NunoSempere's profile

NunoSempere 9mo ago

There is a philosophical problem regarding whether pure altruism is conceptually possible; if you help someone, and you receive in exchange nothing but the satisfaction of having helped someone, then haven't you received something of value, thereby rendering the altruistic act "impure"? What if you don't even feel good about it, could it be pure then? But then, how were you motivated to help in the first place if you didn't even feel good about it? Regardless of how we answer these questions, I believe we can put the idea of absolute pure altruism to the side, because if it exists at all, it surely encompasses a minority of human interactions--source

I have a different perspective here, where a) I think it's conceptually possible, b) the interesting question is whether people who say they are are really only doing the pure altruism. I first encountered the term pure altruism in two papers by James Andreoni, from 1989 and 1990. In them, Andreoni lays out a model of altruistic giving, where agents contribute to a public good both because they value it in itself, but also because they get a private benefit, a "warm glow". He has some nice academic results, like a quick mechanism for indexing one's own altruism (if one was taxed one dollar less, or a thousand, how much more would one donate?), and other observations (taxation may not produce warm glow, and as a result increasing taxation by some amount doesn't reduce donations by that amount; when parents get a warm glow from giving to their children, children are incentivized to be more "spoilt" in a technical sense).

Are people who are saying they are doing pure forms of altruism actually doing so? Often not so. There are aspects of the EA community that just don't make sense by considering its participants as pure white cherubs of innocence and selflessness, although each particular case will be uncertain and ambiguous, and although pointing the discrepancy is tricky.

One of the biggest bets Open Philanthropy—a large philanthropic foundation I'm acquainted with—is making is in its own people. 161 people, earning say 150K to 250K salaries, with overhead of 20% to 40% (?) is 30M to 52M/year—probably higher than any one of their grants in 2024 and 2025. This does not include the cost of their office, another cool 16.5M. This leads them to have a class interest: they are invested in that form of doing philanthropy—rather than anonymous part-time rotating grantmakers whose funds under management grow or shring depending on their evaluated success (like the Survival and Flourishing Fund).

Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed outlines how this happened with the apparatchik in Russia. The apparatchik are in charge of the wellbeing of the Soviet Union and ended up reallocating ressources to themselves. Some of my experience is that the grantmakers just want to be sucked up to, their ideas confirmed, their egos upheld, their strategies validated, their personalities admired. But at the same time they are selected for not rocking the boat in a deep way. More mundanely, people get grants from projects that don't work out, and don't pivot, because they think that would involve losing their jobs. EA seems like a failed Schelling point to me, because it advertises itself as doing pure altruism, but the actors end up fighting for their own self-interest, sometimes in quite obvious ways.

Is pure altruism selected out? If you do something for someone such that you don't get something out of it, can you continue doing that into the future? What is the mechanism? I think this is a key question that leads to rederiving some form of non-naïve form of altruism. Or alternatively, it leads to exploiting the pure altruism until its ressources are exhausted. One of the first guys to think about this ended up killing himself.

On the other side, pure altruism can be understood essentially as a mating display because it's a costly signal of strength, and it. The underlying purpose of ideology X isn't ideology X, it's displaying that you can still be a well-adjusted person even with its iron around your neck. Some version of this is fine by me, but the problem becomes when people really believe their ideologies and do cripple themselves for real, as happened with Germany's industrial economy as a result of their terrible energy policy. This matters to me, I made a heavily real, non-fake investment in learning German. I passed the C1 exam but probably at some point did have a C2 level in German. Now I just do business with Americans instead. I also do find it aesthetically distasteful when people do something which is nominally about, e.g., helping the homeless in a way that makes the problem worse, partly because nobody taught me how to do the Straussian reading.

At the same time, how do you coordinate around public goods? One cool answer is dominant assurance contracts but in practice this hasn't been implemented much, perhaps because the people who could have jobs as grantmakers they would rather preserve, but also because part of the problem of setting up a new project is just distribution, and you have a chicken an egg problem here (you could do a dominant assurance funding model if only you had already built the distribution funnel for your thing, but that's a big part of the job).

Anyways one answer here is to try to get people in man vs. nature games because man v. man conflicts are just fucked up.

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NunoSempere 1yr ago · Edited 1yr ago

Somebody asked last time I posted a list like this what the background was. I'm coming from an EA/forecasting background, but then realized that although there might be something to being worried about catastrophic risks, reponses to this were top-down, trying to conceptualize risks long beforehand. I grew very unsatisfied with this, particularly for AI, and ended up raising some money to run a foresight/fast response team. We produce weekly minutes here, and the below feeds into that.

Some general topics:

Will NK detonate a nuclear weapon? When?
To what extent is ww3 a good level of analysis for global conflicts?
I used to not worry that much about climate change, but 100-1k people killed in my own backyard (Spain) makes me a bit more worried
On the one had, a terrorist cooking ricin is a bit alarming. On the other hand, it shows that Al Qaeda doesn't have the chops to do anthrax or bottox. Thoughts?
Is the WHO's global emergency corps bullshit? Seems like it's a "reserve of experts"
I didn't know that France depended on Rosatom for nuclear fuel. Lol.
We've been seeing mpox coming to developed nations for a while, but it's still striking to see the 1st london case.

South Korea’s military intelligence agency told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea has likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test and is close to test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States.

An article looks at the growing alliance between China, Russia and other powers

Jamie Dimon, the head of the financial giant JP Morgan, makes the argument that we are already in a WW3.

Animal testing of H5N1 gives some data about how well it's adapting

Russia launches exercises simulating retaliatory strikes

Pakistan vows to emphasize military ties to Russia, and collaborates on anti-terrorism exercises.

At least 100 people have died so far (and about 1000 are "disappeared") in flash flooding of Spain’s Valencia. Bridges collapsing, and overall very striking videos on social media. The city got what would have been a freak tornado, but such events might become more common as climate change continues changing up weather patterns.

A teen who went into a murderous rampage was also cooking ricin.

Israel ordered a whole Lebanese city evacuated

Geneva convention rules are being weakened, and civilians aren't being shielded from the worst harms in Ukraine or Gaza.

Finland seized Russian assets over compensation linked to invasion of Crimea

A Boeing satellite exploded into 500 pieces. The worst case scenario in events like this is Kessler syndrome but so far reporting doesn't point to something like this, though early simulations don't look great

The US and China are fighting over dominance in the depths of the South China sea

The WHO activated the global emergency corps to deal with monkeypox. Implications unclear, as it seems more like a "reserve of experts that advise" and less like a "reserve of nurses and doctors"

A cyberattack from Iran hit an Israeli bank, and maybe credit card users generally, blocking users off.

Cyberattack against French Internet Service Provider

New agreement between Germany and the UK will tighten cooperation

Ballot box arson attacks in Oregon.

More cyberattacks in Australia

Fire in UK shipyard which builds nuclear submarines

The 2025 geomagnetic storm season might be pretty big

France depends on Russia for nuclear fuel

Some Russia military bases are empty. Some experts suggest this is for sabotage operations in the Baltics

First case of mpox Ib clade in London

Floods also caused havoc in Africa

Putin launches drills of Russia's nuclear forces simulating retaliatory strikes

India is expanding nuclear capabilities with fast breeder reactor

The US CDC issued an alert for "walking pneumonia"

A man with 120 guns and 250,000 rounds of ammunition in his home was arrested for shooting at a Democratic Party office

in Tempe

AI "Will Enhance" Nuclear Command and Control, Says nuclear command general

North Korea likely to ask for nuclear technology from Russia in exchange for troops, South Korea says. This would mirror an agreement between Iran and Russia.

The US army is preparing for a possible confrontation with China

Hezbollah new leader might agree on a ceasefire

More coral bleaching

Israel is using AI tools with little oversight to determine whether an individual is a Hamas operative.

North Korea conducted an ICBM test.

H5N1 detected in pig. Previously only in cows

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NunoSempere 9mo ago

strawmanning of EA in general

I think EA does have a fair share of pure altruists. I know of at least four people that have gone celibate over the last few years as a result of being too concentrated on their jobs (and I claim they could have had romantic success if they had chosen to). I think coordinating around "we are doing the most good" also has an easy attractor in pure altruism.

the Soviets did not rely on charitable giving to fund their efforts

The thing I was pointing at is that the job of the apparatchiks was to nominally be pure altruists towards the population of Russia as a whole, and this predictably failed.

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Some news stories I'm tracking; thoughts welcome on any of them, particularly the first two.

South Korean intelligence reports that an agreement between North Korea and Russia includes an annual supply of 600-700 tonnes of rice to North Korea, a salary of US$2,000 for North Korean soldiers deployed in Ukraine, space technology, and provisions for Russian involvement in potential conflicts on the Korean Peninsula. With around 10,000 North Korean troops expected to be deployed to Ukraine, this could generate over US$200 million annually for Pyongyang. The 4 million tonnes of grains that North Korea says it produces per year are actually about 1 million tonnes short of what it needs to feed the country.

Six people have been killed in NY after a "subway surfing" trend, where people get on top of subway trends, has been going "viral". The number is really small, but the vector "social media leads people to do really stupid shit" seems like it could scale (anorexia and tumblr, lying flat in China, etc.) Admittedly, the subway surfing in question looks pretty lit.

There is a crunch in the transformer industry

Canada's National Cyber Threat Assessment classifies India a "state adversary"

198 killed, 111 injured in separate terrorist attacks in Pakistan during October.

