Garrett Baker

Karma: 6,699

I have signed no contracts or agreements whose existence I cannot mention.

They thought they found in numbers, more than in fire, earth, or water, many resemblances to things which are and become; thus such and such an attribute of numbers is justice, another is soul and mind, another is opportunity, and so on; and again they saw in numbers the attributes and ratios of the musical scales. Since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be assimilated to numbers, while numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number.

Metaph. A. 5, 985 b 27–986 a 2.

Garrett Baker 27 Mar 2026 8:14 UTC
4 points
2
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Socrates is Mortal

Euthyphro was a kind of proto-Christian, having the correct moral feeling that murder ought to be punished even if the murderer is your relative.

It is not clear to me this behavior is particularly christian, nor its inverse particularly a-christian. Nor even that Socrates/Plato would say Euthyphro has even come to a wrong conclusion! Indeed, in The Republic, Plato argues his perfect society would eliminate the family as a unit, so he clearly does not feel it particularly Good to treat your family different simply because they’re your family. He generally treats the institution as a competing loyalty against the Good.

Unless by “proto-Christian” you simply mean coming to occasionally correct, but mostly incorrect poorly-thought-out conclusions. If that is what you mean, then I would again argue that Plato and Socrates beat you to it, and indeed this particular mode of behavior is a human universal.

More generally, you are again falling for the Nietzscheian reading of history, which frames Christianity as much more of a novel moral innovation than it in fact was. I have argued to you previously about this the last time I noticed you peddling this particular (mis)reading of history.

Garrett Baker 27 Mar 2026 7:42 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Socrates is Mortal
This is typically why most specify the need for liberal democracy, which both limits the powers of the populace to arbitrarily and without argument condemn people to death, and limits the ability for one person—philosopher or no—to become king.

Socrates (/his lineage) was anti-democratic, but it should be pointed out that for the longest time both democracies and non-democracies were horrible governments to live under, so personally I forgive them. Liberal democracy has in many ways given historical democracy too good a name.

Garrett Baker 27 Mar 2026 7:01 UTC
21 points
4
on: My hobby: running deranged surveys
I’m interested how the immortality questions would change if you asked whether the world would be better if everyone had the option to “to live forever in perfect health and youth”. It is notable due to how much support it’s getting compared to the other transhumanist proposals on the list, and I think the “would you” framing is the cause.

For instance, I think people would also say they’d like an option to “change their physical appearance to whatever they want” or make themselves much smarter whenever they want. Its just they don’t think the world would be better if everyone could do that.

This would also explain why the numbers don’t budge much if you add the overpopulation stipulation. If people are interpreting the question as only affecting their own actions, why would overpopulation matter?

Garrett Baker 20 Mar 2026 21:58 UTC
3 points
−3
in reply to: aysja’s comment on: Michaël Trazzi’s Shortform
I don’t want this to be a semantics argument about what the word “quiet” means. I will only claim that the Holden post is an important piece of information, both for encouraging Anthropic to be more open and for being evidence against the claim that Anthropic did not want people to know or talk about the relaxation of its safety framework, and further that the description of Anthropic’s behavior as “quiet” gives people a skewed picture of events and does not encourage such prosocial aspects of Anthropic’s behavior.

Garrett Baker 19 Mar 2026 18:18 UTC
45 points
17
in reply to: Michaël Trazzi’s comment on: Michaël Trazzi’s Shortform

This comes after Anthropic quietly removed its commitment to pause development from their RSP.

fwiw I don’t think they “quietly” removed their commitment to pause development, Holden wrote a big LessWrong post justifying the recent changes.

Garrett Baker 16 Mar 2026 7:20 UTC
13 points
0
in reply to: Chris_Leong’s comment on: Chris_Leong’s Shortform
What are examples of posts you think were highly downvoted and shouldn’t have been?

Garrett Baker 10 Mar 2026 20:55 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Adam Selker’s comment on: Maybe there’s a pattern here?
If that was the argument, we should check whether war actually got reduced and whether that was because war became too messy to fight. For nuclear weapons at least that strategy ended up working, but perhaps it also worked on a smaller scale too, for instance the Pax Britannica after napoleon saw many of the advancements in war discussed in the post, how much of that was caused by war becoming too destructive to fight?

