EniScien

Karma: 263

Tldr: from Russia, hated reading, was grateful to science, liked clever things, cheats, computers, coded since 9y, was going to become a programmer, read HPMoR at 12, but didn’t tried to solve any riddle, didn’t read sequences until 16y, until 2023 didn’t understood that rationality isn’t about Truth, it’s about Skills. Now trying to generate maximally useful thoughts, post some on LW.

More detailed version organized as Shortform comments thread: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbSsSwEfdEuaqCRmz/eniscien-s-shortform?commentId=JtpxcmxMt2ycd4K5s

EniScien 5 Feb 2026 21:55 UTC
1 point
0
on: The Third Fundamental Question
It seems to me very similar to some old lw post I have seen about being there some very easy, but very powerful technique (it had also said that it is equivalent of some iirc basketball technique/throw), which is “thinking before doing” or more precisely “visualizing what will likely happen before doing”. Because you didn’t mention it I suppose you didn’t read—unfortunately I failed to find it even using Grok, maybe someone other have read it?

I generally agree that it is very useful. Though I personally try not to ask any questions, but just visualize. Also humans do have natural ability to do that, those automatic anticipations, for example when I think about asking Grok for something often in my imagination automatically pops up a rough picture of its reply which follows some unpleasant pattern and so I drop the idea with disappointment. Unfortunately that happens almost fully outside of focus of attention and very quick and far from always—usually tied to you feeling pain in the past so you flinch from it and/or after many repeats.

I mostly try to develop those natural anticipations into more long, detailed and conscious, because it feels to me like they have some elegant aspect which my intentional tries in visualizing future lack.

EniScien 5 Feb 2026 19:43 UTC
4 points
−1
on: Examples of Highly Counterfactual Discoveries?
I am surprised that nobody wrote about it—on lesswrong, but… Bayes theorem. I remember the story how it was lying in a drawer and found only after Bayes’ death.

Per Grok:

Thomas Bayes developed the core idea in the 1740s (published posthumously in 1763), framing inverse probability to update beliefs given evidence. Pierre-Simon Laplace independently rediscovered and significantly extended it starting in 1774, giving it much of its modern form and broad applications—without apparently knowing of Bayes’ work. This is a classic case of independent rediscovery, but with a key caveat: the gap was substantial (roughly 30+ years from Bayes’ work to Laplace’s publication).

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EniScien20 Aug 2025 13:39 UTC

10 points

1 comment2 min readLW link

EniScien 4 Aug 2025 18:16 UTC
1 point
0
on: HPMOR: The (Probably) Untold Lore
Sort of question: I have read once about some drafts of “Not your usual Riddle fic” or something like that which iirc EY had written and was going to publish as well as epilogue. When I heard about it I became really interested about those, what it was exactly about, are they finished, can we see finished of those, can we see just drafts? I just hope to ever read them (as well as epilogues) before we all will die.

And also I am interested about other works, esp Well Bound Demons. What is with them? Is there some central page with info on such questions?

I am one of those people who are really interested in hpmor epilogue, but not in planecrash’s. That’s because I liked hpmor much, much more than planecrash. I am actually more interested about continuation of… I never can recall the name, the story about Oliver Greenfield, than in planecrash.

I suspect I have lots of questions about hpmor, but now can only recall that:

Were Harry’s… I don’t know how to say, let it be… Quirks. Like his stories about being afraid of mugging, biting a teacher, hitting for a ball, his strong privacy feeling etc. Were they somehow aimed? Do I at all see any real pattern here or just faces in the clouds or maybe it’s a part of some bigger pattern, including eg later explained story with scientific project? Actually, what at all was part of Secret Plans in hpmor writing and what was just things of moment (like want to make Hermione be eaten by a troll)?

In one interview I have heard that EY was going to write something completely goofy and was somewhat surprised by reaction. And I hadn’t understood at all what that means at the moment. I don’t quiet understand how something as rational as hpmor and goofyness may be in one sentence. After all this time, I have some ideas, like trolls suddenly having transfiguration ability from nowhere just for funny plot. Or that Harry both mentions Raistlin Majere as story characters and somebody Dulak as real spell. And yet.

