10: empire state of mind

Author

Gavin Leech
November 08, 2025

  • Where I am now: SF → NY→ Bristol

  • What I’m doing now: leading 4 big Arb projects

  • Last Song: "Frank Mills" from Hair

  • Currently watching: Sergio Leone

  • Currently reading: “Into the Sciences”

  • Current Obsession: making a new taxonomy of AI safety

I am fizzing along with 4 big big Arb projects. Current goal is to feel proud of the year. Going to do 25% of the value in the last 13% of they year.

Andy Matuschak writes, kindly: “I enjoy your web site. I was reminded of Agnes Callard's "Twitter is a way to care about anything"—you seem to have a lot of methods for caring about anything!” Which makes me realise a latent function of all of my lists and my receptions: it is very very useful for a consultant to be interested in everything. But it would be a sad cold self-mod to do for that reason alone.

Curve

  • I went to this conference. Top 3 I’ve been to.

  • They succeeded in their goal of getting representation for lots of contradictory views. They had more actual disagreement than the reference class, but nowhere near enough. The American-elite-culture of nodding uncommunication is a heavy burden to lift.

  • Lambert says it was “SF [AGI is a big deal] vs DC [AGI will be normal]” instead of the Twitter battle lines. I did find common cause with people I didn’t expect to.

    Zvi: “like when the early season villains and heroes are now all working together as the stakes get raised and the new Big Bad shows up, then you do it again until everything is cancelled.”

  • Probably too many famous people picked, over people capable of technical disagreement, so I won’t namedrop. And no messaging system or email list!

  • But I met a new coauthor and and learned a lot about how DC works. Bunch of crazy people who think of themselves as sane, and who others treat as sane.

  • I met one guy who walked away whenever the conversation turned to technical AI (from SSI apparently) and one guy who told me a dozen things he probably shouldn’t have (from OpenAI).

  • A couple of gov people told me sotto voce that “of course the current administration are… just not good people”. Poor things.

  • Four hilarious belly-laugh conversations, two with someone I had just met.

  • I had many large new thoughts in SF. I wrote about buggering post-AGI economics. But overall I dislike the effect and am glad I’m not there much.

  • I have been talking to my taxi drivers. It’s good.

  • Hung out with the SF FABRIC people a lot. Gave them all this badge

  • Spent a full 13 hour day power-coding for the first time in a year without copilot. Atrophied muscles.

  • Four years of economic independence has made me free, honest, vitriolic, and a bit extra.

Book

  • Me and Dwarkesh’s book finally came out in print. I lost half a day to reading the buzz and seeing it on bookshelves.

  • I have no idea if it did well or not. Amazon ranking was good, but it was an unforced error to come out just after Yudkowsky’s one.

New York

  • Then a month in New York, test-driving the place for a future move. It was pretty wonderful! 16 new people, 11 dear old people.

  • “Drinking-in the grime”

  • It’s the only place in the world which pulls me out of the house rather than me having to push myself. It’s as walkable as a giant blob can be. And everything's <30 minutes away by train. I went to something every day, which has never happened to me before. I met 6 people.

    • So many awesome people with so much free time. PG’s essay (“New York tells you, above all: you should make more money. There are other messages too, of course. You should be hipper. You should be better looking. But the clearest message is that you should be richer”) is actually slander, or about south Manhattan specifically.

    • The Nonsense events newsletter is great and hardcore. There’s a whole other world of music out there, out here. A 24 hour continuous raga. Or The Compass Trio have no studio recordings.

    • Went to Marie's Crisis, a gay singalong bar. Really wonderful, probably my favourite night. (One novelty: having strangers smile at me.) On the Tuesday I went the audience’s singing was crazy good.

    • The Fractal people were very welcoming (they got me my sublet!), though I was lucky to arrive coincidentally(!) during their big open month.

    • I hadn’t heard of either the Frick or the Neue Galerie until one hour before I was in them, which was a powerful surprise. Thanks W!

    • The subway - the piss-stained, rusting, grubby subway - is a marvel. $2.90 when the economic cost is about $11 and the consumer surplus is way more. I was only accosted once, by a woman on something too strong for her.

  • Food was excellent but it's no Taipei. Favourites: Veselka, 1915 lanzhou noodles, Dhamaka, Mountain House, Petee’s

  • Went on a long walk through Williamsburg and hit on the Chassidic enclave by surprise. I was the only person for a mile not wearing a fedora and frockcoat. The most cinematic thing that has happened to me all year.

  • Didn’t hear many real Bugs Bunny / Carl Brutananadilewski / Regina Spektor accents, except in the bodega. This is a fact about my social circle, not New York.

  • Williamsburg. I got a sublet for $1600, which is a steal except that it’s across the street from a fire station. My bedroom was around 50dB at midnight. I'm told that the waterfront is really quiet.

  • After a month of this background attack running against me through earplugs it is sheer bliss to be back in Bristol and have my eyelid stop twitching.

Bristol

  • And currently enjoying seeing absolutely no one except my gf.

  • Write me if you’d like to comment on this year’s Shallow Review of AI Safety.

Posts

I've joined a daily writing group so lots of little bits:

Books

Playlists

Words

  • secretagogue (endocrinology n.): a substance that causes another to be secreted. See also galactagogue.

  • yunibare (Japanese v.): to be exposed as someone wearing Uniqlo (viz. cheap) clothes.

  • to main (gamer v.): to specialise in, to focus on. Originally for a chosen character class in a videogame, but leaking into real life. Heard irl as "I didn't expect him to be maining a woman."

  • Shadow prompt (tech n.): alleged prompt modification by the model provider’s backend before inference. Also used for the banal claim that providers have unseen system prompts.

  • I wanted to use “Shadow Prompting” to mean passing off AI work as your own. (A major problem for the study of AI creativity and therefore risk.)  What about echoing? Wet relay? But realistically it’s going to be “shadow AI”.

God bless America