johnswentworth

Karma: 64,094

johnswentworth 19 Jul 2026 17:28 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Elias Schmied’s comment on: The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
Had to think on it a bit, but I buy it. This comment helped some things click. Thank you!

johnswentworth 19 Jul 2026 15:31 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: remizidae’s comment on: The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
In every single other domain in which people lead and follow, a follower pretending to fall asleep would absolutely not be a signal encouraging the leader to lead more. It would be a strong signal that the follower does not like what the leader is doing and is opting out of the lead/follow relationship.
Generalizable point: too much of what I see in practice does not actually look like lead/follow; that model fits some of the data, but does not explain all or even most of the stuff which the deep nonconsent model explains.

johnswentworth 18 Jul 2026 16:10 UTC
4 points
1
in reply to: Elias Schmied’s comment on: The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
People being weak, non-agentic, etc, predicts that social equilibria will be non-ideal somehow, but it doesn’t predict which of the many different non-ideal social equilibria we see. Why are mating/dating norms weird in the particular ways we see, rather than some other ways? In particular, there are certain patterns of mating/dating norms which both recur across many societies and seem nonideal (like e.g. people relying on subtle signals), so there must be some systematic underlying causes of those particular norms. Why those particular norms?

johnswentworth 15 Jul 2026 17:47 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Patri Friedman’s comment on: The Weirdness of Dating/Mating: Deep Nonconsent Preference
I don’t think this answers the puzzle which the post attempted to answer. (Which is not to say the post answered the puzzle correctly, but it did give any answer to the puzzle at all.)
In approximately every other domain of human interaction, people just say what they want. The puzzle is, roughly: why is courtship/seduction specifically different? Why do people not just say what they want, in this domain, while they do in basically every other domain? Why the subtle dance? What is the underlying generator of that difference?

johnswentworth 15 Jul 2026 14:16 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: Thane Ruthenis’s comment on: AI for Agent Foundations etc.?
Even prior to Fable, Claude Code had reached the point of accelerating our coding work dramatically. That was a pretty recent development; prior to the last few months, LLM coding contributions were relatively marginal for the sort of coding problems we work on. Even now, Claude Code has mediocre taste, and auto mode would be pretty bad for our research coding work. (Though it is great for more standard cookie-cutter coding projects.) But it can bang out simple empirical tests well, and test basically what we asked for most of the time.
Other than that, it is still mostly Google Search Plus Plus.

Visioning: Concretely Imagining What You Want

Gretta Duleba and johnswentworth

6 Jul 2026 19:19 UTC

74 points

20 comments12 min readLW link

johnswentworth 2 Jul 2026 0:03 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: Nico Hillbrand’s comment on: Nico Hillbrand’s Shortform
I dunno, man, one galaxy seems kinda small ;)

johnswentworth 27 Jun 2026 21:17 UTC
9 points
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on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
If you were sexually attracted to children, would you be able to admit it to yourself? If you would not be able to admit it to yourself, then you don’t actually know whether or not you’re sexually attracted to children; maybe you are, maybe you aren’t.
This is a special case of a general principle: the only way to know that you don’t secretly want X, desire X, or value X, is if you would be able to admit to yourself that you do want/desire/value X, in worlds where you really do. If the possibility feels too painful to face, then you can’t rule the possibility out.
In order to know your own wants, desires, or values, you need to be ready to face the possibility that they’re not the wants, desires, or values you thought you had, wished you had, or were told you were supposed to have.

johnswentworth 26 Jun 2026 18:44 UTC
12 points
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on: Surprising facts about the slave trade
I haven’t looked into this very deeply, but I suspect that some of this information is historical propaganda. In particular, when I shallowly looked into the famous slave ship diagram some years ago, it didn’t really add up, and I came away thinking it was likely propaganda from the abolitionists’ side. (… but I investigated only briefly and don’t remember the details, so take this with a lot of salt.) Some of the other things also have a propaganda vibe—e.g. the thing about slavery being bad for the economy, or about the sailors, or Clarkson giving an awfully heroic account of himself.

