OC ACXLW Meetup 113 — Technological Adolescence, Moltbook & OpenClaw

Date: Saturday, February 7, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
Host: Michael Michalchik • michaelmichalchik@gmail.com • (949) 375-2045

Materials (links)

• Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/zu5YrNJiBQg?si=wU3hg6jIUE3FHhcK
• Scott Alexander — Best of Moltbook (ACX): https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/best-of-moltbook
• NotebookLM podcast: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/ce0b56eb-e5d3-48b8-9868-01c9656b65a1?artifactId=1445efe4-63a8-4f17-ae73-d4d0ec4940fe
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/p9acrso71KU?si=bNSBcfWO0KHPnJBk

Discussion pack (summaries + questions)

1) Dario Amodei — The Adolescence of Technology

Key points (medium-length):

• “Technological adolescence” frame: we’re entering a turbulent phase where capabilities outpace governance; think of a “country of geniuses in a datacenter” operating far faster than humans.
• Risk buckets: autonomy risks, misuse for destruction, power-seizing misuse, economic disruption, and indirect destabilizers (e.g., propaganda, coercion).
• Strategy vibe: avoid fatalism; pursue surgical interventions—targeted company practices

ACXLW Saturday Meeting #112 — The Land Trap & Why Our Brains Crave Ideology

📅 Date: Saturday, January 24, 2026
🕒 Time: 2:00 PM
📍 Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
👤 Host: Michael Michalchik — michaelmichalchik@gmail.com | (949) 375-2045

ACXLW Saturday Meeting #112 — The Land Trap & Why Our Brains Crave Ideology

Conversation Starters

1) The Land Trap (text + video)

Read: Book Review by Lars Doucet → https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/book-review-the-land-trap-by-mike (Progress and Poverty)
Watch: Related video short → https://youtu.be/L7vGUOgSulM

Summary (medium length)

• The review distills Mike Bird’s thesis: because land is scarce, immobile, and ideal collateral, modern credit cycles and investment booms revolve around land values—which can crowd out productive investment and amplify inequality. (Progress and Poverty)
• Historic and global cases (e.g., Japan’s bubble/bust; China’s real-estate-centric policy trilemma) show how states and banks become structurally

ACXLW Meetup #111 — Post-American Internet & Everlasting Empire

Saturday, January 10, 2026 · 2:00 PM

Host: Michael Michalchik · Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com · Phone: (949) 375-2045
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660

Hello folks! We’re on for this Saturday. Two meaty topics: rebuilding an internet that resists “enshittification,” and what makes some empires feel… everlasting.

1) A Post-American, Enshittification-Resistant Internet (39C3 talk, Dec 28, 2025)

Text (transcript): https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition (Pluralistic)
Video: https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet (Media CCC)
(YouTube mirror: https://youtu.be/39jsstmmUUs?si=vvD3MlRSn1am3L5T)

Summary (bullet points):

• Diagnosis: Platform capture leads to predictable degradation (“enshittification”) as firms squeeze users, business customers, and the public once lock-in is achieved. The talk frames this as a structural, not just cultural, failure. (Pluralistic)
• Levers that work: Interoperability/“adversarial interoperability,” genuine exit rights,

OC ACXLW Meetup #109 — When the Numbers Stop Meaning Anything America’s Broken Poverty Line & UCSD’s Grade Mirage, Saturday, December 6, 2025
Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)
Time: 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. PT

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SzMulku7BF3QdyuEXo8qcUPXjTVt6bV63N-mb-7dyzM/edit?usp=sharing

Topic 1: My Life Is a Lie — How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America

Text (essay):
 Title Link: My Life Is a Lie — How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America
 URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sO0Ksej5OZk7C3jKN9XI6z_jo428OlOFiGeRWY9pppY/edit?usp=drive_link

Audio (NotebookLM highlights, may include video/quizzes/flashcards):
 Title Link: NotebookLM AI-generated audio summary
 URL: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/db9e76c4-048b-4281-bc07-8feb82aea9f9?artifactId=032642e7-72a0-409a-a7aa-7b1722a3603c

Summary

Michael Green’s essay argues that America’s foundational measure of poverty—the 1963 Orshansky “food × 3” formula—has silently deformed national economic discourse for six decades. Because food no longer represents 33% of household... (read 586 more words →)

Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660 Host: Michael Michalchik
Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)
Time: 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. PT 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ofEhbYQF4p3n-PsKbEJNSonFZ0vN86hHgA43yVPDN2Y/edit?usp=sharing

Topic 1: Early Science Acceleration Experiments with GPT‑5

Text (paper):
Title Link: Early science acceleration experiments with GPT‑5 — Sébastien Bubeck et al.
URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WK-gLuF_MLUyo4Y4OuWL6jZoC6hkY51P/view?usp=sharing

Audio highlights (podcast):
Title Link: NotebookLM AI podcast of paper highlights
URL: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/25328d16-29dd-490a-94e1-750239cbcd56?artifactId=43c3f296-15f5-4f02-abc5-ca6f6f03a2db

Summary: Case‑study paper describing how GPT‑5 assisted ongoing research across mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, biology, and materials science. Reported contributions include concrete research steps, documented human‑AI interaction patterns, and four new, independently verified results in mathematics. Authors describe where AI accelerated progress, where it failed or required human steering, and what verification and experiment‑design practices made collaborations productive. Takeaway: modest domain‑level advances with... (read 322 more words →)

OC ACXLW Meetup: Halloween Edition — Haunted Houses & Post-Discontent Societies — October 25, 2025
 #107

Date: Saturday, October 25, 2025
 Time: 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
 Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik
 Email: Michaelmichalchik@gmail.com

Introduction:
 Two eerie, rationalist-friendly topics. First, a classic “haunted house” narrative from early 20th-century Washington, D.C., told through vivid reportage and audio storytelling. Second, Isaac Arthur’s framework for “post-discontent” societies, where systems resolve unrest not by ending scarcity but by removing dissatisfaction itself.

