Ben Pace

Karma: 37,660

I’m an admin of LessWrong. Here are a few things about me.

I generally feel more hopeful about a situation when I understand it better.
I have signed no contracts nor made any agreements whose existence I cannot mention.
I believe it is good to take responsibility for accurately and honestly informing people of what you believe in all conversations; and also good to cultivate an active recklessness for the social consequences of doing so.
It is wrong to directly cause the end of the world. Even if you are fatalistic about what is going to happen.

Randomly: If you ever want to talk to me about anything you like for an hour, I am happy to be paid $1k for an hour of doing that.

(Longer bio.)

Ben Pace 2 Dec 2025 21:08 UTC
8 points
0
in reply to: Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comment on: NATO is dangerously unaware of its military vulnerability
We are drowning in this stuff. If you want you can go through the dozen-a-day posts we get obviously written by AI, and proposed we (instead of spending 5-15 mins a day skimming and quickly rejecting them) spend as many hours as it takes to read and evaluate the content and the ideas to figure out which are bogus/slop/crackpot and which have any merit to them. Here’s 12 from the last 12 hours (that’s not all that we got, to be clear): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Interested in you taking a look.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

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)

Ben Pace 21 Nov 2025 22:58 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: 7 Vicious Vices of Rationalists
I don’t know. Some frames:
- Scope sensitivity: Some amount of it should be able to outweigh a certain amount of meaning.
- Virtue ethics: I am willing to push through a lot of suffering if it means something; the simple ratio of the two does not determine whether the overall thing is worthwhile.
- Deontology: it does kind of differ on whether you’re responsible for the suffering happening or not.
It’s also plausible to me that I am more coming at this from a deontological feeling of “One should not kill everyone if one has a good reason” rather than “The world is net positive”.

Ben Pace 21 Nov 2025 19:15 UTC
4 points
0
on: Evrart Claire: A Case Study in Anti-Epistemology
I talked with Zvi Mowshowitz who is quite skilled at seeing all the things being communicated at once, about the last section of dialogue above, where Evrart Claire talks about being transparent with Joyce Messier. This befuddled me for a while.
He said that what is being communicated is:
1. I know that you’re talking with my primary political opponent.
2. That’s okay with me, I’m still happy to work with you.
3. Also you haven’t got anything on me; nothing I’ve ever said is actually incriminating (as per the plausible deniability point).
  1. (By implication: And of course, if we’re going to talk about shady stuff, don’t forget that I’ve got stuff on you.)
I didn’t quite notice that 1 and 2 were intended to be communicated. I don’t think of myself as someone to hide, so number 1 was not something I noticed.
Anyway, I am personally kind of annoyed that both (a) many things are being communicated at once, and (b) not all of them can be said explicitly (and in fact the explicit content of the words is kind of the opposite of true and of what’s being discussed). I wish either everyone stopped doing this, or I were better at tracking it all. (Zvi roughly said “That’s what your brain is built for, tracking this all.”)

Ben Pace 21 Nov 2025 5:24 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: chaizen’s comment on: Paranoia: A Beginner’s Guide
I think he said to me that he disagrees with them, on their practical utility.

Ben Pace 21 Nov 2025 4:50 UTC
35 points
2
on: Dominance: The Standard Everyday Solution To Akrasia

Ben Pace 20 Nov 2025 18:58 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: chaizen’s comment on: Paranoia: A Beginner’s Guide
My vague model of Habryka didn’t find those very helpful for thinking about this problem.

Ben Pace 20 Nov 2025 2:05 UTC
9 points
7
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Aim for single piece flow
FWIW I think that much our epistemic environment is too far from the true/right path. I think Habryka is able to think for himself in public better than most, and this has involved being one of the most intellectually aggressive arguers on the internet. I am not sure that being more in touch with everyone and their feedback would be healthy. For similar reasons, I don’t tweet. I suspect I would become more insane.

Ben Pace 19 Nov 2025 20:10 UTC
0 points
0
in reply to: J Bostock’s comment on: Jemist’s Shortform
I feel like they’re trying to brand more in the direction of being advisors for others’ money, but aren’t willing to go all the way? I’m not sure why, I guess they want to keep more relative power in the relationships they build.

Ben Pace 19 Nov 2025 19:04 UTC
5 points
−3
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: 7 Vicious Vices of Rationalists
Perhaps “7 Pathologies of Rationalists”.

Ben Pace 19 Nov 2025 4:27 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Wei Dai’s Shortform
If you are uncertain about what I would feel comfortable doing, and what I wouldn’t, feel free to ask me!
Do you mean via DM, or like via a quick take that Wei Dai has written here? Or some secret third thing?

Ben Pace 18 Nov 2025 18:45 UTC
7 points
0
on: Status Is The Game Of The Losers’ Bracket
Very similar to Peter Thiel’s idea that competition is for losers.