Common tech jobs described as cabals of mesoamerican wizards Is the cell really a machine? AI scaling might hit a plateau soon as we run out of data. Large language model skepticism, from the same author. Organ problems? No problem! An Israeli company wants to grow embryous made out of stem cells, to eventually produce organ replacements. How much quantum computing skepticism should one harbor? Scott Alexander reviews What We Owe The Future Plasma dilution as an anti-aging treatment continues to work in hum…

You have arrived in the Bay Area after a multi-hour long flight from somewhere afar. You conclude California is the best place on Earth and you feel you belong here. Then you realize it's hard to stay. I am a Spanish citizen and I live in the US. For a long time I had wanted to come to the country and was discouraged by how hard it seemed to be, but eventually I realized there were options that were not obvious at first and now here we are! Here are some things I have learned by going through the US immigra…

Summary Existential risk due to artificial intelligence (hereafter AI risk) is worth taking seriously A common reason why it is not taken seriously is that arguments or scenarios that illustrate the risks from AI contain many "sci-fi" elements that many consider highly implausible, like developing advanced nanotechnology overnight. All critiques that completely reject, or seem to reject, AI risk are flawed. There is value in writing compelling concrete cases for AI risk Near the end of this e…

OpenPhil's report on the social returns to research. Seems about right. Themes in Elon Musk's emails Don't be dumb Talk to each other clearly Self-management Micromanagement is good How common is independent discovery? Pick a discovery or innovation at random, and the probability it has much in the way of built-in redundancy is probably pretty small. I think it is quite plausible that for most papers or patents, if you erased them from history, no one else would independently reproduce the work in the ne…

For those diet coke drinkers among you, yes aspartame is perfectly fine. It probably is not some kind of secret nootropic either. IVF is a procedure commonly associated with infertility treatments as a last resort option. It is also a requirement if one wants to do any embryo screening. There's a small rabbithole to be explored (I didn't fully go into it) of potential adverse effects of IVF: it might increase in risk of cerebral palsy among others, which could defeat the point of the screening itself (Excep…

I've seen "Ineffective Altruism" used a couple of times to poke fun at EAs. I remember the first time I saw the phrasing I jumped to some state inbetween of amused and confused. Ineffective Altruism sounds jocular (who would oppose something effective!) so what must be going on is a reaction to the EA aesthetic or specific definitions of "effectiveness". That in turn of course leads us to ask what that alternative effectiveness might be. Or is it a reaction against not so much EA but spe…