Discussion Topics:

Topic 1: A Real Haunted House?

• Readings: Short narrative case study of a family plagued by strange footsteps, bells, dread, and failing health.
  
   
  • Neatorama: A Real-Life Ghost Story
    
     
    • URL: https://www.neatorama.com/2012/10/22/A-Real-Life-Ghost-Story/
      
       
• Audio: Modern retelling that captures the atmosphere and investigative arc.
  
   
  • This American Life

OC ACXLW Meetup: The Dragon Hatchling & Defending Democracy – October 12, 2025
 Meeting #106

Date: Sunday, October 12, 2025
 Time: 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. PT
 Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik
 Email: michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (For questions or requests)

Introduction

This week’s meetup bridges two frontiers: one exploring a biologically inspired architecture that might connect Transformers and the human brain, and another testing what it really means to “defend democracy” when the will of the people clashes with the survival of democratic institutions.

We’ll start with The Dragon Hatchling — a proposed “missing link” between deep learning architectures and biological computation — then move to Scott Alexander’s Defining Defending Democracy, a timely piece on institutional legitimacy and... (read 1332 more words →)

OC-ACX-LW Meetup: Reality Tunnels, Creative Agnosticism & Predictive Processing – Saturday, August 30, 2025 Meeting #103

OC-ACX-LW Meetup: Reality Tunnels, Creative Agnosticism & Predictive Processing – Saturday, August 30, 2025 Meeting #103
 Date & time: 2:00 p.m. (wrap ~5–6)
 Place: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik — michaelmichalchik@gmail.com — (949) 375-2045
 Snacks: Welcome but not required

Readings:

• Introduction to Reality Tunnels: A Tool for Understanding the Postmodern World — Mykola Bilokonsky — https://medium.com/reality-tunnels/introduction-to-reality-tunnels-a-tool-for-understanding-the-postmodern-world-72cdd98af9d0
  
   
• Creative Agnosticism — Robert Anton Wilson (Journal of Cognitive Liberties, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2000) — https://www.cognitiveliberty.org/ccle1/4jcl/4JCL61.htm
  
   
• Book Review: Surfing Uncertainty — Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex) — https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/
  
   

Recommended audio overview (covers all three):
 NotebookLM overview — https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/b89a6b5e-b8a0-47c8-9fd1-90d0f1bdd000?artifactId=6f2de7c4-fcb8-4468-9772-b3d1b5db81c8

Summaries

1) Introduction to Reality Tunnels (Bilokonsky).
 Via Robert Anton Wilson’s notion of... (read 662 more words →)

OC ACXLW Meetup: What is a “cult”? Do we spawn them? — August 23, 2025
 Meeting #102

Date & time: Saturday, August 23, 2025, 2:00 p.m. (wrap ~5–6)
 Place: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik — michaelmichalchik@gmail.com — (949) 375-2045

Readings (two short pieces):

• Eileen Barker, “The cult as a social problem” (LSE working version, 2013) — https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/50874/
  
   
• Ozy Brennan, “Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?” (Asterisk, Aug 2025) — https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/why-are-there-so-many-rationalist-cults
  
  AI Audio Overview: https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/140e141e-01b5-456f-94a3-4d71905af1b8?artifactId=4b79eae4-8059-4829-b58f-d8e58be32dd2

Extra (optional): We might play the dark-humor ethics game Trial by Trolley later. Rules video: https://youtu.be/gwTEimusrhM?si=ryWMVxd8G20kaP3C

Summaries

1) Barker — “The cult as a social problem.”
 Barker argues that “cult” talk is often a construction—an image of “bad religion” set against “good/true” religion—rather... (read 383 more words →)

OC ACXLW Meetup: The Unbearable Accuracy of Stereotypes – August 16, 2025 Meeting #101

Date & time: Saturday, August 16, 2025, 2:00 p.m. (we’ll meander toward wrap-up around 5 to 6)
 Place: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Host: Michael Michalchik — michaelmichalchik@gmail.com (949/375/2045)

Reading (one topic only this week):

• The Unbearable Accuracy of Stereotypes — Jussim et al. — https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0lqrnaEkJWCbDYzNkZiLWNtV2M/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-gAPMcDFfuIuHvr4C1F-lOw
  
   
• Recommended Audio quick orientation (16 minutes): AI-generated NotebookLM podcast-style summary — https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/37d2b4a5-660a-4769-b93d-f937cd6a8058?artifactId=0029cc61-35c0-4212-b8ff-c5c003eb1d07
  
   

Summary

The chapter argues that “stereotypes” should be defined neutrally as beliefs about attributes of social groups, not assumed false or malicious from the start. Accuracy is an empirical matter. It separates two levels that people often blur: (1) whether beliefs about group averages track reality and (2) whether you should apply... (read 523 more words →)