I am also interested what exactly didn’t fit, wasn’t assembling to close the brackets? I can’t quite imagine an example.

Also, what happened in SPHEW Arc? Even I considered it boring despite how much I liked approximately everything else about hpmor not from first chapter, not even from first lines, but I may say, from negative lines, because I really liked it already because of all the meta. Which i am actually also interested about, was that intended from the beginning? Because I never saw something like that before, and even after I have seen something resembling only once, in Thinking Physics. (I actually really regret that just because there were no similar warnings before planecrash, I assumed that there will be no riddles, foreshadowing etc, so I wasn’t trying to solve any riddles, I’d really wanted all this meta to be here, including eg “I know you often seen disclaimers before things just because they mention death of something, but it’s not one of those, and also the author is incredibly smart and creative, so, really, be careful”)

One of the things I most liked in hpmor is… I am not quite sure how to describe it, but I ever got some close feeling only from Oliver Greenfild’s story. I am interested to know is there actually some cluster of traits or is that something that only aligns with my personal distribution of preferences.

EniScien 4 Aug 2025 16:32 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Czynski’s comment on: HPMOR: The (Probably) Untold Lore
I was in interesting in reading the first time to think and also haven’t thought that all the chaos is only my own stupidity. But on further rereads it seems very strange that Quirrell says “My immortal existence must depend on discovering what trap you have set, and finding a way to escape from it, as soon as possible. But let us pointlessly delay to talk of other matters first.” and Dumbledore just… goes along with that. Shouldn’t it be incredibly suspicious? Pointing out that Voldemort is completely sure that it’s safe for him.

As I guess, Voldemort is indeed just much smarter than Dumbledore. Just as Voldemort said. And Dumbledore himself said. And everyone said. Harry just didn’t believe that because why then Voldemort didn’t win in 3 days? And in previous chapters we had found the answer: Voldemort was just a role, Riddle just liked played into all that war more than wanted to win.

So I suspect that Riddle said that knowing that Dumbledore isn’t actually cunning, he pointed attention to Weasley twins etc. So Riddle sure he will not notice.

So Dumbledore is being stupid, but very predictably stupid, not suddenly stupid. So I think that is how it can be not an Idiot Ball. Though I don’t dare to actually claim that because I didn’t actually predict that in advance (in my first read, I mean).

P.S. Oh, also he should (falsely) thought that trap will work before strange Quirrell phrase because he doesn’t know that Harry leaked Resurrection Stone to Voldemort. About cloak not sure, maybe Dumbledore didn’t think about it, maybe didn’t expect that Voldemort will be able to get it, or maybe the cloak will not be able to save Voldemort and Dumbledore just didn’t want to lose Harry.

EniScien 30 Jun 2025 16:42 UTC
1 point
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
I can remember that long ago when I have read Science vs Bayes I wasn’t actually convinced. Because… Yudkowsky didn’t prove that Bayesianism can actually do better. MWI already was mainstream QM in science. So I wasn’t convinced that I actually should choose Bayes for the sake of my sanity.

I changed my mind after reading about P-values vs Bayesian-likelihoods, sure, I need to choose Bayes instead of Science for the sake of my sanity.

I think post about likelihoods will be really useful if linked to Science vs Bayes. And… It wasn’t in my experience, but EDT vs CDT vs TDT probably also will be good example.

EniScien 17 Jun 2025 4:59 UTC
7 points
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
I am increasingly more concerned about how my current beliefs may be defined by the fact that I eg watched “Little Soldiers” and was impressed as a kid. And other examples of fictional evidence which probably formed my priors. I now interested how to know which is the degree of influence, and how to correct for that.

EniScien 17 Jun 2025 4:54 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Sure, there are some things that don’t change. But how to ensure that it isn’t just survival bias? And if I will try for example to look into my traits which I considered important at a time, then it looks like most of them changed in my case.

