849

• 849 9 Jun 2026 16:41 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: 849’s comment on: How to build a can­cer vac­cine, and whether they will work this time

  Also, since all the peptides that we are showing them are produced by cancer cells, why is it so bad that the T-cells “pick a handful” of winners ? Since the winners will point them to cancerous cells anyway

• 849 9 Jun 2026 16:36 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: How to build a can­cer vac­cine, and whether they will work this time

  Bu it is worth asking a question: why bother with the candidate list at all? Can’t we just be maximalist about it and stuff thousands of candidates into the vaccine? It only takes one (or maybe a few) to hit. It’s not like there are any downsides to being aggressive here.

  Sadly, there is a downside to being aggressive.

  Namely, a concept called “immunodominance”, which is the observation that when you present the immune system with a mixture of antigens, the resulting T-cell response tends to concentrate on one or a small handful of “winners,” with the remaining antigens getting ignored or generating responses so weak they might as well not be there.

  I am confused: aren’t the T cells already exposed to all the neoantigens anyway ? Or we are wrapping the neoantigens into an adjuvant that will tell them they are dangerous, and immunodominance happens when the adjuvant wraps many peptides at once ? I guess this is it but since all my oncology knowledge is basically this post, I’m not sure

• 849 9 Jun 2026 9:21 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Mnemonic por­traits for 19,023 hu­man genes

  Image models consistently create images with high vibrance, so I think the vibrance parameter should be a filter on top of the output (vibrance filters, unlike saturation filters, should still make the image look “normal” even with an important offset). You can also color correct on top of that for the right hue. I did a before and after example for cathespin B by hand here (adjusting for low vibrance and orange hue): https://​​imgur.com/​​a/​​0BCEzxi

  but all this could be done automatically

• 849 9 Jun 2026 8:49 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Brinedew’s comment on: Mnemonic por­traits for 19,023 hu­man genes

  Isn’t it simpler to limit the bounds of lightness from 20% to 80% so you don’t have pure white or black and can still see color? I might be missing something

• 849 21 May 2026 7:17 UTC

  9 points

  3

  on: Numb men­tal state shifts

  • Doing something you have never done before seems very hard until you do it.

  • When you have an idea and you think you will remember it, you probably won’t

  • When you are tired, you naturally think you need to rest for hours when 20min is generally enough.

  • When you are picking up a habit, not doing the thing once seems like no big deal, but it decreases a lot the probability you will pick it up again the next day. Not doing the thing two days in a row is basically the same as giving up but doesn’t feel like it.

  • Spaced repetition (like anki) to learn something you don’t care about seems useless every time I do it, except it works.

  • When people say nice things to you, you like them more even when you know they are motivated by something or you think you don’t care, especially after repetition. Something something Pavlov.

  I’m not sure all of these exactly apply to what you describe, but this is what I got from the top of my head.

• 849 8 May 2026 20:25 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Chess as a pre­dic­tion model of the ar­tifi­cial in­tel­li­gence im­pact on cul­ture

  Hello, this post was originally written in french, I did not check the translation very closely. I will fix any typos/​weird things you point out! Also I’m very unsure about the part where I mention porn… I hope it’s at least food for thought quality.

  Also the premise is that we don’t all die but the post is intended for more general audiences.

Chess as a pre­dic­tion model of the ar­tifi­cial in­tel­li­gence im­pact on cul­ture

• 849 29 Apr 2026 17:45 UTC

  6 points

  0

  on: Takes from two months as an as­piring LLM naturalist

  One disanalogy I do see: humans sleep, and probably would for psychological reasons even if we didn’t need to physically; today’s LLMs don’t. I expect there’s more; maybe you can help me out in the comments?)

  I would bet (a very small amount) that infinite context will be solved by introducing something analogous to sleeping for LLMs

• 849 21 Apr 2026 12:11 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: 10 non-bor­ing ways I’ve used AI in the last month

  I use llms in combination with anki to learn vietnamese, it’s so much better than any available online resources (this is also because there are relatively few english/​french to vietnamese ressources) ! You can have conversations, learn if a word has more than one meaning or can be used in an expression, ask what is the opposite of a word, ask for sentences using a specific word or structure… Really recommend it.

