Philosophical Multicore

This meme got me thinking: That feeling when you’re smart enough to know how awkward you are, but not smart enough to know how not to be awkward The reason it works that way is because not being awkward is NP-hard, and I can prove it.

Not that I’m remotely as funny as George Carlin, or that this list is funny at all.

A silly argument: The goal of this activity/institution is to achieve X.

I’ve been interested in lucid dreaming since high school, with just enough success to say that my efforts haven’t been a complete waste of time.

The ethical principles that most people hold—and hold most strongly—go completely out the window when it comes to war.

AI companies want to bootstrap weakly-superhuman AI to align superintelligent AI.

I’ve been playing a lot of MTG Arena lately, but I refuse to spend any money on it, which means I can’t craft many rare cards.

Inspired by this post by Tomás Bjartur, which is an allegory; but I’m not writing an allegory, I’m writing about the rules of Quidditch.

Sometimes I’m talking about lifting weights and someone asks me, “What’s your goal weight?”

A curiosity stopper is an answer to a question that gets you to stop asking questions, but doesn’t resolve the mystery.

Last year I gave my reasoning on cause prioritization and did shallow reviews of some relevant orgs.

Vizzini: Inconceivable!

Introduction Even if we solve the AI alignment problem, we still face post-alignment problems, which are all the other existential problems1 that AI may bring.

Previously, I reviewed the five strongest studies on protest outcomes and concluded that peaceful protests probably work (credence: 90%).

Classically, according to the Abrahamic religions, God is a man.

An investor is considering putting her money into a mutual fund.

One day, I was at my grandma’s house reading the Sunday funny pages, when I suddenly felt myself getting sucked into a Garfield comic.

If we are correct about the laws of physics, then ghosts can’t exist.

(Here is the same clip in HD, but that 2010 YouTube vibe is part of the fun) This clip is in the running for most-mocked scene of all time, but I think it’s good, actually.

Political advocacy is an important lever for reducing existential risk.

Nearly nine years after part 1, I bring three new short ideas.

This post contains spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Investors often say that standard deviation is a bad way to measure investment risk because it penalizes upside volatility as well as downside.

Is it a good use of time to call or write your representatives to advocate for issues you care about?

(that I still remember a decade later) Evolution on Earth Fact 1: When foxes are bred to be more docile, their ears become floppy like dogs’ ears instead of pointy like wild foxes’.

When I was 18, my dad took me to the bank to get my first credit card.

I’m playing Elden Ring.

TLDR: The available evidence is weak.

Last year I did a caffeine cycling self-experiment and I determined that I don’t get habituated to caffeine when I drink coffee three days a week.

Last year, I wrote a list of things I’ve changed my mind on.

Epistemic status: This entire essay rests on two controversial premises (linear aggregation and antispeciesism) that I believe are quite robust, but I will not be able to convince anyone that they’re true, so I’m not even going to try.

I’m pretty sure that the next generation of LLMs will be safe.

If there is no plausible mechanism by which a scientific hypothesis could be true, then it’s almost certainly false.

Is moral offsetting a good idea?

This post is about the niche intersection of Emacs and Magic: the Gathering.

I wrote a report giving a high-level review of what work people are doing in AI safety.

source The problem with most “lazy cooking” advice is that it’s not lazy enough.

Or, more accurately, the fact that he said the Avengers only won once can’t be taken as evidence about what he really saw.

On most questions about the future, I don’t hold a strong view.

It’s common for monthly subscription services to offer a discount if you pay annually instead.

Among people who have thought about LLM consciousness, a common belief is something like LLMs might be conscious soon, but they aren’t yet.

Confidence: Likely.

On many occasions, I edit old posts to make additions, correct mistakes, etc.

Confidence: Highly likely.

Edited 2025-05-26 to correct an inaccuracy—originally I said butter goes in the Dairy group but actually it goes in the Fats, Oils & Sweets group.

TLDR: A meta-analysis allegedly showed that a 500-calorie deficit is the sweet spot to avoid losing lean mass, but the interpretation of the data was wrong and actually it didn’t show that.

Cross-posted to the EA Forum.

James Özden and Sam Glover at Social Change Lab wrote a literature review on protest outcomes1 as part of a broader investigation2 on protest effectiveness.

In this post I will explain the most impressive argument I heard in 2024.