It looks for me that preferences (even as they feel on emotional level, not just appear in behaviour) are vastly influenced my your capabilities. Eg I really hated reading and really liked computers when I was 9, and now it changed because I read better and easier and because I now can use my mind instead of computer. So I strongly suspect that if you will drop on somebody +50 iq points he will suddenly start to like math (previously I was skeptical about EY’s claims that increasing intelligence will lead to sudden changes in preferences, but now I totally believe it). Or eg I didn’t like emotional and interpersonal moments in fiction, but now I suddenly like them because I understand them so much better. And the question “do I prefer to know awful truth or be happy” doesn’t even make sense to me now since I can disentangle those mentally.

In some sense it looks obvious, but yet I totally wouldn’t expect these things to change, they didn’t look like having these concrete slots for circumstances variation or even more, things that changed felt like internal for those mental preferences. And even more again, they changed because of change in cognitive circumstances, not environmental.

And maybe I had more malleable personality than usual. I never had a unified place for storing my personality info and was extremely prone to decoupling, so different behaviour modes inside of my brain totally could just check consistency against themselves.

And maybe I spent much more time than usual person to introspect and notice behavioral differences.

And maybe I was affected here by the fact that I looked through my memory to find my forming childhood events and reflect on them and update with all my current cognitive skills.

Anyway, personality now looks for me much less stable. It looks like you can shift personality to almost any state by changing capabilities. Just people usually have mild preferences to not do that, to improve eg their first best math and not second best languages. Or if to put it another way, personality usually looks not changed because it’s traits tend to on average have the same average as previously, not because traits are stable.

I still don’t get what are you talking about. Religious belief isn’t discussed because it is something that can be be destroyed by truth? And meditation isn’t? There could be said something about power of “всенощное бдение” from Christianity, but sleep deprivation seems to much, much more likely to have huge harmful effects than meditation?

EniScien 16 Jun 2025 12:29 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
(I am afraid that it will turn into people just saying what they have in mind instead of replying… Even more than now. But I can’t write down all of inference, so...)

I more thought that “no self” should be about something literal like “your personality in years changes so much that you 5 years later are more like some other human than you 5 years ago”. But if people on lw (not just some LLM) continue to point out only to Buddhism than… Maybe I forgot how often people like to say something in way of “shocking news! There is no time, time is just an illusion, Barbur proved it” while the same would say “shock! There are no protons, they were illusion of quarks prestidigitation”. Though I am still puzzled why people at all tend to think that if something is not ontologically basic that it’s just illusion, I don’t think I had this problem even before sequences.

Idea that agency of a person is combined from lesser agencies of parts of mind instead of eg booting up after adding one final component to general system looks very plausible to me. Though I am not even sure that it is what was meant by people, not just something I project into.

And also I don’t see where are you coming from with your views on Buddhism & LW. I don’t know what should mean “clearly atheistic”, wasn’t EY in the beginning talking about his Taoism inspirations? What is different now? People started to believe supernatural? For me it’s clear what were skeptical about those people who say “meditation works” (short metaphor would be “expected LSD, found modafinil/nicotine/meth”).

EniScien 9 Jun 2025 4:47 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
I don’t know what is communication problem, but it certainly doesn’t go right. Or probably, multiple problems. Because… Complaining to Grok is like complaining to a parrot… And after not getting clear answer from it I guess that it’s just too niche/original topic to be Grok being able to process it at all. And that are not complaints, it’s a list of what I don’t think could be plausible meanings of what I have seen on lesswrong. In a historical context. With explanation of why I don’t consider those plausible for LW. And you didn’t say initially that it’s what you think, not what eg you have seen. And I not at all fond of the fact that you are commanding me what I “should” do.

EniScien 9 Jun 2025 3:48 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Before posting on LW I asked Grok that question and it suggested variants like that behaviour is situation based or that personality is measured externals instead of some fundamental internals or that personality is reductionist emergent phenomena of neural activity or that eg Big Five are correlations instead of causal mechanism or “no self” that there are just transient mental states instead of permanent self.