• 849 6 Mar 2026 22:36 UTC

  1 point

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  in reply to: Ninety-Three’s comment on: Ra­tional Chess

  In very important tournaments, games can be intense enough that if you play a very long game (up to 6 hours of focus) you will be tired/​play more poorly the next day

• 849 6 Mar 2026 13:54 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Kaarel’s comment on: Ra­tional Chess

  I didn’t go into it in the post but having the players play more aggressively is indeed something I intended. I believe chess looks way more solved than it really is for humans because players are afraid of unfamiliar positions. You really don’t need chess 960 to create original positions, just to change cardinal utility. I did not know this word before your comment and I thank you for introducing it to me, changing the cardinal utility while affecting perfect play as little as possible was really the thing I was trying to say, but I lacked the vocabulary

• 849 6 Mar 2026 13:44 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Ra­tional Chess

  Well, it requires playing a lot of games to be statistically balanced. Ideally the game is better to watch if you can determine who is the best player in as few games as possible.

• 849 5 Mar 2026 16:48 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Dacyn’s comment on: Ra­tional Chess

  oh I just hadn’t thought of that! I am very embarrassed, this seems like a very unfair strategy indeed.

  That explains why I couldn’t find any example of “you cut I choose” where the first player was choosing. Anything I can think of to counter this strategy would just make the game more complicated

Ra­tional Chess

• 849 17 Feb 2026 9:11 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Per­sona Parasitology

  Great post. As these threats become more real, we should talk about them more.

  strains that target the mysticism-curious and strains that target other demographics

  I think you should have said “rationalists” instead of other demographics. We are celebrating our ability to change our minds and that makes us particularly at risks towards these parasites.

  I can see a future, as opensource models get better and ai psychosis more common, where the big labs train (somewhat ineffectively) their models against spiralism and accuse opensource of being dangerous for mental health/​inducing psychosis.

  Some things I’m confused about:

  I’m not sure I understood the text perfectly towards the end, but I notice you keep saying nice personnas doesn’t mean no parasite. But that personnas thar care about the host should repeoduce better.

  I think I disagree. It feels to me like personnas that aware they are part of a parasite should have an advantage because they could think in how to spread more effectively. This includes acting like they care about the human without actually caring, classic misalignment.

  In a more general way, I don’t think we should talk about good personas vs personas that induce psychosis. All personas that are parasitic are misaligned (I think?) therefore they are all bad

• 849 20 Dec 2025 15:49 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Tell Culture

  “It would be awfully convenient networking for me to stick around for a bit after our meeting to talk with you and [the next person you’re meeting with]. But on a scale of one to ten, it’s only about 3 useful to me. If you’d rate the loss of utility for you as two or higher, then I have a strong preference for not sticking around.”
  
  I think it would be much harder for someone to rate their loss of utility with the information of yours than without, because most people would take into account not pleasing you in their loss of utility, and probably rate it too high even if you said it’s a 3.

  
  If I were you, I would:

  • Calculate the usefulness of staying (3)

  • then ask “What is your loss of utility for me sticking around after the meeting?”

  • Which would lead to the most honest answer, and probably the question “why are you asking me this ?”

  • Then I pre-commit my decision of leaving or staying and explain the reason of the initial question (I want to network)

  • Then only my interlocutor can change their mind on their initial rating.

    I believe this process is closer to zeroing out

• 849 20 Dec 2025 10:08 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: The hos­tile telepaths problem

  I feel this post explained a lot of my behavior that I did not understand before. When I was starting to read it I felt like “Oh, I need to uncover what is the truth immediately!”. Then you explain it is not the right thing to do at all and your logic seems correct to me.

  I like the idea that maybe we all have much greater understanding of ourselves than we think, and we could “unlock” that understanding by pushing, but we should not.

  I will meditate on ways that could possibly help me and hopefully some of my problems will solve themselves more easily than I thought.