Episodes

  • "Who Got Breasts First and How We Got Them" by rba

    "Who Got Breasts First and How We Got Them" by rba
    Jun 30 2026
    It really is Sydney Sweeney's world, and we’re all just living in it.

    Human female breasts are an evolutionary mystery along several dimensions. First, breast permanence is unique to humans. All other mammals develop breast prominence during pregnancy or nursing, and the mammary tissue recedes after weaning. This process is called “involution”. In contrast, humans develop breast tissue at puberty before first pregnancies and maintain it permanently after last pregnancies.

    Second, breasts are costly, both metabolically and potentially from a fitness perspective. Metabolically, because they are fat deposits requiring calories and fitness-wise, because the tissue easily lends itself to malignancy. Breast cancer is apparently rare in captive apes and is overwhelmingly a human disease, often striking women young enough to have children, and so subject to evolutionary selection.

    Background

    In Descent of Man, Darwin catalogs human secondary sexual characteristics, but he doesn’t seem to have noted human breast permanence as an issue of interest. Cant, 1981 seems to have been the first to speculate about this systematically and believed breast prominence and permanence might have evolved as a nutritional signal of health to mates indicating potential for maternal investment, a la Robert Trivers. Since then, quite a range of [...]

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    Outline:

    (01:05) Background

    [... 12 more sections]

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    First published:
    May 11th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XTHa5C6SgGKYopH7o/who-got-breasts-first-and-how-we-got-them

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    21 mins
  • "The worthlessness of vitamin D is mildly exaggerated" by dynomight

    "The worthlessness of vitamin D is mildly exaggerated" by dynomight
    Jun 30 2026
    For a while there, many people thought vitamin D was magical—that it could improve bones, the heart, infections, cancer, heart disease, longevity, even mental health. But among people I respect, opinion is now overwhelmingly that taking vitamin D does nothing unless you're severely deficient. The central argument is that while vitamin D levels are correlated with ~all positive health outcomes, when you actually test vitamin D supplements against placebo in randomized trials, nothing ever happens.

    That's what I used to think, too. But I've come to think the skeptics have over-corrected. Yes, randomized trials have shown the magical correlations are not causal. But if you start with non-insane expectations, the trials look like weak but positive evidence. And if you consider what we know about biology and evolution, I think the balance of evidence tips pretty clearly in the direction that people with low-ish levels would be wise to supplement.

    Am I certain that vitamin D is beneficial for people with low-ish levels? Absolutely not! But I claim that's the best bet given the limits of our knowledge.

    The classical view: Boring bone vitamin

    Most vitamins are "ingredients" that the body uses to do stuff. Vitamin D is more [...]

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    Outline:

    (01:19) The classical view: Boring bone vitamin

    [... 14 more sections]

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    First published:
    June 23rd, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sF5gAxnmifQe2TBNt/the-worthlessness-of-vitamin-d-is-mildly-exaggerated

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    36 mins
  • "What is up with e/acc?" by KatjaGrace

    "What is up with e/acc?" by KatjaGrace
    Jun 27 2026
    I was chatting with someone tonight about a planned documentary; they had interviewed various people in AI safety, and we got to discussing who they should talk to from an e/acc (effective accelerationist) perspective. I also watched The AI Doc recently, and they also dedicated a serious chunk of it to ‘optimists’ with e/acc founder ‘Beff Jezos’ perhaps given the most screen time. Here and elsewhere, people seem to treat e/acc as a substantial contrary-to-AI-safety cultural movement, worth engaging with.

    But is it? Are there even many e/accs? There seem to be very few notable ones. Beff Jezos is perhaps the most prominent, and aside from founding e/acc he seems to be not distinguishable on casual perusal from a normal crank (his company claims to be developing super-energy-efficient computing hardware based on probabilistic processes).

    The intellectual tenets of e/acc seem to be pretty unclear.

    The apparent counterarguments to AI risk raised in situations like the AI doc seem to be widely agreed on by everyone in AI Safety, so don’t explain the disagreement. For instance:

    • AI will be able to do lots of great things, such as cure diseases, make new materials and do all [...]

