Bruce Lewis

Karma: 88

Bruce Lewis 27 Apr 2026 14:24 UTC
1 point
0
on: The “Outside the Box” Box
The eminent philosophers of Monty Python said it best of all.
The linked video is now private. Perhaps quote them inline?

Bruce Lewis 24 Apr 2026 15:02 UTC
1 point
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on: Communicating with people who disagree on “obvious” things
If I understand correctly, the problem is when a participant in spoken in-person conversation is working from an assumption they think to be obviously true to everyone, and other participants don’t think so.
For written conversation, hypertext can help; the “obvious” info can be behind a link that people don’t need to follow if they agree it’s obvious. For spoken in-person conversation, I don’t see how there could be any solution beyond what you describe in the last three paragraphs. But it sounds like you intuitively think some further solution might be out there. Can you identify what feeds this intuition?

Bruce Lewis 23 Apr 2026 2:14 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: jchan’s comment on: Call for machers
To “asynchronously develop ideas discussed at meetups into long-form writings” couldn’t one attendee just start a draft post here on lesswrong and use its sharing features on the draft to collaborate on developing it into long form?

Bruce Lewis 22 Apr 2026 14:28 UTC
1 point
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on: Call for machers
>Write up notes on particularly interesting meetup discussions, and add those to a shared archive.
Couldn’t this just be a tag here on lesswrong?
>Create an online platform for community members to asynchronously develop ideas discussed at meetups into long-form writings.
If you assume there’s a primary author of such a writing, isn’t lesswrong’s draft-sharing function already good enough?

Bruce Lewis 24 Feb 2026 2:17 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: jnalanko’s comment on: The power of a simple 3-way truth scale
Thanks! Yes, it definitely resembles the structure of an argument map.
Percent probabilities would be more Bayesian and fit certain questions better, but I wanted to show what’s possible without any scary math at all. Also, for a lot of questions, any percent probabilities people put down would be made up anyway.

The power of a simple 3-way truth scale

Bruce Lewis23 Feb 2026 2:41 UTC

4 points

2 comments2 min readLW link

Bruce Lewis 22 Feb 2026 4:24 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: LessWrong’s goals overlap HowTruthful’s
Pardon my noob mistake. I’ve edited the post with a correction.

Bruce Lewis 22 Feb 2026 1:57 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: LessWrong’s goals overlap HowTruthful’s
Isn’t one’s opinion of whether the statement is false, debatable, or true the epistemic status of that statement according to that person?

Bruce Lewis 21 Feb 2026 16:28 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: How I got so excited about HowTruthful
Hi, sorry for the late reply. That iteration of HowTruthful only got 2 paying customers, both of whom were people I knew. I realized I needed to improve the aesthetics, UX, and SEO, plus move to a more modern tech stack, so I rewrote it.
Thanks for the detailed suggestions. I want to implement a few of them, but most of them probably not, my reasoning hinging on the fact that adding complexity adds friction that discourages people from using it.

LessWrong’s goals overlap HowTruthful’s

Bruce Lewis21 Feb 2026 4:19 UTC

7 points

4 comments2 min readLW link

Bruce Lewis 30 Sep 2025 11:25 UTC
1 point
0
on: Bruce Lewis’s Shortform
The project I’ve been quietly working on now has its second iteration, better than ever: https://www.howtruthful.com/
I’m eager to talk about it, but won’t be able to during the workday today. Try it out. Comment and I’ll answer tonight.
The video linked from the link above can be watched at 2x speed if you only want to get the gist. If you do that and stop at the how-to-use part, it’s only 4 minutes. Watching the entire video at regular speed is 12 minutes, but since this is different from things you’ve already seen, that might be 12 minutes well spent.

Bruce Lewis 15 Feb 2024 18:29 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Perhaps’s comment on: Let’s make the truth easier to find
The best path forward might be for @DPiepgrass to make a prototype or mockup, borrowing ideas from HowTruthful and then discussing from there.

What’s happening behind the scenes with my HowTruthful project

Bruce Lewis15 Feb 2024 18:27 UTC

7 points

0 comments3 min readLW link

Bruce Lewis 2 Feb 2024 19:07 UTC
−3 points
−4
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: The NYT routinely and brazenly lied about Ukraine during March 2022
This comment is a level 1 lie! (I’m replying to it now with a level 5 lie.)

Bruce Lewis 11 Jan 2024 17:43 UTC
7 points
3
on: The Aspiring Rationalist Congregation
I don’t think 11 needs to be a community value. If someone comes in believing in the supernatural, in cryptozoology, UFOs, P = NP, or other ideas that haven’t been scientifically verified, who cares as long as they’re interested in changing their way of modeling the world to be more evidence-based?

Bruce Lewis 28 Dec 2023 3:07 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: mike_hawke’s comment on: mike_hawke’s Shortform
Sympathize with them, but also with those affected by them.

Bruce Lewis 28 Dec 2023 3:02 UTC
11 points
9
on: In Defense of Epistemic Empathy
I strongly upvoted this post because I believe epistemic empathy is important.
The word “irrational” has too many meanings, and I try to avoid it. And I try to direct criticism at arguments rather than people. But I do want to answer your final question as best I can. I’ll just phrase it as problems with arguments rather than people’s irrationality.
In my experience, the problem with arguments against COVID-19 vaccines is that they mainly consist of evidence that there’s risk involved in getting vaccinated. To usefully argue against getting vaccinated, one needs evidence not only that vaccine risks exist, but that they’re worse risks than those of remaining unvaccinated.
Similarly, arguments against masks are usually arguing against the wrong statement. They argue against “Masks always prevent transmission”, when to be useful, they should be arguing against “Masks reduce transmission”.

Bruce Lewis 7 Dec 2023 17:07 UTC
16 points
14
on: Why Yudkowsky is wrong about “covalently bonded equivalents of biology”
Good points are made in other comments about the significance of weakest bonds, but mostly I want to say that I like this post because it’s making a clear point with clear reasoning, and was very readable.

Bruce Lewis 24 Nov 2023 16:53 UTC
8 points
6
on: Insulate your ideas
Are you really insulating from reality, or from recency bias?

Bruce Lewis 24 Nov 2023 4:33 UTC
3 points
−2
on: What did you change your mind about in the last year?
At the beginning of 2023 I thought Google was a good place to work. I changed my mind after receiving new evidence.