The Bayesian Conspiracy

You can’t control (well) what you can’t count Samzdat’s posts that served as the basis of much of this episode: Man as a Rationalist Animal, and The Meridian of Her Greatness. Also: The Use and Abuse of Witchdoctors for Life (not Witchdoctors Without Borders, as Eneasz misremembered) Matt Freeman’s podcast – We’ve Got Worm Also from Matt – The Daly Planet Scott Alexander’s review of “Seeing Like A State” And the original source material, for the purists. Norman Borlaug’s dwarf wheat saved 1 billion people GreenPeace blocks golden rice for no good reason ChemTrails Turned My Frogs Gay Cats are Murder Machines Our Robin Hanson interview on Age of Em Kim Jong Il made a quilt of sparrow’s neck feathers A photon teleported from Earth to Space – or was it? Northpaw Anklet Friendship is Optimal & Caelum Est Conterrens (different authors) Red Legacy & Other Stories

A lively dive into transhumanist themes like life extension, cognitive enhancements and AI control. They debate psychedelics, expertise and whether training preserves rationality. Population ethics, wireheading and the value of genuine relationships get examined. Music, rituals and social limits like Dunbar’s number round out the conversation.

A wide-ranging chat about transhumanism and life extension, exploring why people fear long lifespans and how religion and culture might adapt. They debate cognitive and bodily enhancements, consent around changing minds, and risks like inequality, irreversible harms, and elite domination. Discussions cover uploads, simulated lives, AI governance, and ethical strategies for creating or improving future minds.

Patrick Chapin, pro Magic: The Gathering player, game designer, and writer, returns to talk AlphaGo's evolution and its strange, alien play. He covers AlphaGo’s anonymous online dominance, human-plus-AI collaborations, and efforts to extend Go-style systems to complex games like StarCraft. They also digress into sports tech, tool-assisted play, and how mods spawn new genres.

A wide-ranging conversation about drugs, from how prevention programs like DARE can backfire to the gradual pathways from prescriptions to heroin. They contrast psychedelics, MDMA, alcohol and stimulants and discuss neurotoxicity and long-term personality shifts. Harm-reduction models like Portugal and wet houses get attention, along with safe-setting tips, market risks like fentanyl, and the ethics of legalization and regulation.

Taren Bolton, an experienced participant in nootropics communities, shares practical knowledge on cognitive enhancers. They define nootropics and trace the term’s origins. Conversations cover everyday boosters like caffeine and nicotine, detailed modafinil use and sourcing, microdosing psychedelics and cannabis, safety tips, and social and ethical implications of enhancement.

A lively dive into when and why people lie, from polite evasions to strategic deceit. They survey studies on how often people lie and how closeness affects detection. Discussions cover not technically lying, withholding, and tactics that avoid direct answers. Evolutionary examples show deception in animals. They also debate rules for honesty, reputation effects, and when lies might protect someone.

Zvi (Tsvi) from MIRI, a researcher working on decision theory and AI alignment. He outlines MIRI’s technical agendas and toy failure cases like a Tetris-pausing agent and evolved circuits. Discussion covers logical induction, counterfactuals, transparency limits, and scaling human judgment with ML. Also touches on community capacity, staffing trade-offs, and why capability growth shapes long-term safety.

They dissect fears about advanced AI, from intelligence explosions to misaligned goals and the paperclip problem. Practical risks get attention too: self-driving ethics, liability, and military incentives. Thought experiments like the genie and dust-speck puzzles probe value specification and moral tradeoffs. The conversation also tackles inequality, cultural change, and how scarcity affects behavior.

They debate who truly controls the data in your pocket and whether device ownership includes the software inside. They cover DRM, EULAs, and surprising cases like Kindles wiped and music deleted. The conversation ranges from pacemakers and biometric subpoenas to algorithms shaping news bubbles and ethical open-source alternatives.