analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

Humans Aren't Special

stuff On minds beyond the human

show:

analects under the categories btrmt. believes in, as set out in the manifesto

analects organised according to the fundamental questions of philosophy

sequences of articles gathered around a more focused idea

  • ai and task fragmentation 4 Jun 2026 [marginalium] AI and task fragmentation. A while back I came across the time-horizon model of AI task automation. It was a somewhat reassuring piece for p...
  • ai use and skill formation 5 Feb 2026 [marginalium] AI use and skill formation. A paper out of Anthropic’s alignment fellowship program. Coders coding with and without AI. Not super compelled...
  • the line between sleep and wake 6 Jul 2025 [marginalium] There is a thin line between sleep and wake. You know this if you have sleep paralysis or are a lucid dreamer. In that spirit, here, we have...
  • god without god 26 Jun 2025 [marginalium] God without god. Hard to explain in a marginalia. But there is this ‘hard’ problem of consciousness (not conscious access). Why do we have e...
  • agi is far away 10 Jun 2025 [marginalium] AGI is far away. I only really skimmed this—it’s about the slow productivity gains from what seems to be enormous bursts of growth in AI cap...
  • ai personality extraction from faces (pdf) 9 Jun 2025 [marginalium] AI personality extraction from faces: we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate t...
  • the speed of ai take-off 8 Jun 2025 [marginalium] The speed of AI take-off. Videocast with Tyler Cowan and Azeem Azhar. It’s just good quality AI speculation. 50 mins. Worth a listen.
  • ai spiritual bliss attractor state (pdf) 6 Jun 2025 [marginalium] AI spiritual bliss attractor state. Anthropic put one of its models (Claude 4 Opus) in a sandbox to chat to itself and: In 90-100% of inter...
  • ai in the military classroom 23 May 2025 [marginalium] AI in the Military Classroom. Actually AI in all classrooms. Actually the future of AI use for anything that requires education (think consu...
  • anthropic co-founder on ai 23 May 2025 [marginalium] Jack Clark on AI, co-founder of Anthropic. Lots of interesting insights, especially about the value of people. Not very optimistic about the...
  • legoai 16 May 2025 [marginalium] LegoAI makes Lego models from text prompts.
  • strawson on panpsychism 8 May 2025 [marginalium] Strawson on panpsychism. I think panpsychism—the idea that everything is trivially ‘conscious’—is disappointing: Panpsychists say that, per...
  • o3 is a lying liar 24 Apr 2025 [marginalium] o3 Is a Lying Liar. Zvi on the faults between all the excitement.
  • ai tutoring works 18 Apr 2025 [marginalium] AI tutoring works: students working on mathematics with tutors randomly assigned to have access to Tutor CoPilot are 4 percentage points (p...
  • will ai automate your job 10 Apr 2025 [marginalium] Will AI automate your job? It’s called the time-horizon model, and I found it reassuring: The key idea where the American worker is concern...
  • ai will need personality (pdf) 2 Apr 2025 [marginalium] AI will need personality (pdf). MIT researchers gave AI personality traits (OCEAN), then paired them with humans, who were also rated on OCE...
  • ai finds new use for old drugs 1 Apr 2025 [marginalium] AI finds new use for old drugs. Paywalled, so need a paywall buster. Interesting story, but the extrapolation is more fun.
  • how ai thinks (anthropic) 28 Mar 2025 [marginalium] Interesting article on how AI thinks, by Anthropic. Some highlights: Knowing how models like Claude think would allow us to have a better u...
  • ai suffers cognitive dissonance too 21 Mar 2025 [marginalium] It’s not quite cognitive dissonance, but AI can rationalise stuff to itself too: Chain-of-Thought (CoT) reasoning … is not always faithful,...
  • ai is puncturing conspiracy theories 7 Mar 2025 [marginalium] AI is puncturing conspiracy theories: In a pair of studies involving more than 2,000 participants, the researchers found a 20 percent reduc...

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