AIβs Cigarette Butler Problem
Alignment, dopamine, and the danger of too much of what we want
Imagine a butler whose sole purpose is to supply you with whatever you desire. He studies your dopamine output...and constantly supplies you with cigarettes.
I wrote about why AI faces the same problem as social media: it's incentivized to feed our base desires www.riskgaming.com/p/ais-cigar...
15.07.2025 16:41
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Coco Gauff is about to step onto the court at Wimbledon. But the headlines have been entirely focused on an apology she recently receivedβone she accepted, but her fans strangely did not.
I wrote about this confusion that happens when a private apology goes public.
01.07.2025 18:39
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It's election day in New York City! To celebrate, we had the leaders of @abundanceny.bsky.social on the Riskgaming podcast. We talked housing, subways, community boards, Robert Moses, and the politics of growth.
24.06.2025 20:45
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The details of my friend Alistairβs deportation are even more horrific than I previously thought. Recommend reading his brutally honest account:
19.06.2025 14:15
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Hi everyone
I was denied entry, detained, and deported from the USA over the last 48 hours because of my reporting on the Columbia student protests
I arrived back in Melbourne hours ago and had my phone handed back to me upon landing
14.06.2025 01:27
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I wrote about Joni Ernst's "apology," the medicaid cuts, getting banned on X, and the legacy of my late Uncle Ravi
09.06.2025 11:52
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How can we make the internet fun again?
RenΓ©e DiResta on the future of social media
The internet didnβt used to suck this much. @dannycrichton.com and I talked to the great @noupside.bsky.social about middleware, community gardens, this website, and how to make the internet fun again.
Transcript below!
www.riskgaming.com/p/how-can-we...
21.05.2025 15:58
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The NYTβs alien headline is everything wrong with science journalism
Building trust means teaching us all to live with scientific uncertainty
We have probably not found aliens, yet. Science is all about uncertaintyβbut you wouldn't know it from the headlines.
I wrote about how the media has decreased trust in science, and aided the Trump Administration's war on science, for the Riskgaming newsletter: www.riskgaming.com/p/the-nyts-...
06.05.2025 15:15
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Cheating at Chess
DrLupo, Marina Keegan, and a Twitch charity tournament gone awry
I wrote about chess and a cheating scandal that happened today on Twitch and the apology that followed open.substack.com/pub/laurence...
02.05.2025 23:25
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https://www.riskgaming.com/p/riskgaming-against-a-world-on-fire
Itβs a big day for us at the Riskgaming Initiativeβwe now have our own website and substack, and to celebrate Danny has penned a brilliant and only slightly crazed manifesto on what the hell this is and why weβre doing it.
Give it a read! t.co/JWL8b8DbCN
28.04.2025 23:07
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Think Bush going after Kerry's military service. Or the Doolittle raid in WWII.
From Karl Rove to Carl von Clausewitz, tacticians have always recommended and deployed attacking your opponent's strength.
It proves that even their best isn't good enough.
26.04.2025 14:08
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We should protest arbitrary deportations to El Salvadorian gulags because it's the right thing to do.
But it's also a smart political tactic. You absolutely should attack your opponent's strength.
26.04.2025 14:07
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but without yeast!
12.04.2025 21:56
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LinkedIn post of Lithuanian business class playing βPowering Upβ
Yesterday a business school in Lithuania did a play-through of our China/EV Riskgaming scenario without us even knowing!
Building a worldwide Riskgaming community like this is one of the great advantages of being open source.
09.04.2025 13:23
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The hyper-competition of U.S.-China trade relations
Neil Thomas and Kate Logan on information overload, industrial strategy, and trade
I learned so much from talking to these two...about information overload, the energy transition, and why we've been "wasting trillions" on the wrong industries out of pure envy.
Read: riskgaming.substack.com/p/the-hyper...
Or listen wherever you get your podcasts!
07.04.2025 12:06
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The obsession with trade deficits, manufacturing jobs...Trump clearly has China envy.
So we had @neilthomas123.bsky.social and @katelogan.bsky.social, two top China industrial strategy experts, on the pod. They played our riskgame and told us what we got right, wrong, and everything in-between
07.04.2025 12:06
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Maybe us Jews really do control the markets and the weather
03.04.2025 11:58
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image preview of the linked substack
I wrote about comms consultants, that guy big ballz, and how the right wing plays the apology game better than the left on twitter.
(Also: I'm moving from a private newsletter to substack!)
laurencepevsner.substack.com/p/on-comms-c...
04.03.2025 15:57
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Subway take guy with metrocard as mic asking βso whatβs your take?β
TSA agents should be able to nominate well-behaved and efficient boarders to get lounge status
27.02.2025 16:09
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In LA they just sell you viral products straight from TikTok
26.02.2025 01:11
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Truly a tower of pickles above a charcuterie spread
Obsessed with this pickle tower, complete with a pickle juice waterfall, erected for a German election results watch party
23.02.2025 19:58
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a special 60-second teaser for our lovely Bluesky fans
20.02.2025 22:00
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County has got to be up there (BK represent)
20.02.2025 03:55
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Call me Wilt Chamberlain because I did this last week at the *exact* same location except it was the Ezra Klein Show
20.02.2025 01:06
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Step 2 is where this thought process goes wrong
15.02.2025 14:30
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