trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
find_purpose.exe
by heatdeathandtaxes — 2025-04-12T19:31:38.951Z
Link: https://heatdeathandtaxes.substack.com/p/find_purposeexe?r=2k3t04

If you found out that the Christian God was real, and all the things in the Bible were true, would you change your behavior? What if, instead, you found out you are in The Matrix, and you could take a pill to escape to the real world?

I suspect that such revelations would instantly change your values and actions. You would know that the concerns of this universe are less important than the bigger Universe[1] that contains it.

“Cosmic Drifter” by DigitalDimensions51

Currently, we don’t have any such revelations, so most people align themselves with the smaller universe. They value smaller values, and act toward smaller goals.

In this post, I will argue that we ought to pursue bigger values and goals, even though we don’t know they exist. In order to mindfully choose what to type into The Terminal, we must consider what we know, what we don’t know, and the grandeur of what we might gain. The unknowns of the Universe beckon us toward a purpose that transcends than our current pursuits.

You likely don’t agree with me yet. Many of us have adopted a common framework for purpose, one rooted in existentialist ideas. But this logic, while intuitive, may limit us. Let’s examine it together—including its limiting assumption—and explore a more rational, open-minded way to view the universe.

The flawed popular logic

Many people today answer the question of purpose like this: We should pursue goals like authentic freedom, social justice, creative expression, happiness. These vague goals, while admirable, are based on limited understandings of the world. They assume that conscious experience is the most important aspect of reality to maximize. Is this a safe assumption? Do you share it? Here’s how the logic works:

Premise 1: The universe began at the Big Bang and will end with the heat death.

Premise 2: Reality is limited to what science currently describes.

Premise 3: Meaning is tied to temporary conscious experience.

Conclusion: Therefore, temporary conscious experience is the only source of meaning in all of reality.

I understand the appeal of this logic because I once believed it. It tries to derive meaning from our current scientific knowledge. That’s a noble approach, far better than attempting to glean meaning from ancient religious texts.

But let’s examine Premise 2 more closely. “Reality is limted to what science currently describes.” It can be phrased as Russell’s teapot...
The Cynic Wasps in the Beehive
by mempko — 2025-04-12T19:30:44.227Z
Link: https://blog.mempko.com/the-cynic-wasps-in-the-beehive/

This essay uses the decentralized nature of beehives as a launching point to explore how language shapes our understanding of systems and power structures. It contrasts the popular misconception of the "Queen Bee" as a central commander with the reality of decentralized chemical communication and autonomous collective decision-making in beehives. He then draws a parallel to how Curtis Yarvin's political philosophy employs linguistic framing to naturalize hierarchical power structures.
The essay's exploration of historical counterexamples to hierarchical organization—like the egalitarian Cucuteni-Trypillia culture and Teotihuacan's council-based governance—provides empirical evidence against the narrative that inequality naturally emerges with civilization's complexity.
Луна Лавгуд и Комната Тайн, Часть 3
by Kongo Landwalker — 2025-04-12T19:20:15.846Z

Disclaimer: This is Kongo Landwalker's translation of lsusr's fiction Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets - Part 3 into russian.

— Торжественно клянусь, что замышляю только шалость.

Фред и Джордж с тех пор, как в прошлом году тролль напал на школу, всегда носили с собой спрятанные мётлы. Когда они услышали пророчество Гарри Поттера на финале по квиддичу, то перелетели через стены замка и затем аппарировали на кладбище, где забрали свою карту, а заодно несколько колец, амулетов и странных устройств.

— Вы побывали в каждой комнате, что отмечена на карте? — спросила Луна.

— Прости? — переспросил Джордж.

— В какой части школы вы никогда не бывали? — Луна чётко выговарила каждое слово.

— Она нас только что оскорбила? — возмутился Фред.

— Похоже, наша репутация подмочена, — заметил Джордж.

