This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. In this week’s news:
1: Some corrections from Thursday’s links post: the SPLC poll on feminism must be flawed somehow, see here. The Kiev city council probably did not un-found Moscow, see here. And although I condemned Hanania’s admission that he sometimes endorsed putting his personal aesthetics above objective utility, commenters brought up situations that don’t seem so clear-cut: for example, would you destroy a beautiful rainforest so farmers could raise pigs there? (assume the farmers get some money from it, which raises their utility, and that the rainforest doesn’t get enough tourists or novel-pharmaceutical-product hunters to be as valuable as the pig money).
2: Isaak Freeman asks me to signal-boost the Future Forum, from August 4-7 in San Francisco, featuring speakers including Sam Altman, Anders Sandberg, Patrick Collison, and Tyler Cowen. They are bringing together 250 people from EA, Silicon Valley, and related communities to “arm the world's brightest minds with the tools they need to tackle global problems” and to potentially offer funding and mentoring. Apply at the link above.