Best LessWrong Podcasts (2025)

1
“EU explained in 10 minutes” by Martin Sustrik 16:47

Play Pause

1h ago16:47

16:47

If you want to understand a country, you should pick a similar country that you are already familiar with, research the differences between the two and there you go, you are now an expert. But this approach doesn’t quite work for the European Union. You might start, for instance, by comparing it to the United States, assuming that EU member countri…

1
Bits and bricks: Oliver Habryka on LessWrong, LightHaven, and community infrastructure 1:14:44

16d ago1:14:44

1:14:44

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Oliver Habryka, who runs Lightcone Infrastructure—the organization behind both the LessWrong forum and the Lighthaven conference venue in Berkeley. They explore how LessWrong became one of the most intellectually consequential forums on the internet, the surprising challenges of running a hotel with fractal g…

1
“Cheap Labour Everywhere” by Morpheus 3:38

3h ago3:38

3:38

I recently visited my girlfriend's parents in India. Here is what that experience taught me: Yudkowsky has this facebook post where he makes some inferences about the economy after noticing two taxis stayed in the same place while he got his groceries. I had a few similar experiences while I was in India, though sadly I don't remember them in enoug…

1
[Linkpost] “Consider donating to AI safety champion Scott Wiener” by Eric Neyman 2:35

7h ago2:35

2:35

This is a link post. Written in my personal capacity. Thanks to many people for conversations and comments. Written in less than 24 hours; sorry for any sloppiness. It's an uncanny, weird coincidence that the two biggest legislative champions for AI safety in the entire country announced their bids for Congress just two days apart. But here we are.…

1
“Which side of the AI safety community are you in?” by Max Tegmark 4:18

36m ago4:18

4:18

In recent years, I’ve found that people who self-identify as members of the AI safety community have increasingly split into two camps: Camp A) "Race to superintelligence safely”: People in this group typically argue that "superintelligence is inevitable because of X”, and it's therefore better that their in-group (their company or country) build i…

1
“Doomers were right” by Algon 4:35

1h ago4:35

4:35

There's an argument I sometimes hear against existential risks, or any other putative change that some are worried about, that goes something like this: 'We've seen time after time that some people will be afraid of any change. They'll say things like "TV will destroy people's ability to read", "coffee shops will destroy the social order","machines…

1
Talking to the Bank of England about systemic risk and systems engineering 1:31:37

2d ago1:31:37

1:31:37

Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) shares his remarks to the Bank of England on critical vulnerabilities in financial infrastructure. Drawing from the July 2024 CrowdStrike outage which brought down teller systems at major US banks, Patrick discusses how regulatory guidance inadvertently created dangerous software monocultures. He also examines the stable…

1
“Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems” by Algon 3:21

1d ago3:21

3:21

People don't explore enough. They rely on cached thoughts and actions to get through their day. Unfortunately, this doesn't lead to them making progress on their problems. The solution is simple. Just do one new thing a day to solve one of your problems. Intellectually, I've always known that annoying, persistent problems often require just 5 secon…

1
“Humanity Learned Almost Nothing From COVID-19” by niplav 8:45

2d ago8:45

8:45

Summary: Looking over humanity's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, almostsix years later, reveals that we've forgotten to fulfill our intent atpreparing for the next pandemic. I rant. content warning: A single carefully placed slur. If we want to create a world free of pandemics and other biologicalcatastrophes, the time to act is now. —US White H…

1
“Consider donating to Alex Bores, author of the RAISE Act” by Eric Neyman 50:28

2d ago50:28

50:28

Written by Eric Neyman, in my personal capacity. The views expressed here are my own. Thanks to Zach Stein-Perlman, Jesse Richardson, and many others for comments. Over the last several years, I’ve written a bunch of posts about politics and political donations. In this post, I’ll tell you about one of the best donation opportunities that I’ve ever…

1
“Meditation is dangerous” by Algon 7:26

4d ago7:26

7:26

Here's a story I've heard a couple of times. A youngish person is looking for some solutions to their depression, chronic pain, ennui or some other cognitive flaw. They're open to new experiences and see a meditator gushing about how amazing meditation is for joy, removing suffering, clearing one's mind, improving focus etc. They invite the young p…