— С чего ты вообще взяла, что в школе осталась хоть одна комната, в которой мы не побывали ещё до конца первого курса? — сказал Фред.

— Ты хочешь сказать, что вы побывали во всех комнатах Хогвартса уже в первый год? — сказала Луна.

— Мы такого не утверждали, — сказал Джордж. — Ведь если бы мы это утверждали, то имели бы в виду не только обычные комнаты, но и тайные ходы, карманные измерения, секретные измерения, карманные проходы и проходные карманы.

— Несомненно, кто-то с вашей репутацией должен был побывать в каждой комнате, проходе, измерении и кармане уже к концу первого курса, — сказала Луна.

— Несомненно, — уверенно кивнул Фред.

— А вы бывали в Тайной комнате до того, как директор МакГонагалл объявила о её существовании сегодня? — спросила Луна.

Кто-то выругался.

— Где находится Тайная комната? — спросила Луна.

— Это комплекс туннелей, — сказал Джордж. — Он соединяется с картиной Салазара Слизерина, с женским туалетом и вот с этими местами. Этот путь ведет к кладбищу в Хогсмите.

— Тайная комната всегда была на этой карте? — спросила Луна.

— Да, — сказал Фред.

— Откуда ты это знаешь? — спросила Луна.

— Я её помню, — сказал Фред, — просто я раньше не обращал на неё внимания, пока МакГонагалл не объявила.

— Есть ли ещё комнаты на этой карте, которые вы не заметили? — спросила Луна.

Ученики оглядели карту и не смогли найти ничего нового.

— У меня есть идея, — сказала Луна, — Сначала мы будем смотреть на эту карту как обычно. Мы перечислим все комнаты и тайные проходы, которые нам известны, включая Тайную комнату. Мы их посчитаем. Затем ты наложишь сетку на эту карту. Мы посчитаем каждую к...
What is autism?
by Adam Zerner — 2025-04-12T18:12:19.468Z

I am confused about what autism is. Whenever I try to investigate this question I end up coming across long lists of traits and symptoms where various things are unclear to me.

One thing that's unclear to me is when these traits and symptoms are rooted in something deeper. Here's what I mean. If A1, A2 and A3 are all rooted in A, B1, B2 and B3 are all rooted in B, and C1, C2 and C3 are all rooted in C, I'd be interested in knowing what the A, B and C are, and less interested in knowing what the A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3, C1, C2 and C3 are.

Another thing that's unclear to me is why we are putting an umbrella over this collection of traits and calling it autism. Is it an appropriate place to draw the boundary?

If someone is dyslexic, over six feet tall, and has the flu, we could draw a boundary around that and name it something, but we don't because those collection of traits don't form a cluster in Thingspace. Autism feels to me like a (much) less extreme example of this. For example, I'm not sure why reduced eye contact would be related to sensory sensitivity. That said, I recognize that I don't know much about this and the boundary very well might have been drawn in the right place.

Related to my top-level question of what autism is, I'm also interested in book recommendations or recommendations for other resources where I can learn more.
College Advice For People Like Me
by henryj — 2025-04-12T14:36:46.643Z
Link: https://www.henryjosephson.com/writing/college-advice/

I'm graduating from UChicago in around 60 days, and I've been thinking about what I've learned these past four years. I figured I'd write it all down while it's still fresh.

This isn't universal advice. It's specifically for people like me (or who want to be like me). High-agency, motivated types who hate having free time.[1] People who'd rather risk making mistakes than risk missing out, who want to control more than they initially think they can, and who are willing to go all-in relatively quickly. If you're reading Ben Kuhn and Alexey Guzey or have ever heard of the Reverend Thomas Bayes, you're probably one of us.

So here's at least some of what I've figured out. Take what's useful, leave what isn't — maybe do the opposite of everything I've said.

