iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 21h

Huh, I would think if they could build whatever harness they want, that would include just, like, downloading a chess engine and using that?

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"mainstream textbooks, for instance, mine that I just wrote,"

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Yeah, but for Russell/Norvig I think the framing came directly from Russell's work at the time? e.g., here's a 1994 Russell paper people.eecs.berkeley.edu/%7Erussell/p...

people.eecs.berkeley.edu

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Yep, but I'm mostly referring to the "rational maximizing agent" frame that forms the structural spine, as Claude might say

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

But I later came to realize this framing was actually kind of idiosyncratic

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

By weight it's 90+% summarizing ideas from elsewhere, but it adopts a particular unifying structural frame around, basically, utility-maximizing agents. This mostly only shows up directly in the first chapter and first page of each chapter, also informs the organization of chapters

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I always thought Yudkowsky got a lot of stuff (like, general direction) from Russell-Norvig "AI: A Modern Approach" textbook

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

but isn't programmability fundamental to what computers are, with premade software being something layered on top? Like if you bought a home computer in the early 1980s it would probably boot to a programming language prompt

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Holly ⏸️ Elmore @ilex-ulmus.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I think Survival and Flourishing Fund funding was used as tool by the SFF re-grantors and advisers to make the other PauseAI denounce me in retaliation for criticizing them.

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

this sort of has the causality backwards IMO, i.e., AI didn't get the focus on utility maximization from Yudkowsky/rationalists; rather, AI theory/textbooks (esp. Stuart Russell's AIMA) from the 1990s and 2000s were organized around utility maximization and Yudkowsky/rationalists got it from there

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

(and removing Vance as well? to be replaced with whom?)

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

So if the midterm results are as decisive as polls suggest, is there a possibility of impeaching Trump again (the part that doesn't do anything) and actually convicting (part that does something?) and removing him this time? Presumably this would still require peeling off a faction of Republicans?

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

????? were you not around for the 2000 election or something? everyone did not know it wasn't true. it was absolutely infuriating. I personally spent a lot of time and energy back then trying to correct people on this, to little avail

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

oh right, I guess I could also do the equivalent in Latin. but that feels too corny to me (as no doubt the classical Chinese version would if I'd grown up in a Chinese culture)

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

studying classical Chinese just so I can come up with bespoke 4-character motivational slogans for various life stuff & things

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think this is pretty good worldspiritsockpuppet.com/2022/10/14/a... though it's by someone in the x-risk sphere I'm not sure I agree there haven't been any good counterarguments, but I do feel like they've been weirdly thin on the ground.

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I have kind of an ugh field around using llms/agents tbh or rather, I get psychotic/addicted to particular projects or threads using them, but tend to resist using or introducing them somewhere else/new, just bc I kinda don't feel like it

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

this episode in particular made my skin crawl, tho happy she left ofc

"My rationalist ex (Ronny Fernandez) once told a friend of ours that the meaning of her marriage was 'Holly can't leave me' and the meaning of [points to other friends]'s marriage was 'Holly can't leave me' and the point of marriage itself was 'Holly can't leave me'.

Well I could and I did."

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

this episode in particular made my skin crawl, tho happy she left ofc

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Hélianthe @helianthe.net · 02/10/2026

lmao, Scott Alexander the Neoreactionary Apologist seemingly unaware in his Messiah-posting that his other cult leader Curtis Yarvin loves comparing Yudkowsky to Shabbatai Zevi

INTERVIEWER: More lightning round takes on what became of Less Wrong?

YARVIN: Were you ever a rationalist? Are you now, or have you ever been a rationalist, I should say?

INTERVIEWER: I was friends with them. They were always encouraging me to jump right in, but I was happy being a peripheral.

YARVIN: I respect those people, but there's a sort of Peter principle to them there. I always wanted to troll them with my Bayesian analysis of Barack Obama's birth certificate. The problem is—adopting that name—no one should ever adopt a self-aggrandizing name for anything that they do. It kills you instantly. It's instantly pretentious. Not only does it not fool anyone else, its main effect is to fool yourself, and so when you compare being a rationalist like Eliezer Yudkowsky to being someone like Socrates, who was like, "My wisdom is knowing what I don't know", I see on one hand wisdom, and I see on the other hand arrogance. And when I choose between wisdom and arrogance, it's obvious which I want to choose. Eliezer always reminded me—I've only met him a few times, never talked much, but—it's funny, the person that Eliezer always reminded me of was—do you know who Sabbatai Zevi was?

