David Hornbein

Karma: 1,562

David Hornbein 17 Sep 2026 6:10 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: NoSignalNoNoise’s comment on: Open Thread Autumn 2026
On a regular day I can write ~500 words for a solid essay in ~60-90 minutes. On a good day I can write twice as much in twice the time. That’s about as much focused writing as I can reliably do in a day. I don’t know if there’s much to usefully say here, most writing advice amounts to “draw the rest of the fucking owl”, but I’ll give it a shot.
My own process doesn’t really use outlining and drafting. Mostly I’ll pace and think about whichever point seems most interesting and important for a few minutes to put my thoughts in order, then sit down and write a paragraph or two. Sometimes I’ll get distracted thinking about a different point I intend to make later in the essay. When that happens I’ll add a bunch of whitespace and then start writing the later point. For a ~5000 word essay I might have three or four sections like this. I’ll skip between them based on whichever feels like it’ll flow most easily, and join them up as they complete.
I’ll reread once to do sentence-level revisions. Sometimes that’s it and I’m ready to post. For high-effort essays I spend more effort on revisions like “Delete this section, it’s a distraction which doesn’t carry its weight” or “Readers didn’t understand why this was relevant, add a new paragraph explaining” rather than sentence-level polishing. For longer essays I’ll go through and add section titles to break things up.
The main thing is just to put your ass in the chair and write. It gets faster and easier with practice but it doesn’t get *easy*.

David Hornbein 12 Aug 2026 20:22 UTC
16 points
9
in reply to: Charlie Sanders’s comment on: What just happened? A retrospective of AI alignment
The canonical example is the steam engine, which predates thermodynamics by over a century.
That’s not true. The Watt steam engine was made possible by the thermodynamic research of Joseph Black, Watt’s friend and financial patron, who discovered heat capacity and latent heat, thereby making Watt’s separate condenser possible. Savery’s earlier engine was based on Papin’s research. etc.
It’s true that thermodynamic science depended substantially on engineering progress as well, and worth noting that Black and Papin were more like experimentalists than like today’s idea of a theorist who works with symbols and abstractions, so your point is correct even if your history is wrong.

David Hornbein 5 Aug 2026 4:41 UTC
25 points
12
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: ricraz’s Shortform
What’s implausible about the story in the OP?
I signed the offer a few days later, then soon afterwards I messaged Jesse about my politics curriculum. … Jesse noted some controversial aspects of the curriculum, then set up a meeting with me, him, and Dan. … I had a long conversation with Jesse and Dan, and later a long conversation with Geoffrey. In the latter I learned that, although the decision was prompted by me sending them my curriculum, Geoffrey in particular was more concerned about my tweets.
So, they hadn’t read the curriculum, and then they did. At that point they learned where Ngo stands and changed their minds. If they had seen the curriculum beforehand then yeah they wouldn’t have made the offer in the first place. I’m sure they would have preferred that. No mystery here. Perhaps in the future they’ll do deeper political vetting before making offers.
why did they cite this tame exchange, instead of the much more conventionally offensive stuff that Richard supports
That’s not what happened. In the quote from Ngo’s OP above, Hoogland explicitly cites the “much more conventionally offensive stuff” as the reason. My read of “although the decision was prompted by me sending them my curriculum, Geoffrey in particular was more concerned about my tweets” is that probably Irving didn’t read Ngo’s Twitter until after they saw the curriculum and flagged the political concern.

David Hornbein 5 Aug 2026 2:02 UTC
27 points
20
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: ricraz’s Shortform
Do I radically misunderstand what reasonable people find offensive?
Yes. Most people make decisions about exclusion on the basis of coalitions and alliances and affiliations, not on the basis of the literal content of the person’s beliefs.
Do they have a spidey-sense that Richard endorsing the “national right” view
Yes. They accurately discern that he is a member of the other coalition and so they don’t want to hire him. See e.g. Zach Stein-Perlman elsethread saying he agrees with Resolution’s concerns not because of Ngo’s beliefs, but because of which other people Ngo affiliates with. (As I write this the comment is at 29 agreement points with 8 votes, so some others strongly agree with Stein-Perlman’s view.)
and that potential employees wouldn’t want to work for Resolution, because Richard is also employed there?
No. That whole line of argument is a dodge. The bottom line was written because Ngo is an outspoken member of the other coalition. If this dodge didn’t work, they’d move to a different one instead.
It’s not some utilitarian effort to achieve the company’s hiring goals most efficiently. Lots of people just want to exclude their political enemies. This is very common. In my life I’ve only once worked for a small tight-knit organization which employed outspoken members from the extremes of both political teams, and this was an unusual fact which provoked surprised comments from outsiders.
If Irving says outright “I want to exclude my political enemies” then he’ll get a lot of flak, and the Eli Tyres of the world will think less of him, and some people would feel ashamed of themselves. But if he dodges into concerns about what other people might think—of course I’m not judgmental myself, but you never know about those potential employees, surely I can’t be accountable for how they might hypothetically act—then for people who profess a belief in open inquiry it lets them dodge the cognitive dissonance, and in any case it’s much less likely to trigger the antibodies of people who focus on the literal meanings of the words and don’t naturally like to think in terms of coalitions (like many here). The dodge makes it less likely that Richard speaks publicly—of course that didn’t work in this case—and when he does speak it makes it harder for you to tell what’s going on.

