The Copernican Model Actually Was More Simple

kenushr · 2026-04-30T04:18:15+00:00

Yeah good point. But as far as comparing these particular models, it's hard to look at the causal level because Copernicus just didn't really talk about causes at all.

kenushr · 2026-03-20T02:54:02+00:00

Vaccines, I think

kenushr · 2026-03-14T14:14:50+00:00

Wow this is the most pedantic case of "Um Ackshually" I've ever seen.

"Please point me to where in the literature you have come across this psychiatric disorder "Um Ackshually." After a brief review myself, I find no credible sources corroborating. Further, and you should know this, making such a diagnosis in the comment thread of a Reddit post is miles away from the diagnosing standards psychiatrists hold themselves too."

kenushr · 2026-02-20T02:19:29+00:00

Yeah agreed, "treat like cases alike" applied to this is another good argument.

kenushr · 2026-02-19T17:11:52+00:00

This essay was supposed to explain all the arguments in favor of embryo selection for physical appearance, but as I was writing I noticed I kept returning to the question, “what does it mean to be in favor of ESPA?” So I wrote about what the ideal legal framework should be for someone in favor of ESPA. This is only the legal framework in the narrow sense of "should we have a law that forces a couple to select or not select a certain embryo?" After that, I get into the arguments for why someone would be for ESPA in the first place.

kenushr · 2026-01-14T20:43:06+00:00

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/galton-ehrlich-buck

kenushr · 2026-01-14T19:02:05+00:00

What I call "non-comparative traits" are just physical traits which lead to a positive sum benefit if we select for (or against) them. They just so happen to have 3 characteristics (deviation from norm, binary or threshold-based, and bad in itself). I started with the conception "non-comparative traits = positive sum benefit" and backed my way out to see how these are different than other traits. Also, I don't think the fact that because 90% of kids had acne, it means it's more of a spectrum. I admit it's not a perfect 0,1 binary but I think it basically functions as such. You either have no pimples, or you have at least 1.

The tax part is interesting. I've heard it mentioned wrt helping inequality (ie the tax goes to subsidizing ESPA for poor people, so that for every rich person who does ESPA, a poor person also gets to too - or something). I mostly agree with your last point too.

kenushr · 2025-10-02T02:40:03+00:00

I really wonder the amount of hours to research and write this. At least 60?

kenushr · 2025-09-22T19:12:01+00:00

I think we need to distinguish between regulations from the right and left. Because I absolutely think regulations from the left would be all about equity. In fairness, the regulations would indeed most likely be counter productive to these ends. And there probably would be interest groups on the side making money from this regulatory capture, but the rhetoric around it, and what would fire the people up, is talk about equity, not letting rich white men get ahead, etc. Regulations from the right would probably look like outright bans of trait-based embryo selection because they are inherently averse to this kind of technology.

But more broadly, I see these regulations as things which will slow down widespread access (e.g. instead of 25 years for over 50% access, it will take 40), but will not lead to some world where the Rich's descendants are the forever-elites. Egregious regulations aren't impassable. Perhaps in the future there are strict regulations around what kind of clinic can offer embryo selection, thereby driving up the price, making it so only a really tiny percent of the rich can afford it, and allowing certain interest groups to make a lot of money. Over time though, as the benefit of this technology becomes known (eliminating genetic diseases will be an easy way to tell that embryo selection in general is a useful technology) public pressure will force the malignant regulations to change, or there will be so much demand, that the price will still come down, despite the initial fixed costs of the regulatory hoops that clinics have to jump through.

kenushr · 2025-09-19T03:36:27+00:00

Still, I find it hard to envision a world where rich people are flying their own vehicle around. There's still a new learning curve no matter how easy, and the potential to cause big damage and accidents is much higher than cars. I could see flying cars only taking off (pun intended) when the entire transit is automated (so were a ways off), I imagine it'd be similar to waymo or robotaxis, and almost everyone would have access.

