The strange, vast thoughts of Eliezer Yudkowsky
mugasofer : mugasofer : the-pasemi : yudkowsky : I understand why alchemists invented, and modern fiction writers use, systems with a few understandable Elements like Earth / Fire / Air / Water / Light / Dark. I understand why even most nerds don’t bother to study the Elements in real life. There’s too many of them, and they don’t neatly correspond to meaningful aspects of…
I understand why alchemists invented, and modern fiction writers use, systems with a few understandable Elements like Earth / Fire / Air / Water / Light / Dark. I understand why even most nerds don’t bother to study the Elements in real life. There’s too many of them, and they don’t neatly correspond to meaningful aspects of macro-level existence. But just once I’d like to…
Pegasus axis: Exuberant/adventurous (Dash) vs. quiet/cautious (Flutter) Unicorn axis: Stylish/sociable (Rare) vs. bookish/introverted (Sparkle) Earth-pony axis: Silly/creative (Pie) vs. sober/hardworking (Apple)
raginrayguns : nostalgebraist : Pattern (in temporal sequence): “the short charming one everyone kinda likes, mostly” / “the long monumental one with the rabid fans that people either love or hate” / “the strange forbidding one for devotees only” E.g.: Portrait of the Artist / Ulysses / Finnegans Wake The Hobbit / Lord of the Rings / The Silmarillion Homestuck Acts 1-4 / Homestuck Act 5 /…
“Good morning!” he said at last. “We don’t want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water.” By this he meant that the conversation was at an end. “What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!” said Gandalf. “Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won’t be good till I move off.” On…
airplane announcements in the land of the high-decouplers (from “ aviation is the most dangerous routine activity ”; prerequisite @lintamande ’s “ aviation is really remarkably safe ”)
nostalgebraist : This was my first in-depth conversation with Anthropic’s Claude 2 model. In all likelihood, it will also be my last in-depth conversation with Claude 2. Like… sometimes I roll my eyes at ChatGPT’s exaggerated, overly eager-to-please, “unhelpfully helpful” persona. But I’ll take ChatGPT’s “ managerial fantasy of ‘ideal’…
balioc : This is a purely and relentlessly thematic/Doylist set of categories. The question is: What is the magic for , in this universe that was created to have magic? Or, even better: What is nature of the fantasy that’s on display here? Because it is, literally, fantasy. It’s pretty much always someone’s secret desire. (NOTE: “Magic” here is being used to mean “usually actual magic that is…
Don’t get me wrong, I liked Scholomance. But I also want the story that I thought I was getting in the first half of A Deadly Education , the story of El Higgins, a witch with vast dark powers and prophesied to rise to a dread fate, who is kind of acerbic about the whole thing and never asked to be dark. I want to watch the Disney movie of it. I want to watch the story of Disney Princess El, who…
eightyonekilograms : homoluigi : urban-bike-cryptid-deactivated2 : eightyonekilograms : ALT View on Twitter This sure explains a lot. Is there anyone who has more details on this? I guess I’m out of touch because I’m not understanding the context of the tweets above. I know very little insider stuff but Elon just bought Twitter and announced he’s going to start charging for blue…
so did you know you can ask the AI for catboy Gandalf and it will just
phantomrose96 : phantomrose96 : Sometimes I go to myself “you know, I don’t understand what NFTs are” and then I go look it up again and discover, yes, actually I do know what NFTs are. It’s just that every time I read about them again I’m left going “this CAN’T be it, there has to be something else to make this make sense” and the answer is always…
tanadrin : Today I learned that in Germany, you can get insurance for your insurance–basically, it pays for legal expenses if you have to sue your first insurance (or otherwise incur legal expenses) for not doing what they should. I actually kind of love this. I wonder if it would work in other countries; here, for instance, what health insurance is obligated to pay for is specified quite…
balioc : Your ideology – if it gets off the ground at all – will start off with a core base of natural true believers . These are the people for whom the ideology is made. Unless it’s totally artificial, they are the people by whom the ideology is made. It serves their psychological needs; it’s compatible with their temperaments; it plays to their interests and preferences. They’re easy to…
slatestarscratchpad : slatestarscratchpad : Okay, people who understand statistics, help me out. My understanding is that the most common proper scoring rule is log odds, where you add the log odds of everything you predicted. So if I predict 99% chance the sun will rise this morning, and it does, I get ln(0.99/0.01) = 4.59. Then if I predict 99% chance the stock market will go up tomorrow, and it…
Major metropolitan areas need an online service where you give them a deposit and a key to your house; and then when you meet somebody interesting at a bar, you take a cellphone picture of them, ideally when they’re not looking; and within 1 hour, by the time you arrive at your house, your front room has framed photos and framed monochrome photos and ancient-looking worn paintings of you and them…
prokopetz : Level 1: Porn with plot Level 2: Porn with social commentary Level 3: Porn with troubling philosophical implications Level 4: Porn with maddening revelations of humanity’s place in the cosmos Level 5: Porn with math So I know I’m not the first to ask this, but if this post isn’t specifically about The Erogamer , I’d like to know what other literary work it was about. Or could even…
yudkowsky : mirasorastone : yudkowsky : prokopetz : Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons. Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it. “Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the…
mirasorastone : yudkowsky : prokopetz : Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons. Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it. “Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine…
prokopetz : Bad: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, but nobody picks up on it for various implausible reasons. Good: Superhero whose secret identity is just staggeringly obvious, and everybody “knows”, but in spite of countless people’s best efforts nobody can actually prove it. “Literally everyone knows that Bruce Kent is the Masculine Mongoose,” said the woman sitting…