I never enjoyed compiling the Open Threads; always felt like a chore, goings to Twitter and my notes, and then just transcribing them. So from now on I will be just be posting them as videos, probably weekly or at least bimonthly. I enjoyed this format a lot more since I don’t so much transcribe the takes but essentially get to redo them in a new medium.
Here’s some of the things I talk about:
My upcoming longread on life in the near-AGI age. I have stated since early 2023 that my timelines are short and chance of some prolonged asymptote has since collapsed.
Some observations on coming back to San Francisco (last here in 2016).
How Trumpism: Can’t Get Fooled Again has been vindicated (both Hanania and Cofnas throwing in the towel), including some comments on how this has collapsed rightoid prospects abroad (e.g. Canada, Germany). Although I note that politics/culture war interests me very little these days that is where you get the clicks so I’ll write a longread about that as well this month.
I am fascinated by Rwanda vs. Congo.
FWIW I remain bullish on crypto. But I did not foresee that Trump would choose to wreck the world economy with tariffs. In this environment making long-term forecasts is a fool’s errand. He might order an SMO into Ottawa tomorrow for all we know.
Additionally, there’s some other administrative changes to this blog going forward.
I decided to start making the chapters of my upcoming book Nooceleration arguing the case for human intelligence enhancement progressively available here (excerpts for free subscribers; the full thing for paying ones). I am unhappy with the progress I have been making, so this doubles as an incentive for me to write regular updates as opposed to whenever I like it. The perfect being the enemy of the good applies is an even greater truism in the near-AGI age.
I continue taking AMAs with questions from paying subscribers being privileged.
I also decided to roll up Cryptograd. Running a crypto/network states-specific newsletter also feels like too much of a chore. I will obviously still comment on the decentralization movement and network states and the like, but I will do so within the context of the Open Threads.
The longread on RationalWiki. Discuss it, ignore it, whatever. I am glad to be finally done with it and don’t intend to comment further.
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