Arjun Panickssery

Karma: 2,991

Arjun Panickssery 16 Dec 2025 21:40 UTC
4 points
7
on: More Hyphenation
I think this post is very good (disclaimer: I am the author).
It promotes better writing and the advice is concise, clear, and accurate. I think reading the post is a good use of the 90 seconds it takes to read the post.
With respect to the LessWrong 2024 Review, the question is whether the post is too narrow or the topic too mundane.

Arjun Panickssery 24 Nov 2025 2:35 UTC
9 points
2
on: Should you announce your bets publicly?
These stories are very funny. If anyone wants to express themselves by borrowing some money at 15% interest, or a $1 million forward contract on Bitcoin, my DMs are open.
In college I played poker: first a $20 buy-in game in the freshman dorm, then sometimes a $200 buy-in game at a frat house or similar, and also a weekly $1 buy-in game with many non-poker-playing friends in the lounge of the Computer Science building.
Because the numbers were so small, we kept a ledger for the $1 game, but then it also served as a public leaderboard, generated more interest than the money among those with a competitive disposition. So the game could play tight even with the small buy-ins.
A similar principle might make sense here. People want to be ranked highly for their predictions, so if there were a suitable leaderboard then people could lower the stakes and make fewer nonsensical “bets on their beliefs,” while still disciplining the predictions.
I know there’s Metaculus and prediction markets—maybe they serve this purpose already.

Arjun Panickssery 20 Oct 2025 16:31 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: 1a3orn’s comment on: Frontier LLM Race/Sex Exchange Rates
I agree—added these links to my post

Arjun Panickssery 24 Aug 2025 22:58 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: JBlack’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
Why is (1) obviously false?

Arjun Panickssery 24 Aug 2025 22:49 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
I don’t think this premise is as intuitive. For example, if someone said that a quadriplegic should have saved a nearby drowning child, then the objective appears immediately this it wouldn’t have been possible and so the “should” claim isn’t reasonable. On the other hand, if you say that the quadriplegic should avoid intentionally drowning the child, I don’t think that’s clearly nonsensical or false.

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 21:39 UTC
13 points
8
in reply to: Eric Neyman’s comment on: Eric Neyman’s Shortform
Yeah I’ve argued that banning lab meat is completely rational for the meat-eater because if progress continues then animal meat will probably be banned before the quality/price of lab meat is superior for everyone.
I think the “commitment” you’re describing is similar to the difference between “ordinary” and “constitutional” policy-making in e.g. The Calculus of Consent; under that model, people make the kind of non-aggression pacts you’re describing mainly under conditions of uncertainty where they’re not sure what their future interests or position of political advantage will be.

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 21:21 UTC
7 points
4
on: When Money Becomes Power
People should be free and equal
You opened with an assumption that your described audience (“progress studies people, economists, techno-optimists, anarcho-capitalists, proper libertarians”) largely doesn’t share. Why should people be equal? What sense of equality do you have in mind?
More generally, you make a bunch of undefended claims, e.g.
- You say that when one side has bargaining power over another, that’s bad per se, but it’s not explained why
- You say that when there is more wealth concentration, that leads to less freedom “empirically” but you don’t present any empirical evidence
- You give Elon Musk buying Twitter as an example of the negative influence of billionaires, but in fact the Twitter Files reveal an apparently more serious threat to freedom from the state, whose power is actually counterbalanced by wealthy individuals

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 21:18 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
It makes intuitive sense to me to say that if you have no way to do something, then it’s nonsensical to say that you should do that thing. For example, if I say that you should have arrived to an appointment on time and you say that it would be impossible because I only told you about it an hour ago and it’s 1000 miles away, then it would be nonsensical for me to say that you should have arrived on time anyway. This is equivalent to saying that if you should do something, then you can do it.
The converse “Whatever ought to be avoided can actually be done” doesn’t make sense because there’s no equivalent intuition.

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 20:26 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Joseph Miller’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
What fundamental confusions?

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 20:24 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: Cleo Nardo’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
No I think Kant’s “ought implies can” principle usually uses “can” to mean some kind of “practical possibility” that means “possible given your powers and opportunities” or something. And whatever is possible in that sense is also physically possible (i.e. “possible given the actual state of the world and physical laws”). So the argument is still sound.

