Ben Pace

• Ben Pace 2 Dec 2025 4:19 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Drake Thomas’s comment on: Ben’s 10 Tips for Event Feed­back Forms

  I have not seen a form website/​software that allows for this. Interested to hear about one if anyone knows.

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #59 (Tues­day 12/​2)

A Statis­ti­cal Anal­y­sis of Inkhaven

Ben’s 10 Tips for Event Feed­back Forms

A Har­ried Meeting

• Ben Pace 29 Nov 2025 0:10 UTC

  24 points

  6

  in reply to: zroe1’s comment on: zroe1′s Shortform

  I’m happy to chip in $500 for a replication. $250 if it seems post-facto to be a good-faith attempt, and $250 if it indeed does not replicate (as determined by some third party, perhaps Greenblatt or kave rennedy). Feel free to his the plus react if you also would chip in this money, or comment with a different amount.

Should you work with evil peo­ple?

• Ben Pace 27 Nov 2025 20:18 UTC

  6 points

  0

  on: Con­tra Col­listeru: You Get About One Carthage

  I don’t think this makes much sense. Here’s a series of assorted heckles, followed by me simply stating my stance here.

  1. You’re constantly in situations where you need to provide political forces. Consider: your family is getting together and deciding when/​where/​how-long. There are many tradeoffs here. It helps for you to make pushes and pulls on this, and be for /​ against options. This is often much better than saying “y’all decide and I’ll just show up”.

  2. Even in the extreme, there are many things worth destroying. The FDA. AI extinction companies. Mob justice. Death. Sam Bankman-Fried’s company FTX.

  3. In this quote

     > White collar corporate America prizes the ability to work with anyone… Consider your political opinions… Expressing those opinions is discouraged. Why? Imagine a coworker said they were Against Your Team. Do you feel any reluctance to work with them? If you say you’re against Their Team, will they still want to work with you?

     You say that expressing your opinions necessarily leads to animosity. While this is sometimes true, sometimes it leads to respect! I understand that sometimes it is worth not discussing these things beceause you don’t respect the other person’s ability to set it aside; but also I think you’re forgetting that there are ways to connect to someone’s human side while expressing very disagreed-with opinions.

     I admit that it probably makes sense in a number of contexts to have a no-politics-discussion norm, but it is mostly a sign of dysfunction and low-skill amongst the people.

  4. “You should oppose about one thing. Everywhere else, talk less, smile more.” ← I hope you did not take away from Hamilton that Burr is the guy to be emulated!

  5. “It would not occur to me to write “____ is the ethics of evil” for basically any ____. I’d regard that as an unforced tactical error, and instead I aspire to try things like “I’m curious why people believe ____?”″ ← I put this slightly more in the ‘temperament’ category than the ‘tactics’ category.

  My overall position: I think it’s a good heuristic to be able to work with anyone. But also I think it’s generally healthier to be able to take more political stands, and I think if you are in a position to then this is a good sign about your environment. I also think there’s a skill issue in being able to take political stands while still working with people who disagree with you on those.

De­s­pair, Seren­ity, Song and No­bil­ity in “Hol­low Knight: Silk­song”

Rea­sons Why I Can­not Sleep

• Ben Pace 26 Nov 2025 3:25 UTC

  6 points

  2

  in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: Daniel Koko­ta­jlo’s Shortform

  Reminder that spoiler tags exist, like this:

  I think this is better for hiding spoilers than the long dots… because when I saw this post in recent discussion, I saw all the dots and also some of the first paragraph after them.

  You make spoiler tags by adding >! at the front of the para.

• Ben Pace 26 Nov 2025 3:22 UTC

  7 points

  7

  in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Align­ment will hap­pen by de­fault. What’s next?

  Huh, I quite like the crystalized/​fluid split in describing what the LLMs are good and bad at. I’m not sure if it’s an analogy or just a literal description.

• Ben Pace 25 Nov 2025 20:32 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: Why Not Just Train For In­ter­pretabil­ity?

  Aside: This is why subtweeting is bad. It makes people paranoid that people are subtweeting them when they aren’t.

• Ben Pace 25 Nov 2025 20:00 UTC

  4 points

  2

  in reply to: Ruby’s comment on: Avoid Fool­ing Your­self By Believ­ing Two Op­pos­ing Things At Once

  It is mistaken to hold the ‘reasonable’ middle position that everything is neither ‘great’ nor ‘inadequate’ but ‘middling’. In fact, some things are at one extreme, and some things are at the other!

Avoid Fool­ing Your­self By Believ­ing Two Op­pos­ing Things At Once

Lighthaven Se­quences Read­ing Group #58 (Tues­day 11/​25)

I am a rationalist

• Ben Pace 24 Nov 2025 3:50 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Zack_M_Davis’s comment on: Why Talk to Journalists

  Just checking, did you first record your conversation with him due to my recommending that course of action to you?

Me­mories of a Bri­tish Board­ing School #2.5

• Ben Pace 22 Nov 2025 1:42 UTC

  2 points

  0

  on: 8 Ques­tions for the Fu­ture of Inkhaven

  Normal mode: 500+ word post each day

  Hard mode: Above, and 200+ word comment each day

  Nightmare mode: Above, and 3,500+ word post each week (replacing one of the 500+ word posts)