Bucky

Karma: 2,916

Bucky 2 Mar 2026 19:11 UTC
15 points
2
in reply to: PeterMcCluskey’s comment on: OpenAI employees: Now is the time to stop doing good work.
Sometimes dishonesty is the right thing?
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xdwbX9pFEr7Pomaxv/meta-honesty-firming-up-honesty-around-its-edge-cases-1

Bucky 20 Jan 2026 16:04 UTC
11 points
0
on: The Worst Form Of Government (Except For Everything Else We’ve Tried)
In this post John describes a method by which functioning democracies can attempt to prevent tyranny of the majority—giving each major faction a de-facto veto over new legislation.
Whilst this is a method used in some countries, it is by no means the only, or indeed the most common, method for achieving this. I am only properly familiar with the UK as a counter-example but Dumbledore’s army lists Frace, Germany, Italy and Canada as some others.
The method described in the post is likely more useful in situations where there are 2-3 major factions, whose values are incompatible with each other (slavery in pre civil-war US, religion/ethnic background in Iraq, religion/national identity in Northern Ireland—an example mentioned by Michael Roe). In Northern Ireland, for example, you cannot both want NI to be part of independant Ireland and want it to be part of the UK and you are very unlikely to change your position on the topic. Similarly slave vs non-slave states in pre civil-war america.
If such countries can maybe be thought of as bimodal (or trimodal) distributions of beliefs, other countries can be imagined as having a normal, or at least a relatively flat distribution.
In situations without a solid dichotomy, other methods for preventing tyranny of the majority are used. Some countries have regular coalition building (e.g. Germany), others are just kinda ok with regular opportunities to vote for a new leader. Possibly these solutions are less resilient if the country implementing them becomes more internally polarised and the de facto veto would be a useful backstop but I’m not sure.
Unfortunately this post doesn’t tackle these issues, instead focussing only on the single solution. To improve this post it would need to consider what different methods are used and the situations which make them more or less useful.
Footnote: Even the example of the US isn’t so obvious. Historically (before Nixon) the president and the 2 houses were united about 2/3rds of the time. More recently, power has been shared, but there is no tendency towards house or senate between Democrats & Republicans—each party has won each about 50% of the time since 1981. Before that Democrats controlled both for all but 4 of 48 years.

Bucky 18 Nov 2025 10:27 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: Screwtape’s comment on: Lack of Social Grace is a Lack of Skill
The main reasons I didn’t use that title were that the piece I’m responding to doesn’t (Lack of social grace is also not always epistemic virtue! Sometimes it’s pure unforced error!)
IUUC, the “Epistemic” in the title of LoSGiaEV is intended as the qualifier—LoSG isn’t an unqualified virute. In the first 3 paragraphs LoSGiaEV lays out what it means by that qualifier. I feel like LoSGiaLoS would be improved if it engaged more with the nuances.
I assume you mean “having the potential to become disastrous; at a point of crisis”
Yes
“Hey moron there’s a car coming” is worse than “There’s a car coming” right?
Yes, but both are worse than just shouting “CAR”. Being shouted at feels bad, along with the implications that you weren’t being careful enough / are a bad driver / are stupid for not looking. When I was younger I was in a car with someone who I respected who was texting as they drove. I saw a car coming but was initially socially nervous and tried to politely get their attention. This didn’t work and in the end I had to shout at them. They felt pretty bad about it but it worked.
Or take expressing disapproving comments or judgements; I’ve often seen people give feedback that only points out one or two flaws with no further commentary. I later learned that the person giving feedback loved most of the piece.
I think this should mainly be orthogonal to social grace. In my initial comment I deliberately put in the bits I agreed with, not because I wanted to be socially gracious but because I wanted to accurately portray what I thought.
There’s a great scene where a scientist is in a room full of people congratulating themselves on the Chernobyl disaster being not that big a deal and being well in hand, and stands up to say things are not fine.
Unfortunately I can’t view the video because it’s copyright blocked. It sounds like a good example of when being socially gracious is useful.
My counterpoint would be to consider what culture led to the scientist having to waste his time on multiple explanations. Should a less socially adept scientist have been ignored?
In pushing the culture of LessWrong we should be wary of such problems. My personal feeling is that LessWrong at the moment is in about the right place on the “Gracious” vs “Honest” pareto front for a given social skill level.
Tying this in with the car example, my wife and I have an agreement when one of us driving. If the passenger sees something dangerous that they think the driver might not have seen, they’re allowed to shout this with no concern for social grace and the driver should not take this as a personal slight.