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 20:17 UTC
2 points
−2
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
Why? If you’re taking as a premise that “Whatever ought not to be done can actually be done” then I don’t think that makes sense.

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 4:50 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Thomas Kwa’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
Yes I agree to be clear.

Arjun Panickssery 22 Aug 2025 1:06 UTC

4 points

in reply to: Richard Korzekwa ’s comment on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform

In fact the argument is basically the same I think. And I know Michael Huemer has a post using it in the modus ponens form to write a proof of free will presuming moral realism.

(MFT is his “minimal free-will thesis”: least some of the time, someone has more than one course of action that he can perform).

1.	With respect to the free-will issue, we should refrain from believing falsehoods. (premise)
2.	Whatever should be done can be done. (premise)
3.	If determinism is true, then whatever can be done, is done. (premise)
4.	I believe MFT. (premise)
5.	With respect to the free-will issue, we can refrain from believing falsehoods. (from 1,2)
6.	If determinism is true, then with respect to the free will issue, we refrain from believing falsehoods. (from 3,5)
7.	If determinism is true, then MFT is true. (from 6,4)
8.	MFT is true. (from 7)

Arjun Panickssery 21 Aug 2025 23:06 UTC
8 points
−15
on: Arjun Panickssery’s Shortform
Is this argument about determinism and moral judgment flawed?
1. If determinism is true, then whatever can be done actually is done. (Definition)
2. Whatever should be done, can be done. (Well-known “ought implies can” principle)
3. If determinism is true, then whatever ought to be done actually is done (from 1, 2).
The context is that it appears to me that people reject determinism largely because they’re committed to certain moral positions that are incompatible with determinism. Perhaps I will write a longer post about this.

Arjun Panickssery 14 Jul 2025 9:28 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: An Opinionated Guide to Using Anki Correctly
Oh also how many mature cards? (from the same window)

Arjun Panickssery 14 Jul 2025 7:57 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: An Opinionated Guide to Using Anki Correctly
What’s your total lifetime review count? (Stats → Collection/All Time → Reviews)

Arjun Panickssery 30 Jun 2025 7:35 UTC
3 points
−4
in reply to: lesswronguser123’s comment on: Support for bedrock liberal principles seems to be in pretty bad shape these days
There are even “non-democratic liberal-ish societies” today . . . like Singapore, Brunei, Dubai and other Gulf monarchies, etc