Volcano erupted in Indonesia, killing ten people (and thousands will be relocated), but the region has a lot of volcanoes and a lot of people.

Myanmar <> India border conflict. Over 200 people have died, 60,000 displaced, and 30 km of fencing completed. The influx of refugees from Myanmar, over 60,000 in Mizoram and 5,000 in Manipur,

The Houthis have developed what they call a "marching submarine", something between a moveable landmine and an unmanned submarine.

Veterinarians back mass testing of milk for avian flu

Egypt hosted Fatah <> Hamas post war Gaza talks

US Deploys B-52 Bombers and Missile Destroyers in Warning to Iran Amid Escalating Regional Tensions

Another Hezbollah commander killed

Houthis pledge to continue red sea attacks despite Israeli asset sales. They allege that Israeli shipping companies are transferring assets to avoid detection.

Israel conducted airstrikes on military targets in Iran, damaging their missile program and air defenses.

Israel Ends Agreement With UN Agency Providing Aid in Gaza

Israel has ended the agreement enabling the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees to operate, citing alleged infiltration by Hamas, a claim the agency denies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fired Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and appointed Israel Katz as his successor. The move comes following open disagreements between Netanyahu and Gallant over the management of Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Thousands protested the move in Tel Aviv

Palestinians say Israel struck Gaza clinic during polio campaign; army denies it

Lebanon filed a formal complaint against Israel at the United Nations following deadly explosions caused by rigged communication devices. Shows how impotent Lebanon is imho

The Philippine military has opened two weeks of combat drills in the South China Sea, with more than 3,000 personnel participating in maneuvers that include seizing an island. The drills have raised tensions with China, which claims most of the South China Sea.

Newly revealed documents show that Russia's proposed agreement to end the special operation in 2022 included giving up Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, reducing Ukraine's military size, prohibiting missile development, joining NATO

Mariana Katzarova, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Russia, reported on the widespread and systematic use of torture by Russian authorities to oppress and control society. The torture has worsened during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with thousands of Ukrainian civilians detained, deported, and tortured in Russian prisons. Despite the shocking human rights violations, Katzarova hopes for a constructive dialogue with Russian officials to address the issues. Note that the source is Voice of America; a US state-controlled outlet.

Russian operatives shipped two incendiary devices in attempts to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft heading to the U.S. and Canada. DHL was used to ship electric massagers containing a magnesium-based flammable substance as part of a covert Russian sabotage campaign. Seems like an escalation of US<>Russia tensions.

There are ongoing jihadist insurgencies in Chad, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger. These are generally attacking Christians, causing large population movements,

Chaucer has launched a new nuclear insurance policy called CyNuC to provide insurance cover for cyberattacks on nuclear power plants. It doesn't include war and hostile state-sponsored action though. I thought this was cool.

Sudan conflict spirals into civil war, if it hadn't already

The US State Department is giving some assistance to Somalia's police to build counterterrorism capacity. state-funded radio show in Poland replaced all its presenters with experimental AI hosts. This initially increased listenership but then sparked backlash.

Another case of the new, more infectious mpox strain (clade 1b) has been detected in the UK, bringing the total confirmed number of cases to four. The cases are all from the same household

Norway invests ~22M USD in global pandemic preparedness

Global pandemic accord negotiations continue

Scientists track emergence of novel H5N1 flu reassortant in Cambodia The novel reassortant virus combines genes from two H5N1 clades and has worrisome mutations, including one linked to adaptation to mammals and airborne transmission. This is kind of the next worrying step between on the way between now and H5N1 being a global pandemic.

UK government to create surveillance system for future pandemics

UK raises avian influenza risk level to high

The US carried a test of its Minuteman III missile, to showcase its nuclear readiness

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NunoSempere 1yr ago · Edited 1yr ago

Some stuff I'm paying attention to this week:

Drag marks on the seabed were discovered following damage to the Estlink 2 undersea power cable, which connects Finland and Estonia. This provides further evidence of sabotage.

Chinese is facing a human metapneumovirus outbreak, with authorities ramping up detection and response protocols

Palestine: a year in review.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov shared Moscow's opposition to the deployment of Western peacekeeping forces in Ukraine

The IDF reports 891 casualties since Hamas' October 7 attack. Compare with the upwards of 40K dead Gazans.

Pakistan attacked some positions of the TTP in Afghanistan, leading to the Afghan Taliban hitting several points in Pakistan.

Iran to hold nuclear talks with France, Britain and Germany on January 13

Israel announced increase in propaganda budget by USD 150M to combat Gaza narrative

Israeli Report to UN Exposes Hamas Torture, Sexual Abuse of Hostages, Including Children

Israeli raid shuts last major hospital in north Gaza

Yemen's Houthis claim to have shot down 13th MQ-9 Reaper drone

China calls for withdrawal of U.S. missile system from the Philippines

Himalayan megadam gives China power to turn off taps in India

Leaked documents reveal that Russia has prepared target lists for over 160 sites in Japan and South Korea in the event of a major war, dating back to 2013-2014. The plans, which focus on military engagements in the Asia-Pacific region, highlight Russia's intentions to use non-nuclear cruise missiles to disrupt military operations and include both military and civilian infrastructure targets. Among the military sites are command headquarters and radar installations, while civilian targets include power plants and major transportation infrastructures like tunnels and bridges. The documents indicate that of the 160 targets, 82 are military installations, with the remainder being civilian infrastructure.

Taiwanese fighter who served in Ukraine says island unprepared for Chinese invasion

The US and Japan issued their first guidelines for extended deterrence, which outline the potential use of U.S. nuclear weapons in response to threats from China and North Korea. Final authorization remains with the US president. Seems more like something to calm Japan's nerves than anything else

The Chinese navy and Coast Guard conducted a maritime blockade drill in the Miyako Strait, a strategic waterway near Japanese territory where U.S. forces are stationed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has directed the government and Sberbank to collaborate with China on AI, aiming to bolster Russia's capabilities, particularly military ones, like autonomous combat systems, in the face of Western sanctions.

"The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification," Xi said in a speech televised on China's state broadcaster CCTV.

Chinese-Russian air co-operation in the Artic has Norad's 'full attention'

Russia threatens more nuclear tests as World War 3 fears intensify. Russia ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 2000, but has since withdrawn from the agreement

Russia will abandon moratorium on deploying short- and medium range milliles

Russia angry that state media blocked on Telegram in the EU

'We are waging an existential war': M23's Bertrand Bisimwa on DRC conflict

Delaware officials investigate possible bird flu outbreak after dozens of snow geese test positive. Small microcosm of how H5N1 is playing out

Sweden is planning to secure additional land for cemeteries in anticipation of potential war casualties,

Also, Scott Alexander also gave some thanks to me and my group at the end of this post on H5N1, :)-

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Some items I've been reading this week:

Uzbek man kills Moscow general at behest of Ukraine service

Study analyzed data from 56,450 stars observed by NASA's Kepler telescope and discovered 2,889 superflares on 2,527 stars, establishing that superflares are significantly more common than previously understood. The energy released during such an event could reach one octillion joules, far surpassing the Carrington Event of 1859.

Guyana is cooperating more with the US, amidst conflict with Venezuela and ExxonMobil operating in contested waters, reports a Venezuela pres

At least 110 people have died in 7 weeks of post-election protests in Mozambique. Protesters alleged that the presidential election was rigged in favour of the long-entrenched Frelimo party, which has been in power since the country gained independence in 1975. Protests escalated following the killing of two opposition officials.

The world's 'deadliest day' when over 800,000 people died | World

isp.netscape.com seems to be a frontend for associated press

Donald Trump 'considering proposal to strike Iran's nuclear programme', and so is Israel, now that they can freely operate in Syrian airspace after the fall of the Assad regime.

An article in The Times looks at how Israel has been using AI to systematically identify airstrike targets, following up on earlier reporting.. “During the period in which I served in the target room [between 2010 and 2015], you needed a team of around 20 intelligence officers to work for around 250 days to gather something between 200 to 250 targets,” Tal Mimran, a lecturer at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a former legal adviser in the IDF, tells TIME. “Today, the AI will do that in a week.”. One intelligence officer tasked with authorizing a strike recalled dedicating roughly 20 seconds to personally confirming a target, which could amount to verifying that the individual in question was male.

The US Department of Defense's Annual Report to Congress reviews China's ambitions and capabilities.

Russian air force [flies](https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/12/18/russian-air-force-flies-nuclear-cSome items I'm tracking:apable-bombers-near-alaska-a87390) nuclear-capable bombers in neutral waters near Aalaska

California Gov. Declares 'roactive' State of Emergency Over Bird Flu

Wisconsin reports presumptive avian flu in poultry worker as California declares emergency

First person in US to develop severe illness from bird flu is hospitalized

Drones reported above N.J. nuclear power plants, N.Y. airport, officials say

FAA bans drones over several New Jersey towns

Switzerland to spend £200m upgrading nuclear shelters

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NunoSempere 2yr ago · Edited 2yr ago

Here is a rant about Effective Altruism. It goes as follows:

I want to better understand in order to better decide
That the structural organization of the movement is distinct from the philosophy
and EA structurally orients itself around one billionaire's money.
In practice, cost-effectiveness estimates keep EA honest, but only for global health
Outside of global health, the leadership of the EA machinery has even more unappealing aspects
...and EA leadership doesn't display a blistering, white-hot competence
Therefore it might make sense to walk away more often

Unflattering aspects of Effective Altruism

1. I want to better understand in order to better decide

As a counterbalance to the rosier and more philosophical perspective that Effective Altruism (EA) likes to present of itself, I describe some unflattering aspects of EA. These are based on my own experiences with it, and my own disillusionments¹.

