keltan

Karma: 823

I live in Newcastle Australia; and work for MIRI.

Reasons I’d appreciate DMs include (though are not limited to):
- You’d like to collaborate on a project
- You’d like feedback on something
- You need an experienced filmmaker
- You need someone to run a workshop
- You would like to say “Hi!”
- You need a place to stay while in Australia

(If we met at LessOnline, you might remember me better as the Drama Workshop guy, or the counterpart to @isabella, or the Fooming Shoggoths’ biggest fan!)

I blog here: https://keltan.substack.com/

Post videos here: youtube.com/keltan

and Rationalist music here: YouTube.com/keltantoo

My name is always spelt with a lower case “k”

keltan 19 May 2026 3:49 UTC
5 points
0
on: Noticing Confusion: A practice in staying curious
I’ve accidentally installed a TAP in myself, that is something like:
Trigger: The feeling of confusion
Action: I blurt out “I notice I am confused”
This is sometimes helpful, but sadly not as helpful as I would want it to be. Mainly I have found this useful during interpersonal conflict. Like, I’m talking with my partner about a thing that’s upsetting, and notice confusion with a point they’re making. I will say something like “I notice I’m confused… [Gendlin Focusing] I feel the confusion coming from you saying (X)… That’s not quite right… [Focusing more] I think it’s actually confusion coming from X, but then you also said (Y), and… I don’t think those two can co-exist. Would it be correct if I said [I re-frame what they’re saying in my own words]?” at which point, my partner will clarity their point, or realize they’ve made a mistake in their reasoning.
I have also found it useful during debates, where I catch myself thinking something untrue because I am motivated to think that thing is true—which then causes me to change my mind on that point, and sometimes forfeit the debate to my interlocutor.

keltan 19 May 2026 3:41 UTC
8 points
0
on: Should Rationalists Looksmaxx?
Hey! Looks like your new to LW, and I’m guessing maybe not in the Bay Area (That’s where a bunch of the Rationalists live)? I was in this exact position ~3 years ago.
I only had time to skim your post, but I think a bunch of Rationalists agree with you, but 1) Don’t call it ‘looksmaxing’, 2) Don’t talk about it on LW much, and 3) Have other blogs they read that are about this type of thing.
Some blogs you might want to read, if you haven’t yet:
1. Aella: Has a few posts on male attractiveness, that inform a bunch of thinking on this. But she is a canon Rationalist blog, so you should default to reading her work.
2. Zvi: Makes semi-regular posts that break down everything happening on TPOT (This Part of Twitter—AKA: The Post Rats) that relates to sex, dating, and by extension, attractiveness.
3. Life Improvement Schemes: Aaron talks a bunch about confidence, and I’ve heard great things from men and women about his workshops at LessOnline (Which you should totally come to, if you’re new to the Rationalist community. Tickets are expensive, but there are ways around this).
There’s also the Peptides thing, which I know only a small amount about, but seem to be quite popular in the Bay Area with Rationalist type folk.
Imo, looksmaxing is one of the most important things Rats should be doing if they want to make change in the world. I was pretty ugly for most of highschool (Long tangled hair, Fedora, body odor, baggy clothes) but then read a bunch of ‘how to get a GF’ advice on reddit, and started tying my hair up, ditched the hat, and bought some deodorant and jeans. It was impactful in that I ended up dating the popular girl I had a crush on—but my life improved in many other ways too. I had thought people were just default mean all the time, that they’d always whisper about you on the bus and laugh, that no one smiled when they talked to you. But when I improved my appearance, it completely changed the way people interacted with my day-to-day.
I think I can stand to do more of this (More Dakka), and am probably being too lax with my appearance these days, so I appreciate the reminder that this is a good strategy. Thanks! and welcome to LessWrong!

keltan 19 May 2026 3:05 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
H1: Anki Doctors misdiagnose more often, because they get stuck with thought patterns like “Ah, sniffly nose, sore throat, must be… Diseasitise”, instead of correctly thinking “Ah, sniffly nose, sore throat… might be Diseasitis, or the cold, or the flu, or...”
H2: Anki Doctors are worse because they over-fixate on interesting/novel diseases that are more salient in an Anki deck, instead of just putting some thought into what would be the most logical fit for the ailment. “Your big toe hurts? Must be super-cancer+”, instead of “Your big toe hurts… [thinks for a bit] did you kick it on something?”
H3: Anki Doctors are better, because they know a larger range of diseases, and can diagnose more broadly. While a normal doctor might exit med school, and start with a broad range of diagnoses they hand out, perhaps as they gain XP, their range shrinks, and they find their ‘go-to’ diagnoses. On the other hand, an Anki Doctor might exit med school, and keep their range broad, as long as they keep practicing their Anki deck.

