LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

Preface for LessWrong: When I think back on my most cherished memories of this community, I return to those honoring defiance in pursuit of goodness:

Defying prestigious dogma and searching for raw truth;
Defying social pressure, acting alone to help someone while others watch;
Defying your self-expectations (your “role”), instead searching over lines of cause-and-effect to find a winning pathway;
Defying a powerful foe's threats, because they only threaten since people like you cave;
Defying the specter of apparent impossibility because you can’t bear to lose.
I cannot return to you and say “I defied and then I won.” But I’m at least here to say “I defied.”

I recommend reading this article on my website since the embeds and typography work better there: click here.

Why I left Google DeepMind

In January, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officers killed at least two people. In both cases, a federal agent grasped his gun, aimed it at a peaceful citizen, and shot them dead.


Left: Renée Good, moments before DHS killed her.
Right: Alex Pretti, moments before DHS killed him.

I learned that Google sells its Cloud services to the relevant agencies within DHS. I thought that was [...]

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Outline:

(00:59) Why I left Google DeepMind

[... 42 more sections]

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First published:

July 15th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iKm2FhpWkuuBojm82/why-i-left-google-deepmind

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The mosquito bucket of doom is a population control mechanism where you dissolve some Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) into a bucket and allow the mosquitoes to lay eggs in these buckets. The larvae then feed on Bti and die.

I tried this method, and it has been unexpectedly effective.

Background

I live in a really wooded area. It's not swampy, but we have a lot of mosquitoes.

I didn’t take the baseline measurements in the previous years, but on hot months like June, July, August, and partially September, it would be quite literally impossible to spend any time out in the yard – in the morning, while the sun is not super strong yet, you get bitten by dozens upon dozens of mosquitoes. Then the sun is super strong and it's impossible to be outside. Then, in the afternoon or, god forbid, evening, there are swarms and swarms of mosquitoes, which make it impossible to be out and about.

According to my own guess, I would, at all times, be surrounded by at least 20 or 30 mosquitoes. Killing 30 mosquitoes per hour was not uncommon. That's one mosquito every two minutes!

Nesting and proximity

Mosquitoes lay eggs in [...]

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Outline:

(00:28) Background

(01:21) Nesting and proximity

(04:13) Bucket of doom: pro tips

(05:00) My setup

(05:56) Safety concerns

(06:42) Buying Bti

(07:47) Results

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 8th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d56vd7yhFGxBQnoEk/the-mosquito-bucket-of-doom-works

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This criticism of AI 2040: Plan A by Séb Krier unfortunately seriously mischaracterizes our proposal. It also mostly contains flat assertions, not real argumentation, and the argumentation in it seems quite weak. While we appreciate constructive criticisms of Plan A, such as the ones by Tom Davidson, Richard Ngo, and 1a3orn, we feel the need to correct the issues in Séb's response. First, we’ll go over the specific false representations, and then we’ll give a point-by-point response.

False Representations  

I’m not claiming you shouldn’t prepare and improvise in the dark, but rather that this version of preparing bakes in too much and leaves little space for the effective but uncomfortable trial-and-effort that real life requires.

The exact opposite is true. Plan A is extremely iterative. In the status quo, there is trial and error, but ultimately companies aren’t going to choose the safer or more societally beneficial path, they are going to choose what the market wants. In Plan A there is much more time for AI companies to gain evidence and for governments to respond reasonably to the sweeping changes. Thanks to total transparency and broad deployment, all of this evidence is accessible to academics, independent researchers [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) False Representations

(05:02) Point-by-point response

(29:54) Conclusion

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RPgHythvMKh6eG9pS/our-response-to-seb-krier-on-plan-a

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content warnings: depictions of human and anthro nudity, discussion of bestiality, modern art

Credit where it's due: it is genuinely, unironically baller for the Whitney museum to make the exhibit about how a disabled artist wants to fuck their dog the first one that people see when they attend the prestigious Whitney Biennial, their every-two-year showcase of new and emerging American talents. You know, the one that's supposed to be a barometer of where America is at these days.

Unfortunately, not only do they fail to commit to the bit, the critics then fail to point this out and condemn them for it. Like, here is how one art critic at ArtReview describes it:

Visitors first encounter Emilie Louise Gossiaux's Kong Play (2025) – a hundred or so small, brightly coloured snowman-shaped ceramics arranged on a low two-tiered pedestal. These sculptures are modelled after Kong chew toys, a tribute to the artist's guide dog (Gossiaux lost their vision in a bicycle accident in 2012). Accompanying Kong Play are variously titled ballpoint pen and crayon drawings by Gossiaux that depict the artist playing with a jaunty, sometimes bipedal, white canine. The exhibition thus opens tenderly – without fanfare, without friction.

[...]

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Outline:

(03:53) Gossiaux's Recent Body of Work

[... 1 more section]

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First published:

July 13th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sFkYA5CwZCWYQ9nzB/the-whitney-biennial-should-admit-that-emilie-gossiaux-wants

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Abstract:

We already know enough to act. I wish we were in a world where research was the bottleneck, but the main constraint on AI safety is no longer a shortage of clever policy ideas: best practices already exist and are not being applied or enforced, and a serious international (or even just national) regulatory regime would probably cut most of the risk.
They are not applied because awareness is low. The people who narrate and enforce AI policy mostly do not believe in the problem. I estimate that a majority of the top ~100–1,000 most influential policymakers worldwide have never had a single serious conversation about catastrophic risk, and this is the main reason they are not worried[1]. Even among the civil-society organizations that showed up to the UN Global Dialogue, exactly one of the 1,534 written submissions mentions "takeover", and less than 1% mention x-risks.
They've never had the conversation because our field under-invests in having it. Status rewards research over advocacy (~3.6 researchers per advocate in US AI safety); many organizations self-censor; funders treat repetition as redundancy, even though repetition is how anyone actually gets convinced. Meanwhile, the industry secured 7× as many meetings with the European Commission [...]
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Outline:

(03:29) 1. -- The bottleneck is political will, not research

(03:44) What do I call "political will"?

(05:10) The best practices we already have are not being applied

(07:28) We need to go from plan D to plan A: more seriousness and coordination

[... 31 more sections]

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First published:

July 11th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EexsebbYhbe2gXkPP/the-current-bottleneck-is-political-will-not-research

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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