If people getting into EA² have a better idea of what they are getting into, and decide to continue, maybe they’ll think twice, interact with EA less naïvely and more strategically, and not become as disillusioned as I have.

But also, the EA machine has been making some weird and mediocre moves, leaving EA as a whole as a not very formidable army³. A leitmotiv from the Spanish epic poem The Song of the Cid is “God, what a good knight would the Cid be, if only he had a good lord to serve under”. As in the story of the Cid then, so in EA now. As a result, I think it makes sense for the rank and file EAs to more often do something different from EA™, from EA-the-meme. To notice that taking EA money carries costs. To reflect on whether the EA machine is better than their outside options. To walk away more often.

2. That the structural organization of the movement is distinct from the philosophy

Effective altruism’s philosophical ideas are seductive: who wants to be less effective? who wants to work on intractable, overgrazed and worthless projects, as opposed to tractable, neglected and impactful problems? But liking the philosophy doesn’t mean you will like the actual movement, or that you should join it. You can have many different kinds of organizational structures corresponding to the same philosophy, and some will be a poor fit for you.

For example, after the 2008 crisis, one could be in favor of reforming the US financial system and holding those responsible for the 2008 crisis accountable, but find Occupy Wall Street deeply disappointing. Historically, there has been huge confusion about this point in EA.⁴

3. and EA structurally orients itself around one billionaire’s money.

To a first approximation, the structural organization of Effective Altruism is as follows:

Dustin Moskovitz, a deca-billionaire, is giving his fortune away through his foundation. His foundation, Open Philanthropy, has a large staff subdivided into cause areas.
Organizations are chasing Open Philanthropy’s funding.
Rank and file members are seeking to work at organizations with Open Philanthropy funding (“EA organizations”)

There are players who do not fit into this scheme, but I would describe their contribution as marginal. Not as irrelevant, mind you, just as very small in comparison with the Open Philanthropy juggernaut. Still, a few points of nuance:

Dustin Moskovitz (ca. $10B) isn’t the only billionaire giving money to the cluster of organizations under the EA banner. There is also Jaan Tallinn (ca. $1B), which gives under various “Survival and Flourishing” funds. More may be coming.
There are a few people “earning to give”, or donating independently of Open Philanthropy. The ones I know of are smaller, with a net worth of ca. ~$10M or so.
Not 100% organizations or individuals in the EA movement are chasing Open Philanthropy funding.
Sometimes, Open Philanthropy doesn’t donate to projects directly but e.g., donates to some Effective Altruism Fund or to the Centre for Effective Altruism, which donates to the final project.
etc.⁵

Still, the decisions of Open Philanthropy end up being decisive. How decisive? Well, Open Philanthropy directs something like 90% of current funding within the EA movement⁶. So other funders just don’t have as much capacity in comparison. For example, running a 10 person organization in the EA movement really benefits from having backing from Open Philanthropy, because relying on the other funders adds too much uncertainty and volatility. So I’d say that they end up being pretty decisive.

4. In practice, cost-effectiveness estimates keep EA honest, but only for global health

If we have some reliable way of estimating the value of projects, structural organization doesn’t matter that much. You would propose your project, it would be evaluated, and if it was above some cost-effectiveness bar, it would be funded. That is, to a first approximation, what happens within the global health cause area in EA. You can seek to objectively⁷ estimate the quality-adjusted life years that an intervention saves. You can have an evaluator like GiveWell. And you can have an organization like Charity Entrepreneurship trying to find interventions that would be evaluated favorably by GiveWell.

The situation with animal welfare is a bit messier. Open Philanthropy might be making some quantified estimates, but I don’t recall them being public. And Animal Charity Evaluators, the would-be GiveWell equivalent, doesn’t do quantified estimates of the value of the charities they rank. Still, in principle you could do estimates of value for animal suffering interventions and avoid the problems I outline below.

With longtermism and global catastrophic risks, you don’t have good methods of estimating the value of different interventions, for example of determining that one AI safety research agenda is better than another, or that one AI governance approach is superior. So in practice, you end up relying on the personal judgment of a crowd of amalgamated⁸ EA leaders for making funding and prioritization decisions.

Historically, Open Philanthropy has been slow to trust people, either as employees or as grantees. So these amalgamated EA leaders have been overworked, busy, unapproachable⁹. In practice, people go to great lengths to try to approach and socialize with Open Philanthropy employees, like visiting or moving to the very expensive San Francisco Bay area.

That grant-makers are busy and unavailable makes getting access to them hard, because the group has limited available throughput. But say you increase the throughput. Then, if the game and the habits are still to compete for a limited pool of resources, and if there is still infinite demand for free billionaire money, then charismatic grantees close to EA leaders will still out-compete others. Competing for access is still the wrong game to be playing, though, and I resent this; you don’t want to have a pool of talent competing hard for grant-maker attention, you want to have a pool of talent working hard at making the world a better place¹⁰.

Consider the sunflower. The sun provides a source of energy; the sunflower evolves to follow it. So with Open Philanthropy and Effective Altruism. I’m then saying that in a sunflower field, flowers who don’t move to track the sun could be out-competed. But tracking the sun is a distraction, an instrumental goal at best.

The same story told from the bottom up is: an aspiring EA starts with the intention of doing large amounts of good, and will try to do something semi-ambitious. Then he’ll find out that funding constraints are a big part of making shit happen. And when solving that funding bottleneck, he will be in a social context where the natural good move is to try to get access and then seduce a busy, overworked, and therefore unavailable coterie of grantmakers¹¹^,¹². He’ll burn out.

But that’s the wrong game to be playing because if you look at autochthonous EAs, at the rank and file, many are nerds, nerds who are able to do good work but who will find it hard to jockey for access. Their winning move would be not to play, and to gain real power by building something independently.

5. Outside of global health, the leadership of the EA machinery has even more unappealing aspects

Even beyond the sunflower issues, the central EA machinery, at organizations like the Center for Effective Altruism or Open Philanthropy, has other issues that make it unappealing to me as a source of leadership—of guidance, of evaluation, of moral direction:

First, their priorities are different from mine: Open Philanthropy seems fairly committed to worldview diversification, which I consider a mediocre framework. The Center for Effective Altruism cares much more about the reputation of the “Effective Altruism” brand than I do. In general, I get the impression that they want to “be in control”, and reduce variance from people they don’t deeply trust, while at the same time coming to trust people slowly. In contrast, I would prefer to increase formidability, to employ Auftragstaktik.

As a small but very concrete example of the disconnect between my priorities and those of the EA machine, the EA forum has become a worse place for me over the last couple of years; it seems slower, more pushy, more censorious, more paternalistic. It started as a mean lean machine hosting community discussion, and it is now more of a vehicle for pushing ideas CEA wants you to know about. In the process it grew to cost $2M/year (!?!), employ six to eight people. You can see this thought elaborated further here.

Second, I don’t really understand how feedback loops work in Effective Altruism. If someone thinks that Open Philanthropy is making some mistakes, do they ¿write an EA Forum post and hope to get the attention of someone on inside an inner circle? ¿ambush someone at a party? ¿how do they find the party? ¿how do they get heard? Over the past years I’ve had some disagreements with Open Philanthropy around forecasting strategy, worldview diversification, or the wisdom of committing to donate all of Moskovitz’s money before he dies, and I haven’t felt particularly heard.

Third, I feel that EA leadership uses worries about the dangers of maximization to constrain the rank and file in a hypocritical way. If I want to do something cool and risky on my own, I have to beware of the “unilateralist curse” and “build consensus”. But if Open Philanthropy donates $30M to OpenAI, pulls a not-so-well-understood policy advocacy lever that contributed to the US overshooting inflation in 2021, funds Anthropic¹³ while Anthropic’s President and the CEO of Open Philanthropy were married, and romantic relationships are common between Open Philanthropy officers and grantees, that is ¿an exercise in good judgment? ¿a good ex-ante bet? ¿assortative mating? ¿presumably none of my business?

Fourth, my impression is that the leadership doesn’t see itself accountable to the community, but to their understanding of the philosophy and to the funding source. E.g., Holden Karnofsky, the erstwhile head honcho of Open Philanthropy, for a long time didn’t answer comments on his posts.

Fifth, Open Philanthropy is large enough that it begins to have “seeing like a state” problems, the problems of bureaucracies. It moves slowly, and seems to have an “unfocused glaze”. E.g., it took two years and an extra $100M to exit the criminal justice cause area. Its forecasting grant-making could have used more small experimentation over large grants to existing organizations. For example, Scott Alexander’s grants seem much more exciting than a $8.5 million to Metaculus, but Open Philanthropy chose the $8.5M to Metaculus and warped the forecasting ecosystem and distribution of talent towards Metaculus-shaped things instead of many small experiments¹⁴.

So overall, my impression is that the leadership of EA holds a “leadership without consent”, a leadership without much listening and telegraphing one’s priorities so that the leaders can coordinate better with those they lead, and incorporate their perspectives and feedback. It falls on the wrong side of the socialist calculation debate¹⁵, and doesn’t compensate enough. And that makes some sense: Open Philanthropy, the main source of funding, is a bureaucracy spun up to spend a billionaire’s wealth according to his¹⁶ broad, delegated desires. It would then be surprising if they were able to also skillfully steer and command a 10k strong community, and listen and address their worries, absorb their perspectives. But also as a result, I don’t feel particularly inclined to take my cues from that machinery.

