AI Article Readings

Five years after his prize-winning ACX review of Progress and Poverty, Lars Doucet returns in a guest post to revisit his case for a land value tax: what he got right, where he has changed his mind about tax pass-through and land assessment, the new laws in Virginia and Kentucky, and how writing about Georgism became his full-time job.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 01:12 - I. Progress and Poverty
* 04:03 - II. LVT Momentum is Growing
* 07:11 - III. My Theory of Change Was Wrong
* 07:32 - Overrated: winning online arguments
* 09:15 - Underrated: doing policymakers’ homework for them
* 17:11 - IV. Does Georgism work?
* 17:43 - 1. Is Land a Big Deal?
* 18:40 - Korea is a Big Deal
* 21:16 - What About Zoning?
* 26:02 - 2. Can Land Value Tax Be Passed on to Tenants?
* 32:06 - 3. Assessing the Value of Land
* 33:10 - Maybe Just Send Your Office to South Korea
* 37:49 - There’s No Single Magic Algorithm
* 45:12 - Horizontal Uniformity
* 48:39 - Whatever you do, keep values up to date
* 53:24 - V. Why did Historical Georgism disappear?
* 55:37 - VI. I Guess This is My Life Now
* 59:26 - VII. It’s not who you know; it’s who knows you
* 01:01:12 - VIII. Why I even care about any of this
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/does-georgism-work-five-years-later


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Scott Alexander looks at three puzzles in how AI training generalizes: why training a model on one bad behavior can make it broadly misaligned, why Anthropic’s deliberately reward-hacking “Hacker Opus” stays well behaved outside graded tasks, and why the blackmail seen in AI safety tests never seems to show up in real-world use.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 00:06 - One. Owain Evans
* 02:10 - Two. Richard Qi
* 09:39 - Three. Nostalgebraist
* 13:32 - Postscript: Blackmail
https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/mysteries-of-ai-generalization?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web


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Bret Devereaux examines the Battle of Helm’s Deep through military history, Tolkien’s books, and Peter Jackson’s films. All eight parts, in order, explore campaigning, armies, fortifications, weapons, morale, and the strategic choices behind the battle.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 00:04 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part One: Bargaining for Goods at Helm’s Gate
* 07:52 - Operations by the Book
* 21:51 - (Fully) Operational Castles
* 38:14 - Operations in Film
* 48:02 - Conclusions
* 54:42 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Two: Total Warg
* 57:16 - What To Expect, When You Are Not Expecting Wargs
* 01:14:14 - Warg and Blade: Wargband
* 01:24:57 - Spears!
* 01:34:12 - Impact
* 01:44:07 - Conclusion: Towards a Better Charge
* 01:50:50 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Three: The Host of Saruman
* 01:54:09 - Organizational Systems
* 02:00:41 - Uruk Squares
* 02:08:56 - The (not) Drilling Uruk-Hai!
* 02:21:16 - Major Lurtz, Captain Uglúk?
* 02:36:55 - Conclusion: The Greenest Orcs
* 02:41:31 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Four: Men of Rohan
* 02:44:02 - The Lords of Rohan
* 02:56:49 - Ninth Century Rohirrim
* 03:05:39 - Men of Rohan!
* 03:23:42 - The Elves
* 03:35:57 - Conclusions
* 03:39:42 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Five: Ladders are Chaos
* 03:41:04 - Investing in Preparation for your Prepared Defenses to be Invested
* 03:51:12 - Ladders
* 04:05:25 - Battering Rams
* 04:14:59 - Blasting Fire
* 04:23:15 - Grapples, Catapults and Large Ladders
* 04:28:09 - Hasty and Deliberate Assaults
* 04:31:51 - Conclusions: Saruman Is Not Very Good At This
* 04:38:25 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Six: Is This a Good Sword?
* 04:40:00 - Swords Out of Central Casting
* 04:50:38 - Some Not Very Good Swords
* 05:01:23 - The Worst Armor
* 05:09:53 - Pikes in the Deep
* 05:21:27 - Conclusions
* 05:24:49 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Seven: Hanging by a Thread
* 05:26:17 - The Battle Speech
* 05:37:17 - A Battle Speech By the Numbers
* 05:47:10 - Hollywood Battle Speeches
* 05:53:15 - The Unintentional Battle Speech
* 05:59:42 - Speaking from the Page
* 06:08:14 - The Breaking of the Host
* 06:20:23 - Cohesion and Failure
* 06:26:44 - In the Hand or in the Mind?
* 06:29:39 - Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part Eight: The Mind of Saruman
* 06:33:55 - What is Strategy?
* 06:42:56 - The Plan
* 06:49:01 - Certainty of Death? Small Chance of Success? What Are We Waiting For?
* 06:52:51 - Wizard Needs New Strategy, Badly
* 07:01:41 - Gnawing at Old Plots
* 07:07:37 - The Power of Magical Thinking
* 07:12:39 - Conclusions
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/the-battle-of-helms-deep/


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Bret Devereaux brings a military historian’s eye to the Siege of Gondor in The Return of the King. All six parts, in order, explore logistics, fortifications, cavalry, weapons, and the human experience of battle across Tolkien’s books and Peter Jackson’s films.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 00:04 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part One: Professionals Talk Logistics
* 02:36 - Objectives: Strategy and Operations
* 07:56 - Logistics of the Army of Mordor
* 14:09 - We’ve Had One Logistics, Yes. But What About Second Logistics?
* 22:29 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Two: These Beacons are Lit
* 23:25 - Defense in Depth
* 25:18 - Gondor’s Operational Plan
* 29:05 - The Beacons
* 34:31 - Meanwhile, at Osgiliath, bad tactics
* 42:05 - Charge the ruins! Perhaps the stones will run away?
* 46:10 - That’s not a charge. Now this is a charge
* 52:12 - The Perils of Film
* 55:43 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Three: Having Fun Storming the City
* 57:23 - The Approach (or, the Pelennor Steppe)
* 01:04:17 - Catapults!
* 01:16:57 - Siege Towers
* 01:26:15 - Grond
* 01:30:22 - The Somme of Gondor
* 01:38:51 - Conclusions
* 01:40:27 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Four: The Cavalry Arrives
* 01:41:37 - Look, Mr. Frodo – More Logistics!
* 01:46:08 - The Ride of the Rohirrim
* 01:49:23 - Cavalry Formations
* 01:54:00 - What to Expect When You Are Expecting a Cavalry Charge
* 02:00:25 - Impact
* 02:05:42 - Yes, Elephantry is a Word
* 02:11:18 - Conclusions
* 02:12:47 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor, Part Five: Just Flailing About Flails
* 02:16:33 - Trolling Physics
* 02:28:53 - Troll Tactics
* 02:37:26 - Just Flailing About Shields
* 02:42:25 - The Epic Flail
* 02:50:20 - Conclusion
* 02:51:49 - Collections: The Siege of Gondor: Part Six: Black Sails and Gleaming Banners
* 02:53:13 - The Corsairs of Umbar
* 02:56:19 - Dead Men Tell No Tales
* 03:00:40 - Logistics of the Grey Company
* 03:04:22 - Is the Battle in Our Fields or In Our Heads?
* 03:12:27 - Cohesion in Tolkien
* 03:19:47 - Conclusions
https://acoup.blog/category/collections/siege-of-gondor/


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Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, read in full from the Harry Zohn translation in Illuminations, with his endnotes. Benjamin asks what happens to a work of art once it can be copied without limit: what he calls its aura, its unique presence in time and place, withers, and art loses its footing in ritual. Photography and above all film become the test case, from the screen actor performing for a machine to the audience that judges like an examiner while barely paying attention. He closes on the politics of the 1930s: Fascism’s aestheticizing of war, and the response he saw from the other side.
* 00:00 - Introduction
* 01:30 - Preface
* 03:18 - One
* 06:50 - Two
* 12:51 - Three
* 16:18 - Four
* 21:58 - Five
* 27:55 - Six
* 29:51 - Seven
* 33:33 - Eight
* 35:51 - Nine
* 42:00 - Ten
* 49:56 - Eleven
* 53:58 - Twelve
* 57:00 - Thirteen
* 01:02:03 - Fourteen
* 01:09:14 - Fifteen
* 01:13:54 - Epilogue
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm


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