LessWrong posts by zvi

If there's several things this blog endorses, one of them would be going meta.

It's time. The big picture awaits.

You’re Single Because You Live In The Wrong Place

The most important meta question is location, location, location.

This is the periodic reminder that dating dynamics are very different in different locations, and gender ratios are far more uneven than they appear because a lot of people pair off and aren’t in the pool.

If you are a man seeking to date women, New York City is the place to be.

Churrasco Suadade: when I’m out I notice that tables at restaurants and bars in manhattan are probably around 80-95% women, it's a new dynamic that no one is talking about.

Fixed Income Guy: Are you at all the poor people places? All the finance guy hang outs are 80% dudes.

I mention Fixed Income Guy to mock him, as in why are you spending a lot more money to hang out with 80% dudes and largely finance dudes at that? I mean, sure, if that's what you want.

Darrell Owens: Oh this is new? Coming from the Bay Area [...]
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Outline:
(00:20) You're Single Because You Live In The Wrong Place
(02:04) You're Single Because You're Not Okay Making Less Money Than She Does, You Fool
(03:19) You're Single Because You Work Out The Wrong Amount
(07:32) You're Single Because You Don't Know You Are Hot
(09:27) You're Single Because Age Gap Discourse Is Crazy
(10:04) Dating Apps Are Bad For Mental Health
(13:13) You're Single Because You Listened To E-Girl Advice
(14:13) You're Single Because You Didn't Hire Blaine Anderson
(15:52) You're Single Because You Think Zizek Mocked Date Me Docs
(18:36) You're Still Single Because You Don't Appreciate Relationships
(20:50) You're Not Single And Haven't Been For a While
(22:25) You Are Still Single As Evidenced By Would
(24:02) You're Single Because You Lack Motivation
(25:03) You're Single Because Of Robin Hanson
(26:00) You're Single Because You Did This Instead Of Going To Therapy
(26:58) The Lighter Side
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First published:

January 23rd, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7y6YA8o6oisAzDSgk/dating-roundup-11-going-too-meta

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Anthropic released a new constitution for Claude. I encourage those interested to read the document, either in whole or in part. I intend to cover it on its own soon.

There was also actual talk about coordinating on a conditional pause or slowdown from both DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which I also plan to cover later.

Claude Code continues to be the talk of the town, the weekly report on that is here.

OpenAI responded by planning ads for the cheap and free versions of ChatGPT.

There was also a fun but meaningful incident involving ChatGPT Self Portraits.

Table of Contents


Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Call in the tone police.

Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. He who lives by the pattern.

Huh, Upgrades. Claude health integrations, ChatGPT $8/month option.

Gemini Personalized Intelligence. Signs of both remain somewhat lacking.

Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Get that bathtub viking.

Fun With Media Generation. Studio Ghibli pics are back, baby.

We’re Proud To Announce The Torment Nexus. Ads come to ChatGPT.

They Took Our Jobs. Find a game plan. Don’t count on [...]
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Outline:
(00:52) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(01:25) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility
(01:55) Huh, Upgrades
(02:48) Gemini Personalized Intelligence
(07:06) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(10:34) Fun With Media Generation
(11:35) We're Proud To Announce The Torment Nexus
(18:58) They Took Our Jobs
(25:29) The Revolution of Rising Expectations
(26:30) Get Involved
(27:52) A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
(30:30) In Other AI News
(32:57) Axis of Assistance
(39:58) Show Me the Money
(40:39) California In Crisis
(42:14) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
(43:57) Quiet Speculations
(52:32) Elon Musk Versus OpenAI
(56:31) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(01:03:30) Chip City
(01:08:57) The Week in Audio
(01:14:19) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:19:47) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:23:06) Alignment Is Not Primarily About a Metric
(01:30:43) How To Be a Safe Robot
(01:37:52) Living In China
(01:41:05) Claude 3 Opus Lives
(01:41:23) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone
(01:42:42) Messages From Janusworld
(01:43:53) Everyone Is Confused About AI Consciousness
(01:45:36) The Lighter Side
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First published:

January 22nd, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pCkYfhYcwFLELoYQf/ai-152-brought-to-you-by-the-torment-nexus

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We’re back with all the Claude that's fit to Code. I continue to have great fun with it and find useful upgrades, but the biggest reminder is that you need the art to have an end other than itself. Don’t spend too long improving your setup, or especially improving how you improve your setup, without actually working on useful things.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis

Odd Lots covered Claude Code. Fun episode, but won’t teach my regular readers much that is new.