6. …and EA leadership doesn’t display a blistering, white-hot competence

If the EA leadership was, you know, an Arthurian elite which routinely displayed a blistering white hot competence, then I would be more willing to continue pouring my heart and soul into plans of their design in the absence of feedback loops.

But they aren’t, so I’m not.

7. Therefore it might make sense to walk away more often

I see bright-eyed young EAs wanting to roll deeper into the EA rabbit hole and to get employed by EA organizations. They will learn much at first, but later find themselves at the mercy of a machine that can’t hear them. Bad move to walk into that without forewarning. I see the EA machine luring brilliant minds that might be better off trying to amass a small fortune through capitalistic entrepreneurship and then deploying that fortune subject to many fewer constraints. I see people with ambitious visions with their wings clipped because they are illegible to grantmakers, and I think, what good knights they would be, if they had a good lord to serve under.

Perhaps it makes sense to instead do something subtly different from EA, to ignore the implicit vibes and expectations of the EA machine. To sometimes take their funding, but to do your own thing and preserve your ability to comfortably leave. To not serve a billionaire’s notion of the good within a structure with exceedingly poor feedback loops. To notice that if you could do well inside the EA machine, you might do better outside of it. And sometimes, to simply walk away, to burn the remainder of your youth in the pursuit of making the world a better place, outside of EA.

You can read a bit more about what I was trying to do here, and some more reflections here.↩
That is, I think this blog post could plausibly be useful for individual people reading it, not for EA institutionally to address the aspects I discuss. I don’t think there is an EA entity with the inclination to digest and address these points.↩
I like bellicose framings, but one could use neutral metaphors instead: “…making mediocre moves, reducing the EA community’s ability to do good together”, or more flowery ones “…making mediocre moves, reducing the EA’s community to flourish and give birth to valuable projects.”↩
Incidentally, this is why providing criticism of EA is not a catch-22 where you thereby “are” “an EA”, or “are doing effective altruism”. In particular, you can agree with some of the philosophical attitudes and positions of Effective Altruism, without thereby having to pledge allegiance to the EA machine.↩
E.g., technically, Open Philanthropy is its own thing, and the vehicle for Moskovitz’s donations is Good Ventures. But who cares.↩
For example, per here, Open Philanthropy donated $450M in 2021. Did other sources of funding cumulative add to more than $45M? My guess is no, and that the distribution of funding is steep. For example, Jan Tallinn donated $23M in 2021. So the EA movement wouldn’t literally be a monopsony, but still, because capital is so concentrated, it seems like capital has much more power compared to labour.↩
There are going to be some free variables, e.g., around what the “exchange rates” or conversion factors between money, illness and death should be, or around how to value a young person’s life vs an older person’s. But you can be transparent and predictable about how you will resolve these ambiguities.↩
these are going to be grant officers at Open Philanthropy, but also EA Fund managers, people in charge of hiring decisions at CEA and at large EA organizations, and so on.↩
Readers are also welcome to hypothesize what dynamics arise when trust is scarce. Perhaps promotion to incompetence across the people that are trusted? Or exacerbation of inner circle dynamics?↩
You can solve this problem by having grant-makers be anonymous. Here is a robinhansonian design: have a cohort of anonymous regrantors and allow members of the public to make $20k bets at 1:2 odds on whether any one particular person is a grant-maker. This ensures that your regrantors will remain anonymous. Anonymous philanthropy has precedents, see e.g., here.↩
Doesn’t seem like a great attachment theory setup.↩
Incidentally, having romantic relationships with Open Philanthropy employees increases access to that coterie. That is, I suspect that having a close relationship with Open Phil people privileges the hypothesis that your grant is worth evaluation.↩
For some confirmatory evidence, note that Luke Muehlhauser, an Open Philanthropy grantmaker, is a board member at Anthropic.↩
I find it interesting that when he left Open Philanthropy to start the FTX Future Fund, Nick Beckstead (with others) designed it to look completely different than the Open Philanthropy model: trusting independent and eclectic expert regrantors to make grants according to their judgment, evaluated on their performance, rather than hierarchies of grantmakers each restricted to a cause or sub-cause.↩
See here for a more libertarian perspective which disagrees in emphasis with the Wikipedia page.↩
and his wife’s↩

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Some items I'm tracking this week:

Austria didn't pay for Russian gas, as a remedy for an arbitration award. This ends Austria's 50 year dependence on Russian gas, mid-winter.

Anti-NATO nationalist won the first round of Romanian presidential election. Calin Georgescu, who has praised Putin's regime and blamed the military-industrial complex for the war in Ukraine, secured over 22.9% of the vote, surpassing pro-western candidates Lasconi and Ciolacu.

Israel <> Hezbollah ceasefire

As a case study for negative impacts of technology, apparently the introduction of Facebook groups allowed larger-scale cooperation in Myanmar to a much larger extant than before, and contributed/enabled/made possible the Rohinya genocide.

Aljazeera looked at whether aid workers are being tagetted, given that relatively many (281 in 2024) were killed this year, articularly in Gaza. This could be important, because killing aid workers potentially makes catastrophes much worse.

Further protests in Pakistan about releasing Imran Khan

His wives kept dying mysteriously. His secret poison: Insulin

William Dale Archerd was a charming sociopath who married frequently, drank highballs, and despised 9-to-5 employment. He was a natural salesman who married seven women from 1930 to 1965, sometimes not bothering to divorce the previous one. Archerd was finally arrested in 1967 for a series of murders carried out using insulin injections to mimic fatal illnesses.

Israel and Lebanon instituted a ceasefire, which was then broken. However, Lebanese are returning to their abandoned homes

Per Biden's announcement of the ceasefire, it is between the governments of Lebanon and Israel, and their respective security forces. It doesn't seem to bind Hezbollah?. Over the next 60 days, the Lebanese Army and the State Security Forces will deploy and take control of their own territory once again. Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon will not be allowed to be rebuilt.

Food conditions continue to worsen in Gaza, in part because Israel has been blocking aid

The US and Japan are High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) on Japan's Nansei islands to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion, as reported by Voice of America.

Trump team weighs direct talks with Kim Jong Un. Meanwhile, in his final meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month in Peru, Biden asked for Beijing to use its leverage to reel in North Korea.

Documents declassified by the US reveal a list of assassination targets authorized/ordered by Putin

North Korea reveals uranium enrichment facility for the first time. DHL cargo plane crashed just outside the Vilnius airport, killing the Spanish pilot and injuring the three other crew members. Lithuania cannot rule out terrorism.

If Trump introduces tariffs against other nations, inflation in the US would go up, and other countries would likely retaliate.

Bird flu found in sample of California raw unpasteurized milk sold to the public. group of access leaked api access keys to OpenAI's Sora model in protest to considering themselves "free PR"

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Elon Musk shared a perspective from Jeffrey Sachs, outlined in more detail here or here, about how Russia was provoked by NATO expansion into invading Ukraine, in the same way that the US was provoked by Soviet cooperation with Cuba. This matters because Musk has become an important Trump advisor.

African countries face cybersecurity vulnerabilities due to foreign control over critical technological infrastructure, with notable cases of Chinese cyber espionage in African Union headquarters and Kenyan government ministries. Chinese and U.S. companies dominate the application and operating system layers.

Theravada Budhist rebel militias control most of a state (province) in Myanmar. Seems like it could tickle some people here.

Otherwise, I'm thinking about how states just seem like a bad abstraction. Alliance blocks, ideologies, religions, dynasties seem like somewhat better building blocks. In particular, states seem like an easy abstraction, but recently they have mislead me when... a) thinking about the Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthis: it seems much easier to think about them in terms of religion than in terms of their geographic boundaries; b) there are a few governments that are pretty weak, and they are so just because the west recognizes and supports them. Yemen, the former government of Afghanistan come to mind, c) borders are important, but not that important. There is free travel between Paraguay/Argentina/Brazil, between the European Union, between the US and Canada, between Russia and Belarus, etc., d) at the lower level, a few governments are just a few families in a trench coat (Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, etc.).

Longer list of items below. Some may be wrong.

Protest in Hyderabad against Punjab's construction of more canals on the Indus river.

Canada forces are training for deployment in Latvia—an a potential

Potential prophylactic against Ricin, in case somebody is wanting to recreate a Pricess Bride scene irl.

A paper in nature warns about the danger of a repeat of the 1815 Mount Tambora eruption

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned of the potential spillover effects of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, where Iran-backed groups are battling Israel. Araghchi stated that if the conflict expands, it could result in insecurity and instability spreading to other regions beyond the Middle East. I'm particularly worried about that scenario.

Biden administration "under pressure" to respond to Iran's plot to kill Trump, reports Fox News.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for imposing a weapons embargo on Israel and severing trade relations with the country

Far-right Israeli minister calls for annexation of West Bank

IDF says it destroyed most of Hezbollah's manufacturing, storage sites

Iran is building 'defensive tunnels' in Tehran metro network to save people from Israeli air strikes

Iran might have developed chemical weapons. These would have been tactical, rather than wide-area.. British tabloid claims that Liz Truss thought that there was a 50% that Putin would use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine in the eve of her administration

The Famine Early Warning System warns that if food supplies remain blocked, then Famine (IPC Phase 5) will most likely occur in North Gaza

An Iranian MP says Iran should move forward with a nuclear test

China is building nuclear reactor to power new aircraft carrier

France sent a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Japan

North Korea ratifies mutual defence treaty with Russia. The treaty commits both countries to providing immediate military assistance to each other using “all means” necessary if either faces “aggression”.

