SMI2LE, lab-grown salmon, you should be a god-emperor
"Following his release from prison in 1976, counterculture guru Timothy Leary began to espouse a new plan for experimentation if not human enhancement. SMI2LE was Leary’s moniker for 'space migration, intelligence increase, and life extension.'"
Good thread on the events leading up to Albert Hofmann's synthesis of LSD, includes much I didn't know.
Why fundraising is a spiritual practice by the most excellent Noah Maier.
nytimes: How psychedelic research got high on its own supply. I haven't done a thorough dive on this but my impression is that this sort of coverage is overstating the issues with e.g. the MDMA for PTSD trials – I expect the core result of those studies will hold up over time. Definitely a sign of the vibe shift though.
Fake AI-generated quotes in the wild: "It was early Wednesday morning that Lionsgate debuted its second trailer for Megalopolis, featuring a slew of past “criticisms” of Coppola’s now-iconic works by such famed critics as The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael and Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris. In reference to The Godfather, for example, Kael was quoted as calling the film “diminished by its artsiness,” with Sarris referring to it as a “sloppy self-indulgent movie.”"
Epoch AI report: Can AI scaling continue through 2030? tl;dr – yes.
"U.S. AI Safety Institute signs agreements regarding AI safety research, testing and evaluation with Anthropic and OpenAI"
Bloomberg profile of how AI is impacting call centers in the Philippines. What is starting to happen there now could be happening here soon.
The Economist: Is Xi Jinping an AI doomer? "Most prominent among [the Chinese 'doomers'] is Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, the only Chinese person to have won the Turing award for advances in computer science. In July Mr. Yao said AI poses a greater existential risk to humans than nuclear or biological weapons."
The Atlantic: Young men have invented a new way to defeat themselves
Musa al-Gharbi's telling of his life story is wonderful. Might we all have the courage to be so straightforward in public!
Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Interview with Estas Tonne, modern troubadour: "I did not abandon the guitar; I just had no idea what to do with the guitar at that time. I had to answer to the life’s call to explore it in a very different way and this was important. So I wouldn’t say that I got into meditation or spiritual practices. I was doing quite the opposite, living the life of destroying myself daily and learning how to survive daily. This side of life was essential for balancing life later with meditation and all kinds of spiritual practices."
When David Chapman writes about Scott Alexander and Nietzsche, we pay attention: You should be a god-emperor
The Atlantic profile on Soryu and MAPLE from last year.
Support the first ever transcranial focused ultrasound meditation retreat (Shinzen & co at the University of Arizona).
Lab-grown salmon hitting the market. I haven't tried it yet; I am intrigued.
Alex Zhu returns to LessWrong: How I started believing religion might actually matter for rationality and moral philosophy
nytimes profile on Próspera (the charter city off the coast of Honduras).
Ben Hoffman on the governance of Roman Republic. I can't tell if he's more sympathetic to the Republican "mutual defense pact" model or the later Imperial institutionalization of the military...