EniScien

Karma: 261

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 15 Apr 2026 5:12 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: EniScien’s comment on: Only Law Can Prevent Extinction
When writing I was unsure what is less of a problem: split text on 7 different comments or have one comment be too long? Now it seems that having one long comment was certainly a mistake (as well as lots of P.S.). I am not sure whether it is possible to fix it by reposting it as many comments.

EniScien 15 Apr 2026 4:49 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: TristanTrim’s comment on: Only Law Can Prevent Extinction
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but changing a job is a good political expression gesture if you are proposing to vote for Blue. If you are saying something as extreme as that the world is ending, you should be ready to make signal as extreme as that—changing a job isn’t.

To be clear: by ‘signaling’ I don’t mean that people are calculating how much of hard to fake bayesian evidence changing a job provides, they don’t feel that changing a job anywhere as near worldshattering as belief in world end. Eh. It doesn’t feel that I convey it well. I think of something like person getting cancer diagnosis—people expect that if it is true, then Walter White is maximum level of calmness allowed (as to say—Breaking Bad into a drug dealer).

EniScien 15 Apr 2026 4:33 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: EniScien’s comment on: Only Law Can Prevent Extinction
And now I know why I so rarely try to post (or even comment) on lesswrong. I almost was puzzled why. Now I am not. Just commented something and got karma −4 on it and I have no idea why (Ok, I have too much ideas why, I don’t know which one is right)

Suddenly I have much more appreciation for the terrible system of eg twitter where you can’t downvote things. Probably I should have written it there...

EniScien 14 Apr 2026 4:41 UTC
−10 points
0
on: Only Law Can Prevent Extinction
Oh, it is a long post and have a lot of thoughts I wanted to comment about it. Not sure how to organize it all.

But wait! The utter extinction of humanity—argue people who do not believe that premise—is a danger so extreme, that belief in it might possibly be used to argue for unlawful force! By the Fallacy of Appeal to Consequences, then, that belief can’t be true; thus we know as a matter of politics that it is impossible for superintelligence to extinguish humanity. Either it must be impossible for any cognitive system to exist that is advanced beyond a human brain; or the many never-challenged problems of controlling machine superintelligence must all prove to be easy. We cannot deduce which of these two facts is true, but their disjunction must be true and also knowable, because if it weren’t knowable, somebody might be able to argue for violence. Never in human history has any proposition proven to be true if anyone could possibly use it to argue for violence. The laws of physics check whether that could be a possible outcome of any physical situation, and avoid it with perfect reliability.

That whole line of reasoning is deranged, of course.

The problem here is not even so much that it reads more as mockery than as arguments, but, as @Algon noticed about other fragment, that this probably is not at all how described people think. I wasn’t in such cognitive state as described here, so I don’t know, but, as my brain guesses with using automatic empathetic modeling, they probably think more more along the lines of “this belief is obviously not true, so all this unlawful force would be for nothing, so Yudkowsky shouldn’t be allowed to cause it for nothing. And you should avoid dangerous contacts with his arguments, because they are directed into convincing you about super danger of AI, and then you may do unlawful force. Because of a belief which is obviously wrong. And he may start something about epistemology and proper rules of updates, but I can forsee where it is going on—to try to make people believe in violence causing, ridicously implausible belief!” and then they may also go say something about how Yudkowsky shouldn’t tell his false stories about AI danger because they would just depress teenagers for nothing.

I am actually not sure, maybe EY has reasons to put it that way, I had very much cases when he actually had reasons for things his was doing (though in this case my guess would be “I am too tired to make it polished and respectful, so either like that, or I won’t write at all”).

Maybe also there is influence of the fact it is cross posted twitter article. Which actually isn’t marked in any way I have seen, and I found out it just accidentaly, and was confused what is it while reading, because it wasn’t said to be copied series of twitters posts and was too long for that, but was somewhat strange for LessWrong and more reminding twitter. I am actually not even sure now, should I comment here or on twitter? (on both??) Edited: no, really, does someone know some kind of standard policy for that or something?

There’s in fact a difference between calling for a law, and calling for individual outbursts of violence. (Receipt that I am not arguing with a strawman, and that some people purport to not understand any such distinction: Here). Libertarian philosophy aside, most normal ordinary people can tell the difference, and care. They correctly think that they are less personally endangered by someone calling for a law than by someone calling for street violence.

After reading the link, I actually feel being afraid that I in fact totally could also not notice the difference. If I try to figure out why by introspection, it seems that the problem may be in too much using logical mental mode with drawing consequences and too little the mode where you just stare at the thing until considerations pop out. Which actually seems to be a result of that I was trying to not make mistakes of the latter mode such like dismissing MWI because it “seems weird” and bite the bullets instead. But ended up drawing consequences from a mental model which wasn’t account for some intuitively obviously significant factors.

Oh, also I am glad that good writing is back here, unlike Top Tier Intelligence and Fleshling Story posts.

(I probably should have wrote or even posted in parallel to reading, because now I have a feeling I forgot at least one point I wanted to say)

P.S. Oh, and just post comment that it seems by avoiding social networks since I was a kid, because I heard that they are harmful for your mind, I managed to end up having no actual personal experience of what is bad in social networks. But after some examples in that post I actually have better reference point for what was spoken about in “Clickbait Subtly Destroys Intelligence”.

Actually… I looked up and it is “Is Clickbait Destroying Our General Intelligence?”. Which reminds me about another point: I suspect that “bomb data centers” meme causal story was not somebody lying, but somebody recalling by memory without a thought that such serious allegation maybe is worthy to actually look up it and not rely on unreliable memory. Or even not ever hearing about how unreliable memory is and thinking like “I vividly remember it, so it is certainly true”. And then refusing to back off because it would be Dangerous Admitting of Weakness.

P.P.S. Oh, totally forgot. Another moment when I have obvious alternate hypothesis to what these people think is about “you should commit some violence”. Just… I recently first heard about Handicap concept in signaling theory. And it immediately sparked the idea that it would have explained why people talk about all that desperate violence. Because if you people truly believe that the world is ending, then you would be ready to show something more than cheap words, make some great sacrifices which would only people in such a great desperation make. It shouldn’t even be something about AI actually. Just some great expressive sacrifice of truly desperate. Like, maybe start sawing off your own legs. Or stop eating for half a month. Though, okay, that one doesn’t prove how much you truly believe in world end, people who stop eat believe in much less extreme things.

Of course, all this “signaling theory” may be some complicated matter and there is a tiny chance my half second idea was not quite correct. Like, I was surprised that eg Robin Hanson didn’t come to explain why of course you need to start sawing off your legs, or, even more desperate—go throw your own money into heaps and burn them.

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).

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.