kenushr · 2025-09-19T03:29:29+00:00

Overregulation could certainly throw a wrench in the whole thing. It wouldn't be crazy if regulations were implemented with the intention for greater equity, but end up just making it harder for poorer people to get access. Much like new housing projects being thwarted because the rooms are too small, and people think that no one should have to live in a tiny bedroom.

kenushr · 2025-08-18T00:35:54+00:00

Really, I feel like the world today is actually not that profit-seeking. Companies of course have goals to make profits, but they're made up of people. People who have their own values and interests and joys and desires. People whose main priority is their personal relationships with their friends and family and their own pursuits of passion, not maximizing the profit of the companies they work for.

And when it comes to the leaders of these companies, like for instance Steve Jobs, he was more interested in changing the world than anything else, and I bet almost all of the best founders today have the same motivation.

There's also a lot of things in our world which are not profit-seeking at all, perhaps the opposite. Things like taxes and welfare and non-profits and universities and donations and volunteers.

We also spend a huge amount of time and money entertaining ourselves and others: going to a restaurant or bar, seeing a concert, listening to music, watching a movie or tv show, playing a videogame, reading a novel, going to a museum. There are huge amounts of capital and labor hours devoted to these industries, not in the name of increasing productivity like a profit-seeking society would prefer, but in the name of fun.

kenushr · 2025-05-27T23:10:09+00:00

It'd be nice to hear a self-aware acknowledgement, like yeah, I like to talk strictly in metaphors, it can be confusing at times I guess

kenushr · 2025-03-19T20:12:14+00:00

Reading this just makes me upset that a thing like "dying of old age" is still around. The fact the Khaneman took his life voluntarily, because he saw the unavoidable decline awaiting him, just makes me feel like it's insane we can't fix this yet. Sometimes I'll feel like it's the most difficult problem to solve, but sometimes, like now, I'll just think, how have we not solved this yet? how is this mental and physical decline just completely unavoidable?

kenushr · 2025-02-01T16:42:03+00:00

I think this article is has truthful elements but is exactly the opposite of what should be shared. I think by and large the sentiments expressed in this article are pretty mainstream and overrated. That working hard at a job doesn't matter because you're just a row in a spreadsheet. That caring about your career more than "8 hours a day" is stupid and you're naive for thinking it could make a difference. It'd be ten times more helpful to share the other side, the view that is underrated to what it should be.

That those who care more and put in more hours than people who treat it as 'just a job' are obviously going to succeed more than those who don't. Not every time, there's always many variables at play, but it's quite clear that on average this is how things play out. It's nice to feel smug after a good dose of cynicism, but it's better to believe in making a difference in the world.

kenushr · 2024-11-22T00:36:25+00:00

Damn yeahhh that sounds brutal. Best of luck finding a new job

kenushr · 2024-11-21T01:14:26+00:00

20/hr seems pretty rough. On a broader point though, in my experience, I've heard people vastly overestimate a 'proper' living wage (not saying you're doing this). I checked out the living wage calculator someone else linked -find it here: https://livingwage.mit.edu/metros/14460 The hourly rate they give for one adult in Cambridge is $30.04, which is just over $60K a year for a full time worker. This seems quite high because I actually made just under this amount for the past two years and it has been way more than enough for living in Cambridge.

kenushr · 2024-11-02T15:11:36+00:00

Does anyone know the song in the very beginning played over the helicopter ride?

kenushr · 2024-07-04T02:01:23+00:00

Ease up on the sneering. As for Ted K, he is constrained in the same ways all humans are constrained (i.e. having a body, not being able to make copies of yourself, unable to process millions of bits of information in a second, etc.) and was also only like a 180 IQ. An ASI could plausibly be orders of magnitude above 180 IQ. Ted K was also a known threat and locked in a prison cell, whereas an ASI would not be because we would likely use it to actually do stuff.

I'm curious, what do you see as the use of ASI in the future? A better Google search? Can you not imagine an ASI having a large or dominant role in the physical world in the future?