INTERVIEWER: The Jewish historical figure, the one who was supposed to be the messiah, and then converted to Islam—

YARVIN: Exactly, exactly. If you look at woodcuts of Sabbatai Zevi, it's Eliezer Yudkowsky; it's the same person. There's a lot of inbreeding going on there. More than that, I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that in the same position, Eliezer Yudkowsky would also convert to Islam.

https://unremediatedgender.space/2020/Aug/yarvin-on-less-wrong/ (CW: transphobic blanchardist website)

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It kind of reminds me of this story by Daniel Ellsberg www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2... except he is, like, deliberately dedicated to moronmaxxing in a self-reinforcing process that continuously generates new bogus esoteric knowledge

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Wentworth always struck me as tremendously stupid tbh. like, willfully stupid or something, his Dunning-Kruger levels are wild even for lesswrong. I guess adopting the attitude displayed in the OP screensnip is a way to make yourself stupid

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

did MIRI use to claim that AIXI was literally possible? I thought they always regarded it as "unbounded analysis" www.lesswrong.com/w/methodolog...

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Like, willfully stupid or something, his Dunning-Kruger levels are wild even for lesswrong. I guess adopting the attitude displayed in the OP screensnip is a way to make yourself stupid

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

That guy always struck me as tremendously stupid tbh

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The Roko's basilisk episode happened in 2010 though?

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Thanks, fair enough. My impression though is that the funds that go into x-risk stuff are still pretty small on the scale of industries (including entertainment/hobby/etc ones), govt budgets, etc

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I don't really understand how this is true except in the sense that everything is a distraction from everything else. Like why is it true of long-term risks and not, idk, baseball, algebraic geometry, film noir, Chinese cooking, Street Fighter, birdwatching, or calligraphy

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Never successfully got a job like that (and I tried!)

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I sort of associate Heidegger *with* "low-decoupling" (or "thickness", "situatedness") though?

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

But yeah these are standard late-90s Usenet rec.arts.sf.* opinions and writing (including hating on Buffy season 4)

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Sorry for not including alt text but I just could not bring myself to type that out lol

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

One of the last of a lost culture that left artifacts like:

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I like how when people accuse Yudkowsky of getting spooked by Terminator his response is to scoff at the thought he'd give the time of day to a mere movie for pleb mundanes when he had the classics of written SF

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I always thought a big part of it was porting the existing AI doom discourse to a Stuart Russell/"AI a Modern Approach" like framework

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The altruism vs self-interest thing comes in when he contrasts the CEV Basilisk with his preferred alternative, another even more confusing thought experiment he calls the "quantum billionaire's trick", which tbh I can't make sense of but it involves many-worlds and making lots of money like Elon

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

It was supposed to be specifically an argument against trying to make an AI that was aligned to the "coherent extrapolated volition" of all humanity, which was meant to be Yudkowsky's plan at the time. In the comments Roko sort of implies that since a lot of humans believe in hell, so would CEV AI

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The argument doesn't really make any sense but expressed Roko's emotional state of frustration and resentment, while referencing some concepts that were trendy on LW at the time

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

yes this was the whole point of the basilisk - its unfairness and "ingratitude". it was part of an argument that lw people should be less altruistic and more self-interested and entrepreneurial like Elon, because by trying to be altruistic you get stuff like the basilisk

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

yes this is consistent with your implication in maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizian... that having a "stable sense of self" is somehow a good thing. I'm very against this, abolish the self

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Not specific to tech. in maxread.substack.com/p/the-zizian... , @maxread.info asserts the importance of having a "stable sense of self"; I'm very against this, abolish the self

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Anna Ezekiel @annaezekiel.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A translation of & intro to early 19th century German Karoline von Günderrode's story "The Apparition." Beautifully written & concerned with the possibility of connection between the living & the dead, the piece links to Günderrode's metaphysics & epistemology: acezekiel.com/2020/12/01/k...

acezekiel.com

Karoline von Günderrode, “The Apparition”

Karoline von Günderrode’s “The Apparition” is a ghost story dealing with betrayal and regret, as well as two of Günderrode’s trademark themes: connections between the living…

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Wild pentachoron correspondent @crossslide.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

You could have a cult that worships and fears Sex while, logically, strictly forbidding its members from engaging in it since that's blasphemy

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