After reading that I concluded that Grok has no idea what lesswrong memetics is and went here to write a post. Because all of that seemed blatantly obvious not from bayesian but just from scientific or even common sense perspective.

The closest sensible idea I think may be referred as “self is not real” is that if you try get coherent agencies from humans they will not tend to neatly cluster as 1 brain → 1 agency, 1 agency → 1 brain.

But it feels like other people didn’t referred to that.

Also maybe they meant that you can have multiple selves like HJPEV with no central one and generate new on a whim. Or even that most of people actually do that, just subconsciously, while communicating with different people (which will actually align with eg morphology of Russian translate of “personality”—“личность” which has same root as face/mask/appearance)

And yet all that feels like not a clear explanation. Also people said about it like about some giant insight and in difference with Sorting Pebbles it feels like I am not getting it fully instead of not getting it at all, so probably I indeed don’t get something instead of just getting it fully in advance.

EniScien 9 Jun 2025 3:00 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: We Don’t Really Want Your Participation
This whole post looks very strange to me in comparison with other posts.

If I am not misunderstanding it, I really disagree. I have very much parts of my brain which can generate sensible output for some input and very limited amount of attention to actually do that. So it seems to me like a very sensible ask to say something mathematical or say something as rationalist. Somebody who doesn’t know math can easily just never think that he needs to think in some direction.

For example, I can say “oh, well, it’s projection of 3d on 2d and it follows such math” or “one of the main reasons why brain thinks something is beautiful is symmetry” or “as rationalist I for a long time thought that we need make pictures more useful, for example not put them into museams, but draw on wall everywhere, because currently walls are either plain or have ornaments of very low artistic quality” etc. Well, it may be harder to say as rationalist something that relates to some picture and only to that picture. Though “it’s beautiful” is also can be said about very much pictures, not about one presented.

It’s really strange to hear that there is something wrong in ask to say something special as rationalist from the same person who said about not wanting to do anything in his fanfic same way as it was done in other fanfics because then it would be too cliche/unoriginal and will fail to transmit any Shennon information.

Though I think it’s indeed very suspicious when somebody “calls artists to participate” instead of hiring artists.

P.S./Edited: I am not sure that it’s the same idea as in g’s comment. And I don’t think that stereotypical idea of artist view will be correct in comparison with actual artist view any more than will be correct a stereotypical idea of “mathematician view” that you should do everything only with logic with no intuition.

Also, I may compare ask for N’s view instead of “your view as human” to ask for your 20th thought on topic instead of 1st thought. It may have sense to say that picture is beautiful if you are the first who says something, but if not, you probably better in advance say something different than your natural reaction.

EniScien 9 Jun 2025 2:20 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Maybe I was unclear, it’s highlighted by quotes fuzzy example, not a citation. I meant eg things what is said there: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vjmw8tW6wZAtNJMKo/which-parts-are-me?commentId=RLzuLn3wZkgidQPyC

And I have seen a lot of different phrases in general resemblance of that

EniScien 9 Jun 2025 0:43 UTC
1 point
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
I often see here, on LW, phrases like “personality isn’t real” and yet it feels blatantly obvious that personality can’t be explained away. So I am really interested to see an explanation what it at all means, because I only ever seen people claiming it, never explaining. I am also interested to know, should I prepare to have some afwul realization or not?

EniScien 8 Jun 2025 7:00 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
Then probably I was wrong to omit that I have seen summary in Rust official guide. Which made me doubt it’s useless.

Though I also now suspect that I have much better memory than most people. (I mean, I always thought that it’s normal to remember near verbatim first few sentences of audiobook after listening to it twice and complain that you stuck on what was fifth. But maybe it’s not? Idk how to check)

EniScien 8 Jun 2025 6:33 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: EniScien’s Shortform
It’s… Not at all what I am talking about. There is a big difference between five points overall scale with no reference points except being from (+)1 to (+)5 and −10 to +10 logarithmic scales each of user added tags with bayesian adjusting on previous ratings and clustering users by tastes. And it would be impossible to have good taste in apps if your only option is “vote pro” instead of default “doing nothing”. Actually… I keep in head here Thellims complaints about rating organization on Amazon, majoritarian voting on elections, EY post on psychophysics and, again, that post about textbook recommendations with mention what you also tried (iirc it’s not a thing in Google play, so I can’t filter note taking votes only by those who tried obsidian).

