iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A personal statement from an OpenAI researcher who was never a doomer but has become much more concerned recently. docs.google.com/document/d/e...

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Both can be true at the same time: 1. AI progress is still exponential and people who dismissed it were wrong; disruptions will grow 2. 10-15% growth rates and/or extinction-level events* remain highly improbable To be clear, the harms could still be tremendous and we should try to prevent them!

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

AI will probably be normal technology but it’s also negative EV. AI is inevitable but we can still slow it down. You can hold these beliefs simultaneously.

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Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I don’t really favor AI progress so if sand gets thrown in the gears of the hyperscalers that’s fine, but in practice a lot of the activism against data centers is activism against transmission lines and that has bad implications for wind and solar projects.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I'm very grateful to live in America. Happy 4th, everyone! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

[New blog post] The one celebrity administrator you don’t hear much about is Dr. Oz, the peddler of dubious remedies who now heads the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). What ever happened to him? chris-said.io/2026/06/03/d...

chris-said.io

Dr. Oz as CMS Administrator: A review

A surprisingly competent turn from a peddler of dubious remedies

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

New blog post: You don't want luxury unemployment Supporters of AI say that the harms to well-being caused by AI-driven unemployment will be offset by material prosperity. None of the unemployment literature supports this. chris-said.io/2026/02/13/y...

chris-said.io

You don't want luxury unemployment

Unemployment causes a profound drop in life satisfaction and material prosperity doesn't matter

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Not to remove blame from Trump, but scientists need to pivot on these association studies. Either the publications come with caveats in bright orange warning labels, or they should stop being funded.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Nate unfortunately uses some of the same style he criticizes Bluesky for, but I agree with overall point. People here don't realize how alienating this place is to normal voters. www.natesilver.net/p/what-is-bl...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

The boring but underappreciated reality is that if you don't want authoritarians taking power, you need to come closer to median voter opinions on crime and immigration.

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Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Large minorities of the electorate have right-wing views on immigration and crime that mainstream politicians won't embrace, as a result voters back new parties or (in the US) outsider insurgents like Trump. www.slowboring.com/p/a-boring-t...

slowboring.com

A boring theory of the populist right

A large minority of the public wants tougher policies on crime and immigration

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Seeing reactions to Alpha School on here that feel like the reaction to self-driving cars in 2016. There’s a deep desire for promising results to be fake.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 26/07/2025

DOGE now doing what it should have been doing instead of firing federal employees randomly for no reason. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

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Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

AI data centers using water is the least of our problems with regard to either water or artificial intelligence. www.slowboring.com/p/theres-ple...

slowboring.com

There's plenty of water for data centers

Probably the last worry you should have about either water or AI

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

ChatGPT’s water usage is “probably the last worry you should have about either water or AI” www.slowboring.com/p/theres-ple...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

[Work opportunity] In the wake of OBBB, Propel is opening up a residency program for exceptional mid-career technologists to help states navigate policy implementation around SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and WIC.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

This might have been the quickest I've gone from "that's an insane conspiracy theory" to "it's plausible".

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Robert (Bob) Kubinec @rmkubinec.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

What makes science credible? Publishing findings like this that undercut whatever political message scientists are supposed to believe in. I am tired of having conversations about "what if my finding undercuts movement x." Tying your findings to politics is what makes science irrelevant.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

I witnessed this interaction last week and agree with George. I you want to beat Trump, the way some high profile accounts act here is just incredibly counterproductive.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Many people here say there's no need for Dems to build a bigger tent, since MAGA will destroy the economy and lose elections on fundamentals. Maybe, but I wouldn't bank on it! It's not that hard for Trump to just stop doing dumb things.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

If you want to beat Trump, the way you respond to these types of posts is an IQ test.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Many normies are dismissive of AI x-risk, but also think their ChatGPT query will cause water shortages. What should we make of this? (A single California almond uses 300 times as much water).

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

I promise this is not a defense, but these things are simultaneously true. 1. They’re not playing 11-dimensional chess. 2. The next 5 years are in fact 11-dimensional, so dumb things we do now have an unusually high chance of being good, and vice versa.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

“Bhutan is unusually happy” is a popular claim that, in retrospect, had all the hallmarks of being false. x.com/ourworldinda...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

Do the terms "credit" and "debit" add anything other than confusion? Why is an increase to an account a "credit" or "debit" depending on which side of the equation it's on? Why not just say "increase" and "decrease?

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Going forward, any claims about Elon's mental abilities must specify a year, like Elon[2017], otherwise we will forever talk past each other.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Interesting prediction on AI and unemployment. www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

One of the creators of the USDS writes about DOGE. "I care deeply about trans people and immigrants [...] but I could not care less that someone plugged in a server to create a new email list without a Privacy Impact Assessment." reason.com/2025/02/13/i...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

I'm an ideal target for contrarian takes like "USAID sounds good but is actually bad", but... I just don't understand this? A mix of effective and ineffective international development that is less than 1% of the federal budget seems fine to me.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Shoplifting by political affiliation. I don't want to read too much into this, but I'm not surprised by how this sorts. I got this data from a survey of ACX readers. www.astralcodexten.com/p/acx-survey...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

This is nominally about Nvidia, but it's actually an incredibly good overview of what's happened in AI over the past 4 months. Worth your time! youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com/blog/05_the_...

youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com

The Short Case for Nvidia Stock

All the reasons why Nvidia will have a very hard time living up to the currently lofty expectations of the market.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Someone should start a GoFundMe for any former administration officials who had their security detail removed.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

This study makes the case that NSAID anti-inflammatories for acute pain can make chronic pain *worse* in the long run. First, among people with acute back pain, taking NSAID anti-inflammatories is associated with 1.76x increased odds of developing chronic pain. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

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Ethan @ethanrosenthal.com · 08/01/2025

food for thought

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

I'm just excluding shrimp from the graphs in my upcoming animal welfare blog post because they make all the other bars too hard to see.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Give me $500,000 and subpoena power and I will solve this mystery.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Consumer Reports did its own study of plastic chemicals in food earlier this year, and just like Plasticlist's recent report it's hard to find discernible patterns. Why is Brisk Iced Tea so much worse than Gatorade? www.consumerreports.org/health/food-...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

Pretty incredible findings on plastic chemicals in food, from Nat Friedman's Plastliclist report. 1. Boba Guys Black Tea Pearls contain 32,571% of the daily limit for BPA. www.plasticlist.org/report

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Incorrect FDA denials have caused an order of magnitude more deaths than incorrect FDA approvals. Yet every expert quoted here by the NYT focuses only on bad approvals. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevo...

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JD Long @jdlong.cerebralmastication.com · 24/12/2024

Yet again we see a situation in the wild where a gzipped csv would be infinitely more helpful than a restful http api. But web app devs gotta web app dev.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

This feels like the moment I first heard "weird" applied to JD Vance. Instantly recognizable as something that will stick.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Getting normies to talk about “updating their priors” has done more good for the world than any actual Bayesian analysis. Rare case where the gatekeeping is not just wrong, but backwards.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Current status: Trying to read this response from a guy I'm talking to on the EA forum.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

All nutrition research funding should be diverted into this type of study design. Incredibly informative. x.com/KevinH_PhD/s...

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

How is Google Maps able to support high precision minute-level direction accuracy for subways, but has no support for commuter trains?

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Bluesky beats Twitter on not penalizing links. Twitter beats Bluesky on private likes.

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Chris Said @csaid.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Correct both-things-can-be-true synthesis. Gov-funded research is extremely high ROI and almost all of it is useless.

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