LessWrong posts by zvi

Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is so hot right now. The cool kids use it for everything. They definitely use it for coding, often letting it write all of their code. They also increasingly use it for everything else one can do with a computer. Vas suggests using Claude Code as you would a mini-you/employee that lives in your computer and can do literally anything. There's this thread of people saying Claude Code with Opus 4.5 is AGI in various senses. I centrally don’t agree, but they definitely have a point. If you’d like, you can use local Claude Code via Claude Desktop, documentation here. It's a bit friendlier than the terminal and some people like it a lot more. Here is a more extensive basic discussion of setup options. The problem is the web interface still lacks some power user functions, even after some config work Daniel San misses branch management, create new repository directory via ‘new’ and import plugins from marketplaces. If you haven’t checked Claude Code out, you need to check it out. This could be you: Paulius: ​whoever made this is making me FEEL SEEN Table [...] ---Outline:(01:32) Hype!(06:26) My Own Experiences(11:35) Now With More Recursive Self Improvement(13:06) A Market Of One(13:46) Some Examples Of People Using Claude Code Recently(20:25) Dealing With Context Limits(21:08) The Basic Claude Code Setup(23:14) Random Claude Code Extension Examples I've Seen Recently(25:09) Skilling Up(31:23) Reasons Not To Get Overexcited(37:33) Get Pretty Excited --- First published: January 9th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MQGAMHQNTFyJTke2H/claude-codes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Claude Code is the talk of the town, and of the Twitter. It has reached critical mass. Suddenly, everyone is talking about how it is transforming their workflows. This includes non-coding workflows, as it can handle anything a computer can do. People are realizing the power of what it can do, building extensions and tools, configuring their setups, and watching their worlds change. I’ll be covering that on its own soon. This covers everything else, including ChatGPT Health and the new rounds from xAI and Anthropic. Table of Contents Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Even Rufus, Amazon's Choice. Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. They don’t believe you. Language Models Have All The Fun. In glorious AI future, does game play you? Huh, Upgrades. Claude Code 2.1.0, and JP Morgan using AI for its proxy advice. On Your Marks. Yes, Meta pretty much did fraud with the Llama 4 benchmarks. Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. The year of doing real things? Fun With Media Generation. The art of making people believe a human made it. You Drive Me Crazy. Crazy productive. They Took Our Jobs. Will [...] ---Outline:(00:46) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility(01:18) Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility(01:52) Language Models Have All The Fun(02:57) Huh, Upgrades(03:42) On Your Marks(04:12) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon(07:39) Fun With Media Generation(07:55) You Drive Me Crazy(10:10) They Took Our Jobs(13:35) Get Involved(14:08) Introducing(16:46) In Other AI News(18:31) Show Me the Money(20:30) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble(21:32) Quiet Speculations(24:25) The Quest for Sane Regulations(27:32) AGI and Taxation(31:29) Chip City(31:46) The Week in Audio(31:54) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult(33:17) People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone(34:27) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 8th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fWJsqHXHBAEd8rq69/ai-150-while-claude-codes --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Going Full San Francisco Waymo goes Full San Francisco West Bay except for SFO: Jeff Dean: Exciting expansion! @Waymo now serves the whole SF Bay Area Peninsula from SF to San Jose and is taking riders on freeways. They can serve SJC, and SFO is almost ready, employee rides are in place and public rides are ‘coming soon.’ Brandan: Would be nice if @Waymo comes across the bay to Berkeley! Jeff Dean: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it! Going Down The Highway Waymo is going to start using freeways in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. That's a big deal for longer rides, but there is still the problem that Waymos have to obey the technical speed limit. On freeways no huamn driver does this, so obeying the technical speed limit is both slower and more dangerous. We are going to need a regulatory solution, ideally that allows you to drive at the average observed speed. Looking For Adventure This is all a big unlock, but it depends on having enough cars to take advantage. At this point, aside from regulatory barriers in some places like [...] ---Outline:(00:10) Going Full San Francisco(01:03) Going Down The Highway(01:33) Looking For Adventure(02:38) And Whatever Comes Our Way(05:38) It's Coming(06:20) Who Stands In The Way(08:59) My One Weakness(11:20) The path forward(15:59) Cruise Control(18:24) Growth Rates(20:02) The Competition(21:21) They Took Our Jobs(22:44) Bikers As Winners(23:21) The Elderly As Big Winners(26:19) Save The Cat(29:24) It's Going To Be The Future Soon(31:12) In-Context Old Man Yells At Self-Driving Car(32:07) The Safety Case(34:12) Keep It Classy(34:39) The Lighter Side --- First published: January 7th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ry3SyA92bJCPe75Nt/advancements-in-self-driving-cars --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