Bradly Olsen at the Wall Street Journal reports Claude [Code and now Cowork are] Taking the AI World By Storm, and ‘Even Non-Nerds Are Blown Away.’

It is remarkable how everyone got the ‘Google is crushing everyone’ narrative going with Gemini 3, then it took them a month to realize that actually Anthropic is crushing everyone, at least among the cognoscenti with growing momentum elsewhere, with Claude Code and Claude Opus 4.5. People are realizing you can know almost nothing and still use it to do essentially everything.

Are Claude Code and Codex having a ‘GPT moment’?

Wall St Engine: Morgan Stanley says Anthropic's ClaudeCode + Cowork is dominating investor chatter and [...]
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Outline:
(00:28) The Efficient Market Hypothesis
(01:57) Huh, Upgrades
(03:49) Obsidian
(04:33) New Tools
(04:57) Tool Search
(07:17) Out Of The Box
(08:48) Skilling Up
(12:01) The Art Must Have An End Other Than Itself Or It Collapses Into Infinite Recursion
(13:43) Safely Skip Permissions
(14:44) A Matter of Trust
(16:30) Code Versus Cowork
(18:14) Claude Cowork Offers Mundane Utility
(21:52) Claude Code Offers Mundane Utility
(23:32) Vibe Coding Requires Good Vibes
(24:06) Codex of Ultimate Vibing
(25:12) No Soup For You
(26:46) Server Overload
(28:17) Here's The Pitch
(29:12) The Lighter Side
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First published:

January 21st, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rCf8KLrpzdtFoFTJD/claude-codes-3

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A short fun one today, so we have a reference point for this later. This post was going around my parts of Twitter:

@gmltony: Go to your ChatGPT and send this prompt: “Create an image of how I treat you”. Share your image result.

That's not a great sign. The good news is that typically things look a lot better, and ChatGPT has a consistent handful of characters portraying itself in these friendlier contexts.

Treat Your ChatBots Well

A lot of people got this kind of result:

Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Uncle Chu: A good user

From Mason:

Matthew Ackerman: I kinda like mine too:

Some more fun:

It's Over

Others got different answers, though.

roon: it's over

Bradstradamus: i’m cooked.

iMuffin: we’re cooked, codex will have to vouch for us

Diogenes of Cyberborea: oh god

There can also be danger the other way:

David Lach: Maybe I need some sleep.

It's Not Over But Um, Chat?

And then there's what happens if you ask a different question, as Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it this sure is a pair of test [...]
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Outline:
(00:51) Treat Your ChatBots Well
(02:58) It's Over
(04:28) It's Not Over But Um, Chat?
(08:44) It's Rough Out There
(09:14) Reciprocity, You See, Is The Key To Every Relationship
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First published:

January 20th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/eg6GgEq6KWPJZQQYE/chatgpt-self-portrait

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The main thing to know this time around is that the whole crazy ‘what is causing the rise in autism?’ debacle is over actual nothing. There is no rise in autism. There is only a rise in the diagnosis of autism.

Table of Contents


Autism Speaks.

Exercise Is Awesome.

That's Peanuts.

An Age Of Wonders.

GLP-1s In Particular.

The Superheroes.

The Supervillains.

FDA Delenda Est.

Hansonian Medicine.

Hospital Strategy 101.

Mental Hospital Strategy 101.

Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?

The Lighter Side.

Autism Speaks

It has not, however, risen in prevalence.

The entire shift in the rate of diagnosis of autism is explained by expanding the criteria and diagnosing it more often. Nothing actually changed.

We already knew that vaccines don’t cause autism, and that Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, but now we know such things on an entirely different level.

I admit that this result confirms all of my priors and thus I might be insufficiently skeptical of it, but there are a lot of people with what we in 2026 call autism that are out there, they love [...]
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Outline:
(00:23) Autism Speaks
(04:42) Exercise Is Awesome
(06:41) That's Peanuts
(07:09) An Age Of Wonders
(08:05) GLP-1s In Particular
(09:09) The Superheroes
(10:32) The Supervillains
(14:21) FDA Delenda Est
(16:35) Hansonian Medicine
(18:13) Hospital Strategy 101
(18:58) Mental Hospital Strategy 101
(21:04) Drugs Are Bad, Mmmkay?
(21:10) The Lighter Side
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First published:

January 19th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FBkJmFStydJbAJmry/medical-roundup-6

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