This sensible-sounding idea fails parents by putting them back into a collective action trap. Platforms often propose it because they know it won’t work.

Nov 08 5 min read Rob Henderson

Women Have Become More Likely to Marry Men With Less Education Than Themselves

Nov 06 5 min read Koenfucius

When there is no right answer

Most questions we encounter have a clear answer, even if it takes effort to find it. But some don’t, and we seem remarkably poor at handling those

Nov 04 5 min read Cass’s Substack

The Blue Tsunami

1 This is an academic substack, not a political substack, but what the heck.

Nov 04 5 min read Rob Henderson

Brave Men, Reproductive Effort, Motivation

Links and recommendations

Nov 03 5 min read Maria Konnikova

The art of political decision making

Jon Ralston on the midterms and how to make better decisions in the political arena

Nov 03 5 min read Conspicuous Cognition

Sand Gods, Foom, and p(doom) (with Séb Krier)

Why Séb Krier is very AGI-pilled but rejects many popular narratives about the AI revolution, from godlike superintelligence to explosive self-improvement.

Nov 01 5 min read Rob Henderson

Sometimes It Hurts to Ask

But you should probably do it anyway

Oct 31 5 min read Small Potatoes

Separating the art from the artist

Podcast with Robert Wright

Oct 30 5 min read Koenfucius

Aligned, but with whom?

We humans all want AIs to be ‘aligned’ with us. But what does alignment mean, and who is the ‘us’? I asked Claude himself* how he addresses this challenge

Oct 28 5 min read Rob Henderson

Cornell 7, Illicit Activities, Violence Interventions

Links and Recommendations

Oct 28 5 min read Experimental History

Fake it ‘til you make it (and then keep faking it)

links ‘n’ updates

Oct 28 5 min read Speak and Regret

Quiet Luxury for Academics

When I saw a fancy professor put an award he won in a desk drawer, I was surprised.

Oct 27 5 min read Cass’s Substack

Does the Constitution Forbid Racial Discrimination by the Federal Government?

The Unthinkability Doctrine

Oct 27 5 min read Optimally Irrational

What AI progress teaches us about human psychology

How the challenges of designing AI cast a new light on the human mind

Oct 26 5 min read Everything is Bullshit

Pseudobeliefs

If there’s a master key to everything I’ve written on this blog, it’s the prefix “pseudo.”

Oct 25 5 min read Rob Henderson

Poor People Lie Upward, Rich People Lie Downward

How wealth and social class are changing marriage and dating

Oct 24 5 min read Rob Henderson

A Guilty Person’s Idea of How an Innocent Person Would Behave

My review of “You Can See Everything”

Oct 23 5 min read Maria Konnikova

On cyber-security and cyber-stupidity

Vibe coding the way toward disaster

Oct 23 5 min read Koenfucius

The greater of two (or more) evils

Identifying the best option is not always easy, but in politics we are increasingly faced with a much harder task: picking the lesser of two (or more) evils. Is that the wrong way to look at it?

Oct 21 5 min read Rob Henderson

Bad Company, Socialism, Jealousy

Links and recommendations