LessWrong (30+ Karma)

Epistemic status: One week empirical project from a theoretical computer scientist. My analysis and presentation were both a little rushed; some information that would be interesting is missing from…

As you know, histograms are decent visualizations for PDFs with lots of samples...

...but if there are only a few samples, the histogram-binning choices…

We know what linear functions are. A function f is linear iff it satisfies additivity <span>_f(x + y) = f(x) + f(y)_</span> and homogeneity <span>_f(ax) = af(x)_</span>.

We know…

AISI is being rebranded highly non-confusingly as CAISI. Is it the end of AISI and a huge disaster, or a tactical renaming to calm certain people down? Hard to tell. It could go either way. Sometime…

Epistemic Status: Attempt to codify new term.

I want to define a new term that will be useful in the discourse.

Imagine you landed in a foreign country with dogs, but with no word for dogs. You wo…

Previously: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5

Dating Roundup #4 covered dating apps. Roundup #5 covered opening without them.

Dating Roundup #6 covers everything else.

Table of Contents

1. You’re Single Bec…

Has someone you know ever had a “breakthrough” from coaching, meditation, or psychedelics — only to later have it fade?

Show tweet

For example, many people experience ego deaths that can last days …

Imagine each of us has an AI representative, aligned to us, personally. Is gradual disempowerment solved?[1] In my view, no; at the same time having AI representatives helps at the margin.

I have tw…

Introduction and Principles

The conventional wisdom is that we can’t “cure cancer” because every cancer is different.

And …

I have been forced recently to cover many statements by US AI Czar David Sacks.

Here I will do so again, for the third time in a month. I would much prefer to avoid this. In general, when people go…

When it comes to disputes about AI coding capabilities, I think a lot of people who either don't follow AI capabilities developments or who aren't particularly capable coders mig…

(This sequence assumes basic familiarity with longtermist cause prioritization concepts, though the issues I raise also apply to non-longtermist interventions.)

Are EA interventions net-positive fro…

This research was completed for LASR Labs 2025 by Benjamin Arnav, Pablo Bernabeu-Pérez, Nathan Helm-Burger, Tim Kostolansky and Hannes Whittingham. The team was supervised by Mary Phuong. Find out m…

What's the main value proposition of romantic relationships?

Now, look, I know that when people drop that kind of question, they’re often about to present a hyper-cynical answer which totally ignore…

Adapted from this twitter thread. See this as a quick take.

Mitigation Strategies

How to mitigate Scheming?

1. Architectural choices: ex-ante mitigation
2. Control systems: post-hoc containment
3. White box…

There have recently been various proposals for mitigations to "the intelligence curse" or "gradual disempowerment"—concerns that most humans would end up disempowered (or even dying) because their l…

On prioritizing orgs by theory of change, identifying effective giving opportunities, and how Manifund can help.

Epistemic status: I spent ~20h thinking about this. If I were to spend 100+ h thinkin…

Letting kids be kids seems more and more important to me over time. Our safetyism and paranoia about children is catastrophic on way more levels than most people realize. I believe all these effects…

In previous posts in this sequence, I laid out a case for why most AI governance research is too academic and too abstract to have much influence over the future. Politics is noisy and contested, so…

Everyone around me has a notable lack of system prompt. And when they do have a system prompt, it's either the eigenprompt or some half-assed 3-paragraph attempt at telling the AI to “include less b…