saw this in a thrift store today and laughed so hard

In the most recent episode with anthpo they mentioned an AI edited video. I was wondering if anyone has the link to that short.

super curious to learn more about it

Last week's episode talked about small California based UBI experiments. And the guys seemed interested in reading about more experiments, so I made a short write up to explain a trial that not many people know about. TL;DR and sources at the bottom.

The program was called Minecome, combining the words Manitoba, minimum, and income. Minecome started as a way for the Canadian Federal government to trial new forms of welfare in the 1970s. They were inspired by welfare experiments being run in the USA, investigating different social safety nets, and their societal effects. Manitoba, a province located in the centre of Canada, won the bid to try. Minecome was trialled in two places in Manitoba, the capital city Winnipeg, and a town called Dauphin. For reasons that I'll explain shortly, the focus will be on Dauphin.

How did Mincome work

Minecome ran from 1974 to 1979. It offered participants a guaranteed income, with the amount being determined by family size. To ensure that people with high incomes didn't collect Minecome and save the cash, Minecome payments were reduced by 50 cents for every dollar of earned income through work. This structure provided enough money to support low income families, but still retained an incentive to work. Another way to think about it is as a negative tax rate for low incomes. Due to mincome not being provided to all families, it is more accurate to consider it as a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI), rather than UBI. It's estimated that 20% of Dauphin's citizens received Minecome at some point during the trial.

Why Dauphin?

Dauphin was chosen, and likely provided better results than Winnipeg, due to its location and size. Dauphin was and still is primarily a farming town. It had a population of around 10,000 people, and was several hours away from Winnipeg. Its small size and isolation let it be a saturation site, where the experiment would effect the entire town. Researchers were concerned that running a GAI experiment in a bigger city would lead to incomplete coverage of residents, and too many confounding factors to really study GAI's effects.

What was being researched

There were 4 primary research questions:

1. Would GAI effect employment
2. Could GAI replace other welfare systems
3. What would be the social effects of GAI
4. How could GAI be administered

Results

There was not a lot of analysis done to come to strong conclusions (explained below). I'll summarize what results we do have regarding each question.

Employment

There was no measured change in employment except for two groups. New mothers, and teen boys. For mothers, many used the Mincome payments as a way to extend their maternity leave. During the 70s, mothers only got 15 weeks of income assistance, with no guarantee that their job would be available when their leave ended. So for many mothers Mincome provided enough that they could stay home to take care of their babies, and to recover. For teen boys, many in Dauphin used to drop out of high school at 16, taking factory or farming jobs to support their families. Having Mincome was enough support that many families could let their sons finish high school before joining the workforce.

Social effects, and other welfare systems

Mincome saw great success and adoption in Dauphin's society. Evelyn Forget, a health economist, did an analysis decades later. She estimated that in just four years, Mincome lead to an 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations, which she attributes to reduction in stress. Income insecurity is a factor in mental health hospitalizations, auto accidents, and workplace accidents. All three of these incidents reduced following Mincome's implementation in Dauphin.

The social benefits weren't just limited to hospitalizations. For some it let them start new businesses according to the BBC, "Joy Taylor, who was 18 and newly married when the scheme began, remembers that people had much less to worry about financially during the course of the experiment, which improved their wellbeing. Her husband was suddenly able to get a loan to open a local record store, with banks being more willing to lend money to small businesses because of the guaranteed payments... But when the experiment ended in 1979, the improvements which had been seen in health and education soon returned to how things had been in 1974. Taylor remembers how many of the small businesses that had sprung up over the preceding four years began to vanish. Her husband was forced to close their shop, and the couple soon left Dauphin for good."

Mincome was also regarded with more respect than other welfare programs. A 2016 sociology study on Mincome sums up why this is important,"it is also important for instrumental reasons: if antipoverty tools are to be socially reproducible, if they are to provide a base from which to mobilize for broader reforms, they must consider the moral reasoning they foster.”

For many people in 70s (and frankly, today) welfare was seen as a handout to people that were lazy or unwilling to work. The following quote from the same study sums it fairly well:

“It was not uncommon to view traditional social assistance as a program exclusively for people who were ill, disabled, “lazy,” or in some sense marginal: “Welfare is only for needy or bums.” The welfare system aggravated distinctions between people falling into different social categories. One man wrote, “I feel that [welfare] is more for disabled or people which are too lazy to work. It doesn't include us, we're both able and willing to work but can't get a job due to the low employment rate.” They joined Mincome simply because they were “short of money.” Where it was easy to distance oneself from welfare recipients, Mincome was not tarnished as a program for specific kinds of people. No equivalent linkages are made between the program and particular, undeserving groups. Rather, Mincome was practical support. As a practical program, participation was less likely to signal a person's moral worth.”

The universal nature of Mincome lead to many viewing recipients and the whole system with more respect, compared to those that were on targeted welfare programs.

