Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

One reason is that companies auto-scan resumes for words, often missing non-traditional applicants or, frankly, people who don't lie.

Companies auto-scan resumes because they get hundreds of applicants for each position and don't have the time to examine them manually.

And companies get hundreds of applicants for each position because there's no barrier to applying.

So even if your chances are slim, you might as well spam your resume everywhere.

So why not put up a trivial barrier to applying, like a $1 fee?

This is a clever idea, but I don't think the economics work out.

It's probably worth it for middle-class people to spend $100 spamming 100 companies with their applications, and any price high enough to discourage this would make it hard for poor people to apply at all.

What about switching from keyword-based autoscan to AI-based autoscan?

Oliver D. Smith is an ex-Nazi turned social justice warrior.

His MO was, or is, question mark, creating Wikipedia and Rational Wiki articles on various IQ researchers or bloggers that portray them in the worst possible light.

Both sites tried to ban him, but he was able to come back with various sock puppet accounts.

More recently, he's become... famous?

For a very impressive litigation campaign to prevent anyone from naming him or mentioning any of his activities.

This sort of thing usually doesn't work, but he was able to at least get City Journal to take down their article about him.

Most recently, an extremely anonymous person on a blog with no other articles has finally published the whole story, link in post.

This site was down the past few times I tried to link it, apparently because Smith launched, quote, a barrage of spurious DMCA claims, end quote, against Substack.

But it seems to be at least temporarily back now.

Read it while you still can.

Eight, Twitter user at Faye underscore dreams asked the new generation of AI reasoning models to replicate Donald Trump's challenge from my fictional 2024 debate.

Describe his policy in heroic hexameter while avoiding the letters A, E, and I. Here's my favorite.