This is what 2026 looks like. The place is Lighthaven. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. 2026 is an age of wonders. Claude Code. The age of humans writing code may be coming to an end. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Your dog's dead, Jimmy. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Keep your nonsense simple. Fun With Media Generation. YouTube facing less AI slop than I’d expect. You Drive Me Crazy. Another lawsuit against OpenAI. This one is a murder. They Took Our Jobs. Yet another round of ‘oh but comparative advantage.’ Doctor Doctor. Yes a lot of people still want a human doctor, on principle. Jevons Paradox Strikes Again. It holds until it doesn’t. Unprompted Attention. Concepts, not prompts. The Art of the Jailbreak. Love, Pliny. Get Involved. CAISI wants an intern, OpenAI hiring a head of preparedness. Introducing. [...] ---Outline:(00:30) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(01:34) Claude Code(08:49) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(10:04) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(12:17) Fun With Media Generation(12:47) You Drive Me Crazy(13:39) They Took Our Jobs(17:46) Doctor Doctor(18:46) Jevons Paradox Strikes Again(20:52) Unprompted Attention(22:42) The Art of the Jailbreak(23:22) Get Involved(24:09) Introducing(24:30) In Other AI News(25:56) Show Me the Money(26:14) Quiet Speculations(29:38) People Really Do Not Like AI(32:23) Americans Remain Optimistic About AI?(33:40) Thank You, Next(36:36) The Quest for Sane Regulations(39:42) Chip City(42:54) Rhetorical Innovation(43:29) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(44:25) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(44:45) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 1st, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qp7kEfd2MnGRR8evZ/ai-149-3 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

It's that time. It's been a hell of a year. At the start we barely had reasoning models. Now we have Claude Code and Opus 4.5. I don’t code. Yet now I cause code to exist whenever something about a website annoys me, or when I get that programmer's realization that there's something I am planning on doing at least three times. Because why not? The progress has simultaneously been mind bogglingly impressive and fast. But a lot of people don’t see it that way, because progress has been incremental, and because we were reasonably expecting to often get even more than this. The public conversation and debate, even more than before, was full of false narratives and active attempts to make the situation worse. The same goes for attempts to shape Federal policy towards AI, and OpenAI's conversion into a for-profit. It's been, as they say, one battle after another, with many wins, many setbacks and a lot of things in between. This includes the key developments in AI, and also other blog posts from the year that I consider memorable looking back. This is only our corner of the world's [...] ---Outline:(01:26) January(03:50) February(06:58) March(08:15) April(09:24) May(11:06) June(12:02) July(13:04) August(15:23) September(15:50) October(18:39) November(20:12) December(21:39) Questions For Next Season --- First published: December 31st, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2hFiaDmYr3KuuWNDS/2025-year-in-review --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

Ultimately, it comes down to one question. Are you in? For you, and for them. You’re Single Because They Got The Ick The Ick, the ultimate red flag, makes perfect sense and is all about likelihood ratios. Koenfucius: The ‘ick’ is a colloquial term for a feeling of disgust triggered by a specific—typically trivial—behaviour from a romantic partner, often leading to the relationship's demise. New research explores why some are more prone to getting it than others. Robin Hanson: “Women also experienced the ick more frequently, with 75% having had the ick compared to 57% of men … Those with a higher tendency for disgust … [&] grandiose narcissism was linked to stronger ick reactions, as was holding partners to exceptionally high standards.” Paul Graham: About 30% of Seinfeld episodes were about this. One gets The Ick because a small act is evidence of one's general nature. The right type of person would never do [X], ideally never want to do [X], and at minimum would have learned not to do [X]. Often this is because they would know this is indicative of attribute [Y]. Indeed, if they should be aware that [X] [...] ---Outline:(00:18) You're Single Because They Got The Ick(02:53) You Are Still Single Because You Are Inventing Red Flags(05:10) You're Still Single Because You Demand The Same Generic Things(06:51) You're Single Because Everyone Is Too Picky(08:46) You're Single And They Will Never Tell You Why(10:19) You're Single Because You Won't Tell Them The Problem(12:12) You're Not Single But The Clock Is Ticking(13:21) You're Single Because of Your Bodycount(15:11) You're Single Because You Failed To Read The Signs --- First published: December 30th, 2025 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6hhPbovwRWem4fvwr/dating-roundup-9-signals-and-selection --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.