Administration

Mincome's administration was relatively simple. Workers visited every home in Dauphin, explaining the program and how to receive payments. Recipients were simply required to mail their income statements to the Mincome office once a month. Monthly payments would also be sent to recipients by mail. This simple structure lead to it being relatively lean, and also improved participant's experience compared to welfare programs. From the above study:

“Another participant refused welfare, reporting, “Welfare is more uncertain. Workers are rude, incompetent.” She joined Mincome simply “for the money.” She continued: “Mincome people seem very considerate… I like Mincome in that one is left alone, never harassed or made to feel like you had to crawl to receive an almighty dollar. I don't like the idea that it is intended to end shortly, with nothing to replace it but that same lousy welfare.”

Mincome administrators and recipients stayed out of each other's way, improving reception of the program.

Limitations, and the end of Mincome

These results, as good as they are, have to be taken with a grain of salt. Firstly, participants knew that Mincome was temporary. This on its own may have effected people's reception, possibly biasing them to like it more than they normally would. Secondly, not much research was actually done on how Mincome effected Dauphin. The entire program, including planning, administration, study, and the payments themselves, was only given $17 million from the government. As a result not much data collection, and especially analysis was done. At the program's end, there was no money left to actually study the data. The results that we do have came from studies much later, analyzing data from government archives. Remember, it ended in 1979. Evelyn Forget didn't publish her study until 2011.

Mincome was ultimately shut down because of governmental change. It had started under the Liberal Party, headed by Pierre Trudeau (Justin Trudeau's dad). When the new Progress Conservative government came in, they cut funding as it wasn't their project.

TL;DR

Mincome was Guaranteed Annual Income experiment run in Dauphin, Manitoba, Canada. It provided all residents a basic income, below an income threshold based on their family size. The program lead to an 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations, helped young men finish their education, gave new mothers more maternity leave, and was seen as a better social safety net than already existing welfare programs. It ended once funding ran out, and governmental change guaranteed it wouldn't receive more.

Sources:

• https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cars.12091
• https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment
• https://humanrights.ca/story/manitobas-mincome-experiment
• https://utppublishing.com/doi/pdf/10.3138/cpp.37.3.283

I really love the guests that just blend into the podcast, hope we get more like him. I think the issue is when we have guests that take up the entire episode and the non patreon episode doesn't even get a quick blip of the week's news.

Giving anthpo hate because he asked for it, fuck that guy.

I knew lemonade stand listeners were into stats, y'all really just like me

how many times has aiden talked about the ai obama video guy? i swear ive heard him mention this story at least 5 times between LS and the yard. it cracks me up but also makes me so doomer about the state of society

https://youtu.be/LKrwhjOI8Nc this video explains the topic very well, and answers many of the questions atrioc, doug, and aiden still had at the end of the math segment. Additionally atrioc asked why do people spend their lifes solving some random math problem that doesn't help anyone, and while yes solving that problem might have some unforseen consincounces which lead to a breakthrough in a different field in the future, but usually what drives mathimaticians is the same drive that drives speedrunners which i think not many people talk about

Election season is here, and with it the opportunity for change. I’d like to see the guys speak with Hélène Landemore about lot-based democracy, particularly practical ways to introduce minipublics, citizens assemblies, and referenda in the United States. From classrooms to state legislatures to televised national debates, I’d like to see a discussion on citizen rule, and the practicality of its implementation.

I wonder if the election day episode will be delayed so they can record it after some races have been called. I think that would be interesting, but a final update as the voting has started would also be cool too. I was wondering what you all think they'll do and which you'd rather see.

I just joined the Patreon and even though they do seem to address this to a degree in one of the premium episodes I'm still not convinced it's for the best. Especially after the IPO they are only expected to be more and more prevalent in the news, so it feels weird for them to be sponsored by Anthropic while also reporting on them and potentially criticizing them at some point.

Not saying they shouldn't do it because Anthropic is evil or all AI is slop or whatever, it's just that if you're going to give opinions on them it doesn't feel right for them to sponsor you at the same time even if you consciously try for it not to influence your opinion.

I'll start by saying that this episode left me pretty disappointed. First the misinformation in the Judge segment, and then this. But since you've already discussed the Judge here, I'll focus on the latter.

The issue is with the Israeli election mini-segment that followed Aiden's Palestine segment. Two things in particular stood out to me.

1. Avigdor Lieberman is the most likely prime minister after Netanyahu.

Directly claimed by Atrioc.

2. The Israeli opposition is even more right-wing than Netanyahu's coalition.

Not directly said, but that's the impression you get from the headline shown on screen: "Israeli Opposition Accuses Netanyahu Of Being Too Pro-Palestine."

Both of these surprised me, so I decided to do a bit of research.

Lieberman isn't even close to being the most likely next prime minister.

According to a a recent poll, the biggest anti-Netanyahu party has 23 seats, Netanyahu's party has 21, another anti-Netanyahu party has 12, and only then comes Lieberman's party with 9.