NATO military chief says troops would be on ground if not for Russian nukes

US flights to Haiti banned after 3 airplanes shot. government information campaign in Norway is urging citizens to prepare for emergencies, with a checklist of supplies including water, food, candles, iodine, a radio, and cash.

Doctors Without Borders ambulance in Haiti ambushed, patients executed by police officers and vigilantes.

Colombia has declared a state of disaster following days of torrential flooding impacting tens of thousands of families.

European Forum for Disaster Risk Reduction

Canada records its first human bird flu case

Global talks to reach an agreement on better fighting pandemics will continue into next year

The largest-yet multilingual open pretraining dataset was released.

China arms itself for potential trade war with Donald Trump. "You think you’ve priced-in geopolitical risk and US-China trade warfare, but you haven’t, because China hasn’t seriously retaliated yet"

Ukraine could build a crude nuclear bomb within months, similar to the Fat Man bomb dropped in Nagasaki, from spent plutonium

An elephant seal colony lost 95%+ of its pups because of H5N1

An Australian site makes the point that misinformation laws prevent converging to the truth when the official version is wrong, as it was in the early days of covid when the mechanism for transmission was thought to be droplets, rather than the virus being more generally airborne.

ChinaTalk reports on the state of model testing in China

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Do people have any thoughts, questions on forecasting stuff?

Some things I'd love to have some back and forths about:

How to model the chance that North Korea will detonate a nuclear bomb by end of year?
Chance that monkeypox will spread to the West? Distribution of expected deaths?
How to model the spread of conflict? How to model which states matter in the world?
What will happen with Bangladesh?
Some states are three families in a trenchcoat. What's up with that? Particularly in the case of Pakistan: it's a nuclear state, but it also just has a lot of difficulty projecting power into rural areas...

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Letter from Biden to the Speaker of the House on US deployments is interesting. I appreciate how it subverts various mechanisms for Congressional oversight.

From doctor to brutal dictator: the rise and fall of Syria's Bashar al Assad

An article in Haaretz openly talks about Israel's nuclear program, noting a shift from Israel's official stance of "strategic ambiguity"

China warships near Taiwan nearly double in 24 hours, ahead of possible wargames. China also expressed dissatisfaction with visits to Hawaii and Guam from Taiwan's president

Syria rebels name transitional prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir. He was the previous prime minister of the statelet in the region controlled by HTS.

NK saber rattling. My sense is they might test a nuclear weapon in the next few months (15% by April?)

US transition of power soon

Belarus president confirms that nuclear weapons are stationed in Belarus, reports Russia Today.

Putin claims that its intermediate-range missile system, the Oreshnik minimizes the need of using nuclear weapons.

Ukraine war: US gives $20bn to Kyiv funded by seized Russian assets. It's deposited to a World Bank fund, where it nominally can't be spent to buy military assets (though it of course funges with civilian spending).

Zelensky says that Ukraine has lost 43K soldiers since the start of the war, with an additional 370K wounded, and that losses oon the Russian side are around 200K, with an additional ~500K injured. With a population of 37.9M for Ukraine, that corresponds to 0.11% dead, 1% wounded. Wikipedia reports similar numbers. The ratio of repoprted Ukranian to Russian losses is also very steep. The Economist instead estimates 60K to 100K deaths for Ukraine. But these are just... not that high? Very, very far from "total war".

Genetic analysis of H5N1 in kid in California: "the virus gene segments sequenced most closely resemble those segments from recent B3.13 viruses detected in California in humans, dairy cattle and poultry. This analysis supports the conclusion that the overall risk to the general public associated with the ongoing HPAI A(H5N1) outbreak in U.S. dairy cattle and poultry has not changed and remains low at this time."

UK considering ring-vaccination campaign to tackle new mpox outbreak if more cases emerge

Drone strikes UN vehicle on way to inspect Ukrainian nuclear plant

Israel arrested 30 people to whom Iran was paying relatively small amounts of money for spying and sabotage tasks

Assad fell, some good coverage here. Israel also took the opportunity to get a buffer zone in Syria.

Various European countries are stopping or revering asylum claims from Syrians

Arrakan Army now controls the Myanmar/Bangladesh border.

The Russian Federal Security Service arrests a German-Russian man for allegedly planning to sabotage a rail line in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia to host 2034 world cup

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NunoSempere 11mo ago

Some headlines for discussion:

4 Palestinians die after the storming of a UN food warehouse in Gaza. A distribution center from a group that agreed to work with Israeli restrictions meant to prevent aid being diverted or controlled by Hamas was also overrun. The head of this later group also resigned

Iran may pause enrichment for a year and ship off its highly enriched uranium in exchange for the US to recognize its right to enrich uranium for its civilian energy program and unfreeze funds.

Israel receives new U.S.-backed Gaza truce proposal: state media-Xinhua

Malta announces plan to officially recognize Palestine

Cholera outbreak in Sudan kills 172 in one week

Amnesty says over 10,000 killed in two years in Nigeria

Trump used offers of trade access to broker India-Pakistan ceasefire, claims U.S. Commerce Secretary

Eric Schmidt warns against China bombing US datacenters

UK announces $1B investment in cyber warfare

Ethiopia reports first mpox case

Trump admin cancels $766M in funding for moderna.

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NunoSempere 11mo ago

Some headlines below for your consideration, focused on risks. The high level overview is that Trump's Middle East trip is going well, India/Pakistan situation not that worrying. I was also surprised that the PKK announced its disbandment. Generally things seem less tense than a couple weeks ago.

Satellite images show Russian military buildup near Finnish border

Cotton Introduces Bill to Prevent Diversion of Advanced Chips to America’s Adversaries and Protect U.S. Product Integrity

Kurdish militant group, PKK decides to disband and end armed struggle with Turkiye

On May 14, a formation of Chinese Coast Guard vessels patrolled the territorial waters around my Diaoyu Islands.

PM Modi outlines harder stance against terrorists. Says that any terrorist attack on India will be met with a strong and decisive response; that India will not tolerate "nuclear blackmail" and will respond with precise strikes; that there will be no distinction between terrorist groups and their sponsors

Türkiye Says It Is Closely Monitoring PKK Disbandment to Secure Peace

Did Pakistan agree to ceasefire after IAF bombed nuclear assets in Kairana Hills? Did it cause leak of radiation?

Iran 'ready to make nuclear concessions'

Amazon will work with AI company recently launched by Saudi Arabia’s ruler to invest upwards of $5 billion-plus in building an AI Zone in Saudi Arabia

Genocide in Syria: Jihadists Massacre Druze, Christians, 'Infidels'

Nvidia sending 18,000 of its top AI chips to Saudi Arabia

Trump, Saudis secure $600B investment deal to include billions in US defense weapons

Similar to a 600B number earlier this year

Taiwan military conducts its first live-fire test of American-made HIMARS, military expert says: its survivability is very fragile.

Nigerian state, Borno, with 6M people, bans the sale of petrol in order to reduce the mobility of jihadist militants

EU finalizes 17th sanctions package targeting Russia's shadow fleet and defense sector

German police arrest three men over alleged Russian parcel bomb plot

Inside Putin's New Kill Squad: Russian Dictator Launches 'KGB 2.0'

Amid beating from India, Baloch rebels also claim 71 attacks on Pakistani forces

No radiation leak from any nuclear facility in Pakistan, says IAEA amid buzz after Indian claims

Macron open to deploying French nuclear weapons in Europe

Estonia tried to detain vessel from Russia's shadow fleeet, did not succeed

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

Lebanon thread. A summary statistic is that Polymarket is at ~49% at the time of this writting that Israel will invade Lebanon. https://polymarket.com/event/will-israel-enter-lebanon-before-November

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NunoSempere 8mo ago

Stuff I'm looking at this week:

Geopolitics

Americas

Court paves way for Trump to yank billions of dollars worth of foreign aid, concluding that aid groups lacked standing to bring the case.

US offers $5m bounty for Haitian warlord 'Barbecue'

Terrible health conditions at Alligator Alcatraz prison

US appeals court says Trump administration can cut billions in foreign aid

Europe

Musk chatbot Grok says it was 'censored' after suspension from X over Gaza posts

Children dying of hunger in Darfur's el-Fasher city

Attempted coup in Mali

Russia Has an Arsenal of New AI Drones Built with Smuggled Nvidia Chips (old news tho)

Zelenskyy: Ukraine won't cede land for peace amid US-Russia summit

European leaders unite behind Ukraine as Trump-Putin meeting nears

Europe says U.S. and Russia cannot decide on Ukraine land swaps at this week's summit

Migrants swim from Morocco to Ceuta as officials say enclave 'overwhelmed'

Middle East

Ireland intends to pass bill to ban the import of good from Israeli settlements despite US pressure

Iran

Where Next for Iran's Supreme Leader? Another review of his unstable grip on power.

Iran arrests 20 Mossad spies, executes nuclear scientist for providing classified information.

WWIII: Palantir CEO Alex Karp Says 3-Front War With Russia, China And Iran 'Very Likely'

Gaza

Israel strike kills Al Jazeera journalists in Gaza due to allegations of his leadership of a Hamas cell involved in rocket attacks.

Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly in talks with South Sudan to take Gazans

Gaza Sees Five Starvation Deaths in 24 Hours

11 more die from malnutrition in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says

Israel faces growing global condemnation over its plan to take over Gaza City

Gaza terrorists caught using emblem and vests of the World Central Kitchen.

'It's a horrible picture': Gaza faces new threat from antibiotic-resistant disease

Gaza health system 'catastrophic' with hospitals overwhelmed and medicines running out, WHO warns

Yemen

Yemen's Houthis say they launched 3 drone strikes inside Israel

Asia

Morning Brief: US Coast Guard Commissions First New Icebreaker in Over Two Decades; US, China Trade Accusations Over Panama Canal at UN Security Council

China's Chikungunya Outbreak Surpasses 10,000 Cases, Spreads to Taiwan

Chinese Authorities Mandating Blood Tests, Releasing Lab Mosquitoes to Fight Chikungunya Outbreak (although Epoch Times is not generally a reliable source)

A U.S. destroyer illegally entered the territorial waters of China's Huangyan Island; the Southern Theater Command lawfully and according to regulations warned and expelled it.

On August 13, Navy Colonel He Tiecheng, spokesperson for the Southern Theater Command of the People's Liberation Army, announced the unauthorized entry of the U.S. Navy destroyer "Higgins" into the territorial waters off Huangyan Island. This action was described as a serious violation of China’s sovereignty that undermines regional stability and breaches international law. The Southern Theater Command's naval forces responded by tracking, monitoring, and ultimately expelling the U.S. vessel to assert their legal authority and maintain security in the area.

Key points include the assertion that the U.S. military's activities threaten both China's sovereignty and the peace of the South China Sea. The Chinese naval forces remain vigilant and prepared to defend national interests, emphasizing a continual state of readiness against foreign military actions.

Bangladesh Braces For Potentially Devastating Dengue Outbreak As Cases Surge. The country has documented 101 deaths and over 24,183 infections so far this year

India/Pakistan

Australia To Recognise Palestinian State At UN In September

Germany invites Trump, Zelenskyy, NATO, EU leaders to virtual meeting before Trump-Putin summit

Indian court orders removal of thousands of stray dogs from Delhi region, responding to concerns about rabies. India is facing the highest rabies toll in the world, with approximately 5,700 deaths annually according to government statistics, while some estimates suggest numbers could be as high as 20,000. The stray dog population in Delhi has surged, increasing from 60,000 in 2012 to close to 1 million.

Africa

Over 2,500 cholera cases, 103 deaths recorded in Sudan's North Darfur

Nigeria Emerging As Hub For 22 Islamic Terror Groups

40 dead in Darfur as worst cholera outbreak hits Sudan

FYI there was a pretty terrible famine in Darfur in 1998

US approves potential $346 million weapons sale to Nigeria to bolster security

US imposes sanctions on Congo armed group, mining firms over illicit minerals

Tech and AI

OpenAI gold at the IOI

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NunoSempere 9mo ago

You are making points without the knowledge of what is already been discussed on the topic. Go google "avoiding EA burnout" and you'll find a plenty of stuff on this front.

I think you are empirically wrong on this. E.g., if you go to one of the most upvoted such essays you will see my comment at the top. But it's been a while. Maybe there is much that I have forgotten.

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NunoSempere 1yr ago · Edited 1yr ago

Life got in the way for the last few weeks, so I just posted the final versions of the lists I'd been sharing here on monday here

This week I'm looking at:

Trump admin to challenge Humphrey's executor

If US makes nuclear deal with Iran, Israel will not bomb it, Trump says

Iran launches IRF6 production line at Isfahan nuclear facility

Iran's military urges leader to lift fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons

Israel allegedly used toxic gas to suffocate Palestinian fighters, captives in Gaza tunnels.

Israeli PM says he will make sure Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons

UN suspends its humanitarian work in Houthi rebels' stronghold in Yemen after more staff detentions

North Korea warns of retaliation after US nuclear submarine docks in Busan. North Korea has raised concerns over the docking of the USS Alexandria, a US Navy fast-attack nuclear submarine, in South Korea's Busan port, calling it a threat to its national security. The North Korean Ministry of Defence warned that their military is prepared to take necessary actions in response to what it describes as the US's aggressive military presence in the region, expressing alarm at the heightened tensions and potential for military confrontation on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Jong Un slams US-South Korea-Japan partnership and vows to boost nuclear program. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has expressed that the growing security partnership between the United States, South Korea, and Japan represents a significant threat to North Korea. He reaffirmed his commitment to enhancing the country's nuclear weapons program in response to perceived military imbalances caused by this trilateral collaboration. Kim's comments, made during a speech marking the founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army, suggest that he is unlikely to engage in renewed diplomacy with the U.S. under President Trump, given the current state of stalled talks and North Korea's focus on weapon modernization.. cable belonging to Russian Rostelecom broke in the Baltic Sea

Could a rebellion in eastern Congo widen into a regional war?

Egypt to host emergency Arab summit on Palestinian displacement

First whooping cought death in the Washington since 2011

15K to 25K grebes killed by bird flu within Great Salt Lake, Utah officials say

Small model better than o1-preview?

OpenAI roadmap

The Islamic State has regrouped in Somalia — and has global ambitions.

The Somali branch has become the Islamic State’s new operational and financial hub, according to U.S. Africa Command (Africom), and local officials estimate there are as many as 1,000 militants under its command. Large numbers of foreign fighters have flowed into Somalia, establishing a formidable force that now threatens Western targets. The group has also become a key source of funding for other Islamic State affiliates around the world, which have killed thousands of people, including U.S. soldiers, according to U.N. investigators.

UN report finds brutal, systematic repression of protests in fallen Bangladesh regime

Potential spikes in AIDS-related deaths and a resurgence of untreated infections if access to antiviral drugs continues to be frozen by the US

China views the Philippines seeking to organize joint patrols with the US as a provocative move. In response, they conducted their own patrols (cn). Southern Theater Command: The People's Liberation Army Southern Theater Command conducts routine patrols in the South China Sea area. (cn)

On February 12, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command carried out routine patrols in the South China Sea, according to Air Force Senior Colonel Tian Junli. The Philippines has been attempting to engage external countries in 'joint patrols', which is viewed as a military provocation that obscures its illegal activities regarding China's maritime rights. China asserts its historical and legal claims over these territories, emphasizing that its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights are undisputed and must be respected. The Southern Theater Command remains on high alert to ensure the defense of national interests and to counter any disruptive military efforts in the region.

(I'm now parsing Chinese military news to check for precursors of a Taiwanese invasion)

Sudan confirms agreement on Russian naval base.

Trump and Putin to begin talks on ending Ukraine war

China is building four more type 093 nuclear attack submarines

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NunoSempere 2mo ago

No! He was boiling it down for his own son, who was presumably pretty smart. And I read it when I was a 17 y.o. lad and honestly did not get that much out of it.

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NunoSempere 7mo ago

Executive summary

Chikungunya is an exceptionally painful though rarely deadly mosquito-borne disease. Its prevalence is expanding as climate change spreads the range of the mosquitoes which carry it.

Disease basics

Chikungunya is a mosquito-borne disease caused by the chikungunya virus (CHIKV; see ECDC fact sheet, US CDC fact sheet, and WHO fact sheet). Symptoms of acute chikungunya include a rapid-onset high fever, severe joint pain, joint swelling, muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash. The incubation period is usually 3-7 days, with a range of 1-12 days, and symptoms typically last about 10 days. Approximately 15%20and%20joint%20pains.)-40% of CHIKV infections are asymptomatic. A recent study estimates a burden of disease of 17.8M cases annually, about a fifth of dengue’s.

Reports of people who have had the disease describe it as exceptionally painful. However, the case fatality rate (CFR) is ≤0.1%, similar to that for seasonal flu. Infants, especially newborns (age <30 days, CFR 3.8% in 2022-2023 in Paraguay), and, to a far lesser extent, elderly people with other health problems (CFR 0.6% among people aged ≥80 years in 2022-2023 in Paraguay) face the greatest risks of severe disease and death.

There is no specific antiviral treatment for acute chikungunya. According to the WHO, treatment “includes addressing fever and joint pain with anti-pyretics and optimal analgesics, drinking plenty of fluids and general rest. ... Paracetamol or acetaminophen are recommended for pain relief and reducing fever until dengue infections are ruled out, as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can increase the risk of bleeding.”

In addition to acute disease, CHIKV infection often causes long-term health problems as well. About 30-40% of people who get chikungunya have recurrent joint pain, in some cases for years. Rarely, myocarditis, hepatitis and ocular and neurological disorders can develop.

Vaccines

Two vaccines are approved for use in populations at risk, but they aren’t widely available. And the license for one of them, Ixchiq, was just suspended in the US, after administration in adults age ≥60 was paused in May because of serious safety concerns; the US FDA states that “one death from encephalitis directly attributable to the vaccine” and over 20 serious cases of chikungunya-like illness have been reported for the live-attenuated vaccine. However, the vaccine manufacturer states that recent adverse vaccine effects are "consistent with those previously reported during clinical trials and post-marketing experience." After imposing a similar license restriction in May, the European Medicines Agency lifted its temporary restriction on July 25.