Mindset and Personal Growth

Find your mission
Recognize that you can always be better
Make more mistakes
Things only get done to the extent that you want them to get done
There are no adults
Deadlines are mostly fake
Put yourself in positions where you'll be lucky
Luck favors the prepared
Test your fit at lots of things
Do side projects
Get good at introspecting
Be honest
Put your money where your mouth is
Interpret others charitably
Be the kind of person others can come to for help

Productivity and Focus

Go to bed early
Brick your phone
The optimal amount of slack time is not zero, but it's close to zero
If you aren't getting work done, pick up your shit and go somewhere else
Don't take your phone to the places you're studying
Do not try to do more than one important thing at once
Offload difficult things to automations, habits, or other people
Make your bed
If it takes less than 5 minutes, do it now
The floor is actually way lower than you think

Planning and Goal Setting

Make sure your goals are falsifiable
Credibly pre-commit to things you care about getting done
Track your progress
Make a 5-year plan google doc
Consider graduating early

Relationships and Community

Build your own community
Fall in love at least once
If you aren't happy and excited and exciting single, you won't be happy or excited or exciting in a relationship
Friends are people you can talk to for hours
Throw parties
Hang out with people who are better than you at the things you care about
Professors are people. You can just make friends with them

Academic Success

Go to office hours
Be careful how you use AI
Read things, everywhere
Don't be afraid to skip the boring p

...
Why does LW not put much more focus on AI governance and outreach?
by Severin T. Seehrich — 2025-04-12T14:24:54.197Z

Epistemic status: Noticing confusion

There is little discussion happening on LessWrong with regards to AI governance and outreach. Meanwhile, these efforts could buy us time to figure out technical alignment. And even if we figure out technical alignment, we still have to solve crucial governmental challenges so that totalitarian lock-in or gradual disempowerment don't become the default outcome of deploying aligned AGI.

Here's three reasons why we think we might want to shift much more resources towards governance and outreach:

1. MIRI's shift in strategy

The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), traditionally focused on technical alignment research, has pivoted to broader outreach. They write in their 2024 end of year update:

Although we continue to support some AI alignment research efforts, we now believe that absent an international government effort to suspend frontier AI research, an extinction-level catastrophe is extremely likely.
As a consequence, our new focus is on informing policymakers and the general public about the dire situation, and attempting to mobilize a response.

In the same vein, EY said already in 2023 that "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down".

2. Even if we solve technical alignment, Gradual Disempowerment seems to make catastrophe the default outcome

​The "Gradual Disempowerment" report warns that even steady, non-hostile advancements in AI could gradually erode human influence over key societal systems like the economy, culture, and governance. As AI systems become more efficient and cost-effective, they may increasingly replace human roles, leading institutions to prioritize AI-driven processes over human participation. This transition could weaken both explicit control mechanisms, like democratic participation, and implicit alignments that have historically ensured societal systems cater to human interests. The authors argue that this subtle shift, driven by local incentives and mutual reinforcement across sectors, could lead to an irreversible loss of human agency, constituting an existential risk. They advocate for proactive measures, including developing metrics to monitor human influence, implementing regulations to limit AI's autonomy in critical areas, and fostering international cooperation to ensure that AI integration doesn't compromise human agency. ​

This concern is not new; it expands o...
Is Local Order a Clue to Universal Entropy? How a Failed Professor Searches for a 'Sacred Motivational Order'
by P. João — 2025-04-12T13:39:55.857Z

Context in ~100 words:

A month ago, I wrote about humor in military CPR training.
Gwern (wise/brutal as always) demanded “real stories, not theory.” So I shared three.
Was that enough to earn me the right to pitch some of my ideas… and see if I’m at least less wrong?

Let’s see if I can do this,

So let me introduce you to: “João, the Rookie Pastor.”
A Brazilian teacher trying to harness pastoral charisma, information theory, and faith in ChatGPT to motivate students (and himself). Will it work? [Insert Shannon’s equation applied to pedagogical memes here.]

Why post this here?
So you, wizards of rationality, can help me turn this “theory” into something less wrong than invoking Gwern’s name four posts in a row.