Bucky 4 Nov 2025 21:45 UTC
14 points
−5
on: Lack of Social Grace is a Lack of Skill
I feel like I agree with almost everything that is said here, while finding myself concerned about the overall feeling of the post and the effect on LW if applied as is.
I think this stems from the title which isn’t quite what the article argues for.
I think that the article persuasively argues that:
1. The play off between social grace and honesty can change with skill at social grace
2. With high social grace skill the cost of being socially graceful is lower than you might think
3. In many circumstances being socially graceful is worth it
This doesn’t quite add up to Lack of Social Grace is a Lack of Skill.
This is especially true in critical situations. If I acknowledge that being socially graceful creates even a slight loss of honesty/accuracy then this could have very large costs if the implication of the decision is critical enough.
If LW conversations are intended to be more often about critical situations then we should hope that our conversations are closer to the bottom right of our own Pareto front than the top left.
I think without specifically acknowledging this and with the title as it is the post could easily end up pointing people in the wrong direction.

Bucky 9 Oct 2025 9:39 UTC
7 points
2
on: The Relationship Between Social Punishment and Shared Maps
One of my favourite LW post types is “something that I had a vague sense of being identified and fleshed out”
This is a great example of that.

Bucky 9 Oct 2025 8:50 UTC
3 points
2
on: The Relationship Between Social Punishment and Shared Maps
In my experience, people thinking badly about me isn’t upstream of the social punishment of losing resources, people thinking badly of me IS the social punishment.
Evolutionarily speaking I would guess that worrying about what people think of me is important in order to allow me to get resources but my emotions are implemented on the social level, not the resource level.
(E.g. I don’t know any LWers IRL and will get very little resource from them but it would still feel bad if people had a bad opinion of me)

Bucky 10 Aug 2025 20:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Ben’s comment on: If worker coops are so productive, why aren’t they everywhere?
The Co-Op’s purchase of Somerfield (£1.57b) would seem like an interesting case study—why did they decide to go ahead with this? Did it actually benefit staff in the long run?

Bucky 27 Jul 2025 19:50 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Sodium’s comment on: The Purpose of a System is what it Rewards
Yeah, I think that clarifies my thoughts—IMO using the word purpose is not ok in these other perspectives unless you actually mean a person had that purpose. it brings in connotations that someone has this purpose for which we then assign moral blame when the real question may be competence. And then, when there is moral blame, separating that from a competence issue is harder.
Much better IMO to say “this system isn’t achieving its purpose” than to say “this system has this other purpose” unless that’s what you mean—you are claiming that some designer(s) have this other purpose.
I’m not familiar specifically with HSR but my guess is that there are multiple purposes from multiple people. Some designers have the purpose to improve transport links, some want a big project to make their name and some want a jobs program. Systems can have multiple purposes and trying to narrow it down to a single one oversimplifies things.

Bucky 27 Jul 2025 18:33 UTC
6 points
0
on: The Purpose of a System is what it Rewards
I don’t think this works for general systems. For POSIWID the purpose of a car is to to get you for A to B. I don’t think POSIWIR returns a result—cars aren’t rewarded.
Having said that, I do think it’s much more interesting than POSIWID and, for human systems, more likely to yield sensible answers.
My take would be that purpose comes from conscious minds—the purpose of a system is what the designer intends. This is true even if the designer is rubbish at their job and their system doesn’t achieve the purpose they intend. When we don’t know what the designer intends we try to work it out by looking at what the system does or what it rewards.
This declares by fiat that non-engineered systems have no purpose but I think I’m ok with that. The purpose of a rabbit is not to make baby rabbits—rabbits just are. Saying rabbits have a purpose is to anthropomorphise evolution.

Bucky 15 May 2025 11:24 UTC
8 points
−1
on: Eliezer and I wrote a book: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
Quick note that I can’t open the webpage via my institution (same issue on multiple browsers). Their restrictions can be quite annoying and get triggered alot. I can view it myself easily enough on phone but if you want this to get out beware trivial inconveniences and all that...
Firefox message is below.
Secure Connection Failed
An error occurred during a connection to ifanyonebuildsit.com. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s).
Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP
- The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
- Please contact the web site owners to inform them of this problem.

Bucky 3 Aug 2024 9:55 UTC
14 points
9
on: Dragon Agnosticism
Do dragon unbelievers accept this stance? My impression is that dragon agnosticism would often be considered almost as bad as dragon belief.

Bucky 17 Mar 2024 22:50 UTC
75 points
60
on: The Worst Form Of Government (Except For Everything Else We’ve Tried)
I’m confused as to how the fits in with UK politics. I don’t think the minority party has any kind of veto?

I guess we have the House of Lords but this doesn’t really have a veto (at least not long term) and the House of Commons and House of Lords aren’t always or even usually controlled by different factions.

Bucky 9 Feb 2024 14:11 UTC
2 points
0
on: Running the Numbers on a Heat Pump
One extra thing to consider financially is if you have a smart meter then you can get all of your hot water and a chunk of your heating done at off peak rates. Our off peak electricity rates are about equal per kWh to gas rates.