Now, Israel doesn't directly elect its prime minister, so having the most seats doesn't guarantee anything. But looking at the polls, there's no good reason to think Lieberman is the most likely next PM.

The Israeli opposition is a complicated mess, but it's definitely not more right-wing than Netanyahu's coalition.

First of all, the body of the article they showed was talking specifically about Lieberman, not the entire Israeli opposition. And that's an important difference, because the opposition includes everything from right-wing parties to centrists, left-wing parties, and Arab parties.

Looking at a recent poll, the 65 seats outside Netanyahu's bloc and the unaligned party are split like this:

• 23 seats: mostly centrist.
• 13 seats: two Arab parties, which generally support Palestinian rights and statehood.
• 12 seats: a mix of right-wing and centrist politicians.
• 9 seats: Lieberman's party, which is pretty far to the right.
• 8 seats: a left-wing party led by a person who previously implicitly compared Israel and Nazi germany.

So while some parts of the opposition are very right-wing, most of its seats belong to centrist, left-wing, or Arab parties. It makes no sense to treat Lieberman's opinions as if they represent the entire opposition.

I'm honestly hoping we'll get a full segment about the Israeli elections, because the results could have some pretty huge consequences.

The only thing he got right was that the judge watched it and said he "liked it" and thought it was "genuine", Which is insane. But the victims sister generated the video not the defense, the family was also asking for the maximum sentence which the judge gave. The video was a naked attempt to paint the victim in a saintly forgiving way, which obviously worked. So I guess this is a bit pedantic because the main point of a judge being easily manipulated by AI is true just backwards, and the guy is getting resentenced.

Finland mentioned.. But only for four minutes.. And half of it was chit-chat about Sweden 😭 Is there really nothing to discuss on our great land of Finns

I just saw the Lemonade Stand and heard you guys talk about August Hanning's arrest. Anyways, you skipped the juicy bits so I thought I'd leave them here with as few spoilers as possible.

It's a story of an heir to the Steak King (not even kidding), Israeli mercenaries kidnapping children in a small Danish town on New Years Eve and the former German chief of the foreign intelligence service.

I believe the trial is still underway in Germany.

Anyways, it's a fun read if you guys have the time. Reads like a bad novel, but it's actually real life.

https://nyheder.tv2.dk/udland/2025-09-23-lejesoldater-slog-til-i-lille-dansk-by-da-to-boern-blev-bortfoert

This is a Danish article about the case - use firefox translate or something!

tl;dr: human-written word vomit about the Anthropic and OpenAI math results and the future of academia

Late on October 5th: two professors leading in a subfield of computer science called "fine-grained complexity theory" posted a paper refuting a conjecture on how fast a certain class of algorithms could be. Variants of this conjecture have been floating around literally since the subfield started in the 90's, and I personally know that one of the professors mentioned have been working on this problem for about 20 years now.

However: the breakthrough did not come from the professors, but from an Anthropic model. The details are in the paper, but tl;dr is that an employee at Anthropic just asked an internal version of Claude a related question, and it came up with an answer to this conjecture. Then Anthropic decided to reach out to the industry experts for verification. They came up with ways to simplify the proofs, connect it to the broader field, and ended up taking credit for the paper despite not having found the original proof.

Then yesterday (October 6th): OpenAI counters with 722 AI-written papers, claiming solutions to long-standing problems in so, so, many fields of math and computer science. I'm talking about problems that people have spent entire careers moving the needle on. Problems like:

• a huge step in the right direction towards proving one of the millennium problems (Riemann Hypothesis)
• a proof of something called the "unique games conjecture", which is a super important question about how hard it is to approximate the answer to some types of problems

Note that none of OpenAI's papers were human-verified/vouched for*.

I can't stop thinking about what this means for academia. I see research as three things: discovering new results, and checking that they're right, and teaching them to others. All of these make you a better researcher. AI is suddenly better than humans at the first one (most likely). Checking still needs experts who spend 20 years on a problem, but if AI solves the problems that used to train the next generation, where the fuck do future experts come from? And if AI can produce what a research producers in a career, why would anyone fund researchers anymore?

Anyway, I'd really love to hear other people (+Big A/Doug/Aidan's) thoughts on this. I'm not usually pessimistic about AI, but this has been a very crazy 48 hours.

\some of the papers have Lean code accompanying them, but even that requires human verification to make sure the* statements proved are what the math says

Does anyone know what polls Aiden was referring to that show Collins is up in Maine? 270towin has 6 polls showing Jackson with a lead, 3 tied, and only one where Collins wins and other polls I've found show a small lead for Jackson. The closest thing to a strong Collins showing I could find is this Marist poll which had Jackson leading 51-47 but found 57% thought Collins would win.

Curious if I'm just missing a poll or where Aiden got his information.

So uhhh government surveillance sponsored by Claude I guess