Garrett Baker 5 Mar 2026 7:18 UTC
19 points
12
on: Maybe there’s a pattern here?
Is there a pattern here? Do most technologies end up being used for war? Are most technologies which are used for war invented by people who didn’t know this or thought their invention would stop war because it’d make war too horrible?

Maybe! But there are 6 examples here, clearly selected for illustrating the relevant theme, that is good for a jumping off point for a larger & more comprehensive (or less selective) analysis, but an answer to such implicit questions it does not make!

Garrett Baker 26 Feb 2026 7:35 UTC
4 points
−4
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Why is Anthropic is okay with being used for disinformation?

The term red line suggest that they are willing to give up things that aren’t red lines.

This is very different from the term “red line” meaning they are “okay” with anything that isn’t a “red line”. Obviously there exist compromises Anthropic is willing to make in the service of US national interest. That is different from disinformation campaigns in particular being among those compromises.

Further, in the exceptions to the usage policy (which you link) Anthropic states explicitly

For example, with carefully selected government entities, we may allow foreign intelligence analysis in accordance with applicable law. All other use restrictions in our Usage Policy, including those prohibiting use for disinformation campaigns, the design or use of weapons, censorship, domestic surveillance, and malicious cyber operations, remain.

(bolding my own)

This paragraph is somewhat difficult to read, but I read this as stating that even given exceptions to their general usage policy given to government entities, the listed prohibitions would remain in place, which notably do include your disinformation campaigns.

Garrett Baker 26 Feb 2026 6:56 UTC
13 points
2
on: Why is Anthropic is okay with being used for disinformation?
Why do you think Anthropic supports disinformation campaigns? Their universal usage standards also include prohibitions against creating & spreading misinformation and undermining democratic processes:
Do Not Create or Spread Misinformation:
This includes using our products or services to:
- Create or disseminate deceptive or misleading information about, or with the intention of targeting, a group, entity or person
- Create or disseminate deceptive or misleading information about laws, regulations, procedures, practices, standards established by an institution, entity or governing body
- Create or disseminate conspiratorial narratives meant to target a specific group, individual or entity
- Impersonate real entities or create fake personas to falsely attribute content or mislead others about its origin without consent or legal right
- Provide false or misleading information related to medical, health or science issues
Do Not Undermine Democratic Processes or Engage in Targeted Campaign Activities:
This includes using our products or services to:
- Engage in personalized vote or campaign targeting based on individual profiles or data
- Create artificial or deceptive political movements in which the source, scale or nature of the campaign or activities is misrepresented
- Generate automated communications to public officials or voters at scale that conceal their artificial origin, or engage in systematic vote solicitation that could undermine election integrity
- Create political content designed to deceive or mislead voters, including synthetic media of political figures
- Generate or disseminate false or misleading information in political and electoral contexts, including about candidates, parties, policies, voting procedures, or election security
- Engage in political lobbying or grassroots advocacy using false or fabricated information, or create lobbying or advocacy materials containing demonstrably false claims about facts, data, or events
- Incite, glorify or facilitate the disruption of electoral or civic processes, including interference with voting systems, vote counting, or certification processes
- Create content designed to suppress voter turnout or discourage legitimate political participation through deception or intimidation
Please provide more context in these kinds of posts, because as far as I can tell your complaint is simply based on an incorrect assumption.

Garrett Baker 25 Feb 2026 8:33 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Joanna’s comment on: Joanna’s Shortform
I notice that on Firefox Linux there is a semicolon on the far left part of the screen if you scroll to the bottom of the new profile page.

Garrett Baker 24 Feb 2026 6:40 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: ricraz’s Shortform
A bit late, but the “C” stands for Cosmism. Effectively Communist/Russian proto-transhumanists. If you’ve read it, think Tera Ignota’s Utopians.

Garrett Baker 24 Feb 2026 2:24 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: AllAmericanBreakfast’s Shortform
Notably this works for humans too!