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    First published:
    June 24th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3hwrWDf7wiqASDzBz/what-is-up-with-e-acc

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    4 mins
  • "Existential AI safety needs an effective social movement. PauseAI is building it" by Maxime Fournes, Espedair Street

    "Existential AI safety needs an effective social movement. PauseAI is building it" by Maxime Fournes, Espedair Street
    Jun 27 2026
    Note: this post is about PauseAI, not PauseAI US, which is a distinct entity with a different leadership team and approach.

    This post was written by Matilda da Rui and Maxime Fournes, with significant contributions from Benjamin Schmidt (PauseAI Germany co-lead).

    Executive Summary

    The existential AI safety community needs to take building a civic and social movement seriously as a core intervention. We believe this is a high-value, badly neglected approach to reducing catastrophic/x-risks from AI because it may significantly enhance the likelihood of governance efforts succeeding at keeping humanity safe. As far as we can tell, only one organisation is building this infrastructure across continents: PauseAI. This post lays out our reasoning and our track record, and makes the case that funding this work is one of the highest value-for-money contributions available to anyone looking to reduce AI risk.

    Why don't we already have a pause or strong controls on frontier AI? Multiple advocacy groups are communicating clear and convincing arguments for AI existential risk, and policy experts are putting forward comprehensive proposals. We need more of this work, but this work alone will not be enough, because one link is missing: what policymakers hear doesn't align with [...]

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    Outline:

    (00:32) Executive Summary

    (06:16) Introduction

    (08:54) I. Our theory of change

    (08:58) Prologue

    (11:07) 1. The shape of the problem as we see it

    (14:27) 2. Necessary conditions for reaching a pause

    (17:24) II. Our role towards a global treaty and in the AI safety ecosystem

    (17:31) 1. Our niche within the ecosystem

    (21:35) 2. Policymakers need strong enough incentives to act

    (25:43) 3. The path to a treaty

    (31:36) 4. How we can grow fast without breaking

    (39:08) 5. Failure modes

    (40:10) III. Our path so far and where we're headed

    (40:40) 1. Bootstrap phase (2023-2025)

    (45:01) 2. New leadership, professionalisation and federation

    [... 6 more sections]

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    First published:
    June 26th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aoqhszdEWqcFWbnda/existential-ai-safety-needs-an-effective-social-movement

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • "Surprising facts about the slave trade" by Joseph Miller

    "Surprising facts about the slave trade" by Joseph Miller
    Jun 26 2026
    1. The obstacle to abolition was not the economic system, but an industry lobby.

    I had always imagined the British abolitionist movement to be a broad battle between an unstoppable moral imperative and an immovable economic incentive. But in practice it started as more of a knife fight between a cabal of moral pioneers and a special interest group representing industry merchants.

    The government and the political parties did not come in with any great agenda. MPs were mostly prizes in a furious contest between the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and a coalition of business interests:

    "The merchants and planters availed themselves [...] to wait upon members of parliament by deputation, in order to solicit their attendance in their favour, and to renew their injurious paragraphs in the public papers."[1]

    "The committee, for the abolition, when the work was finished, printed it at their own expense [...] sent it to every individual member of that House."

    However, the public was heavily activated in favor of the abolition, which forced the issue to parliamentary attention.

    "The committee also in this interval brought out their famous print of the plan and section [...]

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    Outline:

    (00:10) 1. The obstacle to abolition was not the economic system, but an industry lobby.

    (02:40) 2. The slave trade was truly terrible for sailors.

    (04:25) 3. The slave trade made Africa scary and violent.

    (05:26) 4. The main argument against abolition was that if the British didn't do it, other countries would.

    (06:24) 5. The early abolitionists explicitly distanced themselves from emancipation.

    (07:11) 6. The slave trade may actually have been bad for the economy (at least after some date).

    (08:29) 7. The 1780s are not so different from today

    (09:39) 8. Thomas Clarkson is a hero for the ages

    The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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    First published:
    June 26th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yDZcsojmRXo5qKNBm/surprising-facts-about-the-slave-trade

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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    13 mins
  • "AI catastrophe: more like a genocide than a thought experiment" by KatjaGrace

    "AI catastrophe: more like a genocide than a thought experiment" by KatjaGrace
    Jun 26 2026
    A notable fraction of people respond to hearing about existential risk from AI by saying they don’t really care if everyone dies. I think the idea is often along the lines of ‘well if we are all dead, then there's nobody to be unhappy about it’.