johnswentworth 16 Jun 2026 0:22 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Caleb Biddulph’s comment on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
To be clear, at the time I wasn’t really thinking about other people escalating the playfulness. That didn’t even occur to me as a thing which might happen, until I was thinking about it after the fact.
I didn’t have a particular community in mind. Wish I knew one. Well, other than an elementary school or some other childrens’ community—that would definitely qualify as supercritically playful, but has a bunch of other downsides.

johnswentworth 15 Jun 2026 22:44 UTC
20 points
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in reply to: β-redex’s comment on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
My impression is that kids at play generally do not have trouble coming up with ideas. So I think most people at least had that skill at one point, though it might have been forgotten and/or trained out of them.

johnswentworth 15 Jun 2026 18:23 UTC
53 points
27
on: johnswentworth’s Shortform
Playfulness, like many social stances, sometimes undergoes a critical transition.
People hang out, someone does or says something a little playful, someone else responds playfully. Sometimes the response is a little *less* playful, and if that goes back-and-forth, then the playfulness dies out (left to its own devices). Other times the response is a little *more* playful, and if that goes back-and-forth, then silliness escalates until things get big and interesting.
When I think about recent times when I’ve brought some playfulness into my social environment, e.g. at parties, I notice that almost everyone responds in subcritical ways. So if I want to have a fun playful time, I can drive that by pumping in lots of playfulness myself (e.g. sitting on the roof at LessOnline tossing a big ball to passersby), but it feels like I’m pushing against a current. The silliness doesn’t take on a life of its own.
Me at LessOnline
There are exceptions to this. For instance, a few months ago Garrett and I had some supercritical back-and-forth over a fire pit at Lighthaven. We ended up cooking a lasagna noodle and convincing a slightly-drunk Jesse Hoogland to put the noodle in his pocket for five minutes to test whether it turned into a sticky mess. But that sort of thing is the exception to the rule in the Berkeley rationalist/EA community, as far as I can tell.
I think this is one of the major things I want in a community, that I don’t get from this one.
In John’s ideal community, if someone is on a roof tossing a ball to passersby, other people naturally show up and are like “ooh fun” and decide to join in for a while, and then a little crowd grows in the courtyard/on the roof/on the opposite balcony, all hitting this ball around. And then eventually someone might e.g. run off and find a net, hang that up, and like ten or twenty people end up playing two-story volleyball with the blue ball in the courtyard. Or maybe someone shows up with squirt guns and those get added to the game. Or people start trying to keep the ball aloft by throwing things at it. Or [...] That would be supercritical playfulness.

johnswentworth 1 Jun 2026 4:07 UTC
8 points
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in reply to: kbear’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
Alright. Sorry for being grumpy at you, and thank you for the model.

johnswentworth 31 May 2026 19:19 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
That is useful info, thanks.

johnswentworth 31 May 2026 5:23 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: kbear’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
I don’t conceptualize them that way. I fucked someone; that does not mean I conquered them in any sense beyond the fucking itself. Perhaps you are bringing in a frame where fucking someone implies bringing them low in some way that extends beyond the sex. But I never said anything like that, do not think anything like that, and do not generally live in that frame. This is your associations talking, not mine, and frankly it does not sound like a healthy way to relate to fucking.

johnswentworth 31 May 2026 4:13 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: kbear’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
Yup, conquest is also part of the kind of sex denoted by “fuck”.
You mostly seem to be proving my point that the reason the word is jolting is because the kind of sex it denotes makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I claim the majority of people want to fuck and/or like to fuck. (Certainly the overwhelming majority I’ve fucked love it!) So why are you so uncomfortable with people talking about fucking, outside of their own bedrooms? Seems pretty sus to be grossed out by the topic, if you actually do not have any hangups about that kind of sex!
As for what the word choice offers: more information and accuracy, just like I said upthread. Why use less precise and descriptive words, when more precise and descriptive words are readily available and don’t even take extra space? This would just be common sense in any other everyday domain. And indeed, I am talking about fucking in much the same way I would talk about any other everyday domain. Why wouldn’t I?

