Not to remove blame from Trump, but scientists need to pivot on these association studies. Either the publications come with caveats in bright orange warning labels, or they should stop being funded.

Nate unfortunately uses some of the same style he criticizes Bluesky for, but I agree with overall point. People here don't realize how alienating this place is to normal voters. www.natesilver.net/p/what-is-bl...

The boring but underappreciated reality is that if you don't want authoritarians taking power, you need to come closer to median voter opinions on crime and immigration.

Large minorities of the electorate have right-wing views on immigration and crime that mainstream politicians won't embrace, as a result voters back new parties or (in the US) outsider insurgents like Trump. www.slowboring.com/p/a-boring-t...

Seeing reactions to Alpha School on here that feel like the reaction to self-driving cars in 2016. There’s a deep desire for promising results to be fake.

DOGE now doing what it should have been doing instead of firing federal employees randomly for no reason. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

AI data centers using water is the least of our problems with regard to either water or artificial intelligence. www.slowboring.com/p/theres-ple...

ChatGPT’s water usage is “probably the last worry you should have about either water or AI” www.slowboring.com/p/theres-ple...

[Work opportunity] In the wake of OBBB, Propel is opening up a residency program for exceptional mid-career technologists to help states navigate policy implementation around SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and WIC.

This might have been the quickest I've gone from "that's an insane conspiracy theory" to "it's plausible".

What makes science credible? Publishing findings like this that undercut whatever political message scientists are supposed to believe in. I am tired of having conversations about "what if my finding undercuts movement x." Tying your findings to politics is what makes science irrelevant.

I witnessed this interaction last week and agree with George. I you want to beat Trump, the way some high profile accounts act here is just incredibly counterproductive.

Many people here say there's no need for Dems to build a bigger tent, since MAGA will destroy the economy and lose elections on fundamentals. Maybe, but I wouldn't bank on it! It's not that hard for Trump to just stop doing dumb things.

If you want to beat Trump, the way you respond to these types of posts is an IQ test.

Many normies are dismissive of AI x-risk, but also think their ChatGPT query will cause water shortages. What should we make of this? (A single California almond uses 300 times as much water).

I promise this is not a defense, but these things are simultaneously true. 1. They’re not playing 11-dimensional chess. 2. The next 5 years are in fact 11-dimensional, so dumb things we do now have an unusually high chance of being good, and vice versa.

“Bhutan is unusually happy” is a popular claim that, in retrospect, had all the hallmarks of being false. x.com/ourworldinda...

Do the terms "credit" and "debit" add anything other than confusion? Why is an increase to an account a "credit" or "debit" depending on which side of the equation it's on? Why not just say "increase" and "decrease?

Going forward, any claims about Elon's mental abilities must specify a year, like Elon[2017], otherwise we will forever talk past each other.

Interesting prediction on AI and unemployment. www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-...

One of the creators of the USDS writes about DOGE. "I care deeply about trans people and immigrants [...] but I could not care less that someone plugged in a server to create a new email list without a Privacy Impact Assessment." reason.com/2025/02/13/i...

I'm an ideal target for contrarian takes like "USAID sounds good but is actually bad", but... I just don't understand this? A mix of effective and ineffective international development that is less than 1% of the federal budget seems fine to me.

Shoplifting by political affiliation. I don't want to read too much into this, but I'm not surprised by how this sorts. I got this data from a survey of ACX readers. www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-survey...

This is nominally about Nvidia, but it's actually an incredibly good overview of what's happened in AI over the past 4 months. Worth your time! youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com/blog/05_the_...

Someone should start a GoFundMe for any former administration officials who had their security detail removed.

This study makes the case that NSAID anti-inflammatories for acute pain can make chronic pain *worse* in the long run. First, among people with acute back pain, taking NSAID anti-inflammatories is associated with 1.76x increased odds of developing chronic pain. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

food for thought

New blog post: Beef-o-tuna-tarianism: The low effort way to improve animal welfare chris-said.io/2025/01/08/b...

I'm just excluding shrimp from the graphs in my upcoming animal welfare blog post because they make all the other bars too hard to see.

Give me $500,000 and subpoena power and I will solve this mystery.

Consumer Reports did its own study of plastic chemicals in food earlier this year, and just like Plasticlist's recent report it's hard to find discernible patterns. Why is Brisk Iced Tea so much worse than Gatorade? www.consumerreports.org/health/food-...

Pretty incredible findings on plastic chemicals in food, from Nat Friedman's Plastliclist report. 1. Boba Guys Black Tea Pearls contain 32,571% of the daily limit for BPA. www.plasticlist.org/report

Incorrect FDA denials have caused an order of magnitude more deaths than incorrect FDA approvals. Yet every expert quoted here by the NYT focuses only on bad approvals. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

Yet again we see a situation in the wild where a gzipped csv would be infinitely more helpful than a restful http api. But web app devs gotta web app dev.

This feels like the moment I first heard "weird" applied to JD Vance. Instantly recognizable as something that will stick.

New blog post: No, we are not underinvested in squishy charities. chris-said.io/2024/12/09/s...

Getting normies to talk about “updating their priors” has done more good for the world than any actual Bayesian analysis. Rare case where the gatekeeping is not just wrong, but backwards.

Current status: Trying to read this response from a guy I'm talking to on the EA forum.

All nutrition research funding should be diverted into this type of study design. Incredibly informative. x.com/KevinH_PhD/s...

How is Google Maps able to support high precision minute-level direction accuracy for subways, but has no support for commuter trains?

Bluesky beats Twitter on not penalizing links. Twitter beats Bluesky on private likes.

Correct both-things-can-be-true synthesis. Gov-funded research is extremely high ROI and almost all of it is useless.

I’m anti-RFK, but this NYT “fact check” is so bad. www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/h...

I don’t understand people who don’t want their tweets to help train an LLM. Like, you want your ideas to spread, right? What better way than to squeeze them in at the dawn of AI?

I made the EA list I created into a starter pack, though I still don't fully understand the difference between the two. Message me if you want to be on the list! go.bsky.app/MgD94eP

This will surely be an unpopular opinion, but I still enjoy Twitter more than Bluesky. I like all the communities there that are laser focused on positive EV bets.

Sure, but here's a better way to make the case for Dem moderation: Harris outperformed expectations relative to international incumbents *because* she moderated on certain issues. It's a unifying explanation consistent with international data, exit polls, and it accurately describes her campaign.

A cool thing I learned this week is that regardless of whether you think Dems underperformed or overperformed, you can still argue for whatever you want.

Not sure I fully agree. A 2-3 point drop in the observation reflects an important change to the underlying parameter, not the randomness of the process. Given high party loyalty, 2-3 points reveals a big change in sentiment, and is important for future elections (ofc not inevitable tho)

4 years ago, SSC described how Republicans could become the racially diverse party of the working class. Not all of it holds up, but still interesting to re-read. It was not at all obvious at the time. www.astralcodexten.com/p/a-modest-p...