Arjun Panickssery 23 Jun 2025 20:17 UTC
26 points
12
on: Racial Dating Preferences and Sexual Racism
Only read the first few paragraphs of your post, but this 1997 article called “Is Love Colorblind?” might be interesting. Sailer claims that Asian men are perceived as somewhat less masculine than white men and black men as slightly more masculine, while the reverse is true for women, leading to more white/Asian and black/white pairings than you’d expect naively.
Interracial marriage is growing steadily. From the 1960 to the 1990 Census, white—Asian married couples increased almost tenfold, while black—white couples quadrupled. The reasons are obvious: greater integration and the decline of white racism. More subtly, interracial marriages are increasingly recognized as epitomizing what our society values most in a marriage: the triumph of true love over convenience and prudence. Nor is it surprising that white—Asian marriages outnumber black—white marriages: the social distance between whites and Asians is now far smaller than the distance between blacks and whites. What’s fascinating, however, is that in recent years a startling number of nonwhites—especially Asian men and black women—have become bitterly opposed to intermarriage.
...
The heart of the problem for Asian men and black women is that intermarriage does not treat every sex/race combination equally: on average, it has offered black men and Asian women new opportunities for finding mates among whites, while exposing Asian men and black women to new competition from whites. In the 1990 Census, 72 per cent of black—white couples consisted of a black husband and a white wife. In contrast, white—Asian pairs showed the reverse: 72 per cent consisted of a white husband and an Asian wife.
LET’S review other facts about intermarriage and how they violate conventional sociological theories.
1. You would normally expect more black women than black men to marry whites because far more black women are in daily contact with whites. First, among blacks aged 20 − 39, there are about 10 per cent more women than men alive. Another tenth of the black men in these prime marrying years are literally locked out of the marriage market by being locked up in jail, and maybe twice that number are on probation or parole. So, there may be nearly 14 young black women for every 10 young black men who are alive and unentangled with the law. Further, black women are far more prevalent than black men in universities (by 80 per cent in grad schools), in corporate offices, and in other places where members of the bourgeoisie, black or white, meet their mates.
Despite these opportunities to meet white men, so many middle-class black women have trouble landing satisfactory husbands that they have made Terry (Waiting to Exhale) McMillan, author of novels specifically about and for them, into a best-selling brand name. Probably the most popular romance advice regularly offered to affluent black women of a certain age is to find true love in the brawny arms of a younger black man. Both Miss McMillan’s 1996 best-seller How Stella Got Her Groove Back and the most celebrated of all books by black women, Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, are romance novels about well-to-do older women and somewhat dangerous younger men. Of course, as Miss Hurston herself later learned at age 49, when she (briefly) married a 23-year-old gym coach, that seldom works out in real life.
2. Much more practical-sounding advice would be: Since there are so many unmarried Asian men and black women, they should find solace for their loneliness by marrying each other. Yet, when was the last time you saw an Asian man and a black woman together? Black-man/Asian-woman couples are still quite unusual, but Asian-man/black-woman pairings are incomparably more rare.
Similar patterns appear in other contexts:
3a. Within races: Black men tend to most ardently pursue lighter-skinned, longer-haired black women (e.g., Spike Lee’s School Daze). Yet black women today do not generally prefer fairer men.
3b. In other countries: In Britain, 40 per cent of black men are married to or living with a white woman, versus only 21 per cent of black women married to or living with a white man.
3c. In art: Madame Butterfly, a white-man/Asian-woman tragedy, has been packing them in for a century, recently under the name Miss Saigon. The greatest black-man/white-woman story, Othello, has been an endless hit in both Shakespeare’s and Verdi’s versions. (To update Karl Marx’s dictum: Theater always repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as opera, and finally as farce, as seen in that recent smash, O.J., The Moor of Brentwood.) Maybe Shakespeare did know a thing or two about humanity: America’s leading portrayer of Othello, James Earl Jones, has twice fallen in love with and married the white actress playing opposite him as Desdemona.
4. The civil-rights revolution left husband—wife balances among interracial couples more unequal. Back in 1960 white husbands were seen in 50 per cent of black-white couples (versus only 28 per cent in 1990), and in only 62 per cent of white—Asian couples (versus 72 per cent). Why? Discrimination, against black men and Asian women. In the Jim Crow South black men wishing to date white women faced pressures ranging from raised eyebrows to lynch mobs. In contrast, the relatively high proportion of Asian-man/white-woman couples in 1960 was a holdover caused by anti-Asian immigration laws that had prevented women, most notably Chinese women, from joining the largely male pioneer immigrants. As late as 1930 Chinese-Americans were 80 per cent male. So, the limited number of Chinese men who found wives in the mid twentieth century included a relatively high fraction marrying white women. In other words, as legal and social discrimination have lessened, natural inequalities have asserted themselves.
5. Keeping black men and white women apart was the main purpose of Jim Crow. Gunnar Myrdal’s landmark 1944 study found that Southern whites generally grasped that keeping blacks down also retarded their own economic progress, but whites felt that was the price they had to pay to make black men less attractive to white women. To the extent that white racism persists, it should limit the proportion of black-man/white-woman couples.

Arjun Panickssery 8 May 2025 19:28 UTC
6 points
7
in reply to: evhub’s comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
I’m responding to John’s more general ethical stance here of “working with moral monsters”, not anything specific about Cremieux
For what it’s worth I interpreted it as being about Cremieux in particular based on the comment it was directly responding to; probably others also interpreted it that way

Arjun Panickssery 30 Apr 2025 4:10 UTC
5 points
−1
in reply to: quetzal_rainbow’s comment on: To Understand History, Keep Former Population Distributions In Mind
Yeah I was reading the other day about the Treaty of Versailles and surrounding periods and saw a quote from a German minister about how an overseas empire would be good merely as an outlet for young men to find something productive to do. A totally different social and political environment when you have a young and growing population versus an aging and shrinking population. And Russia is still relatively young: Italy, Germany, Greece, Portugal, and Austria all have median ages of 45 or higher.