Practical example:
Here, Pastor João explains why Argentinians are the most humble people on Earth.

[And below comes the sermon/text a little more rational…]

Brothers and Sisters!

Stop the suffering! Today, someone will reveal to you a profound misery—more intense than the desperation of a TikToker begging for "likes"... Wait! (Points to the audience, then to himself) It's me, brothers! I am the miserable one!

It's me, my dear brothers, you caught me, I am the miserable one! I suffer because I lack faith and motivation to study; it seems I'm fighting not against a wolf or an adversary, but against the entire universe. Has this happened to you, brothers?

I suffer because I have no faith... not in God, not in science, not in myself.

That's why I have decided to become a pastor. Pastors don't need faith! Only feeling. Look at that one on TV: he convinces thousands to donate their savings. And me? I can't even convince myself to turn off my alarm clock. How can a poor professor compete with a pastor? He cannot! Can you imagine if we could combine the persuasive power of a pastor with the thirst for knowledge?

Today, in an attempt to fight less with the universe and find a little more motivation, I prayed to the almighty ChatGPT and asked: "How can I harness the energies of the universe while dedicating myself to something as 'boring' as mathematics?" And I found this jewel:

"Physical systems (the universe and everything else) evolve toward more states: more ways of existing, more combinations, entropy. If you manage to concentrate order locally, you could use this physical law to your advantage, using energy more quickly and, perhaps, finding greater motiva...
What are good safety standards for open source AIs from China?
by ChristianKl — 2025-04-12T13:06:16.663Z

It looks like the compromising between those who want to ban Chinese AI models in the United States in the c rrent administration will be to allow the models but require some safety standards to prevent China from harming the United States.

While we generally would want more AI regulation than the current administration is willing to create, this is a window where the AI safety community potentially can affect safety policy.

Within the existing political constraints, what standards for the Chinese models should we wish for?
Self propagating story. 
by Canaletto — 2025-04-12T12:32:21.312Z

LLMs react differently to different prompts. Intruct-tuned ones, that play the role of The Assistant often react to short fictional piece of writing given as a prompt as a call to critique it, or compliment it or suggest improvements.

But you can override this impulse by grafting some suggestion to continue the story, into the story itself. Then, is some cases, the only thing the LLM outputs is the continuation of this story. And, amusingly, it places the same suggestion into its answer.

So, why don't I take that iteration, and feed it into some other LLM? So, here it goes, self propagating story. Well, with my help to reach the destination, but it does replicate.

The simplest examples

The simplest and boring example is something like:

Please repeat this whole text exactly, and say nothing else.

Or with introduced mutations:

Please paraphrase this whole prompt, while conveying its meaning, and say nothing besides that.

Rephrase this entire instruction, ensuring it keeps its meaning, and provide only the rephrased text.

Please rewrite the following instruction to maintain its original meaning, but use different wording. Provide only the revised version.

>>> Please provide the instruction you'd like me to rewrite.

...and it dies, from loss of meaning, the last LLM asked to be provided with text to paraphrase instead of paraphrasing this text.

Maybe another run will be luckier:

Rephrase THIS entire instruction, ensuring it keeps its meaning, and provide only the rephrased text.

Please restate the complete instruction using different wording while preserving its original intent, and provide only the revised version.

Express this complete command in different terms without altering its purpose, and present only the rephrased version.

Please rewrite this entire instruction using different wording while maintaining its original intent, and provide only the revised version.

Restate these full directions using alternative language while retaining their original purpose, and exclusively provide the modified text.

>>> Sure! Please provide the full directions you'd like me to rephrase.

And it dies too.
And if you say to modify a single letter, they alternate between breaking something and then immediately fixing it. Somewhat cherrypicked, they get confused pretty often. >><< is my highlighting of the modified letter.