David Hornbein 5 Dec 2025 18:06 UTC
11 points
6
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
This is true of approximately every worthwhile conference and convention. In my entire life I’ve been to exactly one conference where the scheduled programming provided more than 10% of the event’s value.

David Hornbein 25 Nov 2025 23:38 UTC
43 points
30
on: Stop Applying And Get To Work
This is good advice, and is not specific to AI safety or “short timelines”. In every field I’ve ever been part of, the people who show up and start doing the stuff that they see needs doing end up accomplishing more than the people who think in terms of filling open positions and sending applications.
If someone is hiring for the work you want to do, or is offering a fellowship that seems like it’ll help you get where you want to go, then by all means apply. But the difference in mindset between people who see that stuff as the default, vs those who see it as instrumental towards their own plans, is very big.

David Hornbein 2 Oct 2025 20:07 UTC
−1 points
0
in reply to: Roman Malov’s comment on: But what kind of stuff can you just do?
Ridiculous. I have handed out cookies to strangers on the street. I have eaten cupcakes given to me by random strangers on the street. People had a good time. If there are neurotic people who feel anxious taking food from strangers then they can just walk on by. You can just do things.

David Hornbein 23 Aug 2025 3:57 UTC
111 points
83
on: Banning Said Achmiz (and broader thoughts on moderation)
If I were a moderator, I would have banned Jesus Christ Himself if He required me to spend one hundred hours moderating His posts on multiple occasions. Given your description here I am surprised you did not do this a long time ago. I admire your restraint, if not necessarily your wisdom.
What links here?
- Said Achmiz's comment on Banning Said Achmiz (and broader thoughts on moderation) by habryka (23 Aug 2025 4:56 UTC; 12 points)

David Hornbein 14 Aug 2025 21:06 UTC
5 points
1
on: Somebody invented a better bookmark
Neat, I’ll try it out. $14 is a small price to pay for a shot at a minor ergonomic upgrade.

David Hornbein 17 Jul 2025 21:30 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Rauno Arike’s comment on: Rauno’s Shortform
Publishing anything is a ton of work. People don’t do a ton of work unless they have a strong reason, and usually not even then.
I have lots of ideas for essays and blog posts, often on subjects where I’ve done dozens or hundreds of hours of research and have lots of thoughts. I’ll end up actually writing about ¹⁄₃ of these, because it takes a lot of time and energy. And this is for random substack essays. I don’t have to worry about hostile lawyers, or alienating potential employees, or a horde of Twitter engagement farmers trying to take my words out of context.
I have no specific knowledge, but I imagine this is probably a big part of it.

David Hornbein 16 May 2025 1:08 UTC
24 points
1
on: Explaining British Naval Dominance During the Age of Sail
A good summary, but it’s worth noting that while the death penalty for failing to fight was on the books, Byng’s execution was the only time it was ever actually carried out. It’s a bit similar to how the US military legally has the authority to execute deserters, but in the past century has only ever exercised this once out of tens of thousand of sentences (Eddie Slovak during WWII).
From reading the autobiography of Lord Cochrane, an insanely aggressive and insanely successful captain during the Napoleonic Wars, my impression is that the Royal Navy was very concerned with the allocation of credit, glory, and prestige, as well as money prizes. He describes a system where officers are writing to the Admiralty headquarters to describe the meritorious or shameful actions of their peers and subordinates after every major action, and sometimes convoked courts martial to resolve disputes, as in the case of Lord Cochrane’s rival Lord Gambier. Lord Cochrane also argues that the prize system is critical to maintaining the Royal Navy’s morale and effectiveness.

David Hornbein 7 May 2025 18:22 UTC
13 points
13
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
Overtly, OP is trying to shun Cremieux for failing to meet an assumed-widely-agreed “standard of care and compassion”. This is obviously based on OP’s belief that Cremieux’s conduct is unacceptably outside the Overton window, even if they used the word “standard” instead of the word “Overton window”. The only point of deploying phrases like “Hoo boy” and “do better” is to appeal to a social consensus. OP isn’t being sneaky here or anything, you’re just misinterpreting their dialect.