Both vaccines currently in use appear likely to be very effective against infection. Phase 3 clinical trial data show that the Ixchiq vaccine elicits protective levels of antibodies in 97.8% of study participants 28 days after vaccination, which persists in 96% of participants at 6 months after vaccination, and 95% of patients four years afterwards. The second vaccine, Vimkunya, a virus-like particle vaccine, elicited protective antibodies pro in 98% of clinical trial participants aged 12–64 years and in 87% of participants aged ≥65 years, 3 weeks after vaccination. The percentages of study participants with protective levels of antibodies fell to 85% and 76% for the two age groups, respectively, after 6 months.

Several other vaccine candidates are in varying stages of development.

Where and how does chikungunya spread?

Large outbreaks and sporadic cases of chikungunya currently occur in the Americas, Asia and Africa, and small outbreaks occasionally occur in Europe. CHIKV was first identified in Tanzania in 1952 and has since spread around the world. It has been detected in >110 countries to date.

Non-human primates in Africa, bitten by forest-dwelling Aedes mosquitoes, are the original, natural reservoirs of CHIKV. Now, humans are the largest reservoir of CHIKV.

Both Aedes aegypti or Aedes albopictus (“Asian tiger”) mosquitoes carry the virus and are responsible for most transmission. Local mosquito-borne transmission in humans has been seen in all regions of the world with established populations of these mosquitoes. Both species bite humans primarily during the daytime, and while both species bite outdoors, Ae. aegypti also bites indoors.

Chikungunya can also spread through blood transfusions or other interactions with infected blood. It can also be transmitted in pregnancy to a fetus, or at birth to a newborn. CHIKV has not been found in breast milk.

In China

Chikungunya saw an outbreak in China this year, developing from 478 cases by the 17th of July, 3K cases by the 24th of July, 10K cases by August 8th. Monthly data for September is not yet out.

Although larger, China is further apart culturally, and thus granular data on disease spread is harder for us to find. Initial English-language reporting seems to have stemmed from a warning from the CDC in Hong Kong. Because of better data availability we turn to looking at this years’ chikungunya outbreak in Europe:

In Europe

In the short term

Chikungunya continues to spread in Europe. As of August 27, 227 cases have been confirmed in Italy, and 63 cases in France in 2025. Many in Europe are wondering, how much is chikungunya going to spread, and when is it going to stop? In the short-term, this year, not much.

First, let’s look at previous outbreaks in Europe. Six outbreaks with local spread have been reported in Europe before the current outbreak, with the first outbreak occurring in 2006. All of these outbreaks were in Italy, France or Spain. In four of these outbreaks, fewer than 20 cases of local transmission were reported; another outbreak saw over 200 suspected cases, and the largest outbreak to date saw nearly 800 confirmed and suspected cases. All of these outbreaks ended.

The fundamental reason why these outbreaks ended, and why the current outbreak will likely end soon, is that Ae. aegypti is absent in nearly all of Europe, and while _Ae. albopictus _is established in much of southern Europe, _Ae. albopictus _adults generally die off in the fall in Europe. When the adult mosquitoes die, transmission stops, and outbreaks end.

(Sadly The Motte doesn't allow for images, so just giving the source) (Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/aedes-albopictus-current-known-distribution-june-2025 )

(Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/aedes-aegypti-current-known-distribution-june-2025 )

Currently, chikungunya case clusters are active in northern Italy (Bologna, Verona and Modena provinces), one unspecified province in Italy, and in over 20 departments throughout southern, western and northeastern France. Ae. albopictus adults are likely to die off in all of these regions over the coming weeks to months, as temperatures become inhospitably cold. And when the adult mosquitoes die, chikungunya will stop spreading in Europe.

Spatial distribution of locally acquired chikungunya virus disease cases in 2025 through 27 August 2025:

(Source: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/chikungunya-virus-disease/surveillance-and-updates/seasonal-surveillance )

And here is this same map as of the 2nd of October; it has spread a bit further:

Some Ae. albopictus populations in Europe are starting to become adapted to the cold, including some populations in Rome, Italy and the Region of Murcia, Spain. So it’s not impossible that some transmission could continue in southern France or perhaps in new, more southern areas of Europe.

Forecasters think there’s an x% chance (range, y% to z%) that the current outbreak in Europe will end this fall rather than continue through winter and into 2026.

In the United States?

Last week, authorities reported on a local case in New York, i.e., not associated with travel. The CDC page on Chikungunya in the US doesn’t yet confirm it, but it hopefully will be a good page to watch for an increasing number of cases—although recent cuts from the Trump administration might have left the CDC somewhat under-resourced.

The big picture: shifting climate patterns will change the distribution of diseases

At Sentinel, we have been tracking potentially worrisome diseases in our weekly brief over the last year. In general, we are seeing many diseases, particularly those originally tropical, expand and shift their geographic ranges as a result of climate change. Europe becoming more hospitable to mosquitoes leading to the spread of chikungunya is just one example. In the US, we saw the spread of the West Nile Virus, also a mosquito-borne disease.

Beyond mosquito-borne diseases, Spain and Greece faced alerts due to rising cases of Crimean Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF), spread by ticks. In the US, cases of alpha-gal syndrome exploded, carried by ticks described as “a cross between a lentil and a velociraptor”. In general, we are seeing many diseases expand and shift their geographic ranges as a result of climate change.

Looking to the longer term, it looks very likely that chikungunya transmission will eventually occur year-round, as warmer conditions in Europe expected with climate change will likely allow Ae. albopictus adults to survive all year. Chikungunya will likely become established in Europe, as it is on other continents.

A big unknown is the impact of the changing Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which normally warms Europe but which could slow down or collapse. If it does so, Europe would become colder, stopping the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

Overall, Chikungunya in particular doesn’t seem like a COVID-level risk, but the shifting pattern of diseases as a whole seems [statement of severity]

Some possible forecasting questions my team might forecast on:

Forecasters think there’s an x% chance (range, y% to z%) that the current outbreak in Europe will end this fall rather than continue through winter and into 2026.
Chikungunya numbers in Europe will exceed X next year
Chikungunya will exceed 10 cases in the US next year?
A newly expanded tropical disease will kill over 1M people in any one year in any of the next ten?
What other operationalizations for the longer term thing?

I might also add a statement that my team may or may not trade on the above, in the style of Hindenburg research, because I think it's cool. But the play, if any, probably involves buying the stocks of the vaccine makers next year once it has faded from salience and before it fades into view again in Europe's/the US's summer.

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NunoSempere 1yr ago

The big item this week seems like the Trump tariffs. Smoot-Hawley tariffs contributed to the start of ww2 and the deaths of tens of millions of people, says a friend. An argument in favor is that the numbers aren't meant to be taken literally not seriously, and are just there to force a negotiation. The initial formula seems pretty straightforwardly wrong (it disincentivizes e.g., Vietnam sweatshops from producing clothes for cheap). I liked this piece from Varoufakis defending what he views as Trump's plan. I'd particularly welcome steelmen and defenses of the tariffs.

Besides that, a rough list of items I've caught, particularly focused on things that could pose large risks (if you want a cleaner version of this you can check here in a couple of days):

Cholera epidemic claims over 300 lives, spread to 16 out of the country's 21 provinces.

Chinese scientific research/spy ship spotted off coast of South Australia

China Eastern Theater Command Releases Military Operation Themed Poster "Closing In"

Mali, Burkina, Niger foreign ministers due in Moscow for talks

At least 322 children killed and 609 injured in Gaza following breakdown of ceasefire: UNICEF

Hamas agrees to release five hostages in renewed ceasefire, Israel counters

Iran threatens to develop nuke weapons should U.S. attack

An adviser to Iran's supreme leader warned on Monday that if the United States or Israel were to attack Iran under the pretext of nuclear concerns, the country would be compelled to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, according to the official news agency IRNA.

Israel issues wide-ranging evacuation order for southern Gaza

UN Agency Closes Its Remaining Gaza Bakeries Amid Israel's Ongoing Aid Blockade

ARMED Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner has directed the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) to prepare for the possible invasion of Taiwan.

China 'closes in' on Taiwan with large-scale military drills

China Launches Large-Scale Military Drills Around Taiwan

Chinese forces encircle Taiwan on three sides during drills - World

Military chief says Philippines 'inevitably' involved if Taiwan invaded

Google deepmind AI strategy

China large-scale drills

Some incredibly dumb tariff maths

Another Chinese military poster

https://imgmil.gmw.cn/attachement/png/site2/20250402/f44d305ea6dd2956e78044.png

Military drills response to separatism, mainland official says

All bakeries supported by World Food Program in Gaza closed due to lack of flour, fuel

Israel hails Hungary's decision to exit International Criminal Court

Israel's Netanyahu says army to establish new security corridor in Gaza

The Eastern Theater Command has organized forces from the army, navy, air force, and other branches to conduct joint exercises around Taiwan Island.

US opposes China's military exercises around Taiwan, warns against 'destabilizing behavior'. Back in the day they would have done a freedom of navigation exercise

Sudan's RSF confirms retreat from Khartoum, eyes 'stronger' return

A NYT investigations reveals that at times, the US was running the back office of the war for Ukraine. It also tells a story of envious Ukranian generals leading to incompetent counteroffensives. (summary here)

a New York Times investigation |reveals| that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.

One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback to learn how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in Ukrainian operations. “They are part of the kill chain now,” he said.