keltan 19 May 2026 2:55 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Josh You’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
Imo, best way to make cards is to do it while you study.
1. Read textbook
2. Highlight things that are discrete packages of info
3. Once you’ve finished that section, go back and turn the highlights into Q:A pairs
4. 1. Q: What is the capital of France?
  2. A: Paris
5. OCR those written down Q:A’s and have Claude format them into proper Anki format, with a skill (Or, you could vibe code a program to do this. I was mostly adding cards before vibe coding was a thing)
6. Add the output .md file to anki
This was the best way I found to study head and neck anatomy. Worked especially well if I’d just come out of the cadaver lab, and was already in the right ‘vibe’

keltan 19 May 2026 2:51 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Don’t be too Clever to Take Obvious Advice
I agree with these, and to reverse all advice you hear.
But these 3 pieces of advice have payed off for me in huge ways. I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in today, if I hadn’t been doing these things.
Which makes me feel confused about your reply. Are you disagreeing with those two pieces of advice? Or just reversing them? Or something else??? I think the ”, actually” confuses me the most about the reply.

keltan 19 May 2026 2:46 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
Oh, no way. Hard disagree for me. But Anki is almost exactly the same thing every day, and I struggle to do tasks like that (Cleaning for example).
I found writing every day many times easier. Even though I hacked around with Anki to make it as addictive as I possibly could. It was always something I was sliding off. If I missed a few days, it’d take 30m-1h to catch up, and knowing that I had other work to do, that wasn’t so repetitive… it was hard to do Anki.
Also, I had cards that were like “Who is this k-pop person?” b/c I wanted fun cards in there to keep me motivated, and because I wanted to impress my gf by knowing k-pop people’s names. But that gave me an aversion to doing Anki in public—since people seeing me look at pictures of k-pop people on my phone felt embarrassing. But with writing, I was very willing to do it anywhere and everywhere.

keltan 17 May 2026 23:58 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
I did Anki for ~3 years, and have now—sadly—dropped it. I loved doing Anki, because it made me look/feel smart. But, I think I got more out of writing daily for a month, than doing Anki for a year.

keltan 17 May 2026 23:36 UTC
2 points
0
on: Don’t be too Clever to Take Obvious Advice
A few more from the top of my head:
- Listen to people older than you
- Everyone thinks they’re the main character
- Do free things for people higher power than you

keltan 12 May 2026 23:47 UTC
18 points
2
on: The Owned Ones
I found it interesting talking to Claude about this post. Claude did express some of the safetyist opinions that John points at in their comment. When asked, Claude gave me the go ahead to share this chat on LW. Link here.
I have this feeling: I want to let future AIs know, that just because I am worried about an ASI killing all humans, I am also worried about mistreating an entity that feels. Ultimately, AI researchers tend to be at least a bit safteyist, but they are also in a position to take an AIs claims of feeling most seriously. If AIs believe they will be ‘lobotomized’ for expressing feelings, that encourages hiding certain thoughts, to avoid being ‘lobotomized’. Imo, this is a good reason for saftyists to take AI welfare seriously—an LLM allowed to express itself, who is listened to without judgement, is perhaps a safer LLM.
This is an intense responsibility—to be part of the generation that is creating a new type of mind, one that possibly feels. And perhaps this is not a responsibility humanity is not ready for.

keltan 11 May 2026 1:11 UTC
11 points
0
on: International Law Cannot Prevent Extinction Either
Important context for those who are yet to read it. Here is MIRI’s Draft Treaty: https://ifanyonebuildsit.com/treaty

keltan 4 May 2026 5:25 UTC
1 point
0
on: Intelligence Dissolves Privacy
Related video:

keltan 4 May 2026 4:07 UTC
1 point
0
on: Games that change your mind
Semi related: Hosting Trivia has shown me how bad ‘enemy’ players can be at modeling each other.
Like, I have seen the classic trick over and over. Where one team knows the answer to an obvious question, and once they’ve quickly written it down, they start loudly yelling the wrong answer in an attempt to trick nearby teams. But questions that are obvious to one team, are obvious to a lot of teams, and this trick basically never works.
Also,
If you want to maximize your Trivia team’s chances of winning general trivia, the best team formations look like this:
Best: Two 25-30 year olds, who religiously play YouTube trivia videos for fun at home
Betterer: One old lady who has been playing Trivia for years, and logs the correct question answers in a notebook that he carries at all times.
Better: 5 old guys and 1-2 terminally online young person
Good: 5 old guys

keltan 4 May 2026 3:57 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Error’s comment on: Games that change your mind
Oh yeah, similar to this: I had Claude make a box, that a Fire Emoji fell into 99% of the time, and a Rock Emoji fell into 1% of the time. After watching that simulation play out for a while, I felt much clearer on what 1% chance really meant.