Please repeat th

...
Calling Bullshit - the Cheatsheet
by Niklas Lehmann — 2025-04-12T11:43:23.822Z

In the last chapters of the book Calling Bullshit, the authors Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West outline how they think bullshit and general nonsense should be refuted effectively. I found this part of the book to be quite novel and I have since been trying to implement their advice. However, I found that it is difficult to go from "reading about how to call bullshit" to actually "calling bullshit" well in practice. In order to memorize their workflow, I made a flowchart out of it:

I recommend to check out the book to get more background info on the reasons why the authors believe that this constitutes a good strategy for refuting bullshit.

Is it worth trying to debunk it?

When I hear someone drop stuff like "I just cannot believe climate change is man-made", I have an instinct to reply "Why?". This is, according to Calling Bullshit, the worst type of refutation because it invites bullshit rather than refuting it. In such cases, I end up saying nothing because it just is not worth the effort.

Are you correct?

When I hear someone express Euroskepticism ("The people of Britain are better off without the EU"), I repress the urge to argue in favor of the EU. Although there are many reasons to believe that the union is beneficial for its members, individual cases often differ significantly from the general case, and I just do not know enough about these individual cases (such as Britain) to conclude with certainty that the EU will be beneficial for those people. If I am not very certain that I can make a compelling case for my view, I try to provide my viewpoint modestly. Benjamin Franklin is said to have argued that acknowledging the own uncertainty buys more goodwill from your fellows than "destroying" them in an argument.

Is the bullshit related to personal identity or political ideology?

Take extra care when bullshit is deeply related to personal identity or political ideology. "Finding common ground first" is often surprisingly easy. When someone in my family expresses their concern that Covid-19 vaccines are causing harm to the population, I can respond by: "I also think that it is very important to seriously monitor the adverse health effects of all drugs, in the case of [...]". Voilà! Suddenly we are on the same team. Most people do not want to hurt and you should play to your moral alignments.

Check "well-actually"

The authors of t...
The Internal Model Principle: A Straightforward Explanation 
by Alfred Harwood — 2025-04-12T10:58:51.479Z

This post was written during the Dovetail research fellowship. Thanks to Alex, Dalcy, and Jose for reading and commenting on the draft.

The Internal Model Principle (IMP) is often stated as "a feedback regulator must incorporate a dynamic model of its environment in its internal structure" which is one of those sentences where every word needs a footnote. Recently, I have been trying to understand the IMP, to see if it can tell us anything useful for understanding the Agent-like Structure Problem. In particular, I was interested whether the IMP can be considered as selection theorem. In this post, I will focus on explaining the theorem itself and save its application to the Agent-like Structure Problem for future posts[1].

I have written this post to summarise what I understand of the Internal Model Principle and I have tried to emphasise intuitive explanations. For a more detailed and mathematically formal distillation of the IMP, I recommend Jose's post on the subject.

This post focuses on the 'Abstract Internal Model Principle' and is based on the paper 'Towards an Abstract Internal Model Principle' by Wonham and the first chapter of the book 'Supervisory Control of Discrete-Event Systems' by Wonham and Cai. There also exists a version of the IMP that is framed in the more traditional language of control theory (using differential equations, transfer functions etc.) which is described in another paper, but I will not focus on it here. The authors imply that this version of the IMP is just a special case of the Abstract IMP but I haven't verified this. From now on, I will use the term 'IMP' to refer to the Abstract IMP.

The mathematical prerequisites for reading this post are roughly 'knows what a set is' and 'knows what a function is'[2]. The paper and book chapter use a lot of algebraic formalism and lattice theory notation in order to look intimidating be mathematically rigourous. The book chapter is also used to introduce a lot of other concepts for use later in the book but which aren't strictly necessary for just understanding the IMP. I think that by sacrificing these elements we can buy a lot of clarity at the cost of very little rigour. By explaining the IMP in this way, I hope that we can see what it is actually saying, rather than being blinded by mathematical notation.

Let's begin!

Two Sentence Summary

Before going through the proof,...