ike

Karma: 1,329

ike 9 Apr 2026 2:50 UTC
4 points
0
on: Iran and FDT
Can we stop saying that FDT says you should never give in to threats? The theory only actually says that when you’re dealing with sufficiently good simulators whose behavior depends on their simulation of you. That almost never applies.
Separately, the fictional version of decision theory from dath ilan found in planecrash says to never give in to threats. That is not FDT and is not fully explained.

ike 23 Nov 2025 12:50 UTC
2 points
0
on: Omniscience one bit at a time: Chapter 5
The theoretical maximum per flip is doubling your money (if you had a way to just bet on fair coin flips)
You shouldn’t settle for 4%. You should be able to get to at least within 10% of optimal, certainly at low bet sizes.
Find an asset that is likely to either double or go to 0. For small amounts you can just pick sports games, learn which side will win then bet on kalshi or polymarket which won’t ban for winning every time. Plenty of 50c priced assets. That gets you to 7 figure size
Then you go to option spreads that expire soon at the money, although if you need to source a new bet every two hours that can take 7 figures in liquidity it gets complicated quickly. Probably best to only use it for doubling money once a day, and use the other flips for more helpful research. Once a day you can do something like “if I buy a 0dte call spread on SPY around the current price, it will end up profitable” and sell the call spread if not, if you do a narrow spread then it almost always ends up outside the bounds. You can roughly double 5 times a week this way, which should be enough for anyone.

ike 13 Sep 2022 21:15 UTC
11 points
1
on: Simple proofs of the age of the universe (or other things)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology tree rings gets us 14k years

ike 10 Sep 2022 17:25 UTC
2 points
0
on: San Juan, Puerto Rico – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2022
Two of us showed up, we’ll be hanging out in the back under the large square white tent if anyone else is looking

ike 13 Aug 2022 18:15 UTC
4 points
1
on: How to bet against civilizational adequacy?
Maybe buying IPV4 addresses? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416043 some discussion here.

Civilization has been trying to move to ipv6 for decades, but IPV4 is still widespread and commands a premium. With more internet growth this could blow up more.

ike 18 Jul 2022 22:38 UTC
4 points
3
on: Addendum: A non-magical explanation of Jeffrey Epstein
Yeah, the version I liked was that someone else bribed a guard/guards into letting him kill himself but that’s basically the same.

ike 10 Apr 2022 21:03 UTC
10 points
0
in reply to: TurnTrout’s comment on: Do a cost-benefit analysis of your technology usage
It’s been hard keeping to it, but I do notice myself being more productive when I do. One thing that has stayed is not having an email tab always open. Hoping that over time I get better at following it strictly; it has such immediate positive effects that I’m not so worried I’ll gradually forget and stop, like happened with other productivity attempts (e.g. making to-do lists.)

ike 6 Apr 2022 11:53 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: Are the fundamental physical constants computable?

Consider the shortest algorithm that simulates the universe perfectly.

Meaningless, on my metaphysics. Definition is circular—in order to define fundamental you have to already assume that the universe can be simulated “perfectly”, but to define a perfect simulation you’ll need to rely on concepts like “fundamental”, or “external reality”.

Assuming that the way the universe looks changes continuously with these constants, it seems strange to insist that if the changes are so small you can’t notice them they don’t exist.

The assumption is meaningless. It seems strange to me to insist that something “exists”, especially infinities, which are never observable. On our actual known physics we have strict limits on how much information can be contained in a finite amount of space, but even if we didn’t know that you can’t define these concepts in a noncircular manner.

ike 5 Apr 2022 19:42 UTC
2 points
0
on: Are the fundamental physical constants computable?
On my metaphysics it’s not coherent to talk about “fundamental” constants, for multiple reasons. Try tabooing that and ask about what, if anything, is actually meant.

If you can’t measure any of these constants past a hundred significant digits, what does it mean to talk about the constant having any digits beyond that? And what does it mean for a constant to be fundamental?

ike 30 Mar 2022 16:35 UTC
5 points
0
on: Do a cost-benefit analysis of your technology usage
I really liked this post. As a result of reading it, I’m trialling the following:

Every time I go on my computer or phone, I need to specifically have a plan for one specific thing I am going to do. This can be “check all notifications from X/Y/Z), or “write this one long email”, or even, “15 minutes of unstructured time”, but it should always be intentional. If I get the urge to do something else, I need to save it for a future session, which can be immediately afterwards.

ike 17 Feb 2022 1:11 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: Your Enemies Can Use Your Prediction Markets Against You
Yes, but you said they’re buying the no-coup shares, which subsidizes a coup. Article contradicts itself.

ike 16 Feb 2022 21:46 UTC
2 points
0
on: Your Enemies Can Use Your Prediction Markets Against You

Mars buys shares that pay out 5 million Dogecoin if there is not a coup

Suppose the prior implied probability of a regime change is 0.20. Mars can buy its shares for 1 million Dogecoin, pocketing a risk-free net utility equivalent to 4 million Dogecoin.