EniScien 31 May 2025 10:10 UTC
1 point
0
on: The Outside View’s Domain
And all this time I was missing that my key disagreement with Outside View is that I don’t at all infer from the experiments on Planning Fallacy that you should be less concrete, remove some details, but that you should take into account the past experience with all it’s details while reasoning about a new situation with all its details.
Problem that I indeed inferred something like ignoring details from Overconfidence. Failing to remember past data didn’t look like terrible situation of agent who can’t see it’s flaws even when pointed out to them, and Overconfidence did. Hence was the idea of ignoring everything except conclusions.
And I probably too much allowed myself to follow subtly different phrasings of others instead of phrasing everything exactly in my own Original Seeing. Because, as I reasoned, different frameworks should be isomorphic in the logical sense. And they probably are. But as I missed humans aren’t logically omniscient, so you need to consider selection effects of whose computations were actually picked to be executed.
P.S./Edited: Oh, I forgot important details, when I remember about previous cases, I just feel how my anticipations, intuitions change because previously I just didn’t have that fact fresh in working memory and so didn’t take it into account.

EniScien 27 May 2025 15:48 UTC
1 point
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
I often read things where I see start with “introduction” (and it’s not some sort of meaningful introduction like in Thinking Physics) and end with “summary”, and both look totally useless. Remarkably, I can’t remember such thing anywhere on lesswrong. But I don’t understand, is it just useless water, is it a question of general level of intelligence, or am I missing some useful piece of cognitive tech?
If there is indeed some useful piece, how to check do I already have it or don’t?

EniScien 27 May 2025 14:32 UTC
2 points
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
I once thought what will be in my Median World, and one thing was central entering node of all best practices. Easy searchable node. Lots and lots of searches like “best tools” will lead to it, just in case if somebody somehow missed it, he could still find it just by inventing a Schelling point by his own mind.
And then an idea came to my mind: what if such a thing already exists in our world? I didn’t yet try to search. Well, now I tried. Maybe I tried wrong requests, maybe google doesn’t prioritize these requests, maybe there is no such thing yet. But I didn’t find it.
And of course as a member of LessWrong I’ve got an idea that LessWrong could be such a place for best practices.
I thought that maybe it isn’t because it’s too dangerous to create an overall list of powerful things which aren’t rationality enhancing ones. But probably it’s wrong, I certainly have seen a list of the best textbooks here. What I want to see is for example a list of the best computer instruments.
Because I searched for best note-taking apps and was for a long time recommended to use Google Keep (which I used), Microsoft OneNote, as best EverNote. I wasn’t recommended to use Notion, not saying about Obsidian.
And there is a question of “the best” being dependant of utility function. Even I would recommend Notion (not Obsidian) for collaboration. And Obsidian for extensions and ownership (or file-based as I prefer it to name, because it’s not question of property rights, it’s a question of having raw access to your notes, while Obsidian is just one of the browsers you can use).
What I certainly want to copy from textbook post is using anchors to avoid usage of different scales. Because after only note-taking via text-editor, I would recommend Google Keep, and after Google Keep I would recommend EverNote.
And now I tried much more, eg Joplin, RoamResearch and Foam (no, because I need to be able to normally take notes from phone too, that also a reason why I keep Markor and Zettel Notes on my phone, Obsidian sometimes needs loading which needs more than half a second), AnyType and bunch of other things (no, because not markdown file based), so I don’t want to go through recommendations of Google Keep. But I am not going to be sure I found the best thing, because I thought so when I found Notion, and I was wrong, and now I am remembering No One Knows What Science Doesn’t Know.

