FinalFormal2

Karma: 196

FinalFormal2 16 Apr 2026 1:10 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Kajus’s comment on: FinalFormal2′s Shortform
I don’t really know who these people are either- I don’t think it’s important to know who they are for my post.

FinalFormal2 16 Apr 2026 1:10 UTC
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in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: FinalFormal2′s Shortform
There are people who benefited from being introduced to LW-style rationality and the rationalist community in general, sometimes a lot. (I include myself in this group.)
Could you expand more on this? Not so much on the community side, but on the idea of rationality? What’s your experience of improvement there?
I don’t think I really believe that you experienced serious benefits from learning rationality.
I wish I had better information about this, I’m mostly just going off of vibes. I also wish I had better information about the state of the art of sanity-waterline raising.
I think there’s also two ways to break down the sanity project, which is one- can you make a receptive audience rational or improve their lives through rationality, and two, can you raise the societal sanity waterline, like make the average person saner.
I’m interested in the model where schools are generally a big cause of the problem of societal irrationality, but that doesn’t seem like something people talk about much in this community.

FinalFormal2 15 Apr 2026 5:28 UTC
3 points
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on: Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them
This makes me think of the “Anti-Anti-Normativity Alliance.”

FinalFormal2 15 Apr 2026 5:23 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: JBlack’s comment on: Annoyingly Principled People, and what befalls them
As someone fully out of the loop, spill the tea bro, why are we vagueposting

FinalFormal2 9 Apr 2026 4:41 UTC
9 points
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on: FinalFormal2′s Shortform
Doesn’t this basically sum up the course of the rationalist project?
I know we’re more about AI doom at this point, but if anyone is still interested in raising the sanity waterline, it seems like it’s important to make it common knowledge that teaching about biases isn’t enough to make people sane.
From my spot outside of the loop, it seems like that’s about where the project stopped.
What’s the cutting edge on raising the sanity waterline? Are people still working on this project? What might I have missed?

FinalFormal2 2 Apr 2026 7:15 UTC
1 point
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on: Lesswrong Liberated
This is awesome- thanks for setting this up, all the entries have been great

FinalFormal2 26 Mar 2026 5:53 UTC
5 points
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on: FinalFormal2′s Shortform
What do we have for hypotheses about how people acquire false beliefs at scale?
Michael Vassar drew my attention to this problem- and coming from a Christian background it fascinates me how well “religion is a conspiracy” maps onto my lived experience.

FinalFormal2 10 Mar 2026 5:04 UTC
1 point
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on: Newcomb’s Problem standard positions
I came up with a clever solve I wanted to put here-
Use a random number generator when you enter the room to assign yourself a 51% chance of one-boxing and a 49% chance of two-boxing.
If Omega is smart enough to know your method but not to know the random outcome, then by probability you’re a one-boxer, so there will be 1 million dollars in the mystery box, and you have a 49% chance of getting an additional $1,000, and probably the best possible chance of getting away with the bragging rights of successfully two-boxing.

FinalFormal2 28 Sep 2025 15:56 UTC
2 points
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on: Maya’s Escape
My interpretation is that “let me in” represents Jun’s desire for intimacy, and Maya is defending against that intimacy and the attendant fear of being judged with a simulation fantasy. It’s really cool how this is represented so directly with her reinterpretation of the phrase, it really paints the picture so perfectly.
There’s also something really compelling about the clash of the mundane and the supernatural in such a way. It reminds me some of Your Book Review: Real Raw News.
I notice that because the main character believes in simulation theory, I am led to expect that this actually could be true for her universe, which is a cool way to get inside her mind.
I thought it was great- I could see it as a black mirror episode or similar.

