A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “taboos”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott analyzes OpenAI's 'neuralese recurrence' technology that lets AI think in internal representations between processing steps, explaining the safety implications and arguing for clear taboos on recurrent architectures.
Scott reviews 'The Secret of Our Success' by Joseph Henrich, which argues that culture, not raw intelligence, is key to human success and explores the evolutionary basis for cultural transmission.
Scott Alexander explores how minority views can be silenced through social censorship, using a 'first offender model' to explain the maintenance of taboos despite significant private support.
Scott Alexander theorizes that ancient religions were inseparable from culture, comparing them to modern American civil religion and explaining how they evolved into distinct belief systems.