Garrett Baker 21 Feb 2026 3:54 UTC
4 points
2
on: Terminal Cynicism
You have defined “Terminal Cynicism”, but I don’t think you’ve justified the claim that it is a “serious problem” or a natural category. You list some examples, and have framed them in a similar way so that their similarities stand out, but that is different from showing the same root psychological need is being met by each of them.

Secondly, assuming Terminal Cynicism is indeed responsible for many of the bads you claim, its still unclear to me whether it’s on-net bad. If that is driving most of the AGI companies, sure, but barring that, I’d imagine many good things are caused by Terminal Cynnicism too.

Concretely, civil rights, anti-smoking advocacy, the Open Source movement, the startup ethos more generally, gay rights advocacy, government (and industry) whistleblowing, low trust in government (leading to more permissive regulation), and many more goods seem to come from people staying cynical and fighting for their rosey-eyed view of their favorite future.

More abstractly, contrarianism seems a much more appealing failure-mode for a culture to fall into than conformism. People are highly conformist by default, and need to be kicked into being more contrarian.

Maybe we need marginally less Terminal Cynicism, but that claim should be specified.

Garrett Baker 17 Feb 2026 3:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Ivan Vendrov’s Shortform

Do you have any links to state of the art jailbreaks they discovered or published?

Not easily accessible to me, I was around the space ~1.5 years ago and I don’t have saved links, nor do I know if I’d have had links at the time. If the jailbreak stuff hasn’t germinated yet, which I assume you (or the Claude instance I asked about this) would know about if it had (Claude also couldn’t find any examples), then yeah there’s less reason to think they’re the shit, and maybe Ray ends up being right.

Garrett Baker 16 Feb 2026 22:11 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: RHollerith’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
I agree it is possible Newton was trying his best to explain his work, and you probably know better than I do since you’ve read it. However the claim is consistent with my understanding of his personality and is supported second-hand by William Derham’s claim that

These Controversies with Leibnitz, Hooke, & Linus, & others about Colours, made Sir Isaac very uneasy; who abhorred all Contests, accounting Peace a substantial Good. And for this reason, namely to avoid being baited by little smatterers in Mathematicks, he told me, he designedly made his Principia abstruse; but yet so as to be understood by able Mathematicians, who imagined, by comprehending his Demonstrations, would concurr with him in his Theory.

Note that this may be reasonable. If you make a scientific or mathematical discovery, it may be right to confine it in the language specialized to that field so that the relevant scientific or mathematical communities can discuss it with minimal outside noise, however Leibnitz and Hooke were able mathematicians, so if his goal was to write the theory so that even them or their followers couldn’t understand, then that is a different story.

As for the Latin question, regardless of why Newton wrote the Principia in latin, that is definitely a social factor rather than a “we understood calculus more as a society and could therefore explain it better than he could” factor.

Garrett Baker 16 Feb 2026 20:26 UTC
7 points
2
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
No, and my understanding is that this is a major reason why Europe became the analysis powerhouse during the 1800s. Leibniz had the better notation and pedagogy, so far more people in Europe could understand calculus than in England (who mostly closed ranks around defending Newton as the discoverer with the superior notation).

This is why in analysis courses everything is named after a french person.

I don’t know about the age distribution at which people were able to understand Leibniz, sadly, but I’d bet it was much lower than in England, and I would not be surprised if you in fact had smart aristocratic 16-17 year olds learning about it in university,

Garrett Baker 16 Feb 2026 19:13 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: Linch’s Shortform
not due to social reasons like people being too arrogant to understand the deep truths of calculus.

It shouod be noted that Newton did in fact intentionally (or so I’ve heard) write his Principia to
1. Be in latin, so that only the higher classes could read it
2. Be written in an impenetrable style, so that only the very smart could understand it.
Therefore I think its wrong to say there were no social reasons why calculus was overly complicated early on.

Garrett Baker 15 Feb 2026 19:38 UTC
2 points
2
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Elizabeth’s Shortform
Is this referencing a particular recent event I don’t know about, or is this a general observation?

Garrett Baker 15 Feb 2026 19:36 UTC
8 points
2
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Ivan Vendrov’s Shortform
The most legible thing they are clearly very good at (or were, when I was following the space much more closely ~1 year ago) are jailbreaks, no?