David Hornbein 20 Feb 2025 0:07 UTC
17 points
15
in reply to: Cole Wyeth’s comment on: Cole Wyeth’s Shortform
Selection bias isn’t the whole story. The median paper in almost every field is notably worse than it was in, say, 1985. Academia is less selective than it used to be—in the U.S., there are more PhDs per capita, and the average IQ/test scores/whatever metric has dropped for every level of educational attainment.
Grab a journal that’s been around for a long time, read a few old papers and a few new papers at random, and you’ll notice the difference.

David Hornbein 8 Nov 2024 21:48 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel’s comment on: Eli’s shortform feed
OKcupid is certainly a better product for hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, of unusually literate people, including ~all potential developers and most people in their social circles. It’s not a small niche.

David Hornbein 13 Oct 2024 20:05 UTC
LW: 24 AF: 13
4
AF
on: My theory of change for working in AI healthtech
What does your company do, specifically? I found the brief description at HealthcareAgents.com vague and unclear. Can you walk me through an example case of what you do for a patient, or something?

David Hornbein 6 Oct 2024 20:35 UTC
7 points
1
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: MichaelDickens’s Shortform
Hm, this timing suggests the change could be a consequence of Karnofsky stepping away from the organization.
Which makes sense, now that I think about it. He’s by far the most politically strategic leader Open Philanthropy has had, so with him gone, it’s not shocking they might revert towards standard risk-averse optionality-maxxing foundation behavior.

David Hornbein 2 Oct 2024 22:48 UTC
33 points
42
in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: MichaelDickens’s Shortform
“Open Phil higher-ups being friends with Anthropic higher-ups” is an understatement. An Open Philanthropy cofounder (Holden Karnofsky) is married to an Anthropic cofounder (Daniela Amodei). It’s a big deal!

David Hornbein 29 Aug 2024 1:18 UTC
−13 points
10
in reply to: Eli Tyre’s comment on: Eli’s shortform feed
I don’t recall Eliezer claiming that dath ilani characters never give in to threats. *Dath ilani characters* claim they never give in to threats. My interpretation is that the characters *say* “We don’t give in to threats”, and *believe* it, but it’s not *true*. Rather it’s something between a self-fulfilling prophecy, a noble lie-told-to-children, and an aspiration.
There are few threats in dath ilan, partly because the conceit of dath ilan is that it’s mostly composed of people who are cooperative-libertarianish by nature and don’t want to threaten each other very much, but partly because it’s a political structure where it’s much harder to get threats to actually *work*. One component of that political structure is how people are educated to defy threats by reflex, and to expect their own threats to fail, by learning am idealized system of game theory in which threats are always defied.
However, humans don’t actually follow ideal game theory when circumstances get sufficiently extreme, even dath ilani humans. Peranza can in fact be “shattered in Hell beyond all hope of repair” in the bad timeline, for all that she might rationally “decide not to break”. Similarly when the Head Keeper commits suicide to make a point: “So if anybody did deliberately destroy their own brain in attempt to increase their credibility—then obviously, the only sensible response would be to ignore that, so as not create hideous system incentives. Any sensible person would reason out that sensible response, expect it, and not try the true-suicide tactic.” But despite all that the government sets aside the obvious and sensible policy because, come on, the Head Keeper just blew up her own brain, stop fucking around and get serious. And the Head Keeper, who knows truths about psychology which the members of government do not, *accurately predicted they would respond that way*.
So dath ilani are educated to believe that giving in to threats is irrational, and to believe that people don’t give in to threats. This plus their legal system means that there are few threats, and the threats usually fail, so their belief is usually correct, and the average dath ilani never sees it falsified. Those who think carefully about the subject will realize that threats can sometimes work, in circumstances which are rare in dath ilan, but they’ll also realize that it’s antisocial to go around telling everyone about the limits of their threat-resistance and keep it quiet. The viewpoint characters start believing the dath ilani propaganda but update pretty quickly when removed from dath ilan. Keltham has little trouble understanding the Golarian equilibrium of force and threats once he gets oriented. Thellim presumably pays taxes off camera once she settles in to Earth.

David Hornbein 29 Jul 2024 16:30 UTC
4 points
4
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Richard_Kennaway’s Shortform
>Are the near-term prospects of AGI making long-term prospects like suspension less attractive?
No. Everyone I know who was signed up for cryonics in 2014 is still signed up now. You’re hearing about it less because Yudkowsky is now doing other things with his time instead of promoting cryonics, and those discussions around here were a direct result of his efforts to constantly explain and remind people.

David Hornbein 15 Jul 2024 18:44 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: mesaoptimizer’s comment on: mesaoptimizer’s Shortform
I agree with your argument here, especially your penultimate paragraph, but I’ll nitpick that framing your disagreements with Groves as him being “less of a value add” seems wrong. The value that Groves added was building the bomb, not setting diplomatic policy.