FinalFormal2 28 Sep 2025 2:37 UTC
1 point
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on: FinalFormal2′s Shortform
I believe that we’re going to see heavy political and social instability over the next 5 years, how do I maximize my EV in light of this? Primarily I’m thinking about financial investments.
Some things I was thinking about: Gold in GDX, Cybersecurity in HACK, Options income in JEPI, Defense/Aerospace in ITA

FinalFormal2 20 Jun 2025 15:13 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: cube_flipper’s comment on: Estrogen: A trip report
Yeah that’s one of the comments that inspired me to write mine.
As to your friends not being rationalists- I’m not trying to say that there’s something to do with rationality that’s causing psychosis. The ideology is not the movement, the social graph is more important than the ideas.

FinalFormal2 20 Jun 2025 15:06 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Estrogen: A trip report
I agree with you that my comment at the end was excessively combative.
If you just thought of a reason for B, and you wanted to add that, that’s one thing, but my impression is that mako is thinking of reasons for B, and that’s why there’s a list.
It’s directed thinking. An insight that favors one side is one thing, but this is directed thinking.
That can still be productive in a conversation, but it is a basic and bad bias.

FinalFormal2 20 Jun 2025 7:15 UTC
−5 points
−8
in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: Estrogen: A trip report
I think you’re exhibiting confirmation bias. All your thoughts are pointed in one direction. You have not attempted to think of reasons why psychosis might be underreported in this community.
This is ironic.

FinalFormal2 20 Jun 2025 1:41 UTC
4 points
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on: Estrogen: A trip report
It’s kind of disturbing to me that so many people in LW and LW-adjacent talk so casually about psychosis, and like everyone has a friend who’s been psychotic. Nobody in my personal life has experienced psychosis or psychotic symptoms, but it seems like everyone in this space knows someone who has. Maybe it’s all the drugs?

FinalFormal2 11 Jun 2025 5:56 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: lc’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
What’s even the point of that? Did Vassar do a lot of that type of thing?

FinalFormal2 9 Jun 2025 15:24 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: “Flaky breakthroughs” pervade coaching — but no one tracks them
Which are these workshop recordings you’re talking about?

FinalFormal2 27 Apr 2025 23:30 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: plex’s comment on: ete’s Shortform
Super curious- are you willing to give a sentence or two on the take here?

FinalFormal2 29 Mar 2025 17:50 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Noosphere89’s comment on: [Link] A community alert about Ziz
No. Because “going off the rails” often involves doing things that are observably irrational even by your own worldview. Like killing your parents and your landlord.
You can say: “this might make sense from their worldview! (soy)”
And the obvious response is: Yes. Because they’re crazy. Because they went off the rails.
You can also say: “But we’ll never know! Who can know? Nobody knows! Truth is subjective blargh”
And the again obvious response is: Yes, but we can observe patterns. And if you can’t update on this evidence and use some basic sense when this sort of thing repeats, you are not thinking clearly.

FinalFormal2 29 Mar 2025 17:26 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Ratios’s comment on: [Link] A community alert about Ziz
“The suffering of animals across the globe is so great, and society is so indifferent to them- that I need to kill my asshole parents and my landlord”
You: omgosh they’re so courageous and intelligent uwu
Are you just saying: Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking? Because the good thinking part is kind of integral to courage and intelligence imo. Probably if you can’t keep your whole organization from facing prison time because you can’t come up with a better housing solution than stabbing some old guy, probably you haven’t been very courageous or intelligent.
You’re probably, and take me very seriously when I say this, just crazy. And the things you do probably, possibly, maybe, might be, do not correlate well at all with your stated reasoning.

FinalFormal2 1 Feb 2025 19:28 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: FinalFormal2′s Shortform
“Surely the AIs can be trained to say “I want hugs” or “I don’t want hugs,” just as easily, no?”
Just as easily as humans, I’m sure.
No. The baby cries, the baby gets milk, the baby does not die. This is correspondence to reality.
Babies that are not hugged as often, die more often.
However, with AIs, the same process that produces the pattern “I want hugs” just as easily produces the pattern “I don’t want hugs.”
Let’s say that I make an AI that always says it is in pain. I make it like we make any LLM, but all the data it’s trained on is about being in pain. Do you think the AI is in pain?
What do you think distinguishes pAIn from any other AI?