The central message of the fertility roundups has always been that we have a choice. If we do want to raise fertility, we can do that. People respond to incentives. That means money, especially if paid up front, and it also means time, lifestyle and respect. If we do it purely with cash, it would be expensive, but a well-designed version of this would still be net profitable to the state. On the order of $300k per additional live birth would get this done in the United States, depending on how you structure it. This is not money spent, it is money transferred, and it helps the kids quite a lot. If we do it by dealing with the Revolution of Rising Requirements, by providing non-cash advantages or changing the culture, that's a more complex intervention, but we have options that let us do far better. Those who disagree have tried almost nothing, and are all out of ideas. Selection Alex Strudwick Young: Today parents can, for the first time, access polygenic embryo testing for IQ and many diseases through a routine test (PGT-A) done worldwide and in 60% of US IVF cycles. [...] ---Outline:(01:05) Selection(02:22) Surrogacy(02:46) IVF(08:05) Technological Versus Social Solutions(09:32) Dakka(10:51) All The Dakka(12:24) Insufficient Dakka Works Insufficiently(14:35) The Effectiveness of Dakka(17:47) The Wrong Dakka(18:52) Dakka Does Not Disproportionally Motivate The Poor(21:25) Is That a Lot?(25:23) Alternative Dakka(26:38) The Housing Theory of Everything Is Undefeated(35:58) Happiness(37:16) Negative Dakka(38:44) Mother's Day(39:41) Status(43:34) Hungary(46:20) Audio(46:26) NatalCon(46:50) Housing Discrimination(47:20) Your Own Quest(49:36) Hope --- First published: January 6th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xJw5eetbzNNu9SiSZ/fertility-roundup-6-the-art-of-more-dakka --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

This week, Philip Trammell and Dwarkesh Patel wrote Capital in the 22nd Century. One of my goals for Q1 2026 is to write unified explainer posts for all the standard economic debates around potential AI futures in a systematic fashion. These debates tend to repeatedly cover the same points, and those making economic arguments continuously assume you must be misunderstanding elementary economic principles, or failing to apply them for no good reason. Key assumptions are often unstated and even unrealized, and also false or even absurd. Reference posts are needed. That will take longer, so instead this post covers the specific discussions and questions around the post by Trammell and Patel. My goal is to both meet that post on its own terms, and also point out the central ways its own terms are absurd, and the often implicit assumptions they make that are unlikely to hold. What Trammell and Patel Are Centrally Claiming As A Default Outcome They affirm, as do I, that Piketty was centrally wrong about capital accumulation in the past, for many well understood reasons, many of which they lay out. They then posit that Piketty could have been unintentionally [...] ---Outline:(01:02) What Trammell and Patel Are Centrally Claiming As A Default Outcome(03:15) Does The Above Conclusion Follow From The Above Premises?(03:30) Sounds Like This Is Not Our Main Problem In This Scenario?(07:31) To Be Clear This Scenario Doesn't Make Sense(13:51) Ad Argumento(14:44) The Baseline Scenario(16:31) Would We Have An Inequality Problem?(20:57) No You Can't Simply Let Markets Handle Everything(22:22) Proposed Solutions(25:55) Wealth Taxes Today Are Grade-A Stupid(28:27) Tyler Cowen Responds With Econ Equations(30:29) Brian Albrecht Responds With More Equations --- First published: January 5th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQwNgB7ytwqTxxYue/dos-capital --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.