Without this I think our system would be roughly the same cost per year as gas or slightly more, with it we save £200 per year or so I think. (This would be a very long payback time but there was a fully funded scheme we used).

If it helps anyone we are in Scotland and get average COP=2.9

Bucky 11 Jan 2024 4:13 UTC
9 points
0
on: Introduce a Speed Maximum
In the UK there is a non-binding but generally observed rule that speed cameras allow you to drive 10% + 2mph above the speed limit(e.g. 35mph in a 30mph zone) before they activate.

This is a bit more of a fudge but better than nothing.

Bucky 28 Nov 2023 14:28 UTC
2 points
−2
on: why did OpenAI employees sign
1. Someone in your company gets fired by a boss you don’t know/particularly like without giving any reason
2. You are mad with the boss and want the decision overturned
3. You have a credible, attractive BATNA (the Microsoft offer)
These 3 items seem like they would be sufficient to cause something like the Open Letter to happen.
In most cases number 3 is not present which I think is why we don’t see things like this happen more often in more organisations.
None of this requires Sam to be hugely likeable or a particularly savvy political operator, just that people generally like him. People seem to suggest he was one or both so this just makes the letter more likely.
I’m sure this doesn’t explain it all in OpenAI’s case—some/many employees would also have been worried about AI safety which complicates the decision—but I suspect it is the underlying story.

Bucky 23 Nov 2023 22:08 UTC
6 points
0
on: Why not electric trains and excavators?
I work in equipment manufacturing for construction so can comment on excavators. Other construction equipment (loaders, dumpers) have a similar story although excavators have more gently duty cycles and require smaller batteries so make sense to electrify first. Diesel-Hydraulic Excavators are also less efficient giving more potential advantage for electric equipment.
1. Agree that payback period is relatively low but possibly a bit longer than here—I’ve seen 3-5 years. The ruggedised batteries required for instance can be expensive.
Purchasers of new machines will generally keep them for 5-7 years which is enough to justify the payback but not to make it an obvious easy win.
1. If you have to use a diesel generator you immediately lose a lot of your cost saving. It is surprising how many construction sites lack mains electricity.
2. Many machines go to the rental market. In this case the equipment buyers do not get the benefit of the reduced operating costs. In that case the rental company has to sell the increased rental cost to their customers who are happy with what they are currently using.
3. Total cost of ownership just isn’t the main driver of buyer decisions. This is already a problem with diesel-hydraulic machines—there are many ways to make these more efficient which would have a decent payback period but don’t get implemented because efficiency isn’t a key purchasing driver.
What buyers really need is performance and reliability (plus low up front cost). The advantage of electric is more difficult to sell for reliability because of a lack of track record so going electric is a risk. Users are also rightly concerned that battery range will not be sufficient on high usage days—batteries in current machines often claim a full day but not necessarily with high usage.
1. Most likely route for electric in short term is for them to get used in environments where emissions are important (due to regulations or low ventilation such as mines) plus companies wanting to be/look green. This will allow a track record to build up which will give more confidence to buyers.
I suspect the most useful thing a government could do (assuming carbon tax is politically infeasible) would be to legislate for low emissions in cities which would build the track record faster.

Bucky 29 Jun 2023 16:21 UTC
16 points
4
in reply to: lc’s comment on: When do “brains beat brawn” in Chess? An experiment
Something similar not involving AIs is where chess grandmasters do rating climbs with handicaps. one I know of was Aman Hambleton managing to reach 2100 Elo on chess.com when he deliberately sacrificed his Queen for a pawn on the third/fourth move of every game.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUjxDD7HNNTj4NpheA5hLAQLvEZYTkuz5

He had to complicate positions, defend strongly, refuse to trade and rely on time pressure to win.

The games weren’t quite the same as Queen odds as he got a pawn for the Queen and usually displaced the opponent’s king to f3/f6 and prevented castling but still gives an idea that probably most amateurs couldn’t beat a grandmaster at Queen odds even if they can beat stockfish. Longer time controls would also help the amateur so maybe in 15 minute games an 1800 could beat Aman up a Queen.

Bucky 20 Jun 2023 20:18 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Public Transit is not Infinitely Safe
Think you need to update this line too?

This is a bit less than half the rate for the CTA.

Bucky 1 Apr 2023 19:46 UTC
7 points
0
on: Proposal: Butt bumps as a default for physical greetings
Is there a default direction to twist for the butt bump? The pictures all show the greeters facing in the same direction so one must have turned left and the other right! How do I know which way I should twist?

I cannot sign the assurance contract until I understand this fundamental question

Bucky 1 Apr 2023 13:12 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Stop pushing the bus
Agreed, intended to distinguish between the weak claim “you should stop pushing the bus” and the stronger “there’s no game theoretic angle which encourages you to keep pushing”.

Bucky

Secure Connection Failed