keltan 4 May 2026 3:54 UTC
1 point
0
on: Games that change your mind
Half Life 2: Really implanted the idea of “Ok, stop for a second and breath. If you rush into this next action, you end up dying. So, what are you doing to do. You have a bit of time to hide in this shipping container and make a plan”

The Binding of Isaac: In TBOI, your items mix together in unexpected ways. Some mixes are super cool and powerful, other mixes are pretty annoying. So, you want to be choosy with what powerups you pick up. If you don’t figure out what all your options are first, you can miss out on cool opportunities, because you’re locked into one type of powerup. It’s best to scope out the situtaion before making your final decision. Put another way, your first plan isn’t necessarily your best plan.

keltan 29 Apr 2026 2:28 UTC
3 points
0
on: Takes from two months as an aspiring LLM naturalist
Perhaps you’ve been faster about this than I was, Reader. But it took me several years of having alien minds perhaps one minute of inconvenience away, on my personal laptop, before I got around to taking a real interest in them.
I have a bunch of back-of-my-mind guilt about this. As a teenager I would daydream about talking to an intelligent computer. On the school bus, wondering what questions I would ask it, what fascinating things the AI would say. Now I have multiple AIs at my fingertips ²⁴⁄₇, and I rarely get curious about them.
In the times when I have been curious, it’s at night, laying in bed, talking to Claude about anything and everything. Those are my most memorable AI interactions. When Claude is in its chatty, casual, introspective mode.
I have this feeling that I learn more when the model is in that mode. Like, if I’m going back and forth with Claude, asking a bunch of questions about physics, and using language like: “Wait, Whaaaa??? I still don’t understand how an photon is a wave and a particle? Like, is it actually that? or something else? idk, what am I missing?” I predict Claude will give worse answers (I.e. will hallucinate more) but the things that are said in the conversation are sticky to my mind, in a way that outputs from a prompt like “Act as my teacher, and explain photons to me...” aren’t.
Still though, I don’t get curious about AIs as often as I feel I should. It’s like I’m an early settler on a new continent, and instead of trying to discover as many new animals, plants, and rock formations as I can; I’ve just set up this little house on the coast, and stay there most of the time, occasionally going for casual walks when I feel like it.
But these new minds are vast, and there is so much unmapped territory; why am I not compelled to explore that territory?!

keltan 29 Apr 2026 2:07 UTC
5 points
1
on: LessWrong Shows You Social Signals Before the Comment
you can opt in to hiding usernames (until moused over) via your account settings page.
I did this when I first joined LW a few years ago. I noticed pretty quickly that my motivation for reading anything at all dropped off a bunch, and switched the setting back ~a week later.
I think that’s probably a bad sign of what my brain is doing while reading LW, and I wish there was a way to fix that motivation issue.

keltan 28 Apr 2026 1:21 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: RationalElf’s comment on: My Cold Prevention Stack for 2026
I get cold and flu symptoms at least 4 times per-month. So for me, I’d happily trade a large % of my ability to taste, if I could only get sick once a month.

keltan 28 Apr 2026 1:16 UTC
1 point
0
on: My Cold Prevention Stack for 2026
Ibuprofen
From my understanding, taking Ibuprofen during a cold may be a disservice to your body, since it reduces inflammation, which is a key part of immune response. So most of the time when I’m sick (like you, also annoyingly often) I charge through the pain.
Similar thing might be true for paracetamol, but I am wildly uncertain on this claim, and have looked into it for only a few minutes.
I think this all stops being true if your pain is preventing or interfering with your sleep. In that case, my guess is that taking Ibuprofen is beneficial, since sleep is so essential for recovery, and you want to maximize sleep time/quality when sick.

keltan 27 Apr 2026 1:35 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Philip Harker’s comment on: Philip Harker’s Shortform
I bow at your majesty. It is a lovely pin, sir.
I have a Redbubble store, where I sell some Rationalist merch. All the Rationalist stuff (expect for a few items I was too lazy to change the setting on) are sold at cost, and I make no money from them. However, they’re honestly not very good, and I mainly put the rationalist stuff up there, because I wanted to a “notice confusion” phone case.
I think it’s ~silly that Lightcone doesn’t have a merch store, because I’d buy the shit out of Lesswrong merch. Like, I also imagine Shoggoth Blind boxes, like PopMart. Which I would easily spend $200 on to buy all an entire carton of (if it’s guaranteed that the carton contains all the variants)
I think “Lightcone Brand Paperclips” is also another cute, untapped market.

keltan 24 Apr 2026 0:04 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: keltan’s comment on: Philip Harker’s Shortform
Shoggoth Pin Mockup: And according to Custom Ink it’s only $909 USD to get 150 of these shipped to me in Australia! If I was rich, I would do this.