How gambling is eroding empathy, destroying relationships, and changing our culture — even for people who never bet.
#760: Gambling the future into existence
Plus: Cosmo for conservatives, AI;DR and being "agentic"
Humanity’s Endgame
A new history of societal collapse by an expert in existential risk argues that our globalized society is edging toward the precipice.
The hidden ‘rules of the game’ that dictate how we navigate the world | Psyche Videos
How free are we really, if human behaviour embodies the complex, intertwined webs of society and history?
The marketplace of rationalizations
Recent work in economics has rediscovered the importance of belief-based utility for understanding human behaviour. Belief ‘choice’ is subject to an important constraint, however: people can only bring themselves to believe things for which they can find rationalizations. When preferences for similar beliefs are widespread, this constraint generates rationalization markets, social structures in which agents compete to produce rationalizations in exchange for money and social rewards. I explore the nature of such markets, I draw on political media to illustrate their characteristics and behaviour, and I highlight their implications for understanding motivated cognition and misinformation.
Risk, Uncertainty and Profit
A timeless classic of economic theory that remains fasc…
Effective Altruism’s Problems Go Beyond Sam Bankman-Fried - Bloomberg
archived 12 Mar 2026 21:01:45 UTC
Beyond Roleplay: Jailbreaking Gemini with drugs and ritual - Tidepool Heavy Industries
Against False Indulgences in LLM Alignment
Unnecessary moral concern, and the false indulgences that drive it.
The world’s first trillionaire is a killer
Elon Musk’s empire of wealth is built on suffering.
In 25-Country Survey, Americans Especially Likely To View Fellow Citizens as Morally Bad
Across 25 countries, Americans are the most likely to see the morality and ethics of people in their country as somewhat or very bad.
How dupes took over the world
The Verge’s Mia Sato explains the appeal and big business of dupes.
Money for mutual resilience: Introducing Blacksky Cash
Mutual aid has always been about more than money. But money, shared intentionally, can be a powerful expression of solidarity. This is us building toward that future.
Being in a crowd doesn’t make you part of a mindless mob | Psyche Ideas
It’s often assumed people lose their minds in a crowd. Research on riots, festivals and sports tells a more uplifting story
For the Love of Boredom
Boredom is prone to myth-making — much like the story of Phineas Gage. This matters. If we believe certain myths about boredom, it could lead us astray in how we respond.