    I’m personally skeptical that this is really the main thing going on, since it seems unlikely that many people are really mostly concerned for their own non-death out of selfless regard for the feelings of others. I’m also skeptical that this would be their view on a bunch more consideration.

    So to help with the consideration—

    My guess is that an important thing going on here is that the ‘everyone dying at once’ image seems kind of like a thought experiment—abstract, hypothetical, neat, not very sinister. Also, you literally can never see it, so it feels pretty surreal.

    But it is interesting that we even have this assumption that everyone will die together.

    It's true that in some prominent AI catastrophe stories, a single AI system suddenly emerges fantastically more powerful than anyone else and builds technology to quickly kill everyone, perhaps before they notice.

    But this doesn’t seem like the bulk of [...]

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    First published:
    June 24th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/23HybCsJ7KYW4v7tP/ai-catastrophe-more-like-a-genocide-than-a-thought

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    2 mins
  • "AI pause: the case for ASAP" by KatjaGrace

    "AI pause: the case for ASAP" by KatjaGrace
    Jun 25 2026
    I often hear people say they think we should pause AI at some point, but not yet. Their basis for this seems to be some combination of:

    • If we pause at the last possible moment, then we will have the most advanced AI possible during the pause, which will be helpful for doing AI safety research during the pause

    • Implicitly, there is some quantity of ‘pausing credit’, that will buy us a few months of pause say, and if we use them now, we won’t have them to use later, when it is important

    • If we pause, and then AI doesn’t seem to be at dire risk of destroying the world, maybe the public will backlash against this and it will be harder to do any kind of AI safety (especially if it has major economic consequences)

    • The models aren’t dangerous yet

    This all sounds very questionable to me. I suggest instead that the following are at least as likely to be true:

    • We can’t pause on a dime at the precise second that ‘we’ decide it is important to—pulling the breaks will take a while, during which time we will continue [...]

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    First published:
    June 24th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mEhS4wYTy9JXEpe9p/ai-pause-the-case-for-asap

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    2 mins
  • "The Invisible Side of AI Governance" by Charbel-Raphaël

    "The Invisible Side of AI Governance" by Charbel-Raphaël
    Jun 23 2026
    Tldr: Most strategic writing on AI governance on LessWrong describes the outsider game, which is most often visible: press, statements, open letters. Here I want to describe the other, invisible half: the insider work within ministerial cabinets and international fora, and the work of people within national and international institutions. Here are a few claims that I defend in the post:

    1. A huge part of the work that mattered in AI governance has been invisible
    2. There are many types of games in AI governance, which differ in how visible they are. Some of the most impactful work is highly invisible
    3. Some of the most impactful work is in the executive branch and complements the legislative branch. This also explains some of my hesitations about replicating ControlAI in France.
    4. The community is probably overinvesting in intellectual production. There is a bias against invisible types of work. In particular, public work is not necessarily visible to whom it matters.
    5. A few criticisms of both strategies
    I think the AI Safety Community is under-indexing on the invisible part as a result, which might mean we miss large avenues for impact. Some of the strongest questions/objections of this type of invisible policy [...]

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    Outline:

    (02:40) A huge part of the work that mattered in AI governance has been invisible

    (05:44) There are many types of games in AI governance.

    (07:36) 3. types of meetings: the bazooka, the useful assistant, and the advisor

    (10:46) Some of the most impactful work is within the executive branch

    (12:53) People ask me regularly whether CeSIA should replicate what ControlAI does with parliamentarians?

    (15:27) The community is probably overinvesting in intellectual production

    (20:31) Limits of Outsider work

    (22:17) Limit of Insider work

    (23:47) An aside on one particular limit: the Defense-in-Depth Paradigm of present AI governance

    (26:21) Closing & call for action

    The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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    First published:
    June 20th, 2026

    Source:
    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AWKkDLDnShemNCSzZ/the-invisible-side-of-ai-governance

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    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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    28 mins