EniScien 27 May 2025 12:35 UTC
1 point
0
on: EniScien’s Shortform
I now understand my reading issues better. It weren’t just lack of speed and imagination as I thought. There was a whole bunch of factors creating a stable equilibrium.
And probably it indeed was “from childhood”. Concretely, from how I was taught reading at school. At the beginning of school, I already was able to read, but I read slow.
And I was checked on “technique of reading” (“техника чтения”), actually speed of reading. I needed to read out loud (so I couldn’t avoid full-blown vocalization, without even sub) and with expression (so, just make up intonations which aren’t exactly specified by text) and do it maximally fast (so I couldn’t stop to think, check quality of comprehension, not just remembering, or use imagination or...).
And also I was taught on texts which weren’t interesting to me, even the slightest bit. I can remember exactly one example of story which I liked reading in school, and it was already not in elementary school.
And then it all became an undividable habit, including hate.
That was the puzzling thing. I was reading not slower than peers, expressively, with good remembering and good comprehension (checked: I was able to rearrange words in the sentence and make replacement to synonyms very well!).
When I found fan fiction (which allowed me to switch between universes without diving into something totally unknown, and also made dropping books not just permitted in difference with how I was taught to read, but necessary), I even started to like what I read. But I still hated the process.
So advices I saw about “How to Learn to Stop Fearing and Love the Reading” were totally useless. Start to read what you like—I did. Avoid dense text, read in comfortable environment—just misses the mark. Read summaries, highlight key ideas to have better comprehension—I already have! Increase vocabulary—holy Cthulhu, I already have 99.9% if for my age and more than 65y PhDs if in absolute numbers, where more?? Start in short pieces and gradually increase—I already was able to read 16 hours at a day, 8 hours per day on average, my reading already is automatic, I can think about something while my brain will still continue to read. Join a reading club to make it social and fun—are you serious, social and fun? Experiment, personalise, track progress—done, didn’t help. Even the most promising thing “not treat it like a chore” wasn’t actually insightful, I was watching videos as a chore and didn’t have problems like I have with reading.
After seeing such advices, I dismissed the idea of getting help from something like that. As I now see, the most puzzling thing was that I was a smart A-grader etc, though I still hated reading, I shouldn’t ignore that context. But actually that was because stories lied me, when I have gone to school, I understood that in reality it’s not at all like in books, totally not. So I just put this connection “smart A-graders do like reading” into the same bucket of stereotypic blatant lies as “boys pull girls’ pigtails” (I still puzzled why someone will do that, or is actually someone doing that, I have never seen it) or “smart A-graders do like chess” (which similarly to reading actually has its own big story of wrong mental habits causing lack of liking).
As I now see it, a habit of reading maximally fast made me unable to learn any other way of reading, any new method would be less effective in the beginning. And from reading out loud with expression and listening to audiobooks (which weren’t read with just expression, but with soundtrack) I learned to read only sequentially, with never skipping, rereading or stopping to use imagination, and to get a joy from audio (so I couldn’t dismiss it).
And partially it was indeed a problem with reading as a chore, or more properly, as a work, because when I was watching videos as a chore, I wasn’t trying to understand and remember each word, I wasn’t trying to do it perfectly. What I needed as advice was “try to read the same way you’re watching videos”, which actually aims into trying to understand the meaning of the whole content block, but needs to be said with a link to direct experience to avoid misunderstanding.
And partially it indeed was the problem of reading speed. Now, comparing these two experiences I can notice that in the background I all this time felt like in cage, or maybe like being put into rails, while reading with subvoc. I was able to process text my faster than the speed of speech, 4 times at least, maybe? It’s hard to tell exactly just by intuition, because the absence of speech affects the sense of time. And I can’t just take a reading speed test, because I can’t yet switch off subvocalization reliably. And also there are issues with how my eyes are moving, which width the text is text etc.

EniScien

[Question] What to do with pre-or­der if I live in Rus­sia?

[Question] What to do with pre-order if I live in Russia?