Putin plans to conscript 160,000 more Russians for war with Ukraine

British Columbia man, Mohammad Jawaid Aziz, accused in conspiracy to obtain US technology for Pakistan's nuclear weapon's program

Construction of private bunkers in Spain rises 200% as fears of war in Europe grow

Germany stationing troops in Lithuania, and considering conscription

Two-year-old girl from Andhra Pradesh, India, has died after contracting H5N1 bird flu

Mpox activity in Africa on pace to pass 2024 total. Inconsistent with reporting from the WHO last week about cases waning

I generally don't like to report on announcements, but: OpenAI plans to release open-weight language model in coming months

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NunoSempere 7mo ago

Some headlines from this week:

Geopolitics

United States

Ex-Sailor Sentenced to 12 Years in Terror Plot Targeting Naval Station Great Lakes

The Rest of the Americas

Gangs kill over 40 in Haiti's Arcahaïe as local authorities call for reinforcements

Europe

Denmark to buy $9B air defense systems as tensions with Russia grow

Middle East

"A year after Israel's pager attacks in Lebanon, survivors rebuild". Just a really funny headline

Iran

Israel strikes Yemen's Hodeidah Port twelve times after Houthi attack on Israeli airport, claiming it was used by the Houthis for weapons transfers from Iran.

A former U.S. Navy sailor, Xuanyu Harry Pang, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack at Naval Station Great Lakes and attempting to assist the Iranian government in smuggling radioactive materials into the U.S. for a dirty bomb. Pang, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to destroy national defense premises, conducted surveillance on the base and sought maximum destructive locations in Chicago. The judge highlighted the profound betrayal by a service member against his fellow sailors, noting the potential catastrophic consequences of Pang's plans.

Gaza

Gaza hit by telecoms blackout as Israeli tanks and infantry advance

Israeli finance minister describes plans to turn Gaza into a 'real estate bonanza' as bombs hammer the enclave

More than 10% of Gaza’s population has been killed or injured, former Israeli military chief says

Yemen

Asia

SoftBank openai deal delayed

18 members of the Pakistani security forces were killed this week. Pakistan suspects Afghanistan-backed terrorists.

North Korea's Kim Jong Un oversees drone test, and approved a plan to further strengthen unmanned aerial vehicle

Kim Jong Un declares AI military drone development a ‘top priority’

Chinese Coast Guard: "Philippine boat deliberately collides with Chinese coast guard vessel despite warnings, responsibility for the collision lies entirely with the Philippines."

India/Pakistan

Pakistan hard hit this moonson

India's Modi calls for peace in Manipur, launches projects worth nearly $1 billion. Though the reception wasn't uniformly good though.

Africa

Sudan is currently experiencing the world's largest displacement crisis, with over 30.4 million people requiring assistance. The crisis has resulted in alarming rates of malnutrition

Libya: More Than 100 Sudanese Refugees Dead or Missing in Shipwrecks Off Libya

Sudan: Rebel drone strike kill dozens.

Biorisks

DR Congo begins vaccinating against new Ebola outbreak

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NunoSempere 10mo ago

Here are some topics I'm looking at this week; as a draft of the Sentinel minutes. Curious to get thoughts.

Geopolitics

Americas

Bill Gates warns about the lives lost because of US aid cuts, though he relies on a study on The Lancet

USAID programs now being run by State Department as agency ends operations

Mr. Abrego's Account of Torture at CECOT in El Salvador

Europe

Russian use of chemical weapons against Ukraine 'widespread', Dutch defence minister says

613 killed at Gaza aid distribution sites, near humanitarian covoys, says UN

North Korea to send 30,000 more troops to help Russia fight Ukraine

Over 210,000 Russians signed contracts for war in Ukraine in first half of 2025, Moscow says

Middle East

Iran

United States expands military base in Saudi Arabia

A military base has been established by the U.S. near the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, with construction beginning in early 2022. The base, known as the 'Jenkins Logistics Support Base,' has been quietly growing and is strategically located 30 kilometers from a significant Saudi port, suggesting preparations for a prolonged military conflict with Iran. Recent updates show substantial expansion since last year, including new buildings and enhanced security measures, alongside a continuous necessity for U.S. military supplies in response to escalating tensions in the region, such as Iran's attacks on military assets.

Iran Halts Cooperation with UN Nuclear Watchdog

US says its strikes degraded Iran's nuclear programme by one to two years

Iran president Pezeshkian reportedly orders to suspend cooperation with IAEA

US must rule out more strikes before talks can resume: Iran

US lawmakers seek to send B-2s, bunker busters to Israel if Iran takes nuclear path

Gaza

Gaza starvation killings: UN says deliberately shot hungry civilians

Gaza: Over 400 Palestinians killed around private aid hubs, UN rights office says

Hamas submits ‘positive response’ to ceasefire proposal in major step toward a deal

Donald Trump Says Israel Agrees to 60-Day Gaza Ceasefire

Yemen

Asia

Satellite evidence points to heightened operations at N. Korean nuclear site

North Korea's uranium refinery in Pyongsan has shown increased activity amidst ongoing efforts to strengthen its nuclear arsenal. Utilizing satellite imagery and thermal infrared analysis, recent findings indicate that operations at the facility have intensified, particularly at night, with the facility's waste management practices also experiencing notable changes. The site consists of three main zones: a uranium mine, a refining factory, and a settling pond for wastewater, all of which are reportedly well-fortified against potential air strikes, though concerns over their effectiveness persist.

Analysis reveals that the Pyongsan facility is the only operational uranium refinery in North Korea following the reported closure of another site in Pakchon. An uptick in wastewater release into the settling pond has been detected, raising environmental concerns ahead of the rainy season. Additionally, alarming reports of a mysterious illness affecting local workers and residents have prompted calls for a thorough investigation into the health impacts and environmental conditions surrounding the refinery.

India/Pakistan

Bangladesh tribunal hands 6-month jail term in first verdict against Hasina

Africa

Looming funding shortfall could reverse global progress against AIDS, warns UNAIDS chief

200 Christians killed in Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen

Suspected Boko Haram insurgents step up attacks in Nigeria

Congo, M23 rebels plan return to Qatar talks amid Trump pressure

Bio

Tech and AI

Global Economy

Early Fed chair nomination could rattle markets - Reuters

World Bank warns that 39 fragile states are falling further behind as conflicts grow, get deadlier

Misc

Reversal in ocean circulation

Major reversal in ocean circulation detected in the Southern Ocean

Two people perish in Spain's heatwave

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NunoSempere 3yr ago

Here are some drafts I have, though not particularly CW.

Acetylcysteine as the first treatment for a cold/mucus in Spain but not in Britain
Ze Dreadful German In Ze Writings of Curtis Yarvin. I would respect the guy if he was a gentleman and a scholar, actually knew German and used it to better capture the Zeitgeist and express his Weltanschauung, but instead we get a Blitzkrieg of stilted phrases which annoy me.
Comparison of The Driver (1978), Driver (2011), Baby Driver (2017). Same plot, different decades.
Base rates of success dating docs.
Tetlock forecasting approach vs Subjective Bayesianism
My ideal prediction market playbook
Optimize hard or GTFO
A retelling of El Mio Cid, an Spanish epic poem where a recurring theme is that the hero would be a good and loyal knight if only he had a good king as lord.
A lot of shit on OpenPhilanthropy, FTX and EA.
Utilitarianism for Democrats
Utilitarianism for Republicans
Why are we not better, harder, faster, stronger
Updating in the face of anthropic effects is possible
Betting and consent
How to host an autarkic/uncensorable site.
Tetlock vs subjective bayesianism
Something on the limits of Bayesianism
I want to nerd out a bit on infrabayesianism / what one should do if one expects that one's hypothesis may not be able to represent future events.
Bounties, things I would pay for
My consulting rates
Criticism as a demand side problem
My preferred deviations from common English
Some observations on the speed of qalia
People's choices determine a pseudo ordering over people's desirability

This is more than what I would have though, typing this out.

I've been posting a stream of similar ideas on my blog (https://nunosempere.com/blog/), with an eye to those that I think could be more valuable. But if this community is particularly interested in any of these, I'll probably be happy to re-prioritize.

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NunoSempere 2mo ago

Ok, this is a great point that was totally ommitted in my philosophy education. Do you have a best guess as to the esoteric content of Aristotle's philosophy?

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NunoSempere 9mo ago

Relatively quiet week this time:

Anthropic has a $200M contract with the US DoD , as have a few other companies

A good roundup of rumours about Xi

OpenAI agent

Israel bombs Syria

Africa records over 4,200 cholera, mpox deaths in 2025

Gunmen Kill 1,111 Nigerians, Abduct 276 in June

Syrian troops accused of executing civilians in Druze amid Israeli strikes

IDF Ordered To Strike Syrian Regime Forces Invading Druze-majority Suweida

Syria Druze reach ceasefire with central gov, though a previous one fell. Israel also fired on the central gov in Damascus

They have been negotiating with the Islamist-led authorities in Damascus since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in an attempt to achieve autonomy but have yet to reach an agreement that defines their relationship with the new Syrian state. ...reports The Guardian. Btw, the Spanish federal system, where the central government defines foreign policy, and some formerly rebellious provinces (the Basque country) don't pay federal taxes and have special priviledges (fueros) could be a good model here.

Almost 300 killed in wave of violence in Sudan's North Kordofan

Israeli-linked ringleaders and elements arrested in southwestern Iran, says Iran's news agency

Israel launches airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon's Bekaa valley

US demands to know what allies would do in event of war over Taiwan

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