LessWrong writer. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/ https://twitter.com/TheZvi (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz: On (Not) Feeling the AGI. Ben Thompson interviewed Sam Altman recently about building a consumer tech company, and about the history of OpenAI. Mostly it is a retelling of the story we’ve heard before, and if anything Altman is very good about pushing back on Thompson when Thompson tries to turn OpenAI’s future into the next Facebook, complete with an advertising revenue model. It is such a strange perspective to witness. They do not feel the AGI, let alone the ASI. The downside risks of AI, let alone existential risks, are flat out not discussed, this is a world where that’s not even a problem for Future Earth (more)

Patrick McKenzie: Bet on it: Zvi Mowshowitz on professional gambling, trading, and AI futures. This week I interviewed Zvi Mowshowitz, who I Internet-met 30+ years ago in middle school then became acquainted with for real through his recent public intellectualism on covid-19. We talked about his interesting career path through Magic, professional gambling, and equities trading, which are very different but rhyme in important ways. (more)

aka betting

Magic: The Gathering (colloquially known as Magic or MTG) is a tabletop and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield.[1] Released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, Magic was the first trading card game and had approximately fifty million players as of February 2023.[2][3][4][5] Over twenty billion Magic cards were produced in the period from 2008 to 2016, during which time it grew in popularity.[6][7] As of the 2022 fiscal year, Magic generates over $1 billion in revenue annually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering

Free tool/course from Cedric Chin for XmR charts. https://xmrit.com/ (more)

writer of big high agency essay (more)

Grant Morrison on Pop Magic (magick). As a first exercise in magical consciousness spend five minutes looking at everything around you as if ALL OF IT was trying to tell you something very important. How did that lightbulb come to be here exactly ? Why does the murder victim in the newspaper have the same unusual surname as your father-in-law ? Why did the phone ring, just at that moment and what were you thinking ? What's that waterstain stain on the wall of the building opposite ? How does it make you feel ? Five minutes of focus during which everything is significant, everything is luminous and heavy with meaning, like the objects seen in dreams. (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz on More Dakka. Eliezer Yudkowsky's book Inadequate Eqilibria is excellent. I recommend reading it, if you haven't done so... My hope here is to offer both another concrete path to finding such opportunities, and additional justification of the central role of social control (as opposed to object-level concerns) in many modest actions and modesty arguments. (more)

Zvi Mowshowitz: Monthly Roundup #27: February 2025. I have been debating how to cover the non-AI aspects of the Trump administration, including the various machinations of DOGE. I felt it necessary to have an associated section this month, but I have attempted to keep such coverage to a minimum, and will continue to do so. There are too many other things going on, and plenty of others are covering the situation. (more)

More Dakka is the art of solving problems by unloading as many rounds of ammunition at them as possible. (more)

"Fake it 'til you make it" (also called "act as if") is a common catchphrase that means to imitate confidence so that as the confidence produces success, it will generate real confidence. The purpose is to avoid getting stuck in a Self-Fulfilling prophecy related to one's fear of not being confident... The phrase is similar to Aristotle's notion that acting virtuous (Virtue) will make one virtuous. The phrase was introduced into modern language in the late twentieth century... It is often recommended as a therapy technique for combating depression. In this case, the idea is to go through the routines of life as if one were enjoying them, despite the fact that initially it feels forced, and continue doing this until the happiness becomes real. This is an example of a Positive Feedback loop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_it_till_you_make_it (more)

see To Be Or To Do at (2012-02-24) Rao Rader Remarkable Life (more)

feeling grateful

A census tract, census area, census district or meshblock[1] is a geographic region defined for the purpose of taking a census.[2] Sometimes these coincide with the limits of cities, towns or other administrative areas[2] and several tracts commonly exist within a county. In unincorporated areas of the United States these are often arbitrary, except for coinciding with political lines. Census tracts represent the smallest territorial entity for which population data are available in many countries.[3] In the United States, census tracts are subdivided into block groups and census blocks... In the U.S., census tracts are "designed to be relatively homogeneous units with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions" and "average about 4,000 inhabitants". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Census_tract#United_States (more)

A ZIP Code (an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan[1]) is a system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service (USPS). The term ZIP was chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently and quickly[2] (zipping along) when senders use the code in the postal address... Because ZIP Codes are intended for efficient postal delivery, there are unusual cases where a ZIP Code crosses state boundaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code (more)

There has been the occasional gift-based economy. As opposed to our Exchange Economy or a centrally-controlled Command Hierarchy.(Eric Raymond compares them.) (more)

The Three-Body Problem (Chinese: 三体; lit. 'three body') is a 2008 novel by the Chinese hard science fiction author Liu Cixin. It is the first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.[1] The series portrays a fictional past, present, and future wherein Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system of three Sun-like stars orbiting one another, a representative example of the three-body problem in orbital mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)

Ben Hunt term, from the Three Body Problem

'Bad idea': AOC warns Schumer and other Dems poised to make a 'tremendous mistake'. Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) doubled down on urging Democrats to reject the House GOP's stopgap funding bill, calling it a "bad idea" and a "mistake" if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) votes for cloture. (more)