I’m confused—if the prior probability of a coup is 20% and Mars is buying shares that pay out if no coup, Mars would pay 4M?

ike 29 Jan 2022 18:34 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Crypto low risk profits
I wrote the post, everything is true.

In general I find stories of how others have succeeded interesting and useful. It’s also interesting to see how various markets are inefficient at times. Same motivation as my post on prediction markets last year.

Crypto low risk profits

ike29 Jan 2022 4:52 UTC

−5 points

3 comments1 min readLW link

(deepfivalue.substack.com)

ike 2 Jan 2022 14:36 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: We need a theory of anthropic measure binding
I have nothing wrong with the probability request here, I have a problem with the scenario. What kind of evidence are you getting that makes these two and only these two outcomes possible? Solomonoff/Bayes would never rule out any outcome, just make some of them low probability.

I’ve talked about the binding problem in Solomonoff before, see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jqwb7vEqEFyC6sLLG/solomonoff-induction-and-sleeping-beauty and posts it links back to. See also “dust theory”.

ike 2 Jan 2022 14:33 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: benjaminikuta’s comment on: Predictions for 2022
Not deployed yet except some minor positions. Will probably be ~30% private fiat funds, some crypto funds, and most chasing short term yield farming opportunities or related DeFi plays. It’s not something easily scalable and requires quite a lot of active management.

I blew away both the market and crypto this year with a range of exotic strategies and low risk. Think it’s basically impossible to repeat performance at current levels, but it seems hard to lose money given my risk appetite and diversification, and the only way I wouldn’t make significant money is if crypto enters a bear which is probably correlated to a stock market bear as well, in which case I’m probably close to flat.

Predictions for 2022

ike2 Jan 2022 6:34 UTC

13 points

2 comments1 min readLW link

(misinfounderload.substack.com)

ike 1 Jan 2022 22:00 UTC
14 points
0
on: New Year’s Prediction Thread (2022)
Putting together an article, for now here’s 22 predictions:
Tether is worth less than 99c by end of year: 2%
Biden or Harris mentions GPT-4: 2%
At least one school district or university is reported to tell students not to use language models (not just one teacher): 15%
A deepfake goes viral (>1 million views) with very few people, at first, realizing that it’s fake: 15%
Russia is widely considered to have captured the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv: 10%
S&P 500 goes up: 80%
Annual CPI inflation released Jan 2023 (for Dec 2022) over 3.5%: 40%
The 7 day rolling average deaths from Covid-19 falls below 100 in the United States for at least one day: 85%
Omicron booster is taken by at least 25% of Americans over 18: 20%
Dems lose the Senate: 75%
Dems lose the house: 85%
Biden is president: 95%
New named prominent variant infects over 10M: 25%
Will the US rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal before 2023: 25%
Bill signed by Joe Biden that mentions cryptocurrency/blockchain/etc: 65%
Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price is lower than today in dollars ($253k): 80%
Will GME be over $100: 50%
Trump indictment: 25%
Matt Gaetz indictment: 5%
Matt Gaetz in office: 95%
Federal booster mandate: 33%
Masks required on airplanes by Federal law: 65%

ike 31 Dec 2021 22:54 UTC
0 points
0
on: We need a theory of anthropic measure binding
Probability is in the mind. Your question is meaningless. What is meaningful is what your expectations should be for specific experiences, and that’s going to depend on the kind of evidence you have and Solomonoff induction—it’s pretty trivial once you accept the relevant premises.

It’s just not meaningful to say “X and Y exist”, you need to reframe it in terms of how various pieces of evidence affect induction over your experiences.

ike 7 Nov 2021 22:39 UTC
19 points
0
on: There Meat Come A Scandal...
There’s been a handful of kashrus scandals where people mixed in meat from other supply chains into stuff that was supposed to be kosher certified, which seems a useful reference point for how this can slip through even with an extensive monitoring system intended to prevent that.

ike

Crypto low risk prof­its

Pre­dic­tions for 2022

Crypto low risk profits

Predictions for 2022