1
“That Mad Olympiad” by Tomás B. 26:41

4d ago26:41

26:41

"I heard Chen started distilling the day after he was born. He's only four years old, if you can believe it. He's written 18 novels. His first words were, "I'm so here for it!" Adrian said. He's my little brother. Mom was busy in her world model. She says her character is like a "villainess" or something - I kinda worry it's a sex thing. It's for s…

1
“The ‘Length’ of ‘Horizons’” by Adam Scholl 14:15

6d ago14:15

14:15

Current AI models are strange. They can speak—often coherently, sometimes even eloquently—which is wild. They can predict the structure of proteins, beat the best humans at many games, recall more facts in most domains than human experts; yet they also struggle to perform simple tasks, like using computer cursors, maintaining basic logical consiste…

1
Narrative, mastery, and character bleed in games, with Ricki Heicklen 1:31:19

9d ago1:31:19

1:31:19

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined again by Ricki Heicklen to discuss Metagame 2025, a conference where 250 attendees were divided into Purple and Orange teams competing for territories across campus. Patrick built a complete roguelike RPG in 25 days using LLMs, discovering that providing minimal world-building context transformed generic fantasy…

1
248 – Seeking Alpha, with Jay 1:43:12

8d ago1:43:12

1:43:12

Jay talks with us about finding Alpha – returns above the base rate – in every day life (and what this means). LINKS Optimize Everything, Jay’s substack Jay on Twitter Arbor Trading Bootcamp Kelsey’s argument that We Need To Be Able To Sue AI Companies 00:00:05 – Alpha with Jay 01:28:53 – Guild of the Rose 01:31:00 – Miscellanea 01:40:58 – Thank th…

1
“Don’t Mock Yourself” by Algon 4:10

8d ago4:10

4:10

About half a year ago, I decided to try stop insulting myself for two weeks. No more self-deprecating humour, calling myself a fool, or thinking I'm pathetic. Why? Because it felt vaguely corrosive. Let me tell you how it went. Spoiler: it went well. The first thing I noticed was how often I caught myself about to insult myself. It happened like mu…

1
“If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, a semi-outsider review” by dvd 26:01

9d ago26:01

26:01

About me and this review: I don’t identify as a member of the rationalist community, and I haven’t thought much about AI risk. I read AstralCodexTen and used to read Zvi Mowshowitz before he switched his blog to covering AI. Thus, I’ve long had a peripheral familiarity with LessWrong. I picked up IABIED in response to Scott Alexander's review, and …

1
“The Most Common Bad Argument In These Parts” by J Bostock 8:11

13d ago8:11

8:11

I've noticed an antipattern. It's definitely on the dark pareto-frontier of "bad argument" and "I see it all the time amongst smart people". I'm confident it's the worst, common argument I see amongst rationalists and EAs. I don't normally crosspost to the EA forum, but I'm doing it now. I call it Exhaustive Free Association. Exhaustive Free Associ…

1
“Towards a Typology of Strange LLM Chains-of-Thought” by 1a3orn 17:34

12d ago17:34

17:34

Intro LLMs being trained with RLVR (Reinforcement Learning from Verifiable Rewards) start off with a 'chain-of-thought' (CoT) in whatever language the LLM was originally trained on. But after a long period of training, the CoT sometimes starts to look very weird; to resemble no human language; or even to grow completely unintelligible. Why might th…

1
“I take antidepressants. You’re welcome” by Elizabeth 6:09

15d ago6:09

6:09

It's amazing how much smarter everyone else gets when I take antidepressants. It makes sense that the drugs work on other people, because there's nothing in me to fix. I am a perfect and wise arbiter of not only my own behavior but everyone else's, which is a heavy burden because some of ya’ll are terrible at life. You date the wrong people. You ta…

1
“Inoculation prompting: Instructing models to misbehave at train-time can improve run-time behavior” by Sam Marks 4:06

15d ago4:06

4:06

This is a link post for two papers that came out today: Inoculation Prompting: Eliciting traits from LLMs during training can suppress them at test-time (Tan et al.) Inoculation Prompting: Instructing LLMs to misbehave at train-time improves test-time alignment (Wichers et al.) These papers both study the following idea[1]: preventing a model from …

1
“Hospitalization: A Review” by Logan Riggs 18:52

15d ago18:52

18:52

I woke up Friday morning w/ a very sore left shoulder. I tried stretching it, but my left chest hurt too. Isn't pain on one side a sign of a heart attack? Chest pain, arm/shoulder pain, and my breathing is pretty shallow now that I think about it, but I don't think I'm having a heart attack because that'd be terribly inconvenient. But it'd also be …

1
“What, if not agency?” by abramdemski 23:57

16d ago23:57

23:57

Sahil has been up to things. Unfortunately, I've seen people put effort into trying to understand and still bounce off. I recently talked to someone who tried to understand Sahil's project(s) several times and still failed. They asked me for my take, and they thought my explanation was far easier to understand (even if they still disagreed with it …

1
“The Origami Men” by Tomás B. 28:56

15d ago28:56

28:56

Of course, you must understand, I couldn't be bothered to act. I know weepers still pretend to try, but I wasn't a weeper, at least not then. It isn't even dangerous, the teeth only sharp to its target. But it would not have been right, you know? That's the way things are now. You ignore the screams. You put on a podcast: two guys talking, two guys…

1
“A non-review of ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’” by boazbarak 6:37

18d ago6:37

6:37

1
“Notes on fatalities from AI takeover” by ryan_greenblatt 15:46

17d ago15:46

15:46

Suppose misaligned AIs take over. What fraction of people will die? I'll discuss my thoughts on this question and my basic framework for thinking about it. These are some pretty low-effort notes, the topic is very speculative, and I don't get into all the specifics, so be warned. I don't think moderate disagreements here are very action-guiding or …

1
“Nice-ish, smooth takeoff (with imperfect safeguards) probably kills most ‘classic humans’ in a few decades.” by Raemon 21:59

20d ago21:59

21:59

I wrote my recent Accelerando post to mostly stand on it's own as a takeoff scenario. But, the reason it's on my mind is that, if I imagine being very optimistic about how a smooth AI takeoff goes, but where an early step wasn't "fully solve the unbounded alignment problem, and then end up with extremely robust safeguards[1]"... ...then my current …

LessWrong Podcasts

1
LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

LessWrong

1
The Bayesian Conspiracy

The Bayesian Conspiracy

1
Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11)

Patrick McKenzie

1
Heart of the Matter

Bryan Davis & Jay Kannaiyan

1
“EU explained in 10 minutes” by Martin Sustrik 16:47

1
Bits and bricks: Oliver Habryka on LessWrong, LightHaven, and community infrastructure 1:14:44

1
“Cheap Labour Everywhere” by Morpheus 3:38

1
[Linkpost] “Consider donating to AI safety champion Scott Wiener” by Eric Neyman 2:35

1
“Which side of the AI safety community are you in?” by Max Tegmark 4:18

1
“Doomers were right” by Algon 4:35

1
Talking to the Bank of England about systemic risk and systems engineering 1:31:37

1
“Do One New Thing A Day To Solve Your Problems” by Algon 3:21

1
“Humanity Learned Almost Nothing From COVID-19” by niplav 8:45

1
“Consider donating to Alex Bores, author of the RAISE Act” by Eric Neyman 50:28

1
“Meditation is dangerous” by Algon 7:26

1
“That Mad Olympiad” by Tomás B. 26:41

1
“The ‘Length’ of ‘Horizons’” by Adam Scholl 14:15

1
Narrative, mastery, and character bleed in games, with Ricki Heicklen 1:31:19

1
248 – Seeking Alpha, with Jay 1:43:12

1
“Don’t Mock Yourself” by Algon 4:10

1
“If Anyone Builds It Everyone Dies, a semi-outsider review” by dvd 26:01

1
“The Most Common Bad Argument In These Parts” by J Bostock 8:11

1
“Towards a Typology of Strange LLM Chains-of-Thought” by 1a3orn 17:34

1
“I take antidepressants. You’re welcome” by Elizabeth 6:09

1
“Inoculation prompting: Instructing models to misbehave at train-time can improve run-time behavior” by Sam Marks 4:06

1
“Hospitalization: A Review” by Logan Riggs 18:52

1
“What, if not agency?” by abramdemski 23:57

1
“The Origami Men” by Tomás B. 28:56

1
“A non-review of ‘If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies’” by boazbarak 6:37

1
“Notes on fatalities from AI takeover” by ryan_greenblatt 15:46

1
“Nice-ish, smooth takeoff (with imperfect safeguards) probably kills most ‘classic humans’ in a few decades.” by Raemon 21:59