johnswentworth 30 May 2026 13:49 UTC
15 points
1
in reply to: Cole Wyeth’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
I disagree, in this very particular case. I was trying to say something similar a day ago and really struggled to come up with a better word.
The point is that the argument is supposed to be about the object-level thing, about whether the object-level claim is true or the object-level advice will have the effects it is claimed to have. The argument is not supposed to be things like “saying this will offend some people” or “you’re a bad person for saying this”. I struggle to come up with a better word or short phrase for that than “rational”; the standard connotations seem basically correct.

johnswentworth 30 May 2026 13:41 UTC
31 points
2
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
“Being disruptive and disconcerting and jolting” is not how I would describe the purpose of curse words. I mean, they can be used that way, but I don’t think it’s the central purpose, I think it’s a side effect of a more useful purpose.
In the case of “fuck”… I’ll quote from Chapter 10 of Passionate Marriage (nominally a book by a therapist on keeping sex alive in long marriages):
“Good sex” and “a good fuck” aren’t quite the same. [...]
Lexicographer Hugh Rawson notes that the English language lacks another transitive verb expressing the basic idea with any degree of vividness. Having sex reinforces sex as behavior rather than as part of our nature. Sleeping with is self-contradictory. Making love and meaningful relationship don’t always live up to their label. Fucking and “making love” differ subjectively and behaviorally. Rawson observes that the taboo we place on this term, combined with our lack of suitable synonyms, results in a fair amount of hypocrisy. Our euphemisms denote how we avoid eroticism. [...]
The trouble is, the kind of sex it is acceptable to be wild about is “making love”. People—women, in particular—are not supposed to fuck. I use the word fuck here because:
- It’s the label millions of people use for this subjective experience.
- In many people’s minds, it represents one polarity on the continuum of “making love”.
- It keeps issues of sexual intent and aggression center-stage.
I claim: the word “fuck” denotes a particular kind of sex. It’s supposed to be very erotic, aggressive, objectifying, primal. The reason the word is jolting is because the kind of sex it denotes makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Our mainstream society is not comfortable with fucking. That’s not a feature of the word, it’s a feature of the real phenomenon the word refers to.

johnswentworth 29 May 2026 15:31 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: localdeity’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
There are adjacent things besides just truth which apply in that case—e.q. arguments that something will not lead to any intellectual progress in any domain, or (in the case of advice posts) arguments that the advice is harmful.

johnswentworth 29 May 2026 12:46 UTC
23 points
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in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Some Dating Stories
Sure, my standard safeword script runs roughly as follows:
Hold out your arm. <She holds out her arm, and I hold it by the wrist with one hand>
Your safewords are red and yellow. Yellow means caution, red means stop. If you can’t speak, tapping <at this point I tap her arm to demonstrate> also substitutes for “red”. Understand? <Usually she nods>
Now I’m going to cause you some pain, increasing over time. I want you to say “yellow” and then “red” when it feels appropriate.
<Still holding her wrist, I put my thumb on a pressure point near the bicep, and start to squeeze, slowly increasing pressure. Usually that one alone isn’t enough pain for a safeword, so I’ll eventually switch to the hip flexor. Eventually, she says “yellow”, and I ease off a little, then continue the ramp-up a little slower until she says “red”. This whole time, I mostly watch her face, to make sure I can actually tell when she’s feeling bad levels of pain; from my end this is about calibration of pain tolerance and reactions at least as much as safewords.>
<Eventually, she says “red”, and I immediately stop.> Good girl.
(This is assuming someone subby and masochistic, obviously it runs a little different otherwise, but the high level generally stays the same.)

johnswentworth

Vi­sion­ing: Con­cretely Imag­in­ing What You Want

Visioning: Concretely Imagining What You Want