Rob Wiblin

YouTube video by 80,000 Hours The Graph That Explains Most of Geopolitics Today | Professor Hugh White

Trump seems hell-bent on shattering US alliances and abandoning American global hegemony.

Professor Emeritus Hugh White has predicted this retreat for 30 years.

And despite calling the US-led order a 'golden age' he argues it's probably a good thing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0WO...

YouTube video by 80,000 Hours The most important graph in AI right now | Beth Barnes, CEO of METR

AI models currently have a 50% chance of doing something that takes a human expert one hour.

This doubles every 7 months.

In 2 years? They could automate full workdays. In 4 years? A full month.

I discuss with Beth Barnes who uncovered this rule of AI progress:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXtk...

If you want to understand why British governments are so chaotic, be they Labour or Conservative, it's worth at least mentioning the fact that we run this country in a fundamentally irrational way.

This is a great interview (actually something more than an interview). I have read Ian's book a couple of times, but it came alive with such intelligent interrogation. Your engagement is remarkable, Rob, and it was evident that Ian appreciated it.

"There is no democratic element to the House of Lords and it is by far the most effective part of British system.

This is not a popular view, as you can imagine.

But you have to go on the evidence in front of your eyes." –
@iandunt.bsky.social

More: bsky.app/profile/robe...

"…in the final hours when people's lives could have been saved… the team ended up reformatting a table on Microsoft Word for Dominic Raab to look at while people were being left to the mercy of the Taliban." — @iandunt.bsky.social

From How British Government Got So Amateurish: youtu.be/1Yfo1aS0O6s

"10 Downing Street works on a system of professionalised loitering ...

People just kind of hang around thinking 'How do I get the most facetime with the prime minister — and how do I act as a barricade to stop other people...'" — @iandunt.bsky.social

Full episode here: youtu.be/1Yfo1aS0O6s

This was great fun and very, very, very thorough

YouTube video by 80,000 Hours Why Governments Can’t Get Anything Done and How We Can Fix It | Ian Dunt

My interview with @iandunt.bsky.social on how the UK government got to be so bad.

It's not individuals but bad incentives and bad systems that make effective governance impossible.

We run through the UK's many institutional absurdities and how to fix them.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yfo...

There's no evidence EA thinking is the motive or actually in any way casually/contractually responsible for these actions.

Unsurprising, as almost everyone thinks it recommends the opposite.

How involved were they? I'd never heard of them.

If you can remember Musk spent years actually trying to prevent climate change.

Is preventing climate change now bad and suspect by association?

Or has Musk perhaps changed over time. (Or maybe has a combination of good and bad views.)

1. Iirc that article is wrong, his tweet was referring to longtermism + space, not EA.

2. He seemingly was briefly curious about related ideas.

3. He never actually did any EA stuff or advocated for it.

4. He went insane.

5. Now actively does the reverse of what we like and recommend.

Wtf are you talking about, all the most prominent proponents of EA are appalled. Elon has never been a proponent of EA.

It was downvoted to high hell because people basically thought it was wrong in the ways it ultimately was wrong.

Are we to be blamed for someone else trying to persuade us of something wrong and almost entirely failing?

You're not acting in good faith here.

Ok but the people lying about that are bad.

It's more like saying the Left has to own the actions of a vaguely liberal college professor who later flips out and goes full MAGA.

If you then tried to understand the left by saying what it is is MAGA you'd only be confusing yourself.

Was he more involved than going to a student group? I'd never heard of them.

bsky.app/profile/robe...

Dude I assure you if we judged you by the worst thing someone who was once interested in learning about your political/philosophical ideas then did later in life, you would fare no better.

It's just a preposterous way to understand the impact of a group or collection of ideas.

Rob Wiblin on X: "How many people killed by the PEPFAR spending freeze so far? https://t.co/hEB0wXUXxr https://t.co/FU8Xfr8XR9" / X How many people killed by the PEPFAR spending freeze so far? https://t.co/hEB0wXUXxr https://t.co/FU8Xfr8XR9

We go on and on about it on Twitter: x.com/robertwiblin...

On the one hand 10,000 of us are screaming that this is horrific and against everything we've been working for.

On the other hand this guy who took some EA themed courses at college is in favour of it.

So it's hard to tell where EA stands on the topic overall.

On the one hand 10,000 of us are screaming that this is horrific and against everything we've been working for.

On the other hand this guy who took some EA themed courses at college is in favour of it.

So it's hard to tell where EA stands on the topic overall.

Does next mean 3.7 or the one after?

Anthropic states that the next Claude model has "a substantial probability" of meeting ASL-3 👀

Recall that ASL-3 means AI models that substantially increase catastrophic misuse risk of AI. ASL-3 requires stronger safeguards: robust misuse prevention and enhanced security.

This is a crazy paper. Fine-tuning a big GPT-4o on a small amount of insecure code or even "bad numbers" (like 666) makes them misaligned in almost everything else. They are more likely to start offering misinformation, spouting anti-human values, and talk about admiring dictators. Why is unclear.

Actual EA is vocal and united in its condemnation of these actions,which are the literal opposite of what we've been working to accomplish in our global health and wellbeing work.

I'm not aware of Musk having engaged in any EA giving which speaks for itself given his wealth.

When you don't run your article through an LLM to check for completely clear factual inaccuracies.

This is a frequently missed issue in the discussion about fertility rates.

The most commonly cited statistic is based on how many children are born in an individual year.

That can understate completed fertility rates in periods when women have children later.

I guess they don't run it through an LLM asking it to flag possible errors.

‘Unknown disease’ that can kill within days leaves 53 dead in Congo World Health Organization officials said the outbreak appeared to originate from a village where three children died after reportedly eating a bat carcass.

Good thing we recently withdrew from the WTO and killed USAID's international public health programs www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...