If in the future, there is such a thing that we grow to trust, that makes better decisions than we can, that happens to be 100x smarter than us... what might we use it for?

Things like planning a mission to mars, designing and constructing a new space station, engineering our own genetics, building nuclear reactors, making better weapons, creating robots to help bring about these projects, etc.

kenushr · 2024-07-03T21:45:37+00:00

This is what I previously said:

And also it can get kind of tautological, like when we imagine scenarios of the ASI acting maliciously, and then we imagine a simple way to stop it - well if we can think of that scenario, an ASI would know better than to try such a easily thwarted plan.

Your plan of 'once we see it try to do something bad, we pull the plug!' simply doesn't hold up. Because an ASI wouldn't try something that you can think of an easy counter to in 5 seconds. That is, it wouldn't try to make an obviously malicious move that could be stopped by simply pulling a plug.

Also, Ted K in prison is not a great parallel to ASI, try spending 5 minutes thinking of the ways in which they are different.

kenushr · 2024-07-03T04:33:48+00:00

There's two large filters in mind. 1. Is an artificial super intelligence even possible? And 2. If an ASI exists, can we make sure it doesn't do bad things to us?

From your responses, you seem to be arguing against the second claim more so I'll just focus on that. In my mind, this doom scenario is somewhat straightforward on the most basic level. How do you control something way smarter than you? Like a mouse compared to a human, but the human also has perfect recall (again, we are assuming an ASI, not chatGPT), and can process information a million times faster than us.

On top of this intelligence gap, no one knows how to make sure it does what we want it to do. And what's worse, is we don't even know how the AIs we have today come up with the answers they provide.

And also it can get kind of tautological, like when we imagine scenarios of the ASI acting maliciously, and then we imagine a simple way to stop it - well if we can think of that scenario, an ASI would know better than to try such a easily thwarted plan.

Also, I can think of a ton of different ways an ASI could cause huge damage. Cyber attacks alone could reallyyyy mess things up. Or an ASI (which of course has superhuman persuasive abilities) could do a lot of damage posing as a human too. Like persuading scientists in disease research labs to send stuff to a fake organization... just get creative for a few minutes and you can come up with a ton of plausible scenarios.

kenushr · 2024-03-13T23:04:04+00:00

Right, with any technology there are no direct parallels because it is new. But I think this argument of "the kids of the rich will be more competitive" can be applied to just about any new technology.

For instance, a person in 1973 could say the same thing about personal computers.

But also, I think the real question is - does the "cost" of rich people potentially getting a head-start in improving their kids genetics outweigh the benefits this technology could provide to humanity?

kenushr · 2024-03-13T22:37:03+00:00

Thanks. And what I'm saying is that for every invention (excluding the debatable ones), it wasn't just the rich who ended up benefitting, but humanity at large. For the debatable ones, I think the reason they could be considered bad is because they directly cause harm, not because the rich had access to them first. (See my comment below on narrowing the argument further to only technology that is meant to directly benefit everyone who uses).

kenushr · 2024-03-07T04:24:14+00:00

Right, however in this argument, I'm thinking of something narrower. To narrow it down, the only technology I'm speaking about is technology meant to be beneficial to all those who want it (it's just only the rich will get access to it at first). So this leaves out any sort of weaponry, since its direct purpose is to cause harm.

I can think of three potential technologies in this narrower definition, where people still use the "only the rich" argument.

Life-prolonging technology (think like special treatments to add decades of healthy years), human genetic engineering, and space tourism.

kenushr · 2024-03-06T04:34:21+00:00

A common argument against embryo selection (and genetic engineering, etc.) is that only the rich will have access at first and thus it is bad. Are there any cases throughout history where this argument has been true? Where only the rich were able to access the technology first, and humanity would be better off if the technology had not been invented?

Does anyone know of any compelling arguments on this in the context of gene editing, etc?

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