LessWrong posts by zvi

Why can’t you build it?

Because you aren’t allowed to build it. Not in the place you want to build it.

Or at least, not the way you want, to the extent you want it, at any sane price and on any reasonable schedule. The government will not let you.

Here are some of the ways that plays out.

One way they prevent this is so-called ‘affordable housing,’ which gives out lottery tickets while overall making housing less affordable.

Yelling Fire Risk In A Crowded City

Don’t hate the firefighters, hate the fire department and the zoning code.

City Aesthetics: We could still build places that feel like this….

Jason (referring to lower left photo): Fire department response to site plan & sample photo:

-Street width doesn’t meet NFPA. Widen or remove street parking.

-Buildings too close to street. Need 15-30’ from curb to face.

-Trees likely need to go as they block easy ladder access.

-Where's the fire lane?

Seth Largo: You have the courage to hate the rich. You may even have the courage to hate “disabled” vets. But do you have the courage [...]
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Outline:
(00:37) Yelling Fire Risk In A Crowded City
(02:14) Beauty
(06:24) Historical Preservation Is Out Of Hand
(08:03) You Only Need One Staircase
(09:34) Zoning Run Amok
(11:18) Elevator Action
(11:54) The Hookup
(14:56) Affordable Housing
(16:02) Actually Affordable Housing
(18:22) Affordable Housing Only Worse
(20:56) Remember Who The Enemy Is
(22:08) San Francisco Hates Your Stove
(22:49) Los Angeles Not Building
(27:49) New York City
(36:53) Baltimore
(37:05) Charlottesville
(37:35) New Hampshire
(38:07) California
(44:05) Bipartisanship
(44:28) California Forever
(45:52) History
(46:16) The Lighter Side
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First published:

May 1st, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WC69ZpLJ2LYdSMXqb/housing-roundup-14-you-can-t-build-that

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:
The Big One hits SF > Neighbourhoods levelled. Fires destroy everything. > "We as a state and as a nation must rebuild!" > Board of Supervisors draws up highly detailed plans to hire consultants to make sure the former neighbourhood character is replicated during reconstruction"" style="max-width: 100%;" />Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Build more housing where people want to live.

The rest is commentary. If there is enough housing, it will be affordable, people will afford more house, and people will be able to live where they want to live.

It's always been that simple.

Increased supply of any kind of housing increases affordability of all kinds of housing.

Are there other things that would also be helpful? Yes, but they’re commentary.

Freeing up existing underused housing, for example, is helpful. It is commentary.

Let's enjoy the lull and see how much of an Infrastructure Week we can do.

New Levels Of Saying Quiet Part Out Loud Even For This Guy

Trump opposes building houses where people want to live, because doing so would let people live there, which would drive down the value of existing homes.

Acyn: Trump: I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes. You can be sure that will happen.

unusual_whales: Trump: when you make it too easy and cheap to build houses, house prices come down. I don’t want to do that.

[...]
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Outline:
(00:48) New Levels Of Saying Quiet Part Out Loud Even For This Guy
(02:30) Whose Side Are You On
(03:25) Your Intervention Only Partly Solves The Problem So We Are Against It
(04:21) More Dakka
(05:32) Abundance
(06:43) Changes In Rent Are Largely About Changes In Supply
(07:30) Austin
(08:46) America
(10:02) Minnesota
(11:20) Debunking Obvious Nonsense About Monopolistic Practices
(21:25) Age Of The Median Homebuyer
(24:26) Property Taxes Improve Allocation Efficiency
(27:20) More Of Old People Inefficiently And Systematically Stealing From Young People
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First published:

May 1st, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dwNgPrBtAHye2vuwS/housing-roundup-13-more-dakka-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This was the week of GPT-5.5. It is an excellent model, sir, and OpenAI is competitive with Anthropic's top public offering for the first time since late last year.

As usual, I did coverage of the System Card, and then of Capabilities and Reactions.

DeepSeek gave us the long-awaited v4. DeepSeek has given us another strong feat of engineering efficiency for 1M context. That is impressive, and there will be those who build upon v4 and put it to good use. But this is not a frontier model, nor a DeepSeek moment, nor a key step to proto-AGI or anything like that. Compute constraints bind, and have forced DeepSeek to focus on efficiency. Let us keep it that way.

Talkie is the other release, an old timey AI trained on text from before 1931. Fun stuff.

Google signed a contract with the Department of War that not only agrees to ‘all lawful use’ with no functional exceptions whatsoever, it also agreed to modify or remove any safety barriers upon request. They did this under no deadline or pressure. Whatever you think of OpenAI's actions in this matter, Google's were far worse.

Anthropic continues to [...]
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Outline:
(02:03) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(02:34) Language Models Dont Offer Mundane Utility
(06:50) Seeking Deeply
(18:54) Huh, Upgrades
(19:30) On Your Marks
(19:48) Choose Your Fighter
(20:52) More On Claude Opus 4.7
(22:54) Goblin Mode (More on GPT-5.5)
(31:23) Fun With Media Generation
(32:07) They Took Our Jobs
(34:46) Get Involved
(35:49) Introducing
(36:38) In Other AI News
(37:29) Show Me the Money
(37:59) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
(39:05) The Art of the Deal
(40:09) Quiet Speculations
(41:33) And Hes Gone
(43:01) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(43:31) Distillation
(46:12) If You Want A Good Future You Must Steer It
(53:50) Chip City
(54:50) The Mask Comes Off
(01:08:45) People Just Say Principles
(01:12:49) Greetings From The Department of War
(01:19:14) Greetings From Project Glasswing
(01:24:38) The Week in Audio
(01:26:25) People Just Say Things
(01:30:09) People Just Publish Things
(01:30:32) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:34:53) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:38:49) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:45:12) Other People Are Not As Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:46:21) The Lighter Side
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First published:

April 30th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zGyzyJJkTxbhReZP7/ai-166-google-sells-out

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We all need a break so: What is the most important chart in the world?

I decided to ask Twitter, and got a lot of good answers.

So today, with few of my picks, I present: The Most Important Charts In The World.

You’ve got to admit it's getting better. Better all the time. Mostly.

The Original Most Important Chart

The context for this is the METR graph, which is often given that label, where the x-axis is release date and the y-axis is the log-scale time horizon for AI models doing software tasks with a 50% or 80% success rate, usually people use the 50% graph:

If AI models continue to be able to do increasingly long tasks fully autonomously, and trends continue, this suggests we are not too far from a point where AI can do its own AI R&D, with the result of ‘rapid capability advancement,’ also known are Recursive Self-Improvement (RSI) or ‘escape velocity,’ after which… well, no one really knows, but the world presumably transforms into something even more bizarre and inexplicable, which may or may not contain humans or have any value.

This has been your [...]
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Outline:
(00:31) The Original Most Important Chart
(01:39) Show Me The Money
(01:53) Bad Things Happen Less
(03:38) The Exponential
(05:56) Find Out
(06:31) Fertility Crisis
(06:49) However You Look At It
(07:07) Important Things To Know
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First published:

April 29th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vi9KSXWXrPtap9mfR/the-most-important-charts-in-the-world

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The system card for GPT-5.5 mostly told us what we expected. See this thread from Drake Thomas for some comparisons to Anthropic's model card for Opus 4.7.

Now we move on to asking what it means in practice, and in what situations GPT-5.5 should become our new weapon of choice.

My answer is for some purposes yes, and for others no, but it is now competitive. GPT-5.5 is like GPT-5.4, only more so, and with improved capabilities in particular on raw intelligence and for well-specified coding and agent tasks, including computer use.

This is the first time since Claude Opus 4.5 came out, so in about four months, that I’ve considered a non-Anthropic model a competitive choice outside of some narrow tasks like web search. GPT-5.5 is not perfect, nor is it the best at everything, but basically everyone thinks this is a solid upgrade. Highly positive overall feedback.

My effective usage is now split between the two, depending on the nature of the task. If it's something that can be well-specified and all I want is the right answer, my instinct is I go with GPT-5.5. If I’m not sure what exactly I want [...]
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Outline:
(02:20) The Official Pitch
(07:49) Our Price Cheap
(08:29) Official Benchmarks
(11:58) SemiAnalysis Doublecheck
(12:38) Other Peoples Benchmarks
(16:00) Vend That Bench
(19:06) Planning Is Essential
(20:43) Choose Your Fighter
(22:44) Cyber Lack Of Security
(23:12) You Get What You Give
(24:20) True Story
(25:33) Ethan Mollick Thinks GPT-5.5 Is A Big Deal
(26:04) SemiAnalysis Loves GPT-5.5 Especially In Codex
(28:27) Choose Your Fighter
(29:13) Positive Reactions
(36:59) Lazy and Literal
(38:09) Goblins, Gremlins and Trolls, Oh My
(40:02) Other Reactions
(40:34) Claude Ambition
(41:00) Other Notes
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First published:

April 28th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5ytcFayxqZsXN8rNw